Month: January 2026

a drawing of a robot holding a sign and the word January is below Christine’s January Experiments
ADHD · challenge · fitness · goals · habits · motivation

Christine’s January Experiments

Christine Hennebury

In my first Tuesday post for 2026, I mentioned that January was going to be about experimenting and I have enjoyed the process of working slowly to figure things out.

I have been experimenting with when and how to write different things, I have experimented with different ways to approach my volunteer work, I have given a lot of thought to how ELSE my Go Team ideas might apply in my life, and I have experimented with my well-being practices.

Here are some of the things that have come up for me so far and some questions I am pondering at the moment.

A gif from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain asks Pinky ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’
As soon as I mention pondering, I gotta break out a Pinky and the Brain GIF. Image description: a GIF from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain (a short white mouse with an oversized head) is asking Pinky (a tall skinny mouse who looks kind of goofy) ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’ The mice are in a homey setting within a green cage in a laboratory. This question always came up in episodes of this show when The Brain, who was supposed to be a genius, had hatched a plan to take over the world and Pinky, who was rather silly, would respond with nonsense.

I LOVE My Medal!

My medal for the Salem Witch trials-themed walking challenge I did from October to December arrived last week and I am DELIGHTED by it. 

a rectangular medal on a light green ribbon
My medal from the Salem Witch Trials walking challenge. The medal is a black rectangle is kind of like a wrought iron gate along the top and sides with four points along the bottom line. The medal is decorated with a crescent moon, a sun, a crow on a branch and a bat hanging from a different branch. Then there is text that reads ‘The Salem Witch Trial Virtual Challenge’ The words ‘Salem Witch’ are in green and the lettering is ornate and kind of spooky. It is attached to a green ribbon with decorated with stereotypical ‘witchy’ items like beetles, moths, crystals, a dousing rod, and a fly agaric mushroom and a purple banner that reads ‘Make Every Mile Count.’

It’s really fun to have a tangible, obvious, and related reward for my efforts.

While I am very used to activities in which the effort is its own reward or ones in which I decide on my own ‘prize’ that often has nothing to do with the activities itself but this is different. 

While I set my timeframe, the distance and the reward were both set by someone else and I enjoy the feeling of meeting some sort of standard (even a loose one) and getting a medal as a result.

Now, let me be clear – I am in no way treating this like a medal that I won. I know I wasn’t actually racing. I didn’t have any competitors except myself and my time was snail-paced but the medal does remind me that I made a choice to do a program and I completed it. 

The fact that I really like how the medal looks is also a bonus.

My feelings about this medal – and the related challenge – are really interesting to me and I am definitely going to explore more tangible and related rewards for my other fitness experiments this year. 

And this is where the January experimenting comes in:

I decided to experiment with a longer challenge so I signed up for a 2026 challenge with the same company and, like with the shorter challenge, the fact that I can see each day adding up is giving me a little extra push to move more daily.

BUT it will take all year to earn my medal so I’m going to need to invent some more immediate (and related) awards for myself to earn on a regular basis.

Question: What kinds of rewards will feel more directly related to my fitness practices?

Imperfect Practices

Several of my Go Team 2026 posts have been a bit of a thought experiment for me as I figure out whether I am regularly applying these ideas to my life/practices and how ELSE I might want to apply them.

My Sunday post this week is an excellent example of that experimentation.

That post Done Beats Perfect is about getting so caught up in doing things right that I end up not doing them at all has really helped me tune into something about myself. 

I have ‘discovered’ this fact many times in many different contexts but each time I rediscover it, I find a new layer. 

I spend too much time trying to figure things out before doing them.

For example:

My ADHD brain is convinced that there is value in waiting to start work on my core because I wouldn’t want to waste time on some practice or program that doesn’t work. 

So, it kind of shelves the project of improving my core while awaiting more information BUT it keeps the thought in rotation so it FEELS like I am working on it all the time even though I am not actually doing any work.  

But since it has been on my mind for ages, I do get the bonus (annoying) feeling that I am not getting any results for my hard work. 

So, a lot of time passes, I don’t end up finding the right system for strengthening my core AND I don’t actually work on a less than perfect system AND nothing changes AND I feel frustrated with myself.

This is all kind of subconscious and I see the illogical nature of this process when I consciously consider it.  

