Just do it.

Bugs In My Evening Routine

Alright everyone! Welcome back to my blog.

This post will be about bugs (and potential solutions) in my evening routine.

What about the morning routine?

My last post was about my morning routine, which is not perfect but working pretty nicely now.

There are still things I could optimize (more on that on the next blog post), but overall, I’m getting from bed to work in about one hour.

I get to my desk motivated and ready to work! It’s already a big change. Let’s focus on the 20% that gives 80% (as cheesy as it sounds).

Bugs and their solutions

Bug 1: there is no trigger for me to stop my workday

I don’t really have a trigger that tells me: “Work is over; it’s time to enjoy life!”

It’s not even about the evening anymore; I just don’t have any boundary between work and my personal life.

Well, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but there was definitely no boundary a year back. Having a girlfriend forces to come back home earlier, but it’s not as good as intrinsically wanting to come earlier and doing so predictably. Instead of hearing “Baby, when are you coming home?”, I’d rather hear “Baby, welcome back home!”.

The situation, right now, is that I keep working and pushing until I stumble upon some limit of the universe:

So yes. It would be way better if I could have a magical trigger that would cause me to close my laptop, and do my evening tasks.

Solution

Picking a time for the trigger

First off, I need to pick a time at which I want to stop working.

I estimate that my evening routine takes around 4 hours to complete. (for now)

I would also like to wake up around 10am. Why 10am? Well, it’s the time at which I feel like I “woke up early” and “made effort”, when waking up at “11am”, I’ll feel like I’m a sloth and it just demotivates me for the day. I would feel even better if I could wake up at 9am, because it’s a single digit, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I need to sleep 9 hours. 8 hours is just a little too low for me. 10 hours is too much.

I’d like to be reading in bed for an hour.

10 - 9 - 1 = 0. Midnight.

I need to go to bed at midnight.

Which means that I need to start my evening routine at 8pm.

I’m pretty sure my evening routine will be faster, but that leaves some time to enjoy life. And, if I do things right, I’ll naturally go to bed earlier, and I’ll be able to shift everything left.

Using a commitment device or not?

I’m still not sure if commitment devices are good at triggers, or if they’re even necessary.

If you have a commitment device forcing you to get off work, it might work, but it might be a bit too inflexible.

I tried to use Beeminder to force myself to do stuff at certain times, and I’m pretty sure that it contributed to my burnout.

Like in medicine, it’s better to start with the least risky fix.

So, for now, no Beeminder, no Forfeit, no anything.

Instead: pure willpower.

A simple alarm

A simple alarm that rings on my wristwatch simply doesn’t work.

Maybe it didn’t work because I didn’t write a shiny blog post that goes with it.

But truth is, it didn’t work. I’d be surprised if it works in the future.

So, I’ll skip it for now.

A calendar event

I’m currently running [Asahi Linux]1 on a MacBook.

For emails and calendar, I’m using [Thunderbird]2. Don’t listen to the naysayers, Thunderbird is really good. Yes, it’s a bit buggy at times, but otherwise, it works pretty well.

One peculiar thing about it is the way that calendar alerts are implemented; instead of being a nice little notification in the corner of the screen, it pops a big window that totally interrupts you when it appears.

I want to try this, because I’ll listen to it, since it’s a new thing.

My brain is not used to snoozing it as much as my watch.

Forfeit and Beeminder

Yes, I said “no commitment devices”… This section is for when simple triggers don’t work anymore.

At some point, I’m going to be deep into some work and ignore the Thunderbird calendar alert. It’s fine. I’m prepared for it.

When I reach that point, I will have the habit inside me already, so using a commitment device won’t be too risky. The idea is to teach myself how to behave well first, and then use a commitment device to engrave the behavior over the long term, rather than the opposite. Or use the commitment device as a reminder shot (“hey, remember how it feels to end your day early, come back home to a happy girlfriend, get to sleep early, wake up early…, etc.”)

I could try Forfeit (never used it). Or I could try Beeminder.

I’m more inclined towards using Beeminder because I would like to use my phone as little as possible, since exposure to it dramatically increases my chance of getting stuck on Instagram, Hacker News, YouTube, etc.

I could create a script on my computer that is designed to run after work; something that close all the windows, starts updating the system, starts qBittorrent to seed some movies, starts backups…

I could create a keybinding to start this script. A complex one, that requires two hands, to make it a ritual. :)

Bug 2: I get stuck scrolling on my phone

I’m generally low-energy. I don’t feel like doing stuff. So when I come back home, my default action is to sit down, and open my phone.

(then I get stuck on Instagram, Hacker—- you get it.)

Solution

My solution in the morning was to have a dedicated post-it to put on my phone before going to sleep, that forces me to do some stuff. The idea is that the post-it puts me on a right productive track. I don’t require myself to go to work, but I might as well, since my bag is ready, I’m dressed up and I did some chores…

I could try and do the same thing. When I get home from work, I’ll put a special post-it on my phone that tells me to do this (in any order):

Once I did this, I’m allowed to use my phone. Probably, I’m going to start cooking by myself.

The “do one chore” will likely be “cleaning the dishes” or “cooking food”.

I’m not sure about taking a shower so early (I like to take a shower just before going to sleep…)

But I can try. I just feel dirty when I come home, and I don’t feel like doing anything unless I’m clean.

But if I’m clean, I don’t feel like doing anything because I’ll become dirty…

Okay, I’ll change it to something else:

I noticed that the background music is really good to get me in a good mood. Easy listening stuff, the sound of rain or the sound of portable heaters…

… but once I finish the post-it, I might start using my phone and get stuck there again.

I could try to nudge myself to use my e-reader instead. Forcing myself to read one page. Just like “hey, remember, it feels good to read”.

So, the final list:

I’ll try it out tonight!

Actions to take

Here is what I need to do:

  1. https://asahilinux.org/ ↩︎

  2. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ ↩︎

  3. https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev/summary ↩︎

#morning_routine