24 May 2018 What Are Your Limits?

What Are Your Limits?          

What events in your life are more challenging?  The ones that involve more physical effort or the mental ones. I think the physical ones are easier to measure since you can only run so fast or lift a weight a certain amount of time before your body shuts down.  You may want to do more; however, the muscles won’t respond. 

The mental challenges don’t have the same physiological metric. The closest analogy maybe when you are working on some tasks and you fall sleep right on the desk.  Even your mind has a limit to the time you can consciously use it.  For me I can identify sometimes when I hit my physical limit, however I can’t remember when I tested my mental capacity to the limits.

All I can think of is a picture of a software coder pulling an all nighter to grind out the code. Bill Gates had the concentration ability to work 48 hours straight then lay down by the desk to get a little sleep and then get back to marathon coding.

I guess a lot of people who are really passionate about the work they are doing get lost in it and lose all track of time, sometimes for very long periods. I have not found a job I am passionate about that I have worked extremely long hours on. I have read books that have absorbed a lot of time.  I’ve had that “can’t put it down” feeling and go on and on. This is especially true on weekends when I did not have to go to work.  Reading is not working the mind in the way as say solving calculus problems.

I’ve had times when I had to have deep focus and concentration.  Landing a plane on an aircraft carrier during the night did get my attention.  However, that was for a limited time.  Now I see the benefits of deep concentration, for say one to one and a half hours and then take a break.  If I did two of these periods in a day I can get a tremendous amount of work done.  Those three hours produce more than in a regular day due to the elimination of distractions.  Also, this routine can go on day after day, there is not bad effects.  It gives me time to workout, read and get a good sleep.  

I still want to test myself every now and then just to see how far I can push my limits.