But until it occurs to me to bring the thought forward I just have this annoying contradictory situation in which something is sort of on my mind, time is passing, there’s a feeling of effort but no results, but I also know that I am not actually working on that yet.

It’s a bit like when I sit down to write but I can’t make the words string together at the moment so I sit at my desk and putter around at all kinds of distractions. I feel like I am working on it and getting nowhere but there is actually no work taking place.   

In that situation, I need to become aware that I am doing that (again!) and remind myself that the only thing that gets my writing done is putting words on the page and then moving them around. I have to coax myself to stick with it past the initial pain of dealing with an ambiguous situation and trust that if I go through the tried-and-true procedure, the work will get done.

Since I know that completing an imperfect workout or an imperfect practice will be automatically superior to a perfect one that never actually gets done, I need to identify a tried-and-true procedure that I can trust to get my workouts/practices done.

I am going to work on the following questions and develop an experiment based on my answers:

Questions:  What procedures can I use to make it easier to do an imperfect workout instead of waiting for a perfect one to arrive? How can I make myself conscious of being stuck in the ‘waiting for more info’ loop?

My Evening Drawing Experiment

It’s a good thing this is an experiment not a goal because my first plan for adding drawing to my evening didn’t go well.

In fact, it has kind of backfired. 

My plan to connect my drawing to my evening yoga has resulted in me avoiding my yoga because I couldn’t wrap my mind around drawing at that point.  

I know that the main reason I didn’t draw was because I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to draw each evening. Frustratingly, in my post about this experiment I actually said that I needed to pick something to draw or I probably wouldn’t do it.

Alas, I forgot all about that aspect of things then just tried to wing it and ended up (temporarily) sinking my yoga practice along with my plan to draw.

So, for now, I am going back to committing to evening yoga and, if I have the energy, I will do a drawing on an index card but the drawing is a bonus not a dealbreaker.

And I am going to consider the following questions and have an answer to experiment with by Wednesday evening:

Questions:  What kinds of drawing would be fun and relaxing for me to do each evening? How can I make the process of drawing easier to start?

Row Row Row… my living room?

This experiment is less than two days old but after hearing me wonder aloud if moving my rowing machine from the basement to the living room would make it more likely that I would use it, my husband volunteered to move it for me.  

As soon as it was in the living room, rowing felt more like a thing I *could* do instead of a thing ‘I need to get back to’ and now that the living room experiment was underway, I decided to try for 5 minutes of rowing each day for the next week.

I know that’s a small amount but I wanted it to feel easy and I can definitely fit in 5 minutes a day for a week and then review.

So, on Monday morning, I planned to row for 5 minutes but ended up rowing for 15 minutes while watching a video about setting up an artist’s notebook. and it really felt great.

That doesn’t mean that I am changing my experiment though. I am going to stick to the 5 minute plan with the option of doing more but with zero pressure to do so.

Now I am just playing around with the when:

Question: Is it easier to have a set time to row or to just do it when it makes sense on a given day?  

Overall, I’m enjoying the experiment approach and I am planning to continue into February.

Have you been doing any experiments with your practices and habits in January? How are things going?

a drawing of a robot holding a sign and the word January is below
I decided to draw my own calendars this year. This one is above my desk and will have a different robot for each month. Image description: a happy square-headed, rectangular-bodied robot drawn in blue ink. She is holding a sign that says ‘Real Snow Please!’ in one hand and she is holding a star in the other. She is standing on a curved line that is supposed to represent snow on the ground and there are dots in the background to represent snow falling. Text beneath her reads ‘January’ and there are two snowflakes and two horizontal arrows pointing to the word.
A painting of a shiny gold star Go Team 2026: Choose Where Your Energy Goes
ADHD · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Choose Where Your Energy Goes

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Because of the combination of extreme cold and ice build-up at a major power plant over the weekend, people in NL were asked to minimize our power usage to avoid blackouts.

And that led to me asking myself things like, ‘Is it better to type this on my phone or use my desktop computer?’* and ‘Does it take more power to run the slow cooker or to heat the oven?’, you know, questions about how to allocate our household energy in a responsible way. It really made me pay attention to all of the electrical power-related decisions I unconsciously make in a given day.

And THAT led me to think about how I allocate my personal energy at any given time and wonder about the unconscious choices I am making about how to spend my energy on a regular basis.

