We need to recharge our brain. The best way I have found to do that is to stop doing what you normally do, and do something different. Do those hobbies you enjoy, but don’t get to do often.
Another method I have found is to find a way to dis-engage your brain for a while from the day-to-day.
In this episode I talk about things that I do, and as part of that some of my favorite books that are fun to read and take a while so it is a good way to dis-engage.
If you prefer to watch
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the 24th episode of The BudDIY Podcast. I’m your host, Buddy Lindsey. And today we’re going to talk about recharging and kind of getting motivation, resetting your brain, and kind of get away from the normal day to day so that you can get your brain and get your body back into the things that you want to do, and you can have a kind of a renewed spirit. But before that, if you haven’t visited the website, feel free to do so at B-U-D-D-I-Y.net. Sign up for that email newsletter. If you’re listening on YouTube, please feel free to subscribe and hit that notification bell so you know when new episodes are released. And we are available on most major podcast platforms. If you so choose to listen on there, please give us a review. If you make it five stars, it really helps us.
And with that, let’s jump into the episode and in our first of what’s going on around here. Well, I kind of wanted to do this episode because I’m about to take a week off from work and have kind of a vacation and just kind of disconnect from kind of the normal everyday life that goes on and just kind of do a few things that I don’t normally get to do, spend some more extra time with family and just kind of reset. I mean, it’s been a little bit of a crazy year this year and I really haven’t had I think two days off since I think last December area. So it’s been a little bit. And so I’m taking a week off and I’m just not doing nothing. I’m still doing stuff, but I am purposely doing not what I normally do.
See, I’m really looking forward to that, but what’s going on around here specifically kind of in this last week is I finished up the sonoma table. It looks great. My kids love it. And I’m super excited about that. When you make something and you give it to someone, you’re like, “Are they going to like it?” And they like it. They immediately, as soon as they saw it, they went over and sat down at it and were basically like, “This is my table.” And so it was a lot of fun. I was really happy about that.
And then after that, I started work on the bookshelf for my office. It’s part of the Weekend Woodworker course. And I had kind of hoped to get done with that this week. However, trying to get everything else situated from work, personal life and everything, it just did not get done. And all I got was the base of it done, and I was pushing so hard. Like I was just wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. So the last couple of nights, I have not felt safe to go out there and do work in the shop being as tired as I was. So I just like, “You know what? We’re going to hold off. And I’ll hit that project when I get done with my vacation.” When I do vacation, I specifically try to not do things that I normally do so that I kind of can re-approach things in a different way, kind of as a different aspect. I’m still going to do some woodworking type stuff, but I’m going to do, it’s kind of more meta and around it.
The final thing on what’s going on around here is I’ve been helping a friend get into woodworking. Well, I’m not saying I’m getting him into it, he’s getting into woodworking and I’m helping him with different things. We kind of ran into an interesting situation that I’ve run into as well. It’s like, how do you guarantee something is straight or something is perfectly square when you don’t have anything else to square up against? And I was thinking, there is the method where you take something and you want to make sure there’s a 90 degree on it and you draw a line and you flip it over and you draw a line, and you get that. Well, if you only have like a four inch square and it’s square for those four inches, what about at like 10 inches? How do you know about that? Because when you get longer, it’s harder to make sure something is still square.
We were just kind of going through that because we want to make sure that his adjustment is square. And specifically he got a digital kind of like angle finder thing. And it was reading like 0.1 off of 90 degrees. And we were like, “I wonder if it’s off or if the table saw is off because he measured something else and it was at 0.1 off as well.
Anyway, it’s kind of like, how do you do that? So I’ve actually been thinking about spending a little money and buying an expensive square kind of tool as a reference. But my question then is how do you guarantee that square in the first place so that you square everything else off of that square to make sure everything is square? I don’t know. I mean, you just kind of got to trust it, I guess. Anyway, I don’t know. I’m just kind of throwing them [inaudible 00:04:31]. Those have been my thoughts the last couple of days, and trying to help him and try to figure out a couple of things.
