The staying warm in a cold room is so real! There have been so many times where I've just been so ridiculously tired but then I put on a sweatshirt and I'm good to go for the rest of the day
This is why neurodivergent people (me included) can often struggle with driving. You have to focus on so many things at once (making sure your car is in the lane, staying at a constant speed, keeping your eyes on the road, looking out for oncoming cars, etc.) that it can become exhausting or even overwhelming. And since there’s no do-overs in real life, there’s also the added psychological stress of knowing that one slip-up could be life-ending.
Depends on the form of neurodivergence - as a person with ADHD I can drive for ages as long as I know where I’m going. Because processing, handling, and utilizing massive amounts of immediately relevant data is something I excel at. Saving this information, not so much.
Thank fuck for gps though, because my sense of direction is non-existent and my brain only has space for routes that get frequent use. I’ve gotten better at linking major waypoints after about ten trips through. (Example: take Joslyn to get to Costco. Joslyn is that way, I have no idea how far that way but I’ll get there eventually.)
Rings true for me too. Being occupied with streams of immediate and critical decisions is kind of relaxing. A long drive is practically a zen state for me. It’s one of the only times I feel like my background thoughts have a chance to catch up and quiet down.
Things like my work gmail on the other hand are all seven circles of hell. Somebody is like “Oh hey, here’s some questions, some quasi-situations if you will, and the answer I need from you requires you to dig around a spreadsheet and calendar or something and ask me a follow up question and this will go back and forth for 3 weeks.” Then there’s like 30 more of those waiting in your inbox. It makes me feel like I have 100 tabs open in my brain, making each individual thing harder to focus on, because they never resolve. God help me if some of these are contingent on each other. It’s just always more and more forever. Some days I just hope a solar flare takes down the grid.
Yeppppp. Driving as someone with ADHD terrifies me. Medication helps - I can actually take in visual info with more sensible priority when my meds are active. But if I've not had my meds or if Its been a particularly long day and my brain is fighting fatigue on top of ADHD, its so easy for my attention to drift or for me to notice every little thing except the most important thing I need to see. If I need to drive more than 5 min down the road, I refuse to do it without my meds. I'm a much better driver than I used to be, but holy fuck I loathe driving so much. I would avoid it entirely if that was possible where I live.
Even if I was some kind of god-tier perfect defensive driver (I'm well aware that I'm absolutely not), there is no telling what someone else will do on the road. Doesn't matter how good a driver you are if someone drunk or distracted or falling asleep at the wheel comes out of nowhere and rams you. It is literally the most dangerous mundane task we're all expected to do every day. And if you mention that it scares you, you get laughed out of the room or told to git gud. When the reality is you're putting your life into strangers' hands and taking their lives into yours every time you get behind the wheel of the 2 ton machine you can't stay employed without. I think that needs to be treated much more seriously than it is now.
Car dependency fucking sucks. I seriously envy places that are walkable and have reliable public transportation. Hell, the few times I've visited NYC, my favorite part has been traveling on foot and by subway, and I know there are places out there that are even more easily walkable and have even better public transit systems. So living somewhere entirely car dependent is incredibly frustrating to me.
Sorry if this reads as a rant. Its just good to let out my hatred of driving with people who understand.
Oh my god dude this is EXACTLY how I feel. Driving is scary as fuck. Why does everyone wave away the fact that you are operating an extremely heavy and powerful machine capable of seriously hurting and killing people with ease? WHY IS ANYONE OK WITH THIS?
I think it depends on the person. I love to drive and I have ADHD-C. Combine a long drive with the night time, empty roads, and music and I'm in heaven.
Then again, I'm American, and 99% of us are conditioned to drive early on bc we have very little public transit to rely on, so my opinion is very skewed.
As someone who suffers from severe motion sickness, this rings true. I feel way more tired inside a car than during a long walk. The human body truly is weird.
The argument that sitting in a car is physically exhausting because you're muscles are constantly working tiny amounts set off my bullshit alarm a little bit, but a quick google suggests it might actually be true? Or at least, a part of the reason!
