I got out of slump.

Let me describe a bit of my routine from the past four months.

• Wake up and head to gym

• Come back and play video games

• Go for a walk in the evening

• Some light reading before sleep

This has been the most relaxed phase of my life. I enjoyed it a lot!

Of course, this meant that I wasn’t working. Or to put it better, I couldn’t work.

There’s this programming course that’s been pending for long and I tried working on it. By ‘trying’, I mean trying absolutely everything.

I tried keeping it light and breezy, making it fun, working when I was inspired. I tried forcing myself, making deadlines, creating a schedule. But nothing could keep me on my desk.

I’d feel sleepy the moment I open my laptop. I would somehow talk myself into not working — the chair is uncomfortable, the weather is bad, I’m exhausted from gym, etc. Usually, I’d write a sentence or two and call it a day. I hated the project and would do anything but work.

After trying for months, I came to a conclusion — there’s no way I could finish the entire thing even within a year.

And I couldn’t go another year with this course dangling in the back of my mind. I had to get rid of it. So, I made a decision.

I figured that if I write just two more lessons, the course would cross the threshold of coverage. It would cover just enough concepts needed to explain the topic. In other words, I could wrap up the course if I wrote the next two lessons.

Great, I finally found a way to be done with this project and not think about it ever again.

Can you guess what happened next? I finished the course in ten days. I wrote 24 lessons with over 13,000 words in ten freakin’ days!

How? To be honest, even I don’t know for sure. All I know is that the day I decided to quit was the day I actually started working. It’s really, really weird.

I will, however, try to throw some ideas here.

Idea #1

When I decided the cut the course short, I marked 23rd of February as the deadline. I set a simple rule — on 23rd, the course gets submitted. Before that, I have the freedom to do whatever I want.

I can add the two lessons that remain, I can try writing additional lessons, or I can even leave the course in the incomplete state. But on 23rd, the course gets submitted.

I think somewhere deep down, I wanted to conclude the course and this feeling of letting it go unfinished bothered me. Maybe that’s why, I didn’t let it happen.

Idea #2

Have you tried long distance running? Somewhere around the middle, you’re tired and run at a lower speed. But in the final kilometer, the body somehow gains an electrifying energy and you sprint to the finish line.

Maybe, when I found myself near the finish line, I gained that renewed energy and could sprint. I finished those two lessons in two days. Then the next day, I wrote two more. Soon, I was hitting three to five lessons a day. By the end of day ten, the course was complete.

To set a frame of reference, I had started this project on 11th February, 2022. I finished the first half in nearly two years and the second half in ten days.

I have never been this productive. Neither have I worked so effortlessly. After four months, I got out of slump.

What have you been working on lately? Or maybe there’s something that you really wanna work on? Do share.

Until next week,
Aachman