Ever since my friend Mary coined the phrase “the biggest cope of your life” last year, I haven’t stopped thinking about what my own “copes” are. In the past 6 months, I’ve interrogated most of my life decisions with this simple question, “Is this a cope?”

Last year, I briefly talked about coping mechanisms in my Deb 2025 Wrapped, saying one of my biggest copes was buying things. For example, I’d purchase a new journal to feel productive; I’d pay someone else an excess amount of money to fix something I could probably solve in 15 minutes for free; and I’d treat myself any time I experienced a slight inconvenience. Of course, none of these actions put me in any true financial danger, but I did develop a bad habit of succumbing to my copes instead of questioning them.

So going into 2026 with this in my mind, I started to reassess all my big life decisions, habits, and values through the lens of being “coping mechanisms”.

Phase 1: Identifying my copes

After a lot of soul searching over the last few months, I came to the conclusion that these were my biggest copes:

The biggest cope of my life: I kept myself busy to avoid doing personal creative work because I didn’t want to confront that I may not be very good at design or art if I really committed to it

Cope #2: I wouldn’t let myself sleep because I was losing hours that I could be doing other things

Cope #3: I scrolled excessively on social media to deal with my mental exhaustion and lack of sleep

Cope #4: I leaned on productivity tools and planning in lieu of real, valuable work.

Cope #5: I felt compelled to make quick definitive decisions, to future plan, and to know everything (other people’s thoughts and feelings, and my own as well), so I could feel a sense of control in a chaotic world

Cope #6: I spent money to make problems go away, when they could’ve been solved by a little bit of mental effort. I used money to soothe myself as well.

To me these problems weren’t particularly new, but there was a reason why I was still dealing with them after all these years… they were my safety. My coping mechanisms gave me a comforting space to crawl into, to avoid taking creative risks and to dodge any criticism of my personal work. I could spend the rest of my life in this limbo, always craving creativity but feeling safe not doing anything about it.

So why did I decide to make a change?

In my life so far, I never felt like I gave myself enough time to really go all in on my creative side, or challenge myself to finish a project to my standards. There was always a lingering sense of emptiness from never doing it.

For the past decade, I’d dip my toe into a project for a few weeks, retreat, and then find myself focusing on other things like my career, travel, and other hobbies. Those felt more important at the time (and honestly, they were). This year, I felt like I owed it to my younger self to really explore my creativity and artistic skills. Now that I was in a more stable place in my life, I wouldn’t be distracted by the big life hurdles from my 20s.

I also wanted to tackle my sleeping problem. My lack of sleep made me so inefficient I was starting to get frustrated with how slow I was at completing simple tasks. For the past 5 years, I was averaging anywhere from 5-6 hours of sleep per night. This was from a combination of things: early morning meetings, a demanding workload, sleep revenge procrastination, a full social calendar, and hours of scrolling. I was able to sustain inconsistent sleep for the past few years and never miss a deadline, but as I was getting deeper into my 30s, it was starting to wear on my lifestyle.

Phase 2: Prioritising my sleep

It’s true what they say… sleep cures ALL. Ever since I prioritised my sleep, everything I’ve struggled with has solved itself. It was a shock to me how different I was after adding an extra 2 hours to my sleep per night.

This is a breakdown of how 5-6 hours of sleep per night affected me:

• I had lower cognitive function and discernment

• I was making worse decisions (leading to wasted money and time)

• I had an overwhelming sense of dread for both difficult and easy tasks

• I became more reliant on external sources (aka social media) for direction with life decisions

• I adopted a very all-or-nothing mindset

• It was harder to think critically about things that are adding nothing to my life

• I completed tasks inefficiently and experienced a lot of decision fatigue

• I had no capacity to be creative

• I experienced dental and jaw issues from clenching and grinding from stress

• My recovery from any pain was slow or stalled

And this is how 7-8+ hours of sleep per night improved my life:

• I’m more alert and focused

• I can complete tasks in a quarter of the time, and I gained an extra 4+ hours a day (solving Cope #2: Being scared of losing hours to sleep)

• I gained the ability to finish tasks easily without overthinking or relying on productivity methods (solving Cope #4: Using productivity as a bandaid). Even if they were difficult tasks, my anxiety around them completely disappeared

• Any (underlying) anxiety I had decreased by over 50%

• My mood increased (it was already high, but it got even higher)

• I decreased my scrolling naturally (without any time restrictions or personal shaming), because simply got bored of the repetitive nature of social media (solving Cope #3: Scrolling excessively on socials)

• I decreased my spending, and became more thoughtful when it came to spending money and not using it as a stress reliever (solving Cope #6: Using money to solve my problems)

• I’m able to think more critically about my life choices, my schedule, and the ways I waste time for absolutely no reason

• I’m able to stay calm and emotionally regulate more easily

• I’m less harsh on myself when I made poor decisions, and I’m able to fix them easily instead of ruminating

• I can feel my body healing faster after straining itself, and experience less jaw pain

How did I motivate myself to sleep more after all these years?

It wasn’t too hard to convince myself to sleep more, but there were a few things I had to confront about myself. Despite knowing that sleeping was good for me, I admittedly became attached to the idea of being a “sleep deprived person”. I wore it like a badge of honor, something that would signal to others how much I worked, how busy I was, and how much energy I still had “having it all” on 5 hours of sleep. I’d pride myself on always being “on” and being able to juggle so much. Once I realised how much I relied on that persona to make me feel important, I had to detach myself from that part of me, and move on. (Now my personality is about how much sleep I get!)

Another practical thing that helped me was having my sleep tracker send me messages when I woke up, giving me an assessment of how I slept. When I did 7+ hours, I felt like it was a nice pat on the back and small encouragement to keep going with it.

Phase 3: Elevating my discernment and my metacognition

My increased sleeping hours alleviated 80% of my issues right off the bat, and it also opened up new levels of discernment and metacognition for me (I just learnt that term today!)

Discernment is the ability to judge well, to look beyond the surface and falsehoods to understand the truth. Metacognition means thinking about your own thinking, how to manage your cognitive processes and thoughts.

With the new amount of time and focus I gained, I had more mental energy to understand my problems and solve them more effectively.

Phase 3A: Solving my future planning problem, and my reliance on quick fixes

If there’s one thing to know about me; I’m a maximiser. I want to do everything, I want to learn everything, and I want to know how everyone feels about everything (and how I feel about things too). I don’t particularly enjoy being in a state of limbo (conceptually, mentally or emotionally, you name it).

However in the past few weeks, I’ve taught myself how to stay in limbo, and be okay with not knowing everything. I learnt this simply by not taking action on things that I would normally try to frantically solve – and guess what, the world did not end! (If anything, I was better for it).

There are things in life I may never get an answer to, and sometimes it’s actually better to let it unfold naturally, than constantly putting pressure on an outcome. Lessening my grip on parts of my life has given me a lot of freedom to set things on autopilot, so I have energy towards goals that actually need my attention.

I have learned that knowing too much actually stopped me from doing something, and after a while my future planning was causing me more harm than good. I thought future planning was a net positive – I’d felt emotionally prepared and safe to know exactly what I was getting into, but it was actually stopping me from exploring things freely in the present. Instead of experimenting and seeing how it would turn out, I would try to predict the outcome – if the outcome seemed bad, I would not follow through; but it it was good I would not follow through either because I was too scared the reality would fall short of my expectations (a lose-lose in both situations!).

Future planning became a hindrance, and stepping away from it was a choice I was able to make easily.

Phase 3B: Solving my spending problem

As much as I would love to tell people that sleep will suddenly make your spending problems go away, it was a bit more complicated than that for me. Yes, sleep certainly helped me make more rational decisions, but I still had to do a bit more work to stop spending money as a coping mechanism.

My spending habits were never above my means, but they weren’t ideal either. I had a massive wakeup call after calculating my total daily cost on my last US holiday (I can’t even say what it was, it was that absurd), and I knew that if I continued to spend money in a thoughtless way, the money would go to things that added no real value to my life.

First, I had to tackle the reasons I spent money frivolously:

• I desperately wanted to offload my mental baggage in any way possible, even if it meant paying someone else to deal with it

• I always felt I needed a reward when I had a stressful day, as a way to soothe myself

• I was always experimenting with new hobbies and productivity tools, so buying new things was the only way to see if they worked (99% of the time they didn’t, and I knew that would happen)

• Buying an item was an easy thing to check off my to-do list, and I felt accomplished doing it

• I bought items for my “dream self”, for a future version of me whose lifestyle was just a bit out of my reach (think the equivalent of buying expensive gym clothes for someone who doesn’t even go to the gym).

So every time I started thinking about buying something (especially a new one I just discovered), I would ask myself a few questions:

• Is this a cope? What part of me am I trying to heal or satisfy by buying this?

• Do I want to buy this right now because I want to relieve my stress?

• How long have I been wanting this? And have I not bought it yet because I know deep down it doesn’t suit my lifestyle?

• Is there a cheaper (or free) way to obtain this?

• Will I use it in a month?

• Will watching someone else unbox/use it be satisfying enough (this specifically relates to stationery)

After asking myself these questions, 90% of the time I would not have a good reason to buy it. And the time the next week rolled around, I completely forgot about why I wanted the items in the first place.

However, if it was something I still thought about but didn’t need immediately, I would add it to a running list of rewards to give myself after finishing a creative project. Doing this actually made me more excited about owning the item in the future, especially knowing I earned it.

Phase 3C: Solving my creative problem

Just a reminder of the biggest cope of my life: I kept myself busy to avoid doing personal creative work because I didn’t want to confront that I may not be very good at design or art if I really committed to it

I don’t know if I overcame all my creative fears per se, but I got sick of making excuses for myself. The simplest way to put it is: my fear of never being truly creative again became greater than my fear of failure and judgement. In my 20s, I pushed aside my personal creative journey because I wanted to pursue my career, financial independence, and joy. I don’t regret it at all (my day job is very creative too!). But at 33, I no longer had any excuses to hide behind.

Thinking about it now, I don’t think there was a particular method or formula that changed my mindset completely…it was an accumulation of things. I always had an itch to do creative work, and even after 10 years of neglecting it, the desire never truly went away. Even though I was able to let go of random hobbies I picked up like crochet and pottery – illustration and design was always something I wanted to keep working on. It was time to stop ignoring it, and to accept it would always be a part of me.

Over the years, I also went through a lot of creative ego deaths. I thought I wanted viral success and recognition, only to feel overwhelmed by the obligations that came with it when I did go viral (and how it could easily push me into a path I wasn’t happy with). I also tried to run a business (largely inspired by Shark Tank and startup culture in the 2010s), only to realise that the logistics took away from my creativity, and the concept of a “business” was a way to make my creative work feel legitimate in a capitalist world. It also took a while for me to stop caring about the amount of likes I got on videos, Instagram posts, and what people thought of me.

I started to realise that my happiness came from doing something just for me. Not for an audience, but for my own creativity and satisfaction. I always think of that Reddit comment where someone asked “Would you rather make something you hate that is popular and that everyone loves, or something that you love, that people hate or don’t care or know about?”. And for me, the answer is the latter. I would rather spend my whole life making things only I care about, even if not one else liked it. I’ve experienced a life where I created designs that felt inauthentic to me, but were praised or successful, and it only made me feel a sense of dread and disdain towards my own work.

Phase 4: Improving my lifestyle and routine

Once I got over the mental hurdles of my copes, the clouds parted in my mind and I started implementing changes to my lifestyle to make my new goals more sustainable.

Phase 4A: Trimming the fat

If there is one productivity/self-help book I recommend for anyone out there, it’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. It is one of the most insightful, relatable and confronting books about productivity I have ever read, and it definitely made me think about the way I ran my life.

The first time I read it, my main takeaway was how to find ways to enjoy the present moment, how to manage my time in a healthy way, and to accept that there is not enough time to do everything.

However, the second time I read it, the concept of resisting the allure of middling priorities stood out to me the most. In the book, Burkeman recounts a story of Warren Buffett telling his personal pilot to make a list of his top 25 things in life, arrange them in order from most important to least. The top 5 things should be what he organises his time around, and the other 20 should be avoided at all costs. It sounds cutthroat, but realistically, these lower tier priorities were distractions from what mattered most.

This taught me that 5 big goals is more than enough to focus on in my lifetime, and to not waste my time worrying about lower tier goals. The biggest problem I’ve had with hobbies is wanting to do everything, and I would swirl around these less important goals as a means to distract myself. I told myself that it made my life more rich and interesting, but it was actually diluting it.

After reading Four Thousand Weeks again, I decided I had to be strict about how I spent my time. This meant cutting things that were not in my top 5 (goodbye Tennis and Vietnamese). Both these hobbies required time and effort I didn’t have, and the time I spent on the lessons, commuting and homework were precious hours I could spend being creative.

I also decided I needed to be more selective about my social time. I started to say no to more things, and not rush to fill up my social calendar so I would have empty weekends for creative work.

Phase 4B: My new strict criteria

For the past few years, I’ve been saying yes to a lot of things I had no business doing. I definitely don’t regret trying new things, but it came to a point where I found myself willingly wasting my time on things I knew I didn’t care about.

Now everything must pass this trifecta of questioning:

1. Do I enjoy this and get satisfaction out of it?

2. Does it fulfil a purpose that only serves me (and no one else?)

   1. Am I doing this for myself? Or am I doing it because someone else wanted me to?

   2. Am I doing this out of obligation or fear of retaliation? What if I said no? What are the true consequences of that?

3. Does it make sense for my brand and identity?

   1. If I created a book about myself and my work, would I want this to be included?

If there was any new opportunity for a new hobby, I had to ask myself, “If I pursued this, would this make me happier than being good at art?” And if the answer was yes, then I could do it. At this point in time, nothing new has made me answer yes to that question.

Phase 4C: My “why” needs to be SO strong, or I’m not doing it

To put it simply, I can’t do something I don’t give a shit about.

Maybe I’m getting older, or realising that I have a lower tolerance for dull life experiences, but I genuinely don’t have the motivation to do something I don’t care about. The “why” needs to be strong and self-centred (it selfishly needs to start from me, even if the outcome indirectly benefits other people later).

Another important thing is that the “why” needs to be relevant to the present me. I won’t stick to hobbies or old habits that have already fulfilled their purpose and no longer serve my new lifestyle. Like Marie Kondo says about unread books, you need to thank them for what they brought into your life and let them go.

Phase 4D: My new approach and schedule

To make my new habits simple and sustainable, I updated my weekly schedule in a few ways:

Rules:

1. My #1 priority is sleep

2. My #2 priority is keeping my place clean and tidy (both of these allow a clear head, perfect for relaxed creativity)

3. I don’t say yes to something unless my “why” is strong, or I’m excited and curious

4. I spend more time at home on weeknights

5. I give myself an empty Saturday or Sunday at least 2 times a month so I can feel relaxed and creatively motivated

My new schedule:

1. I have a morning routine and night time routine I stick to religiously (includes skincare, stretches, strength exercises, reading, morning pages, journalling, cleaning – skipping these makes me feel unlike myself)

2. I don’t go to the office for early morning calls anymore, I commute in the middle of the day if I have to

3. I spend 1 hour+ a night doing creative work, while doing something relaxing like watching TV (aka habit-stacking). I also stop my creative session to go to sleep, even if I hit a flow state

4. I complete “5 things” a day off my long running to-do list (this has been a game changer, it doesn’t feel too overwhelming to complete 5, yet chips away at my to-do’s significantly)

5. I sleep between 9.30-10.30pm every night, even if I can sleep in the next day

How this has improved my life:

1. I spend more of my weekends doing creative work instead of admin (my admin takes 1 hour max on the weekends now)

2. I spend less time cleaning on weekends (my previous 3+ hours of reorganizing, tidying and cleaning is now down to 40 mins or less on Saturdays)

3. I have more time for myself

4. I’m healthier, and feel accomplished every day

—-

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from all of this – it’s that I spent a lot of time sticking with past habits and behaviours even though they no longer served me. It made me feel safe, comfortable, and protected me from using my brain which was already being stretched thin.

I stuck with so many outdated routines because I didn’t want to think about making a new one, even though the old ones were taking away my energy. I continued striving for the pursuits and feelings of the past (like my ambitions and behaviours in my 20s), when it was clear I outgrew them. I just needed to mourn them and let them go.

2025 was the year for ultimate growth. I stopped being a people pleaser, I cured my anxious attachment style, and I was able to strongly define and uphold my boundaries – which led to less draining dynamics in my life.

There were many moments in the year where I became so acutely aware of my own mortality. I turned 32 last year, and my body was really starting to feel it (sore knees, more cavities, overall tiredness). My body couldn’t get away with bad meals, or a week without exercise, and anything mentally draining would immediately translate into physical exhaustion.

It really made me think about whether it was worth putting up with anything in my life that made me unhappy. And to put it bluntly, the answer is no. It wasn’t necessary to live with something difficult if the process or outcome didn’t help me grow as a person. It felt more productive to put my energy towards something rewarding, instead of beating a dead horse.

I realised that everything that I did in my life was compounding – the more energy I spent reinforcing bad habits and relationships in my life, the more it would wear negatively on my psyche. I used to dismiss small negative things in my life, telling myself to ‘get over it’. But as soon as I started rejecting these negative situations and relationships, my life became significantly better, and every positive change I made increased my confidence greatly.

I’m now incredibly protective of my time and energy – as Kim Cattrall once said, ‘I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.’

Before we get into it, here are my 2025 stats

• I listened to 9,136 minutes of music and podcasts (5,290 minutes less than last year – My top artist was j-hope, my top song was MONA LISA by j-hope, my favourite album was West End Girl by Lily Allen, my favourite podcast was Voicenotes with Jordan Theresa)

• I finished 14 books and 4 graphic novels (1 more than last year – My favourite books were Strange Pictures by Uketsu and Q&A by Adrian Tomine)

• I watched 66 films and 6 documentaries (21 more than last year – My favourite film was Twinless, my favourite documentary was Mistress Dispeller)

• I watched 30 TV shows (18 more than last year – My favourite show a three way tie between was The Studio, The Pitt, and My Love Mix Up!)

• I went to 18 performances aka concerts and stage shows (5 more than last year, my favourite concert was j-hope’s Hope on the Stage, and my favourite show was The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook)

• My favourite moment of 2025: Having a literal (!) and emotional weight lift off my shoulders that I’d been carrying for nearly 10 years (read more in this article).

• My rating of the year: 9/10 (0.5 higher than last year!)

My 2025 theme was Artistry – how did I do?

In 2025, I vowed to be more creative – to focus on illustration and to do so much more than I had done in the past. I think the results were a mixed bag. Did I illustrate more? Yes I did! Was the work substantial or impactful? Not really. But that was okay! The biggest win of 2025 was that I stopped feeling so daunted by art. I just started enjoying the process again, something I haven’t really felt since I was a teen. It was pretty freeing to just pick up a pen and draw, without any expectation of improvement or monetisation. I just did it because I liked it, and that felt very liberating.

My 2026 theme is… Completion and Mindfulness

This year, I really want to finish a project, and complete things. While I did complete many drawings in 2025 that I’m very proud of, I did feel like it lacked thinking and design exploration. Design thinking is a muscle I use a lot at my day job, but I really want to create things that are my own personal style – even if it’s something as simple as a zine or sticker set.

The second theme is mindfulness. I started reading The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it has changed the way I feel about my energy, and how to work with life’s hardships. It ultimately comes down to being aware and focused on what I’m doing at all times, and to stop feeding myself distractions and negative habits. I want to spend less time scrolling, and not be juggling too many things at once. I’ve already deleted Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok off my homepage (and set a timer limit on all of them), and making that simple change has already improved my focus tenfold. My screen time is down by 70%, and I have less brain fog.

What are my 2026 goals and strategy?

1. Sleep more: I’m aiming for 7-8 hours of sleep per night, and an 80+ sleep score. When I was running my own business back in the day, I trained myself to never sleep in, and I haven’t been able to sleep past 8am for the past decade, regardless of what time I fall asleep (even if it’s 3am). On average I sleep 5-6 hours per night, and I need to increase that!

2. Clean and reset my place every day: When my place starts to get messy, so does my mind. It’s now a priority for me to clean and reset my place every day, as opposed to waiting for the weekend to clean everything up. I’ve started implementing it lately and I feel 1000% better, and I have less cleaning on the weekends!

3. Spend less money and do it more mindfully: I did a major spring clean at the end of last year, and threw out things I was holding onto for years. Some of these things I bought on a whim without thinking, others I bought hoping it would make me into a better person (more productive, more artistic, or cool). I also bought items which I knew weren’t perfect, but thought I’d be able to cope with their imperfections. I bought a lot of items as a band-aid, thinking my life would improve from the one item – but it didn’t. With every new item I purchase moving forward, I want to make sure I’m buying it intentionally, and will use it in the future. Especially when it comes to items like books, I want to spend less money by borrowing more often, or getting digital copies so I have less physical clutter in my home.

4. Limit my time to 20% planning, so I can spend 80% doing: I’m such a big planner – I spend so much of my time thinking about doing things, and planning the perfect “scenario” to do them, that I never have the time to actually do them. This year, I’ve simplified all my productivity tools down to my Google Calendar (with Google Tasks within it), and my Hobonichi Cousin (A5) only – aka the absolute bare minimum to make myself focused so I can move forward with doing my tasks.

5. Stay home, allow myself to be bored: I can get pretty busy, and every year I find myself staying out a lot, getting home and crashing after a long day of work and social plans. I want to actively stay home, so I have more time to get bored and find ways to be creative. It will allow me to recharge my social battery and feel less time poor.

6. Close or remove as many ‘open loops’ as I can: I’ve been seeing discourse about exhaustion coming from people’s ‘open loops’, and I have to say I strongly believe my emotional exhaustion comes from constantly feeling I have unfinished business, and all the tasks that need to be done. I want to quickly close these loops as soon as I can, or cut them loose if they don’t help me in the long run.

7. Complete projects! As I mentioned earlier, I want to complete projects, even if it’s small. I want to plan simple projects that are manageable amongst my day job, social commitments, and other hobbies. It will be a good escape from my day-to-day routine.

8. Build up my strength and flexibility: This year, I want to take my flexibility and strength seriously. I’m not getting any younger and want to prevent any mobility issues in the future (I already have sore knees! From walking!)

9. Continue to build my confidence and intuition: This is an ongoing process, but I feel like I made significant strides in 2025, and want to continue listening to my gut. I have made some decisions impulsively which weren’t the right choice, but funnily enough, it has made me more confident in myself because now I can definitively say what is wrong or right for me.

10. Add friction to social media: It is really the damn phone! I do use social media to stay connected to my friends, but now I’m using it purposefully for that, and not to distract me from my responsibilities. As I mentioned earlier, I deleted my apps off my homepage and set timers for all of them and it’s had positive changes for me.

How did I do with last year’s goals?

These were my 2025 goals, and I think I did pretty well!

1. Challenge any feelings of ‘guilt’ when they come up: Yes! I totally succeeded. I no longer feel guilty for making small mistakes or making my needs known. The feeling of guilt is now only reserved for the moments that I do something wrong.

2. Play into my limitations when it comes to art and make it my strength: I didn’t focus on this goal much in 2025, but I did make my personal art style more distinct. I will continue to work on my style and be more experimental.

3. Work on being less impulsive (in life and in art) – I need to sleep on decisions, and I need to stop feeling pressure to “react”: I did do this! I made fast decisions when I needed to, but I decreased impulsive decision making by 50%, and I was able to think more rationally without pressure.

4. Listen to my gut and body more: A 100% success, and I’m better for it.

5. Focus on improving my illustration and design work, developing my skills and POV in creative areas: I kinda succeeded, but it’s an ongoing process!

6. Spend less time on TikTok, decrease brain rot: I did, but also I didn’t. I’m getting better though ;)

7. Declutter, donate, spend less money and don’t spend impulsively: I did declutter, I did donate, but in 2025 I still spent a lot of money impulsively. However, 2026 is going to be the year I make this goal happen!

8. Detach, detach, detach: I have been able to completely emotionally detach from situations that don’t affect me personally, and if it does, I approach it in a very solutions focused way. I don’t overanalyse other people’s actions anymore, and I take everything at face value.

9. Do a bit today so I do less tomorrow: I did this really well! I didn’t feel like I had to be perfect all the time, and even a bit of effort went a long way.

10. Read 3 books from my to-be-read pile before buying a new book: I wasn’t perfect at this, but I did get through many books in my TBR pile!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get into my revelations of 2025! (There are a lot!)

I’m living my life 100% for myself, and no one else

Let’s start with a big one – this was the first year where I believed that I was living 100% for myself. I’ve generally always prioritised myself when it comes to my own life and decision making (I chose the career I’m in now, I generally do what I want, and I’m lucky to have family that support my decisions as well), but there was always a part of me that felt like I was making myself small to not upset anyone. I was a people pleaser, I felt bad for setting boundaries, and I let people take advantage of my time and effort (willingly!). This year, I let go of my people pleasing (more on that journey here), and I finally got over my anxious attachment style, which I had unwillingly manifested during my 20s.

