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Musings Report #41 10-11-14 Burnout
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Burnout
At least once a year, I completely burn out: exhausted, I no longer have the energy or will to care about anything but the bare minimum for survival. Everything not essential for survival gets jettisoned or set aside.
This goes with the territory if you're trying to accomplish a lot of things that are intrinsically complex and open-ended--for example, running a business, being a parent, juggling college, work, family, community commitments, etc.
I am confident many if not most of you have experienced burnout due to being overwhelmed by open-ended, inherently complex commitments.
I don't think burnout is limited to individuals. I think entire organizations and institutions can experience burnout, especially organizations devoted to caring for others or those facing long odds of fulfilling their core purpose.
I even think entire nations can become exhausted by the effort of keeping up appearances or navigating endless crises. At that point, the individuals and institutions of the nation just go through the motions of coping rather than continue the struggle.
Perhaps Venezuela is a current example.
I have long suspected that in many ways America is just going through the motions.
John Michael Greer (the Archdruid) has brilliantly described a process he calls catabolic collapse, which I would characterize as the stairstep-down of overly complex, costly systems as participants react to crises by resetting to a lower level of complexity and consumption.
Just as ecosystems have intrinsic carrying capacities, so too do individual humans and human systems. When our reach exceeds our grasp, and the costs of complexity exceed the carrying capacity of the underlying systems, then we have to move down to a lower level of complexity and lower cost-structure/energy consumption.
This sounds straightforward enough, but it isn't that easy in real life. We can't offload our kids and downsize to part-time parenting or magically reduce the complexities of operating a small business (or two). These tasks are intrinsically open-ended. Reductions in stress and complexity such as quitting a demanding job (and earning one-third of our former salary) require long years of trimming and planning.
So what can we do to work through burnout? Since I'm designed to over-commit myself, burnout is something I've dealt with since my late teens. I like to think I'm getting better at managing it, but this is probably illusory. (It may be one of those cases where the illusion is useful because it's positive and hopeful.)
I find these responses helpful:
1. Reduce whatever complexity can be reduced. Even something as simple as making a pot of chili or soup to eat for a few days (minimizing daily meal prep) helps. Reduce interactions and transactions.
2. Daily walks--two a day if possible. If there is any taken-for-granted magic in daily life (other than sleep, dreaming and playing music), it's probably walking--especially if you let your mind wander rather than keep working.
3. More naps, more sleep.
4. Avoid the temptations of overly fatty/sweet/carbo comfort food, digital distractions, etc.
5. Keep to positive routines (stretching, walking, etc.), no matter how tired and down you feel.
6. Set aside time to play your musical instrument of choice, preferably improvisation rather than practice.
7. Do whatever calms your mind, even if it requires effort.
8. Do stuff you enjoy and set aside as much of the stuff you actively dislike doing as possible.
9. Set aside solitary time to "do nothing." Lowering the barriers raised by conscious effort, focus and thought may well be critical to our well-being.
This is one conclusion from research cited by Sherry Turkel in the latest issue of Scientific American: "For the first time in the history of our species, we are never alone and never bored. Have we lost something fundamental about being human?"
I think the answer is an unequivocal yes. Our minds need periods of solitude, aimless wandering (i.e. boredom), time to integrate thoughts and feelings, time to question things and time for introspection. Without these restorative periods, we end up just going through the motions, on an autopilot setting of keeping overly complex lives and systems duct-taped together. This leads to burnout, and eventually to some measure of catabolic collapse/system reset.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Did Oil's Decline Take the Stock Market Down? 10/11/14
The Stronger Dollar = Stealth QE 10/10/14
Social Schizophrenia, Social Depression 10/9/14
End of the Empire 10/8/14
The Critical Difference Between Rentier Wealth and Wealth Creation 10/8/14
Crony Capitalism Is Kryptonite to Democracy and the Real Economy 10/17/14
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
"End of the Empire" and "Social Schizophrenia" drew a number of favorable comments. Thank you very sincerely who took the time to email me about those essays.
