Energy, and How to Get it | The New Yorker | 12/21/21

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/energy-and-how-to-get-it

Summary: For months, during the main pandemic stretch, Paumgarten got inexplicably tired in the afternoon, as though vital organs and muscles had turned to Styrofoam. Just sitting in front of a computer screen, in sweatpants and socks, left him drained. By the standards of my younger years, I was burning the candle at neither end. And yet his mind roamed: Covid? Lyme? Diabetes? Cancer? It’s no HIPAA violation to reveal that, as various checkups determined, none of those pertained. So, embrace it. The instrument is blunt, but it will cut. The ring also conditioned me to begin each morning with a Christmas-stocking jolt of anticipation. Oh boy, new data. "How’d you sleep?" his wife would ask. "Don’t know yet. Most days, the numbers weren’t good."

3 Fun Facts:

1. He was tired from his bad sleep schedule

2. Cold coffee helps with being tired

3. Energy’ is a useless term. It is not the perception of stimulation, it is just the capacity to generate work