I had the irrational fear that putting myself first would mean I’d become selfish and reclusive – but that was just my anxiety talking. Turns out, implementing healthy boundaries enhanced the relationships I currently had, and strengthened my confidence in them. Nothing external really changed for me. But mentally, I felt so much more relaxed in myself and my relationships.

It’s okay to suck, but not okay to skip

After watching this video by Sharran Srivatsaa, the phrase “it’s okay to suck, but not okay to skip” really snapped me out of my perfectionism. I had spent a good portion of my adulthood avoiding new projects and habits because I didn’t think I’d make progress if I didn’t do everything absolutely perfectly. Switching my mindset to just showing up (and sometimes doing it badly) really took the pressure off. It was a priority to just do something, even if I was mediocre at it. This built on one of the main themes of Atomic Habits, which encouraged readers to show up in whatever capacity they could to build the habit (e.g. putting shoes on to go to the gym, and that being enough).

It also made me realise that being mediocre or putting low effort in something was still incredibly effective. I currently do a combination of swimming, badminton, and tennis as my workouts of choice, and while I am good at swimming (but hit a plateau), and I am incredibly mediocre at badminton and tennis. Even with this level of low effort I put into tennis and badminton, I have seen significant improvement in both skills over the last year, simply by showing up and doing what I can.

I managed my perfectionism by constantly striving for authenticity

Letting go of my perfectionism has been an almost-decade long journey. I think I’m still a perfectionist at heart, but one of the best ways I’ve been able to manage my perfectionism is simply being authentic. Everything I do at this present moment represents who I am right now – and when I look back at it in the future, I know there were no pretenses. I find charm in having worn journals, scribbled out notes, and scratched up items – the imperfections tell a story to me. And when it comes to my art – it doesn’t always need to be perfect. Seeing the improvement and transformation over time is much more interesting than always having flawless work.

What are the things I’m saying or doing just to “cope”?

On my last holiday, my friend Mary coined the phrase “biggest cope of your life”. Simply hearing those words made me think deeply about all the things I’ve done to “cope” with my life’s difficulties. I used to hate feeling uncomfortable or uneasy about things – so I would always make impulsive decisions to make me feel more secure immediately.

Here’s some examples of my “coping”:

• I’d buy a new journal or a nice pen to motivate me to be productive when I was emotionally frazzled, instead of solving the issue that was causing me stress

• When I bought an item that wasn’t exactly what I envisioned (e.g. my ‘tan’ leather couch being 3 shades darker than I wanted), I would try to convince myself that I liked it. (To be honest, I do now genuinely prefer the dark brown couch over tan brown, since tan brown looks very “millennial” and dark brown looks a bit more timeless – but it took a while to get there!)

• If I knew there was a problem, I would try to solve it swiftly to get it out of the way (often by spending money), rather than sitting with the problem and the discomfort it brought. If I was more patient I could probably solve it without spending money or feeling rushed.

I’d say my biggest “coping mechanism” in life is buying things. Spending money can offload responsibilities (paying someone else to solve my problems), or gives me a sense of joy when things are chaotic (the shopping dopamine hit). Buying an item can make me feel like I’m making progress with a habit, when in actuality, buying nicer workout clothes doesn’t make me run any better. Now that I have a resolution to spend less and be more mindful, I’m now being more aware of the things my mind tells me to do to solve issues. I don’t need to buy a new journal to draw more, I don’t need to buy a piece of clothing to increase my confidence – I can’t rely on external things to cope with my internal struggles.

Everyone is on their own journey, and it’s none of my business

In my 20s, if someone asked me for help, I would overextend myself to help them – often to the detriment of my own energy levels and emotional wellbeing. No one explicitly asked me to do it, but I was happy to do it anyway (I had a savior complex and was a people pleaser – a deadly combo!).

Over the years, I became aware that there were limits to how much I could truly help someone. I can support them, but I can’t save them. They need to make their own decisions and mistakes, and figure things out for themselves. Last year, I became more of a side supporter, and it’s been great. I can still help out my friends and support them, but I don’t need to carry any of their emotional burden, nor do they want me to.

Out of sight, out of mind

Ever since I healed my anxious attachment, I’ve spent 80% less time ruminating about people, relationships, and every other aspect of my life. I’ve also noticed that if something isn’t affecting me right at that moment, the anxiety about the situation doesn’t stay with me anymore – I often forget why it bothered me in the first place (is this what it’s like to be healed??).

My brain is no longer reading between the lines. Instead, it’s taking situations at face value, and understanding potential nuances from what’s being presented. It doesn’t try to create a narrative based on my own assumptions or anxieties – I’m able to react more rationally, and detach from situations that are out of my control.

I stopped telling myself “I should’ve known better”

I’m a 100% believer that you have to live through a mistake to really learn from it. In an ideal world, the mistake you make will have very little consequences, but is consequential enough to teach you to be better.

I used to be so harsh on myself for “not knowing better” – for example, trusting someone new who eventually treated me badly, or doing something impulsive that went awry. Last year, I decided if there was little to no consequence (other than my ego being bruised), I’m not going to beat myself up for being wrong. “I should’ve known better” immediately brings in a level of unnecessary shame, so I’ve made a point of letting go of that in the past few years. However, if I keep repeating the same mistake again and again, that’s when I can acknowledge that something needs to change.

I’m continuously making fast decisions and following through, and more confident because of it

2025 was the year of fast decisions. I made a lot of decisions off the cuff, I was reactive (but pragmatic), and it was truly a test for me to see if following my gut would get me positive results. And the results are in… it made my life so much better! I stopped second guessing myself, I decreased my analysis paralysis, if I made a decision that was wrong I’d just own it, fix it, and pivot. It really became that simple.

I used to feel paralysed about making the wrong decision, and I would make no decision, or wait too long for the moment to pass. By making faster decisions, I closed a lot of “mental loops”, and was able to focus more. And as I made decisions based on my gut, and saw that it (more often than not) landed on a positive outcome, that gave me more confidence in myself and my choices.

13 Bonus 2025 learnings I now live by

1. Not everything needs the same energy

2. I stopped thinking I was a bad person for reacting negatively to someone who treated me badly. Maybe there’s a reason!

3. Bad feelings can easily lay dormant when life is going well

4. Something won’t get done unless you care about it

5. People look exactly like the choices they make every day

6. Embracing unpleasant feelings is important for your life

7. Every choice in life is just deciding if things are worth it

8. I no longer internalise my bad habits or mistakes, they are just are what they are

9. The body keeps the score, for decades – it’s important to proactively heal yourself

10. A problem shared is a problem halved

11. The easiest way to build your confidence is to follow through on your own promises

12. Make it exist first, make it good later

13. Context is everything

If my confidence was at 70% in 2024, it shot up to 90% towards the latter half of the 2025. And it came from one big question: Am I important to anyone?

Objectively, the answer is yes – I am important to many people. But no matter how much I proved that to myself, my body never completely believed it (until this year of course, when I’ve actually healed. The journey starts heavy, and then ends on a light note, literally!).

For the past 9 years, I had unconsciously cultivated a severe anxious attachment style, largely triggered by romantic relationships. Anxious attachment is defined as “an insecure attachment style marked by a deep need for closeness and constant reassurance, combined with a heightened sensitivity to any shifts in the relationship. Even small changes can feel like a threat to the bond.”

Research and trends would pinpoint this as a development from my childhood, or my relationship with my parents – but I never felt insecure in any relationships I made when I was younger, nor did I feel like I couldn’t rely on my parents. I always knew my anxious attachment truly developed with my first real relationship. (NB: I will be using they/them pronouns to keep it neutral).

I remember being constantly anxious and disappointed by my partner’s flakiness, feeling endlessly rejected by their lack of effort, and squashing my needs because I didn’t want to push them away even more. They always seemed dissatisfied with their life – and constantly thought the grass was greener elsewhere. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t affected by this. I never felt secure with them – they were always searching for a better life somewhere else, and didn’t seem to care if I was there or not.

The constant fear of being disappointed can really wear on you over time – like a death by a thousand cuts. You wonder to yourself, “I really hope they show up for me today, but they probably won’t.” Nevertheless, there’s still a part of you that hopes things might be different this time. Sometimes they even say yes, only to bail at the last minute, and ask you “Is it okay if I don’t go?”. You set the standards so low, and yet they still aren’t capable of ever reaching it. You eventually get used to the sense of dread you feel when you want to make plans with them. Over time, it becomes so easy for you to associate their lack of effort with your own self worth.

As the disappointments started to build over the years, I started to subconsciously accept this narrative; “They aren’t showing up for me because I’m not worthy of showing up for. They would do it for someone else they actually cared about. I’m not important enough.”

Eventually, I began to blame myself for not being worthy of better treatment. “What could I have done to make this person treat me better? What is it about me that makes them not care?”

When I think about that time in my life, I always think about the analogy with the boiling frog. You don’t drop a frog into hot water – otherwise it will jump out immediately. Instead, you put the frog in cold water and then slowly turn the heat up. It will acclimate to the incremental changes until it’s too late and it gets too hot and dies. I felt like that boiling frog, my anxiety started to rise over time and I slowly accepted it as a normal part of me.

Over the next few years (well after that relationship was over), my anxious attachment did get triggered several times, and it became a problem when this anxiety started bleeding out into non-romantic relationships too.

For dating, I’d get overly anxious if I’d sense a change in pace, and I’d always want to speed up the journey to emotional intimacy, even if I didn’t know if I liked them yet. And when it came to new friendships, if I had any inkling of flakiness from the other person, I’d become anxious again and start to go down the same thought process that I had adopted a few years prior, “They aren’t showing up for me because I’m not worthy of showing up for. They would do it for someone else they actually cared about. I’m not important enough.”

At my most vulnerable times, I’d start questioning every relationship in my life (even my ride-or-dies!). I’d think to myself “Am I important to anyone? Am I even worth caring about?”

This is when I knew my anxious attachment had gone too far, and my trauma was telling me things that I knew were objectively not true. I knew I had to start fixing it.

Okay, but how did I cure myself of this anxious attachment?

Curing my anxious attachment was not a linear journey, it was a whole series of changes and challenges that came together this year. Many of these issues overlapped with each other, so as soon as I started to solve one problem, everything else started to clear up.

The main epiphany: What if I stopped giving my empathy, time, and presence to people who broke my trust?

The moment I decided to stop giving my energy to people who broke my trust, I started to feel lighter, more confident, and free.

But let’s rewind a bit, to how I got to this epiphany.

After my (then) partner and I broke up, we eventually decided to stay friends. They were still someone I got along with (we started off as friends, and also shared mutual friends as well). Everything was fine, and I also only saw them twice a year so I wasn’t giving them a lot of my time either.

However, I started to notice that every time I saw them, there was a part of me that felt compelled to rebel against this friendship, to remind them how badly they treated me during our past relationship. It would come up occasionally as small sassy comments; “Remember when you…”

I would start to hate myself for being so petty, but my inner child couldn’t help itself. In my head, I wanted this friendship to work, but my body kept the score. My body still felt the resentment from the years of disappointment, and it held onto the anxiety because it was the only way it knew how to protect itself.

After a while, I realised that no matter what my ex-partner said – even if they said something to simply be contrary – my deeply buried resentment would interpret their comments as a criticism of my value. Even if they showed up to every event we planned together, there was always a part of me that would brace for disappointment. My body kept the score.

I didn’t know at the time, but trying to build my confidence while being friends with someone who made me feel *the* most worthless in my life put me in a constant state of shame and confusion. My body and mind were conflicting, “How can you learn to respect yourself, when you spend time with someone who constantly reminds you of a time when you didn’t?”

I didn’t want to hold onto this negativity anymore. I didn’t want to be 50 years old and still making petty remarks towards my “friend”. I didn’t want to keep enabling this relationship if it meant I could never move on from my anxious attachment.

I remember sitting on my couch, after an exhausting day, and asking myself… “What if I stopped giving my time and energy to this person who made me feel so worthless? What if… I never saw them again, how would I feel?”

The moment I accepted that I may never see them again, I could feel a literal weight lift off my shoulders. I physically felt lighter. In my 32 years of life, I have never felt a physical catharsis so immediately. That’s when I knew it was the right thing to do. I was unknowingly carrying that negative energy for 9 years, and now I was finally free of it.

I remember riding that high for 2 weeks straight, feeling the most confident I had ever felt. (My body has now acclimated to the new confidence, so I feel pretty normal again, albeit way less anxious than before).

When the trust is broken, or someone has hurt you enough, no amount of growth or redemption on their end will ever heal the resentment you have towards them. Sometimes it’s better to walk away.

* * *

Wow, easy right? Not exactly. This may have been the epiphany, but there was a lot of extra work over the years that led me to this moment.

The media that changed my perspective: Attached and Too Much.

Attached

A few years ago, I read the book Attached by Dr Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller. It was a book that changed my life, and set me on this journey of healing.

I remember reading the book and seeing myself so deeply reflected in it. I felt like I was reading a book about my life. This gave me a sense of reassurance that I wasn’t alone in this, and that these behaviours weren’t particularly unique or notable, if anything – anyone who is put in a situation like mine would develop the same exact behaviours. It was nurture, not nature.

It took me out of an isolated bubble of shame, and made me feel confident that if I had learnt these behaviours, I could unlearn them just as easily. The book also taught me that attachment styles could develop any time, not just from childhood or parenting – which gave me clarity on where to start solving my issues.

Too Much, created by Lena Dunham

I have always been a fan of Girls, and when Lena Dunham announced she had a new show with Netflix, I was seated. Too Much is a show about a woman named Jessica (played by Megan Stalter) who moves to London after a nasty breakup with her boyfriend (Michael Zegen). There, she meets a man named Felix (Will Sharpe), and while their connection and attraction is strong, they spend the series navigating their baggage and differences with each other.

Episode 5 of the series was devastating, and even if you don’t like the series, it’s worth watching for that episode alone. If you’ve ever experienced toxicity in a relationship, it will hit home for you.

Watching the show felt like a wake up call, it made me realise I was carrying so much shame and negativity from small, seemingly innocuous actions. The show reminded me that baggage is something you can carry well after the relationship is over.

The imagery exercise that unlocked everything

When I went back to therapy last year, my psychologist taught me an imagery exercise. The goal of imagery is to go back into your memories, immerse yourself in them again, and pinpoint the feelings and narratives you have adopted from those experiences. You close your eyes and start with a recent memory, one that evoked a significant amount of distress, and relive it with incredible detail. You walk through your feelings and land on a personal “I am...” statement of how you felt in that moment. (e.g. “I am insignificant.”).

Once you’re done with that memory, you go back through your timeline and relive the next memory that comes to mind. You keep doing this until you reach your earliest memory that evokes the same feeling – essentially creating a thread of connected memories that have built the narrative of your psyche today. Each memory needs to have an “I am…” statement – and while each statement can be different, they are often related. (E.g. “I am insignificant, I am ugly, I am stupid.”).

It reveals negative thought processes that may be ingrained in you, and when I did this with my psychologist I remember being surprised by how confronting it was (I was crying non-stop). Having my psychologist there to guide me through the memories, and asking questions to prompt me on my feelings, pushed me to admit things I couldn’t on my own.

I remember trying to say “I feel…” statements instead of “I am…” as a way to protect myself emotionally. I also kept trying to backtrack and claim, “I know logically it isn’t true”. My psychologist insisted I say only “I am…” statements because it was a more powerful admission. See the difference below:

“I feel ugly.” or “I feel ugly, but I know I’m really not.”

vs

“I am ugly.”

When an “I am…” statement is said out loud, it can be painful, embarrassing, and confronting when it rings true. It’s incredibly hard to admit too, and that’s when you know you’re making progress. After going through a string of memories, my psychologist would go back with me to challenge and heal the memories from the earliest one.

I remember doing this exercise and looking back on a memory that I felt was my breaking point in the relationship. I felt so humiliated, pathetic, and abandoned in that memory, and all the disappointments had come to the surface.

“I am worthless.”

“I am not important enough.”

When I landed on these statements, I felt an immense amount of pain and uneasiness, but also relief – I had finally confronted how much that moment really affected me.

This was the first time I said the words “I am worthless” out loud, and put my true feelings into something tangible. Everything you’ve read at the beginning of this blog was a result of this exercise – the clarity I have now is because of this moment. Eventually, I was able to go back to that memory, and challenge the “I am worthless” narrative. Instead of quantifying my self worth through my partner’s poor actions, I disconnected the two, and realised the choices they made were simply incompatible with the relationship I wanted to build with someone (I dedicate a lot of effort to any relationship, and it’s not wrong to expect the same in return). I accepted that how my partner acted was out of my control, and they just weren’t the person for me. I wasn’t the person for them either.

This was a big moment of growth for me, but I knew if I wanted to completely heal, I needed to dig deeper and address other behaviours that got me to this point.

Things I can actually blame my childhood and personality for, and how I solved it

Even though I can pinpoint where this anxious attachment truly manifested, it would be naive to deny that my childhood and personality didn’t have a play in this. I am a natural people pleaser, I get a lot of satisfaction from external achievements and validation, and I am very Type A. If I didn’t have these traits, I’d probably be less susceptible to adopting an anxious attachment style.

Desire for external validation

Being a daughter of immigrants definitely shaped who I am today. I was taught from a young age that I would have to try harder than most kids, knowing I was disadvantaged in 2 ways (being a woman, and being Asian). So I thrived on external validation – through school awards, winning competitions, and high grades. This is how I could prove I was succeeding.

When it came to my anxiety, asking for reassurance felt like the best way to know I was doing well. Someone else’s approval did matter – because I was taught it was the only way to thrive.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learnt that having external validation will only get you so far. Even if you have many people praising you, or a partner reassuring you, if you don’t feel good about yourself internally, it wouldn’t matter. I’ve built my confidence over the last few years, listening to my gut, and knowing the only thing that matters is my own personal opinion.

A desire to help others

I like helping people (I got this from my Dad), and in my community, it’s natural to be generous, thoughtful, and repay any kindness to people who have helped me in the past (I got this from my Mum). I’m incredibly lucky that my main circle is very reciprocal (a lot of us grew up the same way).

It was only until I met people outside of this bubble of generosity, that I realised not everyone is naturally mindful of reciprocation. People would see my generosity and attention as something they were entitled to, without any need to give back. (I don’t have the expectation that everything I do must be reciprocated, but if you’re in a relationship where someone just takes from you constantly, it will be exhausting and anxiety-inducing to maintain in the long run).

It took me a while to figure out who was a “taker”. I used to think that if I rescinded my generosity from these “takers”, I was being selfish and calculating. This year I learnt it’s okay to want to be in a relationship which is reciprocal (crazy huh??) and setting a better standard for myself would benefit and enrich my relationship with others – where there is no resentment.

People pleasing

People pleasing was a big part of my life until this year (I wrote about it in a blog). I used to willingly break my own boundaries to make others feel better, and that contributed a lot to my anxious attachment. People pleasing was my feeble attempt to gain security – I was doing the absolute most to try to make someone like me.

Eventually, I realised that my people pleasing was not truly helping others or myself, so I snapped myself out of those unhealthy behaviours. I don’t over extend myself to please anyone else anymore, and my anxiety has decreased significantly as a result.

My savior complex

I used to feel responsible for other people’s happiness, especially when they were struggling – and this kept me in draining relationships. My savior complex gave me security and purpose in relationships, which masked any anxious attachment I had, while also reinforcing it.

But over the last decade, I learnt that no matter how hard I tried, I can’t save someone else – even if I wanted to and they wanted me to.

Letting go of this part of me has done wonders, and I now only think about whether my relationships are built on mutual joy, respect, and understanding – instead of a desire to “save someone”.

Being Type A, a perfectionist, needing to control all outcomes

I am Type A to a T – I love spreadsheets, I love productivity, and I love being organised. Unfortunately being Type A means “going with the flow” is not something that comes naturally to me.

Perfectionism goes hand in hand with anxiety, and I would try to control outcomes as much as I could to ease my discomfort with the unknown. This year, I read Hidden Potential and The Pursuit of Perfect, and both books explain the need to feel uncomfortable in order to challenge yourself and grow. In the past three months, I’ve been adopting a less controlled approach to life and relationships, and accepting this discomfort has been surprisingly freeing.

I stopped trying to figure out why people hurt me

Before this year, any time anyone did anything to hurt me or dismiss me, I would spend hours trying to understand why they acted the way they did. I always needed a reason – it was a way for me to cope with all the uncertainty, and to give me some closure. If I knew the reason, maybe it would be something I could move on from.

This year, I decided that I didn’t need to go deep into their rationale. Even if they didn’t have bad intentions, the result was the same – they still hurt me. I started questioning things at surface level instead – are they doing something to me that makes me feel good or bad? Being mistreated was enough for me to walk away from a situation, and listening to my feelings first gave me so much more confidence in myself.

The most important people in your life will allow you to be your worst self around them, and not bring out the worst parts of you

For the longest time, I thought that because I was comfortable being frustrated, angry, and insecure with my partner – it meant that I was comfortable “being my worst self” around them. It was in fact, not true, because a lot of the distress I felt was because of them, and I was my most anxious in their presence.

I remember seeing my close friends and family during the peak of my relationship problems, and immediately feeling happy that I could be my unfiltered self with them. I felt comfort and security in knowing that no matter what I expressed, they would always accept me.

There is a difference – you should be able to express your hardships and vulnerabilities with someone openly, not have them be the cause of it.

Incremental things add up and will wear on you, what is the shit sandwich you’re willing to eat?

When it comes to any real relationship, there can be downsides. You may have a loyal friend that’s always an hour late, a best friend that may take 3-7 business days to get back to you, or someone you adore that’s terrible to travel with. We often have to grapple with the endless amount of flaws in the people we love and care about – and it’s called the “shit sandwich”.

If this journey of anxious attachment has taught me anything, negative incremental changes can wear on you over time, and change you for the worse. Life isn’t perfect, and we often sacrifice comfort to achieve something better. We often accept minor inconveniences to have access to something exciting and fun. Life is full of negotiations, and when it comes to relationships, what is the thing you’re willing to tolerate to have what you want? What is the shit sandwich you’re willing to eat? And are you aware of what that sacrifice means for you?

I used to think that if you gave a lot away, you’d get a lot back (but that isn’t always true)

Anxious attachment is all about overcompensation – giving a lot of attention, asking for constant reassurance, in order to receive anything back.

In life, many things only grow when you give it attention and focus, and I naively thought that by giving more of myself, I’d always get more back. It may work with developing a skill, but it’s not exactly the same for relationships.

Trust and emotional intimacy is earned over time through action and experience, and you can’t rush that. Forcing closeness is suffocating, and will push people away. It needs to be organic and earned.

If you’re going to minimise the importance of something, everyone else will too

A few years ago, I remember feeling insecure when people in the group chat wouldn’t respond to my invites with enthusiasm (or even respond at all). I remember when I talked to my psychologist about it, she said, “The way you phrased your invite makes it sound like the event wasn’t that important, so people won’t feel like it’s important enough to attend or even respond.”

That concept floored me at the time – it seemed so obvious. Of course. Saying “btw I’m going to this thing on Saturday, come if you’d like” is way less impactful than, “I’m going to this event on Saturday, I’d love for you to come if you’re free!”

I knew why I always went with the former approach – I never wanted to ask for things with my full chest because I didn’t want to scare away people with my needs. It was self sabotage – if I didn’t make it a big deal, and people ignored or rejected me, I could tell myself that I didn’t really care if anyone came anyway.

It was a toxic cycle… putting in half-hearted effort to avoid true rejection, getting half-hearted results, feeling insecure and rejected anyway, and then deciding to put in even less effort next time to avoid further rejection.

Nowadays, if something is important to me, I will express it – and I don’t downplay it to appear “nonchalant”. If people show up, I am always grateful, and if they don’t… it is what it is, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. I am just being my authentic self, and that’s the best I can do. Being open about my needs will always attract the right people, and scare away the wrong ones.

* * *

It was a long journey for me to get to this point, and the journey still ongoing. To say I’m completely healed would be naive, but I don’t experience that deep-seated fear anymore. I feel more calm and confident.

I’m getting used to feeling discomfort as well, but I now know the difference between something that will help me grow, versus something that wears down my self esteem. I know to not repeat the same mistakes I did in the past, but if I do, I’ll give myself grace and allow myself to learn again.

I have a love-hate relationship with TikTok. I love the constant dopamine hit when I scroll through my FYP (For You Page), but I also hate how drained I get from the amount of brainrot on my feed.

I often use TikTok as an escape after a long day, but the more I scroll, the more exhausted I get. It’s a pretty toxic cycle – at my worst I was clocking nearly 35 hours of scrolling a week (that’s 5 hours a day!!). So in August, I decided to delete TikTok.

During that time, I had just finished 2 big back-to-back projects at work with no breaks, I was fighting jetlag, and had just watched 16 films (!!) at the Sydney Film Festival. I desperately needed time to reset and finish my large backlog of tasks, and knew if I still had my TikTok app on my phone I would waste my week off just doom scrolling in bed. Choosing to delete it for a week was an easy decision, but I didn’t realise how much it would teach me about myself.

