My first company officer at the Academy was a Marine captain who openly admitted he over-worked his first company of Marines and ran the entire group into the g

My first company officer at the Academy was a Marine captain who openly admitted he over-worked his first company of Marines and ran the entire group into the ground. He said he learned from that to not expect so much of others. Nevertheless, if you, I, we, found ourselves in a high-demand, high-stress situation, the best advice he could offer was to "Revel in the suckiness." I have tried to live by that for the last 20 years but it's hard to remember it's "just the suckiness" at 3 am for the Nth night in a row. I think it's important to modify that advice with a heavy dose of reality testing: if it's really that important, where are the other people? Does it really need to be this hard? Are the others out of touch or is it me? In short, what environmental modifiers can I affect, and what environmental cues can I calibrate on?