Because even though Taekwondo has taught me to ‘Look where you’re striking’ because your power (energy) is directed towards what you are focusing on, I often forget that the lesson extends beyond TKD class.*

Yes, I have these kinds of strings of somewhat-related thoughts on the regular. Is it ADHD? Is it Being Christine? Who knows? It keeps things interesting though.

I get that we don’t always get to choose where to put our energy and/or that we have competing priorities but it’s worthwhile to think about any energy choices we happen to have at the moment.

So, Team, I invite you to consider the following questions:

What kinds of energy do you have available for your current practices?

When is that energy available?

Are there things you can do in advance so when practice time comes you can spend energy on your practices instead of on preparing for your practices?

Are you wasting energy (or sapping your energy) by being mean to yourself when you could spend that energy on self-kindness (which builds energy!) or on being relatively neutral while you putter through your practices?

I know these are relative easy questions to ask but even the most complicated process has to start somewhere.

Having a look at where your energy goes and how you can make small shifts to save/generate good energy is a great way to help yourself move toward the life you want.

And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts today.

Whether you are asking yourself energy questions, figuring out where you energy goes/has gone, or doing helpful things utterly unrelated to examining your energy, I wish you ease.

Be kind to yourselves out there, please.

PS – If you are spending a lot of time worrying about the situation in Minnesota but can’t figure out how to put that particular energy to positive use then visiting Stand With Minnesota is a good place to start.

A painting of a shiny gold star
A small painting of a shiny gold star that takes up about two thirds of the page. I started the drawing a bit too close to the bottom of the page so the left bottom point is just off the page. After drawing the star, I drew several star outlines outside the original star, each one larger than the next. Each outline extends beyond the page so the result is angled stripes between the star and the edge of the paper. The stripes are mostly in a pattern – black, white, gold, black, white, gold, etc. the painting is outlined with black lines at the edges.

*An hour or so after posting I realized that I hadn’t finished this thought. My quandary was whether it took more energy to use my computer for a short time or to recharge my phone sooner than normal because I was using it more. I do actually realize that using my unplugged iPhone is not using household power in the moment – ha!

Braving the cold, looking on at our neighbours to the south in horror, sadness and fear, and taking comfort in food
family · fascism · fitness · protests · snow · winter

Braving the cold, looking on at our neighbours to the south in horror, sadness and fear, and taking comfort in food

Sam B1 Comment

It was a wild weekend.

And I find I can’t even begin to write about our outdoorsy fitness activities without mentioning the horrors of the fascist government south of us.

I’m also very aware these days that although this blog is based in Canada and almost all of our bloggers are Canadian (Catherine and Mina are in the United States), the majority of our readers are American.

So this post flip flops between what we’re doing and what’s going on, because that’s kind of how my life feels these days.

Some normal life and life activities,  working and working out,  cooking,  and playing cards with friends and family alternating with reading,  watching, and listening to political news that’s pretty horrifying. I’m thinking of American friends and colleagues with love and fear.

I’ve been away working in Ottawa last week and will be there this week too. Sarah and I are spending time in the middle at the farm. We were with family and some of Mallory’s friends here on the weekend.

Saturday was freezing cold. Sunday was a snowstorm.

And in the midst of it all ICE shot and killed a young nurse who was helping a woman during the protests in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti, 37, was pushed to the ground and shot 10 times. We’re all horrified.

Read about it here.

So it was a fun weekend but it was also a hard weekend as we worry about what’s happening in the United States.

Saturday was so cold that I considered staying in.  But I also felt the need to get outside in nature,  in the fresh air,  in the sun,  no matter how cold it was.  So we went for a hike in our snow shoes and even though it was pretty chilly,  I felt better afterwards. Sun helps. Movement helps. Company helps.

I understand why the people of Minnesota are outside protesting in the cold temperatures.  I’d be there too.

We’ve also been cooking lots of familiar comfort food: veggie chili and cornbread,  general tsao tofu and rice with broccoli,  scrambled eggs,  French toast,  soup and grilled cheeses.

It wasn’t all old and familiar.  We did try the viral two ingredient “cheesecake” that’s been making the rounds.

Also, I read this in The Atlantic about what’s going on politically in the United States: “Yes, It’s Fascism: Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.”