TikTok was inadvertently taking away my free will, and I liked it

The minute my brain felt a microsecond of boredom, my thumb would swipe to my home page and click the space where my TikTok app was. I only noticed how bad it was during my break. I’d catch myself swiping to the empty space where the app used to be, pause, and then sit with my boredom for a whole minute because I genuinely did not know what to do with myself.

During this small period of time I’d have to grapple with my own free will – what was I supposed to do with the time now that I don’t have content and entertainment delivered on a silver platter for me? Even YouTube and Netflix require some level of thought – you have to choose how you spend your time and pick what you want to watch (and even thinking about doing that was exhausting enough). TikTok was easy, all you had to do was open the app and watch it if you liked it, or swipe if you didn’t.

It was genuinely uncomfortable realising that one of the reasons why I relied so heavily on TikTok was because it took up so much of my time, and I liked how my addiction was a way to escape the possibility of having free time and doing something meaningful with it. It’s scary to try something new, to challenge yourself – and I was using TikTok as an excuse to not give myself time to confront my bigger life goals.

TikTok is watching the same content over and over again until you die

If you’ve ever been on TikTok, you may have noticed that as soon as the algorithm knows you’re interested in something, it starts sending you the same types of videos within minutes and continues serving you the same content to keep you hooked.

Before deleting TikTok, when other people asked me why I couldn’t delete it, I’d say, “I want to know the trends that are happening, it’s relevant to my job” (which is technically not a lie). TikTok was where the latest trends lived, and I wanted to see it all happen in real time.

But even though I was watching 35 hours of TikTok a week, I wasn’t actually watching 35 hours of new content – I was watching 1 hour’s worth of “new content” 35 times. It was just the same type of content repackaged through different creators, all trying to go viral. Once I realised this, it was easier to step back and decrease the FOMO I felt, and I knew I didn’t have to spend that much time on the app to know what was happening in the zeitgeist.

Admittedly, there’s a part of me (the lazy part) that would still be happy to watch TikTok 35 hours a week because it’s easy and still beneficial to me in some way. It’s much easier to stick with what’s familiar and comfortable, rather than taking a risk on something new and difficult.

You can’t escape hyperbolic, black and white messaging on TikTok

Even before I started watching TikTok, I used to always think and talk in hyperbole. If I had a strong stance on something, I would push my argument as far as I could to make my point clear.

By definition hyperbole means “exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally” – and even though I spoke with vigour, there was a level of nuance I actively maintained to keep myself grounded.

Hearing that type of hyperbolic language non-stop on my FYP for 5 years didn’t feel unusual for me. But after taking my break, I realised that watching that type of content for thousands of hours (since 2020) really rewired my brain and point of view.

TikTok was designed that way – to retain attention for as long as possible. In order to get people’s attention, creators have to be bold, strong minded, and perhaps a little controversial. You only have a limited time to capture someone’s attention before they scroll, so the best thing to do is say something singular that is easy to understand. Therein lies the problem – advice and opinions on the app lack nuance, and if they are nuanced, that’s not what audiences take from it (see any TikTok comment section and you’ll understand).

I consider myself an emotionally intelligent person, and I understand that not everything is black and white – yet, it was so easy to adopt the mindset of the people I was watching. Messages in the vein of “If this person doesn’t treat you this way, then they don’t like you” flooded my FYP, everything was spoken in absolutes as if they were fact. Messages like, “If you do this, then you have ADHD and you’re a narcissist” became so normal for me to hear that I started thinking in extremes as well.

And it wasn’t just the opinions, it was the lifestyles I saw on my FYP – I’d see those perfect organisation and house tour videos and want my life to look like that too. There was a part of me that knew that perfect apartment was curated for filming, yet I still wanted my place to look like that. As much as I wanted to deny it, consuming that much content really did change the way I approached my life. I would start to think in absolute terms – If my home didn’t look like that I wasn’t capable; if this person didn’t treat me like this then I wasn’t a worthy human being.

Breaking away from this black and white thinking not only refreshed my mind, but also took away all the brain fog I had been experiencing for years.

The only way to learn in life is to live it

After having all these revelations, I realised the only way to really learn anything is not to have people tell you what to do, but to live your life as authentically as possible and own the mistakes you make. As a perfectionist, I was always scared of making mistakes so I would load up my brain with as much knowledge and “emotional armour” as I could before stepping out into the real world. Unconsciously or not, TikTok became the source for that armour.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that no matter how much advice you get, you don’t really truly learn something unless you do it and make the mistake – and if you rely on people to guide you through everything you’ll never gain the confidence in yourself to make decisions on your own. I knew that by spending so much time on TikTok I was slowly losing my own independent thought, I could hear myself echoing the messages from my FYP without considering whether or not I truly agreed with them or not.

How has my life improved?

I had those big epiphanies above, but how did my life improve in small ways?

1. I don’t think in extremes as much anymore, and I’m much kinder to myself

2. I have way less brain fog and started dreaming again (in the literal sense, I used to dream 5% of the time, and it increased to 90% when I stopped watching TikTok)

3. I sleep better

4. I felt a lot more boredom and unpleasant feelings, but it led to more creative outcomes and emotional growth

5. I’m more inspired when I consume media that has more thought and attention put into it (I started watching longform media like TV and shows, which made me want to be more creative)

6. I spent less money (who woulda thought!)

Am I back on TikTok?

Yes! But I definitely spend less time on it than before, and set my timer to 1 hour a day (which I often split equally in the morning and evenings). I spend the hours I’ve gained reading, drawing, journaling, and watching longform media which I find way more valuable.

I’ve been a people pleaser all my life, and this is the first year where I’m trying not to be one. The journey has been surprisingly smooth… I’m setting boundaries and actually sticking with them, and I’m now putting my energy into things I truly want to do – rather than always worrying about making someone else feel comfortable.

And that’s not to say I’ve done a complete 180 on everyone – I still enjoy helping out my friends (as one does) and showing up for people even if it’s a little inconvenient (more on that later). But being able to make my needs known for myself and putting them first has been an absolutely refreshing experience for me. It’s a pretty small difference from the outside, but internally has done wonders for my mental health, energy and creativity.

These are the changes I’ve made in the last 6 months:

1. I don’t wait around and accommodate people’s timelines if it means I’m missing out on something I really want to do

2. I don’t feel like I have to do anything anymore, and when I do it’s because I want to.

3. I don’t reach out to people if I feel like it’s obligation (for me or for them)

4. I cultivate the relationships that make me happy and energised

5. I assess how I feel after every social interaction, and if I feel anxious, drained or annoyed, I unpack that feeling

6. I’ve been working on building trust with my intuition, so when something feels off, it won’t be written off as anxiety

7. I now know the difference between being a little inconvenienced and feeling extremely obligated

8. I’ve acknowledged that people around me are grown adults, can take care of themselves, and don’t need “saving”

9. I feel good saying “no”, especially if my only motive to say “yes” is to not hurt someone’s feelings

10. I match energy, and meet people where they’re at

11. I’m taking more responsibility for the choices I make – even if there’s an inkling of a “victim mentality” (aka someone is making me do something), I reframe it and take ownership over it

12. I make my needs known to myself and others, with no shame (even if I feel vulnerable!)

13. I don’t make myself small to make someone feel better about themselves

And this has led to an insane amount of improvement in my life:

1. My mental energy has increased by 50%, even when I’ve been at my busiest

2. I feel less overwhelmed, and less likely to doom scroll (this is my direct response to being stressed out)

3. I have been excited to be creative, and implementing projects in the background

4. I feel more confident in myself, and my judgement

5. I trust my intuition 1000 times more

6. I don’t have a sense of dread anymore when it comes to social interactions and planning

7. My time spent feels purposeful now, and quality time has increased by 300%

These changes all started with small revelations about my own behaviour, and has grown into a really solid system for me. I’m now really conscious of how I spend my time, and I’m giving myself more autonomy than ever before.

“You’re a people pleaser, but no one is pleased.”

The quote “You’re a people pleaser, but no one is pleased” has been doing the rounds across the internet lately (on my FYP at least), and it really made me think, “What is my people pleasing for… and do people actually want this?”.

The answer is both yes and no. Being empathetic, helpful, and anticipating people’s needs are my strongest traits (and this has been vocalised by many). But there would be times where I’d overcompensate so much that it would start to be annoying, rather than helpful.

I’d always worry about making sure everyone would be included and comfortable, and that *I* didn’t come off as thoughtless – when in reality some people didn’t care, or by asking them I put them in an uncomfortable position where they felt like they couldn’t refuse. My "thoughtfulness" (aka the projection of my anxiety) suddenly became an inconvenience for others.

Ever since I realised this, I’ve been working on not overthinking or overcompensating. I’ll ask once (max twice), and if the answer is not a clear “yes”, I’ll leave it alone. From that point, the ball is in the other person’s court and it’s up to them to follow up and make their needs known. It all ends up being a win-win because it leads to a more equitable relationship, and the people who don’t care to follow up will no longer waste your time or energy.

Listening to my body and trusting my intuition

The best piece of advice that my psychologist has given me in the last 6 months is to trust the way my body is feeling. She told me, every time I spend time with someone, I should do a body scan and assess how my body feels. Do I feel anxious, do I feel energised, do I feel tense and drained? Even if my mind tells me “this is someone I like spending time with” but my body feels differently, I should always listen to my body first and try to understand why these feelings come up.

Ever since I’ve done this, I’ve become more conscious of who I want to spend more time with. I prioritise relationships where I feel relaxed, excited, happy and energised. I keep relationships where I feel exhausted to a minimum. If there’s any time I’m feeling a bit off, I check in with myself and figure out why I don’t feel good.

I don’t try to rationalise my feelings away (aka ‘You’re just overreacting!’), I actually sit with my feelings and try to figure out where it comes from. There is a reason why feelings come up, and the worst thing I have done in the past is rationalise it and silence them. If it ends up being a personal issue that wasn’t caused by anyone, it's something I have to reckon with on my own. Feelings don’t just come from nowhere, and listening to them for the past 6 months has done wonders for me, and the confidence I have in myself.

A true friend would never take advantage of my kindness, or put me in a position where I couldn’t say no.

I have the best friends in the world (they are funny, fun, talented, loyal, and thoughtful). They taught me that friendships can be both easy and deep, and joy can be found in every moment with them. There is so much kindness, respect and reciprocity – and I am thankful every day I have these relationships in my life.

And yet, my people's pleasing tendencies and anxiety still took over. Even if I wanted to say “no”, I couldn’t because I didn’t want to let anyone down. It got to a point where I was saying yes to everything, as to not (1) disappoint someone, (2) abandon them, or (3) on the extremely rare occasion, out of fear of retaliation. But it was pressure I had put on myself alone.

When I took a step back to really think about it, my friends would never put me in a position where I couldn’t say no (so the pressure I felt was was self inflicted), and they have never taken advantage of my kindness (we do favours for each other constantly, and it's all very equitable). Anyone who makes me feel otherwise is not my friend, and I don’t need to be associated with them. Reminding myself of this allowed me to be more active in setting personal boundaries and sticking with them.

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries

My theme of 2025 was “Artistry”, but I think my true theme of the year is “Boundaries”. I’ve been mostly focusing on setting boundaries for myself (limit doom scrolling, limit exhausting activity, staying home more), but I’ve had to set boundaries with others as well.

Jennette McCurdy had a Q&A at the Sydney Opera House a few years ago when she was promoting her book I’m Glad My Mom Died (amazing memoir, I highly recommend it!) and she said two things:

“If there’s any resentment, a boundary was probably broken.”

“If boundaries end a relationship then good, that’s what they are there for.”

These two quotes really resonated with me, because up to that point, I didn’t really understand the mechanics of boundaries – how to establish them and how to set consequences when they were broken. At the time, I didn’t need to outwardly set any boundaries with my best relationships because mutual respect was already built in (I see this as a massive privilege that I do not take lightly).

However, for the relationships that were a bit more rocky, I didn’t even know how to set a boundary (and stick to it), and when I tried to, they often found a way to break it. Instead of making my needs known or trying harder to speak up, I just allowed the relationship to keep going the way it was (which was honestly my bad). This meant that resentment would build up over time on my end. Eventually these types of relationships would break down, because the resentment would go so deep I could never fully trust the person again. Resentment is something that I never want to hold onto, and by setting boundaries early it sets the relationship up for success, or ends it sooner for the better.

You can put your needs first and still be helpful to others

I always had the fear that if I stopped being a people pleaser it would be the equivalent of “turning off my humanity” (anyone who is a The Vampire Diaries fan, rise up!).

In the show, vampires are capable of “turning off their humanity” and they become evil and heartless killing machines. For some reason I always felt that if I ever said “no” to someone, I was on the path to becoming a full-blown villain (yeah, irrational I know).

Putting my needs first was always associated with being “selfish”, and I never wanted to be that. I had it in my head that you could either be very helpful or very selfish, and there was nothing in between. I don’t know what clicked this year, but I have been using "Por qué no los dos?" for everything this year. Putting my needs first and being helpful to others isn’t mutually exclusive, and instead of thinking in a scarcity mindset, I’ve been aiming for balance in every social situation.

Friendships are about being mildly inconvenienced (but nothing more!)

I saw a creator on TikTok say “being a friend means you are mildly inconvenienced from time to time.” This has stuck with me ever since I heard it, and I now use it as a scale for my relationships. Friendships should always be a net positive, and even if you have to wake up early, sacrifice a cozy night at home to hang out with a friend, it should always be an enjoyable experience.

The attitude around friendships across our culture nowadays has changed drastically, in the midst of the “self love” rhetoric and “protecting one’s peace”, people have taken it too far and forgotten what it’s like to make friends or build a community.

Doing things with friends and for friends always has an element of inconvenience – you may need to travel in bad weather to catch up with them for dinner, you may need to help them move even if it takes up half of your day. Doing favors for friends may feel inconvenient at times, but should never come with a sense of dread or obligation. If I feel a sense of obligation towards my friends, I have to think, where is this coming from? Is the relationship unbalanced, am I too tired, will this be a net negative?

I’ve been more conscious of the difference between inconvenience and obligation, and it has really helped me decide which relationships are worth putting energy into.

If they can, why can’t I?

Last year, in my Deb Wrapped 2024, I reflected on my people pleasing, which inadvertently inspired this whole 6 month journey:

“When someone would decline an invite because they didn’t have energy or their schedule didn’t align that day (which is a fair response), I would admittedly feel annoyed (an unfair response). I’d catch myself and wonder if it was true annoyance, or perhaps a sense of disappointment that someone wouldn’t do the same thing that I would do for them. But over time I realised it was not annoyance or disappointment, but more a twinge of envy that other people were capable of sticking to their boundaries and prioritising themselves, unlike me. Eventually, I told myself, ‘You could do the same you know…’ and while it was hard to believe at first, slowly I did.”

Since I wrote that I’ve been actively prioritising my schedule, saying no, and being more aware of my own needs and energy levels. And just like that, those feelings of annoyance and envy have completely disappeared.

I’m choosing to do this

As a full grown adult, I’ve realised that I have complete freedom to do whatever I want. I don’t have to answer to anyone, and everything in my life is something I’ve agreed to (whether it’s out of obligation or not). So I thought to myself, why am I moving through my life as if things have been forced upon me? No one put a gun to my head and made me agree to anything, yet – I’m acting as if I didn’t have a choice.

Ever since I’ve moved out of this victim mentality, I’ve felt 1000 times better. Everything I agree to is my choice, and even if it’s a little inconvenient (see above), this is something I’ve decided to participate in. And if I really didn’t want to, I wouldn’t do it. Having this new perspective has really liberated me, and given me more power and confidence in my choices.

2025 has been a really liberating year for me so far, and even though I’ve talked about all the ways I’ve set boundaries, my outward behaviour hasn’t changed all that much. I still have the same relationships, I still go out way too much (my friends get exhausted looking at how active my Instagram stories are), and I still show up for the people I care about. The main difference now is, I show up for myself 100% of the time.

2024 was a great year – but a complicated one to put into words. I experienced a lot of slow and subtle growth, yet my approach to life has completely changed over the past year. Everything you’re about to read is 10 years in the making, not just the last 12 months.

I didn’t go through any life-changing events in 2024 – instead, I took all my experiences, successes, and repeated failures from the past decade, and was able to rebuild my mindset into something more flexible, forgiving and productive.

So let’s reflect on 2024’s theme: Focus and Ambition

I chose “focus and ambition” to be my theme in 2024 because I wanted to actually get stuff done. I wanted to get creative again, and achieve something.

After a long period of burnout and recovery in my mid to late 20s, I knew 2024 was the time to slowly introduce a bit of ambition back into my life again. But after this year, I realised that even though I still do have ambitions, the goals aren’t as impressive or lofty as they used to be. I think it’s because since my 20s, I’ve realised that (1) I have everything I truly want now; (2) some outcomes are not worth the effort anymore; and (3) the hardest things to achieve are my intrinsic goals, showing up, and doing things consistently.

My focus improved this year – because I decided to stop overthinking so much. I’m a victim of future planning – while it is one of my strengths, it can be debilitating 80% of the time. I would spend most of my time planning things instead of doing them, and when I was done planning, I’d think about planning the next thing. Letting go of my overthinking side and trying to work with the present definitely helped my focus in 2024. I know next year it will be even better.

My 2025 theme is… Artistry

I ultimately chose Artistry as my theme because I want to dive back into the craft of making things, learning new skills, and improving old ones.

Now that my day job leans more into directing, strategy, and management, I’m designing way less and I feel like I’m losing the skill. I want to continue being on the tools, and the more I do it outside of work, the better I’ll be at my job as a director. I want to try new things like cinematography and film grading. I want to edit, illustrate, and make print projects. The opportunities are endless and I’m genuinely excited to make things without the pressure to monetise it. The stakes are low, and that’s the best space to be creative.

Before we get into my 2024 learnings, here are my stats:

• I listened to 14,426 minutes of music and podcasts (5,319 minutes less than last year – My top artist was Stray Kids, my top song was Tip Toe by HBYS)

• I watched 51 films (13 more than last year – My favourite film was The Substance)

• I watched 12 TV shows (14 less than last year – My favourite show was Severance)

• I finished 13 books and 4 graphic novels (10 more than last year – My favourite books were The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Heroes by Stephen Fry, Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, and Tomie by Junji Ito)

• My favourite moment of 2024: Meeting Bang Chan and Felix from Stray Kids and talking to them about being Australian for 20 minutes. And learning how to tumbleturn (I’ve been swimming since I was a kid and never was able to do it!)

• My rating of the year: 8.5/10

My biggest revelation of 2024 was… how much guilt and shame I carried in my everyday life

Guilt and shame is such an internal emotion, it’s not something you talk about with others often – so I didn’t realise how severe my guilt was when it came to normal everyday situations.

There was one situation in this year where I felt so bad, and so insanely guilty, even though I didn’t do anything objectively wrong other than put my needs first (verified by my friends, family, and therapist).

After that situation subsided, I took a step back and I reflected on these extreme feelings of guilt and shame – even though I knew my decision was the best outcome for me and all the parties involved. Shortly after, I came across a term called “toxic guilt” which explains my own thought process pretty well:

“There are two types of guilt: the first type signals that we have compromised a core value, while the second type, toxic guilt, involves assuming responsibility for others' emotions and blaming ourselves for causing negative feelings in them. Toxic guilt may manifest as feeling guilty for declining to talk over the phone with a friend who wants to discuss their stressful day because you are emotionally drained, or for being unable to visit a parent due to a busy week and suggesting they visit you instead. In these scenarios, you are simply communicating your limitations and needs.”

So when I thought about it, I recognised that I suffer from toxic guilt in many every day situations:

• Not wanting to flake on plans or decline an invite because I don’t want someone to feel rejected (I would much rather not be invited than say no).

• Feeling awful about not following someone’s advice after I’ve asked for their perspective

• Feeling terrible about rejecting someone because I don’t want to make them feel bad or hurt their self esteem (this is my least favourite part of dating and why I decided to opt out, I’d much rather be rejected than reject someone else)

• A less serious one – when meeting someone for the first time, I don't say someone’s name out loud because I’m afraid of pronouncing/getting it wrong and I’ll make them feel bad (this is so stupid but this makes so much sense with my toxic guilt!)

The funny thing is, if the roles were reversed (someone was rejecting me, flaking on me, not following my advice, getting my name wrong), I honestly wouldn’t care as much or take it personally. I’d accept it as is, and just move on with my life.

This year, I went back to therapy and I’ve been talking to my psychologist about recognising and healing that guilt. Any time I feel any guilt or shame now, I take a step back, think about the situation objectively and ask myself, “Was anyone truly hurt from this interaction?” (the answer is usually no), “and if they were, what can I do to fix it?”. Instead of carrying around the shame and ruminating on it, I’ve been able to catch myself when these feelings come up.

Shortly after this revelation, I read Brene Brown’s Gifts of Imperfection, which explores shame in great depth. If anything I said above resonates with you, I highly recommend you read it too.

I need to always trust my gut and body, no matter how logical the situation seems

In late 2024, I found myself in an emotional pickle. My anxiety shot right up, I wasn’t eating well, I was stressed – and my body and mind were fighting each other. I somehow convinced myself that I had to endure the suffering to become more mentally resilient… but my body was weak, tired, and starving itself as a result.

I remember talking to my friends and family about the situation, and they (not knowing how severe my anxiety was affecting my body), gave me advice to soothe my mind and take a chance on the opportunity. At the time, I wanted to take the opportunity as well. However, my body didn’t feel that way in the slightest. Even when things were positive, I was still feeling anxious, and I hadn’t felt that uneasy in a really long time.

I spent a lot of time negotiating with myself – my gut told me it felt wrong, but from an outside perspective things didn’t seem bad at all. As time went on, the situation became worse (objectively), and my body reacted in a worse way too. I stayed in bed for days (literally brainrotting and sleeping) because I was so mentally spent. Once I got myself out of the situation, the switch was like day and night. I immediately felt happier, I gained my appetite again, and I jumped back into my hobbies like nothing had happened.

After this whole ordeal, I realised that I can’t ignore when my body is reacting strangely to a new situation. My gut has never been wrong, and when I’ve ignored it, I’ve found myself in a pickle just like this one. I’ve spent the last few years building a strong foundation for myself, building hobbies, relationships, and a sense of peace – and if anything comes in and disrupts it, it’s not something I can ignore.

Never make yourself small to accommodate someone who can’t match your level

When I feel like I have to diminish my light or make myself small to be palatable to others, I know they aren’t “my people”. When I meet people who make me feel self-conscious – I overthink things, I limit my personality and restrict myself. That’s no way to live, yet a lot of us do it every day.

I’m really thankful that my main circle is filled with people who match my freak (and enable me a bit too much). If there’s anyone who makes you feel ashamed for being who you are, or makes you feel like you’re annoying or bothersome to them, ditch them and find cooler people to hang out with! You’ll never be too much for the right people.

Don’t sacrifice your plans and needs, to make it convenient for someone else

Because of my people pleasing nature, I have a tendency to put other people’s needs above my own. Here are a few examples:

1. If I carved out a day for myself to relax, and my friend (or even a stranger) had a desire to meet me on that same day, I would go out of my way to move around my plans to accommodate their preference (instead of doing the normal thing and trying to arrange a different date).

2. If I was on a trip and I wanted to do something but no one else was interested, I would not end up doing what I wanted to do.

3. If someone wanted to attend something and needed company, I’d agree to do it even if I really didn’t want to. It would be even worse if I was already physically exhausted but did it anyway.

Reflecting back on these points, they all seem like minor sacrifices for a normal person. But for an extreme people pleaser like myself, constantly making these choices would wear me down over time (i.e. death by a thousand cuts).

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do things like this EVER (if anything, compromises have to be made at times, and being a good friend is always important), but once you ignore your needs and boundaries countless times like I did, you start to feel resentful because you’re constantly betraying yourself when no one even asked for it. I found myself feeling tired and annoyed because I wasn’t capable of EVER putting my own needs first. I just felt “selfish”, “bad”, and “guilty” if I ever put my own desires above anyone else. No one forced me to sacrifice anything, yet here I was – constantly putting my needs last.

Even if it seems small, the more you ignore your own needs, the more your mind internalises that you don’t matter.

And when someone would decline an invite because they didn’t have energy or their schedule didn’t align that day (which is a fair response), I would admittedly feel annoyed (an unfair response). I’d catch myself and wonder if it was true annoyance, or perhaps a sense of disappointment that someone wouldn’t do the same thing that I would do for them. But over time I realised it was not annoyance or disappointment, but more a twinge of envy that other people were capable of sticking to their boundaries and prioritising themselves, unlike me. Eventually, I told myself, ‘You could do the same you know…’ and while it was hard to believe at first, slowly I did.

Over the past year, I’ve reflected on this behaviour and been unlearning these default reactions. Instead of going out of my way to move things around when I have my own set plans, I practice patience and try to find another date that works. If I want to do something and no one else wants to do it, I go on my own. If I’m not interested in going to something, I’m honest about it and I don’t go. These seem granular, but they have been really big steps for me emotionally. It’s been quite a journey but I’m getting better every day.

