Hi Tejaswini! I subscribed to your Substack. Welcome to Substack, looking forward to reading more from you. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate you. 💛
Great example of the power of a one-day hiatus from self-condemnation Nicola. I lost the key to my Ford Focus 2 years ago and it’s been parked on the street waiting for me to get it towed to the dealership. I kept putting it off and the back left tire went flat and weeds were growing around it and every time I walked by it I chastised myself. It’s like that inner dialogue paralyzed me and I was unable to take action on it. Then the other day I got up early and pumped up the tire and washed it and cleaned up the weeds and dirt on the street and it was such a relief. Then my neighbor offered me $500 bucks for it so it’s all working out. Taking a short break from self-judgement works wonders, and establishes a new neural pathway for taking action!!
Thank you, Nicola. This makes total sense. Recently, I've been cleaning some of my storage rooms, literally and figuratively.
It's interesting, often when reading your articles a song will pop into my mind. Today as I read "just for one day" David Bowie's song Heroes started playing in my head.
Thank you, Earl. I love love love that song. And the remake of it by the Wallflowers! All that decluttering you're doing is sure to invite some good and new things into your life. I look forward to hearing what shows up.
The storage room detail makes the whole argument concrete. Four years of avoidance was not laziness. It was the weight of what the task had come to represent. Once the condemnation was removed the task became just a task again and the energy that had been locked up in avoidance went somewhere useful instead. That is the mechanism most productivity advice completely misses because it keeps trying to add more pressure to a system that was already contracting from too much of it.
Hey — I came across your writing and really liked how you think.
I’m exploring something similar from a different angle — writing about human behavior through a system design lens (like debugging internal patterns).
Just started publishing on Substack. If you ever get a moment to read, I’d genuinely value your perspective.
Also happy to support your work — feels like there’s an interesting overlap here.
Hi Tejaswini! I subscribed to your Substack. Welcome to Substack, looking forward to reading more from you. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate you. 💛
Great example of the power of a one-day hiatus from self-condemnation Nicola. I lost the key to my Ford Focus 2 years ago and it’s been parked on the street waiting for me to get it towed to the dealership. I kept putting it off and the back left tire went flat and weeds were growing around it and every time I walked by it I chastised myself. It’s like that inner dialogue paralyzed me and I was unable to take action on it. Then the other day I got up early and pumped up the tire and washed it and cleaned up the weeds and dirt on the street and it was such a relief. Then my neighbor offered me $500 bucks for it so it’s all working out. Taking a short break from self-judgement works wonders, and establishes a new neural pathway for taking action!!
SO well said Michael. Thank you for sharing from your experience. 💜
Thank you, Nicola. This makes total sense. Recently, I've been cleaning some of my storage rooms, literally and figuratively.
It's interesting, often when reading your articles a song will pop into my mind. Today as I read "just for one day" David Bowie's song Heroes started playing in my head.
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
Thank you, Earl. I love love love that song. And the remake of it by the Wallflowers! All that decluttering you're doing is sure to invite some good and new things into your life. I look forward to hearing what shows up.
The storage room detail makes the whole argument concrete. Four years of avoidance was not laziness. It was the weight of what the task had come to represent. Once the condemnation was removed the task became just a task again and the energy that had been locked up in avoidance went somewhere useful instead. That is the mechanism most productivity advice completely misses because it keeps trying to add more pressure to a system that was already contracting from too much of it.
Well said! Thank you, Frank.
You're welcome, Nicola.