Ask HN: Performance psychology in the workplace?

This sounds interesting and reminds of the performance coach in the TV show "Billions". WThat one focuses more on the psychological aspects of workplace performance. We did some experiments internally with this.

You seem to be interested more in the physiological aspects and it makes sense to combine the two. I can imagine a new department within companies with a CHPO (chief human performance officer) role.

Garbage in -> garbage out. Thank you for your humility. You acknowledge that you're good enough to be dedicated but not good enough to be impressive. If you re-use your methods, then you would only be creating devs who are again only going to be dedicated not impressive.

Any biography of GOAT athletes I've read inevitably depict tremendous personal sacrifice. Whether you call grueling schedules, pushing themselves nearly to their physical and psychological breaking point, as "hustle culture", it's undeniable that the road to greatness is filled with incredible suffering.

We would all like to wish ourselves to greatness without putting in the effort that goes with it. Unfortunately, that is not how the world works. Having said that, while positive thinking only goes so far, it's a good salve for anyone in dire straits. In other words, positive thinking won't solve your problems, but it might make you feel momentarily better. Best of luck.

Reminds me of nootropics and biohacking communities.

There are plenty of people I've met who are like this. They can be just as impressive in their relative performance as a star athlete is from an average one. As someone who does frequent exercises, I'd say the same things from sports apply to intellectual work: eat well, sleep well, make your training as hard if not harder than the actual game. This means training your intellectual muscles: read as much as you can about the field, pick up college textbooks (SICP, Theory of Comp, etc.), classic works (C book, Pragmatic Programmer, etc). Turn the scary sounding things (compilers, OS, networking) into exciting, comprehendible subjects. Your workplace performance will increase as a result.

Unfortunately I don't know of communities like this other than the workplace environment, and HN :)

I think I do. I've been looking around for similar ideas. I've also been alienated many times by multiple workplaces because people gradually succumb to workplace politics and mind rot and any attempt at improving yourself or aiming at high perf is a massive threat.

Anyway if you know groups/sites to join, count me in.

ps: beside me or us, I think this could have deep implications to society. I believe the status quo (rot mentioned above) is a pain for many but culture made them forget how things could be, and they'd be healthier and happier going back to perf (and fun) oriented job life.

I don’t know of any groups that do this in a sustainable way. The mindset for optimization seems to be unaccepting of limitations. Trying to get the most out of something requires trade offs elsewhere.

It’s also been an observation of mine that most people have too much reserve capacity to notice they are running down until it is too late.

For myself, I’m bipolar. I have no reserve capacity. Every day requires finding the balance between being productive and not burning out. As a result, I am keenly aware I need significantly more downtime than I want to allocate.

I suspect this is the also the case for neurotypical people. Downtime feels like a waste to a person trying to maximize their life.

The way I’ve chosen to optimize my productive is to not focus on optimizing it. Instead, I try to enjoy life and stay conscious of small changes I can make. I know every decision is a choice that changes who I will become. But know I don’t need to make the right decision every time. The trend just needs to be in the right direction. :)

A lot of people in the tech community are into “quantified self” and will use things like fitness trackers, sleep trackers, logging diet and exercise, etc. but that’s more general well being than work performance. Performance in a software engineering role is famously difficult to quantify. Even the relatively obvious stuff like story points throughout reflects on estimates as least as much as on efforts. At elite levels you’re dealing with stuff like presence, influence and mentorship; your “coach” on that kind of stuff is your manager.

I am (was??) an ultra runner and startup founder, and I love this type of approach to work and life. If you're going to put hours into things, why not try to make it your best?

To be clear, I suck at ultrarunning -- I can do 100km runs but I usually place near the end. What I love about it is that nearly anyone can run an ultra if they simply train long enough... It's why I call my personal performance blog "10 Million Steps" -- if you do enough steps, you can usually do an ultra (barring any deeper health issues). It's almost always about consistency... and I bet you are a better SWE than you are willing to admit because you sound very consistent. :)

A lot of professional coaches come from this space. I highly recommend following Steve Magness[1] and Brad Stulberg[2] on Twitter...

Alas, no communities that I know of.

If you're thinking of starting one or would be up to chatting about organizing something, I'd be 100% down to do so. You can reach me at w --at-- phaseai --dot-- com

[1] https://10millionsteps.com/

[2] https://twitter.com/stevemagness

[3] https://twitter.com/BStulberg

Please don't try to force me to min/max every part of my life. I'm happily mediocre. Leave me alone.

I'm surprised to find very positive question about pushing yourself.

I'm not at all into sports, and from the title I expected a psychology of competition and wanting to beat the others, which sounds horrific in the workplace. Instead it almost sounds like people would even do sports without medals.

How much of sports would remain without striving for worthless tokens and aggressivity?

The nootropics subreddit is probably a decent place to start, it’s mostly students and professionals (often with ADHD) looking to improve performance. But of course, with the help of supplements and drugs

I talk once in a while with people under my supervision about sports and food, and about food supplements valuable for brain-based professions,like soya lecithin and fish oil. I do this when there are performance issues, just in case. I also explicitly invite them into coaching/therapy, and other options as I see fit.

Read Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler

This is not something I do in a very structured way, but I've always been interested in optimizing my performance and health. To be honest, I sort of assumed most people in tech are similar in this tendency, although when verbalized I realize that's very presumptuous of me.

Striving for higher performance and longevity physically and mentally, especially in work-related aspects, tends to be my default state and I find the idea of optimizing myself very interesting. However, I have not managed to find a good balance between that and just relaxing; that default state of self-optimization comes at a detriment to my peace and wellbeing. Over the years I've realized that this is not sustainable, but I can't manage to stop. I would be very interested in taking part in such a community, and hopefully learning more about both performance optimization tactics as well as how to let myself switch off and stop churning.