July 7th, 2020 | Being present

I have a hard time being present. I catch myself thinking about my side projects even when I'm out with friends and supposed to unwind.

This year I've gotten a lot better at it. Here's why.

My full time job enforced me to compress the amount of time I can work on my own things. It used to be all day every day - now it's two to three hours every morning. That's it.

That made me work on what's important. If you have only two hours to work per day, designing your logo for two hours in the morning isn't really what you call a needle mover. 

But doing the three most important things that have to be done? Yes. 1-2-3. Boom, boom, boom. Done. Goodbye.

That has become a habit for me and I'm glad. No more "pretend work", just staying busy all day doing fuck all. Even when I have the whole day free now, I do the few important tasks of the day and I honestly can't see why I should work more. I'm good.

On example is today. I had the day off at work. The last months we were designing and building a Covid tracking/monitoring system for the UK Army and some controlled clinical trials in Stanford.
Because deadlines were tight, we worked on Easter Monday and on Labor day, so they gave us this monday off.

Anyway, I worked in the morning, did the things I wanted to do in three hours and then went out shopping with my girlfriend in downtown Milan. No guilt at all. None.

I was very impressed. But at the same time this should be normal, not something admirable.

As Alan Watts said: "Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun".

Having stress due to a fucking side project while I'm in my 20s is unacceptable.

Unacceptable.

🐦 Twitter/X💼 LinkedIn🎥 YouTube

✉️ Newsletter🔊 Podcast📸 Instagram