Big thoughts out of the tiny house I rented a few days ago (with pics)
If you’re looking to get motivated, here’s my advice — sit on your ass.
(Sigh)
I still remember the day I made the decision to learn how to code. I had a big app idea without the skills to make it happen on my own, so it was either live a life wondering “what if?”, or learn how to code and find out. Ten months later, I debuted my very first app on the App Store and was filling out contracts to be on Apple’s Planet of the Apps TV show.
It’s been an amazing ride, but recently I’ve been reflecting on those ten months of learning. When I think back on that time of my life, it all seems like one big blob in my mind, and that’s because it was. During those ten months, I had my first experience with what I like to call my “mind-machine”.
This was when I first discovered exactly how efficient I could be. This was when I first realized that my brain simply worked better when I treated it more like a machine.
In actuality, the brain really is the machine of the mind. It operates the tasks given to it, and like a machine, it has peak performances as well as lesser quality performances. Just like a machine, the brain works best when it is fed healthy software and is free of viruses that corrupt its ability to perform its task. It works best when it has below a certain number of tasks to complete, as to avoid throttling. It has levels of compatibility with other devices, and like a machine, it has a boot-up flow as well as a power-down flow.
During those months of learning how to code, I began to treat my brain like the machine it was meant to be. I was very careful about the shows that I watched, or the content that I consumed via social media. Essentially, I only fed my brain good software that would encourage efficiency. I only focused on three goals — working out, coding, and going to my day job. The goal was simply to do each of these tasks every single day. I began to understand that I was more efficient when I focused all my energy on no more than three priorities, and avoided the throttling of tasks to ensure quality outcomes. I would eat only things that made me more efficient and energetic. Essentially, I gave my brain compatible devices to interact with. I would “boot-up” by exercising every morning to get my mind flowing before a coding session. Then, I would code for hours and repeat this machine-like approach for up to six days at a time. I did the same exact thing every single week for ten months. That’s how I was able to get it all done. I had figured out this whole “mind-machine” system that kept my brain at its most efficient state and as time went on the number one component to my maximum efficiency revealed itself -
REST.
For six nights a week, I realized I could maintain efficiency as long as I was exercising and eating right by only getting 6 hours of sleep per night. It wasn’t until the seventh day that I found myself overly tired and unmotivated to code. So over time, resting once a week actually became apart of the routine — written in the agenda. On the last day out of the week, I would rest my ass off. I’d sleep 9–10 hours, watch TV, lounge around, do yoga, meditate, take long showers, give myself a facial, and do a whole lot of nothing. I’D REST… hardcore. This day of rest seemed to leave me with enough gratitude and motivation to work hard for another six days.
Ever since then, I began to think of rest as work. So many of us think that rest is the opposite of work when in reality, rest is often the prerequisite to quality work. Without adequate rest, we can begin to resent our work…slack off on our work… hate our work.
Counter-intuitively, unplugging, powering-down and allowing ourselves to not do work can often be the most motivating factor in continuing to do it for longer periods of time.
A few days ago, Ty and I rented a tiny house in the woods about an hour and a half away from where we live. We turned off our phones and locked them in the designated “cell phone lock box”. We went to sleep without setting an alarm. We woke up via the sun. We only stayed there for 24 hours, but as we were driving back to the city I realized that though our phones were on, I had no urge to see the notifications I had received over the time that had passed. There was no desire to email people back or respond to my Instagram Direct Messages. I had actually experienced such high quality of a rest day, that right as we returned to the city I felt more motivated than I had in a while. Almost immediately, I began working on the algorithms for the next iterations of our app. Upon returning from our trip, I felt deep gratitude for 2017, and true motivation to jump into 2018 head first.
I had given my mind-machine a good ol’ fashioned power-down, and the effects were more beneficial than even I expected.
If you’re like me and often work too often, and if you’re looking to get motivated, here’s my advice — sit on your ass.
My recommendation is to do it in the middle of the woods, in a tiny house, without your cell phone. 2018 will thank you, and so will your mind-machine.
Felecia
— I’m a coder, designer and podcast host