Turns out, there are a lot of factors at play that make driving - or just sitting in the car - exhausting. The vibrations of the vehicle, the discomfort of sitting down for a long time (especially in not particularly ergonomic seats), the lack of available food and drink, as well as the hypnotic factor of cars passing us by and defocusing our eyes, can all contribute to feeling tired. Over the course of a long journey, this can all add up to being genuinely exhausting.
Which doesn't detract from the actual point the post is making at all! But I was interested, so I googled all this lol.
Don't you feel it? I prefer buses to driving because I find the mental load of driving more taxing than the increased jostling of the bus, but I vastly, overwhelmingly prefer the train to both because it is a smooth ride that is maybe 1/5th as hard on the body. I do live in a hilly city with lots of extremely winding roads
I feel so much more drained after a quiet/slow day at work than a really busy day, and I think it's because I'm fighting my anxiety so hard when I'm not distracted by work tasks.
Yes, and it’s a psychological phenomenon with a documented (often negative) effect on actual behavior and performance.
Basically, knowing that people are biased against you because of certain stereotypes can make you less confident and more anxious and perform tasks less well. (But the effect seems to be moderated by how tasks are framed and how people are treated within the situation.)
the most physically exhausted ive ever been was when i knew bits and pieces of a language and as a result had to listen to every single word of what was being said so that i could use the bits i could understand and combine it with situational context to translate the bits i couldnt understand into english in my head
Don’t forget flying. Dehydration, loud sounds and harsh movement. If nothing else, you need water and lots of electrolytes after you fly, and be real careful consuming alcohol cause it’s about 50% more potent.
And that's all just if you tolerate flights pretty well. For some reason, from the moment of liftoff I feel like I get a temporary case of the flu until we land, instantly well again.
Fun fact, when you're in a car for a while with the windows up, you produce a shitload of CO2 and when you're tired it may be because of actual CO2 poisoning.
I mean, your standard car compartment is probably about the same size as the accommodation area of an Apollo command module, and you don't have CO₂ scrubbers to clean your air.
If you're perfectly circulating the air, sure, which you tend not to be to try to keep in the heat. CO₂ buildup is a noticeable phenomenom in buildings, even, so it's not out of the question that it'd be a problem in the smaller mostly-sealed box.
What I'm taking away from this is that cars should also come equipped with CO₂ scrubbers. And probably so should trains and planes and buses and maybe buildings too considering what a waste of heat it is to ensure a supply of fresh air in the winter.
Similarly, its a hefty workout riding a horse. Lots of people think "but the horse is doing all the work, youre just sitting there". Theres a lot of invisible labor involved.
This becomes more apparent when you get a brain injury and everything costs concentration and energy. Learned skills cut down the cost to something like 10% concentration of what it would be with full focus. But for the longest time, doing the dishes was as difficult as writing an essay or reading a scientific paper. Driving is still way too difficult to do in real time.
While largely true about the noticeable toll commuting takes, OP is flinging rat ass about the reasons why.
Commuting is difficult on a physical level because it is an extended period of being sedentary. More so than normal (sitting in a chair).
Range of motion is severely limited, air flow is recirculated and most damaging of all is the unnatural repeated motions that have limited ROM because they're optimised for mechanic function, not our natural kinematics - such as shifting gears, pumping the clutch, turning the steering with your elbows not allowed to flare.
Airplane rides are tiring for the same physical reasons but also air pressure variance etc.
The point is, the bit about there being " thousands of micro adjustments" or whatever is patently nonsense. That is true only in high performance environments like fighter jets and motorsports where the forces are greater and thus the urgency to resist them and the force they require.
Repairing skin cells is not something that has a high caloric requirement you have to consciously do.
Nor is staying warm. You're in an SUV for an hour, not the Arctic Tundra on a year long expedition.
Mostly you feel tired because that's what happens when you physically limited and mentally engaged in a repetitive task of drudgery.
One COULD make the case that navigating peak traffic ellicts a stress response (cortisol etc) - and yes that doesn't help. The bit about sensory input processing - sure.
