Machine Maintenance: Self Care For High Performers

It's 5:27 on a Friday afternoon. I just got home from work. It was honestly a pretty long, tiring day.

I was planning to go for a walk and get my steps in. But I felt so cooked, I just couldn't be bothered doing anything.

"A couple minutes of rest and then I'll go do it" I said to myself.

I plopped myself on the couch and the doom scrolling began.

The first five minutes were kind of fun, and there was some novelty in this. I had a very productive week, and I hadn't done much of this.

But soon 30 minutes slipped by. Then an hour and then two. I remember feeling more and more fatigued and miserable with every YouTube short.

Eventually, I snapped out of it. The damage, though, was already done. Yet another perfectly good Friday afternoon was wasted.

Allowing myself to succumb to distractions and pleasure when I am mentally drained is a common pitfall I find myself in.

So, what if I could completely avoid this state of fatigue? Or, at least, if I find myself in it, is there any mental trick I can use to snap me out of it easily?

I think I have an answer and it has been working very well.

First, we will explain why we can't trust our emotions to provide what we need, and then we will write the manual on how to better manage our energy.

Hopefully, you can say goodbye to these states for good, work hard, be disciplined and take care of yourself all at the same time.

Your emotions are a mirage

After reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made, I realised that we believe our feelings and emotions more than we should.

Let me explain why,, and you will understand why you can't trust your feelings as a source of truth.

A hidden world inside of you

There is a lot happening inside of you right now. Your brain is coordinating an entire world without you ever noticing.

Your brain needs to coordinate many things, including your blood pressure, glucose, energy, electrolyte, hormone, and micronutrient levels. It also has to manage the major systems in the body that keep you alive and well: your nervous system, endocrine system, respiratory system, digestive system, and immune system.

It's a lot.

This weird mixture of chemicals causes sensations to bubble up to the surface of your consciousness and provides direction on what your body needs. You feel:

• Hungry so you eat

• Thirsty so you drink

• Tired so you sleep

• Horny, so you fuck

A curse of consciousness

Your brain has the important task of trying to work out what all of these sensations in the body means. It is trying to do that in relation to what is happening around you right now, and also what has happened in the past.

Try answering this question. What are you feeling right now? Try to label it in a couple of words.

What your brain is attempting to do is a really complicated thing. It is taking all the sensory input inside of you and trying to find the right words that best capture what you are feeling in the content of your experiences, both past and present.

Although humans have the capacity to apply logic and reason, that does not mean we are logical beings—far from it. We feel our way through the world using emotions.

As Lisa says, "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are the constructions of our world".

Imagine you are in a tight, pitch black dark tunnel. You cannot see in front of you, so you can rely on touch. You predict where to place your hands, to feel the walls and then you adjust.

Predict, feel, adjust. Predict, feel, adjust.

Your brain is doing this to your body and mind every second of the day. It is like being in a dark tunnel, trying to find its way through.

It's all emotion. It's all feelings. It's all vibes bro.

This is also a curse of consciousness. We are aware of our feelings, and we feel them because of them.

We feel our physical and emotional states. For example, when you stumble through a dark tunnel, you may make errors in where you place your hands and feet. Your brain also makes errors in predicting what these feelings mean.

This means that whatever you are feeling at any given moment may be wrong. That feeling could be the result of a prediction error from the brain.

Emotions are similar to mirages in the desert. Constructions of the world are made by the brain.

Your brain, while incredibly complex and powerful, is a terrible judge of what you need.

We got it all wrong

There's a trend going around on social media about what different cravings mean in the body.

If you are craving chocolate, then you need magnesium.

Your brain doesn't tell you, you need magnesium. It tells you to eat chocolate. When you eat chocolate, your gut tells your brain, "There is magnesium in here, buddy". Your brain learns that association. This is all subconscious. You never become aware that chocolate is high in magnesium through experience. Instead, you have to learn it through education.

What your brain tells you you need is always a proxy for something else. You need to raise your awareness to recognise what these feelings actually mean. Am I actually craving chocolate, or am I low in magnesium?

