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No no, don't. Athletes don't practice every day, they rest. The brain needs rest, just like the body. Take some down time. Come back refreshed. Practice delib

No no, don't. Athletes don't practice every day, they rest. The brain needs rest, just like the body. Take some down time. Come back refreshed. Practice deliberately.

onion2k 11y ago
On the face of it your advice sounds sensible, but is it actually possible? Can you rest your brain? You can do things that feel like they're less effort mentally but your brain is still doing just as much work - things that feel nicer are just releasing a different combination of dopamine and serotonin. Is there actually any difference in the amount of energy you use doing "down time" activities? What mechanism is your brain using to recover?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ggreer 11y ago
I'm sorry, but your comment is doubly-wrong. First, most athletes do train every day. Even tapering before an important competition involves training daily. I ran track and XC competitively in high school and college. Some of my teammates hadn't missed a day in years. Most of us only skipped training if we were injured or very ill. Second, the brain is not a muscle. Sleep deprivation and stress hormones can diminish its abilities, but no amount of thinking or drudgery can damage it. Neurons can't tell if they're reading, playing video games, or debugging code. An examination of history also supports this. A mere century ago, people toiled far greater for far longer than we do today. The average work week was over 60 hours![1] Despite such exertions, even the concept of burnout didn't exist. It still doesn't exist in some cultures, and in the cultures it does, burnout doesn't affect everyone. Unlike sleep deprivation or physical exhaustion, some people just don't burn out. If you start looking at studies, you'll find papers like, Is burnout separable from depression in cluster analysis? A longitudinal study.[2] The answer: no. So far, researchers haven't been able to reliably differentiate between burnout and depression. This indicates that burnout is depression, not a guaranteed consequence of working. Of course, one should still be wary of depression, and work is one piece of that puzzle. Yet work alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause ruin. Exercise, social gatherings, and friendships are equally (if not more) important. As one more piece of evidence that work alone doesn't cause burnout, I submit myself. I have written code every day for the past 908 days.[3] That's almost 8% of my existence. Those commits aren't just whitespace or linter changes. Every day, I write real code that runs in production. I also exercise, socialize, and generally live a fulfilling life. People sometimes voice their concerns about burnout. But to me, it's as if they'd asked, "Are you worried about getting burnt out from reading so much Hacker News?" 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_in_working_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_... 2. http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_20press_29.pdf http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_... 3. http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png
- atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
  Great response! There's also the lovely condescension that I can't help but sense when someone tells me why writing code every day shouldn't be as fulfilling as it is. That's a big part of how some people get a sense of fulfillment, myself included. I suck at drawing and painting, and programming is my main creative outlet. Implying (or sometimes stating!) that I should be spending less of my time coding so as to spend more time doing something that they find more fulfilling is... rude at best.
  - davelnewton 11y ago
    Nobody said anything even remotely rude, let alone "rude at best". Nobody said you don't find coding fulfilling, and nobody said you should do something they find fulfilling. Nobody said coding isn't creative, either. I think if all one does is code then the vast possibilities life offers is being ignored.
    - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
      I wasn't responding to the parent poster directly, but rather addressing some comments I've heard in meatspace. Sorry I didn't make that clear!
      - davelnewton 11y ago
        My bad. I'll grant you that a lot of people (a) assume coding isn't a creative act, and (b) assume that what they enjoy everyone will enjoy.
- davelnewton 11y ago
  I don't know any athletes that train 7/365, although in fairness, I only keep up with several dozen (ex- and current clients, and trainers that I work with). The level of training we work at is more intense than typical; the body breaks itself down and fails after too much of that. If we consider walking to be "exercise" then sure, I suppose they "work out" every day. Regarding [2], without reading it yet, if it isn't separable, then it could be burnout or depression. Not being able to distinguish between the two doesn't mean they're the same thing, it means precisely what it it says--you can't tell which it is. The bottom line is that everybody is different. Some people will get burned out, some people will get depressed, some people will be both, some people won't. "Micro-rests", e.g., having a fulfilling life outside of whatever the cause of burnout/depression is, is still rest.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Many athletes I know practice every day, or nearly so; they may not do high intensity workouts every day, but not all practice is high intensity workouts. And the physical reasons for resting between high intensity workouts don't apply to intellectual activities, and AFAIK don't have a clearly established direct analog that does, either.