Here’s a gift link. I recommend it.

And here’s a photo of Sarah,  Susan,  Mallory,  and me frolicking in the snow.

One of the social media threads that made me smile this weekend was people listing online communities that don’t normally talk about politics that are now full of angry anti-ICE speeches.  From road cycling reddits, and nail polish sites, to porn user groups, and bird watching forums, people are saying that enough is enough.

Here’s two examples:

I guess we’re adding feminist fitness sites to the list.  To be fair,  Catherine has posted about the horrors and the protests already from the perspective of someone on the inside. She’s a US citizen,  working and living in the Boston area.  See Not-very-wordy Wednesday: When all else fails, go to the library and Civic action, costumes, dogs and steps, too: just a regular Saturday.

If you want to do something to help the people of Minnesota,  but you’re not sure what,  here’s a list of places to donate.

“Minnesota is under occupation by federal agents from ICE and CBP, and we need your support. Across Minnesota, ICE continues to stop, harass, and detain people regardless of their citizenship status. Normal life in Minnesota has been interrupted, as schools have been forced to close or go virtual, as people live in fear of leaving their homes or going to work. Minnesotans are organized and activated to respond to this violence. But they need our help. “

fitness · swimming

Chicken, Moose, Butterfly…Sam is back in the pool learning new strokes

Sam B3 Comments

Like Nat, I’m back in the pool.

I’m taking Monday evening adult swimming lessons at Making Waves Swim School in Guelph.

There was a lot of snow and blowing snow on the first night and I thought classes might be canceled. They weren’t but we ended up with a pretty small class. Just one instructor and three adult students. We’re all women and I would guess our age range to be 30 and up.  (I’m the up.)

The pool is lovely.  It’s also warm,  90 degrees.

Everybody could swim,  sort of.  But none of us could do lengths of a recognizable stroke.

I spent the first half of the class working on front crawl with the help of the instructor who had some good tips. Take it slow,  take relaxed breaths,  worry about about speed later. 

In the second half we learned elementary backstroke to practise our whipkick. It was when the instructor was teaching us the arm movements that I remembered they mostly teach children.

It’s chicken,  moose,  butterfly.

I’m looking forward to my next class.  Will let you know how it goes.

Chicken
Moose
Butterfly

a small painting of a gold star against a black background with gold highlights Go Team 2026: Done Beats Perfect
ADHD · advice · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Done Beats Perfect

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

I spent a lot of time trying to draw today’s star.

I started drawing a background last night, creating something with circles of different colours but I couldn’t seem to bring it together – it just looked like random circles. So, I partially covered it with black and was trying to cover the remaining parts with white to make a striped pattern but it just came out looking weird. I actually liked the effect but it didn’t work as the background for a star.

So I did a new one this morning and even after adding the star I couldn’t get this one to look the way I wanted either. It looked fine but it wasn’t quite right so I started tinkering with it, adding bits of gold here and there and trying to figure out what I needed in order to make the drawing work.

And, in the course of tinkering, I realized a few things:

  1. I was running out of time to write today
  2. The star is only part of my project and I can’t spend all my time on just that part
  3. Done beats perfect every time and I can just declare myself done.

So, I promptly decided that my drawing was done and it was time to write.

My writing will also be imperfect but I’m just going to live with that, too.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because Done Beats Perfect works just as well for your practices as it does for my drawing (and writing.)

You can do what you can and declare your imperfect practice done for the day.

I have spent an awful a lot of time in my life not doing things at all because I didn’t have time/energy/information to do them right – whatever “right” meant for me in that moment.

When it came to a workout or a well-being practice, “right” usually meant exactly as I had planned or exactly as I had been instructed. If I didn’t have enough time or if I couldn’t do one of the exercises, I wouldn’t do any of them because that would be doing them wrong or taking the easy way out.

And somehow my brain convinced me that if I couldn’t do it “right” then it was better not to exercise/journal/meditate at all

Which is, of course, complete crap

I’m not a surgeon or a pilot, my practices were never precision tasks.

In fact, I have always had a very, very, very, very wide range of good enough. I didn’t even to get within shouting distance of perfect.

And that’s why, now that I am more aware of that thinking trap, I spend a lot of my time reminding myself that Done Beats Perfect.

(In fact, for the sake of catchiness, I usually say Done Beats Perfect Every Time but I do know that there are exceptions!)

Yes, there are definitely procedures and safety protocols and proper form for various exercises and practices and you may need to take those into account.

But even including those things you will still have a wide range of ‘good enough’ for any practice you are undertaking.

And a work out that is done imperfectly is much more useful that a workout you didn’t do at all.*

If today’s workout only includes 20 squats instead of 30 or if you only journal for 5 mins instead of 15 or if you can’t face meditation and you colour instead, you are still better off than if you skipped your practice entirely.

To summarize: Do it imperfectly. Declare yourself done. Get on with your day.

So, Team, today I would like to invite you to join me in imperfection in our practices (and our drawing, our writing, and our lives in general.)

Very few things need to be done perfectly and we can really benefit from the things we do imperfectly.

Or to be short and snappy – Done Beats Perfect. Every Time.

It’s really worth giving imperfection a try.

And in celebration of our imperfect efforts, I offer you this imperfect gold star.

Go Team Us!

a small painting of a gold star against a black background with gold highlights
A small imperfect painting of a gold star. I’m not putting myself down but, for reasons explained in the text, I haven’t tidied up this painting and I haven’t added some finishing touches. I don’t dislike it but it doesn’t feel quite ready to share. Image description: a small painting of a gold star with obvious, slightly swirly brush strokes against a black background that is divided into horizontal stripes by gold lines. Every second stripe is filled with irregularly-sized gold dots/shapes and the drawing is trimmed in gold lines that are somewhat uneven in colour and shape.

* If you find yourself avoiding or adapting your practices again and again, it may signal that you need to change your plans over all. Or if you are mostly ok with your plan but you have to change it fairly regularly, you may want to adjust your expectations a little so you don’t get stressed out about your results.

Six things Catherine loves about Heated Rivalry
athletes · feminism · fitness · media · men · sex

Six things Catherine loves about Heated Rivalry

catherine w1 Comment

Is there any such thing as too much publicity? The current craze over the sexy-sweet-Canadian-hockey show Heated Rivalry is definitely putting that question to its test. My social media feed is full to the brim with interviews, photos, behind-the-scenes articles and loads of social commentary (most of it positive to the point of gushing) about this series that follows two young hockey stars as they explore their attraction into hookups in bed, matchups on the ice, and their deepening feelings for each other.

Everyone and their cousin has written about Heated Rivalry. And I think I may have read 90% of those articles. Including this one from the Guardian, which panned the series when they reviewed it in early December 2025 (shame on them for not having any artistic/cultural vision!). Here’s what a 64-year-old non-profit executive from Toronto had to say about the series in the article:

Mary, who asked to be identified only by her first name, discovered that a sexually explicit love story about two men was “for her” after all.

“I admit I may have rewatched it more than once,” she said. “It’s super sexy. They’re fabulous to look at. There’s a huge amount of consent. I’d really like to get that back in my life – that feeling of ‘I can’t keep my hands off you.’”

Mary, I am 100% with you on this.

If you’re interested in an interview with Rachel Reid, Canadian author of the book (part of a series she wrote called Game Changers), you can find it here.

I feel compelled to add my own observations about what I love about Heated Rivalry, in part because my head is kind of swimming about it, and also because, as a part of the Fit is a Feminist Issue journalistic team, I’m committed to report to you, dear readers. So here goes.

NOTE: I’ll try not to drop spoilers here. But honestly, does anyone not know (or can guess) how this series plays out?

One: I love that the Heated Rivalry team isn’t budging on talking about the main actors’ dating or sex lives. The show is not about the actors; it’s about the characters. And the actors’ lives are none of our damn business. Talented and hunky veteran actor Francois Arnaud said as much in a interview with Andy Cohen. Good on you, Francois.

Two: I love that multiple languages– English, French, and Russian– in the show, are used in ways that feel authentic. There’s not as much French in the show as there is in the book (of course I’ve read the book by now; duh); many players switch back and forth between French and English, and I am guessing the author Rachel Reid gets this right. Shane, the Canadian player from Ottawa, speaks both English and French, and uses them often in the series.

But mainly, I love that Ilya, the Russian character, uses Russian and English in ways that reveal his personality. He struggles with English sometimes as a non-native speaker, but his playful mocking humor comