Did you launch another personal improvement project this year?

I have to ask, now that we’re nearing the end of the month, how’s that working out for you? Is your motivation crumbling? Did your 30-day challenge not make it past day three?

Or worse, are you reading this while sitting in a stupor, eating storm chips, and binging on Netflix? Don’t despair.

You're not alone. It's not too late. There's a better way.

The business case for starting with a strong finish.

Studies show that a temporal landmark, like the beginning of a year, can have a strong motivational effect on people’s intentions to pursue their goals. Psychologists call this "the fresh start effect."

But here’s the tricky part.

The reason a fresh start is so motivating is it allows you to disassociate from your past actions and your past imperfect self. Blowing past the year you’ve just lived and what it has to teach you, may lead to another disappointing cycle of wash, rinse, and repeat.

A powerful antidote to a weak start is a strong finish. And a great tool for that is a Personal Year-end Review.

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Links to people and resources referenced in this episode:

Tiago Forte at Blog - Forte Labs and author of Building a Second Brain

Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain.

Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results.

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 3.

So much of navigating life in a way that brings you joy and a feeling of being fully alive is a mental game. It is waking up to the experience of your life for brief moments and then slipping back into autopilot.

In this third and final episode of this series, I share five of my favorite reflective practices for more fully experiencing this remarkable ride called life.

Here are some links to resources I reference in this episode:

Ali Victor Binazir's 2021 article entitled, You, the Miraculous: What Are The Chances of Being Born?

The Last Time, Season 2, episode 12, or read it on The Slow Sip here.

Finally, here is a link to my post, The Shut Down Sequence on The Slow Sip.

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 2.

In Part 2 of my series, “How to Enjoy the Ride”, I explore some hard truths about our lives that actually make life more worth living.

In this episode, I discuss:

• The two kinds of happiness and how an over focus on one versus the other can make us miserable;
• Cognitive time travel and how we can improve our enjoyment of life by learning to operate our inner time machine;
• How we don’t really matter as much as we think we do and how that is a good thing;
• And finally, how embracing change and the shortness of our time on this planet can actually be liberating.

Here are links to resources I mention in the podcast.

• Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman.
• The meditation app, Waking Up by Sam Harris. This link leads you to a free trial.
• And finally, here is the wonderful essay by Jane Park, called What is the greatest unit of time for living?

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 1.

I’m excited to share the first of a three-part series called How to Enjoy the Ride.

In this episode, I discuss three common mental habits that have a powerful upside for our performance. But when they become unconscious and ingrained, they can also make us miserable.

Sometimes the path of learning to enjoy your success is to unlearn the very things that got you there in the first place.

In my last episode, I shared a full-throated endorsement of the virtues of sloth as I ventured off on a glorious six week hiatus.

But is there such a thing as too much sloth?

Unfortunately, yes. An abundance of sloth can lead to the dreaded state of “drift.”

Drift is that feeling of listlessness and lack of motivation that comes from drifting down the river of life without a paddle for too long. That slow realization that it’s September, there’s a tsunami of work headed toward you, and your canoe is lodged in the riverbank.

Listen to the cautionary tale of my experience with drift - what it is, the tell-tale signs, and what to do if you find yourself there.

For a transcript of this episode and more, join me on Substack at The Slow Sip.

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 4.

When we think of an arresting drum solo, we think of the beat. The sound. But what gives the sound depth and interest are the rests between the beats. A great rhythm is an intricate relationship between beat and break. It’s the dance between sound and silence, substance and space.

Our days are consumed with thoughts of what's next and what we must do. We are focused on filling spaces versus welcoming or even creating them. And yet, so much of what makes life worth living unfolds during the breaks in the action, the liminal moments. Our most memorable moments were created in these spaces when we stopped striving and simply savored.

In part 4 of my series on Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync, I explore the underappreciated art of taking quality breaks, and how to use them to create better work and greater depth, meaning, and joy.

Some links to resources mentioned in this episode:

• For a transcript of this episode, see my post on The Slow Sip,
• For tips on how to create an end of day ritual, read my post, The Shut Down Sequence.
• Here's a link to an article on Leslie Perlow's Boston Consulting Group Study, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/remaking-the-workplace-one-night-off-at-a-time/
• And a link to her book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone
• Here is a link to Stephanie Pollock's article, The mental load might be killing my ambition

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you’ll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 3.

This episode was originally recorded in 2022. I updated it to include it as part three of my series Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync.

How many of us have tried to reduce our stress and improve our lives by becoming better managers of our time? What if we’re building the wrong skill?

In this episode, I explore how developing your attention skills unlock your superpower.

1. How building the wrong skill is making us miserable.
2. How attention, not time, is the currency of greater value.
3. How your devices may be eroding your cognition and your ability to focus.
4. How the ability to observe, direct and sustain your attention is a superpower that you can develop.
5. Three critical skills attention training develops and how they can improve the quality of your life.

Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip.

By becoming a subscriber, you’ll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.