Beyond Writing Code

Category: mindfulness

You know what doesn’t help overcome resistance?
“So, I put a lot of pressure on myself. All the time.”

My husband stared at me. “Yes,” he said emphatically, as if I’d just pointed out that ice is cold or nighttime is dark.

Nighttime is dark, who knew? Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Okaaay, I guess the pressure I put on myself is a known fact here in our house. Not just for work or writing, I mean for everything. Even on the weekends, lately, I feel pressured to make the best use of my time, get things done that aren’t work-related.

Sheesh, I just started taking a workshop to improve the quality of my sleep. And I can already feel myself ramping up to put pressure on myself to sleep better.

As if that will help.

Resistance is arising

Resistance is coming up a lot for me lately. I sit down in the morning on a weekday, intending to write.

Instead, my motivation to write goes completely out the window. The last thing I want to do is write.

So instead, I listen to an audio book. Or I draw. Or I get sidetracked by something shiny. Anything but writing. Anything that isn’t on my giant to-do list.

Motivation then returns sometime later, when I’m planning to do something else. For example, it might show up after 8 pm on a Monday night, when I really ought to be doing some of those getting-ready-for-sleep practices. [looking at clock warily]

Well, what’s an efficient, organized, driven person to do when faced with this unwillingness to just get to work already? Clearly I should figure out what’s blocking me and put even more pressure on myself to get past the block.

No. Turning up the pressure when I’m not getting stuff done sounds like it should work. But it absolutely doesn’t.

Why doesn’t pressure overcome resistance?

When I turn up the pressure, all I’m doing is pressing against the resistance that has come up. And when that resistance encounters pressure, does the pressure overcome the resistance? Does it just decide that my motivated self should prevail and yield?

Of course not. Instead, the resistance just increases. It’s getting pushed more, so it pushes back more.

Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash

The resistance is arising because the pressure is too much.

How do I know? Because in moments like this, when there’s no pressure to write, the words just flow.

What helps, then?

I’m not sure what will help, honestly. But it isn’t turning up the pressure.
- I’m thinking self-compassion is probably a good start.
- Setting smaller goals for the day.
- Acknowledging the things I’m getting done that aren’t writing.
After all, I didn’t quit my job only to write a book. I also intend to use the time to focus on my health and wellbeing: cooking more meals at home, getting outside for walks regularly, clearing my space of clutter, managing stress, and yes, sleeping better.

I’m definitely making progress in those areas.

Let’s see if taking some of the pressure off helps me return to the joy of writing, rather than pushing myself into the chore of writing.
2025-07-21
House sparrows keep life from going by too fast

How do we keep each day from blending in with all the others? Why does it seem like time passes by so quickly?

It was beautiful out this morning. I drove my husband to his eye exam, and while I was waiting, I found a cafe nearby with outdoor seating in the shade. Perfect. Chai and pastries acquired, I set up my laptop at a tiny table on the patio.

I nibbled on a tomato, mozzarella, and basil bialy and eavesdropped on a pair of cyclists at the next table over.

“Is that your racing bike?”

“Yeah, I race with that.”

“Why’d you take your racing bike for a ride with me??”

That’s when I noticed that I was being watched. She was staring at me from surprisingly close by on the sidewalk. She moved between me and my cafe neighbors’ bikes. I wondered if she might take a seat at my table.

For a split second, I worried that she might make a grab at my bag of pastries. Unlikely, of course, as she was hardly the size of a pastry herself.

“Nice pastry you got there.” Photo by Jay Alexander on Unsplash

I put the rest of the bialy back in the bag and took out the lemon poppy seed scone to nibble on next. “I see you,” I said to the curious sparrow, as a warning. Just in case she got any ideas. I folded the top of the bag of pastries a little more.

I’ve heard that seagulls have been known to take food right from people. Not just “hop up to the beach blanket and grab a cookie while you’re not looking.” Mr. or Ms. Steal-Your-Fries will saunter across the picnic table and pull that half a sandwich right out of your hand.

Sheesh. I have never had this happen to me. I hope it remains the stuff of legend.

But I can attest that seagulls are capable of grabbing something that size. While walking in Boston early one morning, I did a double-take when I saw a seagull fly past me with a huge bagel in its beak. A minute later, I spotted a forlorn bag of at least a dozen bagels, sitting by the sidewalk on Atlantic Ave, torn open. (The seagull may have been thinking “Best. Day. Ever,” but unfortunately bread is not good for birds. Also, clearly the bag of bagels didn’t make it to its destination, but why not? What happened here…)

House sparrows are much smaller than seagulls, though. Taking on humans directly would be daunting, and it’s a lot harder to fly off with something twice their size. So instead, they hop around by the cafe tables, hoping we’ll drop a crumb they can scavenge.

A few minutes later I saw another house sparrow — a male, they look like they have a little beard — doing the same thing. There was a little flock of tiny winged cafe regulars, patrolling the grounds, keeping an eye on the humans in case we got careless with our baked goods.

“Fruit and seed? Surely that lemon poppy scone is for me.” Photo by Maria Hossmar on Unsplash

Capturing little moments, like being spied on by a posse of sparrows on a cafe patio, or watching a seagull fly through Boston with a bagel, may be part of how we keep life from passing us by.

Earlier in my adult life, I believed that the sense of time going faster had to do with time being perceived as a portion of one’s life. When you’re only six years old, and maybe you only remember as far back as age four, any given summer is something like an eighth of your whole life. It’s huge! But as you get older, it’s a smaller percentage of your experience.

Now I’m not so sure that’s right. It may be more of a function of where we place our attention. If we’re doing the same things, day in and day out, no moments stand out in our memories. I was happy to take my husband to his appointment in part because it involved going somewhere different from my usual places. There was potential in it for a moment that would stand out.

And capturing those moments helps, too. We might capture them in words, as I do here; in drawings, as Nishant Jain does with Sneaky Art; in videos, like Cesar Kuriyama does in One second every day; or in other ways, maybe photos or music.

My husband and I started a habit of writing down when we make a memory, or when something makes us laugh. We note it on a slip of paper and put it in a jar. At the start of a new year, we can review the past year. I’m holding onto them, so we can review previous years too.

The book Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks, recommends a practice he calls “homework for life.” At the end of each day, write down any stories you remember from your day, as well as any other stories that come to mind. Not the whole story, just a few words to help you remember it. “Early morning seagull with giant bagel,” perhaps.

He says that doing this has slowed down his life so that not everything goes by in a blur, with all the days blending together. I’d like to try this as a habit and see if it does the same for me.

And that’s my wish for you, and for me: may our lives not go by in a blur. That and not getting our food stolen by birds.

What helps time slow down for you?

2025-06-30
Recognize your wall

I’m not saying it’s time to go stare at the wall. Well, maybe I am.

Maybe you’ve been firefighting most of the day, one urgent situation after another popping up like ads on top of a recipe blog. Perhaps it’s been an endless stream of meetings. Or maybe you’ve been working heads-down for hours (lucky you!), writing code for some huge project. Whatever the situation, it’s now late in the day, you’re dragging… but you’re trying to get “just one more thing” done before you dash out the door.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

First of all, is it just me, or is there always “just one more thing” immediately after that “one more thing” you’re working on? An endless stream of what seem at the time like final tasks, each one inspiring the need for the next…

Secondly, let’s take a good look at how well you’re accomplishing that “one more thing.” Mmm hmm.

I can hear some of you now, saying, “Oh come on, I can totally code for 13 hours straight! My code at 8pm is just as good as my code at 8am.” I hear it because I’ve said similar things in the past. And I’m not here to suggest that you’re wrong. I mean, you’re probably wrong. But who knows, maybe your ability to code for long hours is truly exceptional. 🏅

I am here to suggest that you start to learn the signals that tell you when you are simply Done Coding For The Day, regardless of what the clock says or how long you’ve been at it. In other words, learn how to recognize when you’ve hit a wall. Here are some warning signs to watch for.

You’re forgetting stuff

You spend an hour debugging your code, only to find out that you’d assigned a variable the value "INSERT_REAL_VALUE HERE" instead of the correct value. You meant to go look up said real value and add it before committing that code. You forgot. Looking up the value takes you 20 seconds. Well, there’s an hour you won’t get back.

Or you send your boss an email about a spreadsheet, but you forget to attach the spreadsheet. You send a second email with the attachment, forgetting there are actually TWO spreadsheets you need to send. You send the second attachment. Two minutes later, you remember that you never added this morning’s data to the first spreadsheet…

You’re making familiar mistakes

Even though I’ve been using mostly JavaScript for several years now, other languages I’ve used sometimes still make an unwanted guest appearance.

