77. A quick roundup #12
Ways to feel less rushed and more "new and shiny."
interlude
It’s only November and I’m already feeling reflective about the year. 2024 brought lots of surprises, wholesome moments, and challenges for growth. Here are some of my strategies for adding joy to these last few months.
resources
Not feeling rushed. You know what’s seriously underrated? Cultivating a reasonable pace of life – not feeling like the default answer to “How are you?” has to be “busy.”
Over the last few months, I’ve been training my mind to accept “strategic postponing”: not feeling the pressure to complete tasks which can wait another day or another week. Once I’ve reached my energetic capacity, I tell myself “that is enough for one day,” and it really is okay to spend the rest of the night decompressing. It feels radical, yet important, to accept as normal the fact that I don’t finish everything on my daily to-do list. My to-do lists are unrealistic to begin with; while it’s okay to have ambition, not everything is truly urgent.
Letting go of false urgency also helps in day-to-day routines. In my annual time management class, I tell my students to try leaving for appointments 15 minutes earlier than they think is required. When I put this into practice, the urgency of getting there on time is no longer an issue, and I feel so much less stressed.
Pairing a desired & healthy habit with an incentive. For example, pairing a 25-minute Pomodoro stretch of work with a small sweet or a favourite (instrumental) song helps motivate when I don’t feel like starting a certain task.
Similarly, if I want to incentivize myself to go to bed on time, I can look forward to reading a few more pages of a gripping book before falling asleep. I just binged several Japanese mysteries by Keigo Higashino; I especially recommend The Devotion of Suspect X, which was made into several TV series and movies in different Asian countries!
Decluttering to recover the “new and shiny” feeling of an object. KonMari memes about “sparking joy” aside, I do believe that clearing away unwanted clutter helps us focus on what we love about the objects we choose to keep. On my recent decluttering tear, I rediscovered a gift of tea from a friend, that I can’t wait to try – as well as stickers I’d forgotten I’d bought, that are now decorating my agenda. This is nearly as good as the “new and shiny” feeling of receiving the object for the first time.
Also, in design and in life, subtracting one item generally adds balance to the whole. When staging photos for the 2025 calendar I just made, I initially included the yukata that was hanging on the wall behind. Yes, the fabric is beautiful, but when I removed that from the composition, the focus immediately shifted to the calendar, as intended.
With and without the yukata in the back. (by the way, you can buy one here…!)
What has been brightening your daily or monthly rituals? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
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Walking with children collecting leaves and exploring puddles. Delight. Joy.