Turn the margins of your day into a body of work. No perfect mornings required.
Joined February 2009
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A pen and paper near the bed is the entire routine. That's the system.
New post: what 5 minutes of writing did in a Baylor sleep lab. Nine minutes off, which sounds small until you've watched a ceiling fan.
Bookmark it. Read it tonight.
The mental load has no time slot on your calendar, so it takes yours: the hour you meant to spend asleep.
Picture day, lunch money, the dentist reminder, the gift for a party. None of it scheduled, all of it stored in one place.
Two questions, no essay required:
1. What's the last thing you gave up on because you ran out of time?
2. What were you doing when you gave up?
I have a few $9 to $29 tools at mittendad.eden.so if you'd rather skip the questions and see whether I already guessed right.
The below quote is right and I still waited months after reading it the first time.
Because "start today" sounds like a new morning routine.
Yours might be a tired Thursday, a job that already took the good hours, and a floor with toys on it.
Nothing about that day reads as a beginning.
Just start blocking.
One real 30 minute slot, same day and time, before the job decides your calendar for you.
Matt Tilmann retweeted
What we rewatch without choosing is what our brains practice all day.
You know the rerun. The show we've seen 12 times that's on while we fold laundry. The same 6 clips, in the same order, because nothing in them asks anything of us.
What we rewatch without choosing is what our brains practice all day.
You know the rerun. The show we've seen 12 times that's on while we fold laundry. The same 6 clips, in the same order, because nothing in them asks anything of us.
The problem is that we never decide. We let the app pick, and by 2pm we're wired and can't say why.
Make one small rule in your house.
Pick one thing on purpose before the day starts and one thing on purpose when we're fried.
Matt Tilmann retweeted
If your head's been loud all day, sit somewhere quiet.
If it's been flat and gray, get moving.
Same advice, opposite directions, and most of us get it backwards.
On the loud days we walk it off and come home more wound up than we left.
On the flat days we sit down to think and think about nothing for 20 minutes.
Figure out which one your brain is doing today, then pick the opposite.
It's a 5-minute fix once you notice.
Matt Tilmann retweeted
You'll find most of your good ideas walking, and you'll finish almost none of them unless you sit back down.
A mind in motion free-associates.
A body at rest can hold one thing.
We keep trying to do both at the desk, then wonder why the ideas don't come.
Get out for 20 minutes, come back, and sit still long enough to actually write.
Same brain, two jobs.
If your head's been loud all day, sit somewhere quiet.
If it's been flat and gray, get moving.
Same advice, opposite directions, and most of us get it backwards.
On the loud days we walk it off and come home more wound up than we left.
On the flat days we sit down to think and think about nothing for 20 minutes.
Figure out which one your brain is doing today, then pick the opposite.
It's a 5-minute fix once you notice.
You'll find most of your good ideas walking, and you'll finish almost none of them unless you sit back down.
A mind in motion free-associates.
A body at rest can hold one thing.
We keep trying to do both at the desk, then wonder why the ideas don't come.
Get out for 20 minutes, come back, and sit still long enough to actually write.
Same brain, two jobs.
Most of your opinion of yourself comes from whoever was loudest near you.
Some of them are people you'd never take advice from today.
You'd never let them run your calendar, and yet they somehow run the mirror.
The people who seem calm aren't less busy. They've decided what they're allowed to miss.
Life design starts with a list of things you will not check, not follow, not finish. Write it down. It frees more than any productivity trick.
Your planner has a time limit. Nothing that needs a decision from you survives 4pm.
By 3:30 you can pick between an outline and an edit.
By 4:10 you're reading the same paragraph with your eyes and not your brain.
So the picks go early, when the answer comes fast. The typing goes whenever.
Tonight, put one pick before 4pm tomorrow.
I tried the boredom advice. Sat in the quiet. Let my mind wander. Felt worse.
Stillness doesn’t fix depletion from sameness.
It amplifies it. Same commute, same desk, same dinner rotation.
Your brain wants one small new thing for 25 minutes.
Mine was a box of old sports cards from storage. 3,399 scans later, the fridge stays closed.
mittendad.substack.com/p/bor…