But all the other stuff is bogus. And it's shocking how an experience that is so common can be pretty easily construed and then that higgledypiggledy lauded on Tumblr as some sort of Freakonomics-Aha revelation.
Congratulations on proving the point that OOP was making. Most of your energy output is spent on maintaining your body temperature, that's why so many animals are exothermic.
right, but you do that 100% of the time, so it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to being tired unless you’re in a freezing cold environment. If you’re outside in the snow, you burn thousands of calories extra. If you’re in a car that’s slightly too cold, you probably dont even burn a cliff bar’s worth of calories.
Last I checked, doing something 100% of the time is so tiring that we have to spend 33% of the time asleep.
They're not saying that being in a cold car would make a noticeable difference to your energy usage, just that being endothermic is more tiring that you think because we do it 100% of the time.
Making heat is a baseline bodily function, it literally should not be more energy than expected because it’s part of your resting energy consumption. This is literally the process that your body compares against to decide if you’re feeling more tired than expected. It literally takes no conscious mental or physical effort to be endothermic.
I understand what they’re saying, but they are wrong on a fundamental level.
There’s a difference between “im tired and hungry because I’ve spent all day in the snow” and “i feel tired becuase I’ve been up for longer than usual.” Being a little cold doesnt make you sleepy, it just makes your body work a little harder. It takes a lot for the cold to impact your brain, and its mostly hunger and muscle fatigue, not sleepyness. Ask anyone who’s spent all day skiing or snowshoeing- you get tired more quickly in the extreme cold, but it’s tired from exercise, not brain effort. Sitting in a cold room does not make people more tired in a “my brain is stressed or I need to sleep” manner.
Your brain can absolutely tell the difference between fatigue from physical work, from mental stress, and staying up too late, btw.
With respect, that's not why most animals are exothermic.
Most are ectohermic. External temperature is needed to regulate body temp.
The opposite of this is an endotherm, or basically warm blooded animals like us.
And that is because we release heat as a by product of our ATP process. Busting glucose releases heat.
We utilise glucose to give us energy that's sustainably released over a long period of time.
As to most of our energy being used to maintain our BMR, you are right - in that it's a significant cost. Certainly not most. But top five, sure.
Unfortunately, feeling tired when you're cold is not because you're running out of energy. Just that your body reduces metabolic function when you're cold. The fuel hasn't been expended - the spigot is just turned closed.
Yes, I confused exothermic and ectothermic because they both mean 'heat on the outside'.
I mean, your brain can't perfectly tell the difference between low-energy-because-tired and low-energy-because-sleepy, which is why you get snacky at night. You expect it to tell the difference between low-energy-because-tired and low-energy-because-metabolism-slow-to-conserve-heat?
I always assumed it's because you're in constant danger when you're in the car: you're in a two-ton bullet traveling 70mph towards other two-ton bullets traveling 70mph. That's gonna tax you after a while.
When you're a passenger you have the option to focus on other stuff, but when you're driving you are forced to focus on the indescribable danger of it all.
"i'm sorry legs, thank you for always supporting me; thank you for always getting me up when i fall down, for when i wake on the wrong foot and thank you; for always giving me a leg to stand on. task manager: terminate"
Driving is tiring because I’ve got anxiety, can’t drive a car without the windows down and no music, hate driving close to a bike lane, and impulsively check over my car every time I arrive somewhere.
I’ve been thinking about this!! Basically a car is giving us constant proprioceptive input, which we respond to unconsciously, and though we don’t recognize what we’re experiencing as proprioceptive stimulation it still drains our sensory battery.
The staying warm in a cold room is so real! There have been so many times where I've just been so ridiculously tired but then I put on a sweatshirt and I'm good to go for the rest of the day
This is why neurodivergent people (me included) can often struggle with driving. You have to focus on so many things at once (making sure your car is in the lane, staying at a constant speed, keeping your eyes on the road, looking out for oncoming cars, etc.) that it can become exhausting or even overwhelming. And since there’s no do-overs in real life, there’s also the added psychological stress of knowing that one slip-up could be life-ending.
