Our brain hates us

For months I’ve been wanting to set up a second user on my desktop computer. A user solely for the purpose of work.

When it comes to changing your state, being productive, it’s not enough to want it. Our brain is a powerful tool. A powerful lazy tool that does not want us to achieve our goals. Or be productive. It wants us to save energy.

So, when it comes to being productive we have to outwit that incredible machine between our two ears. Use some form of trick to overcome its natural laziness.

Altering your state is a subtle thing. Something that doesn’t work if you’re even a little bit off. 1% variance and you can try again another time.

By setting up a login that’s only used for work, we tell our brain to get serious now. To not mess around because this is the time to do shit. Whenever we log in to that user we have to get shit done. That’s the premise of having this area for yourself.

Doing so primes our brain for the future. Whenever we come back to this log in our brain will remember what usually happens in that case and fall into the habit of doing what it has done before: Enter work mode.

I was too lazy to do it on my desktop computer. But now I have a laptop.

I basically bought this laptop to get out of my home office. Out of my bedroom. A room that is used to eat, sleep and entertain myself. In various ways.

I wanted this so bad, after sitting in group rooms and cafés working on my phone, I simply ordered what seemed to fit my most urgent needs and paid an insane amount for next day 12 o’clock delivery. It felt good.

So, this laptop gives me the freedom to be mobile. On my phone I’m not as productive as I’d like to be so a laptop is the perfect solution to the challenge I was facing. I’m still facing.

If you think about it, it’s kind of a sad solution. Having to trick your brain into doing what you want it to do, buying a laptop to do work because you’ve told yourself repeatedly it’s not possible to get stuff done the other way. The old way. Being scared of the blank page. Freezing when thinking about writing. Now. Open the doc and write something. Can’t do it.

If it seems stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.

So what, if I had to trick myself into overcoming this thinking? At least it’s working. For now. I’m increasing my output using whichever means necessary. I gotta get the work done.

Plus, it’s a lot more practical. There are multiple benefits to having it set up this way now.

All I gotta do now, is make sure I don’t use the laptop for entertainment. Might be tough at times but I will find a way.

Stay awesome and don’t fail to build!

P.S. It got a totally different feel to it to be writing a post on a laptop. It feels… amazing.