No no, don't. Athletes don't practice every day, they rest. The brain needs rest, just like the body. Take some down time. Come back refreshed. Practice deliberately.

onion2k 11y ago

On the face of it your advice sounds sensible, but is it actually possible? Can you rest your brain? You can do things that feel like they're less effort mentally but your brain is still doing just as much work - things that feel nicer are just releasing a different combination of dopamine and serotonin. Is there actually any difference in the amount of energy you use doing "down time" activities? What mechanism is your brain using to recover?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ggreer 11y ago

I'm sorry, but your comment is doubly-wrong. First, most athletes do train every day. Even tapering before an important competition involves training daily. I ran track and XC competitively in high school and college. Some of my teammates hadn't missed a day in years. Most of us only skipped training if we were injured or very ill. Second, the brain is not a muscle. Sleep deprivation and stress hormones can diminish its abilities, but no amount of thinking or drudgery can damage it. Neurons can't tell if they're reading, playing video games, or debugging code. An examination of history also supports this. A mere century ago, people toiled far greater for far longer than we do today. The average work week was over 60 hours![1] Despite such exertions, even the concept of burnout didn't exist. It still doesn't exist in some cultures, and in the cultures it does, burnout doesn't affect everyone. Unlike sleep deprivation or physical exhaustion, some people just don't burn out. If you start looking at studies, you'll find papers like, Is burnout separable from depression in cluster analysis? A longitudinal study.[2] The answer: no. So far, researchers haven't been able to reliably differentiate between burnout and depression. This indicates that burnout is depression, not a guaranteed consequence of working. Of course, one should still be wary of depression, and work is one piece of that puzzle. Yet work alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause ruin. Exercise, social gatherings, and friendships are equally (if not more) important. As one more piece of evidence that work alone doesn't cause burnout, I submit myself. I have written code every day for the past 908 days.[3] That's almost 8% of my existence. Those commits aren't just whitespace or linter changes. Every day, I write real code that runs in production. I also exercise, socialize, and generally live a fulfilling life. People sometimes voice their concerns about burnout. But to me, it's as if they'd asked, "Are you worried about getting burnt out from reading so much Hacker News?" 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_in_working_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_... 2. http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_20press_29.pdf http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_... 3. http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png

atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
Great response! There's also the lovely condescension that I can't help but sense when someone tells me why writing code every day shouldn't be as fulfilling as it is. That's a big part of how some people get a sense of fulfillment, myself included. I suck at drawing and painting, and programming is my main creative outlet. Implying (or sometimes stating!) that I should be spending less of my time coding so as to spend more time doing something that they find more fulfilling is... rude at best.
- davelnewton 11y ago
  Nobody said anything even remotely rude, let alone "rude at best". Nobody said you don't find coding fulfilling, and nobody said you should do something they find fulfilling. Nobody said coding isn't creative, either. I think if all one does is code then the vast possibilities life offers is being ignored.
  - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
    I wasn't responding to the parent poster directly, but rather addressing some comments I've heard in meatspace. Sorry I didn't make that clear!
    - davelnewton 11y ago
      My bad. I'll grant you that a lot of people (a) assume coding isn't a creative act, and (b) assume that what they enjoy everyone will enjoy.
davelnewton 11y ago
I don't know any athletes that train 7/365, although in fairness, I only keep up with several dozen (ex- and current clients, and trainers that I work with). The level of training we work at is more intense than typical; the body breaks itself down and fails after too much of that. If we consider walking to be "exercise" then sure, I suppose they "work out" every day. Regarding [2], without reading it yet, if it isn't separable, then it could be burnout or depression. Not being able to distinguish between the two doesn't mean they're the same thing, it means precisely what it it says--you can't tell which it is. The bottom line is that everybody is different. Some people will get burned out, some people will get depressed, some people will be both, some people won't. "Micro-rests", e.g., having a fulfilling life outside of whatever the cause of burnout/depression is, is still rest.

dragonwriter 11y ago

Many athletes I know practice every day, or nearly so; they may not do high intensity workouts every day, but not all practice is high intensity workouts. And the physical reasons for resting between high intensity workouts don't apply to intellectual activities, and AFAIK don't have a clearly established direct analog that does, either.