Sam Gentle.com

Discomfort as a signal

Discomfort is an interesting thing. Unlike pain, which usually indicates something is wrong and needs immediate attention, discomfort is a much milder aversion. It says something like "hey, maybe this isn't such a great idea". I like to think I've gotten good mileage out of discomfort; if I'm doing something and it feels uncomfortable, usually that means I'm doing it the wrong way. Maybe I'm sitting wrong and it's making my back uncomfortable, or I've gotten the wrong idea and it makes my thinking uncomfortable, or I've made some bad design decision and it makes my work uncomfortable. I can use that signal to change or stop what I'm doing.

However, lately I've been reconsidering the value of discomfort as a signal, particularly in the cases where it informs your work and your thought. Discomfort could be a signal that you've made life too hard for yourself and you need to go back, or maybe it's just that the thing you're doing is essentially difficult. It would be easy to slip into a situation where you get used to easy problems and averse to hard, complex ones because you value comfort too highly. The Stoics actually speak about voluntary discomfort: the idea that you should deliberately experience discomfort to avoid getting too complacent. I'm starting to see the benefit in that approach.

It might even be that there is some optimum level of discomfort, where things are exactly as hard as they should be – but no harder. I don't know how exactly you'd find that level, but I'm sure it's not zero.