Day 37: Learning to be patient

personal

I did absolutely no work on Hide Feed today, and it feels… surprisingly okay.

I hung out with my close friend Shiva today, and he gave me the sage advice that moving to a new city is basically a whole project in itself, so I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for not being able to work at the same level that I have been able to in Austin and back at home in LA. He’s right, of course. I still feel the strong pull towards getting back into the flow of things so that I can make progress again, but I think this whole transition will be a lot smoother if I bring in more patience and self-compassion.

I think I’ll give myself the next few days to really settle in and figure out my new routine and habits here. I’d like to set up the scaffolding that will allow me to slowly transition back into being able to work productively.

Remember the three pillars of sleep, diet, and exercise I wrote about in Day 23? For starters, I’d like to get those down.

  • Sleep: Go to sleep before 11 PM every day, ideally around 9 PM

    I haven’t been sleeping too well the past few nights (lying in bed for an hour or two just waiting for consciousness to cease is so! much! fun!) and waking up after noon is just a terrible feeling.

    I thrive the most when I go to sleep early and wake up early. There’s something just really nice about getting up at or before sunrise and knocking off some big items before your tummy tells you it’s lunch time. Going to sleep early will likely be detrimental to my social life, but I’m okay with that. I’m sure I’ll build close friendships with people here without joining them for drinks (I don’t drink anyway) or having late-night shenanigans. Man, I’m basically a 70-year-old grandpa in a 27-year-old body.

  • Diet: Figure out my eating routine

    Starting next week, it looks like we’ll have a chef prepare us dinner every night so I only need to take care of breakfast and lunch. In Austin, I made myself a protein shake (typical recipe: veggies (kale) + frozen fruits (banana + berries) + soy milk + fats (peanut butter) + protein (20g soy protein + 20g pea protein)) and brought it with me to ABP to have as my lunch, and that was pretty great. I’m thinking of doing something similar, except having that in the morning after working out and then maybe just fasting until dinner. Err… I feel like in reality I’d get too hungry and want to eat something during lunch time, but let’s see. I was able to do intermittent fasting for a while in college (16 hours fasting / 8 hour feeding window) and this is kind of a weird implementation because I’d be eating (breakfast), not eating (during the day), eating (dinner), and then not eating (sleeping), which seems like I’d just get the downsides without any of the upsides of fasting for a long enough period of time for your insulin levels to drop to a meaningful degree.

  • Exercise: Get a gym membership and figure out what routine to run for the next 10 weeks

    I haven’t exercised in a while, and I feel like that’s contributed to my low-ish energy levels lately (although the weather and other changes here are definitely a part of that as well). I brought my climbing shoes because I wanted to continue bouldering, but the nearest bouldering gym is 30 minutes away by subway and costs $150/month. Woe is me. I’m willing to pay, but I don’t think I can justify riding the subway 1 hour every day just to go there. Austin Bouldering Project, oh how I miss thee. There’s a nearby gym that’s an 11 minute walk away (it’s one of those chain gyms that gets mega packed because it’s so cheap — think Planet Fitness), so I’m planning to go there really early in the mornings to avoid the crowds. They open at 5am… if I can pull off waking up and going there at that time every day, I’d be really proud of myself.

In an ideal world, here’s the routine I’d run:

  • 5:00 AM: Wake up, wash up, meditate for 30m
  • 6:00 AM - 7:00 AM: Work out
  • 7:30 AM: Breakfast (protein shake)
  • 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM: Work
  • 6:30 PM: Dinner
  • 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM: Hang out and socialize
  • 9:00 PM: Sleep

Most likely, given a heavy dose of reality and seasonal affective disorder, everything above will be pushed back by like 3 or 4 hours. But I’m going to give it a shot!

I still don’t know whether I’m going to prefer working in the hacker house with everyone around me or going off by myself someplace else. If the work I’m doing doesn’t require sustained focus (marketing, tinkering with design, etc.), I’m fine working in a social environment, but if I’m coding, I’m terrible with having people around me because I become extremely sensitive to interruptions. Maybe I’ll dedicate some days to co-working and some days to working on my own?

There’s also a bigger question of whether I want to use this program to try to find a cofounder to work on something with. I’m sort of split on this. It would be fun to team up with someone and hack on things, but at the same time, I’m really excited to work on Hide Feed and don’t want to get sidetracked, especially before I’ve launched. For now, I’ll just stick with my plan of just working on Hide Feed and see what happens as the program goes on.

Anyway, the lesson for me right now is to just accept reality as it is (i.e. I’m adjusting to a new life in a new place) instead of being stubborn about how productive I should be or would like to be. I’d like to make at least a bit of progress on Hide Feed over the next few days, but if I don’t, that’s okay, too.