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There is a concept in Japanese tea ceremony from Zen, roughly translated as “one chance in a lifetime,” or “one lifetime, one meeting.” It’s such a beautiful idea: any meeting you have with someone is unique, fleeting, and will never happen again, even if you see this person every day.
What would life be like if we could learn this kind of deep appreciation for any moment?
I notice myself often in a hurry for something I want to happen right away. I want it to be fully finished, yesterday. I’m overlooking the incredible moment that’s happening right now.
I notice myself frustrated with other people, even if I don’t want to admit that frustration. I want the other person to be different than they are, want them to change. I’m missing out on the beauty of being with this person just as they are.
I notice myself wanting to rush around doing things, and wanting to fill every moment with distractions, productive actions, busyness. I’m missing an opportunity for stillness, for stopping and just being in the beauty of the present moment.
I often seem to think (without realizing it) that there is some special moment in life that is coming, that will be more special than life is right now. What I forget is that life doesn’t get more special than what’s happening right now.
This here, this moment happening right now … this is the moment of a lifetime.
How heartachingly gorgeous it is.
The post The Moment of a Lifetime appeared first on zen habits.
Having worked closely with dozens of people’s transformative journeys, I’ve come to recognize a handful of mindset shifts that make an incredible impact.
Those who’ve worked to shift in these ways have remarkable transformations.
I’m going to share them here with you in hopes that they might inspire your own transformation. If you take these on fully, they could be life-changing. This isn’t all there is, but these are a huge, huge foundation.
How do you work with these? I would love to work with you as a coach, because it’s often impossible to do this work without support. We just can’t see what we can’t see. That said, here are some keys to working with these mindset shifts.
First, notice when you have the opposite mindset. Notice when you’re stuck in the old mindset, as often as possible. Notice the impact of the old mindset — what effect is it having on you, on other, on your life? Have grace for yourself, and love, when you notice. Breathe.
Second, practice the new mindset. What if the new mindset were absolutely true? Empower it. Be it.
Third, when you get trapped in the old mindset — you’ll revert to it often — get support. From a coach, from a therapist, from a meditation teacher, from someone outside of yourself. Someone who can help you see it, help you bring love to it, help you practice outside of it.
And then keep practicing! This takes a lot of practice, a lot of messing up the practice, a lot of getting yourself back into it. It’s all a part of the practice. It’s not easy work, but I promise, it’s transformative.
The post 6 Powerful Mindset Shifts appeared first on zen habits.
A well-known climbing coach said that the biggest obstacle in the way of people’s growth as climbers is, basically, fear of embarrassment.
When people want to get better at climbing, they try to do it privately, so that no one can see them doing things badly. They’ll go to the climbing gym when no one is watching, or hang out in a corner hoping no one is looking. But they’re missing out on the biggest opportunity — feedback from people who can see things they can’t see.
And the thing getting in the way is fear of embarrassment.
I’ve found that this is true no matter what you’re trying to learn. No matter what you’re trying to grow in. Fear of embarrassment will stop you from getting real growth and transformation.
My belief is not that we should just get over that fear. It’s that we could learn to see embarrassment as an integral part of the growth process.
I’ll talk about why in a moment. But first, let’s look at a few more examples where the fear of embarrassment stops people from growing:
Hopefully you can see that this can be applied anywhere we want to grow — personal development, taking care of ourselves, deepening in a relationship, dealing with the overwhelming chaos of life. We struggle to get beyond where we are, because we are too embarrassed to get support, feedback, coaching that might take us to the next level.
We hope to grow and learn without embarrassing ourselves. If we can learn in private, and then show how good we are //after// we’re really good at it … then we won’t feel embarrassed. We want to avoid that feeling at all costs, even if it means never learning at all.
But that’s not how it works. We have to be willing to be bad at something before we can be good at it. The growth process requires us to mess up, to learn from experience rather than just reading about it or watching videos. The growth process requires us to be messy and stumbling in the unknown … and then to get some support when we stumble, think we’re doing it all wrong, or feel like giving up.
And that is embarrassing. It has to be embarrassing, because we are necessarily pushing beyond the boundaries of the self-image we’ve created for ourselves. We’ve stepped into a new area of growth, which means we can’t be the person who has everything figure out, who has it all together. We want to be the person who has it all together, but that’s only possible if we are not growing.
So we choose to grow and learn, to transform, but that means letting go of who we think we are, and who we’re trying to get others to think we are. That’s a letting go, and it’s embarrassing.
If we avoid that embarrassment (which is natural), we will avoid the growth. We will not step into the unknown, which is where real learning resides. Where meaningful work resides.
OK, so you have a fear of embarrassment (of course!), and you can see how it’s holding you back.
How do you work with this fear? It’s a deep topic, but here are some ways to start working with it:
As you let yourself feel the fear and feel the embarrassment, what will happen is that you start to shed your old self. You no longer need to be constrained by doing things perfectly, impressing anyone, showing the good side of yourself, because you are growing into a new kind of becoming.
What would be possible if you let yourself go through the transformation process? If you’d like to practice deeply with me and others, come talk about being a part of my Fearless Mastery program.
The post Embarrassment is an Integral Part of the Growth Process appeared first on zen habits.
One of the things that really humbled me in recent years is the realization that I am often only halfway in on anything I do. I’m rarely ever really all in.
For example, I might join a coaching program with the idea of trying it out, but not really sure if I can do it. Then when things start to get hard or overwhelming … I might be looking for the exit door, or hiding so I don’t have to be embarrassed. This is being halfway in, with an eye on the exit.
Another example: I commit to meditating every day. Then when I’m meditating, instead of being fully in the meditation, maybe I’m waiting for it to be over, or giving myself reasons I should end early. Then two days into it, maybe I really don’t feel like it, so I skip it. Then I find reasons to keep skipping it. This is even less than halfway in.
Most of us do this in just about everything we do. And it has a really corrosive effect on whatever we’re taking on.