On that note though, doing some of the stuff with the table saw, I have been getting really good cuts doing this bookshelf. And I mean, I think I have it a lot better dialed in than I did the unit saw. Super excited about that. Getting a lot better results. The miter saw on the other hand is really frustrating the crap out of me, and I need to make a 90 degree miter joint jig. It’s kind of one of those, like, do I want to spend the time to adjust the miter saw to make sure it’s getting perfect miters or do I want to take that same time, build a jig, and then I don’t have to worry about accidentally knocking it out of alignment like I would with a miter saw. It’s kind of a rough one, but I think I’m going to make a miter saw jig.
The other side on that is I’ve been thinking I need, maybe do a cross cut sled and a couple of other different things. And it’s like, do I take the time to make one and spend $5,000, $8,000 in materials to make all these different jigs? Or do I buy something like the Incra 5000? And it’s a bunch of jigs in one and now I don’t have to make them all, and it’s kind of like it just saves me a lot of time and I know that’s industrial grade so that I know it’s right coming out of the gate. I don’t have to mess with making a jig and making sure that it’s right. I don’t know. There’s just a lot to think about. And those have been thoughts the last couple of days.
So anyway, I’m kind of done with that. Let’s move on to the main segment incident, and that’s on relaxing and things that I do to relax and kind of disconnect and try to get out of my head. And I’m curious what everybody else does. I kind of get stuck in the things that I like to do and the things that I do, but I don’t necessarily know all the different activities that people have available to them. And so please, I’m going to give you my list of things that I like and that I do, but I would love to hear everyone else’s, especially if it comes to reading. What are some book recommendations that you might have? Feel free to hit the website, BudDIY.net, and leave something in the comments. I would love to see and love to hear what you do to relax and to unwind and things of that nature, because I’m always looking for something else to do unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I love just doing and learning new things. So finding a new hobby is always fun.
Anyway, so let’s jump in. The first one I’m going to go over his books. I love to read, and this is to me is the best escapism be it fiction books or nonfiction books. I read nonfiction books a lot. And when I go on vacation, I usually refuse to read nonfiction unless I have a specific goal. And I don’t read business books on vacation because those are my favorite. And so those are the ones that I read most of the time. So in this vacation, this time off, I am strictly going to do more woodworking books. I especially have like a history book on shaker style furniture. So I’m really looking forward to that. And then I have a few Fine Woodworking magazines. Those are the only nonfiction’s that I’m going to go after. Other than that, I have a few fiction books that I want to try.
But some of my favorite series and some of my favorite books that I read that are fiction that I reread regularly, just because I like them so much, the first series is the Honor Harrington Series. I love this series. I’m not exactly sure why. Probably because it was the first like adult fiction book, not like young adult or like kids or teen. It’s the first one that was written by an adult for adults to read. My favorite genre space opera. You’ll see that in my first few recommendations. So there is that, but this one talks about interstellar travel, talks about time mechanics and gravity, the possibility of the way that this author perceives how to do faster than travel. Economics between world systems, political intrigue and how politics works. In this series, like one book annoyingly is about 80% politics between two systems, so that it sets up for the next book in the series. It’s a big battle. So it’s just really interesting. And then also kind of how they view the world or the universe might be and how people interact day to day.
There’s one book that was kind of interesting, and it wasn’t written before emojis. And so they were like, “How can I take emojis into the year 2,500?” Kind of the concept of what an emoji is. And they had an interesting take on it. And I’m like you know what? I’ll bet that’s wrong, but I’ll bet it’s right in the sense that that thing will still exist because emojis help us express emotion in a two dimensional way. And in a sense, there’s always still going to be some kind of two dimensional communication that takes place. I don’t necessarily see reading as something that’s going to go away, at least not for a long time. Anyway, it’s kind of interesting. I like to see how other people perceive what the future might be. Plus, it’s really cool to read about big giant ships blowing up. I mean, come on. So yeah, the first series is Honor Harrington. It’s probably my favorite series of all time. I think it’s still actively being written. I think it’s at 13 or 14 books. It’s a great book.
