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@alex I think suffering is what gets you radical innovation or effort, probably not productivity or growth. It’s not reliable in repeated applications–if you’re just going to keep suffering, you aren’t going to keep trying.

Life is arguably a series of dissimilar, uneven periods of suffering, that drive you in total. Every day you wake up and experience hunger multiple times, driving you to eat. Every few days you experience exhaustion. Every few months you run into a season you hate. Every year you pick up new pains and limitations, but also new desires and goals.

People who try to game this system wind up like idealistic communists: failing at the requirement for calculation and management, because it’s functionally impossible to manage in any human capacity. The best you can do is identify your personal zones of comfort and suffering, and use them to motivate yourself accordingly. Trying to manage someone else’s motivation is a loser’s game.