Killing Time With a Purpose

As I sit here, I'm waiting for our CI build server to finish building and deploying my code changes.  That reminded me of a productivity trick.  Plan useful tasks for your downtime.

No matter how focused you are during the day, some day you will hit a point where you just don't want to dig into the code.  It's going to happen and if you don't have a plan you will get sucked into a half hour plus of looking at xkcd comics (don't open that unless you have nothing else to do for a while).  Anyway, at some point, you will need to procrastinate and you can procrastinate on something useful if you have a list of simple tasks you need to accomplish (e.g. write a blog post).

Now, you may have a to-do list, but if it only contains the big items you are missing out.  You need to add in some of the small administratrivial tasks that need to get done in a separate list.  These should be things that can take your mind off of the harder problems you will face in the day.

I know this idea is not mine, but I'm not sure which author I'm stealing this from so I'll just guess John Sonmez as most likely he's covered just about everything productivity related.

So sometimes it is best to harness that procrastination monster and put it to good use.  He'll show his ugly head one way or another, so it's really a question of what you are going to put him to work on?  Just another instance of if you fail to plan you plan to fail.  So you can follow up on email you've been putting off or you can scroll endlessly through Facebook or the cheezburger network (same advice as before)

Try Being a Creator Not Just a Consumer

One of the reasons I started to write this blog is to get my mindset shifted from being a consumer to being a creator.  For me, it is hard to share information I've learned because I feel that if I know it must be common knowledge.  That, however, isn't a good rationale not to share for two reasons.  One, my content might be read by someone that doesn't know it.  Two, in life, rarely do we need to be told, but often we need to be reminded.

The target audience for this blog has been software developers, which in the most part is comprised of people that do creation for a living.  We take ideas from our mind and craft it into working software.  We use patterns, frameworks, languages and text as the building materials in shaping tools that people can use.  However, I for one was in the mindset of using my time off to consume.  I watched entertainment that others had created.  I took training, read books and played games that I could consume.

Creation is a much harder task and even at that, it requires that you consume information, but it's your mind weaving together your own connections that make your creation.  It's taking disparate ideas that you've learned and then connecting the key points where they fit together that is exciting.

Now, I personally find blogging much easier for me to do as a creative outlet than I would by starting or even contributing to a software project.  For me stringing together words into an idea is a strength (I'm definitely not the best at it, but I've seen worse).  That doesn't mean that writing is the only way to be a creator.  Some of you might be much more comfortable coding, singing, carving, building or [Fill in the blanking].  It's not the medium that's important it's the direction that matters.  Creating is sharing yourself with the world.

Consuming will take from the world and leave you perhaps a little bit better, but if you don't utilize that consumed information, you are basically stealing from the world.  You (yes YOU!) can contribute to the improvement of the whole world by creating.  If you strictly consume, you make a good customer, but you are wasting the unique talents and insights that you have been given.

 If you are like me you might think that what you have to contribute will never be the best, so why even bother.  First of all, you don't know what your limits are until you actually test them and secondly you don't need to be the best to be a contributor.

For example, if you love Star Wars and you know all of the lines and characters, you know all of the books even.   You've consumed Star Wars to the point that you are a walking Wookieepedia.  That's great, what have you given back to the world of Star Wars fans?  You could actually be an editor for Wookieepedia, or have a fan site or contribute to a Fan club (I'm not talking about trolling a message board either).  The point here is that to be a creator it doesn't need to be for some amazing noble purpose or for some game-changing technology.  It just needs to be something that you are capable of contributing to.

So let me challenge you to try to do something to be a creator.  Make/write/code/create something this week and every week.  If you are wondering about when you have time for that, it's easy, just replace some of the time you are normally consuming with time spent creating.

Self Experiment: Meditation

A good deal of the people that are at the top of their game talk about the need for meditation (link).  I've always thought that meditation was a load of mumbo jumbo, but enough of them talk about it that I figured I should give it a shot.  I decided to try that hippie nonsense for one month.

So for the past month, I've been using the Headspace app to do some guided meditations.  This has been an interesting experience.  I wasn't 100% sure it was doing me any benefit until I missed a session yesterday.  The rest of the day after when I usually did my meditation was filled with anxiety.

I can't speak to all the different types of meditation that can be done, as I've only tried this one style.  So I am only speaking as a very beginner, but I can echo the sentiments of Dan Harris in saying it makes me about 10% Happier.

So, why use an app like headspace when meditation could be completely free, all you need is your body and some air to breath?  That answer is easy. I use Headspace because I'm lazy.  All I have to do is start it and follow the instructions.  The free version is really good, and the paid version has a bunch of different lesson plans and even achievements.  Another thing I really enjoy about headspace is there is not the focus on any religion or crazy poses ( my hip mobility is not at a place where sitting cross-legged is even a remote possibility), it is just straight to the point.  Sit somewhere comfortable and breath, not a lot of ceremonies involved.

