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Those days you don't feel like working

This is where I'd normally post the one hour saas daily update.

However yesterday I didn't really feel like working, it was a bit of a stressful day and thinking about uptime monitoring wasn't very appealing.

However I'm in the middle of this challenge and felt like I should push through and get stuff done. I sat down at my laptop with the intention of doing so.

I started the clock on the hour of work, and immediately knew I wouldn't get much done if I sat here for hour and tried to "get stuff done".

So what to do?

Find something fun to do

This weekend I tweeted about Podcastindex

I wasn't sure I was going to have the time to integrate Podcastindex into the Podcast Ping MVP, but here I was looking for something I wanted to do, not something I had to do.

So today I did something I wanted to do, and integrated Podcastindex!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-E8uG5AC3c

I knew there would be days where I didn't want to work, and it would have been ok to just skip a day, but it feels good to make progress even if it's not on a core feature.

Doing this work actually energized me, and by the end of the hour I was feeling better and had I not used-up my time I probably wouldn't have got back to building those core features I had originally planned on.

Breaks are ok but making progress is better, especially when you're doing stuff you want to do.

Would love to know how you handle these kinds of days.

  1. 2

    Motivation is a scarce resource. Makes sense to optimize for it.

  2. 2

    Thanks for sharing, @mubashariqbal! I'm having one of those days as we speak. I usually just attempt to "power-thru"; which typically leads to hours of scrolling through LinkedIn, IH's, Slack and refreshing my email client (not good).

    At some point, I usually just snap out of it and am able to get something done, but usually when I'm in this mode, I don't have any desire to work on a side-project/something creative either. I think I punish myself, mentally, so doing something "fun" is no longer "fun"...

    SO, I try and look for low input tasks so that I can, as you said, make progress.

    🤷‍♀️

    1. 2

      Definitely, I've always found a change of scenery helps when I get into a funk like that. Going for a short walk or going to work from a coffee shop (pre-covid!) was great.

      For my challenge when I have a such a short window to get work done, it's hard to just push thru to make progress, I know I won't be making best use of my time, and that makes the situation worse.

      At the end of the day I think we just have to accept that we can't be 100% productive all the time, and that's normal.

      1. 2

        Good tips! Acceptance is key.. something I need to improve upon

  3. 2

    I know how this feels. Sending lots of love !

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