Self-Motivation: Eat Big, Think Big: The Lunchtime Ritual

This has always helped during the very beginning of my career.

Here is the background and formula of how I adopted this way of thinking

Early Days
When I had first started the Just IT course at that time I was still getting pocket money (you know that's a very long time ago lol) which was enough to make it through as I had made myself sandwiches to take with me. This carried on until I had been offered a work experience/placement shortly after.

Whatever I did have I used to go to McDonald's and get just a small fries but I always remembered looking at the insane queues there filled with people in suits. This intrigued me because I wanted to know what it would be like for someone like me in one of those suits and being able to get a MC Donald’s meal during a working lunch break.

The idea and visualisation might seem small or corny, but those times I was hungry to get on so any glimpse of a professional life look like a dream within reach to me. Even more when I would see the same professionals in suits eating in restaurants during a lunch break and the lifestyle visual of it just gave me that more of a boost. So with the small fries and sandwiches I had allowed me.to just hang in there and dream that much more.

Matter of fact I'm lying as this can go even further back to when in the Lewisham college days before I even got to the point of private course. Normally use to hit king roosters for a two piece and fries and that alone was something for me, so I can really see the timelines and how it eventually evolved into what I am today.

First Hand Experience of This
When I had started my first job I finally got to live out this dream, well half and half because the first role I had was at Monsoons Head Office and we got to where our own clothes which can be more relaxed I guess 😀 as you could imagine what an 18 year old would have ate back then, yep I had every fast food meal possible, a lot more indestructible back then lol

But then it really changed when I had the ultimate of motivations when I had got my next role which was working for IQPC and at the time were based in Sloane Square in Chelsea.
At the time this was my first time even touching soil at Chelsea and being the reputation it has for being very expensive down there (and it was) the opportunity was much bigger of a motivation for me. Now my lunch times took the next level turn, I ate in every single restaurant in Chelsea and I'm talking from the bottom of Sloane Square through to the top of Kings Road, up to Fulham Road, and even from South Kensington to Gloucester Road Station
There are restaurants in Kings Road that don't even exist anymore and I ate in those places too 😀

For me I use a lot of brain power, especially when at that time I was doing about 3-4 exams a year plus taking on some complex workloads in order to prove my technical abilities. So this in turn gave me the appetite of a construction worker 😀, but the time away from the office from work allowed me to reset my batteries and allow myself to think big about what the next move should be? How are we doing right now? And where's the food should have been here 15 minutes ago J

How Should you Lunch
This is what I normally do and built this up over the years which really helps the mind body and soul to keep yourself upbeat and motivated

Leave the Office
There are lot of people that bring food back into the office, which I can understand if there is high priority or heavy workloads, but in order to mentally break you need to escape from the place which is challenging you so you can get that overall peace.

Fresh air, hustle and bustle and normality outside the office is what you need.
The mind literally needs to roam and run free and that's difficult to do when you in a building which when desperate enough you will get disturbed whilst on break as well as fighting the urge to work through it.

Pick a spot and stay there.....for a while
I normally have a spot where I go to regular for the sake of variety menu wise but also for familiarity you need somewhere not exactly a duplicate of the office but a visual of familiarity that is not the office.

This can change as well as having multiple spots you can chill at

Feed the brain
You can take this mean a multitude of things but I normally mean this as to feed the brain dependent on how hard you have worked or how much brain power you have utilised.

Speaking for me I earlier I mentioned I eat like a construction worker and that's related to my working style as I do normally multitask various technologies across System Centre, Development and DevOps type duties so altogether it works up an appetite. My history has had me eat this way also from the fascinations of when I first started out so have normally kept to this tradition.

How do I lunch now
still to this day the exact same way 😀 I'm not saying or suggesting that I'm spending or encouraging to spend about £25 on lunch a day because that would be too much, but at your own discretion of how much you spend is entirely up to you but this is more the foundation of building a world (for 1 hour) that doesn't involve pressures, duties or anything involved with the office.

This is the formula I built over the years and still keep it up……..