simple pleasures, the useless web, and the beauty of becoming

This season, I've been watching spring unfold around me—some trees fully bloomed while others are just budding, patches of grass growing at different rates, wildflowers appearing in unexpected places. Nothing in nature completes all at once, yet here we humans are constantly pressuring ourselves to find perfect closure in every area of life.

What if, instead, we took spring's wisdom and embraced strategic incompletion?

Whether in our personal systems, creative pursuits, or business priorities, there's profound power in knowing what to finish completely, what to leave intentionally unfinished, and what never needed doing in the first place.

Let's dive in!

🌱 TIPS FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE LIFE + BUSINESS 

Allocating Your Energy Resources 

I've got the bug to rip everything I own out of where it currently lives, stack it up in the living room, and strategically put things away until the shelves are full and then toss out everything else (or more realistically, I will then review, refine my selections, AND THEN out it goes.)

I get like this every spring. 

And anytime I've ever attempted it, it has gone... poorly, lol. Because I'm not a 10 person team from The Home Edit and I don't have the energy capacity of a fully able-bodied neurotypical person. There isn't anything wrong with not being any of those things (or being them) but it means the reality of life—and spring cleaning—has to look different. 

Building a life that accommodates me has pushed me to learn some of the biggest lessons I wanted to learn in my 20s but just couldn't brute force the willpower into doing it. SHOCKER 🙈

Things like: 

🤷🏻‍♀️ How to let things be good enough
🙈 Letting go of anxiety around the unfinished
✨ Releasing attachment to outcomes

Often times my first thought is the "perfect" (aka not realistic for me) version of something. And living a sustainable life means needing to revise that first thought, plan buffer time, take things in stages, and being okay with things not being completed (all at once, and sometimes, for long periods.)

I'm grateful that there is less and less internal resistance to that process every year. And I think that's the best sign of success in building a sustainable life—getting better at strategically allocating your resources (energy, time, decision-making, etc.) instead of aiming to complete everything perfectly every time and/or all at once. 

If we apply this to work or life: Where would a current project, goal, or task be left strategically incomplete and still serve it's purpose? And what comes up when you think about leaving something "done" instead of "perfect"?

✨ TIPS FOR A MORE SOULFUL LIFE

Creating Productive Tension

In a reward-driven society, we are encouraged to find beauty in the result, the finished piece. Whether that be art, a fully bloomed flower, a finished dish or dessert—you see where I'm going with this—the completed result becomes the only acceptable version of an ending. 

This has been reenforced by western society for centuries and it's not surprising because our brains naturally crave closure. We look to make sense of our environments, process our feelings and emotions, and the undeniable search to avoid (or lessen) pain. And at the root of all these things is fear. The fear of pain and abandonment, insecurity and uncertainty, and we can't forget, judgment and rejection. All things that will happen at one point or another in life and cannot be completed avoided. 

So how do we pull ourselves out of this inherent tunnel vision toward closure?

If you thought to yourself, "look to nature" at the end of that sentence? Then you'd be correct. I'm not a particularly religious and my 30s have certainly been a journey into what spirituality looks like for me personally, but if there is one thing I believe in it's this: however nature came to be—divine invention, scientific evolution, a combination of both or something else entirely—we can't deny that nature has solved problems we (as humans) continue to replicate and learned lessons we should all be embracing. 

We can look at the way weather shifts with the seasons and the gradual back-and-forth shift of temperatures (and conditions) until we wake up one day in a blazing summer. We get new blooms that arrive in stages from bud to flower to simply leaves (or fruit/nut). 

And yet each of these stages is beautiful without being complete. 

It's the same with our creative processes, relationships, and personal growth. When I was recovering from burnout, I found myself caught in an endless cycle of trying to "complete" my healing journey. I wanted to check the box, mark it done, and move on. But healing, like spring, refuses to be linear or fit neatly into a completed package.

What if, instead of constantly pushing toward closure in every area of our lives, we intentionally left some things unfinished? Not out of procrastination or avoidance, but as a deliberate strategy for deeper growth?

This is where the magic happens. Our brains actually maintain a special relationship with unfinished business—things left incomplete tend to stay active in our minds, creating a productive tension that often leads to unexpected insights and creative breakthroughs (otherwise known as the Zeigarnik Effect.) I've experienced this countless times when I deliberately step away from writing this newsletter mid-paragraph, only to find the perfect words arrive while I'm walking the dogs or making dinner.

But there's an important distinction here between what psychologists call "intrusive thoughts" versus "productive tension." When we're haunted by truly unresolved trauma or conflict, these thoughts drain our energy and disrupt our peace. They take over without permission. But when we strategically leave certain projects or ideas in an intentional state of becoming, they continue working in the background of our minds in a generative way.