Depends on the form of neurodivergence - as a person with ADHD I can drive for ages as long as I know where I’m going. Because processing, handling, and utilizing massive amounts of immediately relevant data is something I excel at. Saving this information, not so much.
Thank fuck for gps though, because my sense of direction is non-existent and my brain only has space for routes that get frequent use. I’ve gotten better at linking major waypoints after about ten trips through. (Example: take Joslyn to get to Costco. Joslyn is that way, I have no idea how far that way but I’ll get there eventually.)
Rings true for me too. Being occupied with streams of immediate and critical decisions is kind of relaxing. A long drive is practically a zen state for me. It’s one of the only times I feel like my background thoughts have a chance to catch up and quiet down.
Things like my work gmail on the other hand are all seven circles of hell. Somebody is like “Oh hey, here’s some questions, some quasi-situations if you will, and the answer I need from you requires you to dig around a spreadsheet and calendar or something and ask me a follow up question and this will go back and forth for 3 weeks.” Then there’s like 30 more of those waiting in your inbox. It makes me feel like I have 100 tabs open in my brain, making each individual thing harder to focus on, because they never resolve. God help me if some of these are contingent on each other. It’s just always more and more forever. Some days I just hope a solar flare takes down the grid.
Yeppppp. Driving as someone with ADHD terrifies me. Medication helps - I can actually take in visual info with more sensible priority when my meds are active. But if I've not had my meds or if Its been a particularly long day and my brain is fighting fatigue on top of ADHD, its so easy for my attention to drift or for me to notice every little thing except the most important thing I need to see. If I need to drive more than 5 min down the road, I refuse to do it without my meds. I'm a much better driver than I used to be, but holy fuck I loathe driving so much. I would avoid it entirely if that was possible where I live.
Even if I was some kind of god-tier perfect defensive driver (I'm well aware that I'm absolutely not), there is no telling what someone else will do on the road. Doesn't matter how good a driver you are if someone drunk or distracted or falling asleep at the wheel comes out of nowhere and rams you. It is literally the most dangerous mundane task we're all expected to do every day. And if you mention that it scares you, you get laughed out of the room or told to git gud. When the reality is you're putting your life into strangers' hands and taking their lives into yours every time you get behind the wheel of the 2 ton machine you can't stay employed without. I think that needs to be treated much more seriously than it is now.
Car dependency fucking sucks. I seriously envy places that are walkable and have reliable public transportation. Hell, the few times I've visited NYC, my favorite part has been traveling on foot and by subway, and I know there are places out there that are even more easily walkable and have even better public transit systems. So living somewhere entirely car dependent is incredibly frustrating to me.
Sorry if this reads as a rant. Its just good to let out my hatred of driving with people who understand.
Oh my god dude this is EXACTLY how I feel. Driving is scary as fuck. Why does everyone wave away the fact that you are operating an extremely heavy and powerful machine capable of seriously hurting and killing people with ease? WHY IS ANYONE OK WITH THIS?
As someone who’s 30 and still hasn’t learned to drive, this comment made me feel better.
I think it depends on the person. I love to drive and I have ADHD-C. Combine a long drive with the night time, empty roads, and music and I'm in heaven.
Then again, I'm American, and 99% of us are conditioned to drive early on bc we have very little public transit to rely on, so my opinion is very skewed.
As someone who suffers from severe motion sickness, this rings true. I feel way more tired inside a car than during a long walk. The human body truly is weird.
The argument that sitting in a car is physically exhausting because you're muscles are constantly working tiny amounts set off my bullshit alarm a little bit, but a quick google suggests it might actually be true? Or at least, a part of the reason!
Turns out, there are a lot of factors at play that make driving - or just sitting in the car - exhausting. The vibrations of the vehicle, the discomfort of sitting down for a long time (especially in not particularly ergonomic seats), the lack of available food and drink, as well as the hypnotic factor of cars passing us by and defocusing our eyes, can all contribute to feeling tired. Over the course of a long journey, this can all add up to being genuinely exhausting.