I stopped making excuses when it came to my creativity

Ever since I was young, I’ve always used the phrase “I’ll be ready when…”.

I’ll be ready to draw when I’m not doing exams.

I’ll be ready to create things when I’m not working.

I'll be ready to stick to my goals when it’s the New Year.

But this year, I stopped thinking this way. What was the catalyst? It was The Artist’s Way. I did a review of it 2 blogs ago, but these two quotes really stuck out to me from the book:

“Do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?” “Yes… the same age you will be if you don’t.”

“Blocked creatives like to think they are looking to change their life in one fell swoop. Creative people are dramatic, and we use negative drama to scare ourselves out of our creativity with this notion of wholesale and often destructive change. Instead of writing three pages a day on a screenplay, we prefer worrying about how we will have to move to Hollywood if the script gets bought. Which it can’t anyway because we are too busy worrying about selling it to write it.”

In my life, it was so easy to find an excuse to not do something creative. I’d say “I’m too old to learn”, “I’m not ready”, “I don’t have the energy or time…” or I’d overthink it and worry about the consequences of my creativity (“What if I have to start monetising it?” “What if I hate it later on? It would just be a waste of time then!”).

But this year, I just accepted this simple fact: I’m either doing the thing or I’m NOT doing the thing. There’s no excuses, there’s no “I’ll do it when…” – if it’s not in my life right now, I don’t value it enough for it to be in my life right now.

Thinking about doing something isn’t going to move the needle either. No one is going to look at you and say, “Wow she really thought about drawing! Good for her!” It’s not an achievement to think about something and not take action with it.

Ever since I switched to this mentality, I feel free. I’m no longer making excuses for myself – I accept things as they are, and as a result, I don’t regret anything when it comes to how I’m spending my time.

If I feel hesitant about something, I now ask myself “What am I afraid of?”

Even till this day, I can’t help but procrastinate. Sometimes it happens because of low energy levels or pure laziness, but when I’ve been putting off a task for a few weeks, I sit down and ask myself “What am I afraid of?”.

Usually I procrastinate for a few reasons:

1. I genuinely don’t have the time or energy (if this happens, I specifically carve out a full day to do it, even if the task itself takes only an hour)

2. I’m afraid it’s going to open a can of worms and lead to more tasks (it’s like when you kill the big spider and then 1000 small spiders burst from its dead body)

3. I’m worried that it will impact my life our routine in some way (it’s giving the same energy as “Instead of writing three pages a day on a screenplay, we prefer worrying about how we will have to move to Hollywood if the script gets bought.”)

4. I’m worried that it will lead to some sort of embarrassment in the future (may be valid, most of the time irrational)

So if it’s the first two reasons – that’s an easy fix: I just need some brain space, time and capacity.

If it’s the 3rd one or 4th one, I have to be honest to myself about my anxieties, and whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. If it’s something I want to do despite the “risks”, I have to accept the risks will always be part of the deal. If it’s something I’d rather avoid, I’ll take it off my list and do something else. 90% of the time, my fears are irrational and I’m ruminating on something that won’t happen. I usually break down the task to granular steps so it’s a bit easier to complete.

Success without confidence breeds imposter syndrome

I’ve had impostor syndrome for almost my whole career, and this TikTok explained why so clearly for me; “If you do really well, and you don’t believe in yourself – you do not become secure. A lot of people think that becoming secure is about being successful – that’s not the case. If you’re really successful, you don’t end up with security, you end up with impostor syndrome.”

Even though I’ve been working for over a decade and experienced some successes, my confidence has never been at the same level as my experience. No matter what, I’d always be comparing myself to others better than me, instead of realising the skills I have are great on their own.

In the last few years my confidence has increased, especially now that I have more responsibility at work. Of course, there’s a few things I want to improve, but the impostor syndrome has definitely subsided. Moving forward, if I ever feel impostor syndrome I’m going to take a step back and build my confidence up to my current skillset level.

I don’t need to know every step, just the next one

I watched this YouTube video, and the creator said “You don’t need to know every step, just the next one”, and I think this is an incredible antidote to the anxiety I’ve felt about my life. I always want to plan 10 steps ahead to have a sense of control in my life (it’s almost like a defense mechanism). But instead of helping me, it really hindered and paralysed me.

It was this year that I realised that only knowing the next step is all I need. It keeps me focused and stops me overthinking.

Because I suffer from anxiety, I always want to prematurely react to things that haven’t happened yet – even though there’s no guarantee that it will even happen at all. It’s okay to think about sometimes, but ruminating on multiple hypothetical outcomes can be unhealthy and debilitating. When someone I know is overthinking the future, I always say “cross the bridge when you get to it” – and I always have to remind myself how important that advice is for me as well.

11 Bonus 2024 learnings I now live by

1. Doing a bit today means doing a bit less tomorrow

2. Going back is not moving backwards

3. It’s never too late to learn something new

4. No one needs to know everything about you all the time

5. ‘Fucking the text man for texts’ altered my brain chemistry

6. There’s a direct correlation between my exhaustion levels and my desire to doomscroll

7. I’m only allowed to pick 1 struggle at any given time

8. I stopped overthinking, and I got 80% of my time back

9. Clarity doesn’t come from waiting, it comes from doing (also from that YouTube Video!)

10. Everyone’s advice is their shared experience – pick and choose what works for you, and ignore the rest (you are not them, they are not you)

11. Unhappiness is the gap between your ideal self and current self

As for the small changes in 2025…

1. Challenge any feelings of guilt when they come up

2. Play into my limitations when it comes to art and make it my strength

3. Work on being less impulsive (in life and in art) – I need to sleep on decisions, and I need to stop feeling pressure to “react”

4. Listen to my gut and body more

5. Focus on improving my illustration and design work, developing my skills and POV in creative areas

6. Spend less time on TikTok, decrease brain rot

7. Declutter, donate, spend less money and don’t spend impulsively

8. Detach, detach, detach

9. Do a bit today so I do less tomorrow

10. Read 3 books from my to-be-read pile before buying a new book

This is probably one of the longest blog posts I’ve ever written in my life – if you have read up to this point, thank you so much for being here. Happy New Year!

There’s a trend going around the internet called the “Winter Arc Challenge”, where people use the last few months of the year to set up good habits and routines ahead of 2025, so they can start the new year with a bit of success.

When I was younger, I used to love setting resolutions – I was always excited at the prospect of starting the year with a clean slate… only to break my resolutions within a couple weeks of the new year. As time went on, I decided to opt for a “theme of the year” instead, and that worked way more effectively. I find that having a yearly theme keeps me grounded because I’m not tied to a specific goal – I’m allowed to evolve.

And when it comes to goals these days, I “reset” myself any time I want; every few months, every week, sometimes every few days. My aspirations are always changing as I learn more about myself, and I never want to be restricted by my past goals.

So I’m going to share my 2024 Summer Arc Reset Routine™ (It’s a Summer Arc because I live in Australia). These are small things I do so I always feel aligned with my current purpose and goals. When I’m feeling frazzled or lost, I often come back to these methods and start again.

NOTE: These are methods to help you add more structure and clarity into your life. It shouldn’t feel like a prison – think of it as a light guide that will continue to evolve as you live day to day.

Create a life rating table so you know what areas you need to improve

When I was feeling the most frazzled and lost in 2024, I created the “Life Rating” table for myself. I wanted to be aware of the parts in my life that needed improvement, as well the categories that I was happy with and could leave on autopilot.

This method has been done before in multiple ways (i.e. most notably, the Wheel of life). However, I wanted to create a version that worked better for me visually, and something I could edit in Google Docs.

This is how it works: I create a table with life categories (such as Creativity, Family, Career) and give it a percentage rating. On the right side I have a column named “Improvements / Comments” where I add goals, feedback or encouragement to improve my rating of that specific category. This is an example on what it could look like:

I also colour code it so it’s visually clear which categories I need work on:

• 0-20%: Red

• 30-70%: Orange

• 80-90%: Yellow

• 100%: Green

How I choose my percentage rating is purely based on vibes, and it’s important for me that it’s rated against my personal standards and no one else’s. At the end of the day, even though everyone feels pressure from others around them, your life satisfaction should only be based on how you feel about yourself.

I really love this system because I can check back whenever I want and add categories that are relevant. All the ones above may not apply to you, so I encourage you to make your own and fill it with your own life categories.

Timeblock a rough weekly schedule so you know when you need to be doing things

I love routine and structure, so I always enjoy creating a rough weekly schedule for myself. It gives me a sense of peace knowing all the things I need to cover during the week are accounted for (e.g. fitness, admin, creative time).

I don’t always stick to this schedule perfectly (again, this is a guide, and this doesn’t include variable events like social activities), but I find it helpful to know the habits I want to build are timeblocked into my week. So when the time comes, I know I only need to focus on that one thing.

Focus on adding things in your life that you want to do, not things you should do

This is less of a practical tip, and more of an emotional one. If you haven’t read The Crossroads Between Should and Must, I highly recommend it because it changed my perspective about the obligations in my life.

I realised a lot of my goals and aspirations were driven by a “should” (e.g. I should sell products, I should post on IG daily to keep engagement up), instead of a “must” or ”want” (e.g. I must travel to Japan, I want to draw more often).

I didn’t realise how much energy “shoulds” took up in my life until recently. When I was burnt out a few years ago, everything turned into a “should” and I felt so disillusioned because I felt like I wasn’t living for myself anymore – I was living for others.

So I changed my mindset; and I actively removed the obligations and “shoulds” from my life. I also adjusted my phrasing for a lot of them – instead of saying “I should”, I now say “I get to” or “I want to”. Here are some examples:

1. When I think “I should catch up with that person”: In all honesty, it sounds like I don’t want to see that person. So I don’t actively make plans until I really want to.

2. “I should wake up and go swimming”: I changed it to “I get to wake up and go swimming”. Swimming is something I truly enjoy, so changing my thought process to that (even though it's at 5am in the morning) makes it more exciting.

3. “I should do an artistic project this year”: Instead, “I get to work on an art project this year” makes it immediately sound like a privilege and something that’s already on the horizon. It feels optimistic and encouraging.

And when it comes to adding new things into my life – time is precious, and I no longer add things that feel like obligations. I always have to remind myself that I’m a grown adult, and I don’t have to do anything I don't want to.

Create a morning and evening routine that has a maximum of 2 focus points, and be realistic about what you can do it in a day

I’ve been trying to perfect my morning and evening routine ever since I started a 9-5 job. It’s been pretty hard to stick to a routine over the years, and I realised why: I was trying to do too much.

My lifestyle has changed over time, but the main thing that hasn’t changed is: I get really tired in the evenings. After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is more things. Even if the tasks are easy or ‘relaxing’, doing 5 different things after getting home (e.g. writing a daily reflection, doing yoga, drawing, watching an episode of TV etc…) is incredibly bothersome and overwhelming. I fell into the trap of making every tiny thing into a task, and mentally it drained me every night.

I think this may be the first time in my life where I’ve accepted that having a very structured nighttime routine is unsustainable. So instead of trying to do many specific things daily, I’m opting to focus on my personal project work when I get home before 8pm, and making sure I do a 10 minute tidy every day. If I get home after 8pm, the only thing I have to do is the daily tidy. And if I don’t do the daily tidy because I’m too exhausted, I do it the next morning.

As for my morning routines – my mornings fluctuate a lot, and I often have meetings from 7 or 8am, so the only thing that I can control is what I do on my morning commute to work. On the train, I read a book or draw on my iPad. (I’ve successfully stopped scrolling on the train and I’m very proud of myself.)

Change the associations with your environment

Lately I’ve realised the minute I sit down on my couch, I fall asleep and nap for 3 hours. Or I doom scroll (also for 3 hours). My couch is my resting area, and my body responds to it immediately and doesn’t feel compelled to do anything productive when I sit down.

So I’ve started changing my physical routine a bit. When I get home, I do not sit down on my couch until I’ve done my main 2 nighttime tasks (project work and my 10 minute tidy). I also cannot sit on my couch and scroll at the same time (I am allowed to scroll, but I have to sit somewhere else). Mixing my up environmental associations has really refreshed my perspective and I don’t spend as much time doom scrolling.

Add some rules and restrictions to get yourself started on your journey

We often succeed when we put limitations on our circumstances, because it makes us focus on only a few things. I usually like giving myself ‘rules’ for my current life, something that grounds me. I usually go back and make updates to this list constantly – they aren’t strict rules, but they are good reminders for me.

Remember, if the rules you make no longer serve you, you can change them at any time! You are not a failure for doing so, you’re evolving. I used to beat myself up constantly for not maintaining the same habits from years ago, when in actuality – my lifestyle had changed so much it no longer made sense to keep doing them. For example, it took a while for me to accept that I wasn’t going to make personal monthly Spotify playlists anymore. It bothered me that I couldn’t maintain something so simple, but I just didn’t have the capacity to do it anymore and it quickly became a should, not a want.

I love setting these rules – and even though I break them often (haha), I always want to try again… which is a testament to how much I value certain goals or habits.

Here’s examples of my priorities and rules going into 2025:

Yes to:

• Reading daily

• Drawing daily (exercises in morning)

• Life drawing fortnightly

• Project work 1 hour minimum per night (illustration and/or graphic design and/or filming my process)

• 10 minutes of tidy (NON negotiable)

• Monthly Artist date (NON negotiable)

• Weekly admin starting on Friday nights

• Swimming, Tennis, Badminton, Walking, Yoga weekly

  • Swimming - Saturday Mornings

  • Yoga - Saturday Mornings

  • Badminton - Sunday Mornings

  • Tennis - Sunday Afternoons

  • Walking - Daily (ish)

• One-shot craft days with friends (calligraphy, riso, book-binding, clay)

• Being more thoughtful about how I spend money

Restrictions:

• No journaling or morning pages unless I’m emotionally stuck

• No more than 2 hrs of TikTok a day

• No project time required if I get home past 8pm

• No turning fun things an obligation (TV, movies, hobbies etc)

My slow build into 2025 has felt incredibly solid and optimistic for me – I think over time I’ve become more accepting that I’m allowed to make mistakes, restart constantly, and put things out there that aren’t perfect. Things will evolve naturally as I live my life, and I’m excited to see how it does.

After 12 long weeks, I officially finished The Artist’s Way. I do have to admit, it was a little too long and it became a bit of a slog towards the end. But even so, I found it intriguing, fulfilling, and really helpful for my artistic journey.

I talked about it in my last blog post, but within two weeks of starting The Artist’s Way, I got out of my creative rut and started drawing again. Writing morning pages took the anxieties out of my head, and artist’s dates reminded me of my favourite pastime – taking myself out on solo adventures. I started to realise unlocking creativity starts with prioritising my own needs and taking care of myself. 

So what did I learn from the 12 weeks?

I learned that creativity really isn’t that serious, and it shouldn’t be burdensome. Creativity is a relief, it’s an escape. We add so much weight to being creative and being artistic, because it indirectly exposes our thoughts, feelings, and ‘talent’ to others. It can make us feel vulnerable, and judged – I understand why people don’t want to jump into it. 

We also tend to commodify creativity and art too much, but at its core, creativity is really only for yourself. Creativity is its own reward and should always be thought of in that way. Because I design professionally, I need to seek approvals and validation for the work I do every day – and unfortunately it’s become a mentality that I’ve adopted for my own personal art. I think that’s why I put so much weight on the success of my personal projects (how much attention and positive feedback it gets), rather than just using these projects as a tool to have fun.

After reading The Artist’s Way I’ve realised that being creative is about relinquishing control, having faith, and enjoying the process right in front of you. That sounds so anxiety-inducing for many (me included), but the anxiety never comes from the act of creativity itself, but the weight and pressure we put on the outcome. It’s taught me that if I’m not enjoying the process of the craft, why am I doing it? Adopting this mentality across other factors of my life has helped me figure out what I need to keep in my life, and what I need to remove.

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What are my favourite excerpts from the book?

There were a lot of amazing passages from the book that resonated with me. I’m going to include them down below.

On conserving energy:

“Everyone has an inner well, a place that we draw from (an artistic reservoir). Any extended period or piece of work draws heavily on our artist well. The truth is that work can dry up because it’s going so well.”

“In any creative life, there are dry seasons. In a creative life, droughts are necessary. The time in the desert brings us clarity and charity. When you are in drought, know that it is to a purpose.”

“Your artist needs to be taken out, pampered, and listened to.”

“An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted.”

On being a perfectionist:

“Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting to making and to lose sight of the whole.”

On anxiety and being our own worst enemy:

“Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety. We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.”

“Blocked creatives like to think they are looking to change their life in one fell swoop. Creative people are dramatic, and we use negative drama to scare ourselves out of our creativity with this notion of wholesale and often destructive change. Instead of writing three pages a day on a screenplay, we prefer worrying about how we will have to move to Hollywood if the script gets bought. Which it can’t anyway because we are too busy worrying about selling it to write it.”

“Indulging ourselves in a frantic fantasy of what our life would look like if we were real artists, we fail to see the many small creative changes that we could make at this very moment.”

On being a beginner and always learning:

“To recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”

“In a sense, no creative act is ever finished. You can’t learn to act because there’s always more to learn.”

On excuses:

“Stop telling yourself it's too late.

Stop waiting to make enough money to do something you’d really love.

Stop fearing what your family and friends will think of you.

Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you’ve got”

““I’m too old” is something we tell ourselves to save ourselves from the emotional costs of the ego deflation involved in being a beginner.”

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?. Yes… the same age you will be if you don’t.”

One of my favourite exercises: Goal Search

This was one of my favourite exercises from The Artist’s Way – it felt very direct and purposeful. I decided to include it here because I know others will find it useful too.

You may find the following exercise difficult. Allow yourself to do it anyway. If multiple dreams occur to you, do the exercise for each one of them. The simple act of imagining a dream in concrete detail helps us to bring it into reality. Think of your goal search as a preliminary architect’s drawing for the life you would wish to have. I am indebted to Barbara Sher and Shakti Gawain for the inspiration for these tasks.

The Steps

• Name your dream. That’s right. Write it down. “ In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be a ________________. ”

• Name one concrete goal that signals to you its accomplishment. On your emotional compass, this goal signifies true north. (Note: two people may want to be an actress. They share that dream. For one, an article in People magazine is the concrete goal. To her, glamour is the emotional center for her dream; glamour is true north. For the second actress, the concrete goal is a good review in a Broadway play. To her, respect as a creative artist is the emotional center of her dream; respect is true north. Actress one might be happy as a soap star. Actress two would need stage work to fulfill her dream. On the surface. both seem to desire the same thing.)

• In a perfect world, where would you like to be in five years in relation to your dream and true north?

• In the world we inhabit now, what action can you take this year to move you closer?

• What action can you take this month? This week? This day? Right now?

• List your dream (for example, to be a famous film director). List its true north (respect and higher consciousness. mass communication.) Select a role model (Walt Disney. Ron Howard. Michael Powell). Make an action plan. Five years. Three years. One year. One month. One week. Now. Choose an action.

What will I be doing moving forward?

Morning pages

Admittedly towards the end, morning pages were becoming boring and tiresome. I felt like I was repeating myself, it was taking time out of my commute when I could’ve been drawing or reading – which almost felt counterproductive. My morning commute is around 1 hour long, and I typically use that time to read books or draw on the train. However, when I started doing morning pages, writing took over my drawing time and I stopped drawing altogether.

Moving forward I will no longer be writing morning pages, but I’ll be recording audio diaries at the end of the day so I have a bit more to reflect on and everything feels a bit more fresh. This will also improve my speaking skills, my enunciation (my Australian accent tends to make my smoosh words together), and listening to my voice notes is way more fun than rereading a wall of boring text. I’ve been recording my daily entries for a couple of weeks now, but I find it way more fun and something I look forward to.

Artist dates

As for Aritst’s dates, doing a weekly date is often for me, especially when I socialise a lot during the week. I also want to prioritise time on my own, so I have the mental capacity to be creative. So I’m going to a museum or movie twice a month instead, and it doesn’t disrupt my weekly routine either. I’ve marked a bi-weekly artist date for myself – something I’ll prioritise when it comes around, and I’ll find ways to enjoy some time on my own.

Being mindful 

Instead of doom scrolling immediately when I’m bored, I’ll spend 30 minutes a day doing simple and mindful activities – like stretching or finishing puzzles on my coffee table. It’s a simple act, it doesn’t relate to creativity at all, but it’s a moment for me to step away from my regular routine to feel mindful and restful. 

Splitting up ‘no pressure creative drawing time’ from ‘focused project time’

My biggest struggle is trying to find time to enjoy creativity with no purpose, but also getting things done. I’ve been drawing aimlessly for a few months, and while the process has been fun, my focus has been all over the place and I haven’t created anything substantial. So moving forward, I’ve decided that I will dedicate time to “no pressure free creative drawing” on my morning commute – and an hour before bed I will spend time working on a monthly project that has a deadline and output. This is how they differ:

• Morning “no pressure free creative drawing/time” (10 minutes minimum) 

  • Treating this like a warm up

  • I’m allowed to draw things that are bad

  • I just have to do the bare minimum

  • I’m just drawing to draw, so I can move my hand around

• Night “focused project time” (1 hour minimum)

  • I have a monthly project I need to finish, deadline is the end of the month

  • It can be illustration, writing, graphic design, print or craft related 

  • It’s all I focus on for the month, 1 project at a time

  • If the project finishes early, I will start on another and the deadline will be at the end of the same month

This way I get to enjoy my creative time and slowly improve my skills with no pressure, and I also get to finish a cool little project by the end of each month. There’s a lot of cool ideas I have floating around in my head, and I want to try them all.

My final thoughts

While on this journey, I discovered how much of my creativity was stilted by my own mentality – whether it was from stress, self-doubt or perfectionism. I also went through a period of time shortly after finishing The Artist’s Way where I could barely bring myself to pick up a pencil, let alone think about projects. But only a week after that, my brain was brimming with ideas, intense enthusiasm, and a thirst to share knowledge again. Creativity is a wonderful thing, and should never feel like a chore.

It has been 6 weeks since I started my journey with The Artist’s Way, and I have to say, it’s pretty life-changing. I’m at the halfway point, and to be honest, I’m very surprised I’ve gotten this far at all. If I gave this exercise to 2023 Deb, she would’ve completely failed. (Though to be fair, I still have 6 weeks to go so I could still fail). 

The Artist’s Way was something I always heard about in the art community – people said it was the book that ”creatively unblocks you” when you really need it. The phrase “morning pages” was even more common, and was used by people who weren’t even reading the book. I did try morning pages a few years ago, but failed to maintain it longer than 2 weeks. I think I failed because I didn’t truly understand why I was doing it, and I felt like it was a chore more than anything.

I bought the book earlier this year on a whim – but let it gather dust on my shelf for a few months because I didn’t really need it – I was at my peak creativity at the time. A few months later however, I started to feel a strain on my artistic practice. I was dreading drawing, and struggled to create anything I was remotely happy with. I started to fear being creative because I wasn’t ready to face the reality that I may not improve at the pace I wanted.

So how has it been so far?

In short – It’s been really good. I’m glad I picked up the book at the time when I did, because I am 100% more equipped to succeed than a few years ago. Since last year I’ve really become less precious about making everything perfect, and I’m being more kind to myself on the creative journeys I go on. If you want to complete The Artist’s Way you have to be in a similar mental space too.

I would say the practice of “Morning Pages” and “Artist Dates” is probably the most significant, I’ve seen a big increase in excitement when it comes to creativity. Within a week of starting, my fear and dread completely disappeared and I was drawing again (and I don’t think it was a coincidence either). I would definitely recommend this journey to anyone who is creatively blocked because you may surprise yourself.

These are a few of my takeaways from the journey so far.

Takeaway 1: Do everything you can to decrease friction and keep yourself on your journey

When it comes to morning pages, the book recommends writing 3 full pages of stream of consciousness. Back in the day, when I did morning pages on my own without The Artist’s Way as a guide, I tried to do this in my journal and quickly gave up. There were a few reasons for this: I find it very straining on my hands to write 3 pages non-stop, my penmanship is not great and it can get very messy and unreadable (which means it’s harder to read back on), and time wise, I don’t feel like I have a lot of dedicated time to complete them.

So I changed my approach this time – instead of writing by hand, I typed up all my morning pages (way more organised!), and instead of doing 3 pages (equivalent to 750 words), I chose 500 words as a goal, so that way I had time on my morning commute to do other things like reading or drawing.

I decided that instead of trying to make things perfect and by-the-book, I would use the core technique cited in Atomic Habits. The book tells you to “just show up”, and work on doing something consistently instead of perfectly. The main goal of morning pages is to do it every morning, so I adapted my approach so I could easily succeed in that goal.

When it comes to The Artist’s Way’s weekly exercises, I complete all of them, but I tend to do them digitally and in words, so even if the task asks me to draw a picture, I tend to write a description instead (Call me lazy, but the task is still completed). When it asks me to physically write a letter to myself and post it, I write an email and schedule it to be sent in a month’s time (It does the same thing but it’s way more time efficient). If I feel any sense of friction to complete a task, I remove the friction and do the task in the easiest way possible.

