Yes!! This is such an important topic, it deserves its own post! Thank you for adding it here, because I am definitely guilty of thinking making art must have a monetary endgame rather than allowing myself to make art for art's sake. (I especially love the part about it getting to be mediocre). This is a great contribution to the manifesto, Samantha!
I’ve always been the type who tries real hard at the things I enjoy but slacks when it comes to things I don’t. Which is why I’m never going to be good at math, cleaning the bathroom or keeping plants alive. I can totally relate to trying to do 55 things the day before leaving town though. I always think “I can sleep on the plane.” Except unless I’m narcotically enhanced, I am unable to sleep in the sky.
Ugh the part about keeping plants alive is so relatable!! 🤣🤣
And isn't the tendency to do that to ourselves nuts?! We don't sleep on the plane, and then we arrive at our destination completely cracked out. It's low-key sabotage of our downtime. I vote it ends now.
It's especially hard to go easy on yourself when you have competing interests. Something's always getting shortchanged. Gotta lean into rotation, and include rest as one of the many priorities. We really do need to take our own advice!
Exactly. I think being multipassionate makes self-flagellation all the more likely. Everything we're giving a C-effort to inflames our perfectionist tendencies and comparing ourselves to our specialist friends makes us feel like we need to do more to keep up. Might be worth teaching what you've learned about surrender to your girls, if you see similarities, so they don't have to wait to midlife to cut themselves some slack. I know my insanity began in college . . .
Brilliant article Jennie. Love the manifesto. But really…..how long would we truly last…. us women are innate To Doers! I should get my husband to show you his To Do list. It’s blank. Always has been. He puts his stuff on mine. But its funny you know…..I decided this year not to bust my gut to people please my clients totally and put them first over my life. I asked them kindly to let me know when work was coming in, in advance so I could schedule ahead better and make some time for my writing. And could I be paid on time. Before I sucked up to all their erratic demands and ensured they always had top quality work,on time or often before the due dates even if this meant working weekends. That’s what I felt my reputation was worth. This week one told me they had found someone else without notice because they wanted flexibility. Doesn’t pay to be a doer.
I agree that women are more inclined to be hard on ourselves, but I find it refreshing that there are men in these comments who relate to this piece! I'm sorry to hear about your client. Was the implication that by requesting advance notice and on-time payment, you were being inflexible? Because if I understand that correctly, the client just found someone new to abuse because you had put your foot down. Even though it may not feel like it, being rid of them is a definite win. And I'm a big believer that just means you will magnetize a new client who respects your boundaries (and pays better!!) 🙏🏻
Oh yes of course sorry to all those men out there who have said they felt the same. I guess maybe you don’t hear so many men talk about it.
As for the client, I simply saw their true colours and I guess that’s what they inferred. I didn’t waste my time questioning them. As you say, being rid of them is a definite win now I’ve really had time to think about it.
Oh wow. I'm so busted on this one Jennie O! It's like you've been following me around for the last 20 years of my life. I actually caught myself saying to myself the other day- "What else can I be doing while I'm doing what I'm doing?" Aaaargh!!!!
Hahahaha Kym, I soooo relate! And why does this not surprise me at all? I think it's worse for multipassionates because there's just so much we want to do. I hope this reminded you to cut yourself a little slack 🩵
That made me dizzy and tired just reading about it 😅 I am not one to get caught up in the hustle/busy/productivity culture and I cannot fathom such To-do lists 😵💫
However, I still find it hard to truly “relax” and just enjoy beingness a lot. It’s a strange paradox sometimes.
But this one line you wrote:
“Leisure is not a means to an end; it’s the end worth striving for.”
That made me pause reading and just take it in for moment. Mmmmm yes. I am certainly still guilty of berating myself for not-enoughness.
Anyway, love the manifesto. We need more of this in the world!
Thank you, Natalie! I'm so glad you have escaped the cult of busyness, even IF you still struggle to just be. It just goes to show we have all internalized the indoctrination in unique ways--and none of it is to our benefit. It brings me joy that this opened your eyes a bit. Let's normalize less human doing and more human BEING. 🩵
"I strive only for the sacred flow state, where time is meaningless anyway."
For many years I have experienced sacred flow for a singular moment in the midst of striving, and I've had to pull over to at least jot down my fleeting inspiration for review once I stop striving. The giant boxes of note jots are still waiting. But at least I still feel it's important to slow enough to jot. And in a jot moment, time is indeed meaningless, rather, boundless, enough for me to lose track of clock time and show up late.
