As someone who regularly ‘embraces his despair’, I’ve noticed that it’s one thing to visibly despair as a startup founder with 18 months of runway, and another thing to visibly despair as a freeloader staring at the possibility of homelessness.
Despair has social signalling consequences, and whether those signals help or hinder your ability to actually Get Shit Done is highly context-dependent.
And yes, it has these signalling consequences whether or not you choose to actively talk about your despair—it affects everything you do. For example, one person might be the head of a non-profit FAI research organization, and his tiredness and grimness are seen as evidence that he’s obviously super-dedicated and working super-hard—and the fact that he’s not talking about it and making jokes instead just show how stoic and resolute he is / the fact that he’s talking about it and worrying about what to do just show how sensitive and in-touch with himself he is. Someone else might be a socially awkward quiet girl who doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep next, and her tiredness and grimness are seen as evidence that she’s obviously bad news and going to be a drain on other people / the fact that she’s talking about it and worrying about what to do just show how desperate and needy and self-absorbed she is.
So there’s definitely structural social incentives for people who are already on a certain kind of success trajectory to embrace their despair, but the principle of ‘equal and opposite advice’ strongly holds, and I’d probably advise people on the other side of the impact bell curve to avoid anything that might break the fragile bubble of positivity that’s likely shielding them from the howling vacuum of the Horns Effect.
As someone who regularly ‘embraces his despair’, I’ve noticed that it’s one thing to visibly despair as a startup founder with 18 months of runway, and another thing to visibly despair as a freeloader staring at the possibility of homelessness.
Despair has social signalling consequences, and whether those signals help or hinder your ability to actually Get Shit Done is highly context-dependent.
And yes, it has these signalling consequences whether or not you choose to actively talk about your despair—it affects everything you do. For example, one person might be the head of a non-profit FAI research organization, and his tiredness and grimness are seen as evidence that he’s obviously super-dedicated and working super-hard—and the fact that he’s not talking about it and making jokes instead just show how stoic and resolute he is / the fact that he’s talking about it and worrying about what to do just show how sensitive and in-touch with himself he is. Someone else might be a socially awkward quiet girl who doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep next, and her tiredness and grimness are seen as evidence that she’s obviously bad news and going to be a drain on other people / the fact that she’s talking about it and worrying about what to do just show how desperate and needy and self-absorbed she is.
So there’s definitely structural social incentives for people who are already on a certain kind of success trajectory to embrace their despair, but the principle of ‘equal and opposite advice’ strongly holds, and I’d probably advise people on the other side of the impact bell curve to avoid anything that might break the fragile bubble of positivity that’s likely shielding them from the howling vacuum of the Horns Effect.