MEV is a nice place to be for a lot of activities. Tweet enough to foster discussion but not so much you get sucked in to the vortex.
Check email often enough to not get fired but not so much that you're wasting time.
Conversation
don't get too serious with quantifying these values.
Knowing that your daily MRV for writing is ~2 hours: useful
Stopping at exactly 120 minutes when you're on a roll because you wanted a concrete number: silly
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I must ask: how do you know that this is true? Genuinely curious.
“Look for absence of recovery not presence of stress” sounds insightful but goes against most contemporary research on burnout. The Maslach burnout inventory specifically looks for markers of stress.
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I'm not sure Ryan's aiming at a boolean statement here, more like a corrective heuristic
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Interesting. I’ve used Maslach’s inventory to develop a different heuristic (test for resentment), which allowed me to keep going in my previous startup. I’d be curious to know if you (or he!) have *actually* used this in practice? Is it effective? Are there nuances in use?
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The reason I ask is because Maslach developed her inventory for doctors & nurses who dealt with death. It’s possible to ‘recover’ on a holiday and then burnout upon returning to work. It also explains why her development model is so effective at checking for burnout.
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To clarify: I'm curious to know if this is actually verified by practice, so I can adapt it to my own life. But if it's simply 'statement that sounds right', then I'll wait until it's been verified.
My priors are that it shouldn't work as effectively as 'check for resentment'.
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I'm not familiar with Maslach's inventory (will do some reading, would be curious to hear how you applied it) and I'm not well versed in nor experienced burnout. Anecdotal use in practice:
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My weightlifting coach had us tracking a finger tap test daily (hrv monitors were $$$$ at the time). He'd have us pull back after a few days in a row of depressed scores (he'd also ask about sleep+nutrition quality)
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Interesting. So this works for physical activity. Might not for burnout.
(As an aside, I really like this test — I used to play Judo for my state, and I think we could have saved ourselves from injury if our coach had used something similar).