Sleep is coming

Recently I have noticed a trend. I tell myself that I want to finish 3 hrs / 2 hrs of undisturbed work per day w.r.t blogging/researching. I push so hard to start as early as I can. This means I leave work early, come home fast, eat quickly and sit on my desk. All this with the hope of clocking the hrs quickly and have enough time to chill after, and maybe even sleep early.

I see that I feel really really sleepy within the first half hour. It’s just not possible to sit on the desk anymore, so I go to the bed and lye down and write. And sure enough within minutes I am off to sleep. I hate myself for doing it. Then nothing goes according to plan. And I happen to feel sad. This has happened on multiple days in the recent past.

I suspect that I treat this blogging thing, as a hard core chore. I put so much pressure on myself to complete 3 or 2 hrs per day and without taking breaks, so that I can chill later. I set a timer of 3 hrs straight. I keep hoping to not take a break. I constantly think about the delay that happens as a result of the break. Finishing this chore as early as I can seems to be the goal. I see that I am not trying to optimize for work quality, but just amount of hrs clocked in the shortest amount of time, whether or not I actually did work. I want to squeeze what ever stray time there is and push myself to start early and finish early.

Its not hard for me to work long hrs. I do it every single day. I work atleast 8 hrs for the one that feeds me, 5 days a week. During my thesis I pretty much used to keep crushing my brain as much as I could throughout the day and 7 days a week even. When I am working on my something like python, I can keep working, until I finish getting something to work. Why is this different?

Could it be the way I go about the task? For example, while writing, I don’t write continuously, I keep thinking, and then realize it is hard. I don’t keep writing until I make the first bad version as PG says. Instead I keep thinking of how everything is connected, try to solve it all in my head. I keep trying to do the thinking in my head and put only the fine points. I fail, I suck, I sleep?

The tension, the no-breaks-unreal-attitude, the resistance when I switch on the timer, the way I go about the task, all seem to be lovely contenders of causing this sleep, alongside working in a closed room to avoid smoke?

The worst part is, I think this doesn’t allow me to sleep by 12, despite having eaten at 6. It takes until 2 am for me to sleep.

What would I do differently?

Well what I want to do different is that, I want to lessen the pressure, not push myself to the point that I have to not waste even a single second. Start when I can, easily. Don’t force yourself. You want to think clearly. You want to generate ideas. Thats the main goal, not clocking x hours of “work”. Even If I do less hours it is fine. The quality of work needs to be there. Stop behaving as though this is a chore. I am willing to do this as even the last activity of the day. It’s fine. Not like I have to watch 1 hr of youtube at the end of the day to finish.

The PG way

While writing this essay I came across PG’s page, which discusses about how to write. PG says, make a 1st BAD VERSION as quickly as possible. Recently I find myself thinking a lot and then giving up in my head that I can’t think of anything coherent. But with the PG way I hope to get somewhere.

The most important take aways for me from PG’s writing is this post, for I see myself not doing exactly as given in the post. And I suspect that these are also the ones that are fucking me.

  1. Write a first bad version as quickly as you can:
    I remember an STM in the past saying, quantity over quality. First comes quantity and then quality or something like that.

  2. Rewrite, over and over again:

This post, PG claims to have taken 67 minutes to write. 23 minutes writing and 44 minutes rewriting. If PG’s level is this, then I should probably being doing atleast something similar?

  1. Begin by re-reading when you restart.

  2. Trying to sound impressive:
    Fuck me… The number of times I have tried that. I wan’t to show the audience that I have researched. Fuck that. Writing is not about being impressive, its about generating and containing and clarifying ideas. Focus more on writing. An example is the time that I actually tried to put in a batman dialogue and forcefully spent time on making a meaning out of it. Waste of time. Trust your content more, I guess.

  3. Do not hesitate to cut:
    Sometimes I spend time on writing something and hesitate to cut it out, for stupid reasons like ‘I just spent time on it’ and ‘it adds as number of words’, ‘It occupies space and Space is good’. Screw that.

  4. Expect 80% of the ideas to happen while writing: Trust in writing, remove that shoulder baggage and sit in front of the computer and start writing. Keep writing. Once you see an ending grab it and start over again with editing or rewriting. PG says

rewrite it over and over again.

Its more about doing, and not stressing and being realistic. Play basketball, Go for a run. Come back and then write. It’s okay. It really is.

Summary

I want to try for the next week to relax, not put so much pressure as I do to myself, to clock hours as quickly as possible. Keep track of the amount of time I spend. I will be realistic. For example, I will plan atleast a 15 min break every hour. If I loose some time, unexpectedly, I will forgive myself. I will try going outside and taking some fresh air while writing.

I will keep in mind to not try to sound impressive and to not hesitate to cut.

P.S Today has been different already. But maybe because this essay was not really hard thinking. I guess the one thing to check is if I am still feeling sleepy in the coming days, if I am still putting pressure on myself, Is it so important to finish work and chill, that I don’t do exactly that? Cant I just chill and then continue work?

Adutha murai varai! This post took 2 hrs in total, with approximately half an hour of writing I think Agent18

Keepint track

18-july 2017:
Occational yawning but nothing more. Slept by 12:30.

19-july 2017: Sofar so good, Occational yawning but nothing like what I had