The Subtle Signals: How to Know When You’re Off Track

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How do you know you are off track? 

What are the signs that you are not at your best, out of shape, or not doing well?

This is a list of what my goals group shared when I asked this question, and I added some of my own: 

  • Clutter at home or office.
  • Food rotting in the fridge.
  • Ordering Junk Food/Takeout.
  • Laundry accumulates and, if done, remains on the couch for days.
  • Skipping positive practices like gratitude journaling.
  • Forgetfulness.
  • Pains in your body.
  • Getting sick again.
  • Not going out in the sun.
  • Not walking or moving body.
  • Feeling sleepy most of the time and dragging oneself to places.
  • Skipping skin routines.
  • Skipping showers.
  • Oversleeping more than usual.
  • Not answering other people’s messages for days.
  • Not initiating contact with other people.
  • Forgetting what it means to feel inspired by an idea.
  • No curiosity or excitement.
  • No music in your life.
  • Easily irritable.
  • Snapping at others.
  • Road rage.

What are your signs that you are off track? 

Define your list, and when you notice one of the signs, let it trigger you to ask yourself, “What do you need?” over and over, and then wait for the answer.

After that, take action.

I love to ask myself this question on paper and write whatever comes to mind.

Sometimes, the answer is to ask for help. 

The Subtle Signals: How to Know When You’re Off Track

Twenty Five Words To Conquer Thieves of Time

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I listened to author Juliet Funt as she summarized the big ideas from her book A Minute To Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busynss and Do Your Best Work on the Next Big Idea app, and this part resonated:

“There are four key drivers that cause companies, teams, and human beings to become overloaded. They are actually all assets that simply overgrow. We call them the Thieves of Time: drive, excellence, information, and activity. Despite being positive and helpful in their basic nature, these forces are also the biggest reason that white space disappears.

When taken to extremes, the Thieves of Time become corrupted:

  • Drive becomes overdrive. 
  • Excellence becomes perfectionism. 
  • Information becomes information overload. 
  • Activity becomes downright frenzy. 

Our job is to notice which one or ones tend to carry us away, and then reclaim control of that process. We want them to serve us.

(…)

We need a tool that will directly disarm them. That reductive tool is Simplification Questions. They are twenty-five words that I use just about every week, and each question maps back to one of the Thieves’ risks and becomes its remedy:

  • Drive: Is there anything I can let go of?
  • Excellence: Where is “good enough,” good enough?
  • Information: What do I truly need to know?
  • Activity: What deserves my attention?

Each person finds resonance with a different question and that’s their charm. We’re drawn to the ones we need most. The questions can be used at the individual level or at the team and organizational level. They endlessly and nimbly allow us to amplify the best by removing the rest.”

Twenty Five Words To Conquer Thieves of Time

Decluttering: A Daily Practice, Not An Annual Project

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Last year, my friend moved into a new house and shared a lot about the tremendous amount of decluttering she went through before moving. She only took what she thought she would be happy to have in her new home.

This year, her family came for a one-week visit, so she embarked on another decluttering journey in preparation for the visit. It was funny when she reminded me of the clutter vision we acquire when we think of someone visiting us; we suddenly see items that don’t belong, which we overlooked before.

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Decluttering: A Daily Practice, Not An Annual Project

Take a moment to cool down

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Here is a question I liked in The Daily Stoic Journal and my answer to it:

What would happen if I took a second to cool down?

  • Feelings would be saved.
  • Words that shouldn’t be spoken would be silenced.
  • Trust would be maintained.
  • Regret would be unnecessary. 
  • Guilt would be spared.
  • Relationships would be preserved.
  • Judgment would be deferred.
  • Love would be honored.
  • Day would be made.
  • Pride would be deserved.
  • Self would be disciplined.
Take a moment to cool down

Enhance Your Downtime: Try Effortful Fun

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I read Tranquility by Tuesday last year, and this idea stuck with me: “Effortful Fun Before Effortless Fun.”

The most straightforward kind of leisure time is, of course, scrolling on our phones or watching something, so Laura Venderkam argues that we can add a little bit of effortful fun when we feel too exhausted to do anything productive before using our screens every evening. For example, why not read a book for a few minutes, work on a puzzle, or get some crochet stitches done before? It’s like a small pre-requisite; you can’t check social media until you read a little. After your effortful fun activity, you will feel good, and those minutes will add up with time. 

