Hey there,
Japan is famous for its iconic Torii gates at the entrances of every Shinto shrine.
The purpose of a Torii gate is to separate the spiritual world from the human world. In other words, when you cross a Torii gate and enter a shrine, you cross realms.
While I was reading a book called Zen, I stumbled upon the concept that we should divide our daily life with imaginary Torii gates.
Gates to create recognisable boundaries between our personal life and work life.
And as we cross each gate, we leave thoughts and worries of the realm behind the gate out of our minds.
You cross a gate when you finish breakfast, get ready and start work. Then, you cross another gate when you wrap up work for the day and come home to relax.
I have been practising keeping boundaries between work and personal life for years. But recently, I found myself overthinking about work during my downtime.
As a result, I couldn't fully enjoy my out of office hours, which led to an increased amount of stress.
With most of us working remotely, the lines between work and home are blurred more than ever.
This concept of Torii gates served as a reminder to draw a thick line between these two parts of my life and enjoy the present moment.
If you're struggling to maintain a good work-life balance, try this technique.
Put up some Torii gates in your mind to keep work at the office.
Now, grab a coffee, sit tight, and enjoy this week's issue:
Book to Read
Zen: The Art of Simple Living
In this book, Shunmyō Masuno will teach you 1 Zen principle each day for the next 100 days. This is one of those books which you get in hardcover and keep by your bedside.
Get it from Amazon
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Apps & Services
Oku ➔
A modern Goodreads alternative
Oku is a modern, beautiful and minimalistic Goodreads alternative. With Oku, you can create private book collections, add books to your reading wishlist and find new books to read from the community. It's pretty much like Goodreads but looks gorgeous.
I've been using this app to track books I want to read and have read until now, and I love the experience. Although Oku doesn't have native mobile apps yet, since it's a progressive web app, you can add a shortcut to the web app on your
phone and use it as a native app. Oku is free to use with an optional premium plan which offers reading stats and reading goal tracking.
Slidepad lets you keep your favourite websites opened and ready in a sliding window on macOS. It works like a regular web browser, so you can open any website you want within the sliding window and keep multiple websites opened at once. I love it because
it makes access to web apps like Todoist, Trello, Google Search, etc. pretty handy. As you bring your cursor to the right edge of your screen, Slidepad slides into your screen. Fantastic for note-taking or referencing from the web while
working. It's free to try for 30 days and then a one-time purchase of $12.99 if you want to keep using the app.
Ocean sounds are pretty relaxing anytime you listen to them. The sound of the waves crashing, a group of whales singing, or coral reefs underwater can calm you amidst the daily stress. This web app lets you generate your perfect ocean music by mixing
up different ocean sounds you want to hear — beach, motorboat, whales, waves, and more. This app is free to use and offers granular sound mixing controls.
Ever since GDPR came into effect, the web fell prey to another annoying popup category — cookie consent banners. While many websites, including
hulry.com,
have opted for privacy-friendly analytics and don't show a cookie banner, most websites still use cookies. Super Agent is a browser extension that automatically accepts or rejects cookie consent on websites based on your preference. It
works on most websites and automatically dismisses the cookie banner in seconds resulting in a clean browsing experience.
Available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.
Taking the Shortcut
Show or hide the in-meeting chat panel in Zoom.
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Interesting Reads
We easily fall prey to procrastination when work isn't well-defined enough to act on it. If you set vague goals like I'll work on this project tomorrow, then most likely, you'll end up procrastinating instead of working. This article is a fantastic read
on how to divide up your goals into a realistic to-do list for the day and how to motivate yourself to work when you feel like binge-watching the next season of your favourite show on Netflix.
If your job involves sitting in front of a computer all day, then you're most likely already suffering from neck pain or going to in the future. As you stay slouched over your computer screen or your smartphone for hours, your neck muscles overstretch
and cause pain. This article will show you five neck exercises that you can do to reduce neck pain and keep your neck healthy. These are simple exercises that won't take too much of your time or require some special equipment.
Finding time to work on side projects is still the number one roadblock to our dreams. This article will give you a window into Susan's daily routine. She talks about how she manages to juggle writing for her blog and running a video game studio while
working full-time every week. Susan's routine is nothing extraordinary, and with a bit of discipline and willpower, you can emulate Susan's level of productivity in no time.
If you're suffering burnout or at the very edge of it, this article will open your mind to new perspectives. Read stories of people who have successfully eliminated burnout from their life by questioning themselves about what really mattered to them.
While your current job might bring in heaps of wealth for you, if it ends up killing you, then what's the point?
While amassing a ton of wealth gives you the option to buy your dream supercar or a fancy mansion, the real value of wealth is much deeper than simply buying expensive stuff. In this article, Morgan talks about three meaningful purposes of money that
will buy you the ultimate freedom in life, to do and say anything you want and love. This article might shift your current perspective on money altogether.
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