Ooooh this comment gave me the chills. What would it feel like to give yourself the gift of sitting down one weekend with your favorite beverage and just reading through your notes? I bet your magnum opus is in there, Tom.
Thanks, Jennie. I thought of typing them up and maybe posting as a thread somewhere, maybe Substack. I don't know what kind of shape or theme. Maybe like that little book Notes To Myself, by Hugh Prather, but more abstract and dysfunctional? I haven't actually looked through the little notebooks much (I wrote on the run in mini backpocket notebooks until the digital age, always searching for a pen), because I'm constantly adding more notes. I suppose I've evolved, but perhaps my earlier notes are more interesting, more raw, like from my teens, writing to find some sense of my frustrations and near-misses. It would be a huge volume. When I did randomly peek at some of the mini notebooks, there'd be one or two little pages in each one that surprised me.
So, don't come for me. But I just wrote a piece about non-writing related use cases for AI that free up time to do more of what you love... and I learned that you can take photos of your random assorted notes and upload them to ChatGPT and it will organize them into themes, look for throughlines, etc. Imagine fast-tracking the organization portion of this epic project and just getting to the fun part of polishing it into a book! Could be AMAZING?
Jennie! Am I ever hard on myself for not getting enough done?
Only EVERY DAY.
I’m quite certain I still have a floater of a to-do list from junior year of high school around here somewhere… and part of my nightly ritual is copy/pasting that day’s list in its entirety to the following day’s list.
But this idea of “devoting myself to experiencing the vividness of reality” just knocked me on my tush, in the best of ways. Viva la resistance!
Why am I not surprised that you're in this camp with the rest of us? I can so relate to copy/pasting #AllTheThings to the next day's list of #AllTheThings 🤦🏻♀️ You'd think over time the list would get smaller but noooooo.
I just love that the call to be more in the moment resonated for you. For all of my attempts to do just that, I never realized that being list-obsessed basically ensures that we're NOT. It's time to take our lives back, my friend. Viva la resistance, indeed!
I'm with you, Jennie, 100%. I am Type A to the mostest. My identity is inexorably linked to my productivity and achievements. I am not proud of this, and it's a battle I continue to fight. I'm not sure who I am trying to prove myself to.
My sister once put me in my place, saying, "Why don't you, for once, focus on being a human being, not a human doing?"
Yes!! WHO are we proving ourselves to? It's a great question. I've been so hung up on my "legacy," something I wrote about in a guest post for Veronica Llorca Smith this week, and the other day I thought, "I don't have kids or a partner . . . who is this legacy for?" Goodness knows *I* won't care; I'll be gone!
I think asking that question of ourselves is the first step to undoing the conditioning. And I'm a work in progress right along with you. I bet if more of us normalize this new way of "being," we can have a profound ripple effect. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
I needed this today. I get down on myself for not accomplishing more when the reality is that many of the "accomplishments" are not important, and I'm driving myself into adrenal fatigue with my stress to get trivial things done. Relax. Breathe. Focus on the important things.
I'm sooo glad this found you on a day when you really needed it, Richard! And I commend your self-awareness! Adrenal fatigue was not a thing 100 years ago . . . we've got to slow down and pull ourselves back from the brink. I hope you find a lovely way to relax and be present today. You deserve it!
I love that eating a pomegranate was on your list haha! Might as well include #31: breathe.
Anyway, yeah turning 40 was a bitch. I had this expectation in my mind that I'd be back to work by 40 after nearly a decade of being home with my kids. I also expected this crazy weeks-long adventure in Guatemala to celebrate the milestone. Spoiler alert: neither happened.
I had to figure out how to make peace with where I'm at in my life instead of beating myself up over some superficial deadline I failed to meet. So, I started writing and it's been the best thing for me. It's helped me clarify my thoughts, feelings and future plant.
I realize now that I wasn't even ready to return to work at 40. I had more exploring to do first. More self-discovery. More homeschool with my kids. More slow mornings and more time spent with family. At 42, I love where I'm at. I'm done trying to plan my life out. Now, I focus on being a good human and doing whatever feeds my soul in the moment.
Haha I'm glad you got a kick out of the pomegranate thing. I'm a freakin' NUT!
I actually love this story. It didn't happen because it wasn't meant to, so you could fall into writing, so you could spend more time with your kids. Perhaps it was also meant to show you your limitations (that important milestone wasn't all that meaningful after all) so you could accept them.
