Life in Full Color

An Excellent Sugar-Free BBQ Rub Recipe

Here at the Blanc house, we love to grill. We’re also trying to cut out sugar from our diet. Alas, brown sugar is one of the key ingredients in a good BBQ dry rub. So I made my own that is sugar free, and I think it turned out excellent.

But! Before I get ahead of myself… I’d first like to insert a few thousand words about traveling and discovering my inner chef. Then, I’d like to say something about the history of this recipe and how it has brought my family together in ways we never thought possible.

Sadly, I didn’t capture any photos of the food itself after being cooked. But I do have this neat iPhone photo of the spice jar I bought at Target filled with the spices.

Sugar-Free BBQ Rub

Okay. All joking aside, here’s the recipe. Enjoy!

The Recipe:

  • 2.5 Tablespoons Paprika
  • 1.5 Tablespoons Chili Powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
  • 1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Oregano
  • 1.5 Tablespoons Rosemary
  • 5 teaspoons Mustard Powder
  • 1 teaspoon Cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon Celery Salt
  • 2 teaspoons Ground Pepper
  • 2/3 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper

Directions: Put all the ingredients into a jar or whatever, mix them up, and use liberally as a dry rub or marinade before and during cooking. Goes great with chicken, beef, and pork.

An Excellent Sugar-Free BBQ Rub Recipe

After 191 Workouts in a Row, Here are Three Things That Have Helped Me

Six months and nine days ago it was the first of October 2018 and I decided to do a workout every single day for the whole month. And I’ve been able to keep that streak going. According to the activity app in my phone I am up to 191 workouts in a row so far…

As I shared with newsletter subscribers back in early December when I was just 70 workouts in, there are a few things that have helped me to keep this going. Here they are, revisited after an additional 120 workouts…

  • Just 15 minutes per day. I’ve discovered that I don’t have to focus on closing all my rings. Instead, all I have to do is get in a single, 15-minute workout. With that, pretty much everything else takes care of itself and I am almost certain to close all my rings.

  • Having a plan: By knowing when and where I am going to work out each day, I am far more likely to actually show up. (This goes for anything, by the way: from writing, to practicing basketball, to reading with your kids.) Knowing the when and where takes out all the stress and procrastination — all that’s left is to show up.

  • Accountability: I’ve got two forms of accountability: (1) my twice-weekly spin class and (2) my Apple Watch friends. Having these two groups of folks that expect me to show up is a pretty great motivator to help me actually show up consistently when I’m not feeling it.

(Also, the achiever in me does not want to break the chain of all those closed rings and green dots on my Activity app.)

When I first began, it took a lot of mental energy to do a workout every single day. It was all I thought about — and it felt super inconvenient. It felt disruptive to my whole day.

However…

If you choose the right actions long enough, they begin to choose you back.

At first, you are pushing yourself toward your healthy habits. But then, after a while, your healthy habits begin to pull you forward.

After 191 Workouts in a Row, Here are Three Things That Have Helped Me

Keep Going  →

Austin Kleon’s new book just came out a few days ago. My copy arrived on Tuesday, and I’m excited to read it.

The book starts out with Austin sharing about how he has been writing and making art for over a decade, and yet it has not been getting any easier.

He writes:

Everything got better for me when I made peace with the fact that it might not ever get easier. The world is crazy. Creative work is hard. Life is short and art is long.

Whether you’re burned out, starting out, starting over, or wildly successful, the question is always the same: How to keep going?

Austin’s book came out at just the right time for me. Today — April 4 — happens to be the 8-year anniversary of when I began writing and blogging as my full-time gig. Yay!

I can definitely attest that it does not get “easier” and there is always a challenge to keep going. A lot has changed in the past 8 years. But wow, what a fun time and what a great job it has been so far. Let’s keep going!

Keep Going

Everything Requires Maintenance

A few months ago I bought one of the best drip coffee makers in the world.

Truly, as I was walking out of the store with box in hand, four — (4!) — different people stopped me to say how excited or how jealous they were that I was taking this coffee machine home.

Long-time readers of this site will know that I am giant coffee nerd. Probably the worst thing you can buy me is anything related to coffee. Chances are good that I’ve already seen it, researched it, bought it, used it, and have since moved on to something else.

Over the years my coffee shelf has been home to a V-60, French Press, Espro Press, AeroPress, Kalita Wave, Kone Brewing system, Moka pot, Siphon, and Clever dripper (to name a few).

