I honestly think without the changes I have made recently to the way I work, my brain would not be able to get things done. Setting up my environment to best suit the way my brain works, and changing up the tools I use, has made a lightbulb switch on.

I've been struggling with switching between different things. I plan to do X, my brain says "no sir, I wnat to do Y", and it ends up with my brain winning most of the time. The light bulb which just went off is me realising I need to lean into the diversity of my brain. Sometimes I want to just quickly write some code because it's top of mind, even if I am in the middle of something else. In these instances, being able to very quickly switch between applications and workflows is something I value very highly.

One example is this here post. Right before I started writing it, I typed the following into my interstitial journal: "06:37 time to read some more of The Elephant in the Brain". The next thing I know I had this idea I needed to quickly type out. One three finger swipe later and a couple of key strokes later I have created a new markdown file in the posts directory of my site using Vim and iTerm and I was typing out this post. Once I am finished, which will likely be in a couple of sentances, I just need to save and three finger swipe back to the virtual desktop I keep Obsidian in, which is what I use to take notes on books as I read.

Previosuly I would fight this context switching and favour making a note of the idea and returning to it later over just switching and getting it fully out of my head straight away.

The more I think about the different productivity framework books I have read and videos I have watched, I realise my brain is wired differently, which makes the traditional advice of "plan time to do X, and do X at the time you set" just doesn't work for me. Rather than fight it, I need to accept it and lean into it.