temp234

I guess I would recommend some self-compassion, first of all, because this is a historically miserable time and you are muddling through the same as everyone else. The pandemic may not be the time in your management career when employees seemed happiest.

I think you're right that direct asking sometimes doesn't work. Furthermore, it's easy to confuse private outside-of-work issues for hidden burnout. I have begrudgingly revealed personal problems because it seemed like the best way to stop my manager sleuthing and keep my job safe. I then had to put on a fake smile for all the free advice and unsolicited personal stories I got. The only catharsis was my manager's.

So if "inbound" info seeking can be dangerous, I guess that leaves companies with "outbound" burnout interventions, like surprise days off and "optional" happy hours. Also tricky. Events might make an organizer with power feel good but if they're upsetting the forced attendees, the organizer will be the last to know. Maybe it's best to seek a lot of anonymous feedback on these "rewards"

Third possibility after detecting or relieving burnout is preventing it. This means managers modeling boundaries and self-care. Take needed sick days and do not "excuse" yourself by confessing what you're sick with. Shut the laptop at 5pm and set an overnight away message. Remind people to make plans to use their benefits. Refuse some emergencies.

Sadly, trust is more easily destroyed than built. The management team needs to be honest about which way accountability flows in the company: does it just go from managers to underlings, or do underlings regularly and safely point out problems? Skip-level meetings might prevent people from creating hidden "rules" inside the company ("this team stays til 7", "yeah that employee is abusive but we accommodate them because they're good at programming and our team works on critical systems", "don't talk to anyone outside the team without telling me first")

Sounds like you are a good manager for caring about this issue. Best of luck

Interestingly, if we are talking about actual, diagnosed, non-colloquial, real-bad-if-it-goes-untreated OCD... Jon Herschfield is a good writer about OCD who has it himself and this article series he wrote mentions some OCD manifestations that involve a deep fear of something happening on the internet https://www.sheppardpratt.org/news-views/story/moral-scrupul...

Here's more info on how people with obsessive compulsive disorder might experience obsessions and compulsions related to matching, symmetry, correctness. https://peaceofmind.com/education/types-of-ocd/perfectionism...

You are right that Facebook gets engagement by irritating people, but this isn't an example of obsessive compulsive behavior on the part of the user, just negativity bias maybe. OCD is a specific and potentially life-ruining condition if it goes untreated. It takes people years and years to get diagnosed because almost nobody knows how to recognize OCD or thinks that it's something it isn't and the longer OCD goes untreated the harder it is to fix. I don't think most people mean anything malicious by calling any old high standard or repetitive action OCD but it's really worth getting a clear understanding of what OCD is because maybe you'll help save another person, or even yourself, from pure living hell. https://www.madeofmillions.com/conditions/obsessive-compulsi...

Mindfulness/awareness practice sometimes is used as part of OCD treatment as a resource alongside ERP, and mindfulness is broadly useful to people, and might be good for getting away from a negative feed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31505967/

> We are planning to follow the same pattern.

I'm curious, why?

It seems like you could just do the third step since that's the only one you feel confident you'll do well, and it also gives you the most information about what they're like to work with.

On an iPhone in the YouTube app settings I was able to set up an alert that gave me a reminder every few minutes to take a break. You can customize the number of minutes. After a while with this alert I was watching a lot less YouTube and deleted the app, although I saw in one of your comments that that's not an option on Android.

I also subscribed to a few sites where I can stream video on topics I'm interested in, and now I have less reason to go on YouTube in the first place. I'm directly supporting some great individuals and organizations and learning a lot. You mentioned that you have a couple creators you really like. You could try following and supporting them directly.

Does anybody have any reading recommendations or thoughts on the topic of how people _with_ drilled or otherwise refined skills can turn into people who come up with and complete mature creative projects? In creative contexts I know a lot of people who get stuck on just drilling their skills forever or who want to be mature creative project-completers but mysteriously aren't getting it done. I've read a lot about how people get world-class good at things ("10k hours") but I don't think those books explain why one person successfully completes a unique comic, album, short film, or novella and another person struggles with that goal all their days, either only producing derivative work or never completing their work. Some of the focus on "10k'ing" your way to world class skill feels like a distraction from developing as an independent thing-finisher. Some incredible creative work has been completed by people with decent-but-not-world-class skill.

The longer I am around the more I realize that pretty much every knowledge worker field or creative field is just about having a rocking public portfolio and passing the van/line/airport test: "Would you want to be stuck in a van/line/airport with this person? Are they respectful and nice?" You can break into a surprising number of industries with time, a good heart, and work samples.

Somebody, create a forum for smartphone abandoners that doesn't work on mobile?

Yeah... I was going to go with "4. yes and it was horrifying so I'm back to no"

Mediocrity is subjective. If you were to describe your ideal life to me, I could find someone who would think it sounded unimpressive.

Most people shrink their world until their actions feel like they have meaning. Rich, smart, and powerful people do this too. A person may not be important in the context of the whole world but they can feel like an important person in their relationship, family, job, or hobby. To an outsider, the relationship is boring, the kids are spoiled, the job is pointless, and the hobby is silly and embarrassing. But to the person themselves it's all satisfying, validating, fascinating, and joyful.

