> AKA. career or social suicide. Nah, not risking that. There's too good a chance that your boss never had that problem, and way too likely your replacement won

> AKA. career or social suicide. Nah, not risking that. There's too good a chance that your boss never had that problem, and way too likely your replacement won't have it either. Sure, this is definitely dependant on environment. You owe it to yourself to someday work in a place where they'll go: "Sure, go hack at whatever you want for a week, get it out of the system. We've all been there." But, to note, main effect of this (for me at least) is early acknowledgment of the situation in a safe environment and a timely manner. These things can spiral out of control and shaving of a day or two in its inital stage is very helpful. Additionally, I'm frequently surprised by responses of the type "What? We didn't even have those expectations you think we had. Why are you even worried?" Don't let your mind build illusory labyrinths. > Could you elaborate on that one? Wrt. exercise, nah, I procrastinate too much on that :/. It's pretty well outlined on wikipedia[1], and it's simple idea - some people have a literal need to do cognitively hard things, so piled up boring stuff will drain you in various ways. An alternative route, recently proposed[2], is to wear that out via physical exercise. That route is a bit at odds with my goals in life, but I guess there's some sort of healthy balance. > I keep trying the insight meditation (vipassana) ever since I learned about it on HN & LessWrong close to a decade ago. It keeps not working :/. I've never studied any formal approach to it so I keep it simple - whenever I feel "noise" (anxiety, neurosis, whatever), I sit (not any strange yogi poses or whatever, nor lying down, since I'd fall asleep) in a quiet place for 5-10 minutes, and try to tune everything out. I focus on breathing and heartbeat, as those are the only things you can't really tune out in a non-handwavey way. If you're in a noisy environment, headphones with some brown noise or similar help. Also, I always welcome recommendations for "loud active cognitively-draining music". :) Just putting on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard discography on album shuffle works really well for me last few months. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19606141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19606141 EDIT: Oh, I forgot one more for the fun bag - fasting.