15 ms·

The Spoon Theory (2003)

223 points by Eugeleo 6y ago

eurasiantiger 6y ago
Addiction in a nutshell.
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  I’m not sure. Addiction seems more like a clock than spoons.
  - eurasiantiger 6y ago
    It is a brain disorder: a diagnosable illness where the delta-FosB protein is overexpressed in the prefrontal cortex.
    - travisjungroth 6y ago
      But that doesn’t prove that this story, spoon theory, is “addiction in a nutshell.” Edit: my point is this story doesn’t match what I know about addiction at all. The woman consciously and deliberately allocating her energy (spoons) is not the life of an addict. Addiction is generally a life lived unconsciously. If I was going to put it into spoon terms, it’s that you start your day with 30 spoons. Everything you want to get done that day requires a total of 20. But, you still end up short because you spent most of your spoons on drinking/blow/porn/games and in your moments of lucidity you just think “what the fuck”.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      First I've heard of this. Somewhat contraindicated by the opiate addiction epidemic.
      - eurasiantiger 6y ago
        Opiates, like most drugs, cause overexpression of delta-FosB.
jpxw 6y ago
Another way of looking at this: Everybody has experienced having a flu. Everybody knows that feeling when you’re sick, and suddenly you realise how much you take for granted when you aren’t. In fact, you even start to _envy_ those around you who haven’t got whatever bug you have! Being chronically ill is like living in that world permanently.
- rtp 6y ago
  It breaks my heart, especially for those who become severely chronically ill with diseases like ME/CFS in their teenage years, with little to no indication things will ever get better. Imagine that, maybe spending your next 50-60 years housebound, or even worse: bed bound. Add to that the sheer scale of how ignorant or severely misguided many people are about chronic illness (even doctors, ESPECIALLY doctors!), which imposes such stigma, guilt, and shame on these sufferers.
bearerofgarbage 6y ago
> I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted.
- surajx 6y ago
  The healthy stay healthy because they consciously make choices that maximizes the probability of staying healthy.
  - svrtknst 6y ago
    like making the choice not to have an accident or being born a certain way?
    - sterlind 6y ago
      I try to tell myself that comments like GP's come from a place of taking one's health for granted, and have only experienced sickness from eating junk food or not sleeping enough. I have a genetic disorder that makes me fragile, chronically ill, and limits my mobility. I do PT every day for 30-45 minutes - I've never missed a day since September. I eat healthy vegan food and sleep as much as I can (though painsomnia makes this hard.) I'm doing all the right things, but I'm still sick. If I didn't do the right things, I'd be sicker. I'm still quite limited, and have to carefully plan things that my able-bodied friends take for granted. That's spoon theory.
      - p1necone 6y ago
        A lot of people seem to be incapable of thinking in hypotheticals. All they know or care about is whatever they or close family members have experienced directly.
  - weego 6y ago
    Ah my consciousness must have really let me down when I got a crippling autoimmune disease at 35
jan_Inkepa 6y ago
It's a very catchy abstraction/metaphor. It did lodge itself in my brain quite firmly once I learned of it. It can feel defeatist to acknowledge such limits in concrete terms, but you gotta work with what you got... I know people who are comfortable saying "i'm all out of spoons/only have a few spoons left"; it's pretty useful as frameworks go, and hard to express these things so succinctly in other ways. Just saying, e.g. "I'm drained" doesn't cover it when "drained" is the baseline.
jpswade 6y ago
I used to work with someone who used to say “I’m all out of spoons today” when it was a bad day. I understood, but I take it that it’s from this. The article doesn’t say when it was published but it looks quite old. Interesting that it’s surfaced here, now.
- buro9 6y ago
  <meta property="article:published_time" content="2013-04-25T11:24:09-04:00" />
- new299 6y ago
  The linked PDF says 2003.
- makach 6y ago
  I guess we are all out of spoons..
taneq 6y ago
When I was first learning to ride motorcycles I came across "A Twist of the Wrist" by Keith Code, which uses a similar analogy for attention. In this analogy, you have $10 worth of attention to spend. Maybe as a novice rider you spend $5 just coordinating steering, clutch, gears and brakes to keep the bike upright. You then spend $3 on navigating, which leaves you with only $2 left to pay attention to the traffic around you. A more experienced rider might only have to spend $2 on physically riding the bike, leaving them with much more attention to pay to traffic and road conditions.
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  Fully departing from spoon theory, but sticking with money and motorcycles, this story was told to me by a friend of mine. This was a few decades ago and he was into racing Ducatis. The wise old man at the track was explaining how to go fast. The people in the garage that night didn’t seem to be getting it, so everyone got in the back of the Ford van they used for parts and the old man drove. “You have a dollar to spend. You can spend it on acceleration, braking, or turning. You need to be spending the whole dollar all the time.” He was coming into a turn faster than any Ford engineer would have expected, gas to the floor. “I’m still spending the dollar on the gas.” He switched to the brakes, slamming them without skidding. The guys slid to the front of the van. “Now the brakes, I’m spending the whole thing. And then to turning.” The guys hit the side of the van. This continued on, him ranting about dollars while driving around the track. My friend timed the lap and it was embarrassingly close to what they did on their Ducatis. That old man speed.
  - taneq 6y ago
    You should always be either at the edge of your traction circle or at the full limit of one of your controls. Anything less is wasting time.
    - zdkl 6y ago
