Episode 91: Be Productive, Prevent Burnout

Transcript

i've been playing a lot of music recently so there might be a few music and well specifically
guitar related metaphors that pop up in some of these coming episodes i don't know why music is
like this for me but it's it's long been a thing for me where throughout a good chunk of my i mean
at this point the majority of my life i i will play guitar and music very consistently for
maybe a couple years and then i'll take like a a year or two off and i'll play again for a couple
years a year or two off i don't know why that like like playing guitar specifically seems to
fall into this kind of pattern for me but it does so anyway i i've been back it's been great to to
play some music again so i've been really really happy doing that but that's not really what this
is about what it got me thinking about was really and this is really more of a a productivity tip
and i'm going to give a couple examples of what i'm talking about
one of which just happens to be again the the guitar and the music that i'm playing
i tend to play guitar in three contexts mostly my favorite of which is to play with other people
like i love like and when i get together to play with other people it's typically like jam bandy kind
of stuff or like jazzy kind of stuff or whatever that's just the kind of music that i like playing
with people but outside of that setting at home like when i'm just playing on my own there's usually
kind of two contexts one is when i sit down to intentionally play and i'll sit with my my amp
and i'll be working on something very specific and i kind of have the whole setup i'm sitting in a chair
and like i'm i'm there to play guitar the other context and the one i'm going to talk about most here
is there's another context in which i play where i'll sit on the couch usually not plugged in at all
even though i'm playing like electric guitar and i'll just be you know running through fingerings
or kind of absent-mindedly playing or whatever and usually what i'm doing that i do sit down initially
and i have something specific that i'm either practicing or because sometimes you know what
you're practicing is just getting the fingering down and getting faster at something you're not
really trying to hear the sounds so much as you're just trying to mechanically get the fingering down
and and that's that's a great that's been a good kind of a good way to do that and i'll sit down and
maybe i'll start by doing that and then in years past or really over and over again throughout my
playing history not necessarily during the course of a single session of doing that but over the course
of time like i said i will often play guitar very solidly for like two three years and as i get into
that two three years that couch time that couch practice time often just becomes what what we would
call noodling which is that you're not i'm not necessarily sitting down to practice anything in
particular i just kind of sit down pick up the guitar and run through like nonsense in my fingers
right like i'm not i'm not trying to necessarily make much of anything musical i'm not working on a tune
i'm literally just playing the guitar in the most bass way possible of just i don't know maybe i'm
running through scales maybe i'm running through half scale it doesn't matter like it's just it's just
noodling around on nothing and you know if you look into this like most guitar players will tell you
that this isn't a particularly good thing because it makes you feel like you're practicing right it makes
you feel like you're doing something with your instrument when in reality what you're probably
doing is it's almost like doom scrolling right it's like you're kind of shutting your brain off
you're pretending you're doing something useful but if anything you're probably just building bad
habits right because you're not let's say you're playing electric guitar right you're not plugged into
anything so you can't really tell how the guitar is responding all that well you can you can hear it
but there's any guitarist will tell you there's a big difference between playing unplugged and the
nuances you hear there versus you know plugging into something and actually hearing what it really sounds
like when you've amplified the sound but also you're probably just running through stuff not paying
much attention making mistakes probably all over the place and not really caring about it
this is often done like i'm you know again i'm sitting and playing on the couch the reason i'm often
doing this because i'm sitting there like watching a tv show or something or at least passively watching
a tv show and i decide i'm going to noodle on a guitar it's usually just reinforcing bad habits
unless you're very careful to be concentrating on it so you kind of get i would kind of often get into
this pattern you know at first it starts with all good intentions like you know just sitting down on the
couch a little bit extra practicing working through some things or whatever and then as day after day
after day rolls around eventually this becomes habit it's like you just pick up your guitar and you
noodle around on it and then you feel like you're practicing but did you really practice that day or
not or did you just sit around around and noodle on the couch it's this sort of feeling that you're
doing something but you're not really doing anything a long time ago i noticed this was something else
in my life too which was when i was a bit younger and working on a lot of um like website projects
and stuff you know long before the days of ai coding and stuff where you would be sitting down
and coding your own stuff and this would be similar where a lot of times i'd be very productive
let's say i was doing like a client like client work or i was working actually the better example is
let's say i was working on a side project right or a project of my own like something that i
am creatively interested in creating creatively creating that's a weird sentence anyway
it would start out with all good intentions right i would sit on the couch
and just because it was more comfortable than sitting in a chair i'd have my laptop and i work on my
project and then day after day after day maybe some days you're a little tired or i'm a little tired or
i don't necessarily know what i'm doing or i don't have a next step and i just it became a habit to
just pick up a laptop and just open the screen and start like almost pretending that i'm doing
something useful and sometimes that would mean that i'm just wasting time looking at websites or
whatever and sometimes it would mean that i'm opening my code editor and then just kind of
