Stamina Is a Quiet Advantage

I believe this is simply the aging process. We all want to peg it to something specific we've done, but I've never met a person who doesn't feel this way at some point in the middle of their lives. Our bodies are just like every other living thing in that they get less and less efficient after the initial bloom.

I feel this.

About seven years ago, I was working full-time at an amazing but consuming job, raising a family, and surviving the pandemic. I was also writing every single day on a large textbook. Then within the span of about six months, my dog got sick and died, my mom got cancer, and a few friends and family members died unexpectedly. I kept writing every day while dealing with all of that. I literally wrote in the waiting room while my mom was getting CT scanned. I kept working on the book as the pandemic reared its head and politics went insane.

I got through it all and finished the book, but I haven't felt the same since. It's like some nerve in my soul got burned to a cinder and is no longer able to fire.

I've spent a lot of time in therapy which has been amazing, but I'm still not what I'd call all better.

My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.

I'm working to rebuild that connection, but it doesn't come back easily.

I relate to this. I don't know what it is either, but over the course of my 25-year career it's become impossible to summon that "will" within me. My brain just constantly asks "and what are we doing this for again?" which is anathema to sustained effort. I wonder if it's simple age; maybe this is just the energy of youth that evaporated. Or maybe it's becoming jaded; seeing how people will encourage their employees to burn it hard, for a modest reward that (in my experience anyway) often does not even materialize.

You have to figure out when do to that 110% or more.

Not only for whether it's ever worthwhile in your role and how you benefit, but also for pacing.

For example, if you're a startup cofounder, in a good team, and you win big if the startup wins big, then you might put in that 110% frequently -- but you save your superhuman 200% bursts for emergencies, so that you can reliably put in close to 100% every day, not start making fatigued huge mess-ups.

For another example, if you're a series B startup hire, being paid below-market, with 0.01% stock options that will never be worth exercising, and the founding team turns out to be bad at everything except raising ZIRP money and beer-pong-- then you should still do right by your good teammates, and also be professional in general, but don't spend years burning yourself out at 110% while watching the dysfunctional company just urinate away everyone's contributions. Spend that extra 10% energy of yours in searching for a better situation.

Thanks for sharing this. “Keep burning the candle at 110% … It takes something from you that you aren’t going to get back.” That’s something I’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to articulate after a prolonged sprint. It’s not quite burnout because it doesn’t erase your capability right away, but it takes a compounding toll.

This really resonated with me. I taught myself programming while working full time minimal wage job, I spent a year or two learning then an additional 2 years job hunting. Then I got a job and kept grinding, working like crazy for 3 years. But with our current market, I've been out of work for a year. I need to keep fighting harder than ever, but I don't know if I have the strength anymore. I feel like I've lost something, I don't know if it comes back

Have you tried something like an extended sabbatical?

I went through a similar period near the end of my studies and can relate to your current disposition.

This is the curse of counterfactuals you can't answer.

I was pretty directionless in my younger years, but reasonably smart and driven. I was in the Army and in my late 20s and decided to get into software and went back to school full-time while still serving in the Army. Possibly somewhat predictably, I also went through a divorce at the same time. But I was awake at 3 AM or so every single day, studying for several hours, going to work, studying at lunch, coming home, studying some more, on and on for a few years, and that was all I did. It was work of some sort, nonstop, with no other concerns.

It "worked." I got through the program, re-skilled, left the Army, at this point have quadrupled any salary I ever earned before getting into software.

But beyond that basic brutality of the experience of being mentally on at all waking hours on all days, and those waking hours often being well beyond 16, I ended up going through severe spinal degeneration in my mid 30s, obviously exacerbated if not outright caused by sitting too much, that ended in three surgeries in the span of 16 months, several years of intermittent disability and forced bed rest, cerebrospinal fluid leakage, an inability to walk without assistance for a while.

I ultimately got through it and seem to be basically okay in my mid 40s. Was it worth it, though? I have no idea. I'll certainly never do anything like that ever again. Physical health has become and will remain for the rest of my life my number one priority. I might deprioritize eating properly, sleeping enough, and consistently working out for a few weeks or even months here and there, but for years at a time? Never again. It's not just the severity of the experience itself. I'm not even sure the experience itself is all that bad. You get so high on the feeling of productivity and accomplishment that the difficulty of what you're doing barely even registers, and time flies when you're occupied nonstop. But I have no way of ever knowing how much it contributed to effectively losing half a decade of my life to a level of physical disability that doesn't normally happen to a person before they turn 70, during what was supposed to be the prime of my life.

It's possibly the reason I don't have kids. My wife at the time left me and by the time I remarried, I was in such bad shape that I couldn't even pick up my cats, didn't feel capable of raising a child when I couldn't even consistently get out of bed, and decided a vasectomy was a better option at that point. Again, I have no way of ever knowing if this would have happened anyway, but assuming the answer is even maybe no, was it worth to give up the chance of having kids to burn a little bit more brightly when I was 28? Fuck no, that isn't worth it.

I wish I had realized this when I was younger. People overestimate raw intelligence and underestimate sheer persistence. Just staying with a problem longer—pushing past the point where most would quit—feels almost like magic. Time + focus can take you incredibly far.

Stubbornness might just be the most valuable trait a scientist can have.

Somewhat related, I've seen a similar equation for motivation:

        E*V
    M = ---
        I*D

Which comes from "The Procrastination Equation" by Piers Steel, an academic focused on motivation. I haven't finished the book since it's pretty self help-y, but I do like the equation. Here, expectancy is perceived likelihood of finishing the task, value is obvious, delay is how long until the payoff, and importantly, impulsiveness is the general impulsiveness of the task doer.

energy = distraction + success/time

profound

Right, so persevere correctly, but don't persevere incorrectly. That would indeed be correct, top tip there Aquinas.

I'm reminded of the sunk cost fallacy.

That sounds an awful lot like a complete lack of stamina, made up for by pharmaceutical intervention.

An analogous comparison: someone that has to wear a knee brace to exercise would not be said to have strong knees.

I would argue the original post is talking about stamina on a different scale. Stamina over years. Not over the course of a day or week, fueled by stimulants.

An activity or thing that holds deep meaning to you personally will be the stimulant to one's stamina. Love for your child will allow you to take care of him/her despite being insanely sleep deprived. I think the concept is much more broader than just work.

Five? Pray tell!

That isn't stamina, but perhaps a corrective for the lack of stamina. The stimulation is meant to increase pleasure, hence making it easier to stick with something. Stamina means the ability to endure the lack of pleasure in pursuit of the good.