These are the life choices we make, whether through biology, mentality, or environment. For me, one of the key factors is that the signal-to-noise you have to endure with friends to get the few moments of gratification is so low that it's draining. Maybe it's a product of having a high bar for what constitutes new and interesting/entertaining for me (compared against spending time alone), combined with already being biased towards things and ideas rather than people.
I live with the consequences now in middle age, when friends and connections gradually evaporate if not actively cultivated. And I’m sure I’ll pay for it at a point in life where you need those who stuck with you not for ideas or things, but because of friendship or family. Because you wanted to spend time with them, low signal-to-noise and everything.
Anyway, we all eventually experience this phase. For some, it just comes earlier than others.
Listen to yourself. When you start talking about the signal to noise ratio and calculating the return on investment of social interactions, its time to step away from the keyboard and reevaluate your life.
Eh, I appreciate GP's honesty. I can see where the user is coming from, and the user also acknowledges the potential disadvantages later in time.
I used to spend a lot of time, hours a week, at university just hanging out with people instead of working hard on my career (the opposite of hustle culture). The vast majority of these friends entered a relationship and/or moved far away, and I don't see them anymore (we've also become different people since then). I've since focused more on my career—no longer taking time just to hang out—and I'm subjectively happier. I still make a best faith attempt to treat others respectfully, help others when I can, and also make time for my partner and care for her, but I genuinely like reading, watching a good film, or doing a solitary movie more than investing a lot of time in friendships, especially when they're likely to be temporary and transient.
I wish friendships would last longer, but in my experience, it takes two to invest in one (and the vast majority of people don't)—though in contrast, romantic and familial relationships are more likely to last. I've learned a lot more from reading and exploring artistic works with the time and energy that I could have spent hanging out. In addition, career work will help myself and my family secure a comfortable life in the future, whereas I wouldn't realistically expect friends to materially help me out that far in the future (assuming we'd still be in touch and geographically close).
Eh, it just sounds like precise terminology to me. If they'd said: "I like my friends but sometimes it's more draining than fun to hang out with them. I dunno, maybe I'm hard to please. It's just so much work to find and keep friends," I'm sure no one would bat an eye. I read it about like that, but just described in technical terms.
I'm an engineer and I often find engineering terms applicable to non-engineering topics; that doesn't mean anything about how I look at life other than that I've considered my situation from a number of angles.
The most relaxing time for me is going back to the small beach town where my surviving parent retired.
The pace is slow. It takes a few days for me to downshift from a “fit everything in you wanted to do” to the “lets see what the day brings” mindset.
You might go for a walk, run into a friend and decide to just stop by for a coffee for an hour and catch up. After that? Who knows. Maybe walk down main street and find something to eat (without looking up reviews on Yelp). Have a drink before heading home and reading a book for an hour until you fall asleep.
The urge to hyper-optimize every living minute is a very common mindset among certain groups of people. And it’s often what’s needed to reach the higher socio-economic levels.
But man can it be toxic. It starts to become a goal in and of itself. It’s no longer about the “best” life but rather the “most optimum”. Yes, it’s worthwhile to figure out the best job between the two choices. But it’s also good sometimes to stop trying to optimize and just enjoy where you are at that moment.
Comments like yours remind me that I barely have a connection to this world anymore. Maybe it's just being old, or not being in the US.
Checking yelp reviews before getting lunch is the most alien thing I've read here in quite a while. And this site is full of people who I don't get at all.
Well said. I'd also add that life has stages. YC-style hyper growth startup culture is suited for the young and ambitious. As we age, that immense drive of youth gradually declines. So it makes sense to use that energy productively while it's there for a chance at outlier success. But there is an age at which the slow and consistent life you've described becomes far more preferable to the constant hustle .
I think it was just a way to get the idea across. As much as I value being with friends, even after a short while, let's say a weekend, I feel desire to get away for relief. It is draining for me. I think it is called being introvert
Wait, how are you making the jump to someone's brain being fried? They probably mean that they don't enjoy most of some interactions and the parts that the enjoy aren't enough to make the whole thing worth it.
I don't get why you're getting caught up on the language or what this has to do with hustle culture.
It’s kinda curious. I connect to people over ideas, but my family also happens to be the group of people that is similarly inclined enough to connect over ideas with.
I left my home to go live overseas, but even after 8 years abroad I haven’t found people I connect with in the same way.
I know, but I don’t care. I also believe that having children is deeply unethical given the state of the world. Birthing new humans into this dystopian hellscape we find ourselves in is torture.
Humans waste far too much of their time on unproductive persists like relationships and families. Nobody outside these structures cares what is achieved and rightfully so, human influenced by neurochemicals to influence behavior to spread genetic material, news at 11.
Meanwhile some people are building things, yourself included, that have never existed before and push humanity forward.
Oof. Is that how you determine what is worth doing?
I think it's more accurate to say that nobody cares about anyone else OUTSIDE of personal relationships.
> Meanwhile some people are building things, yourself included, that have never existed before and push humanity forward.
Nah. We're just twiddling our fingers on keyboard until we die or have sufficient padding from the current economic climate. So SO much less worth doing than loving another person and providing the support for them to be their best self. Or raising a child to start with the knowledge and resources which took you a lifetime to learn the hard way.
To be frank, it sounds like you deeply want to be loved by others and yet avoid the only way to get it. I'm sorry.
I know your line of reasoning is not popular, but I would like to add some nuance.
The empirical reality of this situation is that societies directed towards the maximization of individual desires (or "rights") will tend to be in conflict with creation and sustenance of communal societies. As such, we're seeing the breakdown of relationships, marriages, communities and even nations via social atomization. This is the result of liberal philosophy followed to its logical conclusion. The individual reigns supreme, and thus the community suffers.
Traditional societies throughout history had strategies for building families and maintaining communities, but the liberal West deems these anachronistic. We want to have our cake and eat it too, and we're learning this is simply not possible.
I live with the consequences now in middle age, when friends and connections gradually evaporate if not actively cultivated. And I’m sure I’ll pay for it at a point in life where you need those who stuck with you not for ideas or things, but because of friendship or family. Because you wanted to spend time with them, low signal-to-noise and everything.
Anyway, we all eventually experience this phase. For some, it just comes earlier than others.