The morning greeted me with what I prefer to name the unholy trinity: chilly, cough, and vomit. My physique was clearly trying to stage a insurrection towards my latest life selections, full with bodily manifestations of its displeasure. However right here’s the factor about being a developer — the inexperienced dots in your GitHub contribution graph don’t care about your private medical drama.
So there I used to be, dragging myself by a leetcode downside whereas my head felt prefer it was filled with cotton and unhealthy choices. The algorithm that ought to have taken me twenty minutes stretched into an hour. Seems optimum considering and optimum well being are by some means associated. Revolutionary discovery, I do know.
Between bouts of questioning my life selections, I hung out studying JavaScript for one in all my initiatives. There’s one thing oddly poetic about wrestling with callback capabilities if you’re already wrestling with staying upright. The shared confusion makes it really feel acquainted, like assembly a kindred spirit within the chaos of not fairly understanding what’s taking place.
The syntax errors felt much less private when my mind was already throwing its personal errors. At the least the pc’s complaints have been particular and fixable. In contrast to no matter my immune system was making an attempt to speak by interpretive coughing.
Acquired invited to affix a good friend’s venture that really sounds fascinating for as soon as. You know the way it’s — most aspect initiatives sound like “we’re going to revolutionize [insert mundane thing here] with blockchain AI machine studying.” This one doesn’t make me need to faux my very own loss of life to keep away from the dialog.
Nonetheless questioning if fairness is in my future or if I’m simply right here for the educational expertise and occasional pizza. Both approach, engaged on one thing that doesn’t make me query my basic life selections appears like a win. The bar is low, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a bar.
Right here’s the place issues bought fascinating. Tried this time-tracking technique somebody recommended — log what you’re doing each quarter-hour with out pre-planning something. No fancy apps, no color-coded classes, simply uncooked honesty about the place time really goes.
The outcomes have been concurrently illuminating and mildly horrifying.
You begin noticing patterns you by no means realized existed. That second if you choose up your cellphone at 5:14 PM to “rapidly examine one thing” means your whole 5:00–5:15 slot will get marked as “distraction.” Your mind begins recognizing these patterns and, in true developer trend, begins gaming the system.
Now I’m beginning work at random instances like 5:07 simply to keep away from the psychological lure of spherical numbers. It’s like my mind is working a steady A/B check alone habits patterns.
The tactic is deceptively easy: each quarter-hour, write down what you simply did. Don’t plan forward, don’t categorize, simply observe. You’ll see precisely how a lot time disappears into “simply checking one thing fast” or “yet one more video” or “let me simply set up this one factor.”
Attempt it for a day. Your relationship with time won’t ever be fairly the identical.
Needed to formally pronounce one venture concept lifeless right now. Too widespread, too many excuses piling up like unpaid technical debt. Generally one of the best determination is recognizing when one thing has change into a time vampire earlier than it utterly drains your will to dwell.
There’s one thing liberating about killing concepts that aren’t working. It’s like deleting code that you understand is horrible however saved round “simply in case.” The digital equal of throwing away that shirt you by no means put on however by some means satisfied your self you may want for some hypothetical future event.
Tomorrow’s agenda: figma designs and emblem work for the brand new venture. Time to show summary concepts into one thing folks can really see and choose. The enjoyable half about design is that everybody turns into a critic, however a minimum of the suggestions is fast and particular.
In contrast to code, which may disguise its issues till 3 AM when the whole lot breaks in manufacturing, design issues are proper there in your face. There’s one thing refreshing about that honesty.
The physique may nonetheless be staging its protest, however the work continues. That’s the factor about constructing stuff — it doesn’t care about your present bodily state. The pc doesn’t know you’re working on stubbornness and spite. It simply processes your inputs and offers you outputs, similar as all the time.
Day 27 full. Tomorrow we iterate, regulate, and doubtless make totally new errors. The physique will hopefully file fewer complaints, but when not, effectively, the inexperienced dots should move.
The great thing about every day logging isn’t within the particular person days — it’s within the sample that emerges over time. Every day is simply one other information level within the ongoing experiment of determining the way to construct issues that matter whereas protecting the assorted techniques (organic, digital, social) from utterly falling aside.
Some days you slip on the bottom. Some days you resolve issues. Some days you do each. The secret’s displaying up for the following information level.
