Scheduling deep immersion time.

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? So, for the past few months, I have been attempting to form a system and be productive in what could be called a chain process, you know, um, Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" advice where you try to do something every single day and you never have more than one day that you skip or else you've broken your chain, right?

[00:00:45] So I've been setting aside a couple hours in the morning to do something, to do some side stuff that I wanna put more effort into. And it sucks. I don't like it. I'm not good [00:01:00] at it at all, and I realize it's because I am not someone who can work in chains. I am someone who needs immersion. The concept of deep work, the concept of flow,

[00:01:15] you know, one of the premises of it is that it takes time to come in and out of these states. And when you try to do this every single day for a couple hours at a time, let's say, you know, of those couple hours, it takes like half an hour to get in and then half an hour to get out of that mind – that state.

[00:01:38] That means that you really only had an hour of deep work, which is not always enough to accomplish something significant, and then you have to do it again the next day. It has been, for me, a recipe for nonsense. It's a recipe for not being able to accomplish much at all. And [00:02:00] you know, we've talked about seasons and stages and cycles, lots on this podcast.

[00:02:05] So today, I've been thinking a lot about it, and I feel like I'm going to lean into my desire to sprint, my desire to immerse myself. It comes from being a person who has a bit of an obsessive nature. You know, when I have a problem or something I'm trying to figure out, I think about it all the time. I'm thinking about it at work.

[00:02:31] I'm thinking about it in the shower. I'm thinking about it while I'm cooking. I'm thinking about it while I'm walking. I'm thinking about it while I'm arguing about where to eat lunch with my brother. You know, it's constantly on my mind, back of my mind, front of my mind, in my subconscious mind. I am an obsesser, I immerse myself in the problem and then I figure it out.

[00:02:54] I fix those issues, or I fix or find the thing that I was trying to do. [00:03:00] And that's not a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with that. If you can structure your life in a way that leans into it, because that is the way that your brain works, what could be wrong about it? So, I wanna try to figure out a way to create more sprints in my life, to do some of this work that I wanna do that is important to me.

[00:03:27] I don't know exactly how it's going to work because you know, there are other things that I must do every day, and it would be, at this time, I cannot think how I could set aside, like say two days to do a thing, two full days. , but there must be a way, there must be a way where you can schedule deep immersion in your life, and I wanna kind of figure out what that could look like and try it.

[00:03:58] Because this [00:04:00] idea of working every day for two-ish hours or three hours is... I'm completely failing at it. You know, I've tried it. And once in a while it's good and it works for things that can be done in small chunks, but some of the work that I wanna do just can't be done in small chunks. It needs long periods of concentration and active intense work.

[00:04:27] And I – my schedule right now, the way it's set up, does not allow for that. So stay tuned. We're gonna see what I can figure out, for this deep immersion idea that I have in mind. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.