One effortful fun activity that I do is tracking some metrics on an app called Exist that provides nice analytics for me. I track my waking up time, for instance, and my writing and publishing habits, and most importantly, I set a rating for the day with some notes about it, just like a mini digital journal. Mood tracking has been my favorite part of this simple app since I started using it years ago. So, after I do all this tracking at night, I open social media or watch my favorite series.

Another effortful fun activity that I do is checking my book highlights on the Readwise app, which reminds me of favorite passages I highlighted on Kindle books I read, which Readwise directly imports from my Kindle, or famous quotes from audiobooks or paper books I read, which Readwise offers the option to manually add to my library. I feel inspired whenever I read these quotes and often share them with friends and family on WhatsApp or save them for my Sunday Spark readers.

I genuinely love these apps, and recommend trying them for some effortful fun or finding activities you would like to do more and placing them before these effortless scrolling/watching sessions.

Please note that the links provided in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through them.

Enhance Your Downtime: Try Effortful Fun

Win Your Day: Start Strong with This Question

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I have been applying the highlight-of-the-day idea, which I learned from the book (Make Time), with my goals group members for around six months, and it has been wildly successful in helping them focus during the day.

How do we do it?

At the start of the day I encourage them to share the goal of the day, which is one thing that, if they finish, would call the day successful. And then, at the end of the day, the group members share the status of their goals.

This daily goal habit helps them define “a successful day” on their own terms and not leave this evaluation to chance. In addition, they get to avoid the feeling of a wasted day many of us have if we don’t start it with intention. I also usually encourage them to share a maximum of three goals as they are sometimes inclined to share their entire to-do list.

My friend and group member told me that this daily goal habit helps her fine-tune her estimate of the time it takes to finish a task and improve it gradually to avoid the planning fallacy we humans are so prone to.

I also share my daily goals with the group because I love the accountability we create; I need to do it because I said I would, and if tasks do not get done, I provide reasons.

Sharing daily goals is also an excellent way to offer mini-coaching sessions if I notice a pattern. For example, a group member set a goal to “finish studying the material.” Some questions I asked:

  • What do you mean? Does it mean you want to stay up all night to finish it, no matter what? (the answer was no)
  • How much time do you really have to finish it?
  • Why not change the goal from “finish studying the material” to “Allocate 120 focused minutes to study” This goal? You can achieve!

When it comes to goals, time is usually the most critical factor in achieving them. How much time can you allocate to do what you say you want to do? Setting the goal this way helps you win, and we all need to feel these wins adding up, or else we will give up on planning before it becomes a habit.

At the beginning of every day, ask: What’s your one goal today? or, what are your top three goals? Remember, any other tasks you come up with need to go to a “Might Do” list; do them if you have time and energy, as author Ali Abdaal advises.

Win Your Day: Start Strong with This Question

Did you walk today?

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The highlight of the previous week was moving my body more than the week before.

I started with a short Wednesday walk right after work. I planned this walk by bringing the appropriate shoes and socks.

On Thursday, I participated in a fantastic team-building event with my work colleagues. I played, moved, and laughed.

On Friday morning, I walked while my kids were in their weekly math class, and later in the day, I walked some more during our family trip to Ajloun Teleferic (highly recommended).

Seeing those steps add up on my watch made me feel great as I was using my body for what it was built for: movement, as opposed to the unnatural sedentary life most of us lead by working at office desks for long hours.

Last week, I distinctly felt the need to move, like I had an excess of negative energy that journaling could not help me let out. Walking was what I needed. I was right.

Walking has been a part of my life since the quarantine days. Although many things could come in the way of taking a nice walk, like the shortage of pavements, there are good places to safely walk and enjoy the beautiful architecture of houses and the splendor of trees, especially at this time of year.

I don’t walk every day as I wish, but even if I start on Wednesdays, it’s still way better than walking zero times during the week.

When will you walk this week? 

Did you walk today?

How to Overcome Note Overwhelm in 10 Simple Steps

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A good chunk of my weekly review goes to processing my handwritten notes, and this is how I do it: 

  1. During the week, I collect notes in one place. I write any task, idea, or insight on the daily pages in my planner. 
  2. As the week goes by, I process some tasks by crossing off done items.  
  3. At the start of the new week, during the weekly review, I read all my notes from the past week. 
  4. I cross off done tasks. 
  5. I do tasks I wrote that need a very short time, like sending a text or a reminder email. According to David Allen’s GTD, these actions take less than 2 minutes. 
  6. I add digital reminders to my task app with due dates where applicable. 
  7. I copy insights or good ideas, like a sentence I read and wrote or a post or a podcast idea into my task app in a proper list, such as “Instagram content” or “podcast content”.  
  8. Or I copy ideas to one of my favorite note-taking apps: Google Keep and Evernote.  
  9. As I review my daily pages and process them, I cross off every single word. 
  10.  I then write in a colored marker the word “Reviewed,” which means I will never read or even visit this page in the future, and it was successfully processed.  