      This notion of limits and edge reminds me of Hunter Thompson's musings on "The Line" in his piece about the Hell's Angels. He argues (wildly paraphrasing) that the fundamental draw (and in some sense, the art) of motorcycles or extreme sports is in finding that edge or limit. The problem he identifies being that you cannot really know where it is without going over it, with all the consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_and_Terrible_Saga_of_the_Outlaw_Motorcycle_Gangs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_a...
reedf1 6y ago
One of the effects of society is to reduce the number of 'spoons' any person needs to 'spend' a day. This is probably a good argument against those who are anti-automation. As a more efficient automated society slowly lowers the 'minimum spoon bar' that is required for net contribution.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Assuming the benefits of automation are somewhat equitably distributed. But if someone has a decent job which then gets displaced by automation and their next best option is a more demanding job, then automation has increased their daily spoon demand.
- jackpirate 6y ago
  I don't think this is true. I once spent some time at an Amish community, and I saw their elderly and sick all living relatively productive lives. They were cooking, cleaning, watching children, and performing other small tasks that made everyone's life a bit nicer. The only reason these "menial" jobs were available to them was the deliberate inefficiency of the Amish lifestyle.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    These things aren't unavailable in greater society. You simply have a choice. I'm not sure you have as much choice in Amish society, and I think the lack of choice is cruel. If my elbow is broken, I can't cook efficiently. If it doesn't work correctly, same. If walking to the toilet saps my energy, I shouldn't be expected to do the same. I should also now mention that elderly doesn't mean you are sick. Loads of folks are busy throughout old age. "sick" doesn't always mean you can't do anything, either, and I'm pretty sure the Amish communities take care of folks that can't.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
FrozenVoid 6y ago
I work by effort/benefit ratio. Many programmers start ambitious projects with very high effort and low benefit, like e.g. a browser/os/videogame/library which they maintain at expense of their health and limited time. Low effort, small-scale projects with immediate benefit/utility are much less taxing on health and don't require constant maintenance. Unix way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_It_Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_a...
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > Many programmers start ambitious projects with very high effort and low benefit I would argue that they are actually high benefit, or at least appear as such to the person. I don't think many people would willingly choose to engage in high effort/low benefit activities. > Low effort, small-scale projects with immediate benefit/utility are much less taxing on health and don't require constant maintenance They are also much less fulfilling and interesting to many people.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    Benefit comes in multiple forms. There's the benefit you get when finishing a project, and the benefit of gathering experience on the way. In the end that's the way we learn and improve: by pushing the boundaries into unknown territory instead of always going with the methods that have already been working. To actually be sufficiently motivated to dive into a new hard area, having a goal is important, even if it's unrealistic. And when the time comes to actually build something serious it's good to be aware of what to expect and be familiar with the tools.
- taneq 6y ago
  I do something a bit similar with learning new tech. I used to just soak up whatever new thing I found interesting, but these days I don't have time to do this and so I have to make sure that every new thing I do learn "pays rent". It has to not just be immediately useful (unless there's no other way to solve the problem with my existing toolkit) but also to generate value in an ongoing manner for it to be worth the time investment.
Puts 6y ago
"Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities" I think the comments to this post testifies that no one has unlimited spoons. Most people struggle. Some more, some less.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  But comparatively, they do. They aren't considering that taking a shower that day might take the energy they have for the morning. Struggling is different: It takes some energy away, but for many, you can theoretically take away some struggle. Get a new car, have enough food and money, get over a temporary health condition. Get time to get over a divorce. There are curese for many struggles. The same things won't help someone with a chronic disease... who often have the same struggles as greater society on top of whatever illness they have.
- padolsey 6y ago
  TBQH I have a real dislike for the relativistic thinking that people apply to this. Everyone does struggle, yes. But the degree of struggle, for some, is exponentially more. To just participate in the smallest parts of life... eating, cleaning, emptying one's bowels, is a daily challange. What if you could only afford energy for one outing to the shop? What if taking a shower felt like running a marathon? What if making a meal was prohibiltely exhausting? The everyday small parts of life that most people enjoy are inaccessible to many. The degrees of separation between between an able-bodied person and a disabled person can be so massive. So, yes, all people struggle, but the struggle of some denies them reaching the threshold of energy required to do even the minimum expected daily activites. That threshold is the crucial separator between isolation and participation. .. not even to mention the socioeconomic effects.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - notatrumper 6y ago
    And what exactly is the point of complaining about that?
shannifin 6y ago