Does it have to be this way? Let’s take a look at what it looks like to be all in, and why we rarely do that. And then look at how it can create something powerful in your life.
Some of us have an experience of being all in, somewhere in our lives. Some places that might be true for you:
If you can relate to one of these — like having kids — then imagine what it would be like to have that kind of all-in commitment to whatever you do.
Imagine working on a creative project and having no question that you’re going to complete it. Even when things get hard, you’re working with the difficulties. Even when you feel like giving up, you don’t give yourself the option. Even when you miss a few days, you come back without any questions. Even if you die with it incomplete … you will die knowing you gave it your all.
Your heart is fully in it. Doubts might come up, but those are expected.
This is full devotion.
We rarely let ourselves be all in, fully devoted … because it’s hard and scary.
We don’t think we can do it. We don’t think we’re strong enough. We have lots of evidence that we will screw it up, based on past experience. We don’t trust ourselves.
We don’t trust the other person. We fear what they really think of us, we think they’ll abandon or hurt us, or let us down. Yet again.
We don’t think we can work out the hard problems. They feel intractable, overwhelming, too complex, to out of our control. We hate not having full control.
It’s easier to run. But it leaves our full heart, our full power, on the table.
What you’ll find if you’re all in:
Imagine that instead of heading for the exit door, you’re committed to working things out the best you can. (Not that you should stay in an abusive relationship or anything that’s harmful to you.) When you want to run, you stand and find something deeper within you.
What would that do for the projects that are most meaningful to you? For the relationships you care about most? How would you show up differently for your purpose in life?
What would have to shift? What would you have to let go of? What could be created from this place?
This is not another set of expectations and shoulds to judge yourself by. This is about practicing deepening.
Here’s how you might practice:
This isn’t easy practice. I highly recommend you get some support. This is why I’ve created my Fearless Mastery small group coaching program — apply today and let’s talk!
The post Be All In: Unlock Your Full Power appeared first on zen habits.
Most people think that if they’re struggling, that means something is wrong. If you’re struggling to write, to meditate, to eat healthily, to be focused and productive … or struggling in a relationship or job … that means something is wrong with you, or you need to change your circumstances, or this just isn’t right for you.
If we think something is wrong with the struggle, we will usually try to fix it, get out of the struggle, change ourselves … so we don’t have to have this problem anymore.
I’d like to propose a different view: that struggle is the place of growth, learning, curiosity, love, creativity. Struggle is an incredible opportunity for being creative.
Let’s take a couple examples so you can see what I mean, then let’s talk about how to work with this.
Let’s say I’m trying to write a book or a blog post … and I feel frozen by the unknown of it all. What to write about, how to approach the topic, how to be original or valuable, how to avoid people judging me.
So I’m frozen up and don’t know what to write. My instinct might be to avoid this struggle and do something else easier, like answer emails, take care of urgent tasks, check social media. But what would it be like to stay in this struggle?
Instead of avoiding the writing … I could commit myself to staying here. Staring at the blank screen, and letting myself sit with the discomfort that I’m feeling. Let myself sit with the unknown, and feel what it feels like. Get comfortable with this unknown, with the struggle.
After sitting for a few minutes, I might start to settle in and relax with the struggle. The unknown isn’t so scary. I can breathe deeper, and find the beauty in this moment of unknown.
From this place, I might find some creativity. OK, I don’t know what to write … but could I try something silly? Write about a superhero penguin, or an accountant that can shoot rainbows out of his belly button. Maybe I could write about not knowing what to write about, and sing a song as I write (“Oh I wish I knew what to wriiiiite!”).
The specifics of what I try here don’t matter. What matters is I can just try something. Maybe I make a list. Maybe I dance around until something comes up. Maybe I meditate and become one with the universe, and then the universe channels and answer through me. Maybe I trust whatever my heart says. I don’t know — but that’s the place of discovery, in the “I don’t know”.
Let’s say I wanted to practice yoga every morning for 30 minutes. I commit myself, I set a reminder, I feel excited about it! I might even do it for a few days. Then one day when it’s time to do my yoga … now I don’t feel like it, and check my messages instead. This happens for a few days, where I avoid it and feel bad about myself.
Normally, we might just give up, and tell ourselves it wasn’t worth it. Or be harsh with ourselves about the failure. But what else could be found in this struggle?
Imagine that I could pause for a few minutes and feel the struggle. Let myself feel how I am disappointed in myself and discouraged. What if I could bring curiosity into this place, and maybe even compassion and love? What if the real yoga is in this place, where I feel lost and want to beat myself up or give up?
If I stay in this space of the unknown for a little bit, I can find something new. This is where real learning, real growth, real transformation takes place. I might be able to get creative and try something new, if I stay here for a little longer.
We mostly want to get out of this place, because it’s uncomfortable. But maybe staying is exactly the spot where I could grow beyond my current reality.
As you can see, this requires a growth mindset — a mindset that the struggle isn’t the end, but the place of learning and creativity.
So when struggle shows up, here’s how I might practice:
I invite you to practice this, and see what you can discover. You might find that there’s more depth to this space of the unknown than you imagined.
The post Turn Struggle into Creativity appeared first on zen habits.
Creating a new habit like meditation, journaling or exercise isn’t incredibly complicated — at the most basic level, you tie the habit to a trigger that’s already in your life, start small, and find ways to encourage yourself to remember it and actually do it.
But it becomes a much more complicated and much messier ordeal because:
This is an almost universal thing, in my experience. No one escapes this trap.
So how do we work with it? We can make things really simple (that’s not to say easy) by getting to the heart of this: the resistance.
In addition, it helps to have a way to deal with feeling bad about ourselves when we give in to the resistance. I’ll talk about that after I talk about getting to the heart of resistance.
