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Letting go of the idea of keeping up

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Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#101

Post by resource_waste »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #94
resource_waste wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for starting the discussion. > Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of professional obligations (you'll fall behind to your professional peers) Okay, I'm literally terrified about not being in the top 1% or top 10% of everything I do. Scared. I have built my life around me with people that perform at those levels, so everyone from my wife to my best friends may disappear if I'm not perfor…

How is Stoicism Kool-Aid?

You have to mental gymnastics your way to happiness, rather than using your intrinsic desires.

You also probably need to take a philosophical "Leap of Faith" at some point to justify your work. The obvious one is Solipsism, you basically must assume that other people have consciousness. Hope you aren't just a brain in the vat, and this worldly experience was all for you.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#102

Post by fnordian_slip »

resource_waste wrote: post #90
NalNezumi wrote: post #48

When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research .. But it's about spare time reading? Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession). I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of profession…

Thanks for starting the discussion. > Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of professional obligations (you'll fall behind to your professional peers) Okay, I'm literally terrified about not being in the top 1% or top 10% of everything I do. Scared. I have built my life around me with people that perform at those levels, so everyone from my wife to my best friends may disappear if I'm not perfor…

>Not to mention, look at nature: The best do what they can and the weak suffer. It is sad, but its reality.

There's a lot of helping weak members of the pack done by social animals, don't get fooled by the reductionist understanding of "survival of the fittest" that the American education system seems to teach. I believe part of the success of social animals like humans is the support they can give each other, which doesn't mean there is no survival of the fittest anymore, but that the fitness now refers the whole group rather than individuals.

And there are examples of very early humans with disabilities that would have made their care very resource-intensive for their tribe, and still they often lived long lives. This implies that these early humans helped even the weakest members, when they could just as easily have let these individuals perish to make their own lives easier.

I'm trying to say this in the kindest way, but please seek professional help, your view of reality and your relationships seems neither healthy nor sustainable to me.

It is important that you can sometimes let your guard down and not perform at the highest level imho. After all, you are not a machine, but a real human being with feelings. If you want to perform at that level, this is of course perfectly fine, but it should be because you enjoy it, or the fruits of your labor, not because you feel like you have to.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#103

Post by ErigmolCt »

I had the feeling of failure connected with reading during my college experience. There was a book club. It was like an elite club that everyone wanted to be a part of. But in order to join, you had to be able to read a lot of books. I wasn't able to do it, and I never became a part of that club, yet two of my friends were there. I was jealous

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#104

Post by ErigmolCt »

NalNezumi wrote: post #48

When I saw the title I thought the article would be about the dreadful stress of keeping up with new tech or research .. But it's about spare time reading? Granted the problem seems similar, but only because the author is in the field of reading (working in books related profession). I'm not sure how much it can be applied to just hobby reading. Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of profession…

But if you feel the stress of keeping up with new tech or keeping up with book reading, don't you think it's the same? Just don't worry, everyone has their own pace

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#105

Post by specproc »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #102
resource_waste wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for starting the discussion. > Stress of keeping up with tech/research comes from a sense of professional obligations (you'll fall behind to your professional peers) Okay, I'm literally terrified about not being in the top 1% or top 10% of everything I do. Scared. I have built my life around me with people that perform at those levels, so everyone from my wife to my best friends may disappear if I'm not perfor…

>Not to mention, look at nature: The best do what they can and the weak suffer. It is sad, but its reality. There's a lot of helping weak members of the pack done by social animals, don't get fooled by the reductionist understanding of "survival of the fittest" that the American education system seems to teach. I believe part of the success of social animals like humans is the support they can give each other, which…

Absolutely. The notion that fierce competition for survival is the state of all things in nature is reductionist at best, and incredibly harmful when applied to the human social world.

Take some of the more successful species out there: there are countless species of fungi which thrive on a mutually-beneficial relationships with the root systems of plants (check out the Wood Wide Web); or lichen, which are composite organisms arising from algae or bacteria living in fungi.

Competition is undeniably a big part of the natural world, but it's not something that captures a fraction of the complex relationships between and within species.

