July, or the things I learned without breakfast
What would you do with your week if you knew you wouldn't feel guilty about what you didn't do?
There's an implied answer to this question that's sort of guilt-inducing in itself. The implied answer of "oh, you didn't go skydiving off the Amalfi Coast? You didn't launch a startup? You didn't see every one of your friends and family members? Suppose you did all that. What would you do the next day? And the next? How would you structure your life?
I have this voice that nags at the back of my head and it tells me weird things on a regular basis. It's really obsessed with eating breakfast in the morning. I'm pretty sure that this is because I used to force myself to eat these massive breakfasts and second breakfasts back when I was trying to gain weight, and the little voice in my head is convinced that I'll turn back into a scrawny rat if I don't eat breakfast. For the same reasons, that voice is really obsessed with working out a lot.
That voice is also convinced that studying business and technology tomes is the hidden key to success, and if I don't read enough then my career is going to fail. It's also convinced that if I don't write blog posts, my career will probably sputter too, even though I don't really write about my career on my blog. This voice has twisted logic.
When I wrote my last blog post, I was hanging out in San Francisco with a friend who doesn't include breakfast as part of his daily routine. (quelle horreur!) He is a coffee-only before lunch kind of guy, and while I was there, I decided I would experiment with coffee-only before lunch. And you know what? I actually liked it. It saved so much time in the morning and I could get by on less caffeine since I could afford to sleep more. The world did not come crashing down around me without my standard two eggs and yogurt.
This prompted me to ask myself an interesting question: what would I actually do with myself if I didn't try to hold to a rigorous routine day after day? What if I didn't make plans to work out? What if I didn't try to wake up earlier to squeeze more out of the day? What if I didn't try to only sleep six hours?
Here's what happened:
- I went to the gym just twice, both days when I was in Disney World. I decided I was having way more fun swinging heavy steel clubs around, running outside from time to time, and playing basketball. Going to the gym in DC is just a drag for me right now. I don't like treadmills or ellipticals, I don't like waiting for benches to open up, and I don't like taking an extra hour out of my day just to get there and back. After almost ten years of being a regular gym rat, I finally took some time off.
- I started drinking better coffee in the mornings. I upgraded my coffee game with a French press and some Qualia Coffee, the best brew in DC.
- I didn't really eat breakfast. Sometimes I had toast with peanut butter.
- I slept more. I hit seven hours a night on a regular basis, and sometimes even eight. My alarm can go off at 7:30AM and I can still make it into the office by 9:00 by not working out or worrying about breakfast.
- I learned more at work and got more done in less time, which is a direct result of not being dog tired. I suspect sleep might be one of those things where you either have to get seven-plus hours (like Arianna Huffington) or sub-five hours (like Jocko Willink), but there's probably not a middle ground here. I like the Huffington approach way more.
- I read four books:
- The Road to Character by David Brooks
- Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
- I traveled to Disney World with my college roommates. This is a super fun trip as an adult. There are certain parts of the park that you will enjoy way more once you're over 21 (you probably never knew that there's a bar in Epcot that features over a hundred tequilas and a few dozen mezcals), and there are other parts of the park that will make you feel like a kid again (hello, fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom castle).
The most important thing that changed wasn't what I actually got accomplished. That stayed mostly constant. What changed was how I felt about it all. I was genuinely happier doing things that I liked when I let them flow into my schedule, and I was way less thrown off when I had to carve out time for an actual chore because I wasn't treating everything like a chore. It was a remarkably mentally easy way to live.
I'll be on the road a bit next month with some work-related travel and some beach-related travel. I'll be reading. I'll be learning. I'll be enjoying life a little more while I do all of it.