Let’s say you decide to do a morning habit like writing, meditation, yoga, or journaling …
You commit yourself to doing it every morning when you wake up (after coffee of course). You set a reminder. You wake up. Then …
Suddenly, you really need to check your email and messages. That leads to a bunch of other things that need to be done. Then you decide it’s time to check the news, or social media. Now you have to get ready. You’ll do that habit later.
What I didn’t describe above — and what most people don’t even acknowledge or notice — is the most important part. The resistance. If you can deal with the resistance, you can form a new habit. If you aren’t even aware of it, you’ll think there’s something wrong with you, or you’ll keep looking for better answers to fix this problem you have.
No amount of systems, books, answers will fix the problem of resistance. It’s something we can work with, but it doesn’t go away when you find the right answer. It’s simply fear and uncertainty.
If we can learn to work with that resistance, new habits will form.
Incidentally, it’s the same thing when you want to change an old “bad” habit — like quitting smoking or chewing your nails or eating too many chips. We have the urge to do the old habit (smoke a cigarette), and we have resistance to just letting the urge arise and fall. It’s like checking the email instead of meditating — we think we have no choice but to give in to the resistance.
So what if we didn’t need to give in to the resistance? What if it could be a place to embrace?
Here’s a way you might work with the resistance:
There isn’t a right answer here. Play with it. Keep working with it. Our desire for it to be over and to not have resistance is our greatest stumbling block. Keep creating something new, each time the resistance / urge happens. Eventually, you’ll discover something that works. And along the way, you’ll discover something new about yourself.
You hope that this will go perfectly. You’ll work with the resistance and you’ll crush this new habit. Yep! That’s exactly how it will go!
Except that part of it going perfectly is that it will include failure. That’s just a part of the growth process. You fail, you struggle, and you find something new in that.
The difficulty is that people take the failure to mean something meaningful about themselves. It becomes such a big deal. I failed! I must suck. Or I can’t do this. Or I’ll never be able to do this. Or What the hell is wrong with me?
Isn’t it interesting that a simple thing like failure carries such huge emotional significance? We feel bad about ourselves, we get discouraged, and we quit.
What if failure (and feeling bad about ourselves) was simply a part of the growth process? Not a big deal, but something to learn from? How would you approach it then?
I won’t give you the “answer” (because there’s not just one) … but I invite you to get creative. What can you try that will help with this part of the growth process? How can failure be embraced, loved, and be a place for curiosity and discovery?
If you can work with this, you will be liberated.
The post Simplify Habits: Get to the True Heart of Change appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
The boy awoke one morning to a startling discovery — that everything he believed was not the truth. He realized that the way he’d been seeing things was only one way of seeing things. His view of things was not absolute but tentative.
What he saw this morning is that everything was made up of a luminous cloudlike substance, an energy. Including himself. Including the air and wind and light. Luminous and full of wonder.
His body was made up of this energy — there was no difference between inside himself and out. Even his emotions were forms of it — anger, sadness, love, fear, grief, frustration, loneliness, all were made up of this luminous, wondrous, cloudlike energy.
The energy was all the same everywhere, but it was swirlying and cloudlike and changing in form. His body, for example, might have seemed like a separate thing from everything else, but it was constantly shifting like a cloud, breathing out and emanating parts of itself to the rest, taking in new parts from the rest.
This discovery of the luminous energy making up all of reality … it changed his life that day. He felt connected to everything around him, because it was not separate from him.
He was no longer held back by anything. He could do things he was afraid of before, because he saw that fear was just the same energy as everything else, beautiful and delicious. His old habit of avoidance melted away, as he had no difficult feelings to avoid — all was luminous energy.
He was no longer a slave to his addictions, because the craving that caused the addictions was simply a form of this wondrous energy. He could simply feel the craving, and love it as he loved everything else.
He no longer felt worried about being adequate, because there is no fear of inadequacy when you are a part of the luminous energy of everything. He no longer had to worry about getting love, because he was a part of the love of everything.
He was liberated. And so he decided to liberate all other beings by sharing his story of awakening to luminous reality.
The post The Parable of Luminous Reality appeared first on zen habits.
As a chronic maximizer, here are a few reminders that I need from time to time.
Having breathing room — a little bit left over — is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it’s preferred.
In a nut, I’d rather go big on a few really special things by doing less on everything else.
By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that most of us let ourselves be driven by our resistance to something difficult, scary, unknown.
We take on a hard task — creating something, for example — and then we feel some kind of resistance. Or maybe it feels like overwhelm. It’s simply uncertainty, and fear of the unknown.
This is quite normal, to feel uncertainty, fear, resistance, overwhelm. Then we let it drive our actions, letting the fear be in the drivers seat. That’s pretty normal too, and very understandable.
What would it be like if we didn’t need ot let this resistance drive us?
What if we could let ourselves stay in the uncertainty, feel the resistance … and then transform it into creativity and action?
Let’s take a look at the two parts of that.
So the first thing is you have to set aside some space for whatever you’re resisting. Warning: this step can be a doozy. We somehow always find ourselves too busy to make time for the thing we’re resisting. We’re so busy! We don’t have time for that scary thing! Funny how that works.
So if you notice that you never have time for it … make the time. Set aside some time. Maybe 15 minutes in the morning, maybe 30. Cut out some Netflix, Youtube, or social media time, and make time for this. Put it on the calendar, and commit yourself fully.
OK, let’s say you do that … now you find yourself in that block of time, and all of a sudden, everything else seems so much more urgent! Your emails are suddenly irresistible. Your kitchen magically needs some cleaning.
Stay here, don’t abandon the task. Your resistance wants to drive you away, but you’re going to try something different. An act of leadership rather than letting life happen to you.
Sit still for a minute. Let yourself feel the resistance. Not the thoughts about how you can’t do this, or how you should do it later … but the sensation of resistance in your body. The sensation of overwhelm and fear and uncertainty. It’s simply a sensation, an experience.
Be with it. If it feels like more than you can handle, stay a few moments longer. It’s a training, to be able to stay mindfully present with the feeling of resistance.