And the next one is Kris Longknife. This is actually similar to Honor Harrington, except I would say if you have like teen books and you have adult books, this is like 20 year olds. Like 18, 20 year old area. It’s not as in depth as the Honor Harrington, but it’s not as shallow as say The Hunger Games. It’s kind of an in between. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of action. And there’s actually a few twists you don’t expect. There are some things that I find annoying with it, like some of the advancements that they made and the speed that they make them from a technology perspective. For the main character, it makes sense for her character. Like she goes from rank to rank to rank just like that. And it kind of annoys me, but whatever.
I mean, it’s still an interesting story, interesting plot line. And it’s a lot of fun to listen to because I mostly listen to books, but I usually do the audible and Kindle version. So I do the Whispersync, So I’ll pick it up at night and read, and then if I’m doing stuff during the day and it’s something mindless like mowing, then I’ll listen to the book there. And then I can just pick up again on the Kindle. It’s amazing.
The next series is, I think, one of my favorite series in complexity. I’m usually really good about figuring out the plot and the twist of a movie. I mean, it annoys my wife because I literally, she’s been watching a series and I’ll come in and out of the series with her. And I figured out one of the chunks, like three episode chunks, I figured out what it was going to be like within the first 10 minutes of one of the episodes. And three episodes later, it came out and she gets annoyed with me. I don’t know how or why I can figure those things out fairly quickly.
So, when I come across a series or a book that it leaves me guessing for a really long time, I love it. And the Commonwealth Saga, which also includes the Void Trilogy, is amazing. I mean, the Commonwealth Saga, it’s two books. It’s about 80 hours of listening. So they are a long books between the two books. There’s like 10 different stories going in parallel. And then they all converge at the end to lead to a total like, I did not see that coming moment around when you have the climax portion of a final story. Around there, you’re just like, “I see all the connection points in the beginning that if I would have connected those together, I could have figured this out.” Amazing, amazing writing. Just absolutely love this series. Love the Commonwealth Saga and the Void Trilogy.
The Commonwealth Saga is kind of the main thing. Then the Void Trilogy is just kind of an offshoot. It’s super interesting. But to me, it’s not as good as the Commonwealth Saga, but I liked them both a lot. The Void Trilogy has a thing at the end that I don’t know how the writer did it, but they got me so into it that I felt what they wanted me to feel about a particular character after a certain event happened. And I’m like, “I don’t know how they did that.” And it was just amazing. Totally recommend the Commonwealth Saga and the Void Trilogy. Great.
So if we get out of the science fiction realm for a minute, another book series, another book that I like is called Patriots. This one’s kind of interesting because it is a end of the world as we know it type book, but there’s a lot of like practical things that you can do. And there are a lot of practical information in there. And to me, it’s an interesting analysis of what could happen in an economic collapse and all the different things that can go around. And if you’re well prepared for it, some of the things that might happen.
I also like the fact that they were like, “It’s not going to be the end of the world,” and just everything falls apart for the rest of time. There’s going to be a re-build. And some of the stuff that could potentially happen in the middle of a re-build. Really cool book. And also just cool, interesting information that you might not know that is actual practical, applicable knowledge to the real world. Definitely recommend that book because it can be fun or it can be serious. So it’s kind of interesting.
And then the final book that I have before moving on is a classic, and that’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Love this book. I don’t know why I like it so much. Maybe because I like the underdog. We all like the underdog story. Here’s a guy that had it all and then it was ripped away from him by somebody that was jealous. But this guy wasn’t that smart, like he knew his thing and he could learn, but he wasn’t all that intelligent. But somebody, a mentor took him, made him better. He learned, he applied and he became a very, very smart person. And then he went on about his revenge, which like, the concept of revenge, I’m not necessarily a fan of, but it was interesting weaving of the story of the tale, and then his ultimate result. And it is totally different than any movie I have ever seen of The Count of Monte Cristo. The actual original book is very long, but very interesting and totally different than any interpretation that I’ve ever seen. So I really, really like it. I also liked the off shoots and the re-imaginings of it as well. I don’t know, it’s just fun. I like it. It’s a classic.
