💎 Friday Gems (Power of 15 Minutes, Improve Your Posture, Honor What You Create)

Our anxiety's dominion has its limits so use them to your advantage.

Mar 09, 2024

Happy Friday, dear readers!

Here are the gems I gathered this week:

The Power of 15 minutes
Exercises to improve your posture
Honor and preserve what you create
Quote by Haruki Murakami on the purpose of adversity
Song: I’m In Love With A German Film Star by Sam Taylor Wood & Pet Shop Boys

Enjoy!

💎 The Power of 15 Minutes

There are tasks we absolutely dread doing; I’m looking at you, taxes and other work we deem boring and a time suck. We will delay working on those tasks with all our energy; constantly thinking about them becomes a task. But all this overthinking and procrastination doesn’t make the task we need to accomplish go away or make it less painful. The task must be done, and we cannot escape it forever. It may seem like we are doomed and must wait till we absolutely must complete the task.

The good news is that we have options.

We can break down the task into smaller parts and work on it until it is completed, or, as Oliver Burkeman reminds us in his post about the power of 15 minutes, the resistance we feel about completing the full task seems to vanish as soon as we consider working on it for a short period of time. That time could be 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, or shorter time period to overcome our objections to completing the task in one sitting.

As someone who works from home, I am amazed at what can be achieved in a focused 5-minute session.

Oliver Burkeman shares this example of psycholinguist Virginia Valian:

Valian describes finding herself unable to work on her PhD, because she was paralysed by anxiety, and the solution she eventually found, which began with resolving to work on her thesis, daily, for just 15 minutes.
…But Valian’s account of how she alighted on that length of time is a revelation. She wasn’t trying to power through her anxiety or attack it or destroy it.
… Instead, she seems to have accepted its presence entirely. In a sense, she conceded its power. And then, by asking herself how much she was actually willing to do on a daily basis, she perceived that her anxiety’s dominion had its limits.

So the next time you feel resistance and procrastination when you need to work on a task, decide to work on it for 15 minutes and see the power of action to help build your motivation.

Maybe doing that seemingly challenging or boring task isn’t all that bad!

Source: Oliver Burkeman

💎 An Exercise To Improve Your Posture

Sitting hunched over our desks all day and staring at screens is a recipe for chronic wrist, neck, and back pain. So, how do we undo the damage from our sedentary lifestyle? Enter Posture Alignment Therapy. In the video below, Posture Ellie shares a quick exercise you can do to check in with your body to see where your posture is disjointed. Knowing where our bodies are misaligned will help us find the right exercise and treatment to be pain-free and bring joy to our daily movement.

If, like me, you have wrist pain from sitting at your desk all day, try this hand exercise.

Source: Posture Ellie

💎 Honor and Preserve What You Create

I recently looked through the photos on my phone and noticed the different types of artwork I had created and had completely forgotten about. Now, I am reclaiming my identity as an artist and returning to my art instead of relegating it to the sidelines. As a part of the process I’m gathering my artwork to honor and preserve what I have created. I was also reminded of this by artist and writer,

Dan Blank

in his post, Honor and preserve what you create. Dan reminds us if we don’t make creative maintenance a part of our process, we risk

Not knowing what to create
Not feeling we have the capacity or resources to create
Not knowing the path from idea to done
Not sharing what we create (yup that’s me!)
Losing our work while creating (me too!)
Losing our work after creating (definitely me)

I would also add that all these can lead to us not valuing what we create. So please honor what you create by preserving it.

Also, subscribe to Dan’s newsletter for valuable insights, support, and encouragement to make your creative shift.

The Creative Shift by Dan Blank

Honor and preserve what you create

Today is my birthday! As a gift to myself, I am allowing myself to talk about one of my favorite topics: creative maintenance! What’s that? Creative maintenance is how we preserve what we create, and develop simple systems that encourage us to create and share. We do this to protect the work we do, and honor our creative vision…

a year ago · 39 likes · 67 comments · Dan Blank

Source: The Creative Shift by Dan Blank

A Gem of a Quote

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
- Haruki Murakami