With practice, you learn that it’s not a big deal. You can be with it, with non-judgment, gentleness, even love.
Once you’ve done that, there’s another incredible way to work with this energy in your body. It feels like something you don’t want … but actually, it’s just energy.
This is the energy of life. Of being human. Of fear and meaning. Of learning and creating. Of discovering something new. Of connecting and falling in love.
This energy is not something to expel from your life, but rather to use in your creation. What can you create in this place of resistance, in the unknown? Can you let yourself stay curious, and explore? What might emerge, if you stay open here?
From this place, your deepest creation will be uncovered. You begin to realize that you are not the inventor of your creations but the discoverer of them. You begin to get excited about what might be unearthed in the unknown.
This is magic. What are you waiting for?
The post Creating When You Feel Resistance appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’m on my first international flight since the pandemic started, and I got lucky enough to have a window seat. Flying to Costa Rica by way of Guatemala to lead a retreat, I’m looking out at a vast expanse of mountains in Mexico … and I’m in absolute awe.
What a miracle this is, to be flying so magically through the air, over such majestic stretches of this Earth!
I noticed that when I was traveling a lot before, I got pretty jaded about flights. Ho hum, another flight, let’s get this over with, no big deal, I’m an experienced traveler, not some wide-eyed child. How did I get this jaded to the wonders of life? How do any of us get so jaded?
Life is miraculous. Life is filled with wonders. Life is majestic and magical.
And I don’t just mean the magic of flight — which our ancestors would have thought was sorcery, by the way. I mean the magic of toasters and heating and houseplants. I mean the miracles of each human being we encounter on the street, the wonder of having someone love you, the sacredness of grief and heartbreak, the joys of a berry.
Every moment, we have the opportunity to wake up to wonder, to awe, to everyday miracles. It is enough to make your heart leap with joy, to overwhelm your soul, if you let it. Every day, we have access to this, in so much abundance.
Will you let it in?
The post Everyday Wonder appeared first on zen habits.
Way, way back when, Shawn showed off one of his cool tricks for spurring the creative juices each morning. Rather than sitting down cold turkey at the computer to begin work for the day, Shawn would leave a note right in front of his keyboard the prior evening outlining the next step, the next idea, or the next topic to write. Rather than sitting down to chaos, the note provided a clear path forward for Shawn.
This was my first introduction to a “startup” routine.
Honestly, the introduction didn’t root — I only developed a startup routine about five or six months ago.
I had no idea what I was missing. Since adopting my own startup routine, I’ve never felt so in control. I wake up in the morning with a new shot of confidence and a spurt of energy because I know what’s coming. I know what I’m in for. Less reaction. More action.
I can point the rooting of this startup routine to the discovery of Sunsama. Sunsama has done a number of things for my life in recent months. The app has rooted this startup routine and is developing a shutdown routine. The app helps me come to grips with an immense workload and an acceptance of my limits each day. The app helps track my time, carve out moments of personal time, and ensure my actions are aligned with my objectives each week. Sunsama has quickly become one of the most fundamental apps in my workflow.
This startup routine, though? It’s this startup routine in Sunsama which has altered how I work.
Each morning, Sunsama presents you with the chance to plan out your day. The planning process takes no more than 10 minutes and has 3 or 4 steps, which I’ll use my own terms to describe:
Off the top, I noted Sunsama presents you with this planning process first thing in the morning. However, you can pre-plan a day the night before if you’d like. There’s something quite magical about planning your day the night before — you can go to bed with a ton of confidence knowing you have the next day completely under control.
This will be one of the more subjective areas of any startup routine. Here’s how I tend to structure my day.
First, context: I have two or three goals in mind for each day:
With those goals in mind, I generally group all my messaging and administrative tasks first thing in the morning. These sorts of tasks usually take the least amount of brain power, so they hit a time of day where my brain isn’t at its peak performance.
The six hours of billable time is broken apart between each of my best focus times of day: the later morning, later afternoon, and later evening. Sometimes I’ll use that first block of focused time to prepare for the second block. Sometimes I use the last focused block of my day to prepare for the next day’s first focus block. However it ends up being structured, my most important work falls into these three time blocks.
Finally, I always add my personal time into the calendar first before building out the rest of my day in Sunsama. “Wake, prep, and arrive” gives me some time to wakeup, get ready for the day, and arrive at the office. This also includes early morning coffee time with colleagues at the office. “Lunch” gives me a full hour of personal time mid-day (though I never take a full hour), but this ensures I don’t book anything important during the hour and gives me a full hour to check-in with my family. And no matter what, I have a block of “Free time” added to every day — usually at the end of the day — to allow for some decompression.
This decompression time is a great time to use Sunsama’s shutdown features.
For my day, the startup routine is far more important than the shutdown routine. At least at this point. Perhaps, in the same way the startup routine took awhile to root itself, the shutdown routine will eventually become more important to me.
This isn’t to say Sunsama does a poor job handling the shutdown routine. In fact, if you use Sunsama to the full extent of its capabilities, your shutdown routine will physically force you to stop working for the day.
Depending on when you set your shutdown routine to start, Sunsama will notify you when it’s time to start winding down your day. Once wind down is done, Sunsama will provide you with a review of your day — a complete breakdown of your work hours, personal hours, all the tasks you completed in the day and the calendar events you worked through. You can use this time to align your work with your weekly objectives (more on that another day) and to ensure you achieved what you wanted to achieve in the day.
The final step in Sunsama’s shutdown routine is the opportunity to post a quick blurb to Slack. This is one of the team areas of Sunsama which I find to be arbitrary and less useful in practice. But if you do you use Sunsama as part of a team, you can notify everyone of how your day went as part of this shutdown routine.
This shutdown routine and review period takes no more than two minutes to complete (five minutes if you want to align everything with your weekly objectives) and ends with a giant “Done for the day” notifier, easing the process of closing your computer and physically shutting down for the day.