> "Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions. So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point." Not so sure about this... everyone has limited resources, time and energy being the biggest, finances usually a big one as well. How accutely you are aware of them perhaps depends on both your situation (such as having serious health issues that need attention) and what exactly you are trying to do with them. Not taking your resources for granted is always helpful though. (Although someone else not sharing a resource doesn't necessarily make it worth more to me; e.g. I'm not happier to be able to walk specifically because someone else can't.)
padolsey 6y ago
Reflecting on how this applies to the tech industry, IME we're still very behind in accommodating those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. The 40-hour work week is still, on the whole, the minimum expectation across many FAANG-like companies. If falling ill during tenure, such companies ~generally seem receptive and supportive. But if you try to join such companies when you are already chronically ill or disabled, and ask for part-time working arrangements or reactive flexibility (e.g. I only have X spoons today so I can't work as much, but I can work a little ["semi-sick day"]), it's much much harder. Nowadays I only have about 2-3 hours of cognitive time per day. After that I need to lie down and do nothing. It seems so unfair that entire swathes of competent individuals are implicitly sidelined because of their illnesses or disabilities.
- kdelok 6y ago
  Strongly agreed! It doesn't just seem unfair, it is unfair. I also think that there's much more celebration of "overcoming" disability or illness, rather than the much more sustainable (and difficult!) practice of changing your work patterns and lifestyle to live within your daily allotment of spoons.
rozza 6y ago
My wife has chronic cancer* and one day when talking to the doctor at the hospice after a period of grueling treatment she talked about only having so many "spoons" in a day. The doctor liked the analogy as it was a fun way at looking at a real issue. I'm pleased I now know where it comes from! This analogy helped us both come to terms with managing her lower energy levels. * I use the term chronic cancer as she has Stage 4 cancer. The term terminal cancer to describe her cancer has been so incredibly unhelpful, its taken me years to frame where we as a family fit into it and how we can live. Essentially, the term has caused more fear than was warranted at the time. So until she needs end of life care, I won't call it terminal even though that is the expected outcome. That maybe 6 months from now or 6 years from now.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I know this thread is about the severely limited energy of chronic pain sufferers, but there's some good lessons here for the rest of us healthy folks as well. While we have many more spoons than someone who's ill, our spoons are still limited in number each day, despite most of us assuming they are unlimited.
- aszantu 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tteYZfMat4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tteYZfMat4 may you find a solution
  - ufo 6y ago
    These days I've grown to see the word "integrative" as a red flag for pseudosciency or pseudoscience-adjacent stuff. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-integrative-oncology/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-integrative-oncolog...
mcv 6y ago
I've heard a lot of people refer to being "out of spoons" throughout the years. It's good to finally read the origin story of that.
wisty 6y ago
Doesn't the research now suggest that "finite willpower" / ego depletion is only true if you believe it?
- codingdave 6y ago
  This is not about willpower. This is about physical limits imposed by medical problems.
rpaddock 6y ago
If you want to understand the day to day issues of real people then please watch the documentary *Pain Warriors* that is about Chronic Pain. It is five stories, four of people with Chronic Pain, two that ended in suicides. My late wife Karen being one of them. The other story is of a doctor that the Medical Establishment destroyed for helping those with Chronic Pain. It is *NOT* a warm and fuzzy movie to watch. For full disclosure I am a member of the cast, have been intimately involved in Pain Warriors production for several years. I receive no remuneration of any type. It is my mission to raise awareness of those suffering from Chronic Pain and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Leaks. Pain Warriors can be found on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, Viemo (for international) and YouTube (sometimes, they are weird). The distributor set the pricing for the platforms and regions so check around for your best place to watch it. We could really use your help. Our goal is to get Pain Warriors on Nexflix to reach a wider audience. For that to happen we need to have over a 100 positive reviews on The Internet Movie Database (the 100+ positive reviews on the other platforms don't count to Netflix). Our segment in Pain Warriors is based on what has become known as "Karen's Journal". One reviewer wrote: "Karen's first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day." Thank You for your help and bring up this subject here.
- rpaddock 6y ago
  For more details check these sites. They cover some of the things that have happened after the release of Pain Warriors: http://www.kpaddock.com/pw http://www.kpaddock.com/pw http://www.kpaddock.org http://www.kpaddock.org
- koheripbal 6y ago
  > The other story is of a doctor that the Medical Establishment destroyed for helping those with Chronic Pain. Was this the result of the industry crack down on the over-prescription of opioids and various opioid manufacturers being forced to cut opioid production and marketing? Society went from one extreme of "we need to treat pain like a disease and medicate it", to the other extreme of "Holy moly we created an opioid epidemic, we need to cut production and sue manufacturers." Obviously there were a lot of bad actors at play, and I imagine some legitimate practices and patients were collateral damage during these over-reactions.
treeman79 6y ago
