Am I the only one who skips meals when deep in a coding project?

I was working on a simple app for tracking my water intake, lol. But I got so focused I didn't drink water myself for hours. My head started pounding, and I felt dizzy. It made me see that I need to set timers to remind me to hydrate and eat. Now I use a Pomodoro timer to force breaks. It's helped my coding focus and my health. Funny how building a health app made me neglect my own health, lmao.

4 comments

4 Comments

viola12d ago

That deep focus is like a weird trance where your brain forgets the body exists. What finally got me was realizing my bug-fixing speed tanks after about three hours without a break. The answer seems obvious later, but my tired brain just stares at the same lines. Now I force a five-minute walk, even just around the room, and the solution often pops into my head.

the_linda2d ago

Wow, I used to wear skipping meals like a badge of honor, like it proved I was really locked in. Then I spent a whole afternoon stuck on a stupid loop because my brain was just fried from no fuel. Forcing myself to step away for even ten minutes makes the code make sense again when I come back. It took me way too long to admit that the timer thing isn't for weak focus, it's for keeping focus from breaking down.

beng512d ago

Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" mentions that skipping breaks can actually make your coding worse over time... I read a blog post that tracked how much programmers got done, and the ones using timers like Pomodoro wrote more code without burning out. Your water app story is a perfect example of that irony... I set up a cheap kitchen timer to go off every hour, and it reminds me to at least drink some water. It feels silly needing a beep to remember basic stuff, but it works. Without it, I'd probably code straight through dinner again.

noah_perry951d ago

My old coding mentor swore by hourly breaks but I thought it was silly until I tried it. Now I set a timer to stand up and chug water every 45 minutes or I'll just forget. He'd probably laugh at me for finally listening after years of ignoring it.