After well over a solid decade of manual coffee making at home I finally aged out. I have moved to an automatic drip coffee maker. Gasp!

I bought the infamous Moccamaster. (It’s more than famous.)

A Brief Aside on Why I Bought the Moccamaster and What I Think About It

So, after all those years of manual coffee brewing methods, why did I get a drip coffee maker? It all boils down to my time.

The time I have between when I get up and when my day starts is never enough. And I wanted to spend those precious minutes on activities other than pouring hot water over coffee grounds.

I wanted to get back just a little bit of my time in the mornings without sacrificing the quality of my coffee, of course.

It’s been at least four months now since I bought the Moccamaster, and I love it. It certainly wasn’t cheap. The model I bought probably cost more than nearly all of my manual coffee makers combined.

One thing that makes the Moccamaster special is that it’s built to last. I’ve heard from many people who have owned their Moccamaster for years and years and still love them.

As far as quality of coffee… I would say that the Moccamaster makes almost as delicious of coffee as I could make with one of my pour over methods. If the Kalita or V-60 can make a cup that is 9/10 delicious, the Moccamaster makes one that is 8/10.

While I think I could get the coffee quality to be a bit better — you’d be surprised to hear about ways you can still get nerdy and fussy with a Moccamaster — I have intentionally chosen not to go that route because it would be the opposite reason for why I bought the thing in the first place.

I just measure my beans and water and I’m happy with the results. In fact, I’m drinking a cup of my coffee as I type this very sentence. Yum.

The one thing I do not like about the Moccamaster is that the carafe and brew basket are not dishwasher safe. It’s not a huge deal, but it just means every few days I have to wash everything by hand. It still requires some bit of maintenance.

Actually, now that you mention it…

Everything Requires Maintenance

Sadly, there is no gadget or system or process that is completely absent of all work and maintenance.

To some degree or another, everything requires your time and attention; everything requires maintenance.

Alas, even my “automated” coffee maker still takes some work to keep clean and operational.

As someone who doesn’t always like to trust the process, it has been helpful for me to keep this truth in mind: everything requires maintenance.

And it stands for more than just the things I own, such as my clothes, cars, lawn, and tax-receipt filing system. My physical self and even the productivity workflows I live within every day require attention to keep operational. (Ugh, right?)

Spoiler: There is No “Easy” System for Focus and Productivity

Perhaps one area I see the most hangup in this is related to productivity systems.

Staying in control of your time and your attention is an activity that requires some time in an of itself.

Lots of folks bemoan this fact. They have, no doubt, tried many systems and none worked for them. They feel frustrated because they don’t want to waste time managing their to-do list.

Now, side note, there is a lot of legitimacy to these frustrations. I definitely understand how frustrating it is to spin your wheels with an overflowing to-do list. A lot of productivity systems out there are way more work than they’re worth.

However, if you care about how you spend your time and your attention — then you also ought to care about the keeping up with the system that keeps you on track. And I think most people do care, which is why it can feel frustrating at times.

For me, I set aside about half an hour on Sunday evenings in order to plan out my week. (I go into the nerdy details of this in the “Analog” section of my All the Things course.)

During my weekly planning time I will decide what it is that I will focus on and how I will primarily spend my time each day for the upcoming week.

This brief weekly planning session never feels convenient. I am rarely in the mood and I’d almost always rather do something else. But my task list and calendar must get the appropriate amount of my time and energy in order for them to be effective and helpful.

When Inconvenience Becomes Opportunity

In the beginning, these inconvenient activities of maintenance often feel like speed bumps that are getting in the way and slowing things down. There is never a convenient and easy time to work out, or to eat well, or to plan my week or my day.

However, if you stick with it, then over time you will see how these activities of “inconvenient maintenance” are actually the foundational actions in our day in which we are choosing to live with intention.

The truth is, you won’t find anything that is free from all work and maintenance. This is as true for coffee makers as it is for productivity systems.

With that in mind, don’t try to find something that requires ZERO maintenance. Because it doesn’t exist. You’ll never find something that is devoid of all work and maintenance.

Rather, find a system that can work for you — one that you have the ability and the drive to to keep up with.

Everything Requires Maintenance

What it Was Like to Go a Month with No Social Media on My iPhone

It has now been one month since I deleted Twitter and Instagram from my iPhone. I also made a commitment to put my iPhone into Do No Disturb and leave it in another room of the house during our family evening time.

A mere 28 days was no heroic feat at all. Nevertheless, it was enlightening.

