Climbing Out of a Slump | Hacker News Reader

Climbing Out of a Slump

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Much like him, I absolutely despise the "happiness is a choice" crowd - it is incredibly difficult to convey to a person that doesn't suffer with this, how crippling it is to be able to recognize something logically and yet succumb to your feelings anyway. It sucks.

I appreciate the author's sharing of his techniques, I wish more people would as eventually we might find insights into the condition that we don't already have.

The only part I'm not sure about, is whether or not it is an advantage as the author proclaims - more often than not, the highly successful (creative) people I know always focus on the positive and are relentlessly pushing forward. I, for one, wish I had a little more of that.

This needs to be reiterated. Even though he mentioned it multiple times, and you addressed it, it can't be overstated: there are people whose emotional turmoil is not cured by any amount of cognitive help.

These people are disproportionately more creative than the average person, and are lauded "mad geniuses". As a result, others (and I'm not accusing the author for this) jump on the bandwagon, mentioning their mood swings as a way to emphasize their bouts of creativity. I've even heard the occasional self-diagnosed bipolar declare it worth the suffering.

This does a disservice to those who spend decades on medication, 20% of whom eventually end their own life. Many of us who like to call ourselves creative might have our days or weeks of mild depression or mania, but our ability to have a simple perspective change return us to normalcy distinguishes us from them.

True. That's why I took care to separate out the clinical cases as carefully as I could. The reverse is also true: people who can be helped by cognitive reframings may not find medication useful. In fact, it can make things worse. A significant proportion of patients on depression and bipolar meds get worse, not better.

I have no problem admitting that I have been on medication a couple of times, for brief periods. It was a long time ago, and so ineffective/counterproductive for me that it was the kick in the pants I needed to decide to take control of my life at a more cognitive level. It convinced me that meds are vastly overprescribed for what might be called "existential" illnesses. That experience did inform my post.

But there is an aspect of this stuff that is perhaps even bigger than the mild/severe distinction and the pop-psych/clinical psych distinction.

This is the fact that professional or amateur, anybody who thinks they actually understand more than 10% of this sort of thing is a liar. I wouldn't trust any professional who refused to admit that we just don't understand 90% of what's going on, at either a cognitive or biochemical level. There is as much bs spouted by the supposed "professionals" about serotonin as there is by amateurs like me opining about how to climb out of slumps.

Not that I think my stuff is bs, but my kind of writing belongs in a category with more than its fair share of bs :)

Venkat

"Never make decisions when you are depressed" <--- this is gold. Learned it the hard way.

ditto.... I also do the "trick yourself into doing things" technique.

Good to hear that other people go through the exact same thought process.

I don't know how you manage working from home though... going to the office in a morning works wonders for me. I tend to regress over the weekend; I'm at my peak on Wednesday and Thursday.

The short answer is: you get used to it, but it is not ideal or a particularly healthy work lifestyle. It has many of the same problems as solitary confinement within a prison.

Since the pattern is increasing all around, more social support structures are emerging around work-from-home lifestyles, but frankly, the current state is very primitive.

There was a coworking space about half a block away from my current location, but it closed down. Unfortunately I didn't find out it closed until after I moved here (partly to be close to it) :/. Perceived cost of living keeps me from moving to a different metro area with better services.

I also do the "trick yourself into doing things" technique.

That may not be a good long-term strategy.

If someone is in a slump, then he already can't trust himself to do what he knows is in his best interest. I don't think someone in that state should do anything that might degrade his trust in himself even further.

I also do this!

'Just put on your running shoes, and go to the gym. You don't have to run', I'd tell my self. Gets me every time.

I wish I could upvote this more than once. It really picked up my day.

I always find a cognitive approach far more effective than trying to internalize some inspirational BS.

Thanks!

Really, same- I wish I could upvote this more than once.

This was a great read. I've been in an academic slump of late, but I've just begun getting out (a bit late this semester, perhaps) and I can say he's absolutely right about doing smaller things that matter less, moving eventually into larger things.

I just got back from my first real exercise (five laps of the football-field track) in months, and now I'm feeling great. Hopefully things stay up :)

+1 for exercising, especially squats. Apparently, squats and deadlifts release a burst of testosterone. I can vouch from personal experience that squats drive out the blues like nothing else, and can certainly believe in the burst-of-testosterone theory; nothing like a rocket boost of manliness to drive away depression! :-)

Yes, but does it work for women, too?

Yes : Int J Sports Med. 1991 Apr;12(2):228-35.

"Endogenous anabolic hormonal and growth factor responses to heavy resistance exercise in males and females."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1860749

Venkat writes some of the most consistently interesting and intelligent blog posts I've found, and this was no exception. Thanks for sharing it.

Interesting read.

I think one of the biggest challenges is identifying you're in a slump in the first place.

My tactic is to always maintain a list of things that I wish I did more of, and as soon as I figure out I'm in a slump, I pick something on the list. This especially works well with things I used to do more.

I just tacked a list to my wall of varying levels of things to do to pick things up a little. Just that process feels good.

Can't help but think, too, that simply making a conscious effort to incorporate one/some of those things into every day would be a great preventative measure.

He points out that one of the keys is not to indulge too much in something, e.g., eating fried food, because you get used to it. Couldn't agree more. You need a baseline. When the slumps hit, then you pull out your med-pack.

I go through this every so often (actually last week was the most recent one), and I definitely agree that sleeping and spending your unproductive time learning new things is useful. The only problem is while you're in the process of getting out of the slump, people who are depending on you start to get angry, which only pushes you further into the slump. The only consolation is it's much easier to profusely apologize once you're back in good spirits.

Venkat has an understanding of human behavior and psychology I find quite surprising in a developer. Definitely worth reading his blog, especially:

The Gervais Principle (psychology of workplace dynamics) http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

Thanks.

FWIW I am not a developer. I am a pointy-haired boss. My long-forgotten background is in aerospace engineering.

I'm not bipolar (I think). I do get, amongst others effects, a depression if my allergies get "fed". (Really weird, I didn't think allergies worked like that.)

I recently realized the connection, which made me really happy -- now it is controllable. Well, I'll be happy when I get out of the slump...

This article told me why I've been reading a lot of bad sf (instead of good) and manga. :-)

The artist Tricky also had allergies that triggered depressions. And only learned of this relation after a long time.

Thanks. Googling is informative on this. (Saw Tricky play with PJ Harvey 1995, by the way. :-)

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