Congratulations, you have earned the achievement “chronic condition”. Your rewards are as follows. You have max exhaustion at all hours of the day! Exercise recovery is bumped from next day to 2 weeks! Your pain level is now on par with dying cancer patients! Everyone now considers you lazy and incompetent! Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety! You gain +1 to medical research ability. But -20 to Reputation. You now get spontaneous and useless medical advise from people that believe in essential oil. You are now on timer with your job until sympathy runs out! Disability now can mock you openly as clearly your faking and don’t have a real condition! You are now a burden to your family! +10 sneak score; you quickly learn to hide your suffering! +20 to loneliness! -20 to persuasion! Asking for help means doctors think your a hypochondriac. +10 Planning! Your kids may be orphans soon, make plans, read fine print on death benefits. ——- Spoon theory is a great way to reduce guilt people who suffer, and simply can’t do as much on a day to day basis.
- anotherforsure 6y ago
  + 200 to weight; Doctors will now ignore any chronic issues and the only medical advice you're ever going to get is to lose weight.* *The "In too much pain to eat" perk nullifies this status effect
WanderPanda 6y ago
I can remember when I had a severe flu / fever last year (in February so probably not covid) that I only had juice to work (code) for like 30min and then had to lay down for 2h. The strange thing is, I can only remember the numbers but not the true feeling. It is kind of surreal. I should be grateful every day that I am not in that condition and have much more juice/spoons available. Another thing is, no matter how many spoons you have, there is always Parkinsons law to burn through them in an unreasonable way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
RivieraKid 6y ago
Can anyone give a TL;DR? This is one of those articles where you can extract 80% of the value with 5% of the time.
- clydethefrog 6y ago
  It's a metaphor for energy level. The amount of "spoons" someone has is their current energy level. No more "spoons" - no more energy. The metaphor is a bit controversial nowadays, some people identify themselves as "spoonies". See this discussion. https://old.reddit.com/r/illnessfakers/comments/aoz87i/who_else_here_hates_the_term_spoonie/ https://old.reddit.com/r/illnessfakers/comments/aoz87i/who_e...
- Karawebnetwork 6y ago
  Here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
mindvirus 6y ago
Obviously not as serious as a chronic illness, I feel like having kids and working during quarantine is similar. After taking care of work and their needs, you don't have very many spoons left for yourself. So I like this analogy a lot, it seems helpful in being realistic with yourself in terms of your capabilities.
msoucy 6y ago
My favorite variation of this involves Dungeons and Dragons' spell slots mechanic. (Full disclaimer, I didn't make the concept, and can't find the post that I read it from) For every long rest, you get a limited number of spell slots - for example at level 5 you get 4 level 1 spell slots, 3 level 2 spell slots, and 2 level 3 spell slots. These are all the "major" spells you can cast before you need to long rest again. Some things may be more straightforward, and only take a level 1 spell slot. But it's still possible to run out of those. Luckily, you're able to use a higher level spell slot to cast that same spell. Sometimes this makes the "spell" more effective (using a higher level spell slot for programming might relate to intentionally putting more focus on it), other times you're just burning the higher leveled slot. Other actions/spells may take more focus/concentration/energy/effort to do, akin to using a higher leveled spell slot. Naturally you can't do as many of those without resting. Still other actions/spells are trivial for you to do. You can do those as many times as you'd like, and you don't feel (significantly) affected by them. These are your cantrips - the simplest spells, that can still be very useful. I like this variation of the theory not just for the gaming flavor, but also because it changes the concept slightly from "this takes more spoons than that" to differently sized spoons, which feels more in line with how I relate to the tasks that give me trouble.
- amalcon 6y ago
  That's a very interesting variant. Since it works for healthy people as well, you can describe what changes more directly. It also captures that not all conditions are identical. For a healthy person, getting out of bed in the morning is maybe a level 1; making dinner is a level 2; going to the bathroom is a cantrip; maybe going to work is a level 3. Now you have a chronic medical condition. With your particular condition, getting out of bed a level 3, you have no cantrips, and you need to spend 2-3 level 2's per week going to the doctor (rather than 2-3 per year). Now, you've used up your level 3's just by getting out of bed and going to work, you need to use level 1's to go to the bathroom, and you used a level 2 on a doctor appointment (so you're out of them by dinnertime). Someone else may have no more difficulty getting out of bed, and may not need so many doctor appointments, but randomly once a month they just don't get any slots back in the morning. So, they need to keep that extra level 3 in reserve to go to work tomorrow in case that happens.
codingdave 6y ago
Thank you for posting this. I've been using this analogy for years, but never actually read the origin story. It is a great analogy not only for explaining to people why you cannot always do what they can, but it also helps people who acquire new medical problems think through what change they need in their life.
code_duck 6y ago
I've certainly heard the term 'spoonies' a lot in the chronic illness community, but this is my first time seeing this article. It's interesting to see HN decided to discuss this. I was worn down by undiagnosed celiac for years. That was finally diagnosed, but then I became mysteriously ill again for a couple years, which turned out to be type 1 diabetes (actually 1.5, LADA). People definitely don't understand what it's like living with a limiting factor like chronic pain, fatigue or organ dysfunction until they've experienced it personally or watched someone very close cope with such a thing. Besides how difficult as the physical and mental issues have been, it's also cost me many relationships, financial independence, personal development and a great deal of work opportunities. I can easily connect with the message of the spoon holding, but I see I misunderstood the metaphor. I didn't realize spoons were like effort tokens... I thought it just meant you had to do everything all day with the inconvenience of holding a bunch of spoons.

