In a previous update I talked a bit about productivity changes. These are designed to try to ensure I am heading in the right direction on projects rather than going fast in a random direction. This battle is what is driving my tech life at the moment. A conflict between local and global optimisation

To stop my head down don't worry about direction mentality I have am trying to almost calm my brain down a bit. This does mean working slower just keeping the brain calm to stop it entering a tight loop. A calmer brain can pull back and say hang on is what we are trying to do the best thing.

In this context a tight loop is once born out of a frustration that comes from being quite close to a solution but is frustratingly just out of reach. The pattern is usually something along the lines of "I will just try this one thing and maybe that will fix it". Obviously it doesn't so my brain moves to the next thing to try. This is not the way to insights or creativity as they both require me to not have tunnel vision.

The next mindset I am aiming to use more often is aim for a satisfactory step forward than than worrying about what ifs. This isn't to say I am aiming for average, more I am using numerous OK steps to try to get to somewhere good.

So far these changes seem to be working. Although I have allowed myself to jump between projects a fair bit and obviously make slow progress on many rather than significant progress on one. It does feel good.

What next, well my diet appears to have slipped some what so the next few weeks are going to be about getting that back on course before I return to fixing my long term productivity.

I am having a week long staycation. Nothing much planned but I had not realised how tired I was until I spent most of today sleeping and just not doing much.