And so, after a full month, here are some initial thoughts on the experience as well as what I’m doing next.

Regarding No Social Media on my iPhone…

Let’s get to the point:

I have loved not having social media on my iPhone.

Over this past month I have felt more creative, more focused, and at times, more bored. All good things!

If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have noticed that I did not completely disappear. I still have Tweetbot my iPad, and I’ve been checking in about once a day during weekdays to reply to any DMs and other conversations that were going on. This intentional, “small batch” processing of my Twitter streawm for a few minutes per day has been great.

Even though I use my iPad for just about all my work and writing, Twitter access on the iPad has (so far) not been a distraction.

Regarding DND every evening…

Having DND enabled in the evenings proved to be a bit more difficult than I thought.

There were many times during an evening where I’d be having a conversation with my wife or with one of my kids and we’d want to pull the phone in for some reason — such as to search for something online, message someone, look at a video one of us took earlier, etc.

In those moments — with my phone in another area of the house — I grew more aware of just how prevalent my smartphone is within my family’s day to day life. And, honestly, its a prevalence that I’m not comfortable with.

As our boys grow up, there are certain mindsets and behaviors that my wife and I do and do not want to “normalize” for them. And “staring at our phones all the time” is most certainly a behavior we do not want to seem normal.

Now, what’s next?

For one, I currently have no plans to reinstall Twitter or Instagram on my iPhone. My experience in February has been too good and I’m not ready to go back.

And I will also continue to leave my iPhone on Do Not Disturb in the evenings during our family time.

Additionally, there are two more things I’m doing as a result of February’s experiment:

  • I’ve subscribed to several magazines, including HBR, The Atlantic, Monocle, and Fast Company. I’ll share more about this in a future article, but I realized that I wanted some literal boundaries to my news and media consumption. The internet is boundless; a physical, printed magazine has a front and back cover — it is finite.

  • Secondly, I’m signing out of email from my iPhone. During February, I noticed that email was the thing I checked instead of social media. But yet, I don’t actually send or reply to emails from my iPhone — I just check my inbox. It’s not a productive use of my time. So, I’m going to remove it during March and see how things go.

I’ll check back in at the end of March to see how things go without email either. But I have a hunch I already know.

What it Was Like to Go a Month with No Social Media on My iPhone

“If you care about your thoughts, keep them.”

I got a lot of inspiration from this brief article by Derek Sivers on the benefits of a daily diary and topic journals.

I’m already a fan of regular (if not daily) journaling. I’ve been logging stuff into Day One for years. And something I began doing at the beginning of this year is to keep a daily “highlight” journal along with my daily habit tracking.

Over the past couple years I have been continually interested in improving my note taking and learning skills (especially as related to books), maturing my system for idea capture, and just trying to get better at doing more writing.

But the “Thoughts On” journal that Derek wrote about in his article was a new idea to me. It’s so simple and it makes so much sense.

Derek writes:

For each subject that you might have ongoing thoughts about, start a separate “Thoughts On” journal. Whenever you have some thoughts on this subject, open up that file, write today’s date, then start writing.

Since reading Derek’s article last month I’ve already spent some time setting up my own “Thoughts On” inside of a new group in Ulysses. My topics so far include 8-Week Work Cycles, Finances, Delegation, and Leadership.

There are two awesome things about using Ulysses for these “Thoughts On” groups. For one, you can easily set up a specific group to place your own ideas, notes, and thoughts into.

Secondly, if you’re using Ulysses to store book notes, quotes, and other tidbits of information, then you can also create a Smart Filter that will aggregate any and all of those notes you have which are tagged with a keyword and/or which contain other words.

For more reading on this, see also André Chaperon’s weekend article on his knowledge processing system for creators.

There is a ton of nerdiness in André’s article, and I love it. One big takeaway for me was this piece of advice:

Don’t make the decision of what app to use when the moment arrises. Decided on the app now, and position it on your first screen where your thumb can click it easily.

I currently use Bear for all my quick-capturing of ideas right in the moment. And then I will move those ideas into Ulysses.

“If you care about your thoughts, keep them.”

Tips for Delegating

I’m currently reading Mike Michalowicz’s latest book, Clock Work. One of the things that has really stood out to me so far is that there are two types of delegation for a business owner.

The most common type of delegation actually isn’t delegation at all. Mike calls it “Deciding”. This is what happens when you hire someone to help you with a task or a job, but you don’t ever train or empower them to make any decisions on their own.

