This week has easily felt like two and possible even three. All week I was confused as to what day it is. Monday felt like Tuesday, Wednesday felt like Monday and although it’s 7 p.m. on a Friday and I’m home with my feet up for some reason it still doesn’t feel like the end of the week.

I had a lot going on this week and I wasn’t able to switch contexts very well (clearly, since I couldn’t even switch from day to day). For that reason I constantly felt like my head was out of the game and I was getting frustrated with my progress. As of last night, the user stories I’d taken on for this week weren’t completely done and I felt like two weeks after my dive into my Limelight I was still wrestling an alligator in a pit of mud to make it do what I wanted instead of frolicking through a field of fresh flowers with a new-found friend.

However, the past couple of days when I’ve found myself feeling “out of it” I’ve taken a quick break (either a cup of coffee or a power nap on the 8th Light hammock), popped on the headphones, and spent a few minutes doing one of the three katas I’ve worked on. I’ve probably done each of them 30 times at this point but each time I do it something else clicks for me.

Although it wasn’t necessarily a kata, during Code Academy I had a similar routine. Almost every afternoon when I wanted to work on something that we learned during class I’d build a rails app from scratch to bring me up to the point that I could work on that day’s lesson. It might have taken me 30 minutes to build out the routes, controllers, models and views I needed, but every time I did it I had a little better understanding of the MVC relationship or the nuances of rails.

The added effect of the methodic approach of a kata or building out a simple CRUD app is that it always helps my brain shift. Like a basketball player shooting free throws, a musician playing scales or a martial artist performing a … kata — the moments after I’ve warmed up I definitely feel much more in the game.

…and sure enough, in the past 24 hours that alligator named Limelight that I’d been wrestling has calmed down quite a bit. I think he’s even going to let me just hook up all of my existing Ruby code to him and play nice. It means that this weekend I’ll have to work on the stories that were due this week, but I’ve actually really been looking forward to a nice long weekend to relax and write some code. Since we have a three day weekend I’m sure that Monday will feel like Sunday and Tuesday will feel like Monday- but I think I’ll be ok with that.