I cannot agree with this more strongly. I was burnt out for a year, and I’ve only just begun to recover over the last month or two. But one thing that speeded my recovery greatly over the last few weeks was stopping worrying about burnout. Every time I sat down to work, I would gauge my wanting-to-work-ness. When I inevitably found it lacking, I would go off on a thought spiral asking “why don’t I like working? how can I make myself like working?” which of course distracted me from doing the actual work. Also, the constant worry about my burnout surely contributed to depression, which then fed back into burnout.…
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Once I stopped worrying about my inability to work, it became a lot easier to work.
Of course, there’s some danger here—I got rid of the worry-thoughts after I had already started to recover from burnout. They weren’t necessary, and my desire to work could just take over and make me work. But if you really have no desire to work, then erasing such thoughts could just lead to utter blissful unproductivity.
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Bingo. When you have a seemingly intractable problem, always remember to ask yourself if what you’re trying to do to solve the problem is making it worse. That’s where intractable problems come from.
I cannot agree with this more strongly. I was burnt out for a year, and I’ve only just begun to recover over the last month or two. But one thing that speeded my recovery greatly over the last few weeks was stopping worrying about burnout. Every time I sat down to work, I would gauge my wanting-to-work-ness. When I inevitably found it lacking, I would go off on a thought spiral asking “why don’t I like working? how can I make myself like working?” which of course distracted me from doing the actual work. Also, the constant worry about my burnout surely contributed to depression, which then fed back into burnout.…
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Once I stopped worrying about my inability to work, it became a lot easier to work.
Of course, there’s some danger here—I got rid of the worry-thoughts after I had already started to recover from burnout. They weren’t necessary, and my desire to work could just take over and make me work. But if you really have no desire to work, then erasing such thoughts could just lead to utter blissful unproductivity.
Bingo. When you have a seemingly intractable problem, always remember to ask yourself if what you’re trying to do to solve the problem is making it worse. That’s where intractable problems come from.
That’s still a step up from the given alternative of miserable unproductivity.
I suspect it is possible to be blissfully improductive forever, and that thought alone can dominate my attention for weeks.