Ask IH: How do you reset your mind?
Happy New Year folks!
What are your hacks to reset your mind to work on your company?
Let's say you want to spend the next two hours on the sales strategy or update the VC deck after coming back from your day job. How do you stop the inner chatter and bring your focus to what's important?
A run always helps me. Or if it is a day I don't run, then listening to some entrepreneurial podcast on the bike on my way home usually makes me forget about work and start dreaming entrepreneurial dreams :)
Besides the physical break ideas (yoga/walking dog for me), I take a little time to read articles generally related to what I'm mentally switching to. For me, I'll read some design/usability article before switching from coding to more UX intensive tasks.
If you really have to reset your mind and it takes some mental efforts, that means you need to have a rest. Anything like walking outside or spending time with friends and family will work just fine. Otherwise, if you force yourself too often it will hit hard later with a burnout.
Pretty hard question. Sometimes you'll able to do it, sometimes you just wont.
One thing that is working for me right now (don't laugh) is pilates. I've to concentrate in my respiration, and in many muscle groups. All the stress and inner dialogue get pushed away 10 minutes into the class.
I recommend you to try it. Or maybe something like yoga or meditation.
PS: I'm the typical coder with bad form, and never really did much fitness. So pilates is both a way to improve my body, and a hack to deal with stress and recharge energy for my sideproject
Appreciate your honest answers.
Like many of the other commenters, having a set time for physical activity to delineate between large mental-type-blocks has done wonders for my overall mood, productivity and health.
I basically do my business maintenance/contract developer work till about 2pm, then immediately put on my workout clothes and go biking/bouldering/running/ or lifting.
The physical activity helps get me out of my mind and into my body and resets me to jump in to a different type of mental tasks focusing on new ideas/builds in the afternoon.
I've started of I've just recently started doing this (last 4 weeks) and it's been the most beneficial habit building I've attempted.
For me, going for a 15 minute walk (without a phone) helps me take a step back to think and process. I find that when I get back, I'm much more focused instead of letting my monkey mind take over!
I go for a long walk, drive, or go to Target and surround myself with people ;)
I love the long walks as well, pretty hard to do in the winters.
When my "workday" ends, I'll dump out my current thoughts and next tasks into a sticky note, then reset my machine and go for a walk. By the time I get back I'm looking at a blank desktop again, and the reassurance that I haven't lost any momentum on the workday stuff - it's all there in the note for the next morning.
That's pretty good. Will give it a try and see if it works for me.
I always make sure to schedule my time in bursts - with lots of planned breaks! That way, if I can get myself to do 30 minutes of work, I reward myself with 5 minutes of break. This keeps my time frames short enough that I can say to myself, "Okay, there's a break in 12 minutes. That's no time at all!"
It really helps me focus on my work.
Bike ride!
Making sure, you are not disrupted. Not by phone and not in real life. This relaxes me and frees energy.
Meditation and drone flying both work well. Meditation basically teaches you how to quieten your mind. Drone flying is a cognitively difficult skill so you can't really think about anything else while you are doing it.
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