I wish I could pick up all your lines of thought, as I find most of them really interesting.
Our energy levels seem to be very different at the moment, though—I am just recovering from mild depression and my thoughts are neither very associative nor creative right now, much less clear and coherent. I just cannot keep up with your stimulant-infused input right now.
Nevertheless, here is what I mean talking about a local optimum. I am trying to put appropriate energy into different aspects of my life, namely: Taking care of my family, doing a good job at work, working on self-actualization, keeping a good standing with friends and acquaintances and pushing forward some projects of my own. When I am at normal energy levels, which are considerably higher than the ones I have right now, I seem to perform on my personal pareto frontier. Whenever I try to expand activity on one or two of said aspects, I fall short on the others, pushing even harder then leads to stress and regrets that in turn slow me down further on the totality of my efforts, until the point where it becomes problematic for my health. Whenever this happens, I also start to spend too much time dealing with and worrying about stuff that is beyond my control, such as politics and so on, which leads to a vicious cycle that often triggers depression. Once I have found my way out of it, the cycle repeats. For a couple of months, I hold my balance, than I try to push my limits and things start to fall apart again.
It could easily be the case that I am expecting too much from myself and maybe there is no way to become better at achieving my goals than completing my side projects and not replacing them with new ones after that.
Thinking about all you have said and trying to make sense of why it resonates so strongly, I have come to an intermediate conclusion that I will have to think about for some time: Perhaps it is a good idea for me to refrain from learning about the topics that I am most drawn to now, and rather go back to both theoretical and applied psychology. There is not that much to take away from quantum computing when it comes to dealing with other people. Or oneself.
Re-reading my comments, the ideas which appeal to me are directly related to my level of arousal (dopamine level compared to baseline). It maps pretty well to the hierarchy of needs. Everything below is “boring” or “mundane” and everything above is “irresponsible” or “wasteful”.
You can re-read them in the future if they ever become relevant, until then you don’t have to worry about them.
It can help to view energy as a limited resource, but there’s many kinds of energy, and fulfilling needs and building ‘momentum’ can give energy rather than using it. Maybe a good abstraction is the set “Physical/mental/spiritual”. Your mild depression and my 10mg of ritalin don’t change our actual levels of energy, but rather just our subjective feelings of energy. Worrying and stress does use energy though—thinking about work seems to use almost as much energy as actual doing the work.
But stress and too much effort create waste products in the brain, which is probably why our brains make us feel tired. It’s a defense against damage, like physical exhaustion. When we bypass this, with drugs or by a manic mood, we probably cause damage because we keep going without rest.
It’s easier said than done, but periodic effort and rest is more efficient than just the effort. The worst combination of these is pushing the accelerator and the brake at the same time.
It’s possible that you’re pushing further and draining your limited resources (blood sugar and other cognitive resources), but there’s also the possibility that you’re draining other resources (neglecting seemingly less important things which help your mental health), that you’re tired because of what you don’t do rather than because of what you do.
While the engagement in politics could stem from needless worry, it could also be an outlet for your unmet need to communicate, and the reward of correcting other people about something that you’re knowledgeable about. In my own case, something drives me to websites like this one, and while I can’t feel it consciously, it’s just me chasing dopamine or fulfilling some less obvious need. If I don’t go here, I’ll catch myself going to similar places.
If I understand correctly, you believe that you should be able to do all these things at once, that you have less energy than you should have. I think that confidence and energy levels are extremely related, and that mania and depression are just changes in confidence, stemming from feedback loops (failure → failure or victory → victory). And if you’ve been able to do these things in the past, then it should theoretically be possible to do them still, and the transition between these states could be your beliefs and values changing.
But if you’ve experienced mania multiple times before, then it’s likely that you have bipolar, and that we should consider the neuroscience side of things (rather than focus on the psychological like I have until now). Diet, exercise, sunlight exposure, etc. could be factors too.
Perhaps you are taking on too much at once, but I personally don’t believe in these limitations. If I can play video games with friends for 15 hours straight, then I don’t believe that 2 hours of work will necessarily make me tired. Of course, learning new things requires effort for the encoding. Not so much new knowledge, mostly new mental structures that knowledge can fit into.
This will end up being a long message if I once again get into theoretical things, but I find that it helps to write things down (so that I can allow myself to clear them from my head), and to stick to my choices so that I don’t waste energy re-considering and questioning everything, and finally to keep things simple. In short, avoiding wasted energy like fighting myself and keeping track of things which aren’t relevant. Maybe this is one way to making more of each day, but perhaps you need solution which don’t have a big initial cost.
2 hours of socializing with constant self-censorship might equal 4 hours of socializing without worrying too much how you appear. A simpler and easier solution is meditation, but I personally like the idea of conditioning myself into only considering things which are directly relevant to what I care about, and eliminating cognitive waste like hypervigilance.
But yeah, I think that truth is found in simplicity. But hey, if quantum computing interests you, and the field pays well, then I think there is a lot of potential to be found.
I can’t say much about the core problem, as I don’t know the details (and it’s fine if they’re private), so I can only give general advice. I don’t know if your work is physical or not, or if you have a lot of work in your day which doesn’t appeal to you or not. I’m also biased towards what’s familiar to myself, you might not have anxiety and a poor working memory like I do, for instance. (but if you frequently consume stimulants because you feel tired, you should know this feeling well!). Again, take what you find to be of value, you can just discard the rest.
And I will let you reflect on things, maybe reflecting and collecting yourself again will do you some good. Keep in mind that most negativity and worries will be amplified by your mental state, so whatever you find, it’s not as bad as it appears to be.
