Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January 25, 2026

Embracing the "Suck"

There is a phase in every project management lifecycle called the " Trough of Disillusionment ." It happens after the initial launch excitement fades, but before the results are fully visible. It is the moment when the newness of the Keto diet wears off, the scale stalls, and the 5:00 AM alarm feels like a personal insult. In military and endurance circles , this is affectionately known as "The Suck." For the ADHD brain, which runs on dopamine and novelty, "The Suck" is usually where the system crashes. We abandon the project because it is no longer stimulating. But this time, I am treating "The Suck" differently. I am not trying to avoid it; I am using it as training data. The Art of Voluntary Hardship The ancient Stoics (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius) practiced a concept called Voluntary Hardship . They would deliberately expose themselves to cold, hunger, or poverty for short periods, not out of masochism, but to immunize themselves against the fea...

Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again?

In last week's #SystemCheckSunday , SOP of the Morning to You , I detailed the precise sequence of events I use to boot up my operating system for the day. But any IT professional knows that a successful boot-up depends entirely on how the system was shut down the night before. If you hard-crash a server - just yanking the power cord - you risk data corruption. Yet, this is exactly how most of us treat sleep. We run our brains at 100% CPU usage, staring into blue-light emitting screens until the moment we collapse, and then wonder why we lie awake with "racing thoughts." For the ADHD brain specifically, the transition from "On" to "Off" does not happen automatically. It requires a manual shutdown sequence. Here is my Evening Shutdown Protocol (ESP) , executed in the last 60 minutes of the day. Phase 1: The Blue Light Firewall (T-Minus 60 Minutes) At one hour before target sleep time, the "Digital Sunset" begins. Biologically, the presence of ...