mindlessly looking at files and like changing random formatting options like there i can't tell
you how many times i've sat and looked at a python file and been like hmm there really should be a
blank line here i'd add the blank line and like a day later i'd come back and be like hmm i don't
like that blank line delete the blank line it's like playing with fonts and margins and like word
or something just totally pointless activity right they but it make it would make me feel like i was
doing something but i wasn't both of these cases are very parallel cases to me where where it's like
or very synonymous cases i should say where in both of these cases well a they both start off
good intentions right in the beginning of these kind of things there is something productive being
done but day after day it kind of fades and just becomes this like thing where you kind of feel like
you're getting something done but you're not actually the other thing that's common between them
is that i think both of these items burn a person out on the thing right so if every day every time
because because it becomes um an association where when you sit down on the couch you start to feel
like you should be doing one of those things for me at least right i would sit down at the couch i
would feel like oh i should pick up my laptop and do something so what do i do i pick up a laptop and
then i don't do anything of value um so it kind of it's almost like and that is a path to burning out
on whatever it is you're doing and i would say in both of these cases that happens to me sometimes
where like because you get in this mindset of like oh i'm sitting on the couch i should really be doing
something but the the other commonality and this is the thing that i kind of wanted to to say because
maybe you have your own examples of this sort of thing where you have things in your life where you
you kind of sit down and almost go through the motions and maybe it makes you feel like you're
doing something in the moment but when you look back at it later you're like i'm not really
accomplishing anything in fact i'm probably just creating bad habits so i've started in both of
these cases because i'm also i'm now i am once again in a point in my life where i'm actually doing
both of these things right i am i have a number of sort of side project client work web project things
that i'm doing for some for myself and some for other people and i'm playing a lot of music again
now i don't want to completely cut out sitting down on the couch and doing these things
because it's comfortable right like i i like sitting on the couch and getting some work done
it's more comfortable than sitting in a chair and it's a little more a little less formal and
you know it's nice to sit down and even if not paying much attention to like a show on tv or
whatever it's kind of nice to be in the same space as either my kids or my wife or whatever
and again when i'm when i'm when i'm concentrating on these things even if there are other things going
on around me it does tend to be productive time for me what it's more about is that day by day by day
the productivity erodes away and just sort of go through the motion sorts of activities take over
so i've begun to ask myself this question whenever i reach for and in the last year or so this has
mostly been related to i've been very conscious about doing this when i go to reach for a laptop
while sitting on the couch i ask myself before if i find myself reaching for that laptop i ask myself
do i have something specific that i'm gonna do right now it's like a mental check and i've started
to do this with the guitar as well if i go to sit down on the couch and i go to grab my guitar
i ask myself is there something specific that i want to practice right now and in both of those cases
if i can't think of anything right if the answer is no if the answer is i don't actually have i don't
actually have any specific work i'm trying to do for a client or i i don't have a specific
riff or lick or scale or whatever that that i'm trying to get my get under my fingers better with
the guitar then i just don't pick up the thing and it's become a nice mental check because it has begun
to separate out time where i just want to sit and relax and do nothing versus the time that it would
actually be productive to pick up one of these things and work with it and occasionally it has
been an instance where i ask myself that question and maybe i didn't have the answer to it immediately
but then after like five seconds of thinking i'm like oh you know what i could do this right now
like i've got the energy to do this let's do this and so on all fronts i think that asking yourself
this question if you have things like this where you find that you you sort of habitually start doing
things and going through the motions and then find that you burn out over time because you're you're
it's it's like doing a lot of running in place right sure you're running but you're not getting
anywhere and that's how both of these things sometimes are for me and then that really inevitably
leads to potential burnout and then you end up dropping the thing you like right like i i love
playing music but i think that over the years some of what has um you know played into me not
consistently doing it day in and day out all the time is because sometimes i've gotten into this
habit of just like the practice is just becomes boring because it's just going through the motions
i'm not really learning anything i'm pretending i'm doing stuff but i'm not really and it just
burns up time and brain cycles and similarly with doing client work like i love doing client work
and and kind of having some side projects and stuff that i'm working with code and all that kind of
stuff but if every time you sit down on the couch you feel like you have to grab your laptop as opposed
to wanting to grab your laptop because you know there's something specific to do those are two very
different mindsets so if you have things that are like this if any of this sounds familiar
try it try building in that mental check like because there's a clear like from a behavioral
psychology standpoint there is a clear checkpoint in there because i'm reaching for the object
right so i if i can build in i reach for my laptop on the couch right it's a very specific trigger
or i reach for my laptop or i reach for my guitar on the couch i ask my it's a great checkpoint
to just ask do i have something specific to do with this and if i do that's a great starting point
to actually get that thing done and if i don't that's a great reason to not pick it up right then
and just relax instead
you