223 points by Eugeleo 6y ago

eurasiantiger 6y ago

Addiction in a nutshell.

travisjungroth 6y ago
I’m not sure. Addiction seems more like a clock than spoons.
- eurasiantiger 6y ago
  It is a brain disorder: a diagnosable illness where the delta-FosB protein is overexpressed in the prefrontal cortex.
  - travisjungroth 6y ago
    But that doesn’t prove that this story, spoon theory, is “addiction in a nutshell.” Edit: my point is this story doesn’t match what I know about addiction at all. The woman consciously and deliberately allocating her energy (spoons) is not the life of an addict. Addiction is generally a life lived unconsciously. If I was going to put it into spoon terms, it’s that you start your day with 30 spoons. Everything you want to get done that day requires a total of 20. But, you still end up short because you spent most of your spoons on drinking/blow/porn/games and in your moments of lucidity you just think “what the fuck”.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    First I've heard of this. Somewhat contraindicated by the opiate addiction epidemic.
    - eurasiantiger 6y ago
      Opiates, like most drugs, cause overexpression of delta-FosB.

jpxw 6y ago

Another way of looking at this: Everybody has experienced having a flu. Everybody knows that feeling when you’re sick, and suddenly you realise how much you take for granted when you aren’t. In fact, you even start to _envy_ those around you who haven’t got whatever bug you have! Being chronically ill is like living in that world permanently.

rtp 6y ago
It breaks my heart, especially for those who become severely chronically ill with diseases like ME/CFS in their teenage years, with little to no indication things will ever get better. Imagine that, maybe spending your next 50-60 years housebound, or even worse: bed bound. Add to that the sheer scale of how ignorant or severely misguided many people are about chronic illness (even doctors, ESPECIALLY doctors!), which imposes such stigma, guilt, and shame on these sufferers.

bearerofgarbage 6y ago

> I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted.

surajx 6y ago
The healthy stay healthy because they consciously make choices that maximizes the probability of staying healthy.
- svrtknst 6y ago
  like making the choice not to have an accident or being born a certain way?
  - sterlind 6y ago
    I try to tell myself that comments like GP's come from a place of taking one's health for granted, and have only experienced sickness from eating junk food or not sleeping enough. I have a genetic disorder that makes me fragile, chronically ill, and limits my mobility. I do PT every day for 30-45 minutes - I've never missed a day since September. I eat healthy vegan food and sleep as much as I can (though painsomnia makes this hard.) I'm doing all the right things, but I'm still sick. If I didn't do the right things, I'd be sicker. I'm still quite limited, and have to carefully plan things that my able-bodied friends take for granted. That's spoon theory.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      A lot of people seem to be incapable of thinking in hypotheticals. All they know or care about is whatever they or close family members have experienced directly.
- weego 6y ago
  Ah my consciousness must have really let me down when I got a crippling autoimmune disease at 35

jan_Inkepa 6y ago

It's a very catchy abstraction/metaphor. It did lodge itself in my brain quite firmly once I learned of it. It can feel defeatist to acknowledge such limits in concrete terms, but you gotta work with what you got... I know people who are comfortable saying "i'm all out of spoons/only have a few spoons left"; it's pretty useful as frameworks go, and hard to express these things so succinctly in other ways. Just saying, e.g. "I'm drained" doesn't cover it when "drained" is the baseline.

jpswade 6y ago

I used to work with someone who used to say “I’m all out of spoons today” when it was a bad day. I understood, but I take it that it’s from this. The article doesn’t say when it was published but it looks quite old. Interesting that it’s surfaced here, now.

buro9 6y ago
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2013-04-25T11:24:09-04:00" />
new299 6y ago
The linked PDF says 2003.
makach 6y ago
I guess we are all out of spoons..

taneq 6y ago

When I was first learning to ride motorcycles I came across "A Twist of the Wrist" by Keith Code, which uses a similar analogy for attention. In this analogy, you have $10 worth of attention to spend. Maybe as a novice rider you spend $5 just coordinating steering, clutch, gears and brakes to keep the bike upright. You then spend $3 on navigating, which leaves you with only $2 left to pay attention to the traffic around you. A more experienced rider might only have to spend $2 on physically riding the bike, leaving them with much more attention to pay to traffic and road conditions.

travisjungroth 6y ago
Fully departing from spoon theory, but sticking with money and motorcycles, this story was told to me by a friend of mine. This was a few decades ago and he was into racing Ducatis. The wise old man at the track was explaining how to go fast. The people in the garage that night didn’t seem to be getting it, so everyone got in the back of the Ford van they used for parts and the old man drove. “You have a dollar to spend. You can spend it on acceleration, braking, or turning. You need to be spending the whole dollar all the time.” He was coming into a turn faster than any Ford engineer would have expected, gas to the floor. “I’m still spending the dollar on the gas.” He switched to the brakes, slamming them without skidding. The guys slid to the front of the van. “Now the brakes, I’m spending the whole thing. And then to turning.” The guys hit the side of the van. This continued on, him ranting about dollars while driving around the track. My friend timed the lap and it was embarrassingly close to what they did on their Ducatis. That old man speed.
- taneq 6y ago
  You should always be either at the edge of your traction circle or at the full limit of one of your controls. Anything less is wasting time.
  - zdkl 6y ago
    This notion of limits and edge reminds me of Hunter Thompson's musings on "The Line" in his piece about the Hell's Angels. He argues (wildly paraphrasing) that the fundamental draw (and in some sense, the art) of motorcycles or extreme sports is in finding that edge or limit. The problem he identifies being that you cannot really know where it is without going over it, with all the consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_and_Terrible_Saga_of_the_Outlaw_Motorcycle_Gangs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_a...

