What To Do?

Actionable advice on how to deal with existential dread.

I write this list as something I wished someone had given me as I was having a hard time at my previous job as a TSE. I'll begin with advice that you could begin implementing today and move towards more long-term strategies towards the end.

Note: I'll be referencing The Huberman Lab Podcast a lot here since a lot of what I've learned has come from its various episodes.

The more I implement this advice, the more I realize how all of it is essentially about improving the quality and quantity of focusing periods. I have confirmed the outcomes of a particular happiness study through my own subjective experience. For now, please believe me when I say that... if you concentrate very deeply (no matter what task you may be doing), you'll be happier. If you concentrate very deeply on tasks that are getting you closer to your goals, you'll be happy and fulfilled.

Prioritize Sleep

Scientific studies have shown time and time again the immense importance of proper sleep time. If you can't sleep and rest adequately, you will likely have a harder time deliberately focusing on any given task. This will result in...

• Underperformance, because you can't concentrate well.
• Unhappiness, because your mind will tend to wander.
• Bad Mood, because things don't seem to be going your way.

Improving and optimizing our sleep is the most actionable thing we can do to achieve our goals (whatever those may be, but it also happens to be essential to improving happiness). Even if you don't decide to leave your current job, you'll be happy to get consistently good sleep. It will make it much more likely that you'll control whatever negative emotion you may experience at work.

How To Sleep Well?

Stemming from Andrew Huberman's second podcast episode...

• Regulate your sleep by going for a morning walk (aim for 10 to 15 mins.) right at the time when the sun is rising (aim for every day but don't be too harsh on yourself). This will make you very sleepy by the time the sun sets (provided you haven't had caffeine later in the day).
  • Don't use any type of glasses.
  • Check exactly at what time the sun rises in whatever place in the world you happen to be. The time will change as the year goes by; readjust.
  • Aim to wake up close to the sunrise. I wake ~30 minutes before this happens.
  • If possible, go out more. Especially as the time for the sunset approaches.
• Make this your very first habit: Stop looking at screens 1 hour before going to sleep.
  • Read about habit formation in Atomic Habits (by James Clear), a great book on the subject. Use a habit-tracking app of your choice. If possible, change your environment and get an accountability partner.
  • Try to turn off all the artificial lights and use candles instead. If you must use artificial lights, try to have the light not come from the ceiling: a flashlight works well here.
• Get a sleeping mask for your eyes and noise-canceling hearing protection (I recommend Loop Quiet here).
• Get a light-based alarm clock (that simulates the sunrise) and wake up to light instead of sound. And yes, it will still wake you up even if you use a mask.
• If possible, leverage a temperature-regulated solution for sleep. Body temperature is highly correlated with our ability to move into different and deeper stages of sleep. If your body can't lower or increase its temperature as required, you'll most likely end up having bad sleep quality or even waking up in the middle of the night (too cold or too hot). Eight Sleep seems to be the most popular solution at the moment.

Journaling

Journaling can bring clarity and peace of mind. It's like decluttering our ruminating brain from all the things it wants to think about throughout the day. If we journal, we'll most certainly be able to concentrate better and for longer periods.

Journaling is also the place to write down our goals. You can try to DIY this but I highly recommend that you do either:

1. The Self-Authoring Program
2. Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health

I've personally done the self-authoring program. Doing either of these programs should be independent of your journaling habit. It's just that both of these programs will have you critically thinking and writing about your problems and goals.

How to Journal?

There are countless forms of journaling. Each form has its particular benefits and shortcomings. Here is my take and advice based on my experience.

The most powerful type of journaling is the one mentioned in the Huberman Podcast on Journaling to improve physical and emotional health. It is the most powerful because scientific studies show that people who have done even one round of this type of journaling are happier and have better health (physical, mental & emotional) overall. This doesn't mean that we all should always aim to do this type of journaling. I consider this regimen to be best suited for when something is bothering you at a deep level (i.e. something having to do with your own life). To do this type of journaling...

• Write for 15 minutes about the most traumatic experience you've had in your life so far. Write your thoughts as they come. Don't bother about correct punctuation. Imagine that you are vomiting all your negative emotions into the words you write. Do this for 4 to 5 consecutive days. Destroy the contents of what you write every time.
• The medium in which you write is irrelevant; use your computer, a piece of paper, or even your smartphone.
• Plan your day so that you'll have time to recover after writing about this. Don't go hard on yourself and push yourself to have an important work meeting right after journaling like this.

You should feel emotionally exhausted after doing this type of journaling for multiple days. But you'll feel much better in the long run. It would still be a good idea for you to try to make a habit of ~15 minutes of writing every day. I'd recommend that you write about what things you are excited about (future or present) or anything that bothered you in the day. I think the best way to go about it is you should do it as if you were writing to your best friend in a different galaxy. Picturing this is good because you should never be worried about what you write. I recommend that you always destroy your writing every time.

Meditation

Journaling is good for decluttering our minds and setting clear, actionable goals. Meditation is good for training us to focus. Journaling makes focusing easier. Mediation makes you better at focusing.

