Finishing half-read books and filing your Shazams - the time is now
We’ve suddenly got more time on our hands then we ever knew what to unexpectedly do with. What are you doing with yours?
Once you’ve eaten everything in your fridge (twice), and rolled with your dog on the carpet (at least 3 times a day) and taken a selfie of yourselfie in the bath, wearing a face mask while swishing your bright purple mug in a donut of dissipating foam (please god, only once), it’s time to think of some more productive things to do with yourself.
After all, this is a great opportunity for self-improvement. But before we all tumble into a downward spiral of busy - maybe we can self-improve by doing less?
Instead of making (more) to-do lists, I’ve been thinking about loose-ends. There are plenty-many things we start but don’t complete, or things we intend to do, but never quite get to.
These are essentially ‘open threads’ in our psyche - we opened them when we first thought them or started them.💡 A good idea at the time, right! But they take up precious mental space with their dangling in incompleteness.
It’s time to execute or eliminate, and by eliminate I mean process to completion, even if that process is realising, ‘Nah, I’m not into this anymore.”
Here are a few, mostly digital, things you didn’t know your mind was waiting on you to complete. If you have any other good ones to add, please do share them with me.
Gather those half read books and tap over to those abandoned ebooks you’ve been meaning to get back to and get cracking - bonus: happy endings and sense of achievement awaits on the other side.
Courses you signed up for, or began in earnest, but haven’t actually ticked the box of - if you’ve got one or more awaiting your login, go on and get your grow on!
The save-post button on LinkedIn and Facebook makes it easy to save things you don’t have time to watch or read in the moment - go back in time to review that content and then release it back into the wild.
Same with bookmarked websites and articles - or here’s an idea; maybe you can just delete the lot and relieve the pressure of finding time in the future to work your way through them.
Remember when you got letters you loved? How about taking an hour or two to climb into those sub-mailers you actually love and wish you had more time to read? Enjoy.
Sort out your app life, finally! Feel the satisfaction of pushing those dancing ‘x’s as you delete the clutter lurking in your peripheral vision every time you look at your phone.
While you’re at it, when last did you clean up your contact list? Time to delete that douchie client that never paid your last retainer fee and that restaurant that closed back in 2017. Byeee.
So great to Shazam tracks all the time - if you’ve been meaning to listen through and add them to your playlist, do yourself a favour. It’s a treasure trove! This will be a gift that keeps giving.
With love from Lockdown.
Thanks for reading.
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