NEW Book/Education: Heartache, Habits, Hope
Though so many folks have, over the years, asked me “how do you do it all?” my days are 24 hours long just like everyone else’s and I’m not some time management guru, I’m just very, very focused on finding creative ways to live the most life I can with the time I’ve been given. I have a lot of varied interests and a well used coffee pot, but I don’t “do it all,” and the hardest lesson of my 20’s was the realization that multitasking is a myth. The mantra I’ve tried to harness as I’ve entered my 30’s is “doing less, but better.” Which is, ultimately, why I’m even writing the book: Heartbreak, Habits and Hope in the first place.
Having read at least 150 books on the topic over the years, We don’t need another book on time management or productivity hacks. We don’t need another book on entrepreneurship or habit building. We need to learn chaos management. There is a huge difference in the way the brains of those drawn to blue collar vs white collar professions work, and it has nothing to do with intelligence. The most successful productivity/entrepreneurship/time management/habit building books currently out there were written by tech bros, corporate execs and military officers whose lives look nothing like ours. Their advice is solid, some of their techniques are applicable, but what we (homesteaders, gardeners, makers and entrepreneurs), really need to learn is chaos management: what to do when our infrastructures and systems fail, where to pick up a good habit gone awry, how best to triage when fires are burning all around us. The simple reality is that we will never get everything done, we’ll never find a perfect system to organize our lives or our time, we’ll never fit everything in. We need assurance that that is ok, and a guide that shows us how to live a joyful, purpose-driven life and how to build a legacy we can truly be proud of *amidst* the chaos, and that is exactly what this project aims to do.
I want to test the stuff I’m writing about with real people, in real time. I want to bring 8 years worth of one-on-one coaching I’ve done with clients who’ve hired me to help them build better personal habits, build better businesses, and build more efficient farms/offices/workspaces into a group setting where we can all learn and practice together. Where there’s built in community, accountability, and a shared common goal: identifiying what’s truly important, what we want to do with our one beautiful life , and coming up with an actionable plan to pursue it.
Unlikely Beginnings of a book
The year was 2021. In the midst of a global pandemic, with my school project stalled and accruing greater financial losses by the day, as my close friend and then-business-partner had a life-changing health crisis and ultimately left the business, as my marriage started circling the drain, as things started going wrong on the farm left and right, as I nearly lost my lifelong battle with mental illness, I realized something (actually a lot of somethings) had to give. I made the extremely difficult decision to let my team go and shrink my business, I re-evaluated every animal, project, and other endeavor on the farm, and held everything I was currently doing (or ever planned to do) up against the three things most important to me and asked: is this endeavor moving me closer to, or farther from these things? What was moving me farther from them went away. Some permanently, some temporarily, in favor of becoming the kind of person who can now practice what I preach: doing less truly is better. My “less” might look different than yours. Even saying I’m doing “less” might be a surprise to those who still see me “doing everything” but don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes or understand what my prioritization decision matrix looks like.
And to that end, I’m writing a book. But I’ve read enough books on the topic I’m writing about to know that I’m not ok just filling 200 pages with advice and putting it out there into the world as if that advice is gospel. I want you to help me test the advice in real time, as I write, and give feedback, not just on the book, but also on the workbook that accompanies it. We’re hosting a 3 month cohort (an online community development project) starting in JULY, and will be launching an online community and meeting online, for an hour every week, to go through the book, the exercises that accompany it, and will be bumping all of this up against your own real life challenges to see how well it all works, adjusting it all as we go.
I’ll be the first to tell you I am not an expert. I don’t have all this figured out. But I’ve figured some of it out for myself, and I truly think I have learned some stuff in the process that has potential to hugely benefit other folks like me in ways none of the books/podcasts/videos/new year’s resolutions have actually worked for me in the past.
If you want to get involved, click here.