The many me's
How we change throughout the day (161/365)
I’m always amazed by how different I feel throughout the day to the point that I question my identity and unity.
So, even though I’m the same person, my experience of life feels wildly different at ten PM on a weekday while trying to come up with an idea to write my daily post than I do when I’m walking to get a coffee at the Walnut Street Capital One Café every Monday morning after dropping the kids at school.
(Btw did you know that you get a free beverage every Monday during MLB season, even if you’re not a Capital One client? You’re welcome!)
Those Mondays, I sit down at the cafe with my coffee before 9 AM in front of a window full of light. No, the view is not necessarily nice, but it’s OK: I’m usually in a good mood.
And no, I’m not in a good mood only because of the free coffee.
I’m happy because—most Mondays—I feel energized, mostly full of life, and wondering about the week’s possibilities. What will I do? Who am I going to meet? What am I looking forward to these next days?
Now, add to these two another six or seven mental states I go through every week or month—Andrés-in-a-flow, fun-Andrés, client-facing-Andrés, washing-the-dishes-or-cooking-Andrés, etc.
As a general rule, my energy peaks after morning coffee and then slides down throughout the day and the week… except when it’s a Thursday or Friday. Saturdays are just amazing, and Sundays are a bit more mixed, but mostly nice.
This variety has many consequences in my life. If I leave boring or complicated tasks to when my energy is down, I’ll suck at them, or just avoid them.
In principle, I prioritize the important/urgent and leave the rest for whenever. At least until this year.
Writing and burning 750 calories every day has messed up my time management, and here’s why.
These two activities require a lot of energy both mentally (cognitive functions, memory, creativity, imagination) and physically(actually moving the fuck up and down, doing reps, etc) but because they’re not the most important or urgent—family, work, sleep go first—, I leave them for whenever… just as my energy is waning.
What happens is that I ask wasted or low-energy Andrés to confront the emptiness of a blank Substack post and the unpleasant forty minute upper body workout.
Now, you may ask, why don’t you flip your routing and start your days with these two things?
I don’t know, why don’t I?
The answer my System 1 comes with is: then you’ll have to go to bed earlier and you’ll spend less time with Vivi. And you’ll be spending your best creative moments in Mondoli not at your work.
But the counter arguments seem dumb, now that I read them. So…
Let’s see (and I’m thinking-Substackly-loud here), I would have to be up by six AM so that I can write for an hour—with a coffee!—and then workout for thirty minutes so that I’m ready by 7:30 AM.
What do my several me’s think about this?
I mean, I still have more than half a year to go, and I’m sure my present routine is not especially working. I started this post writing about this and I’ll end it the same way: What tends to happen is that I end up writing whatever just because I wasn’t able to choose a better moment, and feel like this New Yorker cartoon that came out a couple of weeks ago:
So starting from, let’s see, this Thursday or Friday, I’ll try this. I was going to say tomorrow, but it’s already 10:24 PM. Idk, I’ll let you know if I made it.
That’s it for today! Thanks for reading.
#day161