And Your Week 4+5 Challenges Are...
...considerably more fun than listening to Piers Morgan.
Hello again!
It’s week 4 of the Everything Is Amazing challenges (well, 4 and 5, really, since I took a week off). Here’s why they’re worth doing - I mean, this isn’t just whimsical sadism on my part.
The rulebook shakes out thusly:
You pick one or more of these currently lockdown-appropriate challenges and have a go over the coming week.
If you get it done, you’ll enjoy fun, meaningful benefits over time, in random and unpredictable ways. (That’s the payoff of seeking a more curious life.)
If you don’t get it done, you will suffer the horrific and terrifying fate of having exactly nothing happen to you as a result. Think about that for a while. Think about it some more.
First time doing one of these? Lucky you - that gives you twenty to choose from today. Here are the first, second and third installments. Spoilt for choice, mate.
If you like the idea of inflicting sadistic whimsy on someone else, use the button below to get started:
Right then. Here’s the week 4/5 kaboodle.
1) Sleep In The Garden
It’s starting to get a bit warmer out there (although your mileage may vary depending on geography) - so it’s time to make the neighbours think you’ve lost your damn mind.
Ah, the joys of sleeping outdoors! I've written a lot about this. It's a pet obsession of mine So I will try to restrain myself here.
Being out in nature can do fantastic, wonderful, spectacular things for your mental health, clarity of thinking, and sense of well-being. But it's also kinda of a tough thing to do, the first time you do it. What if someone spotted you? What if a cow trod on you - or a bear?
I get that, so I won't ask you to sleep in a ditch (although bonus points WILL be awarded if you do that, and maybe an invite to my first book launch because I think we'd get along brilliantly).
Instead, you're going to sleep under the stars in a completely safe place that you legally own. You can set up a tent if you like, although, you know, woah look at those stars if you opt for the roofless version and it’s not raining. You can pop in and out of your house as many times as you like - for a sandwich, for a mug of cocoa or a glass of wine, for a wee. Whatever. Go crazy!
The only rule is that when you actually sleep, you sleep outside.
When the first lockdown descended in England last year, the sons of some friends of mine decided to raise money for charity by sleeping in the garden as long as they could. They managed to sleep outside for fifty days in a row (raising £1,580 in the process).
I’m challenging you to achieve just one-fiftieth of that. Easy peasy. You'll wonder what you were worried about.
(Afterwards, I mean. At the time you'll be freaking out a bit - but it'll be a good kind of freaking out. Yes, there is indeed a good kind. You’re about to discover it this week.)
2) Start One Of These Three Types Of Journal
If you equate “journalling” with “angsty, self-obsessed narcissistic nonsense,” okay! If you want to do that, go ahead. Sounds awful, but it’s a free world.
However, the actual definition of a journal should be “attention-focusing communication technology.” That’s what unites all the many, many types of journals out there: they make you pay attention to an unusual degree, and to record your thoughts in a meaningful way.
We’re used to hearing about diaries, which can be fascinating things if they’re written by the right person (I’m absolutely loving Michael Palin’s three-volume collection right now) - but there are other types.
Here are three you could test out this week, to see if they suit you.
a) A Zero-Bullsh*t Journal
When you were a kid, you probably kept a diary to hold all the things you could never say in public - all sorts of information that could destroy your life if your parents or friends got hold of it.
That's probably why you ended up burying it somewhere secret, or feeding it into a paper shredder at your dad's or mom's workplace, or just burning it in the garden.
(Fun-only-in-retrospect fact: I accidentally set fire to the side of my parental house in this way. NEVER put the smoking remains of your diary straight in a black plastic bin, so it can catch fire and send a sheet of blue flame up the side of the house that melts the kitchen’s plastic guttering until it falls across the garden and leaves an evil-smelling line of bubbling slag that it takes you an entire summer of Saturdays to scrape up and scrub away. Think of it like, “Mike did this so you don’t have to.” Thanks.)