I wish I could pick up all your lines of thought, as I find most of them really interesting. Our energy levels seem to be very different at the moment, though—I am just recovering from mild depression and my thoughts are neither very associative nor creative right now, much less clear and coherent. I just cannot keep up with your stimulant-infused input right now.
Nevertheless, here is what I mean talking about a local optimum. I am trying to put appropriate energy into different aspects of my life, namely: Taking care of my family, doing a good job at work, working on self-actualization, keeping a good standing with friends and acquaintances and pushing forward some projects of my own. When I am at normal energy levels, which are considerably higher than the ones I have right now, I seem to perform on my personal pareto frontier. Whenever I try to expand activity on one or two of said aspects, I fall short on the others, pushing even harder then leads to stress and regrets that in turn slow me down further on the totality of my efforts, until the point where it becomes problematic for my health. Whenever this happens, I also start to spend too much time dealing with and worrying about stuff that is beyond my control, such as politics and so on, which leads to a vicious cycle that often triggers depression. Once I have found my way out of it, the cycle repeats. For a couple of months, I hold my balance, than I try to push my limits and things start to fall apart again.
It could easily be the case that I am expecting too much from myself and maybe there is no way to become better at achieving my goals than completing my side projects and not replacing them with new ones after that.
Thinking about all you have said and trying to make sense of why it resonates so strongly, I have come to an intermediate conclusion that I will have to think about for some time: Perhaps it is a good idea for me to refrain from learning about the topics that I am most drawn to now, and rather go back to both theoretical and applied psychology. There is not that much to take away from quantum computing when it comes to dealing with other people. Or oneself.
Re-reading my comments, the ideas which appeal to me are directly related to my level of arousal (dopamine level compared to baseline). It maps pretty well to the hierarchy of needs. Everything below is “boring” or “mundane” and everything above is “irresponsible” or “wasteful”.
You can re-read them in the future if they ever become relevant, until then you don’t have to worry about them.
It can help to view energy as a limited resource, but there’s many kinds of energy, and fulfilling needs and building ‘momentum’ can give energy rather than using it. Maybe a good abstraction is the set “Physical/mental/spiritual”. Your mild depression and my 10mg of ritalin don’t change our actual levels of energy, but rather just our subjective feelings of energy. Worrying and stress does use energy though—thinking about work seems to use almost as much energy as actual doing the work.
But stress and too much effort create waste products in the brain, which is probably why our brains make us feel tired. It’s a defense against damage, like physical exhaustion. When we bypass this, with drugs or by a manic mood, we probably cause damage because we keep going without rest.
It’s easier said than done, but periodic effort and rest is more efficient than just the effort. The worst combination of these is pushing the accelerator and the brake at the same time.
It’s possible that you’re pushing further and draining your limited resources (blood sugar and other cognitive resources), but there’s also the possibility that you’re draining other resources (neglecting seemingly less important things which help your mental health), that you’re tired because of what you don’t do rather than because of what you do.
While the engagement in politics could stem from needless worry, it could also be an outlet for your unmet need to communicate, and the reward of correcting other people about something that you’re knowledgeable about. In my own case, something drives me to websites like this one, and while I can’t feel it consciously, it’s just me chasing dopamine or fulfilling some less obvious need. If I don’t go here, I’ll catch myself going to similar places.
If I understand correctly, you believe that you should be able to do all these things at once, that you have less energy than you should have. I think that confidence and energy levels are extremely related, and that mania and depression are just changes in confidence, stemming from feedback loops (failure → failure or victory → victory). And if you’ve been able to do these things in the past, then it should theoretically be possible to do them still, and the transition between these states could be your beliefs and values changing.
But if you’ve experienced mania multiple times before, then it’s likely that you have bipolar, and that we should consider the neuroscience side of things (rather than focus on the psychological like I have until now). Diet, exercise, sunlight exposure, etc. could be factors too.
Perhaps you are taking on too much at once, but I personally don’t believe in these limitations. If I can play video games with friends for 15 hours straight, then I don’t believe that 2 hours of work will necessarily make me tired. Of course, learning new things requires effort for the encoding. Not so much new knowledge, mostly new mental structures that knowledge can fit into.
This will end up being a long message if I once again get into theoretical things, but I find that it helps to write things down (so that I can allow myself to clear them from my head), and to stick to my choices so that I don’t waste energy re-considering and questioning everything, and finally to keep things simple. In short, avoiding wasted energy like fighting myself and keeping track of things which aren’t relevant. Maybe this is one way to making more of each day, but perhaps you need solution which don’t have a big initial cost.
2 hours of socializing with constant self-censorship might equal 4 hours of socializing without worrying too much how you appear. A simpler and easier solution is meditation, but I personally like the idea of conditioning myself into only considering things which are directly relevant to what I care about, and eliminating cognitive waste like hypervigilance.
But yeah, I think that truth is found in simplicity. But hey, if quantum computing interests you, and the field pays well, then I think there is a lot of potential to be found.
I can’t say much about the core problem, as I don’t know the details (and it’s fine if they’re private), so I can only give general advice. I don’t know if your work is physical or not, or if you have a lot of work in your day which doesn’t appeal to you or not. I’m also biased towards what’s familiar to myself, you might not have anxiety and a poor working memory like I do, for instance. (but if you frequently consume stimulants because you feel tired, you should know this feeling well!). Again, take what you find to be of value, you can just discard the rest.
And I will let you reflect on things, maybe reflecting and collecting yourself again will do you some good. Keep in mind that most negativity and worries will be amplified by your mental state, so whatever you find, it’s not as bad as it appears to be.