buybuydandavis comments on Life hack request: I want to want to work. - Less Wrong

6 Post author: DanielLC 11 June 2013 07:41PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (53)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 13 June 2013 09:09:37AM 2 points [-]

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.