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On personal development, mindful productivity, creative lifestyle design, and figuring it out as you go
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Hey there, Brilliant!
Happy 2022! Welcome to the relaunch of this newsletter! I’m very excited to be back in touch with you with you directly. Every month I’ll be bringing you my thoughts on personal development, mindful productivity, and figuring life out as you go.
Right now I’m in a season of intentional imbalance. Relaunching this newsletter is a part of my 2022 content sprint - my yearlong effort to make sure I’m showing up on a regular basis across platforms and prioritizing connecting with my audience. I’ve been laser focused on creating content during January, and I’m producing at double speed in order to get ahead and ensure I can stay on track. The intensity of producing both at high quality and at high quantity was more overwhelming than I anticipated. On top of that, I was one of the many folks who got sick during January, and I’m still not operating at 100%.
Sometimes imbalance is necessary to reach your goals. When your resources are finite, accelerating in one area of your life means decelerating others. Right now I’m focusing all of my energy on my wildly important goal, increasing my content creation, and the other areas of my life - health, socializing, networking, spirituality, leisure - are taking a hit. My sleep schedule is chaotic. Between working and feeling ill, I’ve stopped exercising (which I had been doing daily). I’ve missed several weekly reviews, and my inboxes are more cluttered than I usually allow. My meditation practice has been spotty. I forget to journal at night. I’m just pushing.
But I know the imbalance is temporary. Eventually (hopefully by a month from now), I will have my production systems down, I’ll have plenty of content ready to go, and I won’t need to accelerate so hard. Though I’m sacrificing my self-care routines now, my wellness is buttressed by my investment in self-care during previous seasons. I know that the gains made in my content creation are worth the temporary loss of personal life, and I know that I’ll be able to recover. After a sprint comes rest.
Life balance is an admirable goal, and it’s what I aim for on a high level, but we also have to be patient with ourselves during periods of imbalance. If one area of life needs to take over, make the focus is intentional, set boundaries on how long and hard you’ll push, and plan for a period of recovery and rebalancing is on the other side.
Wishing you success in pushing towards your goals this year. Let’s go!
Spiritedly,
Ahsante
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My latest videos, for your viewing pleasure and daily leisure
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Using 3 Phones is Saving My Brain
In my latest video, I walk through how my 3-phone system allows me to me more focused and maintain much needed separation between work and relaxation.
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My other recent videos include how I read 40-60 books each year, whether I can really be anti-diet, and how I plan my goals and objectives for the year in Notion.
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My big excitement this month has been launching a suite of Notion templates! Notion is the app I use to organize my entire life, and I've spent hours customizing it to my needs. I'm pumped to be offering the exact tools that help me keep everything together. You can browse the templates here.
Along with Notion sponsoring my first video of the year, they featured my annual goal planning template in their template gallery within the New Years collection. As a huge Notion nerd, it's very cool to have their stamp of approval.
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Music to keep your spirits up and let it all out
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I'll be sharing a monthly playlist in these letters! I do a daily dance out, and here's the playlist of what I've been jamming to lately. Give it a listen while you peruse your inbox, and maybe shake a tail feather🏾
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Pieces of media and pop culture that I'm absolutely loving
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The whole Peloton thing
The NPR Podcast "Pop Culture Happy Hour" did a fascinating episode on Peloton's cultural impact. The conversation ranged from characterizing Peloton's instructors to the language it uses around fitness.
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Entrancing kinetic sculptures
I came across this video from WIRED that spotlights an artist who creates moving sculptures that are the perfect combination of creativity, technical skill, and pure delight. You have to see this one for yourself.
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The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, et al.
This is a system for actually getting things done, outside of the strategizing that so many business books focus on. It’s geared towards people running teams, but I found so much of it to be applicable to my own workflow. I put up a scoreboard immediately after reading this and it's now my favorite way to monitor my progress and hold myself accountable.
With only 4 main pillars, it’s a simple yet effective system. If other execution systems like SCRUM seem overwhelming to you, this is a great place to turn.
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What's been keeping my productivity boosted
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- Hourglasses and Sand timers. Using these instead of a digital timer allows me to monitor my time without being disrupted if I get in the zone, and without the distraction of having a countdown. For those that use the pomodoro method, the sand timers come in measures of 25 and 5 minutes, as well as other options.
- My Calm Phone. As I mentioned in my video on phones, having one distraction-free device has been crucial for my focus. This phone contains my listening, music, and reading apps, my sleep and mediation apps, Notion, Evernote, and not much else. To set mine up, I got a 1st generation iPhone SE from Back Market.
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Live Spiritedly & Think Creatively
Catch ya next time :)
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PS. Drag this to your ‘Primary’ inbox/ add me to your ‘Safe Sender’ list so you don’t miss a letter!
PPS. Consider supporting me on Patreon to help me continue making dope work
Some links in this email may be affiliate links, through which I earn a percentage of any purchase made.
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