Some Charts That Help Me Live My Life

It would be hard even in the best of times to top last week’s newsletter about ChatGPT’s brilliant translation of the Odyssey, and unfortunately, this is not the best of times. My family has really been going through it lately — every single one of my kids and co-parents seem to be struggling with some combination of anxiety, depression, and work and/or caregiver burnout. It’s a fun time!

Normally, I would push myself to try to be clever and poignant right now in the hopes that seeming smart and funny would help me feel better. But I’m tired. So I’m going to try something radical and different, and instead of seeking external validation, I’m going to share some pieces of paper that I’ve taped to the walls of my office that help me get stuff done. I hope they’ll help you, too.

The Idea-to-Plan Matrix

My partner and I came up with this chart when we realized we were having a lot of miscommunication around level of intent. It can be pretty upsetting to realize that something you thought someone was just mentioning offhandedly was actually a nearly fully conceptualized plan of action (or, conversely, that something you thought they had a firm intention of doing was really just a passing thought).

At first we tried to solve this problem by asking each other, “Where would you say this falls on the idea-to-plan spectrum?” I’m a firm believer that most things in life that seem binary actually exist on a spectrum. But soon we realized that even a spectrum wasn’t granular enough. And behold: the matrix. (Maybe most things I think of as spectra are actually matrices?)

We then spent a lot of time arguing for which terms should go in which boxes. Shocking, I know.

(I wrote this and the next one on my reMarkable, which I already gushed about a little bit here.

Anna Sproul-Latimer

recently wrote about loving her Supernote, another excellent alternative. I tried both but found writing on the reMarkable to be a slightly nicer experience. YMMV.)

Neurodivergent Love Languages

I got this from a tweet a while back (dissected at length on this thread on r/autism) and it immediately resonated. Most people in my life are neurodivergent, but this chart especially helps me relate to my oldest child, who just loves a good infodump. For a long time I felt like I was “cheating” at giving her quality time when I either doing my own thing alongside her or zoning out while she named various rocks and minerals, but this chart reminds me that those love languages are actually fairly common for neurodivergent folks, and that I wouldn’t be doing either of us a favor if I tried to force us to interact in a way that didn’t feel good to us. These days we’ve gotten a lot more comfortable snuggling together in bed under a fuzzy blanket — unsurprisingly, we both have a lot of opinions about the Correct blanket weight and texture for maximum coziness — and playing on our respective Switches.

Recently I’ve also been seeing #5 on this list called “Penguin pebbling”, which is just adorable.

The Creative Process

This one was sent to me by my partner’s sister, a brilliant projection designer. She’s a real, actual artist, while I’m a fraud and impostor, but she’s always wonderful to talk to about creative work. I was describing to her how I was struggling with a manuscript revision and I asked if she’d ever felt that way about a project, and she said, “Literally every single time.” She then told me that she has this list hanging near her desk to remind her that self-loathing is a totally normal phase in the production of art, and it passes.

I added “4.∞ THE SLOG” because for me that phase is the longest and most grueling. The Slog is the part of the process where you’re mostly past the self-loathing, and you can almost see the outlines of how this is going to turn into something that doesn’t totally suck, but first you’re just going to need to sit your butt in a chair for a while.

Normally I would try to end on something clever, but instead I’m just going to say: take care of yourselves, friends. Like the month of March, The Slog will pass. Sometimes you just need to get through it.