You and I are no better. We can't escape this same fate for ourselves. All we can do is find the way _we_ want to be tricked. It's sad and ridiculous but that's part of why it's fun and beautiful.

Got to do your due diligence (what's the work? how to you plan and track work? are priorities stable? is crunch rare to nonexistent?) but yes, it's always a bet. If it's another bad fit, keep hoping and hopping.

Maybe use your network of people that were good to work with; can you reach out to your former manager you clicked with or any former teammates you liked and say hey, I'm ready for my next role, I liked working with you, do you have anything open on your team or do you know of any good teams with openings? If they ask why, just say you want to try something new. Which is true. You don't need to unload about your current predicament or criticize your current boss, just be upbeat and clear that you want a new role. People will either pick up that something is wrong and appreciate your tact and respect your privacy, or, when you say you just want something new, they'll simply believe you and not start overthinking, prying, and dissecting, which is hard to remember when your current role is making you feel like you're bad and everyone is horrible.

Best of luck, you are worthy no matter what your current environment is making you feel.

"Rather there will be patches of interest that you hook on, like a mountain climber and handholds."

Really great way of describing it

Really glad I found a few all-ages communities and deep interests outside of my university friends and tech job.

Really glad I stayed in good shape. Maffetone, heart rate monitor, nutrition.

Really glad I kept eating omelettes when I could afford champagne.

Fitting in isn't cool anymore, now boundaries and niches are cool. Everything I regret is related to not getting that sooner.

Really sorry you're going through a hard time.

I would try not to see any of this as a puzzle to solve or evidence to ruminate on about who is actually the bad one here. It doesn't matter whether your manager is bad or you're bad. It's just a bad fit and you should try to get yourself a better fit.

As you've discovered, people can either be set up to succeed and feel good, or not, and you might feel like a completely different person given your environment. It's OK to push for the best environment for yourself with no additional explanation or self-judgement.

Ha! After quitting social media, I thought, "Hm, I still waste time online but now I waste it in more interesting ways." Hoping a smartphone relationship rethink yields similar benefits.

Thanks, this thread was great.

You have a good attitude. Prestige colleges are a lot of things, including brands, and it's in their interest to have everyone develop a tender-age psychological sore spot over whether they're worthy of the brand. Not the other way around, they don't want us wondering whether the prestige college system is worthy of us. We only win when enough of us decide not to play.

There are a few really specific situations where I would advise you to only attempt if armed with the most insufferably prestigious degrees possible (if you wanted to be a humanities professor at Oxford, for example), but for most industries there are plenty of ways in. Practicing medicine? Definitely can do that without the Ivy-tier prestige degrees.

You can probably call up some department at your school and get actual stats for what schools the pre-meds go to.

The prestige racket is real but it's not everything, it just wants you to think it is. Hope you can get away from the grueling college app process and let the wind blow those clouds off your sunrise a little. There's gonna come a day when you look over at your work colleague or close personal friend and realize you don't know where they went to school and you don't care enough to ask.

This is an incredibly interesting question but I have no idea how you would ever be able to figure out the answer. What defines a data set? What about huge data sets that reference back to a relatively small mapping table, is that one big data set or two data sets of different size? Maybe a cloud hosting provider would have some insight into hosted data sets but even if the public had that information we still wouldn't know anything about data sets that are collected and stored on local machines. Similar problems arise for cataloguing models by their complexity. What is the broader question here, what are you trying to figure out?

There is definitely research being done on sparse data sets. Early stats methods were applied to what we would consider small data. Tukey did a lot of work on data viz and exploratory data analysis that was important and applies to small data sets. Many medical experiments use small data sets. Bayesian methods can apply to small data sets.

Beyond scalability, I think the biggest things you could bring to the scientists here would be test driven development and logs. You won't become a Matlab expert on a deadline and they may not actually be Matlab experts either. Tests and visibility into actual behavior are everything here since they don't even seem to have a spec, just a prototype.

I use a similar wooden chair or, when just a laptop is fine, sit or squat on the floor. It's a shoes-off house and a nice carpet that I reckon gets cleaned more often than most expensive desk chair seats. I think the floor time improves my flexibility and mobility. A lot of adults in my country aren't comfortable lowering themselves onto the floor or standing up off the floor and I know I'd be among them if it weren't for my arbitrary floor work habits.

Nobody communicates at their best or perceives everything correctly when they're anxious and feeling like an imposter. Based on what you have written here I would not conclude that you are inherently a bad or slow communicator. I wouldn't even assume that you're coming off that way to other people. I hope you can get some relief from the anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

It can be hard, yes. I would look into research assistant roles at large universities. They will be forgiving of a gap year, they routinely take on people that want to use the role to get recommendation letters for MBA, MA, or PhD work. So more school will be an option for you. You can also use university research roles as stepping stones to normal industry jobs. You will be on-campus and university-affiliated so more likely to network with a recruiter who works with the university scene.