[fatbird]

With all due respect, I think you're missing the point. It's not about whether one is, or should be, tough enough, or is overly sensitive. As with technical debt, there's necessarily going to be a certain amount of emotion that needs to be discharged; and as with technical debt (or financial debt), there's nothing wrong with incurring it and paying it off, if that's part of your plan to succeed.

The only mistake is not recognizing that you're incurring debt, and not having a plan or means to deal with it. Unacknowledged debt of any kind compounds and eventually destroys.

I would guess that your pilot example was less about nerves of steel than about someone who had learned to handle (i.e., process) a lot of stress effectively--which is just a way of saying that nerves of steel is more about efficiently incurring and discharging debt than about withstanding cumulative effects.

[_curious_]

"The only mistake is not recognizing that you're incurring debt, and not having a plan or means to deal with it. Unacknowledged debt of any kind compounds and eventually destroys." True story!

"I would guess that your pilot example was less about nerves of steel than about someone who had learned to handle (i.e., process) a lot of stress effectively--which is just a way of saying that nerves of steel is more about efficiently incurring and discharging debt than about withstanding cumulative effects."

In your view, how does withstanding cumulative effects and efficiently incurring differ?

[fatbird]

Efficiently incurring is like having a high volume credit card that you constantly pay off: lots of cash moving through, but debt isn't building up.

Withstanding cumulative effects is like continually re-financing your home to pull more equity out: at some point you can't keep up, and the failure mode is catastrophic.