Perhaps you do this out of fear or laziness or your perfectionist mindset… whatever the reason is, since you aren’t delegating properly you end up as the bottleneck for all work projects because at every junction in their work, people are having to come to you and ask you to make a decision about something.

And then… when they do finish the task you asked them to do, guess what? They sit and wait for you to decide what they should do next. Because you have not given them any autonomy or self-direction.

In short, you are still managing every little decision — you’re merely delegating (or assigning) the actions behind those decisions.

How does this differ from actual delegation?

Assign an Outcome

Actual delegation happens when you assign a task to someone while also empowering them to make any decisions related to completing that task.

Put another way, you are delegating the outcome.

When you can delegate the outcome, it is liberating to everyone involved. Your team member feels trusted and empowered to do their job without you micromanaging them. And you are free to focus on the things that you need to do.

Reward Ownership (Rather Than Quality)

One other thing related to delegating that stood out to me was the importance of rewarding a team-member’s ownership of a task and not the quality of the outcome of that task.

You must allow them to make mistakes, or do things differently. Because they will.

If you only ever reward them when they do things just perfectly the exact same way that you would have done it, then all you’re doing is training them to ask you for a decision at every juncture.

So, instead, celebrate their ability to think and work with autonomy while giving candid and helpful feedback to help them make better decisions in the future.

As Mike writes, it all boils down to letting go of perfectionism.

Tips for Delegating

There will be poop

Two of the most productive hours of my day are also the most chaotic.

Guaranteed someone will get punched, someone will tell a not-funny joke but we will find it hilarious and belly laugh anyway, someone won’t get what they want, and someone else will poop his pants.

Now, I love a nerdy talk about time management as much as the next guy. But I believe that real productivity does not always look organized and tidy with everything just right.

Most of the time, when you’re really getting things done it’s messy; it’s human.

Those two productive-yet-chaotic hours of my day? They are the evenings hours from 5 – 7pm at the Blanc house.

My wife and I have 3 boys: ages 2, 5, and 7. Our evenings are filled with LEGOs everywhere, Nerf gun target practice with unsuspecting stuffed animals, wrestling, food fights, toddler nudity, meltdowns, and hiding behind closet doors to avoid brushing teeth.

I am a dad. And this is what family time is like with three fantastic sons.

As my boys become adults, I look forward to having a real-life friendship with them. But I don’t know of any “formula” for making this happen. I only know that if I am regularly present and engaged then I stand a pretty-good chance at building a deep bond and long history of trust with each of my sons.

So while our evening hours may look like disorganized chaos right now, they are also the hours where my wife and I get to consistently give our full attention to our boys.

That’s why, every evening at 5pm, my wife and I set our iPhones to silent Do Not Disturb. Then we put the phones away in another room.

Value / Identity: I’m a dad.

Expression / System: I spend quality and undistracted time with them on a regular basis.

Outcome / Goal: I’m building a thriving relationship with my sons.

This is just one example of how I am taking a personal value for my life and aligning it with how I spend my time each day. And the result will be one of life goals.

The immeasurable value of good systems is found in their ability to bridge the gap between our personal values and our goals.

When your time and energy are NOT being spent on the things that matter to you, it’s frustrating and stressful.

Frustration = The Tyranny of the Non-Essential

Ask yourself this:

  1. What is something in your life that you think is important but you are not giving very much time or attention to?

  2. What is something in your life that you do NOT consider important but yet it is receiving too much of your time and attention?

Aside fom someone else eating the last of the ice cream that you were totally saving for later, there is nothing more frustrating than when the things which matters most are pushed to the back burner, forced to succumb to the tyranny of things which do not matter at all.

Which is More Important: Systems or Goals?

It’s somewhat of a trick question; they’re both important.

However, if I had to pick just one, I’d pick systems because most folks already have some goals.

But I estimate that more than 80% of the people reading this do not have a good goals system. And by that, I mean most people do not have a reliable and consistent way to accomplish their goals.

The Systems I Use to Accomplish Goals in Every Area of My Life

There are a handful of various tactics and systems I use on a regular basis to ensure that the important areas of my life are getting the time and attention I want to give them.

These are the habits and routines I’ve built that help me stay active with my physical health, stay on track with my creative work, and stay engaged in my awesome parenting life that I just shared with you.

One of the systems I use is something called my “Hybrid Productivity System”.

