As regular readers might know, I have been working on a six month long experiment. The idea was to do 6 projects in 6 months and try to get some basic earning from them. With 5 months up, I am done with two projects, Joblead and AiRetreat. A third one is ongoing and should be out next month. But it has not been a smooth sailing easy journey. For the past few weeks, I have been stuck in a Wednesday.
Let’s back up a little. A few years ago, I read about some research that claimed Wednesday, not Monday, is the worst day of the week. The reason mentioned was that by Wednesday you are far away from the start of the week and the end is quiet far as well. By Wednesday, the euphoria of the previous weekend has waned and the excitement of the next weekend has not kicked in.
Now, if I consider my project one long week, I am currently living this proverbial Wednesday. At the start of the project, there were lot of unknowns. The total feature set, the mvp, the code architecture, the visual design, each task was more exciting and challenging than the previous one. After completing them, I was left with an impressive task list and a lot of coding to do. So I began. The first few weeks were still fun, as I saw my ideas come to life, but eventually I reached where I currently am. Every day, I pick the next coding piece and put it together. The full picture slowly forming but not really revealing itself. I no longer feel the excitement of working on this new project and since the end is too far to be visible, I don’t feel the rush of the final mile either. This is my Wednesday.
A lack of motivation is something we all have struggled with one or another time. Wednesdays are hard because of the drop in motivation. I was aware of this phenomenon when I started on this journey and hence was following a traditional work week and taking breaks on weekdays. So the actual Wednesday never troubled me. But this proverbial Wednesday stayed in my blindspot until now. And now that it is here, I am struggling to deal with it.
My go to move when low on motivation, is taking a break for a day or two. I engage in non work activites like reading a book, playing a new video game, hanging out with friends and/or spending extra time with family. This generally helps as I wake up the next day with new motivation. But now that everyday is a Wednesday, this solution has failed. So today I am still taking a break but I am not sure what to do. I played a video game earlier but that did not help much. Currently I am writing this post and this is helping a little. After this, I plan on finishing the book I have been reading. Later in the day, I will go back to my project but my main focus will remain on regaining the motivation.
Maybe I just need to take an extended vacation for a few days and rejuvenate myself. Irrespective of whether I take a long break or keep chugging along, work will get delayed. Maybe I just need to wait it out.
Feels like this Wednesday is never going to end. Incidentally, I am writing this on an actual Wednesday.
Have you felt the Wednesday low? How did you remedy it? Let me know in the comments. If you wish to know where this story goes, consider following me here on medium and stay tuned for my next post.