#3usefulthings — #8 — Work-life balance and brain
#3usefulthings is a series of small blog posts with short overviews of some interesting and useful facts. Other issues: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
When some companies are trying to squeeze the most of their workforce and other ones are thinking about switching to a 4-day working week I was thinking about the limited human brain capacity and factors that influence human productivity the most. Also, some people are pursuing the idea that “work-life balance” is just an incorrect term and we should strive for harmony, not the balance.
1. What do you think about the hustle? An article from 37signals blog (maybe you’ve read one of their books: Rework, Remote and Getting Real) about a fashion to want more and never stop:
Pushing through pain and exhaustion in the chase of a bigger carrot
But is it really what we need? Creative professions couldn’t work with the same productivity for 14h per day. Isn’t it a race for the sake of race?
One more great highlight from the article on how to stay productive:
Say no to more dumb shit. Engage with fewer things but at a higher intensity. Stick with it. Stop chasing so much.
2. Feel of happiness is not linear. According to Daniel Kahneman and other great scientists happiness studies, people cannot become happier endlessly. Considering growing income, people stop being happier at a point when they reach their comfort level, and any additional income doesn’t influence as much. The feel of happiness is a difficult concept by itself, and different people understand it in different ways.
By the way, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a brilliant book, don’t miss a chance to read it.
3. Startups that are aimed to “hack” a human brain. Talking about the brain — here’s a great list from Hackernoon of brand new startups aimed to “hack” human brain. The list has a very nice breakdown by the categories as the scope of possible improvements of cognitive functions and disease curing is huge. Different types of neurostimulation, VR, ML and hardware could help people to overcome psychological problems, meditate more deeply, get more precise feedback from their activities and improve their happiness level. Would you like to try one?
Thanks to Ostap Andrusiv for reminding me about my blog initiative
