Lost connections
"Across the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are not caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. In fact, they [believe they] are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. Hari's journey took him from a... series of experiments in Baltimore, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin. Once he had uncovered [what he argues are] nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions"--Amazon.com.
Stats for nerds
27recommend
53mentions
41people
2018–2025years
62% recommend32% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- [Data-Oriented Design – Richard Fabian]
DoD is an interesting design philosophy used in game engine design. This book was both quite concrete and quite abstract, so I walked away not exactly sure if I got the message, but the idea of modelling data closer to a SQL database for performance is interesting.
[Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss]
Nightly audiobook. There's a lot more information than it seems on first reading, I'm trying to internalize and practice it in daily life.
[Lost Connections – Johann Hari]
A book about depression, connection, and medication. It was quite good, though I learned later that the author has quite a bit of controversy.
[The Twentysomething Treatment – Meg Jay]
The book was good, her interviews on people's podcasts are even better.
[You Can't Win – Jack Black]
Awesome HN recommendation, an autobiography of an early 1900s criminal.
[The Starship and the Canoe – Kenneth Brower]
Another HN recommendation. A snapshot of the life of Freeman Dyson of project ORION and his son George, who built a giant fiberglass canoe and paddles the west coast of Canada and the States.
- - Lost Connections by Johann Hari (Life, Overcome depression) - 1946: The Making of the Modern World : Sebestyen, Victor (History, WWII) - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- I found Johann Hari good on this with “Lost Connections” where he talks a lot about chemical imbalance vs life situation and their impacts on depression. Found it very enlightening.
- I read a book called “Lost Connections” which pretty much solidified my belief that most depressions are actually a reaction to something that a person doesn’t feel right about in their life, and is not making any effort to change, because they might not even be aware.
- I have a book recommendation, Lost Connections by Johann Hari.
I'd also highly recommend getting a few lonely people on your phone as "product testers". Make sure you get genuine feedback from them (very difficult if you're passionate about an idea), and try to discover what their hangups actually are about engaging with existing online communities, and figure out a way you'll be attempting to resolve some of those problems for your platform.
- I recently read "Lost Connections", recommended to me after a long few years with depression.
I suspect if you're commenting in this thread, you'd probably enjoy it.
Anyway, the one thing that seems to always be a consistent theme in discussions of burnout, is work. I've not yet seem a conversation on burnout where an employment scenario is not brought up.
One of the chapters in Lost Connections talks about meaningful work, and how a reduction or elimination of personally fulfilling work, can lead to a depression, as can a few other things.
I can't help but feel at this stage after dealing with a long running depression, that our relationships with work are probably broken, and we've all been sold a lie.
My issue with the term "burnout" is that it feels like it's loading the topic to be a personal issue (which it technically is), when in reality, it's a reaction to a bad external stimuli.
I'd write more, but I feel like I'm waffling, I'm happy to discuss more if people want to chat about it.