However you stopped, you almost certainly did. Adults aren't as good as kids at being that recklessly honest. Until now, that is.
Your challenge this week is to buy a diary or notebook - and start writing the actual truth in it.
Because it’s the actual truth, you will never let another human being read this diary. You will conquer the fear of someone accidentally discovering it by using all your grown-up ingenuity to render it unfindable or unreadable.
I say again: do it so nobody will ever see it except you.
And for that reason, you can speak the language of your unfiltered thoughts - the things you feel secure in thinking because nobody can hear you think. This diary will become a true and accurate recording of those unsayables.
And yes, that should be absolutely scary as hell. Sweat freely. It's allowed.
You have 7 days to document the unexpurgated truth about your life - and if you feel like it, you could keep going once the time is up. And if not? Seven days from today, you can burn that diary or notebook in the garden! Just make sure you dunk the smouldering remains in cold water straight afterwards. Do it for me, ok? Thanks.
(b) A Listening Journal
“One of the best parts of this class for me was a very simple exercise, one that I have often assigned in classes but very rarely practiced myself: keeping a listening journal. There are a few ways to approach the assignment: some that involve quite active listening, some that involve more passive reception, ones that involve making a recording, and others that just involve a pencil and paper. In my experience, there is no wrong way to do it, as long as you find yourself listening somewhere. It’s essentially a form of meditation.”
(c) A Nature Journal
This is one of the rare instances where I would recommend you check Facebook. There are some really big nature-journalling groups on there - like this one - and they’re filled with exactly the sort of people you’d expect: thoughtful, observant, calming, and utterly uninterested in yelling at each other, which certainly cannot be said for the rest of that platform.
As for how to write a nature journal, that’s up to you. I’m currently taking a buffet approach to the one I’m working on, recording and researching a plant, a bird and a rock in rotation. Maybe you just want to sketch what you see (that’s a previous challenge, by the way, see number 5 here), or use the microphone on your phone to speak into and record your thoughts. Or something else. What would feel the right approach for the experience you want to have? Do that.
3) Drink More Water
This challenge is really simple, and at first glance, looks really lame.
But here's a personal story.
A few years ago, I lived in Portugal for two months. I'm British, so when temperatures soared to 38 degrees C and I stupidly didn’t up my water intake, I started suffering.
And then the day-ruining headaches started.
I ended up spending the best part of 10 days curled into a ball because my head was pounding so much - and after hydrating properly for a week (with the help of my then-other-half who is a doctor and knew I needed to replenish salts as well as fluids), I still felt so lightheaded that I could hardly walk straight.
Welcome to the exciting world of severe dehydration.
Your body is 70% water and contains anything upwards of 30 litres of water, without which you would grind to a painful halt. When you're unusually hot (or when you’re unusually cold), when you're stressed, or when you're ill - all that water leaves your body at a frightening rate, and if you don't replenish it, you will feel remarkably terrible in record time.
Unfortunately for me, I seem to have now become easily dehydratable (even years later I seem to be super-sensitive to it) and it’s a thing I have to keep close track of, or it’ll trigger a migraine. But it’s certainly not just me. In a mild way, it seems everyone is a little low on water, and it’s stopping their bodies from working as well as they should. Especially the brain, which is over 70% water.
If you’re trying to do anything taxing with your brain, like improving your longterm memory to chess Grandmaster standards, you haven’t a hope if you’re dehydrated.
Right now, your body is probably struggling. Just a little. But enough to become highly aware of when you're getting enough water. Try it. Take a drink - and if it makes you realise you were a bit thirsty and didn’t know it until now, you’re mildly dehdrated. (Keep drinking. You'll feel amazing.)
That's the goal for this week - to increase your water-drinking by at least 25%, and monitor it carefully to make sure you're hitting that target every day.
Sounds laughably easy.
And yes, it's actually quite easy. It's so easy that it’s the kind of thing you end up not doing because the bar feels so pathetically low it’s not worth attempting (watch out for that, it’s a common trap).