Appeals to this survival of the fittest nonsense justify all sorts of terrible behaviour -- and I guess in this context, self-flagellation -- but have little a very weak relationship with modern understandings of biology, history and sociology.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#106

Post by troutwine »

resource_waste wrote: post #99
amonith wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so everyone from my wife to my best friends may disappear if I'm not performing at those levels Excuse me, what the flask. You don't have a wife and friends then at all. You've built a non-profit organization, not a family. > look at nature: The best do what they can and the weak suffer What kind of nature are you even watching? It's the sickly bottom 1% that's suffering which is an unfortunate reality, not the 90%…

>You don't have a wife and friends then at all. You've built a non-profit organization, not a family. :( Yeah I know >What kind of nature are you even watching From the highest levels to the lowest levels, power dynamics decide how things are. I will admit that you can intellectual insanity your way to enjoying/handling suffering, I was a Stoic for 3 years. Whatever the case, maybe I've personally experienced more of…

> From the highest levels to the lowest levels, power dynamics decide how things are.

Even granting this premise, which I don't, the interpretation you are operating under -- all but the 1% or 10% or whatever get get crushed -- is not realistic. Folks live happy, contented lives today in community with others. Many species other than human care for the elderly or their sick and long-term disabled. Keeping with the evolutionary model why would altruism continually evolve into species without utility?

I guess, on a personal note, I hope things improve for you.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#107

Post by ErigmolCt »

steviem wrote: post #2

I read around 150 books a year. Most of it is what I like to call "shitlit", or alternatively inconsequential literature. This does not mean I am better or worse than anyone, just that my default state is reading. Friends eventually read books when recommended them and we talk about then. Reading shouldnt be a target, it should be for enjoyment. I enjoy shitlit, but others may not.

Reading indeed should be a source of enjoyment. But sometimes you read coz you have to.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#108

Post by kaashif »

arvinsim wrote: post #87
sandspar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading a book a week isn't difficult. If you read at a hobbyist reader's comfortable pace then you can finish a medium novel in five to seven hours. Hobbyist readers with full-time jobs who read on the side can read from one to six hours a day. Think of the average person's daily phone screentime.

Reading a book a week in a vacuum is easy. Reading a book a week that competes with your responsibilities and other hobbies is a challenge.

Rather than making absolute statements, let's say that's true if you have a lot of responsibilities and other hobbies.

Some friends of mine say they had huge amounts of time to read and do stuff before they had kids, but took it for granted and managed to complain about having no time.

Lots of people spend huge amounts of their time on their phones or computers passively browsing, or watching Netflix or whatever. Reducing that time and reading instead is very achievable.

This is not true for everyone, others really do still have responsibilities and hobbies that take up too much time to be able to read a book a week. Others read slowly and cannot improve. No advice about free time is one size fits all.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#109

Post by kaashif »

plank wrote: post #84
Novosell wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read short books of low complexity, aye. We need to start talking page count. Aint nobody reading 3 Robin Hobb books a week all year long.

I disagree. Reading lecture (! not literature or study books) I read 15 books each weekend in my teens, reading all science fiction and fantasy books in the town's library. And no, not all where 1000 pages long. But they weren't all shorter then 300. And yes, I regurarly went back during the week to catch an extra book or two. I realize I might be a relatively fast reader, and this fast reading I only did in English…

> 15 books each weekend should be read as ==>> I traded my 15 books for 15 new books each weekend, reading them during the weekend and when not in school

So you mean 15 books each week, not each weekend! I was surprised when I read that, but this makes more sense.

Re: Letting go of the idea of keeping up

#110

Post by NalNezumi »

starbugs wrote: post #82
NalNezumi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it is transferable only partially? But still not that helpful. It is helpful to people that are not aware of the source of the stress (often in the form of feeling overwhelmed) to be able to identify it. The article spend most of the words actually just describing this phenomenon. I think newly-graduated-in-tech-startup me in the past would've felt validated reading it. But the article falls short on any good…

> Not worrying about it might be close to just quitting (or silent quitting) and require a bit more mental change than "to not just worry about it". Even if that's the ultimate goal, the advice is as helpful as telling a homeless man how dreadful it is to not have a home, and then tell him to just buy a house. I understand the sentiment and I know where you're coming from with this. Still, if you want to be less stre…

Thank you for your sincere reply.(and understanding)

I'm right now not in that mental state, and in matter of fact in the process of quitting my job (well one reason of it) for the stress of keeping up. So the description in your last paragraph does ring true to my previous mentality, and something I had to work on for the past 4 years to correct.

Still, when I see my newer coworkers in similar situation as I were, I know neither my experience nor your comment will reach them. But I believe your comment & my experience is probably more useful than the original articles (non-existent) advice.

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