Daily Rituals of a Developer
Show and tell is for children isn’t it? Yes. It is. However, if my first two weeks at HackerYou, a web development bootcamp in Toronto, are encouraging me to be a child then it’s something I want to continue doing. Perhaps indefinitely. Sadly though, because my age tells me I’m an adult and because life now requires responsibility, I also have to do certain adult things like adopt a daily routine.
During last weeks “show and tell” I proudly held up Daily Rituals by Mason Currey and asked the class who had read this remarkable book. To my surprise, and utter disappointment, I only received looks of boredom and confusion. My classmates have clearly missed out on an opportunity to be humoured, entertained, and enlightened by the daily lives of 161 famous creative people. I am sure they are worse off because of it. If you have not read the book I suggest you do that now. If, however, you do not wish to take literature recommendations from an unknown blogger but still wish to continue reading this post I will summarize the main point now. If we are to judge artists by their daily routines we can reach two main conclusions. One, artists are generally insane. And two, they have a stunning ability to maintain daily habits that, in large part, become the recipe for their success. As I embark on a life of code I decided to become mindful of some of the habits and tools I attempt to employ on a daily basis and share them here.
For me, mornings are often a troublesome affair. At least initially. But I have found that injecting them with a healthy dose of humour can do wonders for the malaise that comes at dawn. It turns out that Instagram serves a greater purpose than just pictures of tacos. The account ‘TheSimpsonSig’ is a video collection of classic moments from the first eight seasons of The Simpsons, i.e. the real Simpsons. Merely 60 seconds of Homer being Homer during the wee hours is enough to break me from my morning fog. Other options include ‘The Oatmeal’, a fantastic collection of comics. Or for the slightly psychotic and sadistic I recommend ‘Kenny vs. Spenny’, which you can find on YouTube in it’s entirety. There is nothing quite like laughter to awaken the body, mind, and spirit. That is, of course, until the dread of the afternoon mental cloud.
Afternoons are fickle. They sometimes greet me with a welcoming embrace, encouraging me to seize the day, opening the fountains of productivity. At other times I am met with a seemingly unscalable wall, the only obvious climbing tools being caffeine or sleep. But I have now discovered the power of the lentil! Fans of Tim Ferriss will recall the slow carb diet as discussed in The Four-Hour Chef. For reasons that I am not that interested in it seems lentils along with other beans and legumes provide long lasting energy and mental alertness without the crash or insulin spike that comes with sweeter alternatives. After lunch I am sure to prevent distraction using an excellent plugin for Chrome called ‘StayFocusd’. This extension allows you to set a usage limit on distracting sites such as Facebook or YouTube, once the time limit expires the sites on your block list are disabled for the day. I try to ignore the obvious loophole of using my phone or another browser.
This brings me to the evening. After slouching in front of code for about 10 hours I usually wipe the drool from my face and remind myself that there does in fact exist another reality. The one that’s actually real. To acknowledge its presence I enjoy disconnecting by taking a walk (without my phone) in nature and just checking in with myself and my thoughts. Another great tool for this is mindfulness meditation. It’s up to you how much you want to get out of the practice. It can simply be another method of disconnecting and taming the mind or an all encompassing philosophy on life. If you are interested in either I would recommend starting by watching some talks by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Zinn makes meditation extremely accessible and simple (but not easy) for the novice explorer of consciousness.
This proves that something as mundane as forming daily rituals can in fact be entertaining, enlightening, and delicious! Perhaps I’ll give adulthood a try afterall.
Some more tools for daily productivity:
