3 ms·

In my experience, and what the article also mentions, despite the title: it is fundamentally different if you push yourself, or if you're pushed by circumstance

In my experience, and what the article also mentions, despite the title: it is fundamentally different if you push yourself, or if you're pushed by circumstances. Pushing yourself, to file the taxes, finish your personal project, go for a run, lookup something in wikipedia.. that is almost always good. Being pushed by clients, the organization, dead lines. Often bad. My theory, burnout and stress, happen in environments where you receive responsibilities without the power to fulfill them.

brnt 6y ago
This creates the false impression there is a neat separation between internal and external pressure. In reality, life is a tangle. You're pushing your taxes because you had a busy quarter at work getting that project out the door. Your pushing your running because you've been overeating due to stress at work/with kids/etc. Your pushing your personal project because dealing with a personal situation is just too much right now. Maybe you're pushing because you drank the koolaid (and who hasn't?) that you should 'live life to it's fullest' and be busy every waking second. In general, pushing is I think a crutch that we sometimes need to use, but probably should use a little as possible. In an ideal life, all those things would fit in naturally. I find accepting limits, revising my priorities, and taking freedom I actually have (as opposed to me and/or society being trained to not recognising it) to do what feels good is a better approach. Discipline is not in pushing, discipline is in understanding yourself, your environment and setting honest priorities.
waylandsmithers 6y ago
> Being pushed by clients, the organization, dead lines. Often bad. I disagree with this part, respectfully of course, based on my own personal experience. I can see how external forces do lead to poor decision making and short sightedness; on the other hand I also think of the vast ways I've grown and new things I've learned from designers who drew something I originally thought was impossible, or clients who wanted something built in a language I'd never had any interest in using before. Generally speaking these external forces may push you beyond the limits of your own imagination.

brnt 6y ago

This creates the false impression there is a neat separation between internal and external pressure. In reality, life is a tangle. You're pushing your taxes because you had a busy quarter at work getting that project out the door. Your pushing your running because you've been overeating due to stress at work/with kids/etc. Your pushing your personal project because dealing with a personal situation is just too much right now. Maybe you're pushing because you drank the koolaid (and who hasn't?) that you should 'live life to it's fullest' and be busy every waking second. In general, pushing is I think a crutch that we sometimes need to use, but probably should use a little as possible. In an ideal life, all those things would fit in naturally. I find accepting limits, revising my priorities, and taking freedom I actually have (as opposed to me and/or society being trained to not recognising it) to do what feels good is a better approach. Discipline is not in pushing, discipline is in understanding yourself, your environment and setting honest priorities.

waylandsmithers 6y ago

> Being pushed by clients, the organization, dead lines. Often bad. I disagree with this part, respectfully of course, based on my own personal experience. I can see how external forces do lead to poor decision making and short sightedness; on the other hand I also think of the vast ways I've grown and new things I've learned from designers who drew something I originally thought was impossible, or clients who wanted something built in a language I'd never had any interest in using before. Generally speaking these external forces may push you beyond the limits of your own imagination.