Takeaway 2: Morning pages are incredibly valuable even if I write gibberish every day

Morning pages are supposed to be a stream of consciousness, and while I initially thought it wouldn’t make a massive difference in my life, it really has. Some days admittedly are slogs (I don’t always have 500 words fresh in my head in the morning), but I’ve found the benefits have been incredible. I definitely have felt more focused during the day – and this was very apparent when I substituted my morning pages for writing *this* every article for 2 days. The Monday and Tuesday I skipped out on – I immediately felt more frazzled and irritable throughout the day, and I don’t think it was a coincidence.

Takeaway 3: The Artist’s Way is about prioritising and valuing yourself

My biggest takeaway from The Artist’s Way was the importance of prioritising yourself and your creative time. I definitely know I prioritise my needs (I take care of myself as much as possible when I can), but I don’t always value my own time above work or social events.

I’m an introvert, and spend a lot of my alone time resting, sleeping, rotting in bed, doom scrolling, and keeping my life in order. Time alone takes up 50% of my weekly hours, so I automatically prioritise social events because I assume they are more rare and harder to come by.

Over the years, this has proven to be the opposite, with my social calendar being healthy and full – and I rarely spend time on my own creative practice. Not that I’m complaining – my favourite part of my life is hanging out with my friends and family, but there’s a part of me that yearns for more time to rest and do creative things on my own. I used to put a hold in my calendar for a “Deb Date” every month, but time and time again, I’d skip over it because it felt like a waste to do that when I could use that time hanging out with my friends (after all, I hang out with myself all the time when I’m alone!).

I realised actively hanging out with myself needed to be a conscious choice, and The Artist’s Way reminded me of that. By valuing my time just as much as time with others, I felt like I was taking care of myself a bit more. This gave me some room to rest, and then gave me energy to be creative on my own.

Takeaway 4: I did this journey at the right time

As I mentioned earlier, I definitely know I started this journey at the right time. I’m a born perfectionist, and while it’s hard to shake that off completely, I have been more forgiving of myself in the past few years. I’ve learnt the true meaning of the platitudes “Done is better than perfect” and “The journey is the goal”. Mentally, I’m more accepting of failure and trying multiple times – and my life is more stable than it was previously. I have a routine, I know my habits and rhythm really well, so if things go awry I know exactly how to counter it.

To succeed at The Artist’s Way, I think you’ll have to accept the journey will be uncomfortable, and requires you to prioritise it. It can be tiring to do something for a long period of time (12 weeks is a lot!). If you fail, it probably means you didn’t want to do it enough, you’re afraid of the outcome, or your lifestyle doesn’t suit it right now. These are all valid reasons, and these are reasons I failed at previous creative endeavours. I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish this one though!

Takeaway 5: I learnt I am afraid of failure and success

In the previous takeaway I mentioned that most people don’t follow through on most creative projects because they’re afraid of the outcome. This often comes down to two reasons: success and failure — and surprisingly, I’m scared of both. Let me explain.

When it comes to fear of failure – I don’t want to face the reality that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be good enough or reach the potential I’ve made up in my head. Even now, I do worry about my own journey with design and drawing because I wonder if I’ve already hit my limit, and my skills cannot progress. (Objectively I know this is false, but my anxiety likes to swirl in this narrative).

On the other hand, it has become apparent to me recently that I’m incredibly fearful of success. There’s a few reasons for this – more success means more eyeballs on my work, progress, and me as a person. Impostor syndrome kicks in – being afraid to be found out that I’m not as good as the success I’ve managed to accidentally achieve. And last but not least, when people succeed, things will change. This was something I struggled with after the success of Timeblock Planner and Expense Tracker, after getting so much attention, I found myself being the “productivity queen”, running a new business (when I was just recovering from burnout from my last one), and I was paralysed trying to make a new move not knowing what that meant for my lifestyle (which I had become really comfortable with). Losing a sense of autonomy (even from success) is a scary thing, and I really love keeping everything of mine small and on a random corner of the internet. I get to set my standard for my schedule, creativity and progress.

During this journey, I’ve been coming to terms with these fears so it doesn’t get in the way of my creative practice. I think I’m getting a bit better but I know there will be ebbs and flows.

–

All in all, my journey with The Artist’s Way has been incredibly effective and fulfilling. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is interested or feels creatively blocked. (This is also the first blog I’ve written in several months, so this is proof I’m doing better!)

Ever since the beginning of the year, my mindset has completely shifted. For the first time in my adult life, I’m not carrying the emotional burden of everything I do. I no longer over-analyse, I don’t over-anticipate, and I’ve stopped ruminating about the most menial tasks. 

I’ve stopped second-guessing, I’ve started to enjoy books, media, art, writing – without worrying about whether I’m wasting my life away doing these things. 

As someone who is known for being productive and constantly optimising for the future, it’s been a constant struggle for me to chill out. It was almost impossible for me to do anything without consciously (or subconsciously) thinking about how it could contribute to my future growth somehow. Until this year, I didn’t realise how much having this default mindset exhausted me and took away energy from things that were supposed to be relaxing.

A lot of external factors have helped me on the journey towards “not caring”; I’m now in my 30s, I have an established routine that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years, I’m focused on cultivating my current relationships, and most importantly, I switched to timed tasks in my Google Cal (explained here, along with other great habits which have helped me this year). 

But emotionally, things are different. 

I don’t need to change who I am, it will happen naturally as I move through life

Instead of trying to control how I grow, I’ve accepted that the best growth will happen naturally. I’ve surrendered control, accepting that I’ll build more knowledge, learn more resilience, and build skills purely from existing. 

While my 20s were filled with intense growth, a lot of my worst (and stunted) moments happened because I was trying to change or deny who I was. I was constantly micromanaging my own growth, hoping I’d push myself into a path that (in hindsight) wasn’t anything I wanted.

Here’s an example: During COVID and my post-business failure, I decided that I didn’t want to be a workaholic anymore (ha!). The culture of work was shifting to anti-hustle, it was basically frowned upon to care about liking your job. I had decided it was my priority to now focus on just getting any job that had a paycheck, and it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it – because enjoying work was lame right?

Instead of accepting that part of me (aka the part that knows work fulfills me, as sad as that sounds), I decided it was better to push myself into a mindset that my peers had, where they were able to compartmentalise their grief about their job within 9-5, and spend the money they earned enjoying the spoils of life. What I learnt during this period was that my work has such an impact on my emotional well-being and I can’t change that – that’s just who I am. And as much as there is criticism about productivity, work, and being a slave to that culture, I can’t help but be interested in and motivated by it, I just really like it. 

Growth will happen, whether I like it or not. Instead of trying to stress myself out about whether I’m making the right choice, I now allow myself to grow naturally. I now approach my personal growth like I do my wardrobe – I have staple pieces, but slowly over the months and years, I add pieces that I come across that make me feel good, fit me well, or that I’m drawn to. I trust the pieces that I pick will match the rest of my wardrobe and my lifestyle – and if it doesn’t, I’ll learn to avoid those types of clothes in the future.

Instead of trying to put restrictions – i.e. limit my wardrobe to 32 pieces (like a minimalist capsule wardrobe) or overconsuming to create a false identity (following trends like clean girl, tomato girl, blueberry nails girl??), I’m letting myself (and my wardrobe) be eclectic, and be an embodiment of my lifestyle and where it takes me. 

Suffering is not a victory

In the last few years, I’ve accepted that I’m not a better artist or better person by allowing myself to suffer during the process.

I think I had adopted the ‘suffering is needed to succeed’ mindset because of the following reasons – I’m a creative person, and being creative is often littered with anxiety, stress and insecurity. People use the term ‘tortured artist’ as a badge of honour. Society also favours the underdog, and scoffs at someone for achieving something so easily (tall poppy syndrome anyone?).

And because of this, I subconsciously developed this mindset: that everything I did wasn’t worthy unless I had suffered or stressed in some way to get there. If something came too easily, I questioned whether I tried hard enough, and if I could have achieved a better result if I drained all my energy into the task. 

This didn’t apply to just art, or my job – it was everything in my life. Even menial tasks needed to have 100% energy and effort in – if I wasn’t agonising over the perfect outcome, then it meant I didn’t do it to the best of my ability. As you can imagine, it was incredibly exhausting living this life – so I eventually accepted that it's okay to enjoy things and things can be easy. 

The time spent worrying about the thing, you could be doing the thing!

There’s a Taylor Swift quote I think about a lot. She’s being interviewed and she talks about her creative process:

“I definitely feel more free to create now, and I’m making more albums at a more rapid pace than I ever did before, because I think the more art you create, hopefully the less pressure you put on yourself. If you stay ready you don’t have to get ready, if you keep making stuff you just keep making stuff and hopefully you get better at it. It doesn’t have to be so, you don’t have to belabour it and polish the doorknob so long you forget to open the door.”

“Polishing the doorknob so long you forget to open the door” was the #1 reason why I struggled with creating ANYTHING. I’d always worry about needing to be prepared – having everything set mentally, emotionally, physically. I spent so much time planning and worrying about the future, that I never did the thing! I’d agonise so much over the consequences of my next steps, I would feel overwhelmed and debilitated – and end up doom scrolling instead.

So now, I don’t think far ahead, I just do the thing if I want to do it. Rather than assessing whether I should spend the time doing Task 1 over Task 2, the time I spent agonising over what’s better, I could’ve done both of the tasks! I’ve actively stopped thinking about outcomes – 90% of the consequences I have in my mind are completely made up, and it took me years to realise that. My anxiety likes to catastrophise and it wasn’t helpful at all.

I embrace my different ‘modes’

My three modes of living are: Gremlin mode, Standard mode, and Advanced Deb mode. Based on how I feel, I do everything at the standard of that mode. Let me explain:

Gremlin mode (35% of my life): This is when I’m feeling crusty, unmotivated, and tired. I allow myself to rot as much as I want, and I’m watching TikTok and YouTube for hours on end. I prioritise getting 9-5 work done, but then nap as soon as I get home. I rely on external factors to motivate me (like people inviting me out to social events), but my internal willpower is gone and I barely have the energy to do anything on my own. My apartment is messy and chaotic but I just leave it like that until the end of the week (This is my current status, I’m surprised I’m even writing this article right now).

Standard mode (55% of my life): This is my most normal status, where I spend most of my day doing everything at 80%. I tidy after myself, I do my skincare routine, I read, I write, I watch TV, I get all my tasks and admin done and feel very balanced.

Advanced Deb mode (10% of my life): This happens very rarely, and this is when I’m at my optimal and ideal self. This means my home is clean, my tasks are all completed, and I’m starting to add new habits to my routine. I’m also being creative, I’m drawing, designing outside of work and I feel like I have time to myself.

Depending on how I feel, I switch between these different modes, and the standard of living adjusts to that mode. I’ve loved adopting this mindset about “modes” because it takes the pressure off to be ‘perfect’ all the time, and just because I’m in ‘Gremlin mode’ today, it doesn’t mean that I won’t be in ‘Advanced Deb mode’ next week. I used to think that if I suddenly fell into Gremlin mode, I would be like that forever (I know, so dramatic) – but being able to identify this is a small phase that I’m going through allows me to accept where I am now, instead of forcing myself to change myself when I’m not in the mental state to do so. 

Last words…

When I reflect on the mental transformation I’ve achieved this year, I can barely believe how chill I’ve been (honestly, I’m cautiously optimistic this will be how I feel for a while). Getting to where I am has been a long journey – 31 years of trial and error, fucking things up, chaos, fun, and spontaneity. What I’ve learnt is no matter what ‘mode’ you're in, even if you’re angry, sad, depressed, it doesn’t mean there can’t be moments of hope, fun and iconic memories that can be made at our worst times. 

Remember… nothing is a waste, nothing matters, and things happen at the time when they need to.

1. Staying hydrated - drinking more water

When I was in Singapore recently, a big thing stuck out to me -- I got dehydrated easily and it severely affected my focus, mood and willingness to do anything. My sister (who was there experiencing the same conditions as me) fared way better. While she also was affected by the heat and humidity, she was able to keep her composure and stay focused throughout our trip. 

I, on the other hand, became extremely agitated, and was on the brink of collapse multiple times (mentally and physically). This made me think -- I'm not a big 'drinking water' gal, I maybe drink 4 glasses a day (half of what's recommended), and I haven't been able to focus well in the past few years. Could dehydration be the cause of it? Probably yes.

While I hate having to go to the bathroom every half hour because I'm drinking too much water, I definitely want to become a bit more healthy in 2024.

2. Switch over to completely timed tasks (via my Google Calendar and Tasks)

For the past several years, my central to-do system has been a simple Google Doc with a bulleted list of things to do. But lately, I've realised this system has made my life incredibly stressful.

Why? Because as I've grown older, I've become busier than ever, and I now have a list of never ending tasks that always recur. I often have to plan for the future too, since long term tasks always pop up a few months in advance. These tasks usually can't be completed until a certain time, but I need to include them in my to-do list otherwise I'll forget. This means my to-do list never clears up, and every time I see it there's a long list of looming tasks I still have to do.

Because of this, I am always thinking about the future, waiting for things to end -- and this is a bad mindset to be in. Also I feel helpless knowing that I have tasks I can’t do right now, but I’m still using my brain space to think and worry about them. 

So instead of having the big to do list in Google Docs, I’ve now switched to adding tasks in my Google Calendar (it also links to my Google Tasks app). This way, the only things I focus on are the tasks that show up on the day (and maybe the ones on the next day). I don't have to think that far ahead anymore. And when I want to write things down, I use my timeblock planner to plan my day on paper. I started implementing it a few weeks ago and I've noticed my stress levels go down and I'm way more focused. 

3. Reading one book a month, only reading things I enjoy

So 2023 was probably one of the worst years for my reading -- I bought and started so many books, and maybe finished 2-3. I think this was because I had such a good 2022 book reading year, that I thought I'd read more books that were outside of my genre of current interests. I usually love reading non-fiction: self-help, productivity, business or memoirs -- but this year I tried to jump into fiction and failed quite a bit. I don't think fiction is out of the question, but if I get stuck on a book I can't finish, I need to leave it and quickly move onto something else that will be more enjoyable.

A small goal of mine is to read 1 book a month (if I don't it's not a big deal). But it's a good way to remember that I could be reading something at all times. Because my goal is very small and achievable, I’ve already finished 2 books this month (and it’s only halfway through Jan!).

4. Dump things that don't make me happy, or find ways to make it more enjoyable

Kinda related to the last point, I need to dump habits or hobbies faster if they aren't serving me. When I was young, I was told everything worth doing would be hard work (and I don't dispute that). But if something becomes so un-enjoyable that it increases my overall stress and anxiety, I need to reevaluate whether it’s something I should still be doing. I’d have to either stop doing it completely, pivot my system, or change my mindset towards it. This year, it’s all about trusting my gut, and not feeling obligated towards things that decrease my quality of life.

5. Set an aim AND a limit on every goal I have

When I set a goal, I tend to just go a bit crazy once I start doing it. For example, a small aim of mine is to write a blog every month in 2024, but when I happen to accomplish something quickly (for example, I wrote *this* blog post in a few hours, on my phone, on my flight back from Singapore), my mind immediately thinks I can write 1 blog a week now. 

I can do things quickly when I'm focused (this is why I procrastinate so much and leave things until the last minute), and when I get reminded of how quickly I finish tasks or how dedicated I can be, I tend to think, 'Awesome, let's do that... But even more!'. This often leads to disappointment and failure, because the goal often isn’t balanced with all the other things I need to do in my life.

So I've decided I must put a limit on my goals, so they can be sustainable in my life. Am I capable of writing 4 blogs a month? Maybe! But I'm allowing myself to only do 2 blog posts max if I'm on a writing frenzy. This will apply to other tasks too, like drawing, reading books, and finishing shows.

6. Journaling in two ways - daily reflection and making my 'crow book'

Every year I buy a new diary, and every year I fail to maintain it. But this year will be different (I hope)!! I bought the Hobonichi Techo Cousin, which is an incredibly popular diary amongst planner enthusiasts. I’ve been using it for 2 weeks now and LOVING it. I like how the Hobonichi is purely for my technical and planning side – it’s just my handwriting and it doesn’t have to look pretty.

I also have started a separate 'crow journal' which is a small thin journal (I use a Moleskine Cahier) where I glue in random pieces of ephemera, ticket stubs, stickers that I've collected over the months. I'm a bit of a hoarder and I like collecting random artifacts, especially when they have cool designs. I love flicking through it.

7. Creating a vision board, surrounding myself with visual cues to stay inspired

I am a visual person (I am a designer after all). But surprisingly I have never made a vision board of any kind (maybe because I believe I don't need it BECAUSE I'm a visual person?). Last year I realised that I feel inspired to draw when I see amazing work (movies and books), or when I think about people who do incredible work (like Hayao Miyazaki). Now that I want to be more focused with my creative goals, it's time for me to make my first vision board in 2024! (I also saw on TikTok that making a 2024 bingo card with your goals is quite effective as well!)

8. Taking on 1 big focus project at a time, and do the bare minimum for creative tasks

I tend to juggle heaps of projects at the same time, which often means I don't end finishing any at all. I also over inflate the task, i.e. instead of doing a simple blog or image, I have to plan an accompanying social post, process video, or make it into a 'series'. In 2024, I need to do less, and do things one at a time. I predict by trying to do less per task, I'll do more in the long run.

9. Chip away at things in a small way, as things will compound

Piggybacking on the point above, in the last few weeks I've been chipping away at things in smaller ways, rather than tackling them in a big way. A good example is tidying up my apartment. Usually I let the mess accumulate because I tend to do a big tidy at the end of the week anyway – which unfortunately leads to a longer cleaning time on the weekend. Now instead, I tidy for 5-10 minutes a day (even if it's putting only 1 thing away), because I know that doing a small thing now will be one less thing I have to do at the end of the week. This has improved my life a lot, and I can always find 5 minutes here and there to do something to make Future-Deb's life a bit easier.

10. Taking the ‘weight’ out of everything I do

The worst thing about my anxiety is that I put a great deal of weight into every action I make. In the past few years, something as simple as reading a book would send me down a spiral; I’m reading this book right now, but am I wasting my time? Could I be reading a better book? Could I be doing something else to improve my life? What could I be doing better?

Or something like writing: I’m writing this blog, but could I be doing something else that makes me feel more creative? Something that will make me happy and my audience happy? Is anyone going to read this? If no one sees it, is there a point? If it doesn’t lead to anything should I be doing it?

This mindset applied to everything I did – including doing my skincare, cleaning my apartment, drawing, journaling… and it was exhausting questioning whether the things I was doing every day were valuable or ‘worth doing’. I’d be worried about time running out, whether or not I was spending time wisely… and I ended up micromanaging every second of my life. 

Now, I’ve accepted that I do the things I do at the time I’m supposed to. I don’t give any of my actions weight or meaning, if I feel like doing it, I will do it and that is how I will live my life.

Reflecting on 2023, I truly cannot believe how fast this year has gone by. In the last 12 months, I have turned 30, travelled overseas 5 times (...I am now broke), fulfilled a massive bucket list goal, and started writing more seriously with this blog. I figured out a routine for myself, worked on some amazing projects (many of which I didn’t get to finish, but more on that later!), and started to really align myself with the next chapter of my life. 

The new chapter of my life (aka moving into my 30s) feels more stable and more confident (and a bit lazier too ha). My 20s was all about reaching big goals, proving myself, and doing the best with what I had. I had dreamt of winning big awards, making blockbuster films, being featured in magazines – but now that I’m in this new phase, that part doesn’t seem as important to me anymore. I’m more focused on my own happiness, instead of external validation. It took 3 decades to do it, but here we are. Next year I want to continue on with this attitude, but with a little bit more ambition.

But before we get into 2024. Let’s talk about 2023. 

Specifically MY 2023. All in all, I would give 2023 a solid 8/10. I did a lot of things this year – had 3 amazing holidays, worked on 2 successful work events (which were also overseas trips!), saw SUGA of BTS live (twice!), made new friends, tried a bunch of new things, and became more confident in myself. 

I had to minus a point because I had a 3 month burnout period which resulted in low self esteem, high anxiety, and a great deal of disillusionment (kind of a bummer but I learnt a lot!).

Minus another point because I consumed so much TikTok this year that I felt I was suffering from brain rot. The excess amount of time I spent on TikTok meant I failed a lot of personal habits and projects. I found it quite difficult to see things through in the long term because I couldn’t get any instant gratification from them.

But at the end of the day, 2023 was a solid year from beginning to end, and I was able to appreciate my life for what it was.

My 2023 theme was slow growth and being selfish. How did I do?

Every year I pick a theme, and this year I picked two: ‘Slow Growth’ and ‘Selfish’. In my 2023 blog, I wrote:

For ‘Slow Growth’, I want to take the pressure off EVERYTHING I do. I want to take my time building new habits, and maintaining sustainable growth on my personal projects. For the word ‘Selfish’, I want to spend more time with myself, taking care of my needs, and setting healthy boundaries. 

Based on this description, I did quite well. 2023 was really the year where I forgave myself constantly, and surrendered to my new lifestyle. I allowed myself to observe how I did things, how I reacted to changes in my life, and saw how I naturally gravitated towards certain habits. I definitely failed with maintaining personal projects, but it was interesting to observe why – it was a combination of feeling overwhelmed, fear of failure, and not wanting to start something knowing it may not be perfect. I realised this year, the habits I’m able to stick to are the ones I do with other people. I’ll be working towards doing creative projects with/around my friends in the future, even if it means sitting in a room with them in silence and doing my own thing.

I also spent more time this year being ‘selfish’ — and while this sounds extreme, as a born people-pleaser, this really was as simple as setting boundaries, making sure I was thinking about my energy levels first, and being true to myself and others about my personal needs. It just meant that instead of changing my plans to accommodate others, I’d let them know I couldn’t make it, and we’d rearrange times. It meant if I was feeling exhausted I’d let people know that I needed time to myself to reset for a few days. I definitely improved my life with this, but there is a long way to go from here. Even though I spent less time actively reaching out and making plans, I found that I was busier than ever this year. I’ve realised if I go with the flow I will end up busy, which means I need to make conscious actions to put aside time for myself, my projects and my overall needs.  

So my theme of 2024 will be… ambition and focus. 

The last few years were about creating foundations, developing habits in a small and slow way. Because of that, I really put my bigger ambitions on the backburner, in favour of reestablishing my new lifestyle (new home, new job, new priorities). However, now that I’m settled, I want to push myself a bit more, and at the very least, focus on key areas of my life that I’d like to improve on. I’m going to keep these specific goals to myself, knowing these will evolve as I start the year and live my life.

My theme of “Ambition” is about getting back to the attitude I had before 2020, before COVID-19 happened, before I got burnt out from my last business, and before I questioned how I felt about my goals. There are a lot of cool things I still want to do, and I want to be back in that mindset again, feeling motivated and excited about achieving my goals.

“Focus” goes hand in hand with ambition. I want to think less about everything, put 95% of things I do on autopilot, and use my brain space to improve on a few key areas. Rather than spreading myself too thin, I want to put my energy into specific goals, and continue to improve in them. Last year, my focus was probably at its worst. I was so distracted by the short bursts of dopamine from TikTok and other social media channels. I spent a lot of time procrastinating with things that didn’t matter so I wouldn’t have to face the real challenges of the things that did. I want to cut that dead time by 70% and use it to be present and focused.

Knowing these words will be my core theme for 2024, it makes me really excited for the things I will do next year.

2023 was about letting things go and gaining inner peace

All the years since 2019 have been filled with so many ups and downs that thinking about them makes me feel dizzy. I went through so many different phases during that period that I never had the chance to let go of the negative feelings (and people associated with them). 

So in 2023, I tied up a lot of loose ends from the previous years (emotionally), so I was able to build an even stronger mental foundation for myself – leaving a lot of room to develop my own sense of inner peace. This year I really started to familiarise myself with my own base level of happiness – the feeling of contentment from simply being me. So if I added something new to my life that decreased that level, I could clearly see it was something that I had to be wary of. Now that I’ve spent over a year in my most peaceful and (now) ‘normal’ state, if anything really affects my emotional levels, I have a good baseline to compare it with. I’ll probably think to myself, “Remember when you were really happy in 2023? Why not now?”

I realised I start a lot of things and never finish them

This year it became so clear to me that I often start a lot of things with big expectations, big energy, and I never find the time or need to finish them. It’s quite rare for me to finish big projects – they often fizzle after a few weeks and I start another project or I prioritise other things. This year I worked on my ‘100 Day Project’. I read the book, got super pumped and inspired, and tackled my Debbbag branding project (and got pretty far!). I was really happy with it, but never got around to finalising it. 

I started a Discord channel at the suggestion of one of my followers (I never really used Discord outside of this), and it failed pretty quickly because it wasn’t something that came naturally to me. Even though I love it in theory, It just felt like more work, and posting messages into the void with no interaction was quite discouraging. I didn’t really know how to run a community, and doing this on top of needing to design was just more work.

If I’ve learned anything from this experience, I often start things but then overcomplicate them. Am I trying to do a 30 day drawing challenge? Yes. But it’s just not drawing for 30 days. I have to plan a social media schedule, with posts to IG stories, grid, Twitter and also make progress videos on TikTok. I usually get overwhelmed by all of this, and I feel awful that I’m not able to achieve all of it. If I choose to do this, I’ll be conscious of where I post and build my energy. I’ll also spend more time doing “one-shots”, instead of series. Even if I’m writing on this blog, the idea of doing an ongoing series already discourages me to continue doing it. I find it more interesting just doing things in the moment.

The only thing for me that makes things long term and sustainable is not letting other people down

This year was a big year for building habits. I started swimming again, I continued playing badminton with my friends, and I joined a Kpop dance class. I was able to maintain these more difficult habits because there was someone I needed to account for. I don’t want to be a no-show or flake – whereas the habits that I tried to do alone (drawing, yoga, graphic design) were the ones that easily fell by the wayside because there was no real consequence if I missed out on a week.

In 2024, I’m going to make a conscious effort to work with other people in a relaxed setting and draw in their presence. Kind of like a craft/art day. Having a consistent partner who wants to show up and do things alongside you is so important, and now that we are getting busier, having consistent hangouts like these is an easy way to get things done but still have that social time.

I need to feel the way about drawing that I do about writing

Speaking of drawing, I need to stop making drawing such a daunting experience. While I draw, I do really enjoy it. Especially when things are going right. But when I hit a slight rut, my motivation goes down and I start to think about how I’m such a failure. For me personally, drawing has a lot of emotional weight associated with it. It’s the reason why I was motivated to become a designer, it’s the foundation of a lot of my big goals – so I want to be good at it. When the expectation is to be extremely good at something you know you’re not good at (yet), it can be daunting to keep going because you don’t want to face the reality that you may never be good, no matter how hard you try. 

Writing however, is the exact opposite. I don’t see myself as a good writer, and frankly, I don’t need to be. I don’t actively try to improve at writing, even though I do my best to clearly communicate my point of view and what I need to say when I write a blog. There’s definitely no pressure when it comes to writing. It’s something I do purely for fun, for self expression, and to relax.

I realised a few weeks ago that I need to change my mindset around drawing. It needs to be something I look forward to and not dread. I need to eliminate the pressure or expectations I have around drawing – because the less I draw the less I improve, but the pressure of needing to be perfect at drawing is hindering the amount of practice I do. Whether I can change a 30 year mindset is unknown to me, but in 2024 I’m going to try!

I was suffering from TikTok brain rot, to the point where I held a lot of cynicism and negative energy

This year the TikTok brain rot was in full force. I’ve noticed the more stressed I am, the more I would find myself on TikTok, scrolling for hours. It became so severe that I wasn’t able to focus at all during my day.

I also noticed an attitude change – I became more cynical and negative, which was a feeling I didn’t want to hold onto for very long. I genuinely got so exhausted watching TikTok that I deleted the app (which is BIG!). A lot of my friends were genuinely surprised I did, but I really had reached my limit. 

What happened next? I actually got shit done. I was so much more productive, I started enjoying other pieces of media, and I was feeling less angry about things. I slept better, and woke up more refreshed. It definitely opened my eyes to the amount of videos I was consuming every day. I also realised that scrolling for 5 hours felt like the same hour of content on repeat.

After that 1 month break, I did download TikTok again (it is literally my job to know the latest trends), but I started limiting my time to 1 hour per day. It’s more than enough time to be entertained, but not too much that I’m feeling dizzy from the amount of content I’m consuming.

I will prioritise work and my social calendar above personal creative endeavours

In the last 12 months, I have realised that my own personal projects are always at the bottom of my priority list. My day-to-day work has busy periods during the year, and at that point I’m pretty much MIA because I’m so focused on the job. My social calendar is also more important than my own personal needs or projects.

The biggest reason is – the sense of accountability in both work and social events. There are a lot of people who rely on me to show up, follow through and get things done. I want to apply this mindset to my personal projects too, and make sure I am able to give myself space to be creative and not let things fall behind.

I don't like being perceived

This is a really weird realisation coming from someone who posts on social media and writes a very personal (but public) blog, but I’m really weird about people knowing things about me. I do however, want to post content to (1) document my personal creative progress, (2) help people out with my insights, and (3) have my work on a public forum so people can see my work in a casual way. I think not wanting to be perceived relates to my naturally socially anxious nature, the desire to not ‘disrupt’ anyone’s day, or be annoying. In 2024, I want to learn to be okay with people seeing me, my thoughts, and my work.

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I found the balance of being honest but also not oversharing (and I’m still working on it!)

Despite what I just said before, in real life I am a natural oversharer, especially when I’m in an awkward social setting. I'd much rather say something intimate about myself instead of sitting in silence (can anyone else relate?).

When I was growing up, I thought that being ‘private’ meant that I was being dishonest or secretive (which is bad!). So I developed a compulsion to tell people a lot about myself because I didn’t want to come off as a bad or untrustworthy person, even if THEY hadn’t earned my trust yet. 

In the last couple of years, I noticed I tend to overshare because I want to increase the feeling of connection between myself and strangers — if someone knows something intimate about me they must be my friend right? (Well…no.)

This year, particularly through this blog, I think I really struck a balance between honesty, useful learnings, and not oversharing. Are the things I put on this blog personal? Of course, this is kind of like my public diary. But also at the same time, this tone is very comfortable for me. I’m not bringing in drama, exposing anything – yet these are my learnings. I’m still working on making it feel compelling, but that will come in due time.

I have an automatic dislike for anything that turns into a J-O-B

When things start to feel like work, I tend to stop doing it altogether. And the bad thing is, I can easily turn anything into a job. That’s just what I do. I’m so focused on future planning, I have an ambitious side, and even if I start drawing I’m already subconsciously thinking about ways to monetise it. I think that’s why I tend to drop off things very easily, because the pipeline from experimental hobby to work slog is so quick for me. If something starts to feel like an obligation, the people-pleaser in me starts to feel resentful that I’ve become a slave to another thing I didn’t really want to do. In 2024, I really want to isolate the amount of things that will turn into jobs, and just enjoy the hobbies for what they are.

I need to stop telling people my goals or plans before I achieve them

As mentioned earlier, I’m a major oversharer, and I tend to tell people my goals, or what I’m working on before I finish it. This is an incredibly bad habit for me – for a few reasons: 

1. There's a study that shows that people who talk about their goals to others get the same satisfaction as completing them, so they are less likely to actually achieve them because they get the validation early on.

2. It’s kinda embarrassing saying I’m to do something and not even get close to finishing it. I’d rather tell people after I’ve achieved the goal.

3. I’d rather underpromise and overdeliver – and I want my work to speak for itself.

The people pleasing and impostor syndrome still remains

After 30 years of being alive, I’ve accepted that I’ll always be some sort of people-pleaser. I’m trying to slowly unlearn it, but I don’t know if it’ll be something that ever goes away. Same with imposter syndrome. No matter how much experience I get, I still dread that people will figure out I’m not as good as they think I am. This year I’ve come to accept these feelings are 30 years in the making, and moving away from these thoughts will not be an overnight change. It’s something I’ll challenge within myself, but it will take some time.

I learned that my attachment style has been hindering my mindset and relationships

The biggest revelation I had this year was about my attachment style. I already knew my attachment style was “anxious”, but this year I really had the chance to dig deep into how it was affecting my life. I’ve heard about attachment styles before (via TikTok and YouTube), but this year I read a book called “Attached” and it was so incredibly eye opening. I was equating my own self worth with other people’s behaviours – even when they weren’t connected at all. I realised the extent of my anxious attachment style, and how I had adopted so many bad habits and uncomfortable behaviours over the years. 

I would highly recommend reading this book, even if you don’t feel like you need it, you’ll learn a lot about yourself and the people around you. (To be honest, when I was reading the “anxious” chapter, it felt like I was reading my biography. And when I was reading the “avoidant” section, I could directly correlate people I knew with those behaviours, and I realised how they had treated me wasn’t personal, it was just their attachment style).

Another insight I had was realising my attachment style wasn’t a result of my upbringing or childhood (thanks Mum and Dad for making me feel secure!), but a lot of the relationships I had in my 20s. It gave me hope that I could unlearn these behaviours, as long as I was around people who made me feel secure.

I spend too much time wanting to quickly take things off my to do list, and waiting for things to end.

I’m always busy – I feel like I’m rushing through my to-do’s constantly, a list that never ends. I never have nothing to do, and it stresses me out a little. So even if I have a “day off” with no plans, I am always ticking something off my to-do list or catching up on admin. 

This means I’m never truly relaxed, I’m always anticipating the next task, or the next event. I feel like I’m running out of time constantly, and rarely feel present. This is a really poor mindset to have, because it means I can’t focus and I’m always in a state of anxiety – worrying that I’m wasting time. Because of this, I tend to be impulsive in order to get through my life quickly – I prioritise the wrong tasks so I can tick them off my list, I buy things for convenience as soon as possible instead of waiting for a sale, or I say yes to things to get them “out of the way”.

Rushing through experiences isn’t the life I want to live, I want to spend more time enjoying my life right now, instead of worrying about what I’ll do in the future.

I didn’t have enough time for myself

As mentioned earlier, this year I prioritised my social calendar and work over time on my own. Even though I’m an introvert, I was always doing something, and my weekends (and weeknights) were always booked. When I wasn’t doing something – any time I had at home I was sleeping and recharging my social battery.

But now, especially since it’s the holidays I’m starting to feel the mental exhausting creeping in. I’m quite close to feeling burnt out, and I feel like I need to proactively spend more time on my own. I see my “Deb time” split in 4 categories:

1. Admin time: Catching up on my to do list, resetting, checking emails, cleaning

2. Indulgent time: Pure rest, watching YouTube, a random movie, sleeping, TikTok, whatever I want to do

3. Project time: Working on a personal project or design task, reading, writing

4. Active time (rare!): Taking myself on a date, going to a gallery or restaurant alone, enjoying something social at my own pace

Nowadays, I spend whatever time I have alone doing admin or indulging, but I want to spend more time doing projects, which is the next step. I think once I’ve achieved that consistently I will be more open to spending more active time on my own.

I tend to keep myself busy to procrastinate on the things that really matter

If I had to name my core toxic trait of 2023, it would be “keeping myself busy to avoid the things I truly want to do”. For example: I fill up my social calendar, I spend 4 hours a day watching YouTube videos and TikTok – rationalising it as my “job” (it kinda is), and take on random craft projects to prolong the big things I want to pursue in life. Since my theme next year is all about focus – I will not allow myself to be distracted by anything else other than my core goals.

I need to limit how much time I spend on things, even if I’m in a creative flow

One thing I really want to try in 2024 is spending more time growing at a consistent, but incremental level. As I mentioned earlier, I often adopt a mindset of “needing to get things out the way” or “finishing them once and for all”, which means I see a lot of things as “one-offs”, not as skills I want to improve consistently over time. 

For example, instead of aiming to sit down on a Saturday and writing for 5 hours straight, it would be more sustainable to do 1 hour a day, 5 times a week. It means I’m not dedicating my Saturday to 1 thing, and I have 5 chances in the week to contribute to the habit (so if I miss a couple days, I still wrote for 3 hours, whereas if I miss out on the Saturday, I wouldn’t have written anything at all). Also, If I limit my time writing to only 1 hour, it feels like a way less daunting task as well. 

The changes in 2024 I want to make

After this year, I realised there’s tiny little changes I want to implement in my life:

1. Reset at the end of every day – do a 10 minute tidy, so things don't pile up at the end of the week

2. Don’t fall into the trap of taking naps on the couch at 9pm. Just stay awake, do something, and then go to bed an hour later.

3. Focus on 1-3 key areas for 2024 – don’t keep adding on random side quests, especially if they are more than a week long commitment

4. Give myself time back – this means 3 weeknights to myself (no plans with ANYONE), and 1 weekend-night to myself (this has been surprisingly hard this year). Block out 1 day at the beginning of the month to be a “Deb day”, where I sit down and plan my life.

5. Spend less money, declutter, wait for sales – don’t spend unnecessarily

6. I need to manage my job’s crunch time better, and balance my work and deadlines with the other important things in my life

7. Feel more present in what I’m doing, instead of thinking about the future too much. (Perhaps do my future planning confidently, so I’m not anxious about what’s next)

8. Watch less TikTok (limit to 1 hour per day), and get more sleep

9. Find an art friend, so I can be more accountable with my drawing

10. Write a 5-10 minute daily reflection in my Hobonichi planner, so I have some time to be present about my day

This blog is over 4000 words, so if you actually got to the end, thank you for reading! I hope you have the most wonderful New Year!

x Deb

Hello! This is going to be a short and sweet update from me — I talked to the wonderful Patti Andrews from Future Women about the importance of habit stacking, and the article is now live!

Habit stacking is something I implement every day, and as a multitasking girlie it is very satisfying to casually knock off two tasks at the same time.

I really hope you enjoy the read, there’s a few tips from me if you’re interested in trying it out! (I promise it’s all simple and very sustainable) ;)

As you can probably tell, I’m obsessed with productivity. I’m always thinking about making myself efficient, I gravitate towards self-help books above any other piece of written media, and I’m always buying fresh new notebooks hoping that will turn me into a productivity genius (it hasn’t yet).

I’ve always had this drive, but when I became an adult, I realised I was so obsessed with ticking everything off my to-do list that I had turned everything into another form of work. Even something recreational like watching a TV show became a job. I’d have it on my to-do list, and get agitated or anxious that I wasn’t able to take it off fast enough. I’d have to “schedule in” time to watch a TV episode, and then have a feeling of dread when it was taking time away from something else I really wanted to do (Yes! Stress over watching a TV show – can you imagine?!). 

But that’s what happens to us when we have “productivity brain”. We turn everything, even if it's supposed to be for entertainment or relaxation, into something we have to plan for, schedule in, create a habit of… when it’s supposed to be for fun.

It took a while for me to realise how bad it had become, and I had to take a step back and think about all the fun things that I turned into a job. And the list was pretty long; it ranged from watching TV shows, movies, reading books, finishing my YouTube watch list, drawing, writing, and even self-care routines. Over several years, these enjoyable things in my life had become tasks I started to get anxious about. 

So a year ago, I decided to make a change – I started to recognise and reframe the way I approached my life, my work, and my interests.

Categorise your life into 3 sections: Focus, Maintenance, Fun

As a Type A perfectionist, I am wired to maximise all my outputs. Even if it’s something simple, I have to do the absolute best with it. However, once I became more independent and realised I had to do a lot of mundane things like cook and clean (and survive!), doing everything in my life in a perfect way proved to be incredibly difficult.  

That’s why I decided to consciously categorise everything I did into 3 main pillars: Focus, Maintenance and Fun. 

Focus is what I choose to put my all thought and energy into. These are the things that I want to achieve and excel at. For the Focus category, I’d recommend putting a maximum of 3 goals at any given time. When I wanted to add more into my Focus pillar, I ended up feeling so overwhelmed that I stopped putting energy into anything at all. Keep it simple and it will be easier to succeed.

Maintenance is the pillar which covers all the “boring stuff” that reoccurs in your life. Some can be fun, but most of it is a drag – these are the things that don’t (and shouldn’t) require heaps of effort, and the best thing you can do is show up and do the bare minimum. This includes brushing your teeth, your finances, and cleaning. However, the more exciting stuff could include cultivating your relationships, your fitness goals, or travelling at least once a year. These areas are important, but don’t require a lot of effort or focus to achieve results.

Note: Sometimes things that start off as Focus goals end up in Maintenance after a while – for example, a Focus of mine was to cultivate and maintain new relationships, but now that I no longer think it's a big need for me to make new friends, I prefer to maintain the friendships I already have. Fitness goals are the same – for a lot of people this can be a Focus goal, but for me personally, I prefer to keep it as a Maintenance goal because it’s a long term habit and I don’t want to overthink it.

Then lastly, we have the Fun category. Anything under this section needs to be pure enjoyment. If I feel an obligation to do it, it doesn't belong there (it might be more suited to the Maintenance category). Anything in the Fun category must be fun (if it wasn’t clear) – and if I’m not enjoying it, I’m not doing it. Fun means something different for everyone – so for me, it’s mostly relaxing activities like watching movies or TV, going out with friends, or writing things like this blog. 

I have created a simple table below with all my pillars, and everything that fits under it. I’d encourage you to do your own one as well! Remember, everything is fluid, things can move from one category to the next depending on your lifestyle, mood, and priorities. Goals can overlap under these pillars too!

Fluctuate your effort based on your mood, and still reward yourself for doing the bare minimum

A key part of doing well with your Maintenance goals, is being fluid with your effort level and not feeling like you need to perform to perfection. For example, when I created my 7 step skincare routine, I would feel stressed that I didn’t have the energy to do all of it after a long, exhausting day. So what do I do now? Based on my energy levels, I adjust how many steps I do, knowing that the most important thing is to take off my makeup and put on retinol before I go to bed. When I have more energy, I do all 7 steps. Regardless of how many steps I do, I still consider it a win because I did the bare minimum.

Even for all my fitness goals, the most important thing for me is to show up. I don’t always swim 2km, but if I show up at the pool, I’m more likely to do it than if I didn’t show up at all. When I play badminton, I spend half the time chatting with friends, but because I showed up I get 1 hour of fitness that I wouldn’t have otherwise. 

If you don’t feel like doing something, it’s okay! You’ll make more progress showing up consistently and doing a small amount imperfectly, rather than doing it perfectly once and never doing it again because of your fear of failure. 

Ditch the completionist attitude

I used to be such a completionist. If I started a TV show, I had to finish it. If I started a collection of anything, I needed to buy every single item in the series. Even if I started out with good intentions, being a completionist would turn sour really quickly, after I realised things became an obligation and I started to do something because of a weird, external expectation. It can easily turn something enjoyable into work… and knowing how much stress it can be, it’s something I now avoid. Don’t complete things because you should, do it because you want to.

Eliminate obligations as much as possible, and reframe the ones you can’t get rid of

After being in my own place, and having complete autonomy over my own schedule, I realised there were a lot of obligations I still had (that I didn’t remotely like!). So the first thing I did was eliminate them. I stopped going to social events that gave me no value, I stopped doing things that I got bored of, and changed the fitness goals that didn’t suit my lifestyle. 

However, I started to realise there were things that still felt like ‘work’ which I still had to do (like washing the dishes and cleaning my place). Because I couldn’t avoid these obligations, I decided to change my attitude towards them. Instead of feeling annoyed for doing these “time-wasting" activities, I reframed it as something I wanted to do to make me feel more focused in my life. Nothing makes me feel better than having a clean environment, so instead of hating the task of cleaning, I started to think about the benefits of doing it (i.e. turning off my brain for an hour, and being clear-headed after). I also made sure that I put on my favourite podcast or playlist while I was doing it, to keep it enjoyable and mindless. 

Accept that you can’t be an expert at everything

There are so many things we do in our lives as human beings, that we can’t expect to be experts at everything. There’s just not enough time in the day. I used to feel bad for being mediocre at things, when there was actually no benefit from excelling at it (for example, why do I need to be top tier at knitting or cross-stitch?).

Focus on a few things you can excel at, and be average for everything else. This is way more manageable than trying to be an expert at everything (and you may end up being really good over time because you took a sustainable approach!). To attempt to excel at everything is often a massive demotivator… because learning a skill to that high degree can be very intimidating. 

Don’t set yourself a lofty ongoing goal that you can’t maintain

When I want to start a new habit, I somehow always set myself up for failure. A good example is drawing. When I was young (a literal child), I used to draw every day and I loved it. Drawing is the reason why I have a design job today. But like a lot of artists, life got in the way, and I stopped drawing for fun. Drawing has been on my to-do list for ages, and every time I want to get myself back into it again, I proclaim, “I will draw every day for an hour!!!”. And guess what? It never happens. Maybe I will try for 1-2 days, but it’s never sustainable and I feel awful that I failed.

So what I try to do now is make a realistic goal, like draw once a week for 20 minutes while watching an episode of TV. And even if I don’t sustain it, I still try after multiple failed attempts. I don’t feel guilty anymore for failing, because I remember that I’m choosing to draw because I like it, not because it’s a job I need to do. 

Don’t do something just because a rich, “successful” productive person told you to

When it comes to productivity systems and making myself efficient, I have tried everything…and honestly, not everything works for me. We’re constantly bombarded with heaps of hacks and tips – which can be eye opening and insightful, but everyone is different, and it doesn’t mean everything will work for everyone (even the popular, scientifically proven ones!).

This section isn’t here to disregard these methods or shame anyone who does get value out of them – this is just a reminder that even if you’re not doing these things, it doesn't mean you aren’t living your life the right way. These are methods I have tried and find a bit useful sometimes, but they aren’t things I maintain regularly.

1. Waking up at 5am every day: I genuinely cannot bring myself to do this. I love my sleep and I always stay up late at night. I can wake up at 6 or 7am, but 5am is too early to commit to every day. I do wake up early for swimming, but that’s only to snatch an empty lane when the pool first opens. 

2. Taking cold showers every day: I know cold showers are good for focus and happiness, but taking cold showers especially in winter is not enjoyable at all for me. I use my shower time as my own rest and relaxation period, and don’t want to turn something very enjoyable into something that I use to maximise my productivity.

3. Bullet journaling: I really wanted to be a bullet journal girlie, but unfortunately it was too much work to organise my day. It also triggered my perfectionist tendencies too much – if my spreads didn’t look good like the ones on YouTube, I wanted to start again or throw all my efforts away. I found my digital systems so much more efficient than writing out a spread every day/week.

4. Morning pages: Morning pages are great, I love writing and I endorse it. However, it wasn’t something I could sustain. Morning pages were incredibly helpful when I was feeling like I was in an emotional rut, and I couldn’t regulate or understand my thoughts and emotions. Now that I’m feeling more focused, I don’t need to maintain this habit every day because I could spend that time doing something I enjoy.

5. Using the Pomodoro method: I like to keep my focus and rest time very fluid, so I usually don’t apply a timer to my tasks. Having too much of a rigid structure doesn’t work for me. I like to have a guideline for my tasks, but adding the extra layer of timers makes me feel a bit overwhelmed.

6. Eating the frog: Choosing to do the hardest thing first really requires a lot of willpower. And most of the time I need the confidence boost at the beginning of the day to get into that high willpower mode. I do small tasks in the morning to knock them out (especially if they take less than 5 minutes). Depending on the day and my priorities, I can do the difficult thing first, but it’s not something I force myself to do.

7. Don’t break the chain: This is a productivity method that encourages people to sustain habits daily and not “break the chain” – but I think it’s a practice that sets people up for failure. If the goal is to never miss a day, what happens when you do? Your 100 day streak is ruined and you have to start from 0 again, which can feel very discouraging. 

8. Daily gratitude: I am incredibly grateful for things, but I don’t make it an explicit daily practice. Personally, when I’m feeling negative, I don’t want to negate those feelings by trying to be positive. There’s a fine line between being very grateful, and exhibiting toxic positivity traits (and living in denial). When there are moments to feel grateful, I make sure I relish in it, but otherwise – making it a daily habit makes it less special in a way.

9. Meditate: I cannot for the life of me learn how to meditate (it’s just so boring!). So a substitute for meditation is doing something in silence, like yoga, tidying or cleaning. I need my body to do something else and let my thoughts run free and my head be empty.

Stop comparing your life to social media

This point may seem incredibly obvious, but it needs to be said – don’t take anything on social media at face value! It’s never the whole picture! 

But how does this relate to the workification of our lives you ask? Well, very normal routines and experiences have become “elevated” because of the rise of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. People are showing off their home cooked meals, their cleaning routines, their skincare, makeup, and home decor journeys. It’s really easy to feel inadequate when you’re seeing things online that you do everyday too…but your version of it is so much more mundane, unglamorous and sad. It makes us feel like something as simple as feeding ourselves needs to be done “nicely enough” so it’s worthy of being seen by other people. It’s adding a layer of extra work onto something that should be done with the bare minimum.

Even mundane things like how people pack their cupboards and fridges are done so perfectly on YouTube. I used to ask myself — why don’t my cupboards look like that? But in actuality, most people’s homes are not even close to that, and there’s no reason for them to be.

It’s important to remember that a lot of these people who are successful at showing off an aesthetic and aspirational “simple day in their life”, have made it their literal job to do so. It’s their job to keep their place evolving, to show it off, to buy new things. It’s for us to consume and aspire to. In the same way that it seems like the makeup gurus have time to do extravagant looks all day… it’s actually their job to look good. Not everyone has the same priorities, so don’t feel like you have to set your life to a standard from social media that was made to be aspirational.

Don’t hold yourself to the outdated promises you made years (or even months!) ago

When we set expectations or goals for ourselves, naturally these things can take a while to come into fruition. Some of these goals will take months, years, or even decades to “complete”. And by that time, a lot of us would’ve evolved into different people. We may still have the same personality, but our priorities shift significantly throughout the years. Insights and experiences change our perspectives (for example, I was dying to be an animator and VFX artist in film before realising how awful the working conditions and treatment of people were in those industries — that’s no longer something I see myself doing even though I would still love to work on a Disney or film project!). 

