Do you like your average Tuesday?
99.95 % of life is just a bunch of regular Tuesdays stacked on top of each other. If you don’t like your average Tuesday, maybe it’s time to reorient some things.
I realized I’m subconsciously getting better at this. There’s nothing profound about saying, “having a kid totally reorients your life,” but it does.
Having a kid is a forcing function for not getting to live life on your timeline anymore. Everything takes 23% longer than it needs to, nothing is efficient, there are 5 half-eaten snacks that get thrown in a Tupperware until they go bad and then get thrown away.
As a result you’re forced to slow down. Unless you really feel like white-knuckling your way through a lot of frustration. I’m a big fan of the maxim, “A secret to happiness is letting every situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be.”
There is a lot of repetition in that slowness. That repetition, for me anyways, makes me think about how can I make this more fun when I’m doing it for the 17th time… next week. You train yourself to see all the micro moments that can make things more enjoyable.
You don’t need to have a kid to arrive at that state of mind, it just helps me get there faster!
We like to think about life as all these fun and sexy experiences that happen to us. And for the most part, that’s how memories work — you only remember the unique things.
So, you’d be forgiven if all of your regular Tuesdays have been compressed down to a singular memory and they feel less important than your awesome vacation to the Bahamas last year. Or, that one Tuesday where your commute took 3 hours because an 18-wheeler flipped over on the highway.
But, you live far more Tuesdays than trips to the Bahamas. Unless you live there, in which case, niceeeee.
Optimizing for memories is good when you can but we spend so much time thinking about old memories or future Tuesdays that we forget the only thing that really matters is your day-to-day lived experience. Assuming where you’re headed in life is directionally correct.
Could you worry a little less? Could you have a little more fun? Could you be 10% nicer to the barista? Could you call a friend?
Doesn’t have to be a big change, you’re gonna live a lot of Tuesdays, small improvements can stack up pretty quick!
What’s one thing you could start doing, or stop doing, that would improve your average Tuesday?
Words I Wish I Wrote
“Uncertainty is our basic state of existence, not something to be got through to the certainty beyond.”
Links & Learnings
I’m really wondering if vitamin D deficiency is a much bigger problem than we think.
Walk your baby around. Babies have a soothing response while being transported. Likely a biological holdover from needing to be quiet when evading predators in the middle of the night.
A++ Workout Dad Joke. (Happy Father’s Day)
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PHOTW: New PEW research on ideal family working arrangements.
