Thanks for these! Added Ultralearning to my Audible wishlist.
Re RSI, a colleague of mine shared the following note when some coworkers were struggling with it. They said they were happy for me to share it here, and I thought you might find it interesting and useful:
“I have the view that a significant component of a lot of RSI is psychosomatic—and I’m quite confident that this was true in my case. That is, the way we relate to and think about it has a significant effect on how much the disease shows.
To give a sense of what I mean here, think about all the people (including me) who had a bunch of coughing/breathlessness symptoms when they were worried about COVID, or consider how much paying attention to sensations in different ways can change their character. The extreme versions of this effect look like people having seizures (this is common enough that I’ve seen it in hospitals more than once) or being hypnotised.
Some reasons I have this view:
When I had a really bad episode of it in 2017, it ended abruptly by my doctor (a hand surgeon) ruling out things they thought might be causing it, and then telling me to take lots of painkillers and just work through it. It disappeared after 2 weeks. That hand surgeon thought that there was a tricky balance between overuse and underuse syndromes, and thought I might have made it worse by not working with it. They did think that at the beginning something happened to my hands, but that I should have started treating them normally earlier than I did.
It seems much more common in EAs than in other knowledge workers (except maybe programmers). I don’t recall ever seeing patients who have it, and none of my med school friends did.
One tricky thing is that it pushes hard against the ‘pay lots of attention to whether you have symptoms, and if you do take them really seriously and don’t do any work’. I don’t really know what to do about that. I do think that it’s probably harmful in some cases to take that attitude, but I’m not sure about the average case.
What to do about this? The main thing I’ve got in mind is for people to keep this as a perspective if they’re experiencing symptoms. You could try noticing what fraction of your symptoms are explained by this type of effect—I’m not sure how effective it would be. It would also point towards treating it more like standard psychosomatic illnesses are treated.
A worry with sharing this thought is that it’s really hard to know what to do with it. But I checked with a few people who all leaned towards thinking it was a good idea to share—so I’m doing so.”
Also, I noticed I was excited when I saw you had left a bunch of comments on my articles, because your comments are always interesting and useful. Thank you for that!
Thanks for sharing that colleague’s thoughts on RSI. That does seem like a useful perspective to keep in mind.
Anecdotally, it did seem to me that I started perceiving very mild/sporadic potential RSI symptoms when I was around a bunch of people who had or were worried about RSI, despite not having perceived symptoms beforehand, and despite no real change around that time in the relevant activities I was doing. And this seemed suspicious to me. (Which is of course not to argue that RSI is always and only psychosomatic.)
I’m currently aiming for something like the following habit:
quickly note recalled perceived symptoms at the end of each day, while bearing in mind that they may be psychosomatic
don’t think any more about RSI unless I start noticing more perceived symptoms
if I do start noticing more perceived symptoms, think more about this, but don’t necessarily worry, and still bear in mind that this could be psychosomatic
But I’m unsure precisely what the best balance to strike is. And your comment made me think I should perhaps be more thoughtful/cautious about publicly saying things that could be interpreted as “I advise that people pay more attention to whether they think they’re experiencing symptoms of RSI”, in case that exacerbates psychosomatic issues for some people.
(Also, nice to hear that you find my comments interesting and useful—thanks for letting me know!)
Thanks for these! Added Ultralearning to my Audible wishlist.
Re RSI, a colleague of mine shared the following note when some coworkers were struggling with it. They said they were happy for me to share it here, and I thought you might find it interesting and useful:
“I have the view that a significant component of a lot of RSI is psychosomatic—and I’m quite confident that this was true in my case. That is, the way we relate to and think about it has a significant effect on how much the disease shows.
To give a sense of what I mean here, think about all the people (including me) who had a bunch of coughing/breathlessness symptoms when they were worried about COVID, or consider how much paying attention to sensations in different ways can change their character. The extreme versions of this effect look like people having seizures (this is common enough that I’ve seen it in hospitals more than once) or being hypnotised.
Some reasons I have this view:
When I had a really bad episode of it in 2017, it ended abruptly by my doctor (a hand surgeon) ruling out things they thought might be causing it, and then telling me to take lots of painkillers and just work through it. It disappeared after 2 weeks. That hand surgeon thought that there was a tricky balance between overuse and underuse syndromes, and thought I might have made it worse by not working with it. They did think that at the beginning something happened to my hands, but that I should have started treating them normally earlier than I did.
It seems much more common in EAs than in other knowledge workers (except maybe programmers). I don’t recall ever seeing patients who have it, and none of my med school friends did.
One tricky thing is that it pushes hard against the ‘pay lots of attention to whether you have symptoms, and if you do take them really seriously and don’t do any work’. I don’t really know what to do about that. I do think that it’s probably harmful in some cases to take that attitude, but I’m not sure about the average case.
What to do about this? The main thing I’ve got in mind is for people to keep this as a perspective if they’re experiencing symptoms. You could try noticing what fraction of your symptoms are explained by this type of effect—I’m not sure how effective it would be. It would also point towards treating it more like standard psychosomatic illnesses are treated.
A worry with sharing this thought is that it’s really hard to know what to do with it. But I checked with a few people who all leaned towards thinking it was a good idea to share—so I’m doing so.”
Also, I noticed I was excited when I saw you had left a bunch of comments on my articles, because your comments are always interesting and useful. Thank you for that!
Thanks for sharing that colleague’s thoughts on RSI. That does seem like a useful perspective to keep in mind.
Anecdotally, it did seem to me that I started perceiving very mild/sporadic potential RSI symptoms when I was around a bunch of people who had or were worried about RSI, despite not having perceived symptoms beforehand, and despite no real change around that time in the relevant activities I was doing. And this seemed suspicious to me. (Which is of course not to argue that RSI is always and only psychosomatic.)
I’m currently aiming for something like the following habit:
quickly note recalled perceived symptoms at the end of each day, while bearing in mind that they may be psychosomatic
don’t think any more about RSI unless I start noticing more perceived symptoms
if I do start noticing more perceived symptoms, think more about this, but don’t necessarily worry, and still bear in mind that this could be psychosomatic
But I’m unsure precisely what the best balance to strike is. And your comment made me think I should perhaps be more thoughtful/cautious about publicly saying things that could be interpreted as “I advise that people pay more attention to whether they think they’re experiencing symptoms of RSI”, in case that exacerbates psychosomatic issues for some people.
(Also, nice to hear that you find my comments interesting and useful—thanks for letting me know!)