Once more, the Huberman Lab podcast has great content on how to go about this. We should look at meditation the same way we look at practicing ANY sport. I say ANY because it's not like meditation is any particular sport. Just like there are multiple ways to practice sports (swimming, soccer, basketball, etc.), there are various ways to practice meditation.

Meditation is not just sitting with your eyes closed doing essentially nothing and just checking your breath (though that certainly is a valid and useful way to meditate). In the same way, swimming may be a better activity for your current circumstances, as would a specific type of meditation.

We can largely have 2 types of meditation: interoceptive meditation & exteroceptive meditation. Interoceptive meditation has you focus on your body sensations. Exteroceptive meditations have you focus on external things.

Meditation is essentially to train ourselves to deliberately focus very deeply on any particular thing. We can choose virtually anything to concentrate on. Thus, it is perfectly valid to meditate as we eat or walk. There will naturally come a time when our mind will wander; that's perfectly fine. The important thing when meditating is that we refocus. This is the crux of meditation.

How to Meditate?

Try to do a 13-minute meditation session every day. Make this a habit.

Ask yourself: "At this exact moment... am I concentrating more on the outside of my body? Or am I concentrating more on the inside of my body?"

If you are concentrating more on the inside, do an exteroceptive mediation: Focus on a point in your environment. Feel free to get creative. I like looking at Mandelbrot fractal zooms.

If you are concentrating more on the outside, do an interoceptive meditation: Focus on a point in your body. Common (and good) points are the center of your forehead (the third-eye center) and your nose as it breathes in and out.

Try to make your breathing deliberate.

• If you want to be more alert, focus on making your inhales longer than your exhales.
• If you want to be more calm, focus on making your exhales longer than your inhales.
• It's ok if you don't want either and just do inhales and exhales of the same duration. I like picturing waves coming toward a beach as I inhale and the waves going to the ocean as I exhale.

When you notice that your mind starts to wander, refocus.

Don't be hard on yourself; it is expected that your mind will wander off after a certain time. What makes you better at focusing is the ability to refocus that you gain from meditating. The more you practice refocusing, the better.

Aim for Happiness

The Huberman Podcast episode on happiness has some great advice. Here is my summary of the things we should remember most from the episode if we want to put its teachings into practice.

• The takeaway from the paper "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind" is crucial for understanding and increasing happiness:

Regardless of whether or not people were engaging in activities that they enjoyed or not... The tendency for their mind to wander from an activity predicted lower levels of happiness... Than if they tended to be focused on the activity they were engaged in.

Thus getting better at focusing translates into happiness. These are some great news for everyone. Based on this, anyone (regardless of how much they may dislike their job) could be quite happy, so long as they are focusing deeply on the task.

When I heard this in the Huberman podcast, I couldn't help but think and relate it with master Oogway's great line (from 2008's Kung Fu Panda):

... you are too concerned with what was and what will be... there's a saying: "Yesterday, is history. Tomorrow is mystery. But today is a gift.". That it is why it is called the present.

Note: A part of me is somewhat bothered to use a kid's movie for wisdom. However, the more I realize, there seems to be a lot of wisdom in such movies.

• From the famous Harvard longitudinal study... "No one on their deathbed says they wish they had worked more.".
  • Indeed, the total amount of time that one spends working does not seem to determine one's happiness. However, this doesn't mean that one should stop working altogether, of course. Depending on how you use it, having money to spare can lead to higher happiness levels.
• Money helps you be happier so long as it...
  • buffers stress
  • allows for desired social interaction

... but nothing more.

• All types of social connections (deep & shallow) increase happiness.
  • Having a very good friend makes you happier.
  • Small talk (even with strangers) makes you happier.
• Pets make us happier; simply having a dog (even if it was not previously known) in the same room seems to make people happier.
• Allogrooming (activities where we care for one another that involve touching) makes us happier. For example:
  • Getting a haircut makes us happier.
  • Petting makes us happier.
  • Getting a massage makes us happier.

Tips

• Progress every day, no matter how little. You can decide how small of a step you want to take. It can be as small as turning on your computer (if the task seems too hard). Be careful not to be too harsh or too soft with yourself. Imagine you are guiding your best friend in the whole world towards their goals and happiness; what things would you have them do? what things would you say to them as they try their best and either succeed or fail? That's exactly how you should go about it.
• Ask yourself every day: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"
• Develop a personal prayer: a positive affirmation that you should muster and subvocalize whenever you feel stressed or when you notice your mind begins to wander. You can use whatever prayer or mantra you like, but it will be much more impactful if you take the time to think about it and craft one for yourself.
• Mentally plan your day in the morning with the following mentality: Plan the day so that by the end of it, you'll be able to justify why it was a good and productive day. If possible, literally keep track of what made each day good.
• Try new things (especially if you are in your 20s). As per the advice from best-selling author Robert Greene on how to spend our youth:
  • The worst thing to do is to isolate ourselves into the specialty of our profession: i.e. finish law school and be a lawyer for the rest of our lives and not try anything else.
• It's also not good to try to be everything at once. There is not enough time to fulfill your potential in every single human domain. And that's fine!
  • The best way to go about it is to try to learn different skills.
  • Try many things but try to be very good (not the best) at 2 of them.
  • Doing this will pave the way for a future where you are very unique and you are much more fulfilled.