-
Image via Wikipedia
For an utter age now I have been trying to read proper literature more often. There's a pile of books on my desk, all shiny and new, but unfortunately barely even leafed through. Just waiting patiently and asking me to please give them a read, are they bad books, perhaps they're too fat? No you're not fat book honey, I'm just busy.
Two days ago I said, fuck it, this situation needs to be resolved, I used to read a lot, I love reading, so what's the problem?
As it turns out the problem is that starting is hard, isn't that always the problem? Beginnings are always hard, sometimes it's hard even to start going to bed or, hell, start having sex (and I don't mean when you're a virgin, I mean on a daily basis). But there was this other problem, I still didn't have a lot of time.
And so I came up with the concept of 20 minutes a day. Twenty minutes might seem like a lot of time at first, but think about it. 20 minutes is the kind of time you waste walking to school, going to the post office, hell, just waiting for risotto to cook takes around 20 minutes. It's NOTHING!
Everyone's got 20 minutes of free time in any given day.
Yeah so everyone's got twenty minutes, obviously that's so little time you can't do anything with it. _WRONG! You absolutely positively _can do a lot of valuable stuff with that time. For instance you could read ten pages of Dickens, yes Dickens of all things, it reads slow, but in 20 minutes a lot can be done. Or you could devote 20 minutes of unadulterated attention to your children if you've got any, or your pets. Or you could spend the 20 minutes getting through your RSS feeds (it's doable), or do some Pilates like you've been wanting to for years.
The thing is you just gotta get off your fucking lazy arse and DO IT! Go on, take 20 minutes out of your busy day and do something for yourself.
Continue reading about The power of 20 minutes - an inspiration
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- The one book that gets me offline
- What you do while waiting
- Stop being so fucking productive
- Do waste many a single moment
- Why you don't have time to advance your career
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️