Here are a few life lessons I’ve found useful, ones that have stuck with me over the years. I often catch myself referring to them or practicing them in day-to-day life. Writing them here isn’t about giving advice (because I know future me will read this and cringe), but simply to record them somewhere so I don’t forget.
Never Bring Your Phone to the Shower
Honestly, most of my ideas or solutions to problems have come to me in the shower; usually when I’m washing my hair. Even the decision to write this post happened there. There’s a reason for that: our brains are constantly bombarded with noise and tasks. We rarely let them rest. When we’re not working, we’re watching a movie, playing a game, or doom-scrolling Instagram. There’s almost no idle time left for our minds to process everything we’ve absorbed.
There’s a fantastic Coursera course called Learning How to Learn that scientifically explains how our brain and learning processes work. It describes two modes of thinking:
- Focused Mode: Intense concentration on a specific problem or concept.
- Diffuse Mode: A relaxed state of thinking that allows for broader connections and creativity.
You can’t be in both modes at once, like seeing only one side of a coin. That’s why learning (and problem-solving) requires time spent in diffuse mode, where your brain connects dots gathered during focused work.
Another favorite of mine is the Veritasium video Why Boredom Is Good for You. Its main message is boredom fuels creativity. When your mind isn’t occupied, it starts to wander. And that’s when new ideas appear.
I’m not saying you should quit social media completely. Just maybe don’t bring your phone into the shower.
You Are What You Do Every Day
We all have goals and dreams, right? The difference between a goal and a task is that the former takes time, effort, and consistency. We often complete our daily tasks but do little or nothing toward our long-term goals. Worse, we sometimes assume they’ll be easy once we finally start, only to find out they’re not, and give up too soon.
A simple fact: you are what you do every day. If you want to build something, learn a skill, make more money, or grow friendships, basically anything bigger than a one-day effort, you have to act on it regularly. Thinking or dreaming about it doesn’t count.
The book Atomic Habits is everywhere, yet few people truly follow what it preaches. The author practically begs us to take small, consistent actions, every day or at least every few days, because that’s how real progress happens. You can’t get somewhere just by imagining it.
Customize Where You Live
We all decorate our homes and rooms to make them feel personal and comfortable. With furniture, tools, decorations, and appliances that fit our needs. But we also live in our digital spaces. If you’re a developer, your terminal and text editor are part of your home too.
So, start customizing those digital environments as well. After more than a decade of coding, I realized (a bit embarrassingly) that I’d done almost nothing to make my terminal better, learn more powerful tools, or optimize my setup. It’s like living in a messy, uncomfortable house.
Improving this comes with a learning curve, especially if you’ve worked in one environment for a long time. I remember losing my GitHub student pack benefits, which included a free JetBrains license, my main IDE. My productivity crashed. So, I learned (and still learning) vscode as a quick fix and neovim as a long-term solution. I rewrote my terminal configs, created useful aliases, and customized the colors and themes. It took effort, but now I genuinely feel more at home, and even get tired later in the day.
---
These three lessons are just the ones at the top of my mind. I have more, though I can’t recall them all right now. I’ll write them down in future posts once they come back. They usually do. Still, there’s no guarantee they always will. That’s really the whole point of writing this (and future) posts, to make sure these lessons don’t fade away completely.