I genuinely enjoy this process, and it gives me an immense sense of clarity and relief. As David Allen says: “You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing.” 

As I wrote this post, I realized that I need to work on better processing my digital notes. I do this randomly, not systematically. I need to account for processing the digital notes, perhaps every month and see which of these notes are still relevant and which need deleting or archiving.  

How to Overcome Note Overwhelm in 10 Simple Steps

How To Talk To Your Self

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I listened to a beautiful podcast episode about self-talk, where psychologist Ethan Kross shared that positive self-talk works better when addressing yourself in the third person or using “you” instead of “I,” according to his research. So, if your name is Tala, your self-talk should go like: “You got this, Tala” instead of “I got this.” This method is called distancing, and it works better for motivation.  

Also, we can try superhero self-talk. Kids can significantly benefit from this technique when performing a difficult task. They think of a favorite superhero character and then talk to themselves like this: “Super Tala, you got this; you did harder stuff than this; you can do it.” 

We might notice we are not kind in our self-talk after making a mistake, so here is the part where we need self-compassion practice. 

The one and only Kristin Neff joined the conversation with three steps to practice self-compassion, which, unlike what you would think, makes us more resilient and confident rather than lenient. 

  1. Step 1: Mindfulness: I am having a hard time. This situation hurts. 
  2. Step 2: Recognizing our shared humanity: I am not the only one experiencing a hard time. It’s part of being human. Other people feel just like me. I am not alone. 
  3. Step 3: Kindness to oneself. Practicing kindness could be placing your hand on your heart and talking gently to yourself like you would a dear friend, and we go back here to self-talk best practices; “It’s ok, dear Tala. You will be ok.” 

I found this helpful episode this morning after having a hard time in extreme Monday morning traffic that added 30 minutes to my daily drive. I really wanted to blame someone for it, but mindfulness helped me notice the intensity of my anger. I kept practicing the psychological sigh: two breaths in through the nose and a long one out of the mouth until I felt better. 

As I listened, I noticed I was missing steps 2 and 3 from the self-compassion practice in my car this morning. Alas, I will use them next time.

Will you?  

How To Talk To Your Self

Are you ready? Your fresh start awaits.

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Today, October 1st, 2023, is the start of a new week, month, and quarter.

Do you know when was the last time this happened? It happened once this year, on January 1st, which was a public holiday. And October 1st is the last time these three beginnings coincide this year.*

To make the best of your fresh start, spend time as soon as possible this week planning the habits you will track and the most important goals you want to achieve this quarter. Decide your last 90 days of the year ambitions and the problems you want to solve. A wise person in a podcast called problems “projects.” Your problems are projects you want to work on and take action steps to improve. Brilliant, no?

Do you plan to commit to the weekly reviews in the next 12 weeks?
Do you plan to track your weekly expenses and save for the holidays?
Do you plan to sleep at a reasonable hour most nights?
Do you plan to start journaling a few days a week?
Do you plan to move your body?
Do you plan to check on the people you say you care about most?

After you decide what you want to do this month:

  • Write your habits and goals on a post-it note in a visible place to keep them on top of mind because the days will get busier, and the list of goals will be forgotten if not present in your space.
  • Track your habits on a habit tracker like the one in the spark below, or create your own. You will feel discouraged sooner than expected if you do your habits without tracking them. Tracking makes you feel great about progress before the changes in your life become tangible. Track the total number of days you commit in October to beat your record in November and be realistic in December because it would be different from October and November.
  • Open your calendar and book action steps for your non-daily habits and goals, such as a coffee date with a friend, walking times, budgeting days, and weekly review days… you get the picture. It would help if you saw them in your calendar to make sure they make sense with the rest of your commitments.

One last tip: my friend told me about a journaling exercise called Remembering The Future, in which you write how you want to feel at the end of the year like it happened already, e.g., “I am so happy I finished that project, passed the exam, and improved my relationship with my mother.” Cool, huh?

So tell me, what will you say on December 31st about the year 2023?

Let’s end it with a bang, shall we?

*P.S. I learned this when I was designing my 2023 calendar. If your workweek starts on Monday, a new week and month collided once this year; on May 1st. These small facts are a lot of fun for a goal and time nerd like me!

Are you ready? Your fresh start awaits.