Why I Got Out of Bed on a Tuesday

It was only just Tuesday. Why was I feeling like I had done work enough for a whole week, and it should have been a Friday? I tried to get out of bed but my body gave me the bombastic side eye, like “Babes, are you for real right now?”. Why do I even have a job? I questioned myself. Why am I not on some yacht chilling like I have no care in the world? Ermmmmm, maybe because I do have cares? Damn!

Well, this version of an existential crisis wasn’t going to stop me from going for my usual early morning walks. So, with tired legs and an aching body, I put on something comfortable and headed out. Being a work from the office day, I had just 1 hr to walk and I was determined to make the most of it.

The Big Question - Why?

My mind wandered back to the “why?”. Why was it that despite how I felt, I was going to get back home, take a shower and head for the office? Well, maybe the better question was what would happen if I didn’t? And that’s when I realized that so often, we set goals, and they could be all fancy and nice-sounding, but what keeps us on the path is never always the goal itself. When push comes to shove, it’s the consequence of not going through that keeps us moving.

I have a family to care for, I have a standard of living I’d prefer not to drop, I have a level of comfort my kids are used to and woe betide me if it drops. I have a goal to help people do better in their endeavours by empowering them both financially and mentally. So, however I feel on a certain day, I’m going to pick myself up and move because if I don’t, there’s a lot at stake. I put down a note about this on the walk itself: feelings are transient, they never stay the same for long, and that’s exactly why you can’t let them decide what you do.

I kept thinking about it all week — you’ve never once needed motivation to pay rent. You just pay it. A why only holds when you know what it costs you to ignore it, and that my friends, is the push.

The push works and it got me out of bed on Tuesday. But a life made entirely of pushes is a life spent running away from something. Which raised the next question: what’s pulling? How can I make work feel like play so I’m so excited about it that it’s not just about me running from something, it’s also about me running towards something?

I love programming but still….

I spent the week coming up with ideas and crafting methods to make my work more enjoyable. People always say do what you love, and I honestly love what I do — the building and iterating on products and solving human problems via programming. But there’s a but. Sometimes, I don’t want to see or hear of another line of code and I am just freaking tired. I’m wise enough to know it’s not a signal to change what I do, but I’m also wise enough to know that if I don’t find ways to make things interesting, I am going to burn out and that’s not good for anyone.

On demand on this Tuesday, I probably couldn’t make the code itself fun. What I could do was make the day around the code fun. And it turns out that’s worth something.

Is this a relationship?

Writing this makes me wonder if this is similar to relationships. Many times, they start out interesting and people are so excited they’ll tell whoever cares to listen about this new thing. But down the line, people drift apart, the effort to keep things interesting wanes and it just seems like one is going through the motions.

Relationship experts often advise that people look for ways to spice things up and keep things interesting. Now, I can’t tell you that every relationship that spices things up ends up amazing. I’m not a relationship expert and I’m not planning to become one. But one thing I can tell you is that it’s worth extrapolating to your job and your goals. Finding new ways to fall in love with what you do might be the difference between doing it for years and getting tired of it every other week.

Manufacturing the magic

So, instead of waiting for it to feel magical, we can intentionally create those magical moments.

Do you like dressing up to go to the office? Then invest in making that time interesting. Go shopping for more nice pieces, spend some time thinking about how else you can combine colours and cuts.

Do you enjoy lunch with your coworkers? Start picking new spots to try out and doing it more often. Recently, I started looking forward to going to the office because a dear colleague put me on to Banh mi, this Vietnamese sandwich. We have a great spot close to the office and it’s soooo goooooddddd, I’ve been raving about it to my friends and family.

The excitement willpower couldn’t generate, a sandwich did and I’m forever grateful.

So what?

It’s great to set goals. It’s great to have the things we want to achieve in life. But maybe the reason we often don’t achieve them is because we don’t have the push and pull mechanisms in place. Something pulling us toward the goals (which we create intentionally if it isn’t already there) and something chasing us towards them (which we become aware of by asking ourselves “what happens if I don’t?”).

You need both, and you need both because they take turns. Some days the pull just isn’t there, nothing about the work is interesting and no sandwich is going to fix it. On those days, the push can carry you through. And on the days the stakes feel so far away, the pull can be what gets you out the door.

Life is a continuous experiment and if you find yourself not achieving jack, then checking whether you have these two mechanisms in place could be a great starting point.

I hope you have goals worth achieving and are able to move toward them.

Thanks for reading amigo ❤️