More often than not at this point in time, I find myself missing this review step. 6:00PM rolls around, I have supper with my family, I enter into another focused period later in the evening, and shutdown routine triggers at 9:00PM with no Josh in sight. As a result, I often end up reviewing the prior day right before I plan my day the next morning.
In some ways though, reviewing your day the next morning is kind of like leaving yourself “The Note” — if you provide yourself a trigger for where you left off the prior day, you may more easily figure out where you want to start your next day.
I have never felt so in control of my day as I do when I use Sunsama’s startup routine. When Sunsama was still new in my life, I often chose to plan my next day in the evening prior, which led to a sense of calm when I went to bed that I had never experienced before. It was fascinating — in a way, I felt like Superman, such that there was nothing the coming day could throw at me that I couldn’t handle.
Time has worn on and that startup routine has shifted to the earlier morning, if only because I find myself working later into the evening. The last thing I want to do right now at the end of the day is to think about more work the next day.
But it’s this startup routine which ensures I have structure in each day, ensures I meet or exceed my billable goal targets for each day, and ensures I stay up to date with colleagues and clients at least once a day.
Perhaps it’s because my life and work is more consistent now than it was when Shawn wrote “The Note” in 2015, or perhaps I’m just now a new man (!), but I’m grateful this startup routine in Sunsama has taken root as seamlessly as it has these last few months.
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As you may have heard, Focus Boosters are something new we are doing in 2023 for our Focus Accelerator members.
Each Booster is a community-led, themed challenge to help you up-level in a specific area of task, time, and idea management.
These are all the Focus Boosters happening in 2023:
The latest booster, Margin Reset, begins this week at our members-only coaching call (Tuesday the 14).
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to restore breathing room in your day-to-day life.
Imagine, your life WITH margin. It means you’ll have:
A life with margin means is one with less stress and overwhelm in your work; more time on your calendar and more space for the things you love and want to do; more mental and emotional strength to show up for your relationships; and overall healthier work / life balance.
Here is the plan for the Margin Reset:
Step 1: Assess: Use our Margin Assessment to find out exactly where to focus first.
Step 2: Discover: The ideal next step you can take to restore margin in your life.
Step 3 Restore: Using our simple tools and frameworks, we’ll show you how to thrive with a life full of margin.
If you want to join us, sign up for the membership so we can help you get set up before things begin.
In addition to all the live Boosters, your membership also gives you instant access to everything in our entire library. Both here on The Sweet Setup as well as on our sister site, The Focus Course.
And when I say “everything in our library,” I mean you’ll have access to:
Your membership comes with both online and in-person coaching and community. You’ll also get:
How would you describe your average day?
Here are some common answers I see to this question. People often describe their day as being:
In contrast, how would you describe your ideal day? How do you WISH your average day was?
For me, my average day is generally fulfilling, fun, and productive.
As much as I love a good vacation in the Colorado mountains, I would get a bit stir crazy if I didn’t ever have something to put my hand to. And, of course, if all I ever did was work, I’d burn myself out — which is what I used to do.
I used to work 70 hours a week. In 2015 I only took about 10 days off the whole year. I even worked over my Christmas vacation! Yikes.
It took me years to become comfortable with taking time off. Evenings, weekends, long lunches, even vacations… I would feel guilty if I wasn’t cramming every minute of my day with something productive and important.
Dr. Richard Swenson writes, in his book on Margin, that we must “develop the necessary underpinnings for margin that will allow us to accept its importance without guilt. For just as we need to eat and sleep, so we also need to breathe.”
When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables you to breath.
You feel fatigued, hurried, and anxious rather than excited, calm, and secure.
You have little or no time for your own projects and passions because your day is filled up having to respond to so many other urgent issues.
You often wake up to your day, rather than waking up for your day.
If that sounds too familiar, good news: We’ve developed some simple frameworks and systems that help you create your ideal day — one with margin, flexibility, and freedom.
When you have margin in your life, you have more flexibility.
Flexibility that allows for breathing room in your life for things such as…
I just taught an intro class on margin, and here was some of the feedback…
Starting this month (March 2023) we are kicking off an in-depth, live training for folks who want to get back margin in their life.
This is only for members of our community. And if you’d like to join, you can learn more and sign up here and you’ll get instant access.
If you struggle to keep up with all your tasks, your busy schedule, and just feel overwhelmed…
Get Instant Access to our 2-part framework for restoring margin and breathing room (starting today).
Even if things feel overwhelming, you’re not sure where to start, and you’ve already been there, tried that…
Inside our popular community membership, join us for the Margin Reset. Stop wondering why it’s so difficult to keep breathing room in your life. Finally break free from the overwhelm…
You’ll get instant access to the entire course library ($5,000 value), including our popular Focus Course, Margin masterclass, Time Management masterclass, productivity templates, and more…
From Busy to Not Busy
All this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and mastercalasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
You need input, advice, and inspiration in order to make decisions, come up with new ideas, or take action on something.
But with too many inputs (especially too many non-essential inputs), your ability to think clearly and make decisions is hindered. It leads to less progress, dual focus, and, ultimately, very little traction.
Left-to-right:
However…
By removing non-essential inputs, you will have more space to think, find clarity, and organize your thoughts. Thus enabling you to take focused action and see progress.
Left-to-right:
If you’re struggling to find clarity and gain traction, consider cutting back on anything that is distracting you from being able to focus and find clarity.
If you struggle to keep up with all your tasks, your busy schedule, and just feel overwhelmed…
Get Instant Access to our 2-part framework for restoring margin and breathing room (starting today).
Even if things feel overwhelming, you’re not sure where to start, and you’ve already been there, tried that…
Inside our popular community membership, join us for the Margin Reset. Stop wondering why it’s so difficult to keep breathing room in your life. Finally break free from the overwhelm…
You’ll get instant access to the entire course library ($5,000 value), including our popular Focus Course, Margin masterclass, Time Management masterclass, productivity templates, and more…
From Busy to Not Busy
All this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and mastercalasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
In this golden age of technology, it is quite easy to get sucked in and find yourself knee-deep in too many apps, RSS feeds, and inboxes.
