#25: Three Things that got me thinking
Seasons + growth + un-shaming
Here’s what got my intrinsic motivation radar buzzing in the past week.
1. For a while
I’d like to thank Haley Nahman for articulating so aptly the value of “short-term habits” in her Maybe Baby newsletter last Sunday.
This feels like a juicy permission slip to do something for a while, for as long as it feels helpful, relevant, easy even? Reframing those phases not as an oscillation between good and bad, but simply as one thing, and then another thing.
(I’ve spent the last half hour copy-pasting pretty much every paragraph before settling on the excerpts below; I hope you’ll read Nahman’s piece in full 🧡.)
“Common wisdom says that an unsustainable routine is a fool’s errand, relegated to the cursed realm of the crash diet. Instead we ought to focus on consistency and longevity. But sometimes that feels out of step with human nature, which ebbs and flows, requiring different things at different times, and what then?”
…
“Even the more compassionate approaches can hint at this good-bad binary: Forgive yourself for failing; you can’t do everything all the time; lapses happen. But these notions are still preoccupied with one-dimensional movement, however slow. And I wonder if by assuming growth is always the goal, we become too fixated on measuring our progress (or berating our lack of it), when we could be assessing our rhythm.”
…
“Sometimes we only need to do something for a while. Journal for a while. Meal plan for a while. Practice an art form for a while, then put it aside for something else, like going on walks. It’s perfectly natural to try things out, see how they feel, and revisit them later when the conditions of our lives call for them.”
2. On tiptoes
Yesterday, the babies reunited with their carer after weeks apart. I shared with her a few things that had changed in that time—a renewed passion for Duplo; an interest in different foods; shoes that don’t fit anymore.
“Oh, they’re saying new words, too,” she exclaimed. How could I forget to mention their expanding lexicon?! And their satisfaction as they now reach the spot where we used to keep fun things like permanent markers. (We’re running out of high shelves!)
Sometimes I stop noticing those shifts, so this cartoon by Paula Kuka really hit home.
As the artist writes:
“The passage of time is punctuated by milestones that can be dramatic and triumphant. […]
But then others just happen, without a photo to capture it or an announcement to family members.”
3. Guilting & shaming
One of my utilities provider sent the first issue of a colourful e-mail newsletter. It contained this:
Let me translate:
What are we listening to on Spotify?
Motivation MIX
Yes, we know, we went through the same thing🙁: those delicious and treacherous turrones1 preying on us during drawn-out conversations after (long) Christmas lunches, the polvorones2 that pile up where they shouldn’t. Don’t worry, and let’s get going! Listen to the playlist we recommend, give it everything you’ve got, and this summer you’ll show off that great body (again😛) on the beach, in the mountains, or wherever.
Hit play
Again, this doesn’t come from a newsletter focussed on weight loss or exercise. This is unsolicited content from a company that sells gas, phone and internet services, right after paragraphs about roaming costs and how to switch utilities providers as a tenant.
I get it: they were going for a tongue-in-cheek, informal tone. But there’s still a good dose of guilting and shaming under the we-are-all-in-this-together veneer (Evil fat! Bad foods! Summer body! Willpower!).
This stuff doesn’t work for me. Does it ever work for you?
Why did you eat those Christmas delicacies? Were they gifts you savoured, or did you shove them into your mouth mechanically when your uncle passed them around? What do you want to do this summer? How does your body feel? What kind of exercise do you enjoy? If David Guetta and Dua Lipa get you in the mood for whatever matters to you, by all means.
Me, I’ll be over there dancing to the Why Would Anyone Intrinsic Motivation playlist 🎶 (also on Spotify).