Throughout the years, I’ve adopted different habits, been inspired to pursue different things, and changed my weekly routine significantly. Sometimes I think about my past and wonder how I had the energy to do all the things I used to do (sometimes with a bit of envy too). Could I do it today? Yes, if I still really cared about it… but ultimately no, because I now put my energy into other things. 

Often we find ourselves feeling guilty or working towards a goal that doesn’t make sense for the people we are today, but we’re holding onto a dream that we think we still need to fulfill. Sometimes we need to acknowledge it’s time to let go, move on, and be who we’re supposed to be right now.

So for the past several weeks I have felt incredibly unmotivated. Blame it on jet lag, an uneven sleeping schedule, a little bit of PMS, and a sprinkle of post-concert depression (I went to see BTS’ SUGA in concert and have not emotionally recovered).

For anyone following my journey, I started my 100 Day Branding Project in April, and put it on pause to concentrate on my day-to-day job until my work-related event was over. Since coming back from my trip, I have worked on my brand a bit, but have lost the excitement of doing it. Now I feel a weird sense of dread when I think about starting it again.

Outside of creative projects, I’ve found myself procrastinating on the simplest daily things; things that would normally take a minute to complete. They pile up (literally and figuratively), and while I do deal with them at the end of the week, often I find myself taking naps or sleeping as soon as I get home so I’m not awake to deal with it.

All in all, I still function like a normal human being, but there’s a part of me that craves having that feeling of wonder, excitement, and creativity that I had felt only a couple months ago. Right now, it feels like I’m experiencing some bad brain fog.

[...A few weeks later…]

I started writing this blog seven weeks ago on my commute to work. Since then, I finally feel like myself again – and what started as a ‘listicle’ of tips, now is a long diary entry of my journey from being at my lowest, to now feeling very stable and very clear headed. 

Writing a blog about motivation is something I’ve always wanted to do. But for some reason, I never felt right talking about it. When I have the most energy to write, I often have the most motivation. But writing about how to be motivated when you’re on a “motivation high” feels like someone giving you tips for curing acne when they’ve had clear skin all their lives. Often these tips feel surface level and a bit generic; they don’t really dig deep about why you’ve lost motivation, and how to healthily get yourself back to normal.

Prologue: How I lost my motivation

To give some context, the last few months have been objectively tiring. I was travelling; jet lagged; working an event that took 7 months of preparation; I was anxious (and catastrophising) about not being able to attend a concert I really cared about; and I slept maybe 4-5 hours a night for 2 months straight. Before my trip, my cup was incredibly full – I was dedicated to my job, my hobbies, and my fitness goals while still maintaining a healthy social calendar. On top of that, I was working on my 100 Day Project as well.

The trip was great, the concert was incredible, and the work event was a success – but for the first time in a while, I felt incredibly homesick. Perhaps it was my body’s signal to rest, or maybe my socially anxious self felt a little overstimulated – whatever the reason, I just felt off and I missed home.

When I got back, I did what people would normally do – I slept off the jet lag, visited my loved ones, and I took a few days off work to do whatever I wanted. After a few days, I figured I’d be back to my normal routine and everything would be perfect again. [Spoiler alert: It wasn’t!] 

What followed was over a month of unshakable anxiety, rumination, low self-esteem, and no motivation. But the funny (and confusing) thing was... I was so incredibly self-aware of these feelings, almost like I was observing them happening to someone else. It got to that point where I turned to my sister and casually said, “Damn, maybe I am depressed.” to which she replied, “Sounds like it.” 

And that was the beginning of my journey out of my slump. 

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Part 1: Indulge

For me, the first step of getting out of a slump was allowing myself to indulge in it. So this is what I did.

I gave myself rest time

When I first felt my motivation drop, I gave myself a couple days of rest. And while I thought that may have been enough time for me to bounce back, eventually I found out it was way too little. 

Shortly after this mini break, I immediately jumped back into my to do list. I felt an immense sense of guilt and urgency to finish my tasks for some reason, even though nothing was that important. I had a weird fear of falling behind and not being able to catch up. Because of this fear, I adopted a “half-rest” mentality, where I’d try to finish tasks despite not being physically or emotionally ready to do so. The more I tried to push to finish my tasks, the more exhausted I felt, and the worse I was at finishing them. I felt guilty for not being able to do simple tasks properly, and that added to my feelings of inadequacy.

Eventually, I realised I needed to give myself a long rest period that did not have an end date. When I was resting, I allowed myself to lie in my bed all day, watching YouTube and TikTok until I got bored. I visited my closest friends and family, and threw all my tasks and goals out the window – spending 80% of my time alone recharging and resting. It was important for me to realise how precious that time was, and how much I needed it.

I slept… a lot

Catching up on sleep was one of the most important things I had to do while I was feeling low. Normally I tend to stay awake as much as I can to maximise the amount of hours I have in the day (it’s a phenomenon called “revenge bedtime procrastination”). But in this instance, I allowed myself to sleep as much as I could to cure my jet lag and my emotional exhaustion.

I definitely used sleep as a way to avoid dealing with my problems – and even though it doesn’t sound very healthy, it was incredibly effective nonetheless. I don’t feel right personally recommending this approach, but putting aside time to mentally rest (aka be unconscious) was something I needed to do for myself.

I stepped away from things I wasn’t “feeling”

As I’ve grown older, I’ve adopted the philosophy “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no!”. Of course, there are things I have to do that aren’t a hell yes (like washing the dishes) – but in all in all, I’ve made it a point in my life to only do things I’m excited about. When it comes to recreational activities, if I’m not feeling it – I stop, and I trust that when the time is right I’ll find my way back to it again. 

When I was experiencing really low motivation, the things I used to enjoy day-to-day were things I began to dread. In the beginning, I thought I needed to force myself to do them, but it only made me more tired. So instead of trying to push through, I stepped away until I felt emotionally ready to get back into my routine. 

Before this year, there was always a fear that if I abandoned something, or I didn’t have the discipline, that I’d be a failure and never achieve anything. But holding that high expectation over my head was counterproductive and not particularly inspiring. It only made me want to do the thing less. I’ve found that the more chill I am about something, the more likely I’ll do it.

I cleared my calendar

Even though I’m an introvert, I tend to forget how easily my social calendar can get filled up. When I got back from my trip, I had a lot of social events waiting for me – including watching 9 movies at the Sydney Film Festival (I know!). These are things I would do again, but admittedly, really took a toll on my energy levels when they all happened back to back.

After everything settled down, I made a point of blocking out two weeks of no major social events, and I was able to spend some time on my own. 

Part 2: Acknowledge

With all the indulgent stuff out of the way, the next part of my journey was the most uncomfortable one. For me, having no motivation always comes from a place of mental insecurity. Even if I can attribute low motivation to external factors like jetlag or lack of sleep, when I’m feeling depressed or low it’s because there’s a personal issue I haven’t dealt with yet.

I acknowledged all the negative feelings I had

I’m a firm believer of never squashing your feelings. I can’t (and won’t) compartmentalise the emotions I have – especially if they are negative. Negative emotions happen for a reason, and it’s important to listen to your gut and understand what’s making you feel that way. For years, I was incredibly reactive when I was feeling anxious or stressed, and I’d do anything to make the feeling go away quickly. Usually that would result in some rash decision making which didn’t help me at all in the long run.

So instead of doing that, whenever I experience any uncomfortable emotion, I imagine I’m sitting in a room with it, observing it without passing any judgement. I ask myself – why am I feeling this way, did something trigger it? Is it normal for a person to have this reaction? 

Feelings always speak some form of truth, whether it’s something you want to confront or not.

I had a deep exploration of all the things that were bothering me

When I was feeling really depressed during this period, I reflected on every potential problem that could’ve caused it. I wrote mindlessly, trying to deconstruct every little feeling I had, every annoyance, every moment of resentment… until I felt like I had everything out in the open. 

For me, figuring out what was wrong was a journey – it took a few weeks and a lot of back and forth between what I thought was wrong, and what was REALLY wrong (the path to clarity is never linear unfortunately). Often the biggest problems are the ones that aren’t obvious (and the ones you don’t want to acknowledge). But after having the time to explore my feelings, I was really able to understand myself better and take steps to get out of the negative mindset loop I found myself in.

I acknowledged what my fears and faults were

In my experience, I’ve found that any negative feelings I encounter are often linked to an overarching fear or fault I have. Personal fears and faults are different for everyone, but for me, a lot of my negative feelings arise from my perfectionist and people-pleasing nature. I’m often very fearful that I’m not doing something right, or I’m not doing enough. Whether it’s my own expectations (or others), I can’t help but be pulled into an anxious mindset when I’m not “performing” at my best. And this feeling isn’t uncommon, even for those who aren’t born with a Type A personality like me – it’s something that plagues us all. 

I threw all expectations out the window – including my own

Ever since I was young, I’ve had high expectations of myself. This came from a natural desire to achieve because of how I was brought up as a kid. The expectations I’ve had throughout my life have been both helpful and detrimental – sometimes they keep me disciplined and focused, but most of the time they are restrictive and counterproductive. Holding myself to high expectations can be really debilitating – if things don’t go the way I envisioned, it can demotivate me in an instant.

I always have to remind myself that having expectations is not required to live a fulfilled and rich life. We tend to put so much pressure on ourselves to be on a specific timeline – i.e. have the dream job by 25, get married and have kids by 30… and none of these deadlines are real. Even our small goals and hobbies shouldn’t have a deadline on them. We see other people around us achieve more things in one year than we have in our last decade, and it makes us feel so inadequate, without realising everyone is experiencing their own struggles behind the scenes, and are trying to fake it til they make it.

I always have to remind myself that my goals, thoughts, and desires can change daily, and I don’t have to put myself in a prison of my past expectations.

Part 3: Action

As much as I love going on an emotional journey with myself, introducing practical steps is a big part of my approach as well. These were the simple changes I made to my lifestyle to build up my confidence again.

I took control of my autonomy, in small ways

When I was my least motivated, I felt like I didn’t have any control over my life. I felt like I was on autopilot, seeing my life pass me by, feeling helpless and depressed.

So what did I do? I did as much as I could to take control of my decision making again – even if it didn’t seem productive or practical. If I wanted to rewatch an old movie for the 100th time, I would do it – no questions asked. If I wanted to spend an hour rearranging my shelf, only to put it back to what it was… I would do it. If I wanted to tuck myself into bed eating a pack of red frogs and stare at the ceiling for the whole afternoon… I would do it. 

Doing the small things that I wanted gave me confidence in myself again. I started to realise that I wasn’t at the mercy of my previous and outdated expectations. I didn’t have to live a life where I was perfect and productive all the time. Existing… being… was enough.

Once I got into a better mindset, my desires started to change, I started getting the itch to do more things outside of lying in bed all day. Eventually, I got myself back to my regular routine.

I refused to feel guilty

I’ve been struggling with guilt my whole life – I think it’s a symptom of being a ‘productivity girlie’. When I don’t get something done, I feel immense shame for slacking and underperforming. Often this feeling is completely unfounded – nothing bad has really happened and no one was hurt. But the guilt is still there and pops up when I’m not functioning like I “should”. 

So this year, I decided to stop feeling guilty. And this really helped me get out of my motivation slump and depression. Every time I feel guilty for any reason… I challenge it. I ask myself, did I do something wrong? Where is this guilt coming from? And if the answer isn’t “I hurt someone”, then I refuse to feel guilty about it. I actively tell myself, “Well there’s no reason to feel guilty. Let go of these feelings and move on.” 

I planned my dream life (for fun)

Whenever I’m feeling lost, I like to plan my dream life. So that’s what I did during my little depression era. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down a list of everything I wanted to do in my life, and how I wanted to spend my days and weekends. I wrote down all the things I wanted to accomplish, all the travel, all the things I wanted to spend my money on, all the cool big projects I was excited about doing. None of these dreams had a plan or action items (that wasn’t the point of the exercise) — it was more about figuring out what made me happy and excited about my life again. 

I deleted my addictive social media apps (aka TikTok)

Anyone who knows me in real life understands that I have a severe TikTok addiction. I would spend upwards of 20 hours a week scrolling, in addition to other social media apps like Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. I use TikTok as an escape; when I’m feeling exhausted I watch videos so I can be distracted and not deal with the things I need to do. In the past it worked well, I would feel more relaxed and then move onto my other tasks. 

But lately, I’ve been using it as a crutch – and the more I scrolled, the more overstimulated I felt. This made me more tired, which made me want to watch more to soothe my exhaustion. It was an unhealthy cycle and I could feel my brain rotting with every swipe. 

So I deleted my TikTok app from my phone. I needed to clear my head, and give myself some of that time back. After a week, I woke up every day more refreshed and feeling less dread about the day. I spent more time with a clear head, and doing things that mattered. 

Did I download TikTok again? Yes of course – but my attitude after a week of no TikTok had already changed. Now, I only download it on weekends to keep up with trends (I work in marketing after all), and I use it as a form of entertainment rather than a way to fill up time and distract myself. I have since deleted it off my phone again and I’m conscious to only use it when I’m feeling happy and refreshed.

I did things at a subpar level (trying is succeeding)

Speaking of TikTok – before I deleted the app off my phone, I came across a video on my FYP that said ‘Trying is succeeding’. I used to think “trying” was a weak attempt at doing something (“Don’t try, just do!” I would exclaim). But this year, I’ve started to try new things in my life – things I know I will never excel at. And even though I’m still bad at the new things, I’ve had such a great time doing it. 

Trying is so important – instead of being perfect, I just show up and give it a go. The most difficult thing when it comes to doing anything is starting, and doing something at a subpar level is okay too. Not everything in life has to be done immaculately to be considered successful.

I’ve learnt that just ‘trying’ to put in effort (even if you fail) is an achievement in itself. Improvement will happen over time, and showing up and trying is the first step.

I focused on 1-2 things a day

When I got back from my trip, I had a list of 50+ items that all needed my attention. A lot of them were important and/or time sensitive, and the list overwhelmed me so much that I completely shut down and stopped looking at it. 

When I finally started working on my tasks again, I adopted a new approach. I decided to select only 2 tasks a day to complete, and allowed myself to rest after doing them. This really took the pressure off and I got more stuff done over time than when I tried to tackle everything at once.

I talked to a lot of people 

I’m not one to hide my feelings, so when I hit a wall… I immediately started talking to people about what I was going through. Having a voice of reason helped me figure out my feelings, my annoyances, and my fears. I’m really thankful to everyone I was able to openly talk to about my struggles, and all the advice and empathy I got from outside perspectives.

I made myself an instruction manual

When I felt depressed, I was really lost about all the things I had to do day-to-day. I just felt incredibly overwhelmed, confused and frazzled. My brain wasn’t alert, and I would often forget the daily habits I would usually do. 

So instead of relying on my brain to remember everything, I made an extensive list (aka an “instruction manual”) that told me everything I needed to do daily. Even simple things like “Brush teeth”, “Make bed”, “Skincare” were all written down for me in an app called ‘Loop Habit Tracker’, and I would refer to it when I needed to. In the app, I was able to tick off a habit when I finished it, which felt very satisfying.

I read Atomic Habits and Four Thousand Weeks again

When it comes to motivation, my favourite productivity books are Atomic Habits by James Clear and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I really love these books because they’re able to give you practical tips, and change your mindset about what it means to be productive – all their advice is really easy to maintain regardless of your lifestyle. When I was struggling, I re-read excerpts from the books and watched summaries on YouTube – just to remind myself that success and fulfilment can be achieved in small ways. 

Accept that everything happens at the time it needs to

A big part of my emotional journey was accepting that no matter how behind I felt, everything that happened in my life happened at the right time. This has proven to be true for myself again and again – I’ve missed out on opportunities, only for something better to happen a few months later. And while I often feel like I need to rush through things, I always need to remind myself to live at a pace that’s healthy and sustainable. Life has ebbs and flows, and things happen when they do for a reason. Enjoy being a human being, live your life doing what you want to do and even if you aren’t just yet… trust that you will when the time is right.

So it’s been over 30 days into my 100 Day Project and I would consider it a mild success! 

Even though I’m getting busier at my day job, my motivation is still pretty high for this project. I still have enough energy to maintain my core habits and fitness, and I’m not feeling a sense of dread when it comes to designing (like I’ve had in the past with my previous creative endeavours). 

In this short period of time, I’ve learnt a lot of things about myself and will be using these insights to finish off my project.

I was definitely very ambitious

I would say the goals I had for myself were very lofty and grand:

1. I planned to create a brand guide

2. Post daily to my socials (Twitter, IG grid posts and stories)

3. Make video content as I went (TikTok, YouTube)

4. Have an audience interaction component (IG Polls)

But so far, I’ve only been posting a few times a week on my IG stories and Discord, while working on the project daily. Sometimes I’m making significant progress, other times I’m not. I think as soon as I started the first week I realised I wouldn’t be able to do everything I said I would – but honestly, that’s okay. I’m still doing something small every day and enjoying the process, which was my main goal. What I've realised is that you can plan all you want but you won't get a grasp of what will happen until you do it. If I had done this project a few years ago, I would've given up because I couldn't hit all the goals I planned for myself - now I do what I can and I have gone so much further than I have in the past.

Creating public facing work (even if its WIP) is difficult and hinders the process

One of my goals for this project was to show a work-in-progress for every step I took. But after the first week, I quickly realised that showing WIPs when they are incoherent and messy is not particularly valuable. For the first two weeks I was doing nothing but strategy, and that’s not easy to consume (or very interesting) for an audience. In this project I reaffirmed with myself that content creation is extra work – it needs to be thoughtful to be effective and requires its own strategy. Instead of trying to design my brand AND document my process at the same time, I'd much rather go through the messy design process first on my own, THEN create a filtered and edited version for my audience (one that will be valuable).

When the end goal is to impress yourself, finding motivation is easy

For almost my whole life I’ve been wanting to stick to a long-term self-directed project and I’ve failed every single time. I’ve never been able to sustain a creative habit because I’ve always let my anxiety about the outcome or other people’s opinions get in the way. For example, if I wanted to draw consistently and post it online – my dedication was based purely on how many likes or comments I got. Or if I wanted to work on a product idea – my commitment was determined by how much money I could make. If it felt too difficult or not worth it I would just bail on the project.

However, for this project, I don’t really have an end goal – other than to have fun. I don’t need to make money out of Debbbag, I don’t need more followers – I want to create a personal body of work I’m proud of – and that can come in many forms. I’ve been incredibly motivated because my effort and interest is not determined by external factors.

Receiving messages and reactions are definitely helpful and keeps me going

Okay this is going to (sorta but not really) counter what I just said – but getting reactions and thoughtful messages from my friends and my audience has given me small bursts of energy to keep me going. Would I still be able to do the project without these - yes definitely! But having a few people message me saying they have been following my journey or they are excited to start their own because of me, reminds me that there are more reasons than just my internal motivation to keep it consistent.

Thank you to everyone who has interacted with my posts or sent me a message!

Nothing is a waste

Even if I haven't had a 'productive' day, or if I only had the energy to work on my project for 15 minutes, that 15 minutes today is 15 minutes closer to my end goal. Even if I take a creative detour, and end up cutting out the things I designed, it's still valuable because it gave me perspective on what’s important in my project. Nothing is a waste, and knowing this has motivated me to keep going. If I hit a wall, I don't get frustrated with myself. It's an important part of the journey and it shows up in your final result (even if people don't see it).

Create a brief for yourself early on

Even if it's a self-directed project – it's really hard to get started without knowing what your goals and parameters are. I always create a brief for myself – usually that involves writing down my main aims, my goals, creating moodboards, and any general guidance on what I want my end result to be. Putting in the effort early on to establish your goals will make your life so much easier in the long run. When you get stuck, the brief will always be there to reset your focus.

Progress, not perfection 

I am a recovering perfectionist and it has been really hard to shake it out of me. However, there has been a switch in my mindset this year – when I feel that perfectionist itch coming on, I tell myself: Even if I'm progressing only 0.5% every day, that will compound into amazing results.

When you're a perfectionist – you set an expectation for yourself. But when you do that, you limit yourself to that expectation, and don’t allow yourself to stray outside of it. If you just let the progress happen organically without a rigid goal, you will find yourself in surprising and positive situations you couldn't even fathom, and I find that mindset more fun and sustainable than trying to make everything perfect.

Finding small pockets of time is key to maintaining progress (do the bare minimum!)

If you know me, you know I'm an avid TikTok/YouTuber consumer (I consume close to 35 hrs total for each - which is a full work week!). When people ask me how I find the time, I think to myself – okay, I watch around an hour on the train to work, then an hour on the way back, then I steal 15 minutes here and there… and then before bed while I'm going to sleep I watch it for over an hour. That is easily 4 hours a day, which ends up being 28 hours minimum a week. Then I also watch YouTube in the background while I do my chores. 

So with this project, knowing that small bits of time can accumulate to something bigger - I've exchanged my social scrolling time for design time. Even sparing an hour a day equals progress. Or even 15 minutes. If you go into each day with low expectations, it will be easier to start and chip away at the project in a sustainable way.

Working in Google Slides is the best!

If I'm going to recommend one product for a 100 Day Branding Project, it's Google Slides. For the past year, it has been my most used product at work (even more than Illustrator and Photoshop!), and it is where I create decks for all my projects. It's basically Powerpoint, except web based – and it's so accessible on any device and easy to share with others. I find it incredibly flexible to store and/or figure out my strategy and design process. I couldn't recommend it enough for creatives out there.

I do my 100 project and watch YouTube/Netflix at the same time (aka habit smooshing)

I get bored very easily, so when I do my 100 Day Project, I always choose to work on my couch while putting YouTube or Netflix on in the background. People call it 'habit grouping' (I like to call it 'habit smooshing') – I feel happy and relaxed knowing that I can do my project while enjoying a show or YouTube video. It makes the project feel less intimidating and more low stakes, and I'm more likely to do it because I get an instant reward for it.

My attitude towards my project or anything in life: Everything in my life that I'm moving towards has an outcome that is valuable to me

While I was writing this list, I had an epiphany. Why am I so happy and fulfilled doing this project right now? Why am I actually sticking to this? What's different from all the failed attempts of the past?

And then I realised – everything I am doing right now has an outcome that is intrinsically valuable to me, and only me. Even if it's small and irrelevant to other people, it's so important to me. Even if it won't "change my life", it's something I find valuable. In the past, the outcome always served something outside of my personal goals – I wanted to impress other people, I wanted to prove something without really knowing why I was doing it. In the past couple months I've really reprioritised my life, and now I feel like every choice I'm making serves a life that is purely for me and my needs. It means I have less energy being drained through obligation, and more energy put into projects like this.

–

Thank you to everyone who has followed my journey so far, commented, messaged, voted. I'm excited (and low-key a little scared) to see the outcome. I already know it will be one of my favourite projects because of what I've learnt about myself and my progress so far!

I recently turned 30, and I have to say… It's pretty great so far. I feel like I’m the most confident, stable, and relaxed I’ve ever been, and I’m happy to have left my 20s with a lot of good and bad experiences (none of which I regret either). For the most part, my 20s have been incredibly kind to me – despite some pretty horrible “sagas”, I’ve been able to escape relatively unscathed... with a lot of insight, wisdom, and perspective.

The 30 lessons I’m sharing here may seem cliche – but if I’ve learnt anything from life, they are cliches for a reason. 

1. Life isn’t fair

Okay, starting off strong… I had to say it: Life isn’t fair. You can be the most hardworking, talented person in the world and never catch a break, or you could just be starting out on your journey and get lucky early on. And it happens the other way too, there are well-deserving people who get everything they want in life, and those who don’t get privileges because they didn’t do anything to receive them. Life isn’t a meritocracy (despite what many people have led you to believe); at the end of the day… you win some, you lose some, and that’s life.

It’s important to accept that not one human will get everything they deserve (or want to deserve). Life is really just luck and opportunity, and accepting this fact has liberated me from any resentment when it comes to someone else’s success. 

I had a friend who would always see other people’s achievements and ask herself (and me), Why do they get to succeed, and not me? And the more she asked, the more resentment grew in her every day. Having that resentment doesn’t help anyone (or yourself), and it stops you from moving on with your life and achieving amazing things. Just because you didn’t catch a break this time, doesn’t mean you won’t in the future. Luck and timing doesn’t discriminate, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

2. Pick your battles – sometimes it’s fine to be ‘good enough’

I’m a perfectionist at heart and it’s only recently that I’ve come to accept that some things in life can exist in a ‘good enough’ state. I don’t need a perfectly filled fridge with 5 different flavours of ice, nor do I need my wardrobe or cupboards to be neat and organised (in fact, they are very messy). Instead of agonising over every little detail in my life, I put my energy into the things that matter and benefit from my attention.

3. Live. Observe. Adapt.

Piggybacking off the last point – I used to believe that I could create the perfect routine. It would happen like this: I set my goals, build a ‘perfect’ routine, try to ‘live it’, but then massively fail because I set such high expectations for myself to change (e.g. going from no exercising at all to doing yoga daily… which did not work, unsurprisingly). I’d give up, feel guilty…and then get a sudden burst of motivation and try again. Rinse and repeat. 