Market Musings: Contrarian Forecasting
Though nobody can forecast the market's meanderings with any accuracy (except those manipulating it, if you believe that the manipulators can control the entire contraption), that doesn't stop us from trying, either for profit or as an intellectual exercise.
This leads to Contrarian Forecasting, which attempts to turn sentiment and what everyone else is forecasting back on itself.
The classic contrarian forecast is based on extremes and reversion to the mean: once everyone is panicky and anticipating a crash, that means the majority are on one side of the trade. That imbalance usually triggers a reversal. So when everyone is complacent and volatility is low (VIX at 11 or under), that usually triggers a reversal (higher volatility and a market decline).
Put another way, once there's nobody left to buy at a peak or sell at a bottom, the market reverses.
But the human mind being what it is, some contrarians bend classic contrarianism back on itself.
For example, the classic contrarian forecast of the current sharp downtrend is: sentiment has reached extremes that almost always reliably mark bottoms and bullish reversals.
But the contrarian-contrarian view is more convoluted. For example, I read a comment on a bearish-leaning blog that posited this forecast:
Since "everyone" (i.e. classic contrarians) expect a rally here followed by a new high, and then a decline after that new high, what will happen instead is a crash right now.
So the contrarian case (forecasting a bullish reversal here based on bearish expectations and extreme fear) must be wrong because there are too many contrarians expecting it, so what will happen is the current extremes will get more extreme--in other words, the classic contrarians are wrong because now they're the consensus.
This is too convoluted for my taste. We could extend these contrarian iterations one more step and conclude that since a lot of bears are discounting the contrarian case for a rally here, they must be wrong and the market will whipsaw higher.
The fundamental question here is: who is the "majority" and what is the consensus view? Is it the "buy and hold" crowd, or the "buy the dip" crowd, or the classic contrarians, or those who see the classic contrarians as the consensus?
Down this path lies madness. I think the "keep it supremely simple" (KISS) approach is straightforward and easy to see: when the VIX and price are both well above or below the Bollinger Bands, that's an extreme that begs to be reversed.
By this very simple measure of reversal points, the stock market, and beaten-down sectors such as oil and semiconductors, are due for a sharp reversal.
A useful cliche here is "nothing goes up or down in straight line." If history is any guide, a black swan-type event that the market hasn't discounted (such as the collapse of Lehman) would be needed to trigger the waterfall down many bears expect here.
For my money, the ideal bearish set-up is not the present extreme in volatility and fear, it's a rocket launch back to recent highs (or just below those highs) that would trace out a very long-term head-and-shoulders pattern. That would support a crash scenario better than a panic drop on basically no news.
From Left Field
Family Cleans House, Finds Pet Tortoise Missing Since 1982 -- hoarders' surprise and the benefits of plump, juicy termites....
The Local Motors Strati, The World’s First 3D-Printed Car -- nice little runabout....
Tesla unveils 691 hp dual-motor All-Wheel-Drive "D" Model S, Autopilot capabilities -- so perhaps this bifurcated market is the future--super-cheap runabouts and costly super-cars....
Till Death Do Us Part? No way. Gray Divorce on the Rise -- expectations too high for poor old reality?
Tales of the Trash: A neighborhood garbageman explains modern Egypt (via Katharine K.) -- self-organizing systems for rubbish removal....
Slide Show: On Board a Maersk Triple E container ship -- this is why it's so cheap to ship containers across the Pacific....
A Shipping Container Costs About $2,000. 15 Houses made of containers -- most cost a lot more than a few thou, but some interesting innovations here...
The Filipina sisterhood: An anthropology of happiness: Out of misery, some extraordinary lessons -- from the archives--worth re-reading....
Can society keep up with the rate of change in city living? -- complexity has its own costs....
Thailand: Murder in the Land of Smiles -- same old, same old--defend the status quo at all costs....
What kids around the world eat for breakfast -- some of these look staged/overly fussy. The Japanese kid's lunch looks like dinner. The nihonjin Moms we know have too much to do to make such an elaborate breakfast every day, especially if they have more than one child....
30 Witchin' Pun Costumes That Will Make You Cackle -- some dumb, some clever, almost all took a lot of work....
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." Winston Churchill
Thanks for reading--
charles
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