reedf1 6y ago

One of the effects of society is to reduce the number of 'spoons' any person needs to 'spend' a day. This is probably a good argument against those who are anti-automation. As a more efficient automated society slowly lowers the 'minimum spoon bar' that is required for net contribution.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Assuming the benefits of automation are somewhat equitably distributed. But if someone has a decent job which then gets displaced by automation and their next best option is a more demanding job, then automation has increased their daily spoon demand.
jackpirate 6y ago
I don't think this is true. I once spent some time at an Amish community, and I saw their elderly and sick all living relatively productive lives. They were cooking, cleaning, watching children, and performing other small tasks that made everyone's life a bit nicer. The only reason these "menial" jobs were available to them was the deliberate inefficiency of the Amish lifestyle.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  These things aren't unavailable in greater society. You simply have a choice. I'm not sure you have as much choice in Amish society, and I think the lack of choice is cruel. If my elbow is broken, I can't cook efficiently. If it doesn't work correctly, same. If walking to the toilet saps my energy, I shouldn't be expected to do the same. I should also now mention that elderly doesn't mean you are sick. Loads of folks are busy throughout old age. "sick" doesn't always mean you can't do anything, either, and I'm pretty sure the Amish communities take care of folks that can't.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - alisonkisk 6y ago

FrozenVoid 6y ago

I work by effort/benefit ratio. Many programmers start ambitious projects with very high effort and low benefit, like e.g. a browser/os/videogame/library which they maintain at expense of their health and limited time. Low effort, small-scale projects with immediate benefit/utility are much less taxing on health and don't require constant maintenance. Unix way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_It_Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_a...

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> Many programmers start ambitious projects with very high effort and low benefit I would argue that they are actually high benefit, or at least appear as such to the person. I don't think many people would willingly choose to engage in high effort/low benefit activities. > Low effort, small-scale projects with immediate benefit/utility are much less taxing on health and don't require constant maintenance They are also much less fulfilling and interesting to many people.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Benefit comes in multiple forms. There's the benefit you get when finishing a project, and the benefit of gathering experience on the way. In the end that's the way we learn and improve: by pushing the boundaries into unknown territory instead of always going with the methods that have already been working. To actually be sufficiently motivated to dive into a new hard area, having a goal is important, even if it's unrealistic. And when the time comes to actually build something serious it's good to be aware of what to expect and be familiar with the tools.
taneq 6y ago
I do something a bit similar with learning new tech. I used to just soak up whatever new thing I found interesting, but these days I don't have time to do this and so I have to make sure that every new thing I do learn "pays rent". It has to not just be immediately useful (unless there's no other way to solve the problem with my existing toolkit) but also to generate value in an ongoing manner for it to be worth the time investment.

Puts 6y ago

"Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities" I think the comments to this post testifies that no one has unlimited spoons. Most people struggle. Some more, some less.

Broken_Hippo 6y ago
But comparatively, they do. They aren't considering that taking a shower that day might take the energy they have for the morning. Struggling is different: It takes some energy away, but for many, you can theoretically take away some struggle. Get a new car, have enough food and money, get over a temporary health condition. Get time to get over a divorce. There are curese for many struggles. The same things won't help someone with a chronic disease... who often have the same struggles as greater society on top of whatever illness they have.
padolsey 6y ago
TBQH I have a real dislike for the relativistic thinking that people apply to this. Everyone does struggle, yes. But the degree of struggle, for some, is exponentially more. To just participate in the smallest parts of life... eating, cleaning, emptying one's bowels, is a daily challange. What if you could only afford energy for one outing to the shop? What if taking a shower felt like running a marathon? What if making a meal was prohibiltely exhausting? The everyday small parts of life that most people enjoy are inaccessible to many. The degrees of separation between between an able-bodied person and a disabled person can be so massive. So, yes, all people struggle, but the struggle of some denies them reaching the threshold of energy required to do even the minimum expected daily activites. That threshold is the crucial separator between isolation and participation. .. not even to mention the socioeconomic effects.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- notatrumper 6y ago
  And what exactly is the point of complaining about that?

shannifin 6y ago

> "Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions. So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point." Not so sure about this... everyone has limited resources, time and energy being the biggest, finances usually a big one as well. How accutely you are aware of them perhaps depends on both your situation (such as having serious health issues that need attention) and what exactly you are trying to do with them. Not taking your resources for granted is always helpful though. (Although someone else not sharing a resource doesn't necessarily make it worth more to me; e.g. I'm not happier to be able to walk specifically because someone else can't.)

