id: foundation title: The Foundation previous: mop next: sdl date: 2021-01-22 ---

## The Foundation

I think that the most important part of productivity is self care. You can have all the neat, time saving tricks in the world but if you are tired, can’t focus, or anything else it becomes much harder to implement them. Therefore ensuring that you can perform at your best often saves much more time then it takes.

There is always a tradeoff when looking at time spent on an activity to improve your performance elsewhere. In the long run I think it is almost always worth it. If you are pressed up against a deadline and you really need to get something finished then of course making sure you exercise and get enough sleep is not going to be as important as just grinding out your work. Something like that should not take more than a couple of days though. Any longer and the value judgement flips.

I really like the way that James Altucher puts it in his book Choose Yourself. There are a few core components that you need to take care of in order to function at your best. He specifies four: physical health, mental health, emotional health and spiritual health.

Physical health is all the things that most of us know: exercise, eat well, sleep enough. They are the easiest ones to measure so if you are starting from scratch they are a good place to start. You don’t need to exercise for hours, eat a perfect diet, and religiously monitor your sleep environment and practices. You can and you will get better results but it takes more time and effort. If you want to stay simple you can take walks a couple times a day (the time outside especially also helps with some of the other areas), avoid processed foods (shop around the perimeter of the grocery store is often a good suggestion) and make sure you are getting around 8 hours of sleep at around the same time every night.

He refers to mental health as exercising the brain. This is not quite the same as the way mental health is commonly used and is in no way a replacement for therapy or that type of mental work. For your mental health he suggests trying to generate 10 ideas every day. This is a fantastic exercise and also leaves you with a bunch of ideas you can pursue if you are ever looking for a change or just something to do. They don’t have to be good, just get a list of 10 done. Reading, math, programming, any sort of puzzle (sudoku, crossword etc), writing, drawing, sculpting or anything else that fits into the learning, puzzle, or creative fields will help support the health of your mind. A lot of skill development fits in here and it is a good place to invest time to build marketable skills. If you want to keep this minimal try reading a little before bed (learning something) and getting your ideas down (brain exercise).

We are social animals and emotional health fits into that. Even for the introverts (like me) it is important to do something with others. Your preferences can dictate what that activity is but do something. Calling a friend for a chat, playing games together whether online or in person (if online try to use voice), or going to a group activity (sports, games, book club) all fit in here. Make sure that you do something each day that leaves you truly happy and not just the dopamine hit that a lot of our technology gives us these days. Baseline for this is to have a conversation, not just small talk, with someone who you genuinely enjoy being around each day.

Spiritual health is different for most people. In general the goal is to spend a little time in a place of peace with yourself. This could come through meditation (any type), prayer or anything else that you feel works. There is a fantastic quote from the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone,". While this may not literally be the case I think intuitively the point he is getting at makes sense. Spending time with yourself is important. The noise of life distracts us from what is going on inside and it is important to give ourselves space to step back and just be. It is very interesting what sort of questions and answers you start coming up with if you commit to sitting in a room and having nothing to do but think for a time. Try to at least take a few minutes each day to just sit. Don’t touch your phone, watch tv, or even read. You don’t have to meditate necessarily, though it can be extremely helpful, just take some time to be you without any distractions. This of the four can be the hardest. We train ourselves to do the opposite and getting started can be very difficult but the benefits are enormous.

I will dive into these topics more deeply another time but for now it is important to keep in mind that no matter how much you are trying to do, taking care of yourself will always pay off. Doing a little something for each of these every day will let you get more done in the time you spend working, enjoy your time more, and help keep you from burning out over the long haul.

Thank you for reading.