Techniques for dealing with lack of motivation, malaise, depression

What people said

jmacklin308 · 2024-02 · Strong recommendation

Best advice I heard was from Jonathan Blow: [VIDEO] And Dr. Huberman: [LINK] Everything else didn't have enough data for me to latch onto. Life is difficult, and some tasks are not meant to be fun. You can't fix that. You can however reframe your minds' perspective on the manner. Instead of thinking "Man there are so many dishes to do, I'd rather be playing Helldivers 2 now" you can think "I can do 5 dishes... That was easy, I can do 5 more dishes... Look how many dishes i did! I can do 5 more". Even if it's clearly a lie to yourself that you enjoy it, you'll find that your brain will start to believe it. Over time, your brain will take on the new perspective. This is why "faking it until you make it" works.

Read the original HN comment ↗

loevborg · 2022-04 · Reference

In my view, The Witness is the best video game of all times. On the surface, it's a puzzle game. I bought it (for something ridiculous like €5 on the iPad I believe) expecting to enjoy a few logic puzzles and remembering the games of my childhood like Myst and The 7th Guest (and I was also happy that, unlike many games it wasn't about shooting people). But it ended up a much bigger deal than that. I found The Witness (which doesn't have dialog or a plot) immersive like no other game and I think about it every week, years after completing the game. If it's not about the puzzles, what is it about? To avoid spoilers, here are just a few hints: • The Witness is a game about learning and perception. And about meditation. (That's only my interpretation, though; like any work of art, you may have another valid interpretation). • The author, Jonathan Blow, is a "programmer's programmer", who built his own game engine for The Witness and is in the process of writing his own programming language for his next project. He's also an interesting speaker. Here he talks about depression: [VIDEO] • The Witness is as close to a video game equivalent of "film d'auteur" as you can get (at least compared to most of the other games out there, which are commercial Hollywood productions) (Disclaimer: I'm not a gamer, and haven't played more than 2-3 games in the last decade.)

Read the original HN comment ↗

vfinn · 2019-03 · Reference

It seems his teachings are based on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. There are some good audio books by him on Youtube, like Freedom from the Known . On a slightly related note, Jonathan Blow also has a talk called Techniques for dealing with lack of motivation, malaise, depression ( [VIDEO] ), where he also talks about the importance of observational skills as a means of understanding / "putting out" your (negative) emotions and thoughts.

Read the original HN comment ↗