My first few times trying meditation were quite challenging.  I'm not a super high energy guy, but my mind is always zipping around.  So sitting quietly I quickly became anxious and felt like this is just a huge waste of time.  As the days passed, though, I started to feel like the time was just flying by and I found it much easier to calm my mind.

I can't say that this has completely changed my life or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure it makes me just a little bit better every day.  As I mentioned earlier, I really noticed a difference on the day that I skipped my session.

Going forward, I'm going to keep this habit.  I plan on setting aside 10 minutes a day for this because I can tell I get more than that back out of it.  So this will go alongside my gratitude practice and minimalist shoes in my list of hippie dippy baloney that I'm now doing.  These small things are an investment of time that actually create more productivity and thus give me more time for things I enjoy.

Now I'm challenging you, give it a shot for 10 days.  The free headspace app comes with 10 free sessions, so you don't have any excuse not to try it.  I'll include some links to well written articles on this so you won't have to just take my word for it.


LifeHack
More from Headspace
Huffington Post

Ugly Truths: The Six-Pack-Tax

Recently, one of my managers who knows that I tend to pay a lot of attention to my diet told me about how he stopped at the grocery store to pick up a salad and a diet soda and all of that cost him almost $10.  My response was simply "That's the six-pack-tax".

Now I am not even close to sporting a six pack, and frankly, it's not really a goal of mine.  The credit for this phrase belongs to someone else. Tim Ferriss coined the term "Six-Pack-Tax" in his book The Four Hour Body (which is a fantastic, but huge book). The Six-Pack-Tax refers to how eating healthy while eating out can be more expensive than eating a Standard American Diet (SAD).


In my experience buying food follows the above image of a triangle.  The food you eat is going to be a point inside that triangle.  The closer you are to one of the corners the farther away you'll be from the others.  You can have a good dose of any two, but it's unlikely you'll get all three.

Sometimes it is warranted that eating better is going to cost you more.  Starches are extremely cheap and restaurants want you to leave feeling full so you will often get a big dose of starch in your meals and it seems like a good "value".  I doubt I need to go into why getting a large fry is not a good decision when it comes to your health.

There are also cases where you know that companies are simply charging more because people who want to eat healthy are willing to pay more than people who don't eat healthily.  This sucks, but it's just economics.  People who are health conscious tend to be less price sensitive.  However, they also tend to be very quality sensitive so it costs more to make a product that is acceptable.

Get Beyond Price Per Calorie

When making these value decisions one should not just evaluate the cost per calorie (macronutrients) but also to factor in what kind of vitamins and minerals are contained in the food (micronutrients).  If you are eating cheap food the odds are good they are extremely micronutrient poor. In fact, most of the micronutrients will probably be in the fortified flour used to make the bun/bread/pasta/pizza crust, those vitamins are not naturally occurring, they are lab vitamins sprinkled on to make sure that people don't get scurvy, rickets etc.

In contrast, if you get the chicken salad, you'll actually be getting the building blocks of your body in their naturally occurring form.  Also, you will be getting a lot more of them per calorie than from the dollar menu options.  This idea of micronutrients per calorie is known as nutrient density.  Nutrient density is really what you should put your money in.  See an awesome Nutrient Density post written by Dr. Sarah Ballentyne, Ph.D.

Whoop Dee Doo Coach, I'm Frugal

The two areas affected most by eating a nutrient dense diet compared to a SAD are short-term productivity and long-term health.  The short-term productivity is where I intend to get your attention.  Everybody knows that in the long haul eating poorly with negatively affect your health, but hey that's a problem for future you.  Current you has bills to pay.

Have you ever come back from BurgerPlace and wanted to fall asleep from 1 pm until 3 pm?  Yeah, that is the immediate drawback of the SAD diet lunch.  You smash a pile of fried starch and a big cup of sugar and for some reason you are tired.   Now you might be saying, "That's just how I am in the afternoon, that's not my diet. Besides, everybody is yawning after lunch".  To which I would say that's why it's called the Standard American Diet.  Just because it's common to see people feeling terrible doesn't mean it is normal, nor is it inevitable.

If you come back from a lunch of reasonable portions, consisting of unprocessed foods (aka real food, not edible food-like products), you will most likely feel refreshed and full of lasting energy and not the half hour from sugar and caffeine kind.  This little transition will turn your post-lunch from survival in a truly productive time.

Of course, there is a workaround for this in that you can cook your own food.  This will allow you to control the ingredients and will take the cost down a whole lot.  We will put that aside for now and assume you are interested in convenience.

With that in mind if you want to have a cheap physique, discount physical health, and budget energy, keep eating SAD (and answer the question How's that working for you?) However, if you are interested in not only your long-term health and aesthetics but especially your immediate productivity, invest in yourself, pay the six-pack-tax, get your energy up and go about kicking some butt.