Hi friends, I took a 12-day break off Instagram during the 16-day break from work thanks to merging Easter and Eid holidays, which you may also call super planning! It felt good focusing on my family and getting my home in order, especially the seasonal clothes switch, which has been exhausting as I try to respect the space limit I have or what the book Decluttering at The Speed of Life calls: the container concept. I have not finished working on clothes 100% but let’s say I achieved 80%. Would you like me to talk about that book in the podcast or live on Instagram? Hit reply and say “Yes, I would” and I’ll do it. I always look for chances to begin again, and today is definitely a collective great chance after Eid holiday and after the holy month of Ramadan, which got exhausting by the end, I'm sure. We have eight weeks to make significant progress in our goals before schools are out and travel plans kick in again. So let’s do this, people! |
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Here is your weekly dose of The Sunday Spark ⚡️ a newsletter listing 5 inspiring things I thought were worth starting your week with: - A free ebook: Generation Carbon: A Carbon Almanac for Kids. A worldwide team of volunteers wrote, designed and illustrated this free PDF about our role to save the environment, such beautiful work.
- I am really enjoying what Mike Vardy AKA The Productivityist is creating on his +400-episode podcast, blog and his new YouTube channel. Here is a good blog post by him about overchoice.
- I couldn't help myself; I got the hardcover 10th-anniversary edition of Steal Like an Artist, the book you see behind me in most of my Instagram videos, signed by Austin Kleon himself. This is a book we all need to read as creative beings. Here's Austin's reflection on it a decade after writing it in a podcast interview with Mike Vardy.
- How to take things less personally and avoid mind-reading.
- Over the vacation, I enjoyed a gathering with friends where one of them played the Oud and I sang along. Although I don't play it, Oud is one of my favorite musical instruments because my dad used to play it when we were kids and my brother plays it professionally and every New Year's Eve to us after 12 AM. I always participated in school choirs and always wished God made my voice a bit prettier for solo singing, alas, I am thankful he created it to be so easy on the ear for my podcast. Here is a quote that made me sing more lately:
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“We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss, delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics that let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours. In song, we have permission to rehearse all our heartbreaks, all our lusts. In song, we can console our children while they are still too young to judge our rusty voices, and we can find shortcuts to ecstasy while performing the mundane duty of a daily shower or scrubbing down the kitchen after yet another meal.” ― Katherine May |
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What was your favorite Spark? I am eager to know. Reply to this email or share with me on my social media. See you next Sunday 😊 First name / my dear friend. |
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- In the past two years, my work routine pretty much consists of going over to Brain Fm, selecting deep work mode and time duration; the rest is... focus. You get 20% discount on your subscription using my code: bardees.
- Enjoy 10% off my favorite gratitude journal that I have been using since 2017, The Five-Minute Journal, using the code Bardees10. One journal will last you 6 months. I loved the newly released colored covers.
- Enjoy 10% off my favorite daily planner, The Full Focus Planner, using the code Bardees10. One planner will last you 90 days.
- Enjoy a free month of the Readwise app to remember your highlights from books/articles you read on Kindle or websites.
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Note: some of the links above may be affiliate links, but always keep in mind that I don’t endorse anything I don’t use and love myself. |
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In case you missed these posts on Instagram… |
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