021 — Reserving Fuel

How do you apply and reserve your fuel for the things you are working? That’s what I am wrestling with today. Typically, I reserve these early morning sessions for my personal stuff, so I can take advantage of the fresh tank of brain juice to pull from. I feel like with personal projects there’s always more critical thinking and personal hesitations that get in the way of getting things done that it takes that extra boost from the good morning fuel to break through them and keep going.

Although, today is unlike most of those days. Instead I am going to be working on some client stuff that has been lingering around a bit too long to see if I can knock that out early and use the rest of the day for personal stuff. Most notably, trying to commit some time to work on a site that is assisting with some relief efforts in Asheville, SC.

Over in the Verbs Discord, developers there have been contributing to two different relief effort sites. The first was disastercheckin.com, a site that allows people to text in updates via a phone number, and people who visit the site can do a reverse look-up via the phone number to check on the latest status of their family or friend who have posted. It was a way to allow for people to post updates when they get signal, and for multiple people to asynchronously check on the status of those people, without having to rely on the cellular networks for people to get some status of their loved ones.

Now that FEMA is in the area, the cellular networks seem to be more stabilized and people are able to communicate better now, so the effort in the Discord has transitioned to helping get clean water to the area, and assisting in the effort of managing the distribution of and requests for that water. For some reason, I can’t seem to find the site for that right now, but I will update the notes once I do.

I have always been a big fan of collaborative efforts around a local cause and this has started to inspire me to follow through on an idea that I have had incubating for a while now. More on that later, along with a link, but for now I need to get back to work and knock out this client work so I can make a real difference elsewhere.

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Episode Transcript

Ryan (00:00):
Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All
Play podcast. So similar to lastweek, it is 4:34 in the AM, and
the mind is once again racingafter taking the dog out for his
3:30 AM duties. Yeah.

(00:24):
You know, I just was layingthere again, and the mind is
still racing. And it startedmaking me think about, all the
stuff I had to get done. And,you know, normally or, like
like, I guess in the past and,like, what I've been trying to
do recently is, it just got methinking about, like, reserving

(00:46):
fuel. So in the past, I wouldtypically you know, if there's
some personal stuff that Iwanted to work on, I would try
to wake up early in the morningand use some of that good first
of the day brain juice to tryto, you know, fire on, you know,
doing, like, the kinda, like,deep work, deep discovery,

(01:08):
problem solving stuff for the mypersonal projects. Because, I
mean, after, you know, a wholeday of, you know, either jumping
in and out of meetings orworking on, you know, other
things that are kind of, like,solved.
You're just kinda tweaking themand stuff. That I don't know.

(01:30):
It's just there isn't much fuelleft in the tank to kinda dig
into, like, the real grindystuff at the end of the day for
your personal stuff, compared tothe way that it is in the
morning. So, you know, I I wouldtypically reserve this time for
personal stuff, but actually,there's a few client projects
that are I wouldn't say they'renecessarily behind, but they've

(01:52):
been kinda balling up. And Ijust wanna try to, like, get
back to smooth on those.
So, unfortunately, I am gonna beusing this morning to work on a
client project with the hopesthat that'll then free me up in
the afternoon for a big block oftime to work on some personal
stuff. So we'll see how thatgoes. No guarantees, obviously,

(02:17):
that that's the way it's gonnaplay out and, whatnot. But,
yeah, reserving fuel, it'stricky. Like, using the good
fuel and then, like, you know,getting to the bad fuel, it
makes me you know, it's kindalike when you top off your car,
it seems like that first quarteror half a tank really lasts for

(02:39):
a while.
And then you get down to the,you know, the second half and
then you get down to that lastquarter, and it's just like the
gas is just flying out of thething. Unfortunately, I still
drive a gas based car, but,yeah, I don't know if it's just
bad gas, you know, sloshingaround at the bottom of the tank

(03:05):
or if it's just a weird mentalperception that you're just more
maybe conscious of, checking itmore often when it gets slower.
I don't know. You know, it'slike those weird things where if
you're looking to to maybepurchase something, you just see
it everywhere. Maybe that's asimilar thing with, with the
level of your gas tank, but I'mnot a 100% sure.

(03:26):
But I do know that when youchoose to, like, reserve your
fuel and when you choose toexpend the fuel, there's
definitely an art to it. And I'mstill trying to figure that out,
but I do think that the earlymorning juice or the early
morning fuel is just a betterfuel. But yeah. So that's where

(03:51):
I'm at. The it's so trickybecause, like, I feel like I'm
conflicted with, like, a lot ofdifferent things.
Like, I wanna work on somepersonal stuff. There's also
just, like, some really coolactivity going on for, like,
some relief efforts, which isreally cool. I I I don't know if

(04:13):
I, touched on this in an earlierepisode, but I'm over in the
Verbs discord and, you know,after hurricane Helene came
through and, you know, did allthe damage to to Florida and
then also worked its way up toNorth Carolina and South

