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One of my mentors, pointed out that I was gritty in making things happen but I should also watch out for willpower depletion as time flies by. That is the time he got me into systems thinking, every decision that we take in a day causes an imbalance and a build up of that causes decision fatigue.

I have written many times about this topic of habits vs goals. The reason I chose this today is because I complete 15 years streak of writing at least one blog post a month. Initially I started with a goal of 50 blogs a year, I achieved it but the learning was, it was super draining the moment I hit that milestone, it looked like I am pulling back the throttle. Why did I want to write so many blogs? I wanted to improve my articulation, I wanted to expose my knowledge to the outside world, I also wanted it to be a snapshot of my mind at that point of time. From my mentor’s inputs, I changed my mind from a big goal based mindset to a systems based mindset. I went to a sustainable streak with a micro goal of a blog a month instead of x blogs a year.

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I was able to apply this to a lot of other areas at work and life; especially when the change is transformative, it looks daunting and takes a heroic effort to get there. Mentor, coaches, veterans were the key people to help me break down big goals into systems and habits. A very good example was when I turned 30, I was going down the path of abdominal obesity, I gained 3 sizes very rapidly. I tried doing many things like swimming, walking and nothing worked. No amount of reading up and trying different things turned useful. I ended up talking to a sports physio who drew a plan not for the goal of getting to normal BMI and waist but healthy eating and regular exercise.

He told me, that I will regress and go back to my old ways if I just workout heavily and bring things back to normal. A diet plan consisting of normal south indian non veg food, with occasional allowances of indulgence. The dietician told me that your willpower will get exhausted if you don’t treat yourselves sometimes so take a decision like “I will eat only one dessert a week”. Also the dietician ingrained one strong message – “You cannot outrun a bad diet with heavy exercise”. The change in habits took a month or so but I have been able to keep up the right BMI and waist size for years now.

If you are pursuing something big, always get some help from a veteran in that field and break it down to small sustainable habits instead of taking a resolution and going towards it from the word get go. Always remember that will power fades away, reduce decisions to be taken and convert them to habits.

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A lot of have been talked about stress at the workplace, those are visible and bold like toxic managers, unrealistic deadlines etc. A very few people speak about silent stressors that are very much invisible but damages more in the long run as very less is done to eliminate them. When I had begun working, hardware was very expensive. In some companies they used to use the machine across multiple people in shifts. I got a machine assigned to me and over the course of 4+ years it was never replaced. It was impossible to run an IDE so I had to rely on text editors to code. What this meant is a constant loop of editing code, going to the console to compile and come back to figure out errors in the editor by comparing compiler outputs. The days just dragged on in endless loops.

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One of the other types of stressors were unplanned working days. At the hands of a novice manager, days get difficult to plan. Developers need unbroken time and reduced ambiguity, but constant interruptions and ambiguity feels like a constant droning in your head. Detachment from family and social life, this stressor builds up slowly and is a secondary stressor often a result of other ones. In my younger days, I have missed many of my friends’ weddings, found it difficult to be at the side sick parents/grand parents at home town and slowly the immediate circle is only acquaintances from the office which is a deep echo chamber.

Identifying these stressors early is a key to good mental and physical health. I did not realise this for a long time, once I figured out and eliminated it then it improved my quality of life. Ask these simple questions, a single no requires you to reconsider what you are doing?

  1. Are you able to finish your work week within ~40 hour window and still find it fulfilling/ having a sense of achievement/ being recognised? (Some lean weeks and some tight weeks will be fine, but the average should be around 40)
  2. Do you find time for friends and family?
  3. Are you able to eat, sleep and exercise well?
  4. Do you like going to your office, is your 1 way commute less than 30 minutes or if it exceeds do you have a commute routine that is engaging (like reading, audio books, podcasts or simply enjoy the drive)

Ask yourself these questions? Find out the root silent stressor and figure out a way to eliminate it. The stressor could be anything from poor hardware, bad planning, noisy environment, gossip culture, poor management, tough competition etc. Don’t cope up with any kind of stress, just remove it.