Disagree strongly, frustration is like the setup before the payoff, it's what makes figuring out something "worth" it - the more frustration, the bigger the payoff.

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crazygringo 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's not what any psychologist would say. This isn't my opinion on frustration, this is just the standard interpretation under emotional appraisal theory.

Also, it is absolutely not the case that more frustration leads to higher payoff. There are tons of cases where frustration leads to zero payoff, and where you get complete payoff with zero frustration.

Frustration is not the same as hard work. If something takes a lot of hard work but progress is constant and clear, there's no frustration involved.

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bartvk 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Can you explain something?

I did a lot of iOS development. The layout of elements was done with Auto Layout, and I really had the hang of it. It was replaced by how SwiftUI does it, and I knew it would take me a couple of weeks to get the hang of it.

I often felt what I'd call frustration. Lots of times, I knew I could easily express solutions in the old framework. But I knew I needed to learn the new one.

Are you saying that's not called frustration?

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crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It really depends on a lot of factors.

It can definitely be frustration, as you keep re-assessing whether it's really worth switching to SwiftUI, and getting upset that something isn't as easy as it was the previous way, for you. I've definitely started switching to a new library and then ultimately stopped because it was too frustrating. What I thought was going to be a better library for me, wasn't. Other times I've learned a new library and felt mostly delight, as I'd discover it was set up in ways that solved all my old problems, and I could see how much time it was going to save me in the future.

Also, you can feel frustration on a daily scale, without feeling frustrated on a larger scale. E.g. you know you want to learn SwiftUI, but today you're running into roadblocks with it, and you need to figure out whether to step back from it today and come back to it tomorrow, refreshed and having slept on it.

If there's anything frustration can be confused with, it's often resentment. E.g. when switching to SwiftUI doesn't actually help you achieve any goals of your own in any direct way, and you feel like Apple is creating busywork with some arbitrary deprecation or migration.

Often, you may feel both -- resentful that Apple is forcing you to learn something new, and frustration that learning the new technology is harder than you'd expected, or not providing the expected benefits, and therefore possibly not worth it at all, or at least not worth it today.

	▲	bartvk 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Small frustration daily versus larger scale achievements is what I think happened. Thanks, interesting viewpoints to think about.

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throwaway290 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe it's how frustration with what things are before can make you want to do something to change it?

	▲	crazygringo 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		From a product design or startup perspective, sure -- identify the sources of frustration in other people can help identify potential business opportunities where people would pay money in order to alleviate the frustration. But that's very different from the idea that frustration is somehow intrinsic to accomplishment at all, for your own goals. It's not.

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speed_spread 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A certain amount of frustration is expected if you set the goals high. But an excess of frustration becomes counter-productive and should signal it's time to change strategy. It doesn't mean "give up forever" but rather "try getting to midpoint first, then reevaluate".

It's surprising how effective being lazy can sometimes be. Some tasks that could be brute-forced seem to magically melt away if you adopt round about ways and let time pass. It's a latency/throughput tradeoff.