In essence, harmful unresolved issues hijack the mind, while intentional open loops harness its natural tendencies for growth.

So how can we put this insight into practice? Choose one creative project this week and deliberately pause. Write down one sentence about where you'll pick up next time, then walk away. Notice how your mind continues to work on it even as you do other things.

Spring doesn't rush into summer all at once, and your work and life don't need to reach all the milestones in every area simultaneously either. When you practice selectively releasing the need for immediate closure, you are creating space for deeper insights to emerge naturally—when they're ready, not when you demand them.

📈 TIPS FOR A MORE SCALEABLE BUSINESS

Deliberate Efforts

Our work often mirrors the seasons—explosive growth in all directions during spring, slow, deliberate decisions and progress during the winter pause, and so on. With spring in particular, It's the perfect metaphor for the Pareto Principle, where 20% of efforts yield 80% of results.

While every tree in my yard has been bursting with new growth over the last month, only certain branches will bear fruit. The tree doesn't waste energy trying to make every single branch productive—it strategically allocates resources to the areas that will have the highest impact.

This mirrors how, in business, not all tasks are created equal. Some seemingly small actions will create disproportionate results, while others (often the most visible or noisy) contribute little to your actual goals.

This season of growth is the perfect time to identify those specific high impact and high-yielding tasks by asking:

1. Which activities consistently generate the most meaningful outcomes? These are your 20% activities.
2. What tasks feel productive but don't move the needle? These likely fall into the 80% that create minimal impact.
3. Where are you prioritizing visibility over value? Spring tempts us with quick, visible wins (like inbox zero) over deeper work that bears fruit later.

The challenge isn't working harder across everything—it's identifying and then protecting time for your high impact work.

This week, track your activities for at least three days. For each task, note both (a) how visible the work is to others and (b) the actual impact on your goals. At the end of the week, use the above prompts to look for patterns to identify your true 20%. Then lean into those tasks when you prep for the next week.

WHAT I'M LEARNING

It's 10:52am on Sunday morning, and I'm putting the finishing touches on this newsletter before I get ready to meet up with family. The irony isn't lost on me—writing about intentional incompletion while rushing to complete this on deadline. 🙈 (I at least had 75% of it drafted before I sat down this morning lol)

But maybe that's the perfect embodiment of this week's theme. I was out part of the week because I'm in the middle of moving and I started my cycle this weekend. I could have forced myself to finish this last night when my creative energy was depleted, producing something "done" but not aligned with my standards. Instead, I chose to sleep on it and return with fresh eyes.

This is the dance we all navigate—deciding when completion matters and when something deserves more space to unfold. Some months my newsletters are drafted days or weeks in advance with just a few personalizations the Friday before it goes out. Other weeks, like this one, it comes together in the final hours and I send it a little after my ideal time (11:00am CST.) Both approaches have their place.

What I'm learning as I go through these processes alongside you is that sustainable work, life, and creativity isn't about perfect consistency...

It's about making intentional choices that honor both my work and my wellbeing in each unique moment.

Sometimes that means finishing early, sometimes it means embracing the creative tension of a tighter timeline, and always it means giving myself grace for being human in the process. And always remembering why we do this work in the first place—so we have the luxury of making that choice.

CURRENTLY OBSESSED WITH

• I finally reached the extreme level in my Sudoku app AND hit first place in the weekly tournament 🏆
• Simple pleasures. I'm struggling to choose things to put here this week because my formula has always been something new and exiciting that I'm loving or have come across. But this week has been a focus ing existing with what I already have. Die hard skin care routine favorites. Choosing between my sriacha egg + cheese burritos or those waffles I mentioned a couple weeks ago topped with strawberries and homemade whipped cream for breakfast (with a heaping side of chicken sausage and eggs.) Deep work and strategic planning in business. 
• When I don't know what to do and I want to explore the internet without a goal, I go to The Useless Web. This week, it took me here. It let's you input your own words to use, so I made this (it's not a masterpiece, don't get excited, lol)
  
  

HAVING A GREAT TIME HERE?

Here's a few ways you can let me know:

• Option 1: 💌 Share with a fellow creative or business owner. Community starts with each of us and friends don't let friends chase their dreams at the expense of their mental health! If you know someone seeking more sustainability and harmony in their life and/or business, send this their way.
• Option 2: 👋 Say hi! Hit reply and share a sentence or two about anything you enjoyed or hit home for you. I always hope these words find the right people at the right time, but it's always makes my day to hear from you!

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