Dear Readers,
Can not believe we are midpoint already in the 2025 Year Book! For the progress obsessed, you might be doing a mid-year reflection of your 2025 journey so far. How many items in your 2025 resolutions have been checked off? Do you have any “measurable“ progress or milestones to show? How have you leveraged AI to improve your productivity?
Congratulations to the over-achievers! But if you feel falling behind, and are dealing the emotional drag of disappointment, this post is for you. Inspired by
and her recent 6-week guided journaling course, I would like to invite you to a gentle reframing of the problem - creating space to stay grounded, think clearly and care deeply.But wait, that is a lot of ambiguous words! Doers and overachievers need something concrete so that we can measure, manage and audit progress! Sounds familiar? But life is not a business with rigorous statements, life has a certain level of fluidity that follows a nonlinear and non-predictable path. Creating space, as Jean said, could lead to more creativity, clarity and calm.
Now let’s see how some of these vague ideas can be broken down and applied in our daily struggles for life.
Unlocking creativity via creating space
I have been thinking about creativity for a while. At work, we have regular hackathons for promoting innovation, and at home, I am always trying different parenting styles to instill a sense of curiosity and creative thinking to my daughter. But more often than not, we are falling victim to innovation traps: POCs that are never deployed to production, ideas that remain on paper with learnings lost in individual minds, confused kids. How come?
Perhaps we need structure and mechanisms to harness innovation systematically. That means consistency, intentionality, and reflection. All of these need space and an expansive mindset.
Think about it, if your mind is pre-occupied with the quarterly planning activities and what roadmap items make the cut versus not, or religiously meeting the timeline for the next promotion cycle, how could you identify the true bottlenecks in your team’s performance, and apply creative thinking to level up your team’s productivity?
Creating space helps you to observe reality, connect the dots, and develop better, creative thinking to troubleshoot your career, and your life. And writing or journaling could be a great forum for making that space.
Seeking Clarity via creating space
Our world is getting more complex by the mind. The average person receives 120 emails every day, not to mention constant slack pings, Jira mentions, and calendar invites. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed and buried in information turmoil. On a regular day, I engage in slack chats with 15+ team members/groups, and 10+ slack threads. That is a lot of mental load to keep track of and engage in meaningful conversations!
No wonder we are all feel exhausted, and losing sight of higher goals in life. How to make sense of all these busy activities?
Creating space helps you to form mental catalogues of various aspects of your life. When you show up without an agenda, your mind will naturally be guided by memories, experience, or just raw thoughts. Sorting through those thoughts, organizing and writing them down, will help you to gain clear thinking and make sense of your life experiences. You will also start to see patterns of your behaviors that might need some rework. Do you have natural tendency to “defend“ when things go wrong? In a way, creating space via writing will act as a mirror to help you see a clear picture of yourself, and your goals in life.
Obtaining Calmness via creating space
Last but not least, involves the obtainment of a calm mind. I have to admit, I am not a practicing Buddhist and I do not meditate regularly. But I yarn for a calm mind. Life is too much of a hassle, isn’t it? Creating space via writing has a meditative aspect to it. Starting from a blank slate and let your mind guiding you can lead to a flow state, and help you to observe life from a third person point of you. When you remove “ego“ out of the picture, and become less self-aware, you will be left with new found freedom. Freedom from judgement, pressure, and expectations, freedom from worldly pursuits. This is not to say we should not have goals or desires, but to detach your sense of self from achieving those goals. This detachment will lead to calmness, which will bring clarity and creativity to your life.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
I am looking forward to the journaling workshop from
! And I invite everyone to create space for yourself via journaling!