For example: when I, yet again, use contains() on an array in JavaScript. JavaScript, yet again, reminds me that it doesn’t know what I’m talking about. It’s includes() that I want, not contains().

I have to look that up, every time. I had to look it up for this article. For me, the warning sign is not forgetting the function name. The warning sign is forgetting to go look up the function name.

You’re making newbie mistakes

If you’re a newbie, making newbie mistakes is normal! Nothing to see here. You can move on to the next section.

If you’ve been in this field a while, though, and you’re catching yourself using = (assignment) when you mean === (strict equals), for example… it might be time to step away from the keyboard.

You’ve gone way off course

Your code worked fine at around 4pm. You were just trying to fix one little piece of one little unit test. Now it’s several hours later, and not only have you not fixed your unit test, you have broken your previously working code in a way you don’t understand. And in the course of trying to fix that, you accidentally changed something else, and now your application won’t even start on your branch. And in your flailing attempt to get the code on your branch to work, you inadvertently committed a bunch of code to an unrelated branch…

When you are so far down in the pit of despair, my friend: stop digging.

You literally can’t see 😫

A comma where a semicolon ought to be. Missing quotation marks. A variable called employeeFirstName in one place and employeeFirstname 20 lines later. These things happen to us all now and then. But if “now and then” has turned into “three times in the past hour,” it’s time to give your eyes a rest.

Why do I get an error that customer-file-052122.json doesn’t exist?? I can see that customer-fle-052122.json is right there! (Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash)

Better late than never

If you don’t catch yourself faltering in the moment, you might start to notice the results the next day. You can’t change the past, but this is still useful information for the future!

Pay attention when, in the light of day, you see that all of your code from last night stinks. Or worse, your peers reviews your late-night pull request, and point out at length exactly what stinks about your code. Even worse, most or all of it involves basic mistakes you know you wouldn’t normally make.

Water under the bridge, but start to connect a certain fuzzy-brained feeling on day 1 with the unpleasant results on day 2. You’ll begin to recognize what might have been signs for you last time, and thereby learn what might be signs for you next time.

Regardless of whether you can make it through 13 hours straight of coding, or if you run out of steam much earlier than that, pay attention to what the warning signs are for you that things are going awry. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress by learning when it’s time for you to step back from the keyboard and go do something else — or go stare at the wall.

Originally posted 23 May 2022 on Medium.

2025-04-25
Boredom is an interesting thing

Okay, you’ve put off that dreaded task long enough. Finally, you get to work, but the time just drags on. You’d like to get it over with, but it’s just so… boring.

Ho hum. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Yes, it’s true that we all have work now and then that we’re just plain stuck doing. Tedious chores that, whether we like it or not, need to get done, and need to get done by us.

Just the same, take a closer look at what you’re working on. Maybe your boredom is trying to tell you something. Here are some questions to consider.

Is it necessary?

Are you bored because, on some level, you recognize that this just isn’t that important? Could you — or your stakeholder — do without?

Take a moment to review why the task is important, and if you truly can’t identify a reason, maybe you can skip it. On the other hand, if you do see a valid reason for it, focusing on the purpose of the task might help relieve your boredom!

Is it the right way?

Perhaps you’re having a hard time getting rolling on this item because it’s not the right approach. For example, maybe you need to gather some data and analyze it, and you’re combing through a spreadsheet trying to pull out the information you want. Could you (or a colleague) instead write a script to pull the data you want out, rather than sifting through it by hand? Or is there a better way to get the data you’re looking for? Does someone else already have this data extracted?

Is it yours?

Maybe you’re not the right person to be doing this task. Can you delegate this to someone else who might not mind doing this? Or have you been asked to take on something that you feel is really someone else’s responsibility, and therefore this seems like a waste of your time?

Is now the time?

Are there other priorities right now that should be taking precedence? Could be that your boredom is trying to tell you that, as important as this task is, it isn’t your top priority right now. If you’re handling something at someone else’s request, perhaps you ought to check with them to confirm what their timeline is. It may be that they never intended for you to drop everything and do this now!

Check in

Checking in with yourself, a trusted colleague, your manager, or your stakeholder when you’re finding something especially boring might guide you to the root cause of your boredom, and from there you might spot another solution. Or it might give you new perspective on the task, or ideas to help you get through it.

Has boredom been a “red flag” for you in the past? Are there other emotions or thoughts that act as a signal that it’s time for you to re-evaluate something?

Originally posted 10 May 2022 on medium.

2025-04-25