Are you a blogger? A web designer/developer? If you are slaving away at the computer for a living like me, you are probably doing it for hours and hours without moving your ass and getting out of your cave.
With this post, I will kick off a series of articles concerning the fitness and mental health of computer and Web addicts like you and me. Be prepared: I will show you why pushing for an utter nerd and über geek lifestyle is bad for you.
Not being able to let go of the computer
It is easy to get glued to the computer screen and stay indoors for days. Why? Because:
- There is always one more thing that needs to be done immediately,
- There is always some RSS feed that you will check out for new posts,
- There is always your inbox to be checked for new e-mails (although there are still tons of old messages lying there that you still haven’t got to replying to),
- There is always one more dumb YouTube video about someone doing something stupid that needs to be seen,
- There is always one more file or torrent to be downloaded.
I will take away all the really unnecessary stuff. That leaves us with the first item in the list above: one more thing that needs to be done immediately. If you have no problems with your attention span and are concetrating purely on your work, this is still not good if done for long hours without any breaks.
I am certain that you are familiar with the feeling: Working on an interesting project gets you hooked. The realisation that you are finally seeing your magnificent design that you worked so hard on taking shape, going in the direction you want it to, or finally writing that programming routine that seemed unsolvable and which gave you headaches for days and made you irritated and angry.
And hop! Suddenly you can’t move away from the keyboard, you are hooked, you even forget to drink water. You will get up from your chair only when you’re completely exhausted, unable to communicate with anyone because you’re mentally still stuck in your work.
Still, you are trying to reason: Hard work is the path to success and satisfaction. That is certainly true. But working hard does not mean that you should pass your days cemented in front of your computer screen without seeing the light of day.
In fact, if you overwork yourself, if you neglect your body (and your mind, consequently) you will more likely not succeed, because your overall health will begin to deteriorate. Thus, your working capacity will shrink.
Success does not mean being a damn robot. You can’t succeed without having real life experience. You can’t succeed by neglecting your body and becoming either a sphere of lard or a skeleton. You can’t succeed if you don’t interact with other people. I already hear some of you saying “Yeah, but what about Tesla? Nikola was a recluse, he lived alone all of his life, he never had a girlfriend or a wife. He spent most of his time closed in his lab working on new inventions. He was a genius and so productive!” Well, keep in mind one thing: Nikola Tesla was a fucking alien from outer space. He was a genius, ok? That means that he was also somewhat insane. Bear in mind that people like him are born once in a hundred years. And their lives are far from anything that is considered even remotely ordinary and normal.
There are a few simple things that you should do each day, in order to have a sound mind in a sound body, to feel better and enjoy life at its fullest. Here they are:
Go Outside Each Day
Whether you live in a city or in the countryside, the outside world is a beautiful, wild, interesting place. Going outside will accomplish two things:
- It will keep you away from depression.
- It will make your life far more interesting and bring you new experiences.
The former is a well known fact. Your body needs sunlight to be able to function normally. What do you think, why is alcohol such a problem for nordic countries? Because they are living in darkness for months each year, especially those near or above the polar circle. Beer was banned in Iceland until 1989! This is all related to depression caused by the lack of sunlight. Unfortunately, people living up north have often tried to offset the adverse effects caused by the darkness by drinking too much alcohol. Did you ever read some swedish or norwegian prose? There is always a melancholic feeling lingering around.
Getting outside for a nice walk in the sun will make you feel much better. Get out of your fucking cave!
The second reason you shoud get outside and away from your computer is to live your life as you should. You are missing a lot if you are staying indoors too much. You will be missing on cool people you can meet, on experiences you can have and learn from, and on women.
Do not make the mistake of replacing your social life with a digital one: social networks, blogs, instant messaging and online chat are fine to get to know people and hook up with them, but nothing more than that! Use these tools to meet people in real life and spend quality time with them. Have fun in real life, you retard!
One of the best ways to get your ass outside is to enroll in a sports club. By doing this, you will force yourself to leave your computer, to go out and to socialize. The advantages of actively training in a sports club are many:
- You will go outside regularly, each week.
- You will be fit (I cannot stress the importance of this enough).
- You will get to know other people.
- You will have new experiences that will enrich you.
In my opinion, being a member of a sports club is better than jogging solo or lifting weights in the gym. That’s because a sports club almost always involves some teamwork and learning. Learning a new sport can be a very interesting process and always involves a lot more than you think.
Go to Sleep Early
Having a regular, healthy sleep is of a paramount importance. For anyone. This is closely related to most of the things that I mentioned above.
Being glued to the screen has seriously adverse effects on your sleep:
- You are exposed to more artifical light, which screws up your pineal gland (that is partly responsible for a regular sleep pattern) and therefore reduces your natural ability to go to sleep early.
- You are forcing your brain to take in and process more information, which is keeping you awake.
- You are making yourself think more about the task at hand, how to solve it, what new ideas can be derived from it, etc, which again makes it more sifficult to calm down and fall asleep.
- You are beginning to switch day and night, which will fuck you up even more and your sleep will be of a lesser quality.
Let me expound on one of these points: Namely, the urge to stay awake because you are so sucked up into your work and there are so many more things to do and ideas to be written down.
Listen, did you ever lose anything if you went to sleep early? That same work will wait for you tomorrow. You will still do it and you won’t miss a thing. What do you think, that if you don’t work 18 hours a day, you won’t become successful fast? Success does not come overnight anyway. So it is wise to sleep during the night. You won’t become a millionare or become a master designer/developer/whatever if you force yourself and overwork yourself. You will just become sick and dysfunctional.
Resist the urge to stay awake and slave away at the computer. Turn it off and don’t leave it downloading anything if it really isn’t absolutely necessary for your work or growth. Shut down the damn machine, do you hear me? Go to sleep.
In the morning, you will rise early, be able to do more because you had a healthy dose of sleep, and you’ll have more sunlight available to you.
Why is it better to sleep at night? Try going to sleep at 3 or 4 in the morning, drowsy, tired and zombified from the computer. You may sleep for the same amount of time that you normally would during a normal night (let’s say 7 hours), but you will wake up feeling tired and exhausted. There are very few people that actually live during the night and sleep during the day. The opposite is normal. Modern life is responsible for much of these aberrations. Waking up late makes you feel weak, bad and tired. And you lose much daylight time and consequently have less sunlight.
Work hard, go outside often, enroll in a sports club and sleep well!
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Alec // Dec 17, 2007 at 0:47
How are you doing on the ten commandments yourself?
I was doing great until I had a bike accident which sprained both wrists and then had my bikes stolen from right outside my front door the following week.
I’ve found hanging around inside working late can gets lots done, if you are living with a cool chick who will force you to live some semblance of normality (eating regularly and sleeping sometimes).
There is a hidden (censored) element to making a success of indoors - overworking.
2 evernerve // Dec 17, 2007 at 2:33
Well, it is always easy to give advice to people on the problems that bother one the most, because then the subject matter is well-known from firsthand experience.
Yes, working during the night helps, because there are no distractions. But if someone really wants to cut off distractions, this can be done during the day as well. A grain of faith and willpower can do miracles.
Women are known to bring order into men’s lives. We men tend to roam around, be it in real world or cyberspace, with a complete disregard for our own health.
As for overworking, I wouldn’t completely agree with that. I had to overwork myself while I still held a regular job at a company. Once I made it on the Web (enough for self-sustenance), I didn’t have to go into overkill anymore. And I go out every day. I also enrolled in a sports club and I’m never missing training sessions, because I enjoy them immensely and they bring me so much more energy.
Sorry to hear about your wrists and the stolen bike. I hope that you healed well. Keep up the good work.
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