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Design engineers: Can you shut off your brain during non-work hours?
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dietert1:
I remember reading a report 20 or 30 years ago about a high fraction of unmarried men at HP. They hired unmarried men intentionally. For somebody affected by such situations: It's not a personal disposition but a disposition of commerce in general. It's not enough to say: I am feeling uncomfortable but it's my problem. We need a little bit of resistance to protect our private lives.
Last year one of my neighbours started inviting me to walk an hour or two in the nearby forest. I thought maybe he wanted some advice. It turned into a habit and we went maybe once a week. Meanwhile he left and moved somewhere else.

Regards, Dieter
MT:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 18, 2023, 07:21:07 am ---
--- Quote from: MT on June 16, 2023, 12:07:22 pm ---There is not a work related mental issue a "after work beer" cant fix.
--- End quote ---
You are so wrong it is not even funny.
Granted, you have to have an unhealthy attitude towards work and work-related issues first; but then, the end result can be a burned out husk of a man.  Take a guess why I know that for a fact.

--- End quote ---

Good grief! Ok so you obviously had to many beers and didnt understand the concept of it all and your work place was a hell hole to begin with as you are not supsed to have a bottle every day.
No wonder you become a husk of a man.
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: MT on June 19, 2023, 12:15:13 am ---Ok so you obviously had to many beers and didnt understand the concept of it all
--- End quote ---
Nope, didn't drink then or now at all.  Then, just because.  Now, I don't use anything stronger than sugar and caffeine, just to help keep my brain chemistry working the best it can.


--- Quote from: MT on June 19, 2023, 12:15:13 am ---and your work place was a hell hole to begin with
--- End quote ---
Yes, yes it was, for me.  For a different type of person, perhaps not.

For someone else, this kind of environment would have posed no problems at all.  Me, I am a problem solver, not a salesperson or contract negotiatior.  One university lecturer / artist I worked with commented that they "loved working with me, because nothing is impossible".  Combine that with an upbringing that required oneself to belittle the amount of work achieved, and utter rejection of properly marketing oneself and one's skills, and I was like a square peg in a triangular hole.  A silent peg that nobody ever noticed even being there.

Yes, you can say that it was all my own fault.  The problem, really, is that I did not recognize the imbalance (of how I did not fit in that kind of a work culture) nor the need for rebalancing myself.

Switching gears, doing something else that lets these aspects of ones own mind refocus and concentrate on something different but equally interesting and meaningful –– again, for me, tactile and olfactory information makes a huge difference ––, is the first step.  It also makes it easier to recognize whole-life imbalances.  A major error for me was to redouble my work efforts without stacking stock of the situation first, and reject all hobbies –– life –– outside work.
hans:
I don't get the joke about after work beers. Or was it actually serious advice? Can't tell. Because if it is, then it sounds quite cynical to me (e.g. as far from the truth as one could be).


--- Quote from: helius on June 18, 2023, 04:38:38 pm ---Physical exercise is necessary to supply adequate oxygen and neurotrophic factors to the brain. The more strenuous (heart rate maximizing) the better.
Around 90% of frontal cortex neurons are inhibitory: it's precisely the experience of racing thoughts and inability to "shut off" that signal cerebral degeneration.

--- End quote ---
But those symptoms also are signals for a great number of other diseases. Like bipolar disorder (mania) or autism and ADHD (hyperfixation) to name a few.
I agree with you that staying physically fit is essential to keep the brain fit. But marrying 1 symptom directly with a severe disease doesn't sound right. Otherwise the headache I have now could also be a symptom of a far progressed brain tumor.
T3sl4co1l:

--- Quote from: hans on June 19, 2023, 10:11:14 am ---I don't get the joke about after work beers. Or was it actually serious advice? Can't tell. Because if it is, then it sounds quite cynical to me (e.g. as far from the truth as one could be).

--- End quote ---

I mean, self-medication is a thing.  Ethanol is one of the worst medicines you can take, but, it's legal, and socially permitted [in the western world, largely], or even encouraged, so, there it is.

Self-abuse is often a response to external abuse, whether from a personal relationship, or the ennui (and worse) of this capitalist hellscape we live in.  Or specific conditions (depression), which is basically the same thing but done to oneself biochemically (give or take exacerbation by outside forces too).  Tons of people (and media especially, and the former, I suspect, largely because of the latter) stigmatize drug use, thinking it's a failing of a person's moral fiber to give in to such addictive products, and therefore they don't deserve of compassion, they've brought it on themselves.  A very old fashioned, Victorian interpretation.

Whereas if you actually looked at the history of these people, you'd largely see they fell into drug use, whether by peer pressure (particularly when younger, more susceptible to it) or by stress or abuse.  And social stress will be a strong factor in peer pressure itself taking that dark turn, so it almost seems redundant to mention.  (Indeed on a system level, it's irrelevant; we can assume some level of peer pressure exists in a population regardless, and simply consider overall stress of the population and its response to it.  Maybe it has individual effects, but individuals on the whole will have better outcomes more often if that stress is addressed first.)

So it's no accident that many drug users are in poverty, homeless, abused, mentally unwell.  Many may become unemployable as a result of such circumstances, making it a positive feedback loop that therefore needs additional force to break (rehab programs), in addition to dealing with the underlying causes.

Anyway, not to get overly serious here...  Just to say that, the seemingly casual response of "drinking away the work day" is indeed a normal response; a dark one, but a human one.  The severity of that response can range anywhere from "out with the mates", to, eventually shivved in a dark alley over a dimebag of meth or whatever.  The same force that might tempt you to have something "just to unwind", is the same force that tempts others to much darker fates.

And, not to say that a little ethanol here or there is necessarily a self-abusive thing, not to the most severe degree the term brings to mind.  But when we have a conscious understanding that it's incrementally bad for overall health, and continue to do it anyway, that's still a very slight but definite harm we do to ourselves.  And that's just the easiest case, you know, you have a couple drinks, you feel fun for a couple hours, no hangover, no consequences, other than the nebulous idea that you've been told it's bad.  Which sounds more like other people trying to guilt-trip you, you don't feel any worse from it personally, right?  But there's also the level of, maybe you do drink enough to get a hangover, and now the physical after-effects are manifest, and you still do it on an irregular or greater basis, despite knowing it's bad, and now the abuse is clearly both physical and mental.  When I say "abuse" here, I mean anything from a sliding scale of "knowing it's bad but it doesn't feel bad overall" to "constant state of drunken fog mixed with cirrhosis".

So; it's largely a response.  It might not be a healthy one, but it can happen.  And if it gets really bad, it's a gateway to other and worse kinds; it's a sliding scale.  I would suggest monitoring your alcohol consumption, and using that as a hint that, maybe you should start looking for a new job.  Or family or "friends", or place to live; whatever the stressors may be.

(For my part, can confirm: my alcohol budget shrank notably when I quit my first job.  Haven't been [externally] employed since.)

Tim
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