For me, accepting my limitations (hi, I'm not superhuman) is the best thing I ever did. Now my to-do list is a place to capture ideas and important tasks for clients so I don't forget things or miss deadlines. Otherwise, it's a suggestion--and that's it. 😉
Thanks for this. I struggle with this daily, and especially right before leaving town. Gotta sort my socks or clean my jewelry! I just started reading a book called Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and it talks about how work has changed; it’s more mind-based rather than assembly line. The concept of productivity these days is about looking busy because sometimes it takes longer to see the numbers go up. Food for thought.
Ohmygosh thank you for seeing me with the sock sorting and jewelry cleaning! I love knowing I'm not alone in this insanity 🤣🤣🤣
I love Cal Newport's work, and that book definitely influenced this piece. (I also recommend Deep Work, which discusses the concept of building focus in an ever-distractable world). Both books were highly influential for me.
Absolutely! I've started looking at my to do lists (and planners, and calendar, and journal, etc) as a record of events, and not just things I've accomplished. Kind of like the ephemera of a life, rather than a list of things to accomplish, and I find it helps (at least a little bit).
This is actually a brilliant idea, Holly! I refer back to my calendar when I do my annual review to remind myself of the memorable events of the past year. But to just reimagine the list as a reminder of moments instead of an overbearing taskmaster . . . I love it! Thank you!
I’m so glad it was helpful! I had just written a piece on this so it was top of mind. But yea, I’m not sure I could do an annual review without my calendar and planners – the types and magnitude of things I’ve done and forgotten when I sit down to review my year is astonishing to me.
Fuck a to-do list. I’ve been making a tada list for years now. Some days only one thing gets written down. But that’s the point. I did what I felt most important and said screw the rest. As a high/over achiever, it’s been a balm to my nervous system.
Here's my addition: I reject the thought that I must monetize my hobbies. My hobbies can be just for me and as fully mediocre as I like.
Yes!! This is such an important topic, it deserves its own post! Thank you for adding it here, because I am definitely guilty of thinking making art must have a monetary endgame rather than allowing myself to make art for art's sake. (I especially love the part about it getting to be mediocre). This is a great contribution to the manifesto, Samantha!
I’ve always been the type who tries real hard at the things I enjoy but slacks when it comes to things I don’t. Which is why I’m never going to be good at math, cleaning the bathroom or keeping plants alive. I can totally relate to trying to do 55 things the day before leaving town though. I always think “I can sleep on the plane.” Except unless I’m narcotically enhanced, I am unable to sleep in the sky.
Ugh the part about keeping plants alive is so relatable!! 🤣🤣
And isn't the tendency to do that to ourselves nuts?! We don't sleep on the plane, and then we arrive at our destination completely cracked out. It's low-key sabotage of our downtime. I vote it ends now.
GUILTY!
It's especially hard to go easy on yourself when you have competing interests. Something's always getting shortchanged. Gotta lean into rotation, and include rest as one of the many priorities. We really do need to take our own advice!
Exactly. I think being multipassionate makes self-flagellation all the more likely. Everything we're giving a C-effort to inflames our perfectionist tendencies and comparing ourselves to our specialist friends makes us feel like we need to do more to keep up. Might be worth teaching what you've learned about surrender to your girls, if you see similarities, so they don't have to wait to midlife to cut themselves some slack. I know my insanity began in college . . .
Brilliant article Jennie. Love the manifesto. But really…..how long would we truly last…. us women are innate To Doers! I should get my husband to show you his To Do list. It’s blank. Always has been. He puts his stuff on mine. But its funny you know…..I decided this year not to bust my gut to people please my clients totally and put them first over my life. I asked them kindly to let me know when work was coming in, in advance so I could schedule ahead better and make some time for my writing. And could I be paid on time. Before I sucked up to all their erratic demands and ensured they always had top quality work,on time or often before the due dates even if this meant working weekends. That’s what I felt my reputation was worth. This week one told me they had found someone else without notice because they wanted flexibility. Doesn’t pay to be a doer.
I agree that women are more inclined to be hard on ourselves, but I find it refreshing that there are men in these comments who relate to this piece! I'm sorry to hear about your client. Was the implication that by requesting advance notice and on-time payment, you were being inflexible? Because if I understand that correctly, the client just found someone new to abuse because you had put your foot down. Even though it may not feel like it, being rid of them is a definite win. And I'm a big believer that just means you will magnetize a new client who respects your boundaries (and pays better!!) 🙏🏻
Oh yes of course sorry to all those men out there who have said they felt the same. I guess maybe you don’t hear so many men talk about it.
As for the client, I simply saw their true colours and I guess that’s what they inferred. I didn’t waste my time questioning them. As you say, being rid of them is a definite win now I’ve really had time to think about it.