If you’d like to get a better approach to how you use your apps and devices, here are some key takeaways from Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism.
Just as we need a philosophy toward the types of food we eat and why, so too do we need a philosophy regarding the types of technology we embrace and use.
Someone that avoids sugar or fast food isn’t anti-food. Just as someone that refrains from engaging with certain software or social services isn’t anti-tech.
We’ve all seen the catchy headlines promoting life hacks to get your smartphone usage under control. For lasting and meaningful change to occur, we need more than life hacks or quick tips. We need a technology philosophy that aligns with deep rooted values.
A technology philosophy is nothing more than a manifesto of how and why we use technology. If our technology use isn’t linked to our value system, then there will be no anchoring component to what types of technology we use and how often.
For simplicity, we could use Cal’s definition of digital minimalism as a working technology philosophy.
Digital Minimalism
A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.
Feel free to adopt this or come up with your own. In the end, you want to have a statement of sorts to come back to when evaluating the technologies you use. It should give you a sense of true north with regards to how you use tech.
It can be hard to obtain a sense of clarity around our technology use. When stuck in the cyclical patterns of checking inboxes, it can be a challenge to disentangle ourselves enough to define what our essential technology really is, which is what the digital declutter is for. More or less, it’s a digital detox that leads to lasting change.
The digital declutter removes all the extra (optional) technologies we’ve stuffed our life full of long enough to break free of their addictive nature. Then, as we begin to experience the relief of mental margin, we fill the vacant time with activities that bring lasting satisfaction.
Cal outlines the declutter process well in Digital Minimalism. (I highly recommend reading at least chapter 3 on The Digital Declutter)
The Digital Declutter Process (From Digital Minimalism)
There are a couple things of importance in here.
The point of the digital declutter is lasting change on the other side. From the experience of hundreds that have gone through the process, those that dropped out early were those that treated the declutter simply as a break from technology. The declutter removes the cloudiness of technology so that we can decide which ones we actually want to keep after the 30 days is finished.
Another key to succeeding the 30 days is to intentionally decide what you will do during the declutter to fill the void. If you don’t have an activity to fill the empty space, you are more likely to not finish the declutter. Make a list of activities you will turn to instead of the optional technology you are forgoing.
To summarize, the digital declutter is a tool meant to aid the process of selectively weeding out unnecessary technologies that do not align with our technology philosophy. The digital declutter will not be effective if viewed as a break from technology. It is meant to lead to change.
Finally, the most fascinating section of Digital Minimalism for me was on the topic of solitude.
The smartphone moved us into a truly unprecedented era of human history.
It’s not just the power of the internet in our pockets, and not just the ability to communicate with people on the other side of the planet. But for the first time in human history, we have the ability to completely remove solitude from our daily existence. A fundamental element of being human for thousands of years is now being threatened to near extinction — the ramifications of which we are only just beginning to understand.
Solidtude Deprivation
A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from the input from other minds.
To get a clearer grasp of the implications of this change, I highly recommend reading chapter 4 (Spend Time Alone) of Digital Minimalism.
The ongoing research behind the importance of solitude is compelling, but in short: “Regular doses of solitude, mixed in with our default mode of sociality, are necessary to flourish as a human being.”
This isn’t just an optional luxury of life we’ve endangered. Moments of solitude are essential to our human experience. By removing it altogether we are altering fundamental aspects of the human brain — not to mention causing anxiety and stress like we’ve never seen before.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
A while back, I reviewed the reMarkable e-ink tablet. There’s a lot to like about the reMarkable tablet: it’s thin and light, has incredible battery life, and offers a great writing experience for a digital tablet. But the software was lacking, and the more I used it, the more I found myself bumping up against the limitations of the device in frustrating ways.
One of the most annoying was that I couldn’t use my own PDF templates. When David Sparks and I put together the NeuYear Focused calendar for 2023, I worked with Jesse at NeuYear to create a PDF template for planning your day with the intention of using it on my reMarkable to plan my day. I was expecting that I would be able to swipe to create additional pages with the same PDF template applied, but it didn’t work. With the reMarkable, you can upload PDFs, but can’t use a single page as a custom template for a notebook.
Around the same time, a friend of mine was telling me about another e-ink device he was considering that ran the full Android operating system. Which I completely dismissed, until he sent me a screenshot of the device running Obsidian.
Now the wheels were turning. Could I possibly find an e-ink device that would fill the role of the reMarkable, provide a decent writing experience, and could be used for digital journaling in Obsidian?
I had to see for myself. So I ordered the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my “end-of-day device.”
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
It’s a little tricky figuring out what to actually call this device: the manufacturer is Boox, the device name is the Tab Ultra, but almost every instance online refers to it as the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra (so that’s what I’ll use).
The best way to describe the device is a low-powered 10.3″ iPad with an e-ink screen that is designed for writing with a stylus. It runs Android 11 and has the Google Play store installed, but also has several built-in custom apps like a web browser, RSS reader, library, and notes.
At $600, it’s not cheap (though it does include a stylus that I personally like better than the Apple Pencil). Honestly, I’ve spent a lot more than that on Apple devices I didn’t “need” over the years, and I was intrigued by the idea of an e-ink tablet that I could use for my evening journaling and shutdown routine.
If you like the idea of the reMarkable but wish it could do a little bit more, then Onyx Boox Tab Ultra may be just what you’re looking for.
The Notes app is the one I was particularly interested in, and I was happy to see that not only did it support templates, but there were also quite a few impressive features built-in. For example, there are lots of different pen and brush tools to choose from, and you can save presets at the top of the interface so you can easily switch back and forth between them. You can also add layers and choose from a couple of different canvas sizes. You can even add links to web pages and audio recordings to your notes, and can select text to copy and export via OCR (much better than the email-only feature in the reMarkable).
