Look after your tools

Hello Lovelies,

I'm going to be very candid in this article and once again no LabVIEW so bonus random points for me.

There will be no meditation, sobriety or jogging in this article so rest easy.

I'm pretty unemotional and shallow. In fact below are photos of me with my various moods on display

And I have an iron constitution, so essentially for 40 odd years my body was just for moving my brain from point A to point B and for filling with beer.

My twitter feed has a few comic book writers on it and these guys are doing a job they are intensely enthusiastic about, they are also doing a job they can carry around with them. Most are slightly younger than me and have been doing it for years.

It sounds idyllic and not dissimilar to my situation.

So it really interested me when one of these writers complained about feeling anxious and what could he do it about (it was anxious to the point of not being able to work, not just a bit fretful)

And then came the flood of rubbish advice.

Have a cup of tea (mostly British)
Have a walk
Listen to music
calm down
blah blah blah

And I really wanted to chip in, but not on twitter.

A few years back the same thing happened to me. Here's the details.

I love writing software, just love it. I'd do my 9-5 work and go home and have some food, say hello to my family. I'd then sit down and while they watched rubbish TV I would start programming again and this would then go on until 10ish and then bed. Every gap I had I would fill with software.

This was fine until one day I was driving home and I felt most odd, like I was having a heart attack. Bear in mind my body had never spoken to me for 45 years so I wasn't very good at listening.

Trip to the Docs, Heart going too fast, asked me if I was stressed, working too hard, told me to stop being stressed and working too hard.

So I looked at my life and felt surely doing something I loved wouldn't have this effect on me would it!. Well actually it did.

The issue was I wasn't differentiating my work time and home time. Essentially I was never finishing my working day.

The cure?

I just separated the things I think as work (i.e. programming), with the things I don't regard as work. The things I do as work I do 9-5, the other stuff I do when it entertains me.

Luckily I don't regard research, writing blogs, making presentations as work so I could still manage to pack in some extra hours, which is useful when running your own business.

Did it work? Almost instantly and following these rules have kept me very happy for the last few years.

Just look at my little face....