Take care of your health
The modern world with all of its technological marvels has taken us to new heights. Who would have thought that in the year 2019 you could get driven home by some random person you’ve never met with the touch of a button from a phone that can be taken anywhere in the world, connecting to an invisible network that talks to the entire globe? Yet with these modern marvels, home life and work life has become more and more entwined. No longer can you go home and your boss has no way of contacting you, no longer can you use the excuse “I can’t do anything more because I’m not in the office”. With mobile phones and laptop computers you can do most jobs from anywhere in the world.
I for one have found it difficult to cut ties with work for the day. Sometimes I can say “Fuck it, I’m done” and go home to my partner and watch Netflix all night. Others it's more of a “I just want to finish this one last thing when I get home”, others it's “This technology is really cool, I should learn some more about it tonight”. These last two situations can be troublesome, not one offs, but when you get in the habit. Now this might just be a personal situation but I have found myself to wear out quicker than others. Recently I was working from 8am to 4:30pm on some stuff at work that I’ve never done before, it was really working me out mentally, all day, I was fighting with the technology, grappling with the new ideas, the strengths, the weaknesses, the limitations of third party SDKs and then I would go home have dinner, go to my study and work on a side project for 3 hours. Once I couldn’t take that anymore I would go through a brutal home workout that brought me to the point of almost vomiting, which was in direct response to reading the book “Can’t hurt me” by David Goggins in which he describes the brutal workouts he performs. Finally I would read and get about 5-6 hours of sleep. Now I’m one to really need their sleep, I can’t just wing it on less than 7 hours sleep for to long, never have I and I don’t think I ever will. So when I did this for 2 weeks straight, I was at the point of exhaustion. Infact instead of doing my usual 8-4:30pm, I left at 4pm. Why did I do that? Well I was so mentally and physically dead that the last 30 mins would have been me trying to keep my eyes open. I took the train home which felt a lot longer than usual, got home, made dinner and then went to bed. I was in bed at 6pm! I felt like a 90 year old man. I woke up at my usual 6:45 am feeling quite a lot better but not a huge improvement, so the next 3 nights I forced myself to get at least 8 hours sleep, most getting almost 9. Within a few days I was starting to feel a whole lot better and I was reducing the amount of coffees I needed from 3 to 1 which was a nice benefit.
Now I know all about health, how you should sleep 8 hours, how you need to eat healthy and exercise at least 30 mins a day, I really do. I eat very well, I will typically get 8 hours of sleep according to my Apple watch and the handy app “Auto Sleep”, I exercise regularly too. The problem that I face, is trying to do to many things outside of work. Instead of spending more time on the weekends on these side projects I’ll spend 3 hours after work then do nothing on the weekend. Instead of doing a 30 minute workout that gets the heart pumping to a moderate level, I’ll workout to the point of almost throwing up. I really struggle to do things at less than 100%, especially when it comes to working out. Yes it’s great that you want to get fit, but no it’s not great that after every workout you feel sick. Yes it’s great that you want to build that app in your spare time but don’t compromise on your sleep. I tend to go through these spurts where I will workout to a moderate level and only do my job from 8-4:30pm. Then I’ll feel extremely unproductive and for a week or a month I’ll do hours more work on side projects or something at work or learning something new and workout to higher and higher levels of intensity. Then I’ll crash and go back to a slow cruise.
My experience is purely my own, i’ve found that I tend to be on the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to working hard, I tend to burnout quicker, and I require more sleep. You might be able to workout longer, live off less sleep and perform all your side projects each night but not everyone can. For a long time this stressed me out, I felt that I wasn’t as productive as I could be, that I was wasting time watching Netflix, I shouldn't be playing video games. Instead I should be researching that next technology, building that side project or workout as hard as I could, in truth it’s still a big struggle. This mentality is good and bad, I spend less time watching TV and more time getting better at my job but if I let it consume me I end up doing the complete opposite, I get so tired that I need to sleep for 12 hours, I put on hold all my side projects and it’s a miracle that I didn’t get sick in this time.
Many of you will be burning the midnight oil, creating a side project that you think will change the world, or you’re just creating something cool on the side. However, you need to keep an eye on your health. You need to sleep as many hours as your body actually needs and don’t say that's 4 hours because the people who can actually get away with that are extremely rare and the chances that you’re one of them is extremely unlikely.
Eat your greens, sleep 8 hours and watch some damn Netflix.