11 February, 2011

Morning thought freeze

It's morning. I clamber myself out from bed, eat breakfast and start to work. Or so it should happen. Most often my breakfast is very short, a yoghurt is all there is to it, really. And since my "workplace" for my projects happens to be in my room, the travel to work is not a very long one. Meaning the "recovery time" from wake up to work is short. So, I sit in front of the computer and - nothing happens. My brain freezes.

No thoughts at all. Nothing. Njet. Nichts. Nada.

The cogs and flywheels inside my head are stuck. There's no oil to facilitate interactional movement. This situation can, unfortunately, last for a while. According to previous experience - anything between 10 minutes and a full day. One solution is to restock with coffee. It certainly helps, but I'm hoping to avoid this problem mentally, and not just cheat my way out of it.

I'm most definitely not a morning person, so I've never had the advantage of waking up with my brain buzzing at full speed. My brain is not an early bird - it's more like a snake, which hardly moves if you look at it daytime, but strikes like lightning when you least expect it. Once I get the cogs rolling, my thoughts zip around fast enough to make the laptop's AMD processor sorry for its performance. If I don't, however, even a snail would beat me, even with hands tied behind its back.

Naturally, there is always the possibility of helping my neurons by designing my schedule to be more evening-focused. That works, but more commonly there's always the problem, that evening hours are when all the main social stuff is. That's when people go out to eat, drink and discuss the stuff of the day. I don't want to be stuck with my computer/books and miss all the social fun!

Well, I know there really is no perfects solution to this. One good tip is to avoid procrastinating and just brute force the brain to output. With most stuff that works. 90% of work (in my field, at least) does not require full levels of creativity, so it doesn't pay off to wait for the peak hours. Reading articles is possible without making new connections to previous knowledge. It may even be better to read first and think later.

Tomorrow I'll focus on a better start to the day. It'll help. It must help.

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