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

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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.

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 2.

In part two of my series, "Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync", I introduce the connection between your best energy and your most important work. I share the results of an experiment I conducted on myself in an effort to overcome my life-long struggle to build a consistent and sustainable writing practice.

In this episode, I explore what is your most important work and how do you distinguish that from all the noise? What is best energy and how do you find yours? How do you deal with all the other important demands on your day?

And finally, what is possible for all of us, when we put our personal well-being at the center of our relationship with work.

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.

Here are links to some of the sources I reference in the episode:

I reference Cal Newport's excellent book, Deep Work, which was very helpful in helping me understand both the conditions I needed to create and the benefits to my productivity and peace of mind of creating them.

For a deeper, and admittedly nerdier, dive into my BIG THING system, check out my post What’s Your BIG THING: How to get traction on what matters most.

For more on ultradian rhythms, see the links and resources referenced in my post at The Slow Sip, Finding Your Rhythm in a World out of Sync.

For more on chronotypes, see this article from The Sleep Foundation, and find Dr. Michael Breus' free chronotype quiz, here.

A different path to balance.

In this episode, I explore the connection between the natural rhythms that govern our bodies, our environment, and our lives and their impact on our work. I discuss the significant upside for our health and performance when we pay attention to these rhythms and work with them rather than against them.

"When I let nature’s rhythms guide my life, nature delivers. Adopting a more natural rhythm and pace in my work has delivered the single greatest boost to my creativity, productivity, and general well-being."

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.