Feeling Drained After 5 PM: Does Anyone Else Struggle to Pursue Creative Passions

[mr_engineer]

@Clabber Girl Join an art-club and discipline yourself to go there every weekend. (Twice or thrice a week, if you have a deadline for your business) Go to art-galleries, talk to artists. They are ever-ready to talk about their journeys and if you say you want to enter art, they will be very supportive. 

I think you're being drained by the people around you, more than your work. Accounting is not fundamentally boring, you can always get better at it. But, I can understand how being surrounded by accountants all day can drain your spirit. 

[integral]

On 9/13/2024 at 7:27 PM, Carl-Richard said:

I've been doing sprints for about a year now, and I've noticed the last couple of months that I've been experiencing some build-up of fatigue, and I think it had to do with me slowly upping my sets of sprints from the recommended number of 3-4 sets to 6 sets (and recently also an additional "sprint to failure" set on the 6th set: when the set is done, sprint the other way until you literally cannot run anymore). In hindsight, that sounds pretty foolish, but I somehow felt like I was progressing by doing it that way. But yes, it was foolish because it didn't just make me feel fatigued but it also made me less able to sprint with high intensity (which is the point of sprints). Recently, I've cut back down to 4 sets, and the difference is palpable.

So if you are going to do sprints or other forms of super high-intensity work, keep your sets deliberately low. And I agree that sprints are something unique when it comes to boosting your cognitive functioning. The type of mind state I enter after a sprint session where I managed to hit extreme levels of intensity is so much different than times where I didn't or compared to low-to-moderate intensity cardio or weight training. It's like your mind just got bolted with electricity or fed some superconductive substance, which is probably because it had just been granted an extreme amount of resources (blood flow, glucose, oxygen, neurochemicals). I think I used to achieve something similar back when I did weight training with extreme intensity, but I partially stopped doing that to work on form, correct muscle imbalances and deal with various injuries.

I think the reason high-intensity training in general is thought to increase intelligence is because of this effect of granting an extreme amount of resources in a short time period. In order to think clearly or solve difficult problems or have insights, your mind needs to be working at high intensity, and high-intensity bodily training produces a high-intensity mind (your body is connected to your brain which is connected to your mind). Also, thoughts themselves are fleeting and quick and are in a sense analogous to a sprint. Nevertheless, if you increase the intensity that your mind can handle in short bursts, then naturally you will be able to handle more heavy thoughts and thoughts in general.

That's a good point I think I noticed a similar pattern and by coincidence I just watched this video

A surprising discovery is that the total number of calories burned daily doesn't significantly differ between those who are highly active, like hunter-gatherers, and those who lead a more sedentary lifestyle.

For instance, the Hadza people, a hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania, walk an average of 9 kilometers daily. Despite this high level of activity, they burn roughly the same number of calories as people in industrialized societies.

This phenomenon is not due to genetic differences but to how the body allocates energy. The body seems to have a relatively fixed daily calorie budget that it adheres to, regardless of activity levels.

The body has evolved to maintain a consistent energy expenditure. When you exercise more, the body compensates by reducing energy spent on other activities or processes, a concept known as the "activity budget."

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The way I see it is when you overdo high intensity exercise you're pulling from all the energy of all the cells in your body and if that isn't replenished or the recovery can't keep up you're going to suffer. Pretty obvious but it's interesting that you are still use up a fixed amount of energy throughout the day regardless of your activity level. 

Edited Sunday at 09:37 PM by integral