For the curious folks, this might sound familiar. I have a dilemma where I have many ideas in my head and they all start to sound interesting to pursue. The problem comes when I already have enough on my plate to fill my time with. So how do I choose what to do?
The time between the idea's conception and actualisation of it varies.
Sometimes I know exactly what I need to do to make it happen.
Case in point - after going for physiotherapy sessions, I got interested in sports massage:
Other times, the pursuit of an idea is not too clear.
Is the idea too big?
Will I be able to do it?
Am I crazy for wanting to do it?
Do I want to be that crazy?
What do I need to deprioritise to do this?
The answers to each thought may change from minute to minute. To quell some of these thoughts, I would take one tiny step toward making it feel real.
This one thing can snowball into the next.
If the first step seems too far away, my motivation and curiosity usually dwindle fast. The idea goes into the back burner. Who knows if I would even pick it up again at another time?
If the first step propels the idea forward and it feels good, I’d keep going. It’s almost natural to begin figuring out what seems less of a priority to make space for what matters at that point.
What made the idea of starting this newsletter concrete for me?
Feeling good about the name.
Having a name for the newsletter made it real, and concrete – a dedicated space to write about this topic.
But if there’s one persistent situation where words fail me - it is giving a name for anything. Plants. Website. Even my IG account user handle. Naming my blog feels almost like naming a baby. Is it just me?
The name is something that represents what this entire thing is. It’s something that I don’t want to get wrong otherwise I will live to regret it. If a name sounds bad to me, I would not be proud of telling others about this thing out of fear of judgement.
However, I should not have to worry too much since the name is a reversible decision. Most platforms allow for a change of names at least once.
So what did I do to arrive at TIS? (Geddit?)
First, I hounded ChatGPT to give me a list of suitable names:
I found the names stiff and boring, so I regenerated this list with a few more prompts:
getting it to become more conversational
to remove “productivity” as a word
And finally, a prompt that got me a little closer to what I wanted, but not quite:
ChatGPT gave me a decent starting point. I made another list by throwing in more ideas by word association. I was also getting a sense of whether the name looks good together without spaces for the URL. The aesthetics of how a phrase looks is also pretty important!
I stepped away from this list and let it stew for a couple of days.
The aha!! moment was during a conversation with a friend. We were chatting about his PKM system and something clicked.
It has always been about taking tiny steps forward. And I wanted these steps to be intentional so that I know they can take me in a direction that feels right.
So, Tiny Intentional Steps, it is!
Now I have a newsletter name that I feel great about.
My writing coach/buddy
said this phrase Gentle Productivity would make a great name for the newsletter.I like it a lot too! And seems like many people resonate with the message given the positive response to my first post. :)
Yet, I was feeling attached to Tiny Intentional Steps. I have the option to expand it into different topics if I ever want to. Optionality is great.
Also, Tiny Intentional Steps is guiding my thinking. It’s a promise that I wouldn’t be telling myself, or you the reader, to take bigass leaps.
What shaped my thinking
and Derek Sivers were chatting on one of The Pathless Path podcast episodes. This one idea out of many great ones resonated with me: When you start doing that thing, you take on that identity. You’d think to yourself, ‘Hey, I'm someone who does this.’ Not someone who only thought about doing it.That’s a powerful shift in identity.
Imagine there’s a new place you've always wanted to live in. A small action to get there is to try living there for a couple of weeks. A possible big action is selling your belongings and booking a one-way flight to move over.
Or let’s say you have always wanted to learn to draw but didn’t think of yourself as an artist. It could be as small as searching for a YouTube video for instructional videos on how to draw an apple.
One main challenge of taking action would be having unhelpful cognitive scripts or core beliefs. “How to overwrite your cognitive scripts” by Dr Hannah Rose suggested 3 strategies to help us overcome default thinking. I like injecting randomness by doing things I didn’t expect myself to do a week or a month ago.
Once you start, it can feel so damn rewarding. I know it does for me, even with 101 projects sitting on the backburner.
What’s the next tiny step that could help you feel that an idea, or a desire, is possible?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or hit reply to the email!
I love the name “Tiny Intentional Steps”! And I totally get the feeling of struggling to choose a name 🫠 TIS resonates with me so strongly because I always think of tackling life as the proverbial eating the elephant -- one bite at a time. I would never do anything if I thought only about the end goal, I have to break it down into manageable chunks!
It starts with a sip of a glass of wine 🍷😌