Our world has truly been designed for comfort and pleasure. So, your brain learns that the answer to your discomfort is pleasure. In a world full of distractions, it has never been easier to do nothing while convincing yourself you are doing something.

When you get home, and you are tired, your brain makes the prediction this couch and this phone will sort you out. Dopamine then fires providing the motivation to pursue pleasure. Because the phone and the content you watch take the mind off the mind, and you feel good, you get that dopamine reward. The habit is formed.

But pleasure rapidly becomes rotten.

You feel shame after these sessions. Your mind is plagued by the thoughts of everything else you could be doing. Cytokines and cortisol probably increase in the body, increasing inflammation, reducing recovery and further subtracting from your energy cup rather than filling it up.

I believe this to be true for self-care as well. Putting yourself into a vegetative state is not good for the soul. Rotting in your bed may be comforting, but it is not fulfilling.

The reason why you keep letting yourself down is because the brain is a terrible judge of what is actually good for you.

We need a better way. We need an instruction manual for the machine that is our body and mind.

Machine Maintenance

Everyone in the self-improvement niche says "fuck your feelings", or they promote the idea "how you feel is everything". The former is emotional neglect, and the other is emotion-affirming. Both are a little right and a little wrong - at least in my opinion.

I think there is an alternative. A more effective and healthy way to do what you need to do and take care of yourself at the same time.

Stop thinking about yourself as a person. Detach yourself from your feelings. Think of yourself as a machine, and give the machine the maintenance it needs.

You don't think about how your car feels when it needs fuel. You fill it up.

You don't think about how it feels when it needs an oil change. You do the change.

You don't think about how it feels when the tire pressure is low; you inflate the tyres.

This is not the same as ignoring your feelings and gritting your teeth as you push forward.

That would be like driving your car with flat tyres, low on gas and burnt oil. You won't get far. You will break down somewhere. Unlike for your car there is no roadside assistance for you. No one is coming to rescue you from yourself.

Just like your car needs to be able to drive, so do you have needs to function.

The warning indicators on the car dashboard are your low mood, low energy, tiredness, and inconsistency.

You don't ignore them and keep driving until you break down, nor do you ignore them and park your car in the garage, hoping something will change.

You do the maintenance so you can stay on the road and keep driving.

The feelings you feel are the outputs of the machine's performance, giving the machine the inputs it needs, affects the performance and consequently improves the outputs.

For example, I am an introvert, and when it comes to social events, there is always that part of me that doesn't want to go. My brain has predicted alot of energy will be used at this event. Some negative feelings and emotions swell up because of this.

However, I said I would go, a commitment was made and I need to follow through. And do you know what? Despite the initial apprehension, I always feel better after doing it.

If we treat ourselves like a machine and do what the machine needs despite how we feel and focus on the inputs (our actions), we can improve the machine's outputs (our feelings)

What if you had an instruction manual for yourself?

The instruction manuel

If I had an instruction manual for myself, I could troubleshoot my own feelings and know with relative certainty what the machine needs. I haven't written an actual manual, but I really like it as a frame.

Take that Friday as an example:

When I came home tired and not wanting to do anything, this is what the instruction manual would tell me to do.

Checklist the big inputs

There are certain inputs that contribute to performance and mood. I call these the big movers. If I notice fatigue and low mood swell up, my point of contact is to check this list of inputs. I look for what has been lacking this week.

In the case of last Friday.

• Clear, focused deep work - check

• Good food - check

• Water - check

• Gym - check

• Sleep - not bad, but not as long as required

• Walk - no walks through the week

• Chat with a friend - nothing outside of work or texting my mates

If I had done this review immediately, I could see that my energy cup is low because 3 of the 7 big inputs have been lacking.

The moment when I plopped on the couch and pulled out my phone was the moment to say, "You haven't gone for a walk this week. Do that. Get some sunshine".

