The Restless Art of Doing Less
I traded daily writing for deeper living. Now I’m wondering if discomfort might be a better teacher than metrics. Or if I should just give in to hard work.
Hello, it’s Tuesday again: time for my weekly career coaching session with Chat GTP.
March was the month I stopped chasing growth… and started chasing sunsets (kinda, I still saw a lot of them through the office window, but you know.. #intentions).
With my AI coach in full Zen Master mode, I traded pageviews for presence, followers for family dinners, and productivity for purpose. But it wasn’t all peace and clarity. I felt restless. I kept thinking about what I should be writing, what I could be growing. Still, I chose to stay present for my loved ones. What I gained might not show up in metrics, not yet. But I hope this short-term discomfort will turn into a growth compounding effect in the long-term.
🧘♀️ March: A Bridge Made of New Skills
I gave myself three main goals this month, all meant to strengthen the skills I’ll need to cross over into post-corporate life:
🌊 Deep Learning, with the “How Work Works” series
💌 Rejection Resilience, aka collecting No’s like souvenirs
🌿 Offline Living, to prioritize presence over productivity
Where did I land? Somewhere between contentment and restlessness.
On one hand, I’m proud of the depth, the research, and the real-life experiments. On the other, I struggled with that familiar tension: wanting to write more, but not doing it to honour the time spent offline with my loved ones.
Apparently, meditating on ideas without action is its own special kind of torture for a workaholic in recovery.
And the data doesn’t lie:
📈 February at a glance:
Subscribers: 5 → 25
Growth: +400%
Writing: 17 out of 28 days (60.71%)
🌱 March at a glance:
Subscribers: 26 → 37
Growth: +42.31%
Writing: 11 out of 31 days (35.48%)
So yes, hard work moves the needle. But what these short-term metrics can’t measure is what compounds.
The long walks with my partner. The weekends we tried something new. The trip home to see family. The deeper writing on the sociology of work. The resistance training against rejection. All of it is planting seeds I won’t harvest right away, but I know they’ll grow roots.
I also learned something else: I don’t get this restless just because I want to write more. I get restless when I don’t reflect. This space, this ritual of showing up and sharing, gives my days a kind of shape and meaning that I miss when I’m not here.
✨ Two Friends. Two Exit Stories.
These past few days, I caught up with two friends who left their corporate jobs and are now deep into their own experiments. One, with a career made in the banking industry, is dreaming up a social enterprise to support women stepping into their power. The other, with an international career in Marketing, is breaking taboos around medicinal cannabis and exploring how this plant is also a driver of sustainability.
Talking with them really inspired me. And it energized me for what’s ahead. They are the living proof that one can balance the overwhelming feeling that uncertainty can bring, with the drive to move towards something more aligned with your values.
April: Enter The New Coach
Now, with April arriving, we say goodbye to the Zen Master and invite a new coach to step in:
🦉The Strategic Builder: part Creative Director, part Operations Whisperer.
They care about systems, not hacks. Craft, not virality. Progress, not prestige.
And here’s what this new coach asked me to reflect on:
🔍 What’s a lightweight way to test value?
💸 What if monetization was just an experiment?
🛠 What part of the reader journey needs love?
🎈 How can I keep writing joyful?
📊 Can I track joy as a success metric?
🎯 April Goals
Main Theme: Product-led experiments to test value
Measure: Time spent creating + 1 prototype tested
We’re 18% into the countdown to leaving my corporate job.
Over the next two weeks, I’ll be traveling with my family (another decision shaped by March’s intention to live more offline). So expect a few less updates. But know this: I’ll be back here, writing, reflecting, and experimenting.
Thank you for being here, holding space with me in this strange, sweet in-between where we talk about leaving the safety of a cushy corporate life to embrace something far more uncertain… and far more our own.
See you soon,
Matty