padolsey 6y ago

Reflecting on how this applies to the tech industry, IME we're still very behind in accommodating those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. The 40-hour work week is still, on the whole, the minimum expectation across many FAANG-like companies. If falling ill during tenure, such companies ~generally seem receptive and supportive. But if you try to join such companies when you are already chronically ill or disabled, and ask for part-time working arrangements or reactive flexibility (e.g. I only have X spoons today so I can't work as much, but I can work a little ["semi-sick day"]), it's much much harder. Nowadays I only have about 2-3 hours of cognitive time per day. After that I need to lie down and do nothing. It seems so unfair that entire swathes of competent individuals are implicitly sidelined because of their illnesses or disabilities.

kdelok 6y ago
Strongly agreed! It doesn't just seem unfair, it is unfair. I also think that there's much more celebration of "overcoming" disability or illness, rather than the much more sustainable (and difficult!) practice of changing your work patterns and lifestyle to live within your daily allotment of spoons.

rozza 6y ago

My wife has chronic cancer* and one day when talking to the doctor at the hospice after a period of grueling treatment she talked about only having so many "spoons" in a day. The doctor liked the analogy as it was a fun way at looking at a real issue. I'm pleased I now know where it comes from! This analogy helped us both come to terms with managing her lower energy levels. * I use the term chronic cancer as she has Stage 4 cancer. The term terminal cancer to describe her cancer has been so incredibly unhelpful, its taken me years to frame where we as a family fit into it and how we can live. Essentially, the term has caused more fear than was warranted at the time. So until she needs end of life care, I won't call it terminal even though that is the expected outcome. That maybe 6 months from now or 6 years from now.

koheripbal 6y ago
I know this thread is about the severely limited energy of chronic pain sufferers, but there's some good lessons here for the rest of us healthy folks as well. While we have many more spoons than someone who's ill, our spoons are still limited in number each day, despite most of us assuming they are unlimited.
aszantu 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tteYZfMat4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tteYZfMat4 may you find a solution
- ufo 6y ago
  These days I've grown to see the word "integrative" as a red flag for pseudosciency or pseudoscience-adjacent stuff. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-integrative-oncology/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-integrative-oncolog...

mcv 6y ago

I've heard a lot of people refer to being "out of spoons" throughout the years. It's good to finally read the origin story of that.

wisty 6y ago

Doesn't the research now suggest that "finite willpower" / ego depletion is only true if you believe it?

codingdave 6y ago
This is not about willpower. This is about physical limits imposed by medical problems.

rpaddock 6y ago

If you want to understand the day to day issues of real people then please watch the documentary *Pain Warriors* that is about Chronic Pain. It is five stories, four of people with Chronic Pain, two that ended in suicides. My late wife Karen being one of them. The other story is of a doctor that the Medical Establishment destroyed for helping those with Chronic Pain. It is *NOT* a warm and fuzzy movie to watch. For full disclosure I am a member of the cast, have been intimately involved in Pain Warriors production for several years. I receive no remuneration of any type. It is my mission to raise awareness of those suffering from Chronic Pain and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Leaks. Pain Warriors can be found on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, Viemo (for international) and YouTube (sometimes, they are weird). The distributor set the pricing for the platforms and regions so check around for your best place to watch it. We could really use your help. Our goal is to get Pain Warriors on Nexflix to reach a wider audience. For that to happen we need to have over a 100 positive reviews on The Internet Movie Database (the 100+ positive reviews on the other platforms don't count to Netflix). Our segment in Pain Warriors is based on what has become known as "Karen's Journal". One reviewer wrote: "Karen's first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day." Thank You for your help and bring up this subject here.

rpaddock 6y ago
For more details check these sites. They cover some of the things that have happened after the release of Pain Warriors: http://www.kpaddock.com/pw http://www.kpaddock.com/pw http://www.kpaddock.org http://www.kpaddock.org
koheripbal 6y ago
> The other story is of a doctor that the Medical Establishment destroyed for helping those with Chronic Pain. Was this the result of the industry crack down on the over-prescription of opioids and various opioid manufacturers being forced to cut opioid production and marketing? Society went from one extreme of "we need to treat pain like a disease and medicate it", to the other extreme of "Holy moly we created an opioid epidemic, we need to cut production and sue manufacturers." Obviously there were a lot of bad actors at play, and I imagine some legitimate practices and patients were collateral damage during these over-reactions.

treeman79 6y ago

Congratulations, you have earned the achievement “chronic condition”. Your rewards are as follows. You have max exhaustion at all hours of the day! Exercise recovery is bumped from next day to 2 weeks! Your pain level is now on par with dying cancer patients! Everyone now considers you lazy and incompetent! Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety! You gain +1 to medical research ability. But -20 to Reputation. You now get spontaneous and useless medical advise from people that believe in essential oil. You are now on timer with your job until sympathy runs out! Disability now can mock you openly as clearly your faking and don’t have a real condition! You are now a burden to your family! +10 sneak score; you quickly learn to hide your suffering! +20 to loneliness! -20 to persuasion! Asking for help means doctors think your a hypochondriac. +10 Planning! Your kids may be orphans soon, make plans, read fine print on death benefits. ——- Spoon theory is a great way to reduce guilt people who suffer, and simply can’t do as much on a day to day basis.

