Want to know a secret to achieving gentle, consistent productivity? Keep it simple. When we start with whatever we have at our disposal and chug along, the Universe supports us in all kinds of unexpected ways.

In this shortie episode, I share the amusing way in which I was supported today, and leave you with some honest questions to chew on.

(By the way, the noise started up as soon as I was done with the recording. hehe)

Listen to the episode on the audio player below 👇🏽 (or on any podcast app that you like). If you prefer reading instead, then scroll down. Enjoy! 🙂

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Start with what you have and the Universe will support you

(gently edited transcript for a good reading experience)

In this day and age of short attention spans, where social media posts and thirty second reels have become the norm for consuming content, if you think newsletters are boring, think again.

I, myself, am subscribed to a bunch of different newsletters, and I always look forward to receiving them, and reading them. There’s a lot of thought and curation that goes into it, and a feeling of personal connection comes with reading somebody’s newsletter. You have no idea how enjoyable it can be!

Why don’t you start with my newsletter The Feel Good Tribe? It’s a free newsletter that I send out once or twice a month. On the newsletter page here, you’ll see exactly what to expect. Sign up. It would be so lovely to have you on the tribe!

Now onto today’s episode…

There’s some kind of construction happening at a property behind our house

Since the morning there’s been this huge digger making a racket. It’s been going grrung grrung grrung, clearing debris and digging through the land. God knows what it’s doing. It’s not a very clear view.

It’s actually nice to watch though. It’s been digging away, chugging on at its work. Dig, dig, dig, move, move, move. And that’s it. That’s all it’s doing. Must be a very meditative experience running it, I think.

If I had any kids, I’d have put them at a window to watch the digger. I’m sure that would have filled up a lot of entertaining hours without any screen time.

As lovely as it is to watch, it’s not pleasant to listen to, because it creates quite a racket. But right now, the noise seems to have stopped. I’m assuming it’s their lunch break. So I quickly came here to record this episode.

Before I started podcasting, I’d imagined it to be this very complicated process, involving a lot of specialised a equipment

It seems to appear that way, especially when you see the photos that podcasters post in a lot of places. There’s this huge mic and these ear phones. And many times a fancy studio setup.

But I soon discovered that you don’t need any of that stuff to begin podcasting. I use my normal iPhone ear phones as the mic. And then I shut my bedroom door, sit on the bed, and record most of my episodes. It’s as simple as that!

Yes, it needs a little bit of post processing, a little bit of cleaning out so background noise is cut off and all that. But really, that isn’t the hardest part of the podcast editing process.

Often in life, this happens, right? We want to start something, we don’t know much about it, and then we imagine we need all kinds of things before we begin.

We think we need certain things to be in place, and only then can we do a good job of whatever it is we want to start

But funnily enough, most things are simple. You just take what you have, make use of what’s already available to you – the tools at your disposal, the space, the time, whatever you have, and then you just begin. That’s it.

You just chug along, one thing after another, after another, however, much you can do with whatever time that you have, whatever things you have at your disposal.

And this, my friends, is a great secret to being consistently productive

You just make do with what you have, and you keep at it. Simple as that.

Productivity can be a gentle, easy, simple process. But when we think we need certain things to be put into place before we’re productive, we use that as an excuse to procrastinate, to not get things done.

When we dig deeper, we see that the fears for us to start lie somewhere else. Sometimes it’s just pure laziness, yes, but often it’s a fear of not being good enough, fear of starting, fear of being creative for many other reasons.

This excuse of, “I don’t have the right or the best tools and techniques and things available to me, that’s why I’m not starting off”, when we get rid of that excuse, then the deeper layers get exposed.

We start to see the real reasons why we aren’t starting things, why we aren’t doing the things that we really want to do

The things that give us fulfilment and joy, the creative endeavours we want to take. One by one as you peel those layers of excuses and fears, you’ll have nothing left to stop you from going forward. No resistance.

So I’d like you to think of something you’ve been wanting to start for a long time. And you’ve been putting it off because you feel like you need to buy some stuff, or you need to have a certain setup in your house, or you need to make time for it, blah, blah, blah.

Then honestly ask yourself, “what do I have at my disposal right this very moment, in my home, in my grasp, available around me, that I can just make use of to do this thing, to pursue this endeavour, this creativity, this art, this project, that I’ve been wanting to pursue?”

And then just start. Try it.

Only when you try it will you realise what you need, what you don’t need

Often we overestimate what we need, and underestimate the value of what we already have, and how they can be used in what we want to do. And if you look, if you have patience, if you have faith and trust, and if you take that step, then the Universe also will support you.

Like today. I knew that today was the day to record my podcast episode. But there was this noise from the morning. I thought, “okay, let me just set everything up. Let me just start.” I figured if that noise persists, I could possibly edit it out and make the audio quality better later on. But I need to start recording.

And it was so funny!

I sat on my bed, opened up my computer, plugged the mic in, opened my audacity app on which I do the recording, and suddenly silence at the back. Listen. *a few seconds of silence*

No noise. No noise of the digger.

I’m like, “Yay! I get to record this.” And that acted as an inspiration for the episode because I didn’t really have a specific topic in mind when I sat down. Most of my episodes are like that.

Yes, sometimes I get ideas, I note them down and use them later on recording days. But many times I just sit down to record, you know, bringing myself to the present moment. Breathe in, connect to the Universe, my higher self, and I just channel. Today also I didn’t have a specific topic in mind. But the silence inspired this episode.

That’s it, that’s all I wanted to share today. Something for you to contemplate on.

Where are you making up all these rules that don’t exist?

“I need this, I need that”. Where are you creating all these dependencies and hooks that you don’t really need to before you start something, before you do something that could give you joy and a sense of creativity and fulfilment?

All right. That’s it for today. Talk to you again next week. Take care.

I use Otter for all my transcriptions, and it’s awesome! Try it out.