So I think we’re probably done with books at the moment. Let’s jump onto the next chunk. And that is activities that I like to do that kind of disconnect my brain from everything. So these are generally activities that I like to do that keeps my brain engaged so I don’t necessarily think about other things, and so that my brain isn’t crowded with thoughts and ideas and other stuff. The first one of those is I like to go out and hit golf balls. I like to do chipping and pitching to the hole. I don’t like to necessarily do this for hours on end, but this is something that I like to do or I just go out for 15, 20 minutes and fully engaged my brain into it. And then every once in a while, once in a blue moon, I go out and play a full round of golf and it just totally distracts me from everything else in the world.
And I know a lot of people are like, “How can golf distract you from the rest of the world?” Well, growing up in high school, I was on the golf team and I really enjoyed it, but I also got really competitive about it. And I spend my whole time analyzing my game as I’m doing it, my scoring, what is the setup, and how can I properly hit the ball? And so I’m fully engaged in the game and I don’t actually have a lot of conversations with other people while I play because I fully engage into the game and don’t really consider much else except for like break times or somebody is moving too slow and so I have to wait for them at the tee box. Especially depending if we get piled up. So most of the time I engage in golf and that’s it. So I really like golf for that matter.
The next one is paintball. I like to go out into the woods with family and play paintball. And it’s a lot of fun and the way we play, it takes engagements. You got to listen, you’ve got to be patient and really play the game well. In fact, I was actually supposed to go play paintball this week in Oklahoma D-Day. And this was supposed to be their last year, the 20th year of Oklahoma D-Day, where 3,000 to 5,000 people come together in one 700 to a 1,000 acre place and play paintball for an eight hour event. It’s amazing.
I’ve done it a few times and this was supposed to be the last year, but COVID happened and now next year is going to be the last year because they postponed it. So if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, you ought to check it out next year in 2021. It’s a week-long event. They have different games throughout the week, but the main event is on Saturday and it’s an eight hour long paintball game. Super fun. It consumes a lot of brain power and get you thinking differently than you do every day because you don’t play paintball every day.
The final thing in activities that I like to engage in that just disconnect me from everything that’s going on is shooting. I like to take out my guns. Specifically, mostly my little 22 long rifle. Bolt Action, 22 long rifle. And I like to sit there and shoot at a target and shoot at a target and just shoot a lot at a target. And just work on grouping, just work on different things. It’s just something fun about hitting that target and just trying to dial in that shot because you got so many things to consider. How are you breathing? What’s the wind doing? What’s the air doing? What are you doing based on those factors? How are you trying to compensate so that you don’t overcompensate? And then sometimes it’s just a lot of fun to tear a piece of paper with bullets. I mean, let’s just face it, it’s a lot of fun.
But while I’m there, I’m concentrating not only on shooting, but on safety and everything around me. And so it completely disconnects me from what I normally do. And it’s another reason I like it so that I change what I’m doing. And sometimes I will engage in any of these three activities fully. And I don’t think about anything else. It’s forced my brain to push all that stuff into the subconscious, into the back of my brain. I’ll walk away, and then five minutes later I’ll have come up with a solution for my day to day stuff that I haven’t been able to think of for a couple of days. So those are reasons that I like to just totally disconnect from the normal everyday things that I do.
