Hi everyone,
I’m finally coming out of the fog that happens to me every year when we spring forward. (How is this still a thing?) For some reason, a simple hour shift in the day completely wrecks my sleep and focus for a solid week. With daylight savings in the rearview mirror, I am excited to have the energy to move forward with life, ha!
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of the newsletter and I hope you have a great week ahead.
Tips
- How To Quiet Your Mind: At least once a week, I’ll drift off to sleep, only to have something pop into my head right at the moment my body shuts down for good for the night. All of a sudden, I’m wide awake, filled with concerns about what I will do in the next day. In those moments, it is impossible for me to quiet my mind.
Tip: Look for opportunities to separate your work and your ideas from moments of relaxation. For example, I take 5-10 minutes at the end of every work day to jot down the most important things I need to accomplish the next day to put my mind at ease. It doesn’t completely quiet my brain, but this simple activity certainly helps me relax. Writer Aytekin Tank has some great suggestions to help quiet your mind in this article.
Related: Control What You Can Control
- How To Save The Planet By Deleting Your Emails: Last month, I went to the Hoover Dam for a canoe trip with my son. It was devastating to see Lake Mead down close to 30 feet from where it was in 2020. It feels like climate change is speeding up and I can’t do anything on a personal level to stop it.
Tip: Look for everyday opportunities to make small changes that positively impact the environment. I was shocked to read in this article that if I stream an album for more than five hours, it has a worse impact on the environment than if I purchased an actual CD. When it comes to steaming, one way to combat this is to only stream content when you are actively engaged. Otherwise, opt for things that lower your carbon footprint like listening to the radio or watching local TV affiliates using an antenna. The impact of streaming music sent me down a rabbit hole and I was happy to read this article, which stated that if we all adopt the simple task of deleting our emails it can have a positive impact on our carbon footprint.
Related: Stop Letting Email Run Your Life
- How To Use The Spacing Effect: Studying the bassoon taught me that it is impossible to cram a week of practice into 30-minutes on the day of my lesson and expect to be successful. Occasionally I got lucky, but most of the time my teacher knew immediately if I put in regular, consistent work on the instrument over the course of the previous week. Today I find myself applying the same practice routine I used to master the bassoon in other facets of my career.
Tip: Practicing artists understand that spacing their practice over long periods of time has a tremendous impact on their ability to retain and build skills. This way of practicing has long been researched and is called the Spacing Effect, which can be applied to every learned task from mastering an instrument to recalling the names of acquaintances you met at a conference.
Related: How To Determine An Hour Of Your Time
Things I Loved
- Still sending letters via snail mail in the United States? Here’s how long it will take.
- This site houses thousands of collections of public domain art for use for any purpose with no restrictions attached.
- This graphic eloquently shows how many people are alive today compared to how many people have lived and died since the dawn of humanity. My mind is blown.
- The Uncomfortable is a hilarious collection of inconvenient, everyday objects.
- In Sweden, they’re training crows to trade cigarettes for food!
Join This Newsletter And Invite Your Unrelenting Friends!
If you liked what you read here, I would be truly honored to have you join this newsletter by subscribing below!