The most stressful time of my life was the Spring 2024 semester. I was taking 6 classes (18 credits). I was a lead TA for a class and was co-managing the (now-defunct) OreCart project. I was the Mines ACM President and HSPC Chair. Additionally, for a little while during the start of spring, I was preparing to present my research at SIGCSE. I also played intramural soccer a little later in the spring.
It sucked. I stopped eating a lot, and what I did eat was crap. I stopped exercising, because there was seemingly no time to. I stopped meditating. I slept less, because I needed to get up and get to the library to get work done. There was no time for family or friends whatsoever. I made two new friends that I enjoyed that semester, and made an effort to see them amongst everything else, which was good, but incredibly stressful too, as I knew I was hurting every other aspect of my life.
Something has to give. I was quite simply doing too much for something not to give. Giving my attention to one thing meant seriously downgrading how effective I was at another thing. Even if I was effective at managing all of my workload, my health was what began to give. When your health is what begins to give, that’s the sign that you need to rethink your priorities.
Unfortunately, this is the saddening reality for a lot of people. I know lots of people who attempt and have attempted similar workloads. I’m in a privileged position where I’m economically stable, but I know people in these positions who aren’t quite the same and need to work on top of school to survive. This culture also encourages coping in the wrong ways, i.e. with alcohol or drugs, which seems relatively common nowadays.
The New Culture
I always thought I needed to prove myself to everybody. Part of it was personal, but part of it was because I felt threatened or afraid that I wasn’t smart enough to succeed. I never thought I would succeed unless I worked harder than absolutely everybody all of the time. So I did. I said yes to everything and I wanted more and more opportunities to prove myself and set myself up for success in the future.
Unfortunately, these sentiments seem pretty common in today’s age, and almost exemplify the American dream of becoming rich and wealthy if you just work harder than everybody always. We’re taught as kids to follow our dreams and that anything is possible if you put your mind to it (which is good) but we’re not told how to do that in a healthy way.
Today, it seems like everyone has a side-hustle or things they’re doing to advance their lives and their wealth aside from their job. Our culture towards it jokingly (at least, I hope) romanticizes it as “grindsets,” mindsets which include no let-up in your life and encourage work, work, and more work. More commonly, this might called hustle culture.
It’s a stressculture. A culture where performance outweighs the good of your own health and emphasizes greatness at the cost of immense stress.
The Science
Running from thing to thing like I did is a bad idea. Somewhat new cognitive science tells us about context switching and attention residue; both of which suggest that switching between lots of things can be mentally taxing.
Especially if you’re doing creative or novel work, this can drag you down. Creativity comes when you let go. If you never let go, it’s not to say you can’t be creative, but it’s going to be much harder to get those ideas. Think about it: when do you get creative ideas? In the shower? On a walk? Before sleeping? It’s almost always when we least expect it, but definitely when we’re not fully attentive to a different task.
When was the last time you sat down and did nothing? Your brain needs time to recuperate between so much work and so many switched tasks. When was the last time you stopped, and simply listened to your breath?
Mindfulness meditation is a growing “treatment” in this area, if you want to call it that. But beyond that, it can help you understand yourself and the world better. If nothing else, it will give you a healthy break from doing things. A free app called the Healthy Minds Program (which is out of a lab in UW Madison) is a great place to start that I would personally recommend.
It’s pretty clear with the science that managing stress is important. While some stress is good in your life, if you’re attempting as many things as I did or more, it really will damage your health over time.
Creating Boundaries
The best advice I ever got from my research advisor (or honestly anyone) was to say no to things. His analogy goes as follows: work is like a gas. If you just try to run around waving it toward some direction, or trying to contain it from spreading, it’s going to do nothing. More of it is going to keep finding you, too, if you don’t set boundaries. You have to build walls in your life to stop it from spreading.
It’s hard to do less, especially in the middle of a school term, but there is really always a safe way out: whether it’s resigning from a project, withdrawing from a class, or simply taking a break. You have control in your life.
I remember the point at which I wanted it to quit was when I was speaking to my roommate. He would ask about my work, and I would try to explain, only to have long, awkward, 15-second pauses where I would look around and try to find my words because my head was so jam-packed with things. My memory got worse, and I developed a stutter because there was so much going on in my head and it was moving quicker than my mouth could.
It wasn’t worth it. I finished out the semester, but to many people’s surprise, I immediately resigned as Mines ACM President + HSPC Chair (despite what I think was a community that I built that enjoyed my leadership) because I just couldn’t cope. OreCart would unfortunately fall through over the summer, which was disappointing, but not bad for my health. I tried to promise myself I would never do 18 credits again, but I did again in the fall. However, I coped much better having much less on my plate outside of school.
Looking back on it - I still try to achieve great things, but I also try to be wary of my health. Here’s what I learned from my whole ordeal and things that both do and don’t help while managing big workloads:
Set boundaries (or with our analogy, build walls). As an adult, I’ve noticed that older people (at least than the college age) are great at this, and this goes unspoken for quite some time. Whenever you’re staring down your next semester or work project or new big idea, ask yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice, what things you could leave behind, and how you’re going to change from doing everything all of the time.
Wait to say yes. I recommend everyone I know to do less, probably to an annoying extent. People come to me in similar situations and I tell them to say no to things. We often say yes to everything because 1) we’re nice people and want to help others, but 2) we see opportunity in things. If you want to say yes to something, sleep on it. Ideally give it a week to decide. See how willing you are to say yes after waiting awhile.
After awhile, people will begin to respect your boundaries. If you’re someone who says yes to everything, unfortunately people may take advantage of that and give you more. But if you’re someone who is willing to say no to the right things, people will usually only come to you with the things that matter.
Think about the small things. It astounds me how many people ignore, for instance, time to eat or sleep in their schedule. They just don’t care or pretend it doesn’t matter. It does! These are the foundations that will allow you to do things to begin with. You don’t have to schedule friend-time, but think about having open time where you can spontaneously do things for you or go and see friends.
What doesn’t help. “Just sticking it out” isn’t really a solution. If it’s your only option, you need to make that judgment call on how much of your health you’re willing to sacrifice. But there’s almost always another option; it just depends on whether or not you’re willing to take it. You have more options than you think!
Drugs, alcohol, and other harmful coping mechanisms don’t really help. They might feel like they help in the moment, but in reality, you’re creating habits that are going to be insanely difficult to break. You’re also damaging your health in the long run.
Parting Thoughts
The good news to all of this is that people have started to notice these things. If anything good came from the pandemic, it was the fact that it made people reevaluate their lives and their priorities. Reports mention the fading glamour of hustle culture (and others). People have begun to realize that they don’t want their work to dominate their lives, and that our time here is precious.
People are setting boundaries between their personal lives. In the work they are doing, they’re trying to make it more meaningful work. My advice: go and achieve the things you want to. But don’t lose yourself and your health in the process. Don’t be afraid of saying no to things.