The first four hours

I’ve been running a dangerous habit the past few days of letting writing occur on a non-fixed time, as opposed to first thing in the morning. But, it felt like a necessary adjustment, as writing first thing would put my mind in the frame of writing, which would not rub off for hours. For me, the morning is the most productive part of the day, so what I do for the first four hours is probably the highest quality work I'll do all day.

For the past two months, that’s been on writing this blog and developing a useful habit. But, there are new frontiers now on the technical side of things. Exciting engineering challenges that I’ve been dreaming to start work on. I’ve been energized by the gush of feedback I’ve received from asking users how they use Standard Notes in their daily lives. The result was magical. When we design and build things, rarely do they have the ability to speak back to us. With software, you can send a small ping to your users and get a PONGGGG in return. It’s like an organism that was electrified by the rush of human energy flowing through it. It was a powerful, enlivening experience.

All that to say, the first thing I want to allocate the first part of my morning to is now architecture and code. The other part of the day brings with it compensation from the morning’s caffeine, post-lunch haziness (sometimes straight up unconsciousness), and the unfortunately-timed realization that it’s all downhill from here. It’s not so bad. I’ve been a little lazy lately post-3pm. I begin dragging my feet. It’s probably the winter. Afternoons and nights during the summer were a great time to work. Now, nestled indoors under yellow lights and never-right heating conditions, I melt into a languid state.

But I’m warming up. If yesterday was 30mph, then today was a good 32.