# How I Do Things: Chronic Fatigue Edition

I feel like a battery that can't keep its charge.

[Chronic fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome) is my
greatest foe. I have a lot of things I want to do, and I have to wedge it all
between uncontrollable "emergency naps".

Narcolepsy medication is godsend when I get my dosage right, but I have a very
small habitable zone between panic-attack and asleep. To avoid stimulant
meltdowns, I err on the side of naps.

My capabilities shrink as I tire. I need lots of brainpower to build software,
but very little to wash dishes.

And so I prioritize my [infinite queues](/infinite-queues) by "amperage".
Throughout the day, I tackle the highest-amperage work that my battery will
allow.

Here's my strategy for most days, ordered from most urgent to least urgent:

### 1. "Emergencies" and Appointments

- Evade death for me, my family, and my plants.
- Avoid embarassing myself over missed commitments.

### 2. Chores

- Clear queue of random obligations and responsibilities.
- Respond to all inbound messages, once per day.

[^note]:
    Chores eat up my mental energy faster than anything else. The quickest way
    to drain myself is to do things I've been avoiding. If chores were easy, I
    would've already completed them.

[^note]:
    I wait to do all non-urgent portable chores until I'm stuck in a car, plane,
    hotel, dentist's office, etc. That's how you
    [scrounge for between time](/between-time).

### 3. Personal Projects (Implementation)

- Take an idea and bring it closer to reality.

[^note]:
    Like many other makers, I have a strange attraction to design/research
    loops. I've found that reserving energy for actually building things is an
    essential part of my process.
    [Write tired, edit less tired?](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/spk8we/write_drunk_edit_sober_huh/)

### 4. Career

- Spin the well-oiled wheels of capitalism to sustain my standard-of-living.

[^note]:
    This is a difficult dance. I am committed to doing high-quality output at
    work, but I also want to reserve enough time/energy for my personal
    projects. My current compromise is to allocate a fixed number of hours to
    implementing personal projects before starting career work.
    Design/architecture work is for afternoons/evenings.

### 5. Moving

- Tidy house; clear piles.
- Exercise for 5-20 minutes.

[^note]:
    Most of my work is bound to The Internet Machine™. But sitting all day makes
    me slumpy. When I feel the call of the bed coming, I throw on an audiobook
    and make my home habitable.

### 6. Personal Projects (Design)

- Pull the next idea from my list (currently ~7,000 ideas) and prepare it for
  implementation.

[^note]:
    Separate design and implementation phases force me to consider how I want a
    personal project to come to fruition. Should I skip the work and publish the
    blueprints? Should I try to assemble a team? Should I give it away for free?
    Kickstarter? Apprentice? And so on.

### 7. Consumption

- Pull from RSS.
- Read books.

[^note]:
    Via [an RSS reader](https://reederapp.com), I follow myriad
    [tiny blogs](https://blogs.hn) and YouTube channels and
    [HackerNews](https://hnrss.github.io). I sometimes walk while I read to
    avoid accidental slumber. In the past 2-3 years, I accidentally abandoned
    all streaming services.