🌑 Soulful Productivity & Moving Forward With the Moon 🌕

Let's replace toxic productivity with soulful productivity!

Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

Hi friend,

Today, I wanted to invite you to a date with the next new moon—and a date with your dreams and inspirations for the upcoming cycle. I recorded a moon meditation for you that you can find here:

New Moon, New You: The Realistic Magic of New Moon Intentions

I did this meditation in the spirit of “Dare to Suck” (last week’s post) and “Do It Imperfectly—But Do It” (my mini-article you will find below).

And I did this as part of my own dreams and aspirations for the future.

You see, I would love to find a way to bring productivity and spirituality together. And I think the practice of setting intentions with the moon could be a way to do that.

Productivity—now and then

As you might know, I have spent years helping people as a productivity coach. And in that field, linear time traditionally plays a huge role (planners, to-do lists, regular reviews, etc.)

However, we no longer seem to experience time in a very linear or predictable way. Case in point: April 2020 felt like an entire decade according to everyone I talked to. In contrast, people keep on telling me that this year is just racing by.

Why would we keep on using traditional planning methods if time itself is feeling this erratic? How can you create a five-year plan, when the world around you is urging you to just go on with the program—and we have no idea what the program is?

Also, traditional productivity is pretty bland. It’s all left-brain. It’s all personality and no soul. Mundane, not magic.

Traditional productivity advice is like telling someone how to use their right arm more efficiently—while forgetting that they also have a left arm. (If you have ever broken an arm, you know how helpful it is to be able to use both arms.)

Not only that, but traditional productivity advice can help sustain the toxic idea: that our worth somehow depends on our doing (our accomplishments and achievements) rather than our being (we are worthy simply because we exist).

The way forward

Of course, abandoning productivity advice altogether also isn’t the best solution for most people. After all, you probably do want to do certain things. And there may be things you have to do that you are struggling to complete.

I believe that there must be a better solution than abandoning productivity advice altogether, or resorting to traditional productivity advice.

Enter soulful productivity, a concept I am currently developing and that I’m starting to offer to people. This is a marriage between the magical and the mundane, and a way to get things done that honors the needs of our soul and our squishy human self.

Here’s how I have described the difference between toxic productivity and soulful productivity:

Toxic productivity takes energy. Soulful productivity gives you energy.

How can we be more soulfully productive?

A process that I find immensely valuable in this regard is the practice of setting intentions with the moon. This gives us the benefits of monthly planning, without its downsides.

Unlike monthly planning, moon “intentioning” is magical. It’s fun and it helps connect you to a different timeline. And, because there are 13 new moons in a year (but only 12 months), it even gives you one extra chance to move in the direction you want.

I have been using the moon cycle for intention setting for a long time, and I look forward to sharing this practice with you!

Alright, onto my mini-article for this week:

Do it imperfectly (but do it)

Are you sometimes being held back by wanting to do something perfectly? If so, let me share a story with you that might inspire you to do it imperfectly.

A few years ago, I did a spiritual retreat where I was searching for a new vision and direction. And I’m pretty sure it was one the most imperfect retreats in the history of all retreats.

The ideal scenario would be to spend a few days by myself and without any electronics in the wilderness, fasting, and asking for guidance.

The reality?

It was 2021 so it was all virtual.

The only wilderness I was in was urban.

I signed up late so I was running half a day behind.

The calls were in the middle of my day so I couldn’t stay until the end.

And I was doing this in the middle of everything else… coaching current clients, connecting with potential new clients, publishing articles, reviewing an old interview for a book project, spending time with family over dinner, etc.

I was probably breaking every rule in the book on how to do a retreat.

But you know what? My retreat may have been imperfect but it was perfectly imperfect. Despite (or maybe even because of these limitations), I got a ton out of it. I’m glad I did it. And something about doing it so imperfectly but still doing it felt very appropriate for the times we live in.

I think there’s a lesson in there for all of us. Forget perfectionism. Done is better than perfect. If I wanted to do this retreat right, I wouldn’t have done it at all — and missed out on something wonderful. As Arthur Ashe so accurately put it:

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

Do it imperfectly, but do it.

What is something you could dare to do imperfectly this week?

And another Note on productivity:

Warmly,
Louise

P.S.: If you know people who might resonate with this, please share this article with them. I’d love to have them on board the soulful productivity train. :)

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Planning Playlist:

Planning generally assumes that we have more control over things than we do. But how many times have you made an elaborate plan—and everything actually went according to plan?

Yeah, same here. (See my last email.)

Here’s a little playlist about plans going off the rails:

“The 4 Rules of Planning” by Leonard Snart

In this brief clip, my favorite fictional super-villain (are we allowed to have those?) shares some sage wisdom about planning:

“Best Laid Plans” by James Blunt