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Am I the only one who skips meals when deep in a coding project?
I was working on a simple app for tracking my water intake, lol. But I got so focused I didn't drink water myself for hours. My head started pounding, and I felt dizzy. It made me see that I need to set timers to remind me to hydrate and eat. Now I use a Pomodoro timer to force breaks. It's helped my coding focus and my health. Funny how building a health app made me neglect my own health, lmao.
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viola16mo ago
That deep focus is like a weird trance where your brain forgets the body exists. What finally got me was realizing my bug-fixing speed tanks after about three hours without a break. The answer seems obvious later, but my tired brain just stares at the same lines. Now I force a five-minute walk, even just around the room, and the solution often pops into my head.
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the_linda6mo ago
Wow, I used to wear skipping meals like a badge of honor, like it proved I was really locked in. Then I spent a whole afternoon stuck on a stupid loop because my brain was just fried from no fuel. Forcing myself to step away for even ten minutes makes the code make sense again when I come back. It took me way too long to admit that the timer thing isn't for weak focus, it's for keeping focus from breaking down.
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beng516mo ago
Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" mentions that skipping breaks can actually make your coding worse over time... I read a blog post that tracked how much programmers got done, and the ones using timers like Pomodoro wrote more code without burning out. Your water app story is a perfect example of that irony... I set up a cheap kitchen timer to go off every hour, and it reminds me to at least drink some water. It feels silly needing a beep to remember basic stuff, but it works. Without it, I'd probably code straight through dinner again.
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noah_perry956mo ago
My old coding mentor swore by hourly breaks but I thought it was silly until I tried it. Now I set a timer to stand up and chug water every 45 minutes or I'll just forget. He'd probably laugh at me for finally listening after years of ignoring it.
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