Three

I listened to three different podcasts that had a similar message and it put me in my feels.

A little backstory – since March I’ve repeated “Do bad work” because 1) doing anything is better than doing nothing and 2) once you have something to work with, it’s easier to make it better. Like many others, I can be a bit of a perfectionist and it’s really paralyzing.  I feel “I don’t want to spend time on something that’s not going to be good” but I know that mindset is how nothing gets done. So – I usually block out an hour a couple times a week for me to sit and focus and do bad work. And I don’t feel like I’m getting enough done. I have goals that have deadlines. In the photo above, that’s the amount of time I have before I leave for Korea. Anyways…

 

In podcast 1, the hosts mentioned they get all of their reading done in 5-10 minute bursts while they’re drinking their coffee or while they’re in the waiting room at the dentist or when they’re waiting for their friend to finish getting ready so they can go out. The hosts don’t necessarily set aside time to read, but they fill extra time they have with reading as opposed to checking emails or playing with their phone.

In podcast 2, they talked about intentional actions vs unintentional actions. It’s so different to plan to sit down and watch Netflix, vs sitting around bored and deciding to turn Netflix on while browsing facebook and be on the phone with someone. To intentionally do something, to consciously choose what you want to spend you’re time doing creates a different experience and gives you more value out of the experience/task.

In podcast 3, the hosts said they don’t have the time/energy to exercise. To go to the gym is a 10-45 minute commute, to work out is another 30-60 minutes, then the commute home is 10-45 more minutes. At the minimum, that’s an hour out of the day – and they don’t have (or maybe they don’t want to) set that time aside. At the end of their days, they take 5-10 minutes in their living room to exercise, and that’s it. “The best exercise is any exercise.”

 

The similarity between these three podcast episodes is that the hosts all consciously chose to do something specific with their time. Podcasts 1 & 3 are for a busier lifestyle, but even podcast 2 can be applied to a busy lifestyle when you have a moment of downtime and you don’t know what to do with yourself (because you’re usually always busy).

 

The phrase,”Do bad work” needs to be changed to “do bad work, even if you only have 5 minutes.” Or maybe “be intentional in your bad work”? Maybe the hour of work I sit down to do twice a week isn’t at 100% focus. Maybe if I was doing 15 minute segments throughout, they’d be more focused…. and there would be more momentum?

 

Something to think about.

 

This blog post isn’t as organized as I’d like it to be. There are multiple themes (time, setting intentions, and personal goals) that I think should be in broken up into different posts, but I’m going to post it anyways because I start my work shift in 3 minutes. So I’m sorry. BYE.