#24 - February's Theme Is: No New Ideas

One of the major perks of my job is getting to be incredibly honest with my boss. The thing that it revealed to me this morning? I have a hard time asking for what I need at work (even when the requests are totally reasonable and my boss actively encourages me to ask for things because she knows that historically that’s something I struggle with)!

That’s right folks, I cried on Zoom while saying that I need to take an hour lunch break in order to fuck around on the internet and eat food! And I need a full hour because I love making lunch but then I never have enough time to go full mindless scroll on Twitter!

Anyway, that’s not why I’m writing this, though I do want to give a hearty shout out to Meg for being the best boss of all time, I’m writing this because we are doing a THING this month at Facilitator Cards and when we decided on doing it the relief that flooded through me was truly euphoric and I want to lend the idea out far and wide:

There are to be no new ideas in February.

Those to-do lists are full enough! Time to home in on some shit! I want an empty projects list by the end of this month and by god I’m going to get there! Come hell or high—oh it’s actually just as simple as creating a new filter in Notion and any new idea or project gets automatically added to the “next month” hidden section of the table and we can just continue forth knowing they’re safely stored for later but not clogging up our brain space or to-do list. Opening that thing up on March 1st is going to feel like Christmas!

(Plus, I’m kind of excited for the filter system of not immediately prioritizing new ideas and having a bit of distance from them before we decide to act on anything!)

So I’ve decided to apply this to the rest of my life as well. I’ve done a lot of focus on self-improvement over the past few months, and I don’t think I need to add anything new. When my foot finally heals I will be getting back to morning walks, but right now I think I just want to focus on the sustainable changes and making sure I’m actually, you know, sustaining them. Writing six pages every day turned out to be easy enough to incorporate into my morning routine, but I’m still going to bed way later than I mean to, and since I can no longer sleep past 6 in the morning that’s meant that I did spend almost all of Saturday napping in various locations around my apartment. While covered in cats. It’s a two kitty household over here, they’re very influential!

Give yourself permission to do nothing but things you’ve already committed to! When it comes to stuff outside of work commitments, give yourself permission to do nothing! Shit has been wild, it’s okay if we all take some collective recovery time!

I think everyone I know feels like they’re going at full speed right now. And that makes sense! There’s always so much pressure on the new year, and January is always a weird catch-up/closure vibe since you want to focus on the NEW and the NOW but you still have to deal with your books from the THEN and WOW is it such a pain in the ass to do all the administrative tasks you get to blissfully ignore for months prior! (And you know, global endemic! We’ve upgraded from a pandemic but I only know enough to be pedantic about but not informed enough to know why!)

No new ideas! Take care of yourselves! Buy a humidifier and moisturize more often!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and successful (however you define success to be!) 28 days!

Rabbit, rabbit! 🐇🐇