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[7]Just One Good Thing

Today’s culture seems to reward and celebrate the hustle. The neverending idea
that one should always be productive, working, producing, shipping.

At times, I’ve compared myself to peers, colleagues, and friends. Places like
LinkedIn and other social media make me cringe: everyone performing in favor of
being seen as someone with their shit together. Impostor syndrome strikes. On
the other end, workingworkingworking results in burnout and feeling like
nothing was accomplished anyway.

This followed me for decades, but over the last decade I’ve begun to let go in
many ways and focused on my immediate people and myself.

This is not as easy to do as we’d like, as stress, obligations, and pressure
reveal themselves in the form of externalities: things out of or beyond our
control.

In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea:
just do one thing, that I want to do today.

The one thing can be small or big, easy or labored, fleeting or long. I carve
out time to go play drums for two hours, go for a bouldering session, do a
shorter 20 minute run, read a page of a book, eat something I’m really excited
about, and more. Even on the most difficult day, I can adjust and find the
smallest thing that I am excited about and do it.

I needed some way to change my outlook. Developing a habit that is less about
more and embracing the simple and ordinary has brought me a semblance of peace.
It’s allowed for adaptability and resilience when the days go sideways and joy
and delight on days that go smoothly.

Just. One. Good. Thing.

Jul 21 2025 ⋅ [8]personal

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[12]Prev
Beyond Curiosity

I write an occasional newsletter called Weightshifting. It was originally
comprised of design, culture, and travel notes, morphed into [13]two seasons of
overland travel, and has now returned to its original ideal of observations in
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[1] https://nazhamid.com/
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[7] https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/
[8] https://nazhamid.com/topic/personal/
[9] https://nazhamid.com/journal/boy-meets-girl/
[10] https://nazhamid.com/journal/2020-music/
[11] https://nazhamid.com/journal/on-racism/
[12] https://nazhamid.com/journal/beyond-curiosity/
[13] https://nazhamid.com/newsletter
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[17] https://nazhamid.com/links.xml
[18] https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/#
[19] https://mastodon.social/@nazhamid
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[21] https://letterboxd.com/weightshift/
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[23] https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/#top