One Thing At a Time, Spontaneous Movement and Time Blocking

Newsletter Round Up Of What's Been Happening This Week

🤔 Thoughts for the week

This week I’ve been getting my head round Substack as a new publishing and newsletter platform.

A combination of things has got me to this position:

😬 My need for clarity and cohesion between my website, my blog and newsletter

😥 GetRevue, where I have been producing my newsletter is rumoured to close

🤣 My love of playing with new things as a super way of procrastinating

I never seem to publish anything on my blog Sian Scribbles so by bringing it over to Substack I can publish posts as well as emailing subscribers.

It’s also part of my wish to create a community and get feedback. If I’ve done everything right, you should be able to comment on, like and share the posts and emails. Although you may have to set up a free Substack account to do that bit.

So, what did I learn?

Not to set up everything all at once.

There are so many options at the start of a new project. When you find loads of unexpected features it can be so tempting to want to include them all. When I started setting up my Substack publication I was like a child running round Disneyland trying to go on all of the rides at the same time.

I ended up with podcasts and newsletters all over the place and had no idea how they all fitted together. I had to delete the account and start again.

Keep it simple to start with, and build.

📖 This Week’s Book

I’ve had a problem honing my visualisations for some time. I don’t know if this was a particularly good book (it was good) or if it arrived at a time when I was ready, (remember that saying, the teacher will arrive when the student is ready, or something like that), but I found it easy to follow, easy to implement and I’ve been doing the exercises each day.

You may need to get it as a Kindle for £9.99 as it seemed very expensive otherwise.

This Week’s Quote

“I trust in the universe that everything is happening as it should”

I’m not sure who said this, loads of people probably, but I find it useful when everything isn’t going how I want it to and it feels uncomfortable.

Look Good Feel Good

I just love this video by Kim Eng (Eckhart Tolle’s partner) for Spontaneous Movement Exercise.

I use if for two reasons.

⭐️ Firstly, if I’m stressing about something and I can feel that stress somewhere in my body. Usually for me that’s in my stomach or throat, but I’ve also recently become aware of how some of my back pain could be due to stress. The movement exercise helps to release the tension, and it makes me feel as though I’m building something better for the future but resetting my energy.

⭐️ Secondly, if I feel I need to move, just for the sake of moving, stretching, just not sitting, this is easy to do as you don’t have to think about anything, remember anything or change your clothes. You just do what feels ok.

Tip: Don’t run the video on double speed. When I first played the video I thought it had stopped; it was so slow and with gaps in between the speaking. Somehow I managed to resist speeding it up and I’m glad I did. Slowing down is part of the process.

📓 Journaling Prompt 📝

I love to journal, but often get stuck on what to write about. Here’s a prompt I’ve found useful this week…

What have I done this week that I can be proud of?

If you look at the image below, I’ve changed the wording to “What have I done this week that I should be proud of?”

That’s because I often have lots of things I’ve done, but I’m not actually feeling proud of them. There’s no pat on the back from me, for me.

It’s never enough.

I think it’s time to acknowledge that it is enough; it’s what was supposed to happen and that I deserve a well done.

Do you deserve a well done from you?

What’s happening this week?

I’m going to try out a new way of organising my week. I’m sure you’ve come across using blocks in your diary, as I certainly had, I’ve just not been organised enough to actually do it.

It seems simple enough - you block out time in your diary to focus on a particular project.

I’m doing this because I often disappear down the rabbit hole, focusing on only one thing, when I have a number of ongoing projects which need maintenance each day.

Todoist has a blog post and templates if you want a few more ideas and a bit of depth.

Time Blocking Todist Post

Just in case you haven’t come across time blocking before, I thought I would find a pic to illustrate. I spent an hour searching online for a good image with the right useage permission to post here before it occured to me that I could create my actual time block for next week and use that 🙄

This is what my blocked schedule for the week looks like. As much as I wanted to go and find a new and exciting calendar app, I’m using ‘out of the box’ Google Calendar as I have it on the laptop and phone. It’s done a super job, so another lesson for this week - start with what you have.

You might notice there are gaps in my schedule and that’s because stuff will happen that needs sorting out. In our team meeting on Monday, many of those blocks will get filled in when the rest of the priorities for the week are decided.

Okey dokey, that’s it for now. For some reason I can’t get pro-writing aid to integrate into Substack to check the spelling, and it’s now way past wine O’clock and my Sunday lunch awaits.

See you next Sunday and have a fabulous week

One last thing - if you over-whisk your Yorkshires, they won’t rise 🥲

Sian x

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