[jmhnilbog]

Agreed.

Anxiety can also be expressed as a realization that what's being worked on is useless, adds negative value, or just personally unfulfilling or unimportant. Cops firing teargas at peaceful protesters a few blocks away has cause me a good deal of that flavor of anxiety, which I don't think is necessarily a negative outcome. Do you have any insights along those lines?

[fidrelity]

Although I have never been in a situation like yours, for me personally A Guide to Rational Living (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22673.A_New_Guide_to_Rat...) and meditation with the Waking up app helped tremendously.

[jmhnilbog]

Do you think instances of anxiety are inherently irrational or unhealthy? I know of the effect of sustained stress on people, but I was trying to bring to light potential positive effects of anxiety bringing clarity or insight into ways to relive that same anxiety. It seemed like your post was something born out of such a thing.

I've encountered so many younger people in tech, making $200K+ in places that support lifestyles that need less than a quarter of that for comfort, who complain about their jobs and the golden handcuffs that keep them there. They seem to be locked in much stranger and fantastical anxieties than those I understand.

[wsantas]

I have a theory that the massive amount of data at our finger tips an inability to control social media lack of self care (or read awareness) has cause an inability to focus and a hyper active brain.

This habitual scroll, scroll, feed, feed, dopamine, dopamine cause the brain to be over active and thoughts hard to control. People get heightened without even being aware. Never-mind if you dont carefully curate your feed.

But that's just something Im mulling over lately.

[karatestomp]

Relatedly, I found my "night owl" tendencies, which were "natural" and just about impossible to fight, went away completely when I limited myself to a few dim candles for light after sundown, and no glowing screens of any kind—no TV, no computer, no phone, period. You can still do a ton in low light—board and card games, reading, playing music, listening to music (small exception to the no-screens thing may be a practical necessity to get an album or playlist started or whatever if you don't want to go for physical media, but no fiddling with the playlist), writing. A very low candle power electric light (think nightlight, most of which are still brighter than what I was using and I could see just fine for most anything) would probably do. Obviously you might need a bit more if you're older and your eyes are getting worse, but you really do adjust to lower light levels than one might think. Dozens to hundreds of times lower than typical nighttime lighting, for sure.

I only did it for a couple weeks but soon found whole-room artificial lighting at night obnoxiously and needlessly bright. A candle for the room and ~2 candles per person (or equivalent from small electric lights—it's actually hard to find them this dim, though) provide entirely enough illumination to do just about whatever you want, and, crucially, let you get tired.

I strongly suspect a huge proportion of people who are "naturally" very active at night or just "can't" have a normal sleep schedule are in fact suffering from the availability and use of particular technologies.