Which doesn't detract from the actual point the post is making at all! But I was interested, so I googled all this lol.
i appreciate you
Don't you feel it? I prefer buses to driving because I find the mental load of driving more taxing than the increased jostling of the bus, but I vastly, overwhelmingly prefer the train to both because it is a smooth ride that is maybe 1/5th as hard on the body. I do live in a hilly city with lots of extremely winding roads
I feel so much more drained after a quiet/slow day at work than a really busy day, and I think it's because I'm fighting my anxiety so hard when I'm not distracted by work tasks.
I've never heard of "stereotype threat", what is that?
Basically it's the fear of reinforcing negative stereotypes about a group you belong to.
Yes, and it’s a psychological phenomenon with a documented (often negative) effect on actual behavior and performance.
Basically, knowing that people are biased against you because of certain stereotypes can make you less confident and more anxious and perform tasks less well. (But the effect seems to be moderated by how tasks are framed and how people are treated within the situation.)
the most physically exhausted ive ever been was when i knew bits and pieces of a language and as a result had to listen to every single word of what was being said so that i could use the bits i could understand and combine it with situational context to translate the bits i couldnt understand into english in my head
Don’t forget flying. Dehydration, loud sounds and harsh movement. If nothing else, you need water and lots of electrolytes after you fly, and be real careful consuming alcohol cause it’s about 50% more potent.
And that's all just if you tolerate flights pretty well. For some reason, from the moment of liftoff I feel like I get a temporary case of the flu until we land, instantly well again.
Fun fact, when you're in a car for a while with the windows up, you produce a shitload of CO2 and when you're tired it may be because of actual CO2 poisoning.
I mean, your standard car compartment is probably about the same size as the accommodation area of an Apollo command module, and you don't have CO₂ scrubbers to clean your air.
You also have air circulation and 1/3 the people.
If you're perfectly circulating the air, sure, which you tend not to be to try to keep in the heat. CO₂ buildup is a noticeable phenomenom in buildings, even, so it's not out of the question that it'd be a problem in the smaller mostly-sealed box.
What I'm taking away from this is that cars should also come equipped with CO₂ scrubbers. And probably so should trains and planes and buses and maybe buildings too considering what a waste of heat it is to ensure a supply of fresh air in the winter.
Similarly, its a hefty workout riding a horse. Lots of people think "but the horse is doing all the work, youre just sitting there". Theres a lot of invisible labor involved.
This becomes more apparent when you get a brain injury and everything costs concentration and energy. Learned skills cut down the cost to something like 10% concentration of what it would be with full focus. But for the longest time, doing the dishes was as difficult as writing an essay or reading a scientific paper. Driving is still way too difficult to do in real time.
While largely true about the noticeable toll commuting takes, OP is flinging rat ass about the reasons why.
Commuting is difficult on a physical level because it is an extended period of being sedentary. More so than normal (sitting in a chair).
Range of motion is severely limited, air flow is recirculated and most damaging of all is the unnatural repeated motions that have limited ROM because they're optimised for mechanic function, not our natural kinematics - such as shifting gears, pumping the clutch, turning the steering with your elbows not allowed to flare.
Airplane rides are tiring for the same physical reasons but also air pressure variance etc.
The point is, the bit about there being " thousands of micro adjustments" or whatever is patently nonsense. That is true only in high performance environments like fighter jets and motorsports where the forces are greater and thus the urgency to resist them and the force they require.
Repairing skin cells is not something that has a high caloric requirement you have to consciously do. Nor is staying warm. You're in an SUV for an hour, not the Arctic Tundra on a year long expedition.
Mostly you feel tired because that's what happens when you physically limited and mentally engaged in a repetitive task of drudgery.
One COULD make the case that navigating peak traffic ellicts a stress response (cortisol etc) - and yes that doesn't help. The bit about sensory input processing - sure.
But all the other stuff is bogus. And it's shocking how an experience that is so common can be pretty easily construed and then that higgledypiggledy lauded on Tumblr as some sort of Freakonomics-Aha revelation.
i confused Range Of Motion for Read Only Memory and got confused
Congratulations on proving the point that OOP was making. Most of your energy output is spent on maintaining your body temperature, that's why so many animals are exothermic.
right, but you do that 100% of the time, so it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to being tired unless you’re in a freezing cold environment. If you’re outside in the snow, you burn thousands of calories extra. If you’re in a car that’s slightly too cold, you probably dont even burn a cliff bar’s worth of calories.