It’s a blend of both digital and analog tools to help me schedule my days, know exactly what to be focusing on, and keep the margin I need in my life to avoid burn out. Here’s a video (taken from my course, All the Things) that explains a bit more about the hybrid method.

There will be poop

I’m Turning on Do Not Disturb for Every Evening in February

In yesterday’s post I mentioned how, starting today, I have deleted Twitter and Instagram off my iPhone for the month of February.

There is something else I’m doing this month as well.

But first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to share a story…

I remember one evening when I was young and my family was having dinner. And for some reason that night we got several phone calls during dinner. I remember my dad stomping into the kitchen where the phone was and finally just taking the receiver off the hook so that we wouldn’t get any more interruptions. (Raise your hand if you remember when phones were plugged in to the wall.)

Growing up, we had dinner as a family several nights a week. Even though I totally rolled my eyes at it, I now look back and can see just how special of a time that was where the four of us were able to connect. My dad silenced the phone that night because he didn’t want other people having the priority of attention during that time.

Now that I’m married with kids of my own, I am jealous for consistent and quality time. But instead of telemarketers calling us, it’s friends text messaging. Or my own compulsions to check my email and social media inboxes.

Right now our kids are at the age where dinner is more like a circus. It’s crazy. More food is on the floor than on the table. But because we do dinner together almost every night of the week, the consistency of it adds up over time.

And I don’t want to invite my cell phone to the most important family hours of my day.

That’s why, for the month of February (at least) during the evening hours between 5:00 until 7:30 pm, both my wife and I are putting our phones in Do Not Disturb and leaving them in another room.

These are the hours every day when my family is all together. After we all have dinner together, my wife and I wrangle our three boys toward bed, hoping they’re down by 7pm.

It’s already a very busy and crazy time just due to the nature of our kids: 3 boys, ages 2, 5, and 7. And I don’t want it to be normal for my boys to always see me using my iPhone. I also just want to be more intentionally present with them — not having a baseline level of noise in the back of my mind that is distracting me and pulling me to just check my iPhone.

We have been dancing around this Do Not Disturb time a little bit here and there over the past month, and but so, now we are going to go all in for the month of February.

And I’m inviting you to join us. Is there an hour or two during your day that you’re willing to shut down your phone and put it away?

This is also something I will be tracking in my Baron Fig for February as one of my daily habits: how many days do I leave my phone alone between the hours of 5:00 – 7:30pm while I’m with my family?

I’m Turning on Do Not Disturb for Every Evening in February

We Are Bad at Moderation (Or: Why I’m Deleting Twitter and Instagram From my iPhone)

In a recent episode of his podcast, Tim Ferris interviewed Greg McKeown (who is the author of Essentialism).

And something Greg said that I thought was awesome.

He said we are bad at moderation. That it’s oftentimes better and easier to go all in.

As an example, Greg shared how he cut out sugar from his diet. He found it to be easier to completely eliminate all sugar rather than to eliminate 95% of sugar.

By trying to moderate his sugar intake rather than eliminate it altogether he had to constantly make choices and concessions and compromises for why it was okay or even necessary to have a certain dessert. (I totally can’t relate at all.)

However, by eliminating sugar altogether it removed all future sugar-related decisions. He didn’t have to think about it any more. Thus it was easier to go 100% without sugar than to go 95%.

And as I was at the red light, listening to this podcast, I was naturally translating Greg’s advice into my use of technology.

I immediately was thinking about my own social media usage. I already use Do Not Disturb quite liberally; I have a Screen Time max for my social media apps; I keep both Tweetbot and Instagram in folders off my main Home screen so they are not as easy to access. And yet! And yet I still find myself spending more time perusing my social media timelines than I would like.

Hold that thought…

Then, another conversation topic between Tim and Greg in the same aforementioned podcast episode, was related to making margin for that which is essential.

To help illustrate this point, Greg led Tim through an exercise by asking him these two questions:

  1. What is something in your life right now that you think is very essential and important, but is something you are not giving very much time or attention to?
  2. What is something in your life that you do NOT consider to be essential but yet it is receiving too much of your time and attention?

Right away I knew the answers to both of these questions for myself.

For me, as I have shared with you here already, I want to be writing and publishing more frequently to my personal blog. I consider that to be very essential and important and, as I told Sean McCabe, I want to give more time to writing.

And can you guess the thing in my life which I consider to be not very essential but which is receiving more of my time and attention than I think it deserves? Social media.

According to my iOS Screen Time reports I spend an average of 27 minutes per day on Twitter and 22 minutes on Instagram. That’s 49 minutes of social media scrolling that honestly does not add much, if anything, to my day-to-day life.

