Ask HN: What helps you push through?
When you are overworked, tired, have low motivation to continue and possibly on the brink of burnout.. what helps you drive what you're working on to the finish line?
Outside of work, choose to relax, which might mean leaving a lot of stuff you should do go. Maybe the house doesn’t need to be tidy, or the kids can watch tv without you feeling guilty. Or use ubereats instead of cooking, or pause the side project, skip the run etc.
"What does a man do, Walter? [...] A man provides. And he does it, even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he's a man."
A stress-free, relaxed brain used for 6 hours is much better than stressful brain used for 10h.
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/11/21/a-lack-of-sleep-causes-... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/practical-mindfulnes...
I got pretty lucky and created a small business when I was 32. That business is still alive today, but I don’t put anymore effort into it aside from doing customer support. That’s probably a big part of why I feel like I can finally sit back and enjoy my life and children. I’ve always had low expectations, and I feel like I accomplished more than I thought I would. I haven’t made that big of a dent, but it’s been enough for me.
I don’t know where I’m going with all this. I’m just glad I’m not constantly thinking about success—it can be so draining. I used to be worried about becoming who I am now, satisfied, somewhat complacent. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been.
1. It makes you focus on the task at hand, since you're no longer thinking about another vector (speed)
2. It guarantees that your daily energy reserves are enough to keep you interested
A routine also helps me stay driven and avoid burnout because I know what to expect each day and there is a clear end in sight.
Think about finding what motivates you like you think about finding the right diet: experiment and iterate.
tl;dr We are motivated/rewarded (at the neurotransmitter level) when we feel that we're on the right path. What makes you feel like you're on the right path?
This feeling of being on the right path causes dopamine to be released which quells the anxiety/quit sensation (adrenaline/norepinephrine) that's caused by struggle and is what leads to burnout.
Learn to pull yourself, either with self-motivating goals or habits.
Look into Shamatha meditation which is single-pointed concentration, it's relaxing and good for your mental state.
re: burnout
> [...] level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results.
> My clients are perfectionists [...] They have very rigid ideals in terms of win-lose [...] Their expectations of success are through the roof, and when their reality doesn’t match up with their expectations, it leads to burnout—they leave no room for error or failure at all in their formula.
> Older workers, as it turns out, have more perspective and more experience; it’s the young idealists who go flying into a profession, plumped full of high hopes, and run full-speed into a wall. Maslach also found that married people burn out less often than single people, as long as their marriages are good, because they don’t depend as much on their jobs for fulfillment. And childless people, though unburdened by the daily strains of parenting, tend to burn out far more than people with kids. (This, too, has been found across cultures; in the Netherlands, a recent survey by the Bureau of Statistics showed that twice as many working women without children showed symptoms of burnout as did working women with underage children.) It’s much easier to disproportionately invest emotional and physical capital in the office if you have nowhere else to put it. And the office seldom loves you back.
-- https://nymag.com/news/features/24757/
re: not burning out
> Poor is the person without Slack. Lack of Slack compounds and traps. Slack means margin for error. You can relax. Slack allows pursuing opportunities. You can explore. You can trade. Slack prevents desperation. You can avoid bad trades and wait for better spots. You can be efficient. Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest. Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun. Slack enables doing the right thing. Stand by your friends. Reward the worthy. Punish the wicked. You can have a code. Slack presents things as they are without concern for how things look or what others think. You can be honest. You can do some of these things, and choose not to do others. Because you don’t have to.
> Most times are ordinary. Make an ordinary effort.
> Make sure that under normal conditions you have Slack. Value it. Guard it. Spend it only when Worth It. If you lose it, fight to get it back. [...] Make sure to run a diagnostic test every so often to make sure you’re not running dangerously low, and to engineer your situation to force yourself to have Slack.