A while ago, I caught a cold and was sick for a few days. And the weirdest thing happened…
Because as programmers, most of what we do every day is in our mind. Right? Not like an athlete, where you have to use your entire body. And an athlete must also use his mind, of course. But it is not the same as for us. To create code, to do our work, we must be able to concentrate… keeping an inner focus.
We develop this skill over time. So we get good at it, without even realizing it.
It turns out that when I have the flu or a bad cold or something like that, one of the first things to dull is my sharp mental capacity. My powers of concentration, of creative focus.
Code while sick? Fugged about it.
me they can get over that with sheer willpower, a little… but I’ve mostly come to accept that when I get sick, I’ll just spend a few days watching movies, sleeping a lot, and mindlessly jumping online.
But that’s okay: once I recover, my mind snaps back hard.
All of this reminds me of our most important resource these days…
And it’s not money, of course. I thought it IS a valuable resource.
It’s time? Not currently. I do not think so
In my arrogant and pushy opinion, there is another resource even more valuable than your time:
Your attention.
Especially in today’s world. Where almost everything around you is carefully designed, tested, and fully optimized to capture your attention…whether you like it or not.
You know exactly what I mean.
So the big secret to being massively successful in today’s world… in my bold, blatantly unhumbled and shameless opinion… lies in how well you can win this battle for your mind. The battle for your most precious resource of all: your attention.
This has to do with programming a lot, doesn’t it?
So wherever you are right now, I want you to stop for a moment…
And think about what you invested your attention in today or yesterday.
If you had that day to do over again, would you have invested your attention in the same things? Is there something you would have preferred not to pay attention to?
Not paying attention is a skill you can get better at. So if there was something that caught your attention, it wasn’t worth it…ask yourself how you can keep your attention on more important things, the next time it happens.
I’ve found that the better I get at not allowing outside forces to hijack my attention, the better I get at many things, but coding in particular. I’m curious to know if the same thing happens to you.