Last I checked, doing something 100% of the time is so tiring that we have to spend 33% of the time asleep.
They're not saying that being in a cold car would make a noticeable difference to your energy usage, just that being endothermic is more tiring that you think because we do it 100% of the time.
Making heat is a baseline bodily function, it literally should not be more energy than expected because it’s part of your resting energy consumption. This is literally the process that your body compares against to decide if you’re feeling more tired than expected. It literally takes no conscious mental or physical effort to be endothermic.
I understand what they’re saying, but they are wrong on a fundamental level.
If your surroundings are colder, it takes more effort to stay warm.
Your normalised expectations are that it takes zero effort to stay warm, because staying warm is part of the baseline human experience.
Therefore, you underestimate how much extra effort it is to stay warm when it's colder, and it is surprisingly tiring.
I really don't see what the struggle is with this concept.
There’s a difference between “im tired and hungry because I’ve spent all day in the snow” and “i feel tired becuase I’ve been up for longer than usual.” Being a little cold doesnt make you sleepy, it just makes your body work a little harder. It takes a lot for the cold to impact your brain, and its mostly hunger and muscle fatigue, not sleepyness. Ask anyone who’s spent all day skiing or snowshoeing- you get tired more quickly in the extreme cold, but it’s tired from exercise, not brain effort. Sitting in a cold room does not make people more tired in a “my brain is stressed or I need to sleep” manner.
Your brain can absolutely tell the difference between fatigue from physical work, from mental stress, and staying up too late, btw.
With respect, that's not why most animals are exothermic. Most are ectohermic. External temperature is needed to regulate body temp.
The opposite of this is an endotherm, or basically warm blooded animals like us. And that is because we release heat as a by product of our ATP process. Busting glucose releases heat.
We utilise glucose to give us energy that's sustainably released over a long period of time.
As to most of our energy being used to maintain our BMR, you are right - in that it's a significant cost. Certainly not most. But top five, sure.
Unfortunately, feeling tired when you're cold is not because you're running out of energy. Just that your body reduces metabolic function when you're cold. The fuel hasn't been expended - the spigot is just turned closed.
Yes, I confused exothermic and ectothermic because they both mean 'heat on the outside'.
I mean, your brain can't perfectly tell the difference between low-energy-because-tired and low-energy-because-sleepy, which is why you get snacky at night. You expect it to tell the difference between low-energy-because-tired and low-energy-because-metabolism-slow-to-conserve-heat?
I always assumed it's because you're in constant danger when you're in the car: you're in a two-ton bullet traveling 70mph towards other two-ton bullets traveling 70mph. That's gonna tax you after a while.
When you're a passenger you have the option to focus on other stuff, but when you're driving you are forced to focus on the indescribable danger of it all.
my seeing how much energy my legs require:
"i'm sorry legs, thank you for always supporting me; thank you for always getting me up when i fall down, for when i wake on the wrong foot and thank you; for always giving me a leg to stand on. task manager: terminate"
"Filthy rich coming from me, but driving is work"
Me, who was a delivery driver for two years, which is, in fact, work.
Is this a r/fuckcars moment or are trains just as bad about this?
It should apply to any travel that jostles you a lot, so trains, planes, even ships would be effected yes
Find you a person whose driving doesn't take up all your cpu
Driving is tiring because I’ve got anxiety, can’t drive a car without the windows down and no music, hate driving close to a bike lane, and impulsively check over my car every time I arrive somewhere.
And it's always fucking Discord.
show me how to open my bodys task manager so I can find the program that keeps playing music
What about people who sleep in car
I’ve been thinking about this!! Basically a car is giving us constant proprioceptive input, which we respond to unconsciously, and though we don’t recognize what we’re experiencing as proprioceptive stimulation it still drains our sensory battery.
Funny. Just noticed I was tired earlier today. All I did was eat cereal lol
Misread this initially and thought “what is a car jar”