🔬 Weekly experiment 22, 2020

Hey There.

Did your day ever go along those lines:

• You watch Netflix till one o'clock in the morning
• You sleep in and get up around 9:00.
• You get a solid four hours of work.
• You remember that you have to drive your car to the mechanic.
• Great only one hour and a half left for deep work instead of four.

• You go to the motorway and are stuck in traffic for half an hour.
• Then the repair shop misplaces your phone number, and you wait for an extra hour to get notified that your car is finished.
• You have to cancel a meeting because of the one hour delay.
• You drive to your parent's place to pick up a few books. 5 min, right?
• Oh, where did another one hour and a half go?

• You drive home pissed and thinking something else when you almost run over a quite famous and important person.
• You are so shocked to see them that your car dies. Twice.
• You drive to the garage all embarrassed.
• Then you sit in the car in your parking spot.
• Your heart rate is rising.
• You tell the universe to go reproduce itself. OK, something juicier.
• Wait. OK, body common. Not today.
• You pump up a song as loud as you can take a few deep breaths and calm down.
• You have to cancel another meeting.
• You finally get home.

• All you want is to sit down, but you know you need to blow off some steam.
• So you dress up and go for a run.
• You meet one friend. Then another one then the third one.
• You realise you wouldn't meet any of the friends if the day went as you planned. Your mood lifts up a bit.
• You come home and realise that everything is OK.

• You take a hot shower and make dinner.
• You watch a Snowpiercer episode on Netflix.
• You bang out the newsletter.
• You send it to the readers.
• You sleep like a baby.

Well, those were my last 24 hours. Not the worst. But not the best either.

Mental clarity

After days like this, there's only one thing that keeps me sane. My mental clarity system. The above scenario could have played out in a few shittier ways. In the past, it surely would.

Not any more. Over the years, I managed to put a few "security" measures in place. Every time I start feeling anxiety, stress, mood swings, I address those feelings immediately. If they are left unchecked well nothing good happens.

It took me a while to set up my "decompression" process. Depending on how bad my day is, I need some combination of Music, Writing, Sports and Meditation. Sometimes all of them. But if the day is so stressful that I need all four. Well, I try to avoid such stressful days.

Life throws days like this at use all the time. And we can't do much about it. But we can decide how we respond.

I choose to acknowledge how I feel and figure out why. My system helps me stay sane.

Let me know what's your process to cope with crap that life throws at you.

Small weekly experiment at a time 23, 2020

I managed to write every day in the past week. Not about what I intended to but mostly reflections. Worked even better then I hoped. In fact, the reflections really cleared my mind.

This week I'm experimenting with switching to work in the office full time again. We'll see how this goes.

If you find a typo, have a comment or have an idea for improvement shoot me a message. 😉

Till the next weekly experiment.

Ziga

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