“they tend to accept their situation and silently power through it instead of trying to improve it.”
Your description of the more pernicious elements of “sisu” reminds me of the “stiff upper lip” idea that’s prevalent in British culture.
Tangentially, I’m reminded of research that shows how people who complain more live longer. One of the reasons for this is that complaining can be a necessary part of advocating for oneself, especially in a healthcare situation.
I share your frustration with people who miss obvious solutions because they don’t try to figure out how things could be improved. I like fixing stuff, and I often leap at any opportunity to tangibly improve things in life — little things, like a door that slams loudly, or a wobbly chair. Sometimes I can’t fix them, but most of the time, I can spend a trivial amount of energy and improve things. I suspect this instinct of mine is linked to the fact that I’m disabled, and thus there are many things in my life that suck that I can’t improve or fix, so it gives me a sense of empowerment to fix what I can. I’m always a bit baffled by people shrugging and ignoring things that have super easy solutions.
I share your frustration with people who miss obvious solutions because they don’t try to figure out how things could be improved.
Obvious or not so obvious. Me,I will spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with solutions - even complex solutions - to not do any repetitive task more than once if I can. That’s even my job at work: I design test equipment for production and I make it as automatic as possible, so that neither I nor the production engineers have to spend time doing the same thing over and over whenever possible.
It’s a reflex for me: if I do something more than twice, I start thinking about how to automate it or arrange things so I don’t have to do it again. The Finns I worked with for years almost never have that reflex: if whatever they have to do yields the results they want, it’s good enough, even if some lateral thinking could get them to do less work.
I too am disabled (I’m a double partial foot amputee) and I applied that line of thinking to my own problem of finding proper footwear. For instance, instead of having to physically go for a fitting (which limits my choice of shoemakers to local ones) I made acrylic casts of my feet that I can ship to any shoemaker in the world, so they can fashion the shoes around copies of my actual feet. It’s a surprisingly simple way to buy bespoke shoes that are guaranteed to fit without leaving the comfort of my living room 🙂 But funnily enough, nobody with special footwear needs seem to think of doing that.
Your description of the more pernicious elements of “sisu” reminds me of the “stiff upper lip” idea that’s prevalent in British culture.
Tangentially, I’m reminded of research that shows how people who complain more live longer. One of the reasons for this is that complaining can be a necessary part of advocating for oneself, especially in a healthcare situation.
I share your frustration with people who miss obvious solutions because they don’t try to figure out how things could be improved. I like fixing stuff, and I often leap at any opportunity to tangibly improve things in life — little things, like a door that slams loudly, or a wobbly chair. Sometimes I can’t fix them, but most of the time, I can spend a trivial amount of energy and improve things. I suspect this instinct of mine is linked to the fact that I’m disabled, and thus there are many things in my life that suck that I can’t improve or fix, so it gives me a sense of empowerment to fix what I can. I’m always a bit baffled by people shrugging and ignoring things that have super easy solutions.
Obvious or not so obvious. Me,I will spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with solutions - even complex solutions - to not do any repetitive task more than once if I can. That’s even my job at work: I design test equipment for production and I make it as automatic as possible, so that neither I nor the production engineers have to spend time doing the same thing over and over whenever possible.
It’s a reflex for me: if I do something more than twice, I start thinking about how to automate it or arrange things so I don’t have to do it again. The Finns I worked with for years almost never have that reflex: if whatever they have to do yields the results they want, it’s good enough, even if some lateral thinking could get them to do less work.
I too am disabled (I’m a double partial foot amputee) and I applied that line of thinking to my own problem of finding proper footwear. For instance, instead of having to physically go for a fitting (which limits my choice of shoemakers to local ones) I made acrylic casts of my feet that I can ship to any shoemaker in the world, so they can fashion the shoes around copies of my actual feet. It’s a surprisingly simple way to buy bespoke shoes that are guaranteed to fit without leaving the comfort of my living room 🙂 But funnily enough, nobody with special footwear needs seem to think of doing that.