Newsletter #55 - Distraction

Is distraction good or bad?

When I work, I am not open for conversation, I dislike it when someone comes to chit-chat. Hence why I love remote work.

But I'm forcing myself to embrace it. A good conversation is probably more valuable than getting my todo-list done.

I once heard this story that people who work heads down get a lot of things done, but get the wrong things done. While people who are open for conversation get less done, but get more relevant things done.

I think there is some truth to that.

Hence why I like co-workings. They're typically filled with interesting people from all kinds of backgrounds. Or why I like the Toastmasters organisation.

I also don't like long holidays for the same reason. Initially I always think they bring me out of my routine. But similarly I've come to embrace them because they create distance to the day-to-day routines, and from that distance typically a source of new beliefs and ideas erupts.

And then there are administrative distractions:

I bought a motorbike and need a Proof of Residence to register it. Long story short, our landlord didn't register us, and actually cannot do it because he lost some ownership papers. I figured this out by going to Immigration 3 times, and multiple hours of searching solutions.

Being at Immigration Office is definitely not my preferred way to distract myself. Finding gray area solutions neither. After Visa hassle last year, I was not prepared for more dealing with Immigration.

It takes my focus away from building, from generating new ideas, writing, creating.

Moreover, the discussion with the landlord takes the top-spot in my mind. I think minds are built to prioritise these situations as the top-priority. I have to actively force my mind not to do that, and bring it to priority number 275 or something.

For that reason, I avoid conflict, even if I feel I'm right. It's easier to cut the losses, move on, and bring my focus on the useful things again. It's purely selfish, it's not because I have best intentions with the other party, it's because I want to avoid loosing time.

While the former two distractions (holidays and talking to people) might actually be beneficial, I'm not sure whether repeated visits to Immigration or landlord discussions could a fruit-bearing distraction.

Maybe they help me increase my resistance against frustration?

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And one final distraction: my coworking closed. It's now a big gap in the ground. I need a new office. I found a couple good ones, but the commute it longer ... probably also a distraction with an opportunity to get inspired by a new environment.

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Projects

Because of the above, I'm not making much progress anymore on my projects.

And also (probably mostly) because it's mostly frontend work, which is the type of work I don't like very much*:

• ​Remote Workers With Children Map: Kinda stuck here, not sure what to do next with it. Let it linger, let it ripen?
• ​Drawings Become Real: Need to work on making it pretty, but the functionality is there
• ​Indie Stuff: The purpose here was to write a funny daily or weekly summary of everything that happened in world of independent product builders. But either nothing happened recently, or I didn't see it

Other projects coming soon hopefully! The biggest one being Project Baby #2, probably a top priority in coming months :)

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*I didn't write in a while, while writing this newsletter I realise writing actually pinpointed that not the external factors, but my lack of enthusiasm for frontend work are blocking me. Writing helps me understand bottlenecks and problems.

High Season

It's high season in Phuket:

• The hotels are full, and any available rooms are 3x the low-season price
• Tour buses everywhere
• Our favo restaurants packed
• The sea is beautiful
• A reminder that we live in a very beautiful place!

Bridge App Finished

I played with a Raspberry PI, and I'm happy to announce two tiny led lights go on whenever the bridge in front of my parents-in-law's house opens.

That's it, have a great week ahead!

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