(I have a lot more thoughts on this, and I already have drafts of a few articles in the works that I look forward to publishing. Such as: the value of social media for building real-world relationships; the differences between a social media account and a personal weblog; and the pain of not being able to pursue every awesome tidbit of information we come across online.)

All this to say, I am taking the month of February and I am deleting the Twitter and Instagram apps from my iPhone. I’m not quitting social media altogether; I just don’t want to have it at my fingertips.

This is just an experiment, but it’s something that I’m excited to try. I don’t know what, if any, results will come from it. But I’m giving it a shot.

My desire is that without social media on my phone I’ll have more margin with my time and with my thoughts that will be unto more reading and more writing.

And as a side note, if you haven’t read Greg’s book, Essentialism, I highly recommend it. I’ll leave you with this apt and relevant quote from the book:

Today, everyone waiting around in an airport or a waiting room is glued to their technology tools of choice. Of course, nobody likes to be bored. But by abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.

The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.

We Are Bad at Moderation (Or: Why I’m Deleting Twitter and Instagram From my iPhone)

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

Yesterday we hosted our very first Live workshop for The Focus Course!

We had 32 people here in Kansas City and I led them all through the Focus Course. It was so much fun! And I am so tired!

I’ll be writing quite a bit more about the event in the weeks to come, but I wanted to share a few initial thoughts from my perspective.

For starters, the whole event went just about perfectly! (Thank you Isaac and Joanna!!)

This was our first live event of this scale and polish. It was the content of the Focus Course combined with a live presentation of my whole ethos behind Delight is in the Details. A lot of group training events like this are rich in content but poor in delightful little details. I wanted to do things a bit differently, and seeing it all come together it was clearly worth the effort.

And speaking of the content…

It was so incredible for me to work in person with people and witness as the dots connected and light bulbs went off for them as we all went through The Focus Course. It was amazing to watch people “get it”… From getting their life vision figured out, to finally understanding how habits and scheduling can help them live a better life. Or getting a breakthrough in goal setting, or understating the value of margin. All throughout the day people were getting these little moments of revelation, and it was an honor to be a part of that process and to see it happen in person.

This morning I woke up, and I wrote this in my journal:

“If it is true that health in one area of your life brings about greater health in the other areas… and if it is true that when we align our values with our calendar we can reach our greatest potential with the most joy in the process… and if it is true that we have a finite amount of mental energy within any given day and we need help to keep our life on track…. if those things are true, then therein lies the power of a focused life. Because a focused life enables those things.”

This event was life changing. Can’t wait for the next one!

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

Creating Without Overthinking

Last week I was driving home, and I wanted to send a quick voice message to my friend Sean McCabe. He’s been posting some awesome and fun stuff the past few weeks and it has inspired me and helped me stay motivated with my own desire to write more, here, at shawnblanc.net, in 2019.

Well, Sean took my 60-second voice message and he turned it into this cool little animated snippet. Check it out:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ej0Ooj8I7aY

On his Instagram account, he also shared three takeaways from this little interaction turned video.

  1. When you show up, you inspire others to do the same.
    ⁣
  2. Opportunities to create content are all around you.⁣
    ⁣
  3. A little encouragement goes a long way.

And then I have a takeaway of my own:

Be intentional about engaging in non-disembodied communication.

In a recent episode of Jocelyn K. Glei’s podcast, she interviewed Cal Newport. And Cal shared about how he views all communication and interaction as either “real” or “not real”. Communication done in person or over the phone is real. Communication done via texting, DMing, etc. is not real.

And it got me thinking that the friends and family members I have the deepest connection with are those whom I talk to on the phone or spend face-to-face time with. Not necessarily those whom I iMessage the most.

And so, something I’ve been doing for the past few months has been to send my friends these voice memos to tell them how awesome they are. It’s not quite as awesome as a phone call (because it’s still just me monologuing), but it’s better than a disembodied text message.

Creating Without Overthinking

On the Necessity of Rest and Relaxation

Greg McKeown, from his book, Essentialism:

If you believe being overly busy and overextended is evidence of productivity, then you probably believe that creating space to explore, think, and reflect should be kept to a minimum. Yet these very activities are the antidote to the nonessential busyness that infects so many of us. Rather than trivial diversions, they are critical to distinguishing what is actually a trivial diversion from what is truly essential.

On the Necessity of Rest and Relaxation