Overall, the Notes app is much better than I expected. It’s not quite GoodNotes, but it’s a big step up from the software on the reMarkable. The e-ink screen isn’t responsive enough to do a lot of fancy drawing (you won’t be pinch-to-zooming like you would on an iPad), but it is an excellent note-taking tool.
The “killer feature” of this device though is the fact that you can install third-party apps. There are a couple that I use regularly, including my beloved Obsidian and the new Readwise Reader app.
This is where things start to really get interesting.
The dream I had when using this device was that I would be able to install and use Obsidian on it as part of my end-of-day journaling routine. And honestly, I wasn’t optimistic that it would work. My Obsidian vault has over 35,000 files in it, and my iPhone and iPad frequently had trouble loading a vault of that size.
But I am happy to report that it works just fine, with a couple of tweaks:
To be clear, I’m not using everything in Obsidian here. It’s mobile, so there are missing features (like Canvas) and certain community plugins don’t work well in the mobile version of Obsidian. So I’m primarily using this to complete my digital journaling in Obsidian at the end of the day.
In addition to using the on-screen keyboard, there is a Scribble-like input option in the Boox onscreen keyboard settings. I like to use this to write out my entries by hand using the stylus instead of typing them. This works pretty well, though the formatting gets a little weird if you try to do more than one line at a time.
I also purchased the keyboard case, so in theory, I could grab the Tab Ultra and go to a coffee shop for a writing session if I wanted to. I haven’t done this yet, but the keyboard case is perfectly fine so I imagine I will do this occasionally in the future.
It feels very much like the iPad Keyboard Folio, but I think the keys feel a little bit nicer.
With all the drama on The Bird Site, quite a few of the people I followed for tech news & insights are no longer there. And while I’m kicking the tires on Mastodon, I kind of like not having social media to check in on. I do still want to keep tabs on some of my favorite sites and creators though, so lately I’ve been rebuilding my RSS feed.
There is a built-in RSS Reader on the Onyx Boox, but it’s pretty basic. And with the new Readwise Reader service being available as a public beta, I’ve been using that as the center of my RSS reading workflow.
There are lots of things to love about the Readwise Reader app (I’ll go more in-depth in a future article), but the big one that I love is the dedicated email address that you can use to send email newsletters to your RSS feed. I’ve been doing this for awhile in FeedBin, and it’s great. But the Readwise Reader app has some additional filtering tools that breaks things into categories and offers a nicer reading interface than any other RSS app I tried to use FeedBin with.
The best part: the e-ink display has filters to eliminate all the blue light from the device, making it the perfect tool for doing some catch-up reading at the end of the day before I go to bed. As an added bonus, all of the highlights I make as I’m reading articles and newsletters in Reader automatically sync to my Readwise account as well so they’re easier to find later.
After a couple of weeks, it is a little weird not to be checking in throughout the day on what’s going on. But I also don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything that’s really important, and it’s been a boost to my ability to focus during the workday.
The one thing I wish I had more control over is the font in the Readwise Reader app. All of the fonts are too bold for my taste, but that’s a pretty minor issue that I’ve pretty much gotten used to.
There are a handful of other third-party apps I’ve been using on the device, including:
There are a bunch of other apps I could use on the device that I intentionally leave off (basically everything that connects to work for the day job). These include:
While the Onyx Boox could be used for all of those, I’ve been very careful about what I let onto this device. I like the fact that there are only a couple of things I can do when I pick it up, which helps me follow through on my original intentions and reinforces its role as my end-of-day device.
The reMarkable has gotten a lot of use for note-taking at the day job the last several months, but this has easily slid into that slot for me because it’s much easier to get my notes off of the device and into a usable format.
The Onyx Boox is a bit thicker and heavier than the reMarkable (the reMarkable is 9.7″ x 7.4″ by 0.2″ and weighs 14.1 ounces while the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra is 8.9″ x 7.3″ x 0.26″ and weighs 16.9 ounces), but it’s not really noticeable for me. If you were carrying it around all day on your person you might notice, but it’s sitting on my desk most of the time, and the moments where I have to grab it and bring it with me it doesn’t bother me at all.
The battery life isn’t as good as the reMarkable, but it’s still much better than any iPad I’ve ever used. I use it pretty heavily throughout the day and have to charge it about once a week.
The reMarkable also has a better writing experience out of the box, though I got a Doodroo screen protector that feels a lot like using a mechanical pencil on a sheet of paper. It’s not as pleasant as a fancy fountain pen, but it’s a lot more tactile and provides a pleasant writing experience. In my opinion, it actually feels a little bit nicer than not only the reMarkable but also the iPad with a Paperlike screen protector I’ve been using for sketchnotes for years.
Compared to an iPad, everything on the Onyx Boox just feels a little slower and less fluid. There is no buttery-smooth scrolling, and I didn’t realize how much I’ve come to rely on iCloud until I had to set up a device outside of the Apple ecosystem.
There’s also a handful of apps that are clearly made for smaller screen sizes that look a little bit goofy on the 10.3 inch screen. Using Android apps has really highlighted how much TLC goes into iOS design. I’m so used to downloading apps and having them look great on any device, that the lack of established screen size support seems a little bit weird.
There’s also the obvious limitations of the e-ink screen itself. It can be a little bit jarring navigating apps that assume you’re using a color display and can see the difference in the colors between buttons and windows.
The one thing that I absolutely dislike is the camera bump on the back. When the Onyx Boox isn’t in a case, the camera bump is big enough that the device doesn’t lay flat and wobbles when you write on it. Both the keyboard case and the normal case are both pretty minimal, so in practice it’s quite possible you’d never use the device outside a case, but it feels like a bit of an oversight.
