Too much = Headache

An interesting thing happened yesterday. Too much information lead to self-imposed pressure. This resulted in a big headache - for me headaches are a noticeable event since up until my late 20s I don’t remember having one. Unaware the headache started to fade and after 15 min of meditation it was gone. It’s worth breaking it down.

Too much information I’ve written how I’ve been trying to remove distractions. Here and here.

It hasn’t worked out like I expected and I started chasing too many interests all at once. More than that I’m on a quest to deeply understand whatever I’m into. The theory and the practice.

I’m subscribed to a bunch of newsletter (which are great) but I start following links. Yesterday I followed a bunch of posts on Community, Containers and Machine Learning.

Pressure and Headache Reading those interesting and valuable posts I started putting pressure on myself to capture all the knowledge. A reaslization of how limited my depth in a subject is. Even though I consciously choose the topics the knowledge is not something I need right now. I think I fear not capturing knowledge and losing it to the deep internet. As if not knowing won’t allow me to be successful. Or worse I’m guaranteed to fail.

The result was a big headache.

Getting rid of the headache I wasn’t feel very well and asked my 5 and 3 yo daughters to be comprehensive and help me since I wasn’t feeling great. I realised I was putting pressure on them and started thinking about how I could prevent it.

A debate started. On my mind. What, Why, How I got to this headache. Chasing knowledge is fine but it doesn’t need to be right now. I should be chasing it when I need it and not when it’s thrown at me.

Before putting my kids to bed I was feeling sightly better. It surprised me and I thought I need more of that debate.

I put a timer for 15 min. Sat on the floor with my back straight closed my eyes and thought. Let my mind race. And it ran. 15 minutes takes a lot longer than I expected. A note to self is that I need to do more of it. Also whenever I need to slow down time this does the trick.