Let's say you got to the end of the day, and you felt pretty flat. You did a review for your own checklist and noticed that your diet has been pretty poor this week. There's your answer, prioritise having a good meal and you will most likely feel better than you were.

We are really good at solving the problem once we know what the problem is. But we really suck at the diagnosis part. We get caught up in our feelings, but like we talk about, they may not be accurate and instead be a mirage.

I am convinced that 90% of my problems go away if I just eat well, drink enough water, train hard in the gym, go for many walks, call my friends and get plenty of sleep

Change how you rest

Sometimes, I have weeks where I do a really good job prioritising the big movers, and I feel good, but almost out of nowhere, I feel the urge to sabotage myself.

We have such a desire for something interesting to happen that we would throw good times away for pleasure.

We want to have fun. We want to play. We want things to be interesting.

But as adults,, we tend to have less fun, play less, and get stuck in the monotony of daily life.

And then we rebel. We act out and sabotage ourselves.

Ordinary lives can never be as interesting as the edited and curated highlights from other people's lives online, or the story in that video game, or whatever your thing is.

You can't trick yourself, though. You know these are distractions. We feel bad and ashamed about doing things we know are not good for us. That is the curse of consciousness.

We need to change the way we rest.

Rest doesn't need to be passive and pleasurable. It can be active and enjoyable.

Think about what other inputs the machine needs. What activities do you do throughout your day that you actually enjoy? How can you create these into habits?

I have been thinking this about alot the past couple of months.

• I want to create more time to read books, listen to podcasts, and think and take notes about these ideas. To me,, this is fun. However, it is also difficult and challenging, so I need rest for this as well.

• I want to create more time for mind wandering. I have no plan, no focus, just unoccupied hours of mental space.

• I want to create more time for non progress related hobbies.

• I want to carve out some time for intentional entertainment. I think anime, netflix, or YouTube, used sparingly some nights of the week, is enjoyable. It becomes an issue when it is used in replacement of the other inputs.

Do the thing

Everything we have talked about relies on doing the machine maintenance even if you don't want to.

Remember, you cannot fix a problem of the mind with the mind. It needs to come from action.

There is no getting around it. But here are some tips that may help you have the correct perspective.

Promote accountability to yourself

I heard Chris Williamson talk about having posted it around his house to give him important reminders. I haven't implemented this yet, but I like the idea a lot.

Having a post-it note on the coffee table that says, " You will feel better after it," is a good reminder from my higher self.

Looking at the post-it that Friday afternoon and sinking into the couch would have been so painful that going for a walk would have been the only option.

I remember seeing a clip from David Googins on the Joe Rogan podcast. David said "fuck man, there are some morning where i stare at my shoes for 30 minutes and then I go run".

You need to manufacture an environment that is more painful if you didn't do that than if you did.

You need a stack of whys.

Lower the activation energy of the thing

In this letter, I discuss how I wired my brain to do the hard thing. You need to achieve an activation energy to do this, the same as the activation energy for a chemical reaction to occur spontaneously.

Design your environment to lower resistance and reduce the number of steps needed to do something. Then, focus on taking the smallest possible step first.

On that Friday afternoon, when I wasted time with distractions, I should have gone for a walk. The activation energy for the walk was too high. How could I have reduced it?

Focusing my attention on putting my shoes on like Goggins is the smallest step possible. Instead, my mind would think about all the steps to get to the beach. I know that once my shoes are on, I am out the door.

Build positive momentum and appreciate the wins

We are talking about going on a leisurely walk. No one is going to pat you on the back for that. No one is going to congratulate you for doing something so small despite your mind not being kind to you.

You should, though. That's a small win.

I am trying to get into the habit of feeling grateful to myself in these moments. I expect that doing the thing is the minimal standard of what's acceptable.

Small wins compound and build positive momentum in your life. You spiral upwards and become the hero of your life rather than the villain. That's something worth celebrating, even if it's just you and only for a few seconds

That's all for today. Appreciate you, my friend.

Enjoy the rest of your day

Bye.