During the last year of my life I've spent a lot of time reflecting, it seems such that Covid has strangely amplified the "Lows" of my life while also capping the "Highs" quite a bit. This lead me to seeking out more tools and tricks to stay in a positive growth mindset. Today I'd like to share two simple things that may bring you value too:

1) Morning Pages: (Time required: 10ish min per day, Cost: $0)

This tool is as old as it is simple to execute. As close as possible after waking up, grab a piece of paper and a pen and start writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is off limits, everything goes. Just let your stream of consciousness transform the blank page in front of you. Just scribble it all out. What are you feeling right now? What bodily sensations are you aware of, what's the mood in your mind/heart, how do you feel about the upcoming day, what's bugging you, what are you excited about, are there any fears, where can you feel them most. The only rule is: write. 

I found for this to work best with a few adjustments: 
- do this exercise before looking at your phone/ laptop in the morning (t's hard but worth it)
- actually use pen&paper, there is something visceral about handwriting vs. typing
- don't worry about the volume or quality of your writing. Some days it will be 2 lines, on other days 2 pages

You may be surprised how cathartic it is to get the mental clutter out on paper. Even without trying to problem solve anything at all, you will feel much more focused, clearer and ready to take on the day. 
Another interesting side effect of this tool is that you can actually look back. You can start to understand the patterns of your own life. What has lead to your current situation, are you on the right trajectory when it comes to life, career and relationships? 
If you find it hard to get this started, here are a few writing prompts for tomorrow morning: 

2) 10 Minute Tidy-Ups: (Time required: 10 min, Cost: $0)

I first read about this online somewhere, might have been on twitter or some self improvement blog, maybe an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast - it doesn't matter where it's from.
The challenge for many of us, especially while working from home is, that while now our home is also our workplace, we end up spending way more time cluttering things up around the household. This can lead to additional stress and overwhelm in our conscious or subconscious mind. You may be aware that mental and physical clutter have some strange relationship and can actually influence each other.
While this might sound a little out there, clearing up physical clutter can greatly improve your mood and attitude.  The challenge often is: Where the heck do I start!? When do I find time to do all this??

That's were the 10 min tidy ups come in. The idea is to utilize a random 10 min slot that you may otherwise use to doomscroll through twitter to actually tidy up a tiny part of your surrounding.
I have started doing those a couple of months ago and for me this could be:
- quickly vacuuming a specific room
- taking all the work equipment from my desk, wiping all the dust off and putting the equipment back
- make the bed
- clean the bathroom skins
- wipe down the windows in one room
- take down the trash
-...

What I've noticed is that once the task is limited to 10 minutes (because that's when I have to join another meeting usually) it is MUCH easier to get started. I could also bet that you will be surprised how much you can get done in 10 minutes.
The next level from here is to use multiple 10 minute slots per day. Soon you'll realize that the big weekly cleanup is not that big anymore and breaking the big problem down into doable items works as well for hitting sales targets as it works for keeping your home spiffy.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post and found it valuable. If you'd like to talk more about this or share your own experiences, you know how you can get a hold of me.  If you like more of my random musings, see  here. 

Ben