Break the flow, that broke your Flow

Heyy boys & girls, I hope you’re all doing good.

After almost 3 weeks I’m writing this to you all.

Ungalukku therinjurukkum, I took a good break for 2 weeks, travelling around Pune, Bangalore, and now back to Chennai to continue with my works.

To digest everything that happened during the holidays, I need another two days of leave… but enna seiradhu… kaasu venum eh. Work panni thaana aaganum.

Aana, getting back to work after 1 or 2 weeks is not an easy thing.

Set panni vacha motha Systems um collapsed. Appram, routine ah? Appdina?

“Pune la Roti nu thaan kelvi pattrukken. Routine ah…?” nu oru feeling uh 👴🏼

🧙‍♂️ It’s challenging, but not impossible!

First of all, let’s acknowledge that the routine is messed up, and things will take time to get back to normal. We’re not robots. It’s ok!

Don’t bother for at least one whole day. We all need rest.

More than rest, we need a break in the flow. We need to break the flow of the flow, which broke your actual flow. haha.

😖 confused?

Seri, as usual, namma flow la povom.

Let’s keep it simple and actionable.

I’ve explained the whole process of how I felt, and underwent, to overcome my overwhelming state.

Annaikku enna aachu na…. 💭

Ninaikkave oru maadhri thaan irukku.., aanalum solren.

It was too tough to handle the thoughts. mudiyala…

After almost a week of break, travelling to different places, meeting people, etc… getting back on track was challenging; sathyama mudiyala.

Aana, vera vazhiye illaye… I had to undergo…

Tried to sleep. But, couldn’t.

Kept rolling over the bed.

Tindel & Anu slept off.

I had no choice, other than waking up my 2:00 AM friend

She woke up and kept listening to me… (seri seri, don’t overthink.. adhuvum Anu thaan 😆)

I couldn’t even open up because I was pressured to even think about getting everything back to normal.

But, she helped me to spill out everything, after a few moments of silence…

I just started speaking. illa.. blabberring actually… just letting everything out, from my head.

even I or she didn’t understand what I was trying to say.. and finally I was getting hold of my thoughts…

“Aana, andha 2:00 AM friend ku enga nae poradhu” nu thaana kekkureenga.. kekkudhu 😂

Enakku andha 2:00 AM friend kidaikkuradhukku munnadi, I used to dump everything into my journal. Namma Journals are the best midnight companions.

Seri, matter ku varuvom…

When you have a supporting person with you, they become your voice journal.

As soon as I gathered control over what I was letting out, I was able to speak about everything that came to my mind.

Seri, inimel konjam serious & important…

As something pops into my mind (like an initiative, a thing, a work, a task, a person, etc), I go in-depth and keep telling what bothers me about it, and eventually come up with an action plan to overcome the blockage.

This process was repeated until my mind was clear.

Clear nu edhum illa. But, you can say.. I was feeling light.

Aana, inga thaan everyone will make a Mistake

We usually stop there, and speak something motivated and move on.

But, things didn’t stop there for me. It must not stop there for you too.

No matter what the time was, I grabbed my journal, and wrote down everything we spoke into an actionable.

A quick glimpse of it for you…

This happened almost 2 weeks back.

And, the highlight for you to note is, there are 4 ways to categorise these thoughts into actionable points (4 kinds of actionable points):

• ultimate action points - those are mostly the signs you should not ignore. They are your ground basic things you must do, to get out of your current state

• important action points - these are the ones you need to focus right from the next day you wake up, and to be considered a top priority tasks

• gradual action points - these are the actions without which you cannot become fully effective, but you can take a transition period for this

• go with the flow - they are some thoughts that came by which does not need any immediate action, but needs to be worked upon

As soon as you process them, you’re on the right track.

“But, idha process pannamale my mind is free. Appram ah kooda pannalaam eh?”

Oh no! Vaaippilla pa… innum padinga...

Some Analogies for you…

Imagine Filter Coffee… nalla irukkum la.. what happens before you drink it?

As you add more coffee, you must wait for it to process and let the decoction come down. If you don’t hold the coffee to process with the hotwater, then what you receive will be too much of water, and the coffee will taste bad.

If you hold the coffee too much, and not let it down as decoction, then there’s no use. In fact, it causes a load to the filter and causes damage.

Edhaachum Puriyudha?

“Coffee kum Brain kum enna nae sammandham?”

Irukke, irukke… further ah padinga…

Coffee la mattum illa.

Even in the tech around you, every complete process/pipeline has 3 parts

— Ingest, Process, Store/Publish.

Any data you read into your system is ingestion. Just like you fetch coffee and water into the filter. The more data you add to your system, what happens?

Yes, the system slows down, and will struggle to process further.

The more unprocessed data accumulates, the brain finds it challenging to process. Just like your overloaded mixy jar. Theriyala na, ask your parents. Over load aachuna, thenarum. Seri, mixy ah vidunga.. idhu unga phone la ye paathuruppeenga…

The more you load the memory, it hangs down too slowly. No matter what RAM or processor you have, as soon as the load is high, mudinchuu… our click uh 2 seconds edukkum. So, removing cache or unnecessary memory is always a requirement for any system to function/process better.

Namma brain um appdi thaan. Basically, everything we consume is the ingestion process. Too much consumption keeps adding more load to our brains. The more you store, the tougher it becomes and overwhelms you.

The only problem with our brain is, it doesn't let you clear off memory when you’re overloaded. It just melts down or drains off.

So, it’s better to learn how to process even when there’s a small load, so that perusa varumbodhu, you know how to handle it.

In fact, you can train your brain by building a DR (Disaster Recovery) System around it, and it’s exactly what we discussed above.

Take your transition period to implement the 4 kinds of actionable points.

The sooner you get back to normal, the faster you can get back to your system.

Here’s why you should build a main system and a DR system, which I wrote in one of my previous newsletter issues.

I seriously don’t want to make this newsletter too much for you to process.

So, pausing it here….

Apply this in your life, and let me know how you feel about this.

Cheers 🚀

Nandrigal.

Other issues of my newsletter that you may be interersted to read: