1. Nothing.

Another useless thing ditched: TODO lists. Life’s much simpler now: if something is important and I remember it, I do it; if I don’t remember it, it’s not important enough. The greatest lifehack is not to hack life at all.

There’s a certain pull I feel: a feeling towards things physical. After all, why do I prefer black & white film photography over digital work? Embedded development over software development? Devices over web services? Talking over texting? Preparing my own meals over buying them? There’s a pattern in this.

Making a physical object is a craft in itself. All the effort spent on designs, ideas and plans fades in comparison with the joy and satisfaction of actually making something. It’s a simple pleasure, the same one that our ancestors felt thousands of years ago when they built their first crude tools. Over the centuries and millennia, man-made physical objects embodied quality. Maybe that’s why I find them beautiful.

Embracing a more healthy lifestyle reveals an ugly truth: what is easily reachable and feels good is usually harmful. There’s my list:

1. alcohol;
2. sugar-heavy drinks: soda, juice;
3. convenience foods, most of them meat- or cheese-based;
4. chocolate, sweets, etc.

Want a hamburger? Pizza? Beer? Candy bars? No problem; you can get them at any petrol station at any hour. Want some carrots at 2AM? Haha! Eat grit, fucker! Being vegetarian is lame, right?

* * *

I found a 24/7 vegetable store in my neighborhood. Technically, it’s a petrol station – but they also sell a really nice variety of vegetables, grains, seeds etc. The first time I saw it – and it was at 1AM – I was so flabbergasted I stood outside for a few minutes until an employee came out to ask if I’m okay. It was simply so surprising that anything besides fast food can be sold at night that my mind couldn’t process the information.

PS. Groceries in London are open until 1-2AM. It was one of those “aha!” moments when I realized this. There’s demand – so there’s supply. Too bad it doesn’t work in Poland this way; supermarkets aside, all you can get after 6PM is basically junk food.

PS. Coincidentally, cooking seems like a pretty good antidote to burnout. There’s immediate gratification for the efforts, in form of both satisfaction and food. This should help get the confused brain back on track.

I’ve been living with scarcely any money for the last three weeks. I simply ran out of it. It’s a semi-controlled experiment; something half-planned and half-assed. And the results are amazing.

1. Do you often go to the kitchen, look in the fridge, and walk away disappointed because there’s supposedly “nothing” to eat? Well… when you do this, you’re 1) not hungry, 2) bored and 3) lazy. Without cash, but with some products stashed in the kitchen and ample time, I’m cooking more than ever – simply because if I don’t, I’ll be hungry. Motivation works wonders: yesterday I baked a pie simply because I found out I had all the ingredients needed. It was the best apple pie I ever ate and the first one I ever made.
2. I’m amazed by how little I actually need to spend. This is hard to even describe: recently I couldn’t afford any whims and compulsive purchases and found this had NO EFFECT ON MY HAPPINESS WHATSOEVER. No, wait. It had: I cherish whatever I have much more. I also started paying attention to intrinsic value of things instead of their price tags. A 2008 MacBook? As long as it does the job, it’s okay. Basically, I rejected the consumer approach to life and it didn’t kill me.
3. All this craziness is contributing wonderfully to my health & lifestyle. Since I have to pay attention to what I’m eating (due to costs & limited choices), I stopped buying junk food: frozen/convenience stuff, chocolate, sweets, white bread, etc. As a consequence, the less I spend on food, the better my meals become. I know it sounds crazy – with a food budget of $3/day I just can’t afford frozen pizza anymore.

What’s the moral of this story? I don’t know – but it seems to me the Western culture has got it all wrong. Spending is a really bad habit. Cutting ties between spending and pleasure is hard, since it involves not spending for a period of time – but once you’re through, you won’t ever want to go back.