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I guess what triggers me is the stressors they describe as responsible for those emotions. To me they are meaningless compared to things that really should caus

I guess what triggers me is the stressors they describe as responsible for those emotions. To me they are meaningless compared to things that really should cause anxiety in a CEO: am I making payroll this month if deal X falls through? Can I land in jail if thing Y turns out to be illegal instead of a harmless hustle? If I fizzle is my professional life over? The Hard Thing About Hard Things made the same points as the author in much more poignant ways to me, when I read it. No current or future CEO should stress about volume of email or thoughts of another career as a bartender in a tropical island - stress about real problems instead.

jimkleiber 5y ago
I hear you and often I have a similar reaction—why does this person feel X when Y happens because I feel Z when Y happens, so it makes no sense for them to feel X. So for you, those stressors may seem meaningless. However, to that person, those stressors may feel devastating. Likewise, some things that deeply impact you may seem trivial to them. I, like you, would imagine that the "am I making payroll this month" would be a larger stressor on a CEO (I've never been one so I haven't been in that situation) than the volume of email I'd receive, and yet I can also imagine the payroll stress is relatively infrequent where the email stress may be a nagging drag, bringing with it incessant uncertainty of 1) whether what I say in an email will be posted to Twitter or used against me in 10 years, 2) news that rockets the company or tanks it, or even 3) an email that notifies me I won't make payroll this month. I dunno. I say this to you as much as to myself to remind me that while we might all feel very similar emotions, sometimes we attribute very different causes to those emotions. *edit: and remembering this and actually accepting that other people have different emotional responses to the same stimuli than I do is one of the things that confuses and frustrates me the most.
n4r9 5y ago
The author described the constant emails as "exhilarating" and something he loved, even if it meant raised adrenaline levels.

jimkleiber 5y ago

I hear you and often I have a similar reaction—why does this person feel X when Y happens because I feel Z when Y happens, so it makes no sense for them to feel X. So for you, those stressors may seem meaningless. However, to that person, those stressors may feel devastating. Likewise, some things that deeply impact you may seem trivial to them. I, like you, would imagine that the "am I making payroll this month" would be a larger stressor on a CEO (I've never been one so I haven't been in that situation) than the volume of email I'd receive, and yet I can also imagine the payroll stress is relatively infrequent where the email stress may be a nagging drag, bringing with it incessant uncertainty of 1) whether what I say in an email will be posted to Twitter or used against me in 10 years, 2) news that rockets the company or tanks it, or even 3) an email that notifies me I won't make payroll this month. I dunno. I say this to you as much as to myself to remind me that while we might all feel very similar emotions, sometimes we attribute very different causes to those emotions. *edit: and remembering this and actually accepting that other people have different emotional responses to the same stimuli than I do is one of the things that confuses and frustrates me the most.

n4r9 5y ago

The author described the constant emails as "exhilarating" and something he loved, even if it meant raised adrenaline levels.