So, you stumble across these names sometimes, right? And “Virgil Walker” was one of those for me. Not some bigshot you see on TV, nah, this was more like a whisper in an old forum I was digging through one night, looking for… well, looking for a different way to do things, I guess.
Who Was This Virgil Walker Fella Anyway?
From what I could piece together, Virgil Walker wasn’t about your fancy apps or life hacks. He was old school. Like, really old school. His whole deal, as far as I could tell, was about stripping everything back to basics. Think of it like this:
- He preached about starting your day before the sun, but absolutely no screens. None. Your phone was basically a paperweight until noon.
- Everything, and I mean everything, had to be handwritten. Notes, plans, ideas. If it wasn’t ink on paper, it didn’t count in his book.
- His schedules were rigid. Like, down to the minute. Time for deep work, time for reflection, time for manual chores. Not much room for, you know, life happening.
- He had this whole thing against “modern distractions.” Said they made our brains fuzzy. Probably true, but boy, was his solution extreme.
I was at a point where, honestly, all the constant pings and the digital noise were really getting to me. Felt like my head was full of cotton. So, I thought, what the heck, maybe this Virgil Walker guy, with his super strict, old-fashioned ways, had a point. Maybe I needed a hard reset.
My Go at the Virgil Walker “Practice”
So, I decided to give it a whirl. For a whole month, I told myself. Operation Virgil Walker was a go.
The first few days? Man, it was rough. Waking up at 5 AM was one thing, but not being able to check emails or even the weather on my phone? Felt like I was on a desert island. My mornings were spent with a notepad and pen, trying to plan my day like it was 1950. I bought a bunch of notebooks, felt like I was back in school.
I tried to stick to his “deep work” blocks. No internet, just me and the task at hand. And yeah, for a bit, it felt… quiet. Maybe even a little productive in a weird, slow way. I was writing a lot by hand, which was different. My grocery lists looked like historical documents.
But the cracks started showing pretty quick. Trying to coordinate anything with anyone without quick digital messages? Nightmare. My work involves some online stuff, so I had to cram all that into the afternoon, which just made me stressed in a new way. And the handwritten notes? I had piles of them. Finding anything was a pain. My desk looked like a recycling bin exploded.
So, What Happened?
Well, I didn’t last the whole month. Shocker, I know. Around week three, I just… couldn’t. It wasn’t just that it was hard. It felt isolating. And honestly, a bit silly. Here I was, making my life ten times more complicated, trying to live like someone from a bygone era that probably never existed quite like he imagined it anyway.
One day, I needed to look up something urgent for a family thing. And my “Virgil Walker” schedule said “no screens.” I just thought, “This is nuts.” Fired up my laptop and sorted it out in five minutes. Felt like I could breathe again.
The thing is, I get what old Virgil was probably aiming for. Less noise, more focus. And there’s value in that, for sure. I still try to have some screen-free time, and I do find that writing things down by hand sometimes helps me think. But his all-or-nothing approach? It just wasn’t for me. Not in this century, anyway.
So, my big takeaway from the “Virgil Walker” experiment? It’s that you gotta find what works for you. Cherry-pick the good bits, sure. But don’t try to force yourself into someone else’s rigid, outdated box. Life’s too short, and frankly, some of those modern tools are pretty darn useful. It was an interesting experiment, I’ll give it that. Made me appreciate my Wi-Fi a whole lot more, that’s for sure.