Oh wow. I'm so busted on this one Jennie O! It's like you've been following me around for the last 20 years of my life. I actually caught myself saying to myself the other day- "What else can I be doing while I'm doing what I'm doing?" Aaaargh!!!!
Hahahaha Kym, I soooo relate! And why does this not surprise me at all? I think it's worse for multipassionates because there's just so much we want to do. I hope this reminded you to cut yourself a little slack 🩵
That made me dizzy and tired just reading about it 😅 I am not one to get caught up in the hustle/busy/productivity culture and I cannot fathom such To-do lists 😵💫
However, I still find it hard to truly “relax” and just enjoy beingness a lot. It’s a strange paradox sometimes.
But this one line you wrote:
“Leisure is not a means to an end; it’s the end worth striving for.”
That made me pause reading and just take it in for moment. Mmmmm yes. I am certainly still guilty of berating myself for not-enoughness.
Anyway, love the manifesto. We need more of this in the world!
Thank you, Natalie! I'm so glad you have escaped the cult of busyness, even IF you still struggle to just be. It just goes to show we have all internalized the indoctrination in unique ways--and none of it is to our benefit. It brings me joy that this opened your eyes a bit. Let's normalize less human doing and more human BEING. 🩵
"I strive only for the sacred flow state, where time is meaningless anyway."
For many years I have experienced sacred flow for a singular moment in the midst of striving, and I've had to pull over to at least jot down my fleeting inspiration for review once I stop striving. The giant boxes of note jots are still waiting. But at least I still feel it's important to slow enough to jot. And in a jot moment, time is indeed meaningless, rather, boundless, enough for me to lose track of clock time and show up late.
Ooooh this comment gave me the chills. What would it feel like to give yourself the gift of sitting down one weekend with your favorite beverage and just reading through your notes? I bet your magnum opus is in there, Tom.
Please report back if and when you do 🩵
Thanks, Jennie. I thought of typing them up and maybe posting as a thread somewhere, maybe Substack. I don't know what kind of shape or theme. Maybe like that little book Notes To Myself, by Hugh Prather, but more abstract and dysfunctional? I haven't actually looked through the little notebooks much (I wrote on the run in mini backpocket notebooks until the digital age, always searching for a pen), because I'm constantly adding more notes. I suppose I've evolved, but perhaps my earlier notes are more interesting, more raw, like from my teens, writing to find some sense of my frustrations and near-misses. It would be a huge volume. When I did randomly peek at some of the mini notebooks, there'd be one or two little pages in each one that surprised me.
So, don't come for me. But I just wrote a piece about non-writing related use cases for AI that free up time to do more of what you love... and I learned that you can take photos of your random assorted notes and upload them to ChatGPT and it will organize them into themes, look for throughlines, etc. Imagine fast-tracking the organization portion of this epic project and just getting to the fun part of polishing it into a book! Could be AMAZING?
Thank you. Could be a game changer. GPT would need to decipher my rushed cursive, however. Hmmm
It's worth a shot! Just don't upload too many images at once. One to three at most or it seems to short circuit 🤣
Jennie! Am I ever hard on myself for not getting enough done?
Only EVERY DAY.
I’m quite certain I still have a floater of a to-do list from junior year of high school around here somewhere… and part of my nightly ritual is copy/pasting that day’s list in its entirety to the following day’s list.
But this idea of “devoting myself to experiencing the vividness of reality” just knocked me on my tush, in the best of ways. Viva la resistance!
Why am I not surprised that you're in this camp with the rest of us? I can so relate to copy/pasting #AllTheThings to the next day's list of #AllTheThings 🤦🏻♀️ You'd think over time the list would get smaller but noooooo.
I just love that the call to be more in the moment resonated for you. For all of my attempts to do just that, I never realized that being list-obsessed basically ensures that we're NOT. It's time to take our lives back, my friend. Viva la resistance, indeed!
I'm with you, Jennie, 100%. I am Type A to the mostest. My identity is inexorably linked to my productivity and achievements. I am not proud of this, and it's a battle I continue to fight. I'm not sure who I am trying to prove myself to.
My sister once put me in my place, saying, "Why don't you, for once, focus on being a human being, not a human doing?"
I'm trying to take her advice.
Yes!! WHO are we proving ourselves to? It's a great question. I've been so hung up on my "legacy," something I wrote about in a guest post for Veronica Llorca Smith this week, and the other day I thought, "I don't have kids or a partner . . . who is this legacy for?" Goodness knows *I* won't care; I'll be gone!
