How do you Clear Your Head

to refocus back

[Anyango]

Bored, no new topic. Lets talk about this. So how do you clear your head? You have been busy working for ages on something and you have to take a weekend off and come back on monday after clearing your head and regaining your focus and concentration. What do you do ?

I generally tend to do some realy physicaly draining work like Hiking or an outdoor party with friends doing BBQ and all sorts of tiring works, they realy take your mind away from thinking about programming all the time.
But the best thing is when i go to fly my RC planes, Once a 5k$ Airplane is in the air and there are 20 people watching, there is nothing else you can think of, other than thinking about flying it smoothly and landing it safely. You forget what PHP is, what .NET is, what Application Programming is, what Apache means, or what your profession is. A whole day like that and you are ready for work again on monday.

So what do you do ?

[rj87uk]

Sounds good but I am starting to find after I do offline activities I quickly become bored with what I was doing before I left for a holiday / weekend - How do you get over that!

RJ

[Anyango]

Ya that happens, exactly it does, takes like half of first work day to get back into that mode :)

[LifeinAsia]

Biking or hiking. Haven't done either for a while, which is probably why my head is so unclear right now...

Thanks for the reminder to help get myself motivated to get out there again!

[wheel]

Exercise works, I can get zoned out in 20 minutes, then I can be good for a couple of hours.

Otherwise, I physically remove myself (typically into some geography that's relatively wilderness) to go fishing/hiking/four-wheeling, and that takes at least a day before the brain slows down.

[Anyango]

No More members willing to participate?

[weeks]

No More members willing to participate?

Try "How do you stay focused?" That's what I work on.

I have a good friend who does have trouble "clear the head." She is an artist and she does things like, oh, forget to eat. (OK, not that bad.)

Travel is really a great way to clear the head and get a fresh approach. Get out of the house. Out of the city. Out of the country. If you live in the hills, go to the sea. If you live in the country, go to the city.

[mack]

As soon as I start to loose focus, I go out for a walk. Even half an hour sets you up nicely for when you get back. I don't see it as clearing my head, simply finding a nicer way to think about things :)

Mack.

[caribguy]

I bike 5 min to the nearest beach bar, a secluded place where they have my favorite beer. Only takes a few minutes looking out over the bay in solitude to remind me of why I chose to come down to work here in the first place.

Usually ready to go and crank new stuff out in an hour or so...

[ken_b]

Travel is really a great way to clear the head

Unless travel is an integral part of the job.

[bhonda]

Back at university, whenever I used to lose focus or start to get unnecessarily stressed, I would go for a run.

Just getting outside in the fresh air, pushing it slightly more than usual so all you are aware of is the world around you, your breathing, and your muscles.

Now I just look out the window. There's less sweating involved.

[Old_Honky]

I find sleeping refreshes me the most and restores my focus. It is the natural thing to do. All this exercise and extra adrenaline pumping round your body just stores up the stress for later. Trust me the answer is sleep, even if it is just a 30 minute nap.

[Anyango]

I agree with the sleep idea but honestly if i have some work in mind, then i have nightmares all along, i even dream about work and logic then. and then even sleep doesnt work for me.

[OnlineConnect]

Interesting subject, the thing that surprised me is that according to research you can only work at well a computer for a max of two hours. So I now try to walk away for a bit after two hours.