Welcome Stranger to the TL; DR #21, I hope you have an amazing day! Grab something to drink or eat and let us dive into today’s episode.

Today will be a little different, as I want to talk more about mental health, our short attention span, and all that’s connected to it.

Take a little break

Nowadays we live in a fast-paced environment, nobody has time. Or so it seems. For the last 3 years that I’ve been working in the design field, I have taken very little time off.

I work every day, holidays, weekends whatever the day is I work. Sometimes long hours sometimes just a few but there’s no day off. And it’s great. This didn’t bother me until recently.

So as I’m writing this from a cozy forest with fire crackling in front of me, I think you guessed it. I decided to take some time off. This week, on Monday, I and my girlfriend went to Prague to a Tim Burton exhibition.

We were hesitant to come because we heard so many bad reviews about it after we bought it. Guess what? It was great, we spent 3 hours in there. So why were there so many bad reviews?

People can’t hold their attention for 5 seconds these days

There was a lot of reading and looking around, behind the scenes of scripts and movies from Mr. Burton. There were a couple of tablets hung up on a wall with these scripts from movies, long pages with a lot of text. And I was mindblown by people scrolling like crazy and not stopping to admire the work or reading up the stuff that’s not revealed to the public. Welcome to TikTok.

Anyway, it was a great trip but I couldn’t stop thinking about work and how I’ll do a certain thing, when I get home and if I’m going to finish it on time. How will I tackle the responsiveness of the thing and so on? I couldn’t turn my head off.

Why? I’m having a great time, I should enjoy my time off and not think about work right?

And that’s where the idea for this article came from. I realized I was developing a terrible habit. This whole grind and work thing will ruin me in the future if I keep it up. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with grinding and working towards your dream.

You just need to take a little break here and there so your body doesn’t do it for you. The key is to find the balance between work and other things. Having a healthy relationship, and mine seems to be turning into something unhealthy.

Put the phone down and listen

So with this thought in my head, I decided to go to the woods, off-grid. No internet, no charging nothing. Just me and nature. And it’s so worth it. I’m here for a third day and I’ve already gotten a few ideas for an article, refreshed my mind, and started working on breaking the bad habit of thinking non-stop about something, instead of relaxing and living in the moment.

But back to the phone thing. Since here there’s nothing I also cut down the phone time a lot.

But Adam, I love my time on my iPhone…

Putting down the phone cuts away all the distractions and allows you to live in the moment. And that’s what a lot of people lack these days.

A lot of people these days stare into their phones. When they eat, they have a phone, when they’re on the bus, they have their phone. Living in the moment… is nonexistent.

You say you’re listening but you’re really not. Your friend or your colleague is saying something to you, while you are scrolling through some social noise. You nod so It doesn’t seem like it’s all going around your head and that’s kinda it.

When we are constantly checking the phone, we are getting dumber. We are missing the things around us. That also means we are missing learning opportunities, and learning how to actively listen.

At the meeting for example. Learning how to really observe things, and most importantly getting that fresh perspective.

It’s crucial to just observe, and get a fresh perspective on the things in life. This allows us to be more creative, get some new inspiration, fresh eyes, and more energy.

Which leads to solving problems quickly. Which is the daily bread and butter of the designer world. You might be thinking now about how this is all non-design-related and useless.

But I think a good designer is looking to learn everywhere. I look around and find perspective in daily things, not just design and Twitter. But architecture, galleries, and so on. This is where the best ideas come from. If you ask the best designers out there, most of them will tell you the same thing. That inspiration comes from everywhere not just design-related articles or images.

Happy mind, happy life

Moving on back to the grind. So how do I maximize my work output and not burn out in a week? There are a couple of things you could do. And it starts with your mind and body.

This cliche saying has something to it. I’ve never done anything more for my body than going to the gym. So it was going to the gym and then sitting behind the monitor for 8–12 hours a day grinding, as usual.

But you can’t keep this up for long, at least I couldn’t I started to burn out really quickly. And also frequently. I had a good month and then another two were shitty. I couldn’t break out of the burnout. I knew it was burnout, I kind of knew how to get out of it. But it kept coming back

Especially with long-term things, such as when you have to do the same or similar work every day for long hours. I needed a distraction, or rather I needed to do something for my body and mind.

That’s where my new regime comes into play. Around 4 months ago I started to practice cold showers, meditation, and the WHM breathing method. Every morning, well almost every, I get up, take a cold shower, and do WHM breathing.

(Wim Hof enjoying cold)

This starts my day perfectly. I feel fresh, I feel alive and I feel at ease ready to tackle anything that comes my way. I think that without this I would be long gone with my creativity and the hours I put in. So if you’re like me, try to find something for your mind.

All of this is done without a phone, I just track my breathing with the app and then put it down for the rest of the morning. I have breakfast, my morning coffee, or as I like to call it ritual and I’m ready for the day.

This allows me to put a lot of stress on myself because it goes away with these simple techniques. It doesn’t take much of the day and it’s working. A sneaky thank you to Michal for introducing me to this.

Closing thoughts

I guess all I wanted to say by this article is for you to stop and start taking care of yourself. Having a brief moment of pause in the daily noise of socials and phones. It can be difficult to put the device down, or not to check messages or whatever notification might have landed on your screen just about now.

But I truly believe doing all the things above and being aware of our surroundings can make us better each day.

So I hope you will join me and begin to take small steps to put down the phone, live in the moment, and observe the world and life around you to get better and reach your goals.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If you’re feeling just a tiny bit motivated I wish you good luck on your journey to find the balance!

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