I think asking that question of ourselves is the first step to undoing the conditioning. And I'm a work in progress right along with you. I bet if more of us normalize this new way of "being," we can have a profound ripple effect. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
Sadly, I think many of us are trying to prove ourselves to our fathers. Analyze that! LOL.
I needed this today. I get down on myself for not accomplishing more when the reality is that many of the "accomplishments" are not important, and I'm driving myself into adrenal fatigue with my stress to get trivial things done. Relax. Breathe. Focus on the important things.
I'm sooo glad this found you on a day when you really needed it, Richard! And I commend your self-awareness! Adrenal fatigue was not a thing 100 years ago . . . we've got to slow down and pull ourselves back from the brink. I hope you find a lovely way to relax and be present today. You deserve it!
Thanks for your help and encouragement! I think I'll go out and pull some weeds. 😜
I love that eating a pomegranate was on your list haha! Might as well include #31: breathe.
Anyway, yeah turning 40 was a bitch. I had this expectation in my mind that I'd be back to work by 40 after nearly a decade of being home with my kids. I also expected this crazy weeks-long adventure in Guatemala to celebrate the milestone. Spoiler alert: neither happened.
I had to figure out how to make peace with where I'm at in my life instead of beating myself up over some superficial deadline I failed to meet. So, I started writing and it's been the best thing for me. It's helped me clarify my thoughts, feelings and future plant.
I realize now that I wasn't even ready to return to work at 40. I had more exploring to do first. More self-discovery. More homeschool with my kids. More slow mornings and more time spent with family. At 42, I love where I'm at. I'm done trying to plan my life out. Now, I focus on being a good human and doing whatever feeds my soul in the moment.
But I still keep a to-do list just in case ;)
Haha I'm glad you got a kick out of the pomegranate thing. I'm a freakin' NUT!
I actually love this story. It didn't happen because it wasn't meant to, so you could fall into writing, so you could spend more time with your kids. Perhaps it was also meant to show you your limitations (that important milestone wasn't all that meaningful after all) so you could accept them.
For me, accepting my limitations (hi, I'm not superhuman) is the best thing I ever did. Now my to-do list is a place to capture ideas and important tasks for clients so I don't forget things or miss deadlines. Otherwise, it's a suggestion--and that's it. 😉
Yes! I love that! The to-do list has become nothing but a list of suggestions these days 😊 I feel ya
Thanks for this. I struggle with this daily, and especially right before leaving town. Gotta sort my socks or clean my jewelry! I just started reading a book called Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and it talks about how work has changed; it’s more mind-based rather than assembly line. The concept of productivity these days is about looking busy because sometimes it takes longer to see the numbers go up. Food for thought.
Ohmygosh thank you for seeing me with the sock sorting and jewelry cleaning! I love knowing I'm not alone in this insanity 🤣🤣🤣
I love Cal Newport's work, and that book definitely influenced this piece. (I also recommend Deep Work, which discusses the concept of building focus in an ever-distractable world). Both books were highly influential for me.
Sounds like a good one. Thanks!
Absolutely! I've started looking at my to do lists (and planners, and calendar, and journal, etc) as a record of events, and not just things I've accomplished. Kind of like the ephemera of a life, rather than a list of things to accomplish, and I find it helps (at least a little bit).
This is actually a brilliant idea, Holly! I refer back to my calendar when I do my annual review to remind myself of the memorable events of the past year. But to just reimagine the list as a reminder of moments instead of an overbearing taskmaster . . . I love it! Thank you!
I’m so glad it was helpful! I had just written a piece on this so it was top of mind. But yea, I’m not sure I could do an annual review without my calendar and planners – the types and magnitude of things I’ve done and forgotten when I sit down to review my year is astonishing to me.
"I devote myself to experiencing the vividness of reality—to giving this moment, right now, the exquisite attention it deserves.
I refuse to believe that doing more, faster, will ever bring me peace.
I declare unequivocally that I am already enough."
Hell yeah!
Oh yay! I love that this resonated for you! Let this be a reminder to us all that we're already doing an awesome job at this thing called life! 🩵🩵🩵
being in the moment now....April 12th. 11:48. 2025.......just gonna scrap the list
I love this for you! Let’s roast hustle culture over a slow-burning bonfire made of our former To-Do lists!
Fuck a to-do list. I’ve been making a tada list for years now. Some days only one thing gets written down. But that’s the point. I did what I felt most important and said screw the rest. As a high/over achiever, it’s been a balm to my nervous system.
I LOVE this! Leave it to you to give it some serious sparkle--a Tada list 🥰