But attempt it anyway, because the benefits for your well-being and long-term health could be extraordinary.
4) Learn To Fold Clothes Better
Hot on the heels of the whiteknuckle-ride of “drink more water,” am I really suggesting that everyone reading this doesn't know how to do something as insultingly humdrum as folding their clothes? Am I being that judgemental?
Yup. Because there’s folding and there’s folding.
Your ability to fold is on a scale. Most people are down towards the bottom, the "oh, b****cks to it, I suppose that’ll do" skill-level of clothes-folding. Until recently I was firmly in this category. Yes, they don't exactly stack on the shelf because they're a bit of a mess, but hey - close enough, right?
Then I discovered that further up the scale is the WikiHow category of folding: still fairly obvious, but including classic folding techniques like the travel roll (if roll your clothes properly, they don't crease in your backpack).
Then you're into the realm of professionals - and crazy, crazy stuff like the 2-second shirt fold, and for business travel types, how to fold a suit, pants and shirt to go in a suitcase with nary a wrinkle.
If you show someone else the T-shirt technique in action, it will blow their mind. And if you could get so good that you could fold it in less than a second, well, it's basically a magic trick and when the pandemic is over, you should hire yourself out to children’s parties.
As for "why is folding clothes important" - well, it, erm - it looks cool? And wrinkles are ugly. And you're proving you're a well-rounded human being, especially in front of the opposite sex. And, and....
Okay, maybe this isn't the most pulse-thumpingly meaningful challenge in the world.
(But it is spectacular if you do it right.)
5) Master The First 60 Seconds Of Your Day
A while back I watched the film Groundhog Day with my partner - and she was greatly impressed by the oft-repeated scene where the bedside alarm hits 6am, Bill Murray leaps out of bed and rushes over to the sink to slap cold water on his face.
"Oh my God. I could never do that," she said to me. "Too early! Too quick!"
But she sounded impressed as well as horrified. Let's face it - Phil Connors may be a bloody awful human being (at the start of the film anyway) - but he really nails the first 60 seconds of his morning routine.
There's a lot of stuff online about how your morning routine is the most important part of the day - mainly aimed, as far as I can see, at self-employed young folk in startup land who haven't yet learned how to get out of bed before noon.
For the rest of the world, the response might be, "Ha, must be nice to have that kind of time." (And if you have a family, your time is rarely your own, and never for the whole morning.)
However, I'd argue that everyone has complete control over the first 60 seconds of their day, no matter what the emergency. (For example, a house always takes longer than 60 seconds to burn down.)
Now, 60 seconds may not sound like a lot. But it's enough time to stagger to the sink and throw water on your face (I've seen the film a dozen times, I can confirm it). It's also enough time to do 10 pushups, or 10 situps, or stretch your body a few times. If you're quick, you could get a headstand in. You could go up and down the stairs twice! You could do a lap of the house!!
In short: you could do something that gets your body moving - ensuring you never have a zero-day for exercise.
(This also includes being in the shower at the end of those 60 seconds, so you're not putting it off because the bed's warm and the shower is c-c-cold - which is always why you're always the last person to use it, and always abandoning half your morning coffee as you rush out the door. Cut that out now. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.)
What could you get done in the first 60 seconds of your day?
This week you will decide, and then you will start doing it - for keeps.
Motivational tip
Social media is absolutely filled with people who would just love to make you uncomfortable if you promise to do something and then can’t be bothered to do it. Friends, family, loved ones - they are all ready to make you feel bad about yourself, any time you need.
So how about sharing your chosen challenge with them on whatever social media platform you choose, using the hashtag #EverythingIsAmazing ? (And if you use that hashtag, I’ll see it too, and will be able to give you grief as well.)
Allons-y, then!
Images: Geronimo Giqueaux; Md Salman; Marcos Paulo Prado; Bluewater Globe