I will so copy this! Such a good idea.

At the top of my daily note, there are five little checkboxes. Shop. Bonsai. Exercise. Reading. Meditation. They aren’t on the calendar. They have no time blocks assigned.

For a while, I thought of them as “non-negotiables”.

The shift happened gradually. I started thinking of them less as obligations and more as escape valves. When I finish a hard chunk of writing, or a run of support emails, or a meeting that took more out of me than it should have, I look at the boxes. I pick one. I go.

Shop time means out in my garage-turned-maker space, planing a board or cutting a joint.

⤑ The Escape-Valve System.

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