And then finally, there are some times that I like to do activities that require me to think or self analyze. And this is one I’m really curious about what other people do, because I have a few that I do and they work for me, but I’m not sure what other people do. So for me, I like to go cycling on occasion. I like to get on my bike and I like to just ride, granted I haven’t done it in a while. But one thing that I do while I’m riding is I think because no one’s there to potentially distract me because I’m going 15 miles an hour down a road. And it’s not really necessarily easy to talk to someone like that. So I have myself and me in my brain and I can just think things through, or I can think about nothing. That works too sometimes. But mostly I can just think about things that I’ve been wanting to. And so it’s a good opportunity.
The next thing I like to do is, and I don’t do this necessarily a lot, is just meditation. I like to just sit there and do nothing for five or ten minutes. I am definitely not a, I’m doing an hour long meditation session kind of person. Just five or ten minutes, and I will just lay back in my chair and look at the ceiling for a while and just let my brain go and just let it go wherever it needs to go. And eventually it just kind of gets to a point it kind of pauses for a little bit. At that point, I feel like I’m done. I feel like I’m more relaxed and I’m ready to jump back into what I’m doing. I don’t know why, but it really allows me to think things through after I get done doing whatever I am working.
The third thing I like to do is I just like to talk to people about stuff, about anything. This is weird because I’m more of an introvert, but when I get into a group of people that I know, I just like to talk about random things and just have discussions about things. And I like to talk about topics and not necessarily just like complete randomness, like I don’t necessarily like to get into the 5,000 at the time I have heard a family story. Like that’s just not a thing that I like. But I like to talk about what are you doing today, what are you doing at work? Tell me about it. How is that going? What have you learned about? Just things like that. I like to hear about how other people are doing stuff and then engage with them about what I’m doing so that they can see what I’m doing, and they can throw in thoughts and ideas about that as well. And we can interact and kind of push off of each other about various topics. And sometimes it gives third-party input that leads to new information and new things.
And then the final thing that I like to do, and this kind of goes off of that is I like to get into mastermind groups every so often for a little while. I haven’t actually been able to land in one that stays going long-term. I was in one for a little over a year and I felt like it helped sometimes. But at the end it was just kind of getting, this is now an obligation, we all committed to do it, so we’re going to get it done. It didn’t really help because we were all kind of diverging in different directions.
But the thing I like about mastermind groups is it’s forced focus on a particular topic or set of topics that other people can contribute to and offer ideas. And you’re kind of like, you have a bit of an accountability because you’re telling them specific things about what you’re trying to figure out and what you have done and have not done. And then they’re going to try to help you get through those things. And it’s a little better than trying to think it through on your own and just try a whole bunch of stuff, trying to figure it all out on your own, which is the case that I’m in most of the time, because I don’t have a lot of friends that do the things that I do. And so I don’t have a lot of people that I can bounce things off of. So that’s why I like to try to get involved in mastermind groups when I can. Totally recommend a mastermind groups, if you’ve ever thought about getting into one for whatever it is that you’re doing.
So with that, I think we’re done with this segment. It was really just like, how do I disconnect from the day to day? Because the day to day can wear on you after a while and you need to disconnect, to do something different so that you can jump back into your day to day and be ready to go and be a little bit better off than you were.
So on that, we’re going to jump to the final segment and that is failure. And this is the one that drives me the most insane because I do it all the time and I have no idea how to fix it. And that is poor planning. I had a plan for this week and I didn’t take into account all the variables. And I got nearly nothing that I wanted to get done, done. Got a lot of the things done that I needed to get done, but it didn’t leave a lot of time for the things that I wanted to get done, which frustrates the tar out of me.
I don’t know how to solve this problem. I don’t know if it’s bad ability to plan and account for time, if I’m lazy because I didn’t take the time to do some of the stuff that I needed to do. I don’t know. I don’t know. But that was my failure this week. I had things that I wanted to get done and then I wasn’t able to get done. I had to get all the stuff I needed to get done, done though. So I guess there’s that.
Anyway, on that note, I hope you have a great week. I am curious to hear what you do to try to disconnect and get rejuvenated a little bit. Let me know in the comments and I will see you next week. Have a good one.
BudDIY Podcast – Episode 23 – Eliminate Inefficiencies