“Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting” 1638-39, by Artemisia Gentileschi. Now in the British Royal Collection. I don’t recall what originally inspired this nudge. Maybe it had to do with wanting to look outside my comfort zone for creative inspiration. Now that I think about it, I recently encouraged a client, who was experiencing some burnout, to take a break from writing w[...]
I Nudged myself to get more sleep a while ago, and it’s something I’d like to do more regularly. So back it went into the bowl for another go ’round. What Happened: This is the first-ever “Nudging & Nudged” incident. Up till today, I have pulled a new Nudge on Sunday and worked on it through the week. But with this one, this week, I know I will achieve it. Thi[...]
Well, crap! This is clearly a Nudge from the original list, before I did some other Nudges that helped me gain clarity on how much I do not like gardening. Isn’t one of the “rules” of nudging that it has to be “fun”? Ugh. But…I have been thinking it would be nice to plant a new rose bush in the backyard, to have fresh cut flowers without having to spend the ext[...]
I suppose this one is along the lines of doing a “Fairy Deed” (read the post on that successful Nudge from last year here), but this is not anonymous. This is up close and personal. This is Putting Myself Out There. Here we go. What Happened: Right away I started looking for opportunities. Perhaps I could find something nice to say about a guest at work on Sunday,[...]
I’d forgotten about this one—how fun! I think the idea for this Nudge may have come to me when I checked out a new-to-me bookstore several months ago, when I ended up in a new-to-me neighborhood. Even though I live in a smallish city (San Francisco is roughly 47 square miles; for comparison, Los Angeles is 302 square miles), there is so much here I have yet to explore. W[...]
I receive so many pitches that under normal circumstances I would skim over a message like this. The email’s subject line read: “Create the Career (and Life) You Deserve” But there was something about this that caught my attention. Maybe it was because it spoke to what I have been working on for myself through the 52Nudges. Maybe it was because I was feeling stuck in t[...]
Do I want to change careers? Go back to school? Master a new skill? In her book Sacred Success (see “For Inspiration” in the right column), author Barbara Stanny talks about one of her clients who was terrified about taking on a new challenge in her work. “I am not qualified…I better stay away…I might mess it up,” she told herself. (Hmmm, that inner voice sounds f[...]
This is something I started working on last year, with mixed results. Some days or weeks I’d be on it, and I felt the impact in my level of calm, my focus. Most days and weeks, though, I was too easily distracted by the things that Life threw at me. Naturally, I drew this Nudge ahead of a week that included a deadline for a feature article, deadlines for at least three other short ar[...]
I groaned when I drew this Nudge, as it may be among the hardest I’m asking myself to do. And this week of all weeks, with client deadlines and meetings and a funeral to attend and financials to catch up and laundry that’s overflowing the bin and events to plan and…and that’s the point. Out of the 168 hours in this coming week, I can—and should—take 30 minutes for myself[...]
This is one of my favorite things to do. Some people call it a “Random Act of Kindness,” and I can’t recall why I started calling it a “Fairy Deed”. Maybe because the idea started out as something that I did under the cover of darkness, while the recipient was sleeping, much like the Tooth Fairy delivers her presents. I have been doing these deeds for years, sometimes mailing[...]