If a car needs to warm up, shouldn’t your brain?

Work is stressful. Most days the stress starts before I get there.

The drive can be stressful on its own. Some days I take the train instead, and you’d think that would be the easy version. But usually the first thing I do when I sit down is pull out my laptop. I get papers written. I check email. By the time I get off the train I’ve been working the whole ride, and my day hasn’t officially started yet.

I don’t think I’m the only one. We’re so available all the time. The phone is in our hand before we’re out of bed, and the laptop opens anywhere there’s a seat. There’s no part of the day where nobody can reach us, which means there’s no part of the day where our brains get a chance to just… breathe.

I keep thinking about cars. People used to let the car warm up on a cold morning before they drove off. Most modern engines don’t really need that anymore, but the instinct made sense. You don’t go from sitting cold to full speed and expect everything to run smooth.

If a car needs to warm up before it revs off, shouldn’t your brain too?

I think it does, and I think the best way to warm it up is a little time to putter around. Not a routine, and not a productivity hack. Just a few minutes where nothing is scheduled and nothing is being measured. Eat breakfast sitting down. Look out the window. Let a thought wander off and come back on its own.

That’s why we built Putter. It’s a timer for that first stretch of the day: a warm clock, one place to jot down a thought if one shows up, and a countdown you can’t watch tick. It doesn’t send reminders or throw confetti at you.

I still drive, and I still take the train. Some days the laptop still comes out. But I’m trying to give my head a few minutes to warm up first.