Even with all these limitations though, I absolutely adore this device. It’s everything I was hoping for (even if I couldn’t articulate it) when I first picked up the reMarkable. I’m not expecting the device to perform like an iPad, and expecting any e-ink device to do so isn’t really a fair comparison.
For what it is, the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra is great. Just don’t expect it to be something it isn’t (namely, an iPad).
If you are trying to decide between the Onyx Boox and an iPad, go with the iPad. It’s a much more capable device and can do everything the OnyxBoox does and then some.
But if you have ever been intrigued by the reMarkable, you should give this a look. It’s a very specific type of person who is intrigued by a digital notepad, and the Onyx Boox tab Ultra takes everything that’s great about the reMarkable, makes it better, and adds a whole lot more on top of it.
If you’re sold on the idea of Onyx Boox but the $600 list price is too much, check out the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus. The Tab Ultra is the new flagship device in the Onyx Boox line, but the Note Air 2 Plus is still plenty capable and is actually a bit thinner and lighter (since it doesn’t have the built-in camera for document scanning).
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
Quick wins are rarely the elements of a long-term strategy.
If you search for quick wins, you’ll find them. But they won’t add up to anything substantial over time.
Instead, focus on being consistent with smaller actions you can stick with over a long period of time. Here’s why…
There are two types of goals:
Attainment Goals are something we accomplish. Running our first marathon. Losing 10 pounds. Paying off student loans. Reaching 1,000 newsletter subscribers. There is a clear definition of done and you know when you have attained that goal.
Lifestyle Goals are something we “install” into our everyday life. Such as a daily reading routine, a workout routine, a writing habit, a financial budget. A Lifestyle Goal is a desired outcome we have for what we want our day-to-day life to be like.
On a practical note, these two types of goals go hand in hand.
For example, suppose you want to run a marathon. Naturally, you will need a daily routine of eating and exercise in order to have the strength and stamina for race day.
Moreover, while the marathon itself is a mountaintop type of experience — something exciting and memorable. The race day itself is not a life-changing event. Rather, you will be changed through the lifestyle goal that was required to get you there — the biggest impact on your life will not be the marathon itself, but rather the months of preparation leading up to the race.
The small actions of our Lifestyle Goals only add up if they are done consistently over time.
Any singular, small action that is done once will not produce any meaningful results in your life. This is true for good actions as well as bad actions. Such as:
Any of the above actions, if done once, will not add up to much in the long term. Smoking one cigarette will not be detrimental to your health. Skipping dessert will not impact your weight. Writing 500 words is not much toward a manuscript or a year’s worth of weekly newsletters.
However, if you were to take any of those actions and repeat them consistently for a year…. you would see substantial and noticeable results.
Writing 500 words per day adds up to more than 175,000 words — that’s a couple of books.
Walking 30 minutes per day adds up to about 700 miles in a year.
We do not decide our futures, we decide our habits. And our habits decide our futures. — F.M. Alexander
Whatever your goal is, pick a small daily action that you believe will move you toward that goal. And then, do that small action consistently in order to produce the results you are wanting.
This is a very simple strategy. And it works.
But, if you have ever tried to implement a new habit then you know that, while it may be simple it is not always easy.
And so, the question arises:
How do you maintain consistency and motivation to show up every day for those small actions that compound over time?
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
One of my personal favorite methods for getting new habits to stick and old habits to keep going is through the use of a habit tracker.
There are all sorts of habit trackers available — from apps to notebooks to wall calendars. I’ll list a few of my favorite habit trackers at the end. But first, let’s briefly look at the 3 main benefits of using a habit tracker.
As is often the case, once you begin focusing on a new habit, or doubling-down on an old one, you will have many new ideas for something different you could be doing instead.
Your habit tracker will help remind you of the critical actions you are committed to doing each day. This will help you to stay consistent on the winning strategy instead of getting distracted by new ideas, quick wins, or other distractions.
In order to get the results from your small, daily actions you need to actually do them. It’s not enough to want to write 500 words per day, you actually need to do it.
Like I shared earlier, a small action done once doesn’t add up to much. You have to keep showing up every day. By using a habit tracker you are able to stay focused on the one or two daily habits you are building so you can continue to show up and repeat them consistently.
The very nature of doing small things exactly that: they are small. And, as such, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and to stay motivated.
This is why it’s important to recognize and celebrate the small, daily wins of our life.
Research shows that our motivation increases when we see that we are making progress on meaningful work. This recognition of progress boosts our overall mood and thus leads to an increase in productivity and creativity.
Even a simple habit tracker can help you to catalog and celebrat your small wins each day so that you can be reminded you are making meaningful progress.
We have tried, tested, and used many habit trackers over the years. We even designed our own and put it inside our Focused Life Digital Planner. Here are a few of our favorites.
Habit Tracking Apps
The best habit tracking app for your iPhone is Streaks. It offers everything you need to create good habits or break bad ones, features a great design that is very customizable, has some useful widgets, integrates directly with the Apple Health app for automatic tracking, and offers great support for Shortcuts.
Focus Course Digital Planner
Our popular digital planner has 12 monthly spreads for you to celebrate your daily progress and track your daily habits.
Day One
If you want to build a journaling habit, I’m a huge fan of Day One (and have been using it for nearly a decade). While Day One isn’t a traditional habit tracker, you can use it track your habits by either using a journal template and/or by simply writing down what you did each day.
If you already use Day One, then this could be great for you if you also want to keep things all in one spot. Or, if you’re specifically looking to build a journaling habit this year then Day One is an ideal spot to start.
Notion
There are hundreds of habit tracking templates out there for Notion.
We just designed and developed our own Notion Habit Tracker (based on the best of the best) and we’ll be publishing it for free to everyone inside the Accelerator Membership.
Notebooks
For me personally, I track my daily habits inside of a standard-issue Baron Fig notebook. I map out my own “one line per day” method with a daily highlight and a few check boxes for the habits I am currently tracking.
If you’re looking for even more suggestions on ways to track your habits and routines, here’s another roundup.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
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