(04:34):
Carolina and just really I mean,it's amazing that, those
communities were even impactedby a hurricane being so far
inland. There was a a a littlebit of, like, a relief effort
that was started called disastercheck-in.com. And it was a way,
essentially, like a website anda phone number to where people

(04:57):
could post their their lateststatus.
And then if people wanted tokinda check-in on them, they
could then do, like, a, reverselookup based on the phone number
and see that last person'sstatus that was posted. Because
obviously, cell networks weredown and people were also, you

(05:20):
know, when all these thingshappen, it's just the
infrastructure and the utilitiesand stuff are just so hammered
that it's hard to really getreliable signals and reliable
communication. So it's a reallyawesome community effort by some
people within the Verbs, Discordto coordinate and get

(05:40):
disastercheckin.com up andrunning. And then since then,
there's been a lot of work ontrying to get water out to,
people. And similarly, over inthe Verbs Discord, Daniel
Colbourne has been basically,like, being the conduit and the

(06:02):
on the grounds, coordinator and,you know, relay to, to this
group who is now helping withthis Asheville help, initiative,
which is really awesome.
So it's basically a tool thatallows the management and the

(06:25):
kinda like the tracking of ofall these, like, water
dispatches and, like, refilllocations. And, you know, it's
like, man, I, like, so want tohelp with that because even back
in, when I was up in New York, Ihappened to run this bus service

(06:47):
called Rockabuss. It wasactually just like a way that
we, like, rented some schoolbuses and we would pick people
up in, like, Williamsburg in thelower east side and then, have
them go out to, like, FortTilden and and the Rockaways.
It's just like an easy way toget out there. But, when
hurricane Sandy went through,that was a huge devastation to

(07:08):
that area.
And I would go out there on theweekends and basically, like,
shovel sand out of people'sbasements. And, and also, like,
because we were so kind of,like, integrated with the
community, I ended up actuallychanging over the rockabust site
to be, like, a relief effortsite. So it listed all the
different ways that you couldhelp, the different

(07:31):
organizations that were outthere. We even ended up running
a few buses to send people outso that way people could kind
of, like, had a means of ofbeing able to get out there and
help all these different peoplethat were kind of, like,
displaced or their homes werejust, overtaken by the storm
surge and all the sand thatwashes through. But it was it

(07:54):
was a heavy situation, and Ithink those kind of communal
really it like, bringing peopletogether to make something that
then hopefully helps the reliefof those is such a powerful
thing.
Even, with, you know, even COVIDand stuff. And, actually, back

(08:18):
then, I was thinking about howhow can people kinda get
together and and pool theirtheir resources or efforts in
order to help more people,whether that's through education
or just who knows? So it it gotme thinking about public works
projects from back in the daywhere, you know, basically, when

(08:43):
people needed jobs, you know,governments and other things
would start to build librariesor zoos or what what have you.
And these were all under these,like, public works programs,
which is just trying to helppeople out in the community.
Also ended up building theselong lasting structures and kind
of, like, foundational thingsthat actually then kinda

(09:07):
continue to contribute to that,community for the long term.
And, it got me thinking moreabout actually commune well, so
I was like, well, what would belike a modern day take on that?
It necessarily isn't all wrappedup in the politics, but still
could basically have the spiritof, like, a public public's

(09:30):
works program, but, you know, inthese kind of more grassroots
ways of collaborating. So Istarted thinking about it like
this, Communal Works. Andactually, me and my buddy, John,
we kinda put together a littlewebsite, but it's not really
what it should be right now. Butthis whole idea of, like,
communal works or bringingpeople together, that's such a

(09:53):
powerful thing.
So it's like, I'm so tornpreserving fuel, trying to get
client work stuff done, Wouldlove to be contributing to that.
Also kind of thinking aboutthis, like, bigger, grander
thing of how to coordinate andcollaborate and, you know, just
put some good back into theworld. And that's where my

(10:15):
mind's at at a 4:44 in the AM.I'm at over the 10 minute mark,
and yeah. So I'm gonna be,trying to make the best use of
the fuel that I have for today,stretch it out, try to get some
client stuff done, and hopefullycontribute to, that project

(10:37):
that's in the works.
So, I guess I'll try to dropsome links in the in the show
notes if you wanna get involvedover there. I'm not sure if,
where they're at. I'm stilltrying to catch up because I
haven't been able to reallycheck-in on it over the weekend,
but some good stuff going on.And I do think some of these

(11:00):
communal things are the way thatwe're gonna, you know, build a
better society now and thenmoving forward. And so I get
really excited when I see peoplecoming together working on that
kind of stuff.
So I'm gonna leave it there.I'll drop some links in the show
notes. Have a great day. Andyeah, make sure you check out

(11:25):
the show notes because Iactually do put some time
writing some stuff there.Sometimes they end up being
little mini blog posts that mayor may not fully relate to the
audio, and so having themtogether is like a combo punch.
But yeah. So I'm gonna leave itthere. Have a great one. Later.