However, after moving out (for good), and having my own true independence, I realised that it’s important to live your life. Instead of trying to create the perfect routine in theory – observe the routine you have right now for at least 3 months, and adapt it slowly, adding new things to your routine and seeing if they stick. Move things around, see how you react to these changes. For me, I realised that no matter how hard I try, I cannot exercise after work, nor can I do it in the middle of the day. Even if I book myself for a yoga session, I find myself canceling or skipping it altogether. Don’t try to create a routine based on what you dream to be, create a routine based on who you are right now.

4. Cross the bridge when you get to it

If there’s one phrase I’m taking into my 30s it’s this: Cross the bridge when you get to it. I remember in my 20s I always used to worry about every future event, every detail, even though there was no guarantee it would happen anyway. I would anticipate every outcome, my response to the outcome, and spend so much emotional energy to the point of exhaustion… for things that never happened (or were contingent on factors out of my control).

I remember when a friend of mine spent weeks agonising over whether or not she should apply for a job because she was worried about telling her current boss she’d be leaving the company (her assumption was that if she started the application process, it would lead to an offer and she was worried about leaving her current team). I had told her that she should just apply for the job and worry about the outcome later. I believe that she was 100% capable of receiving an offer but it wasn’t a reality for her just yet. By the time she applied for the job (she had been agonising over it for weeks), she had missed the window of opportunity and they had already filled the job.

My philosophy is to not worry about outcomes or factors that are out of my control and/or haven’t happened yet. If I can delay anxiety for a bit, then I will 100%. 

5. If you wanted to, you would

I’m going to be so real with you right now – if you REALLY wanted to do something, you would be doing it. That’s just facts. And I hear your excuses – “I’m busy, I don’t have the time”… and I’m gonna tell you… there is time, but you prioritise watching TikTok for 20 hours a week instead. (...This is definitely NOT a reference to myself) 

But seriously… even if you did have a tonne of completely valid excuses, the reality is… the things you “want to do” are simply not a priority right now. That’s why you’re not doing them. And that’s okay. 

Take a step back and look at the things you’re prioritising in your life and decide whether you want to make a shift. Stop making excuses about why you can’t do ‘X’ and start thinking about whether or not you’re living the life you want to lead.

6. You can have everything you want, just not at the same time

One of the first self-help books I ever read was called ‘Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office’ (highly recommended), and it talks about the disadvantages women have at the workplace and how to combat them. One of the chapters resonated with me, Lois P. Frankel had said ‘You can have everything you want, just not at the same time’. I think about that phrase a lot - I have a natural tendency to overachieve, juggle multiple projects and get bored quickly, wanting to move onto the next thing.

Any time I get stressed about not doing everything I want to do at that moment, I think about this quote and it gives me ease knowing that I can do everything I want to do, but it will just take time and patience.

7. Things that are meant for you will never pass you by, and everything happens at the time it needs to

I believe with my whole heart that the opportunities that come into your life (and stay) are meant for you. There have been moments in my life where I’ve felt like I’ve missed the opportunity of a lifetime… only for it to show up a year later when I’m in the right place to take advantage of it. It’s never too late to do something you’ve always wanted to do, and life will give you multiple chances even if you fuck it up the first time. 

8. It’s better to regret doing something than not doing something

*Disclaimer: This a catch-all phrase and does not apply to life altering events like having children, committing murder, or causing harm to yourself or others*

Okay, now with that disclaimer out of the way, this is one of the lines I say to myself the most. Even if it’s just an inkling… the feeling of wanting to take a risk, or doing something you’ve always wanted to do - the regret of NOT doing it will haunt you for the rest of your life. I’m a person who in early teenagehood established that I don’t want to regret any choices I’ve made. I don’t want my life to be filled with ‘what ifs’. I don’t want to think about the alternate timelines where another version of me is living the life I wanted. If there are multiple timelines in the universe, I want to be living in the best one.

9. Trust your gut (don’t ignore the ick)

There is a book called the ‘Gift of Fear’ and it is one of my favourite self-help books. It taught me the importance of trusting my gut reaction to people and situations. I used to follow my instincts religiously (I’m a Pisces) - if something felt off, I would disengage from the situation and move on. But then a couple years ago, around the time of COVID, a lot of things went upside down for me. I was the most insecure and lost I’d ever been, everything in my life felt backwards and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

And I found myself in situations with people that just felt a bit off. There were enough positive things about them that I stuck around, but I couldn’t shake off the uneasiness or ick I felt when I was around them. I don’t know them, they are strangers, I just have to get used to them… they are good people right? I felt so judgemental for even having a negative visceral reaction to them, so I squashed those feelings away and told myself I need to be more open minded and more empathetic. After a while, I realised I was wrong to do that.

It became very apparent later on, the things I chose to ignore or excuse were hints of who they were as a people. (As Maya Angelou said, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them.’) Luckily, before anything damaging happened, I was able to escape from those situations and leave them behind with nothing but a bruised ego (and a little bit of trauma ngl).

10. You can’t emphathise yourself out of a paper bag

Empathy is one of the most important traits a human can have – and I believe it to be one of my strong suits (me, an empath). Empathy can give you insight into other people’s struggles and why they do the things they do. However, if someone has put you in a situation where they are purposely making you feel uncomfortable, being toxic or bullying you – no amount of empathy towards them will change the negative behaviours they have towards you.

I can understand hurt people hurt people; people who are feeling insecure or frustrated with their life want the rest of the people around them (even the ones who support and care about them the most) to feel the way they feel. So they take them down a notch, they want to humble them a bit. I can understand these feelings completely, but all the times I have made excuses for this behaviour and allowed myself to be a punching bag, it has not ended well for the relationship.

It’s like death by a thousand cuts - it wears you down eventually and the only way to combat someone who is using you in this way is to disengage and set boundaries. 

11. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no!

Ever since we were young, we have been forced to do things we don’t want to do (go to a social event, do a school performance, read a book for English class). And as we’ve aged, the obligations don’t end. Except – now that we’re adults… we actually have a choice. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that I spend so much time in situations that make me feel bored, tired, annoyed etc, when I could be doing something better with my time. If I’m not excited about something I won’t be forcing myself to do it.

12. You have so much more power than you know / A victim mindset will never get you anywhere

You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. Having a ‘woe is me’ or victim mindset can be very fun and indulgent for a while, but if you really want to move forward with your life, you need to understand that you have the power to change your circumstances. You may feel like you’re stuck at a job or in a relationship that makes you feel bored, burnout, and disillusioned with no way out – but you have the power to change that.

I’ve seen capable, talented, and strong people become completely helpless when it comes to their life because they believe this is what they deserve, or this is the best they’re going to get. And my response is NO, you deserve way more and you can have more.

13. You’re allowed to set the standard for your own treatment / No one can make you feel inferior without your consent

This relates to the previous statement but it needs to be its own point – You’re allowed to set the standard for your own treatment. It’s your life, and you can decide who you choose to be around. Don’t waste energy on people who don’t give a shit about you, who neglect you, who bully you, or keep you around so they feel superior to you.

It’s okay to have high standards (in fact, it’s great). If you have high standards, the people around you will be the best people you’ve ever met. Yes, you have permission (from me) to be picky. Don’t settle. When you meet the right people, it won’t feel like settling (because it’s not!).

14. There will be shit sandwiches you have to eat – you have to decide if it’s worth it

There will be situations in life that aren’t perfect – You may have the perfect job, but the downside is you have to wake up at 6am in the morning for meetings; you may have an amazing ride-or-die friend but they tend to be half an hour late to every gathering you organise. These are ‘shit sandwiches’ (I saw this term in a TikTok), and most situations come with a shit sandwich. Some are more stank than others, some push your level of tolerance, and others are completely NOT worth it. Not every situation or relationship in life is ideal, it’s a constant negotiation between the perks of it and the nastiness of its shit sandwich.

15. There's no point of having a dream life if it’s a nightmare to maintain 

I saw this quote on my TikTok FYP when I was going through my nightly doom scroll – and this creator put it perfectly; ‘There's no point of having a dream life if it’s a nightmare to maintain.’ And she was 100% right. (Before you say anything, I do get all my life advice from TikTok now.)

For a really long time I was spending my energy building and aspiring to a dream life – one that I felt looked good to me and others around me. But on the inside I was struggling to keep it together. My stress and anxiety was through the roof, every time a small crack formed in my ‘dream life’ or things didn’t go the way I expected, I’d have a breakdown and give up. 

I spent time building the image of what I should be doing in my life, without ever really living it. Now, I just live. Of course, I still have goals and aspirations, but I never forget to just live my best life day-to-day.

16. Don’t spend the whole time polishing the door knob and never opening the door

In an interview with Taylor Swift she was talking about the creation of her albums - about how each of her albums are an experiment, and she releases them knowing they aren’t perfect. Then she said, ‘Don’t spend the whole time polishing the door knob and never opening the door’. This really resonated with me because I have spent a lot of my life ‘preparing’ for the right moment – to finally feel worthy enough of taking the risk and going through the door. 

Even now, I’m struggling – instead of ‘opening the door’ (creating things, making mistakes, learning by doing), I’m ‘polishing the doorknob’ (i.e. thinking of how I can make a refined portfolio of work, and how to make the perfect version of ‘Debbbag’). It’s like trying to learn how to be a professional dancer by watching tutorials on the internet and never dancing. You can only get better at dancing BY dancing, and even if you start from nothing, the progress will compound over time. 

17. Practice makes progress

Like many other people, I used to always say ‘Practice makes perfect’. But as a now-recovering perfectionist, I completely reject that phrase, and have since adopted ‘Practice makes progress’ instead. My mindset completely changed once I realised that the idea of perfection was stopping me from starting, enjoying the process, and improving day-by-day. 

A lot of things I want to pursue don’t have an end goal, it’s a whole journey that unfolds and never really ends. Rather than striving for perfection, I aim to get a bit better every day by just showing up and enjoying it. And if I get daunted about the idea of doing something ‘forever’, it probably means it’s not something I should be doing in my life.

18. The best exercise is the one you do 

Throughout my life I’ve come across variations of this phrase, ‘The best exercise is the one you do’ AND ‘The best camera is the one you have on you’. 

It’s about working with what you’ve got in the moment. Even if you have the perfect camera setup at home, if you don’t have it on you when you’re shooting in the wild, the best photo you’ll get is from the camera you have in your hands (which is usually your phone). You could extend this analogy to life as well – whatever tools you have on you at the moment are the ones that will help you the most. So always equip yourself to achieve the best outcome.

Same with exercising, if your current exercise regime involves walking 10,000 steps every few days and you’re actually motivated to do it, that is the best exercise you are doing right now. Not the imaginary weights you’re doing at the gym that you’ve never been to. If you’re doing something that’s already good enough.

19. You know you’re on the right path when you don’t feel like you’re betraying yourself

I saw a clip of Oprah asking author Caroline Myss, ‘How do you know you’re on the right path? And what dream belongs to you, or what husband belongs to you, or what job belongs to you?’

Caroline said, ‘You know you’re on the right path if you’re not put in a position to betray yourself. You don’t betray yourself anymore. You’re not in a position where you have to negotiate your sense of integrity, which is an act of betrayal. You don’t feel like you have to compromise who you are. It feels right.’

At the lowest point in my life, I was betraying my values and integrity to be accepted by people who weren’t worthy of my attention. Once I snapped out of it and lived my life to my values, I was instantly happier and more fulfilled.

20. Sometimes it just comes down to a lack of compatibility.

In life, when things aren’t right, or things don’t work out (relationships, friendships, jobs), sometimes it just comes down to a lack of compatibility. You may have different values, or you’re traveling on different paths. Neither party is the bad guy, things just didn’t work out. It can be heartbreaking (especially when the person, job, or opportunity seemed perfect), but you have to hold your own standards high to live your best life.

21. Never take things personally

Early in my life, I accepted that when it comes to other people and situations, things are rarely personal. If you don’t get the job you want, if someone is being toxic or standoffish towards you, it’s rarely a reflection of you, and more about the circumstances at that time, or how that person feels about themselves.

Even if you’re not good enough to get the job, it doesn’t mean someone is writing off your personal character completely – it’s more likely the timing wasn’t right, or maybe you weren’t ready for the responsibility just yet. And when it comes to relationship conflicts, the people who are the most spiteful towards you are often the most insecure and are battling demons of their own. 

22. You can’t change people

This is pretty self explanatory, but it has to be said – no matter how much you try to help, teach, support people, you can’t change someone else. They have to do it on their own. And no, it doesn’t mean abandoning them when they are having a hard time, but it’s about saying what you need to say, doing what you need to help, and giving them space to figure things out in their own time.

You are not responsible for someone else’s happiness (the only exception is if you are a parent), and it’s not possible to change someone if they don’t want to change themselves. Even if you have the best intentions, trying to change someone can turn into micromanagement, and they will eventually resent you for it. Give people the freedom and support they need, and don’t feel like their livelihood relies on you completely.

23. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference

When someone hates you, they’re giving you the same level of energy as someone who loves you. Sounds intense, but it’s true. Because when someone truly does not care about you, they aren’t even thinking about you, and you don’t exist to them. 

When I find myself in a ‘hateful’ or ‘angry’ state, I try to move on from it as quickly as possible. I do the rumination, the acceptance, and the healing as soon as I can. I don’t like staying resentful for long. It’s exhausting and draining and I don’t want to give anyone attention that they don’t deserve (even if it's negative). As the Buddhist saying goes, ‘Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.’ 

Spending energy being in a negative state for a long time doesn’t help anyone (certainly not yourself), the best thing you can do is move on, learn to let go and live a life that you’re proud of.

24. Who you are today is the result of every mistake, every flaw, and every fuckup you’ve ever made

When I was growing up, I’d find myself watching TV shows or movies where the protagonist would make a magical wish to do a ‘life swap’ with someone richer, more beautiful and more privileged. And everytime I’d watch it, I’d ask myself, if I could permanently swap lives with anyone in the world, who would it be? 

And the answer would be the same. No one. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, nor am I the most stunning person on the planet, and I’ve had my fair share of embarrassing moments… but every person around me, every mistake I’ve made, makes me who I am. Even if I grew up a bit richer, I can’t say I’d be the same person (my mum and I agree I’d probably be pretty spoiled). So every time something goes wrong, I always think; if I didn’t experience this outcome or make that mistake, I wouldn’t be who I am. I like who I am.

25. Acceptance is the key to happiness and confidence

The previous statement leads me to this: Accepting yourself is the key to your own happiness. Even though it seems simple, it’s not easy. We grow up with so many expectations of ourselves and sometimes it takes YEARS to unlearn these thought spirals. 

For me, I never thought I was a confident person. I wasn’t sporty or outgoing like the other kids growing up, and my teachers always wrote in my school reports that I was a ‘shy quiet girl’ (like that was a bad thing?). 

Yet, as I grew older I noticed that a lot of people were insecure about things I had never even thought about. I was always okay with who I was – even though people criticised me for being quiet, I didn’t see it as a character flaw, I accepted that was who I am. Even when there were things I didn’t like about my appearance, rather than agonise over it, I decided to accept it the way it was (however long that took), so I could spend my energy worrying about other things that I could change.

Am I insecure free? No of course not, I’m human. But instead of beating myself up over being insecure, I just do my best to learn how to like the parts of myself that aren’t perfect. It takes time and I can slowly work at it day by day.

26. “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”

People say Einstein said this, but apparently that’s not true. Either way, the quote slaps. Ever since I heard this quote I think about it quite often, and I apply it to my life when I’m not feeling good enough.

Everyone in life has their own strengths, talents, and goals, and to compare yourself to the imaginary standard that society has set for us is unfair and unrealistic. Just because you’re not good at something doesn’t mean you don’t have talents or advantages elsewhere. Life is about experimentation, finding your path and going what you love. Things may not work out, but it doesn’t mean you’re not lacking in any way. (And as I said in my first learning – ‘Life isn’t fair’... you don’t even need the talent to get lucky and succeed.)

27. Your personal concept of success changes every day – don’t hold yourself to a standard that no longer serves you

When I was younger I wanted to be a ballerina, then I wanted to be a doctor, then I wanted to be a cashier at Kmart (I liked scanning things okay!). Did I achieve any of those? No. (I did, however, get a job where I was a sales assistant at another store and I was able to scan things, so I count that as a win). 

The point is, our goals change a lot as we grow older, sometimes we feel a weird obligation to stick to them or a sense of failure for not achieving them. For example, I always wanted to become a multimillionaire, live in a cool mansion etc. To this day, my parents would love it if I was a millionaire. Unfortunately I’m not, and I’m not sure if I ever will be. But also it’s not a goal I’m aiming for anymore. 

To unpack that millionaire goal, I just wanted independence, autonomy and stability. And I have that already, even without the millions. The goal of being a millionaire is arbitrary when the real goal is security. Don’t beat yourself up for not hitting a goal you set for yourself in the past. Your needs change, YOU change, and your idea of success changes too.

28. Everyone always wants something they don’t have - it’s human nature

As a child, I despised my handwriting. I always wanted it to be different – I wanted it to be cute, round and bubbly like the other girls’ writing in my class (if you grew up in the 90s you know exactly what handwriting I’m talking about). But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t change it. I could mimic what I wanted, but as soon as I stopped forcing it, my handwriting reverted back to its natural state. Feeling defeated, I decided it was something I’d have to accept about myself.

Then I went to class in high school and my friend saw my handwriting and said, ‘Wow I’m jealous, I always wished I had handwriting like that’. And at the age of 12, I realised that people will always want things they don’t have. They’ll be looking at other people’s features, skills, and privileges, and feeling defeated about themselves for not having them, without realising someone else is feeling the same way about them. From that moment on, I never took what I had for granted.

29. Never prioritise work, business or hustle over your mental and physical health

I have learnt this the hard way. In the past, I’ve had to get a root canal because I was so stressed about my business that I ‘didn’t have the time’ to fix the tooth pain and headaches I had for 2 months straight. I’ve been depressed, burnt out, demoralised and I’ve been physically ill from the stress and anxiety from work. 

Is it worth it? Never. 

Always take care of your own physical and mental health, and know your limits. Society seems to enjoy a ‘starving artist narrative’, where you have to (sometimes literally) die for your art to be worthy or successful. But that’s not true, and your value is not contingent on how much you suffered for it.

30. You are the average of the 5 closest people in your life

No matter how you try to spin it, you will be influenced by your circle. You are the average of all closest people in your life; the people who you choose to hang out with. If they are funny, positive and encouraging, you will reap the benefits of being around them and you’ll adopt the same mindset too. But if you are choosing to be around people who are actively ignorant, racist, sexist, discriminatory or toxic, you’ll probably fall down that path or be affected by the negative results of those interactions.

Be self aware, start taking care of yourself and be picky about who you surround yourself with. If they are good, respectful and kind hearted, you’ll see your life improve tenfold.

– 

I know this is a long one, and if you even got to the end of this, I really thank you for putting out the time to read this incredibly indulgent essay/listicle. 

Deb x

Even though I’ve put myself on a light spending ban (for my wallet’s sake), I’ve found myself once again swayed into purchasing a lot of cool merch. So I’m throwing minimalism out the window and dedicating myself to being a consumerist hoarder.

Yaeji’s With A Hammer Vinyl

Yaeji’s tweet about her new album popped up on my feed - and I was blown away by the concept and design of her album. Even though I didn’t know her before I saw her tweet, I still bought the album because I wanted to have it for my collection. It definitely leans into the Gen Z aesthetic I’ve been digging lately, it’s pink and playful and I adore it.

A24’S Everything Everywhere All At Once Pet Rock

Okay okay, hear me out. I know I could get any rock on the side of the road and put some googley eyes on them BUT — it would not come with the official Pet Rock™ packaging. When I first saw it I knew I needed to have it. I adore Everything Everywhere All At Once and the rock scene is so cute and endearing. (Don’t watch the video unless you’ve watched the film already!)

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), the Pet Rock™ sold out before I could buy it. I feel like it was probably for the best…

NewJean’s Albums (NewJeans and OMG/Ditto)

NewJeans has been a favourite of mine since they debuted — their music is fresh and catchy and their graphic design and concepts don’t feel like other KPop groups. The design style of their albums is youthful, nostalgic, and really fun, something I want to integrate more into my own work.

If you haven’t checked out their song ‘OMG’ watch it here, it’s a guaranteed bop!

It’s almost the end of January and we may have thrown all our New Year’s resolutions out the window - but it’s never too late to introduce some new habits into your life and routine.

I’ve been doing these hacks for at least a couple of years now, and each of these have proven to be eye-opening, time saving or efficient in some way. Without any further ado, let’s begin!

Tip #1: Pick a theme of the year

Every year I have a long list of resolutions that I want to achieve for the next 12 months, however, I’ve found the best way to stay consistent and focused for the year is to pick a theme or ‘Word of the Year’ that embodies my mindset and overall goals. For 2021, I chose ‘Balance’ because I wanted to juggle different facets of my life (work, travel, social, personal projects). In 2021, my word was ‘Foundation’ - it was my goal that year to establish routines, create my space, and get adjusted to a new job and lifestyle.

In 2023, my theme is ‘Slow Growth’ and ‘Selfish’. For ‘Slow Growth’, I want to take the pressure off EVERYTHING I do. I want to take my time building new habits, and maintaining sustainable growth on my personal projects. For the word ‘Selfish’, I want to spend more time with myself, taking care of my needs, and setting healthy boundaries. 

Mia Freedman, founder of Mamamia, explores her approach to her word of the year in the episode How to Actually Stick to Your New Year's Goals on 8 Minutes to Change Your (Work) Life.

Tip #2: Just show up

As a perfectionist - I always thought that if something couldn’t be done perfectly, there was no point of doing it at all. If I couldn’t see any tangible process or improvement, I would give up because I couldn’t do it right the first time. 

However in this past year, I’ve started to realise the massive impact of ‘just showing up’. I always have to remind myself - if I did something every week for a whole year, I would be in a better place than if I didn’t do it at all. Even if there’s ebbs and flows, there will be a natural progression if you show up and do the thing (even if it’s done poorly)!

Tip #3: Get back into books by reading 10 pages a day

I used to be a massive bookworm back in the day - I would spend my recesses and lunches in the library coveting the latest fiction releases. But as I grew up, reading became more of a chore. I still loved the idea of reading, but I found that I didn’t have the time or attention span to sit down and read a book, let alone finish one!

To combat this, I tried a couple things - set a goal to read 1 book a month (that didn’t work); set a goal to read 1 hour a day (that didn’t work either!). Even trying to sit down to read for 15 minutes every day didn’t work. Even though that seemed like a short time, in the 15 minutes I would find myself becoming distracted and only read a couple pages.

So instead I adopted the ‘10 pages a day’ goal. I really love this goal for reading because it’s not time based - it’s page based. So the time you spend reading a book can vary based on how quickly you read the pages. 10 pages is very short, yet you can easily finish a 300 page book in a month, or an average book in less than 2 weeks. AND - if I love a book I always read more than 10 pages, so I’m able to complete books faster.

Tip #4: Eliminate decisions during your day

As I’ve become older, I’ve realised how many decisions I’ve had to make everyday - and the toll it takes on my energy levels. Even something as small as deciding what to wear or what to eat, can drain my battery during the day.

So where I can, I have things on autopilot - I usually have a written down routine where I do the same things every morning, and I have a very minimal wardrobe which means I spend very little time choosing what to wear. I tend to plan my days and to-do’s using my Timeblock Planner early in the morning, so when I’m doing tasks I’m not deciding what to do next, it’s already been decided!

In the second season of the podcast, Dr Amantha Imber walks us through hacks to eliminate decisions throughout the day. 

Tip #5: Saying No

Saying “no” to things has been something I’ve had to master in the last couple years, and I'm still navigating my journey with it. On one hand, I get serious FOMO if I don't say no and I don't want to let anyone down by saying no (cue: my people pleasing tendencies). But on the other hand, saying yes to everything means I'm spending my energy where it doesn't deserve to go. 

Saying 'No' can open up space in your schedule and space in your mind to focus on things that actually matter. When I was saying yes to everything I was spreading myself far too thin and getting anxious as a result of it. Having more autonomy over what you truly want to do will set you free.

If you love these tips there's many more on my podcast 8 Minutes to Change Your (Work) Life. Listen to it on Mamamia or your favourite podcast app.

Hello! My name is Deb, and welcome to Debbblog. You may know me from a few places – either in real life, from my Tiktok (@debbbag), or my podcast with Mamamia 8 Minutes to Change Your (Work) Life.

Starting a blog is something I’ve been trying to do on and off for the past couple of years, however, being a perfectionist, I never felt ready to commit to something I knew I wasn’t good at.

But things are different this year. 2023 is the year of slow growth and mediocrity for me - a year to do the bare minimum. And I’m committed to that (even if it means this is the only blog I post ha).

So I created this blog. On the daily, I have ideas I want to record, thoughts I want to jot down, and helpful tips I want to share with others.

If you’d like to follow my journey – subscribe below!