anotherforsure 6y ago
+ 200 to weight; Doctors will now ignore any chronic issues and the only medical advice you're ever going to get is to lose weight.* *The "In too much pain to eat" perk nullifies this status effect

WanderPanda 6y ago

I can remember when I had a severe flu / fever last year (in February so probably not covid) that I only had juice to work (code) for like 30min and then had to lay down for 2h. The strange thing is, I can only remember the numbers but not the true feeling. It is kind of surreal. I should be grateful every day that I am not in that condition and have much more juice/spoons available. Another thing is, no matter how many spoons you have, there is always Parkinsons law to burn through them in an unreasonable way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

RivieraKid 6y ago

Can anyone give a TL;DR? This is one of those articles where you can extract 80% of the value with 5% of the time.

clydethefrog 6y ago
It's a metaphor for energy level. The amount of "spoons" someone has is their current energy level. No more "spoons" - no more energy. The metaphor is a bit controversial nowadays, some people identify themselves as "spoonies". See this discussion. https://old.reddit.com/r/illnessfakers/comments/aoz87i/who_else_here_hates_the_term_spoonie/ https://old.reddit.com/r/illnessfakers/comments/aoz87i/who_e...
Karawebnetwork 6y ago
Here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory

mindvirus 6y ago

Obviously not as serious as a chronic illness, I feel like having kids and working during quarantine is similar. After taking care of work and their needs, you don't have very many spoons left for yourself. So I like this analogy a lot, it seems helpful in being realistic with yourself in terms of your capabilities.

msoucy 6y ago

My favorite variation of this involves Dungeons and Dragons' spell slots mechanic. (Full disclaimer, I didn't make the concept, and can't find the post that I read it from) For every long rest, you get a limited number of spell slots - for example at level 5 you get 4 level 1 spell slots, 3 level 2 spell slots, and 2 level 3 spell slots. These are all the "major" spells you can cast before you need to long rest again. Some things may be more straightforward, and only take a level 1 spell slot. But it's still possible to run out of those. Luckily, you're able to use a higher level spell slot to cast that same spell. Sometimes this makes the "spell" more effective (using a higher level spell slot for programming might relate to intentionally putting more focus on it), other times you're just burning the higher leveled slot. Other actions/spells may take more focus/concentration/energy/effort to do, akin to using a higher leveled spell slot. Naturally you can't do as many of those without resting. Still other actions/spells are trivial for you to do. You can do those as many times as you'd like, and you don't feel (significantly) affected by them. These are your cantrips - the simplest spells, that can still be very useful. I like this variation of the theory not just for the gaming flavor, but also because it changes the concept slightly from "this takes more spoons than that" to differently sized spoons, which feels more in line with how I relate to the tasks that give me trouble.

amalcon 6y ago
That's a very interesting variant. Since it works for healthy people as well, you can describe what changes more directly. It also captures that not all conditions are identical. For a healthy person, getting out of bed in the morning is maybe a level 1; making dinner is a level 2; going to the bathroom is a cantrip; maybe going to work is a level 3. Now you have a chronic medical condition. With your particular condition, getting out of bed a level 3, you have no cantrips, and you need to spend 2-3 level 2's per week going to the doctor (rather than 2-3 per year). Now, you've used up your level 3's just by getting out of bed and going to work, you need to use level 1's to go to the bathroom, and you used a level 2 on a doctor appointment (so you're out of them by dinnertime). Someone else may have no more difficulty getting out of bed, and may not need so many doctor appointments, but randomly once a month they just don't get any slots back in the morning. So, they need to keep that extra level 3 in reserve to go to work tomorrow in case that happens.

codingdave 6y ago

Thank you for posting this. I've been using this analogy for years, but never actually read the origin story. It is a great analogy not only for explaining to people why you cannot always do what they can, but it also helps people who acquire new medical problems think through what change they need in their life.

code_duck 6y ago

I've certainly heard the term 'spoonies' a lot in the chronic illness community, but this is my first time seeing this article. It's interesting to see HN decided to discuss this. I was worn down by undiagnosed celiac for years. That was finally diagnosed, but then I became mysteriously ill again for a couple years, which turned out to be type 1 diabetes (actually 1.5, LADA). People definitely don't understand what it's like living with a limiting factor like chronic pain, fatigue or organ dysfunction until they've experienced it personally or watched someone very close cope with such a thing. Besides how difficult as the physical and mental issues have been, it's also cost me many relationships, financial independence, personal development and a great deal of work opportunities. I can easily connect with the message of the spoon holding, but I see I misunderstood the metaphor. I didn't realize spoons were like effort tokens... I thought it just meant you had to do everything all day with the inconvenience of holding a bunch of spoons.