Skip to content

Habits to make sure you don't go insane

4 pointsnyxtomdiscuss
On HN

*Attention Discipline*: Protect your ability to hold a single thought. Constant context-switching and dopamine-drip content degrades capacity to think clearly and erosion of this can surface as anxiety or depression before realizing what is actually root cause.

*Know and Be known*: Be in regular proximity with people who know you and care about you and you care about them. Reciprocal care and community.

*Prepare and eat real food*: Not just basic nutrition, but the act of cooking. This ritual is grounding and hands on and removing this entirely separates something so fundamental to life.

*Hydrate*: Cognitive function rapidly degrades with something that can be so simply addressed.

*Sleep rhythm* Constant circadian disruption can often induce symptoms that look like psychiatric disorders.

*Physical exertion*: Your body needs to be physically tired regularly or your nervous system will start misfiring. Anxiety, restlessness, racing thoughts is a lot of just an under-used body.

*Sunlight* Light exposure regulates so much downstream biology that being indoors for days starts warping your sense of time and mood in subtle ways.

*Use your hands* Build something, fix something, cook, play an instrument, do something tangible so you aren't fixated on knowledge work.

*Silence and stillness* Walk, sit, pray, meditate, - make this unstructured processing time without constant signal and input.

Comments

No comments yet.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.