I’m sat outside in my garden as I write. There’s a bumblebee toppling over a blade of grass and Lynne next door is singing Baa Baa black sheep. I hope she’s ok.

I’m writing by hand for a reason.

I’ve gone from podcast to zoom call. I’ve been in 3 crm’s and about 10 google docs and I want to claw my face off.

I sit outside instead and resist the impulse to seek constant gratification.

It’s grim.

I believe ‘the kids’ call this raw dogging. Many of us know it as the nineties.

To wash your dishes without listening to voice notes. To sit on a plane with no entertainment. To be late and nobody be notified.

But I miss the simplicity of life, don’t you?

Do you ever have that urge to throw your phone like an unexploded bomb as far away as possible?

We went to Zurich this year and forgot to set up data roaming. Do you know how freeing it was to be offline?

Very fucking freeing. I recommend it.

Creating space to think feels like an obvious thing to do. But when did you last do it? That’s a direct question btw, I want you to tell me, so I can try it.

And if you’ve come of age during ‘the productivity years’, sitting in the gap as Pema Chödrön says here, might be exactly what you need.

She also talks about hot and cold boredom.

Hot boredom is the boredom you know: restless, jumpy, itchy to get out of your seat, that pull to check your phone or do literally anything else. It has heat to it, an urge to move.

Cool boredom is what's on the other side. You're still bored, but there's no charge to it. You've unlocked master zen.

And maybe if you’re anything like me (and I’m gonna assume you and I are exactly the same) the thought of sitting still with nothing to chew over/on is terrifying.

But I’m asking you to do it.

I know, what kind of a call to action is this? I don’t know, but it’s my newsletter and I thought we should try this as a group.

Point is, if you want good stuff to come out of your head (and mouth and fingers) you need to create space. You can’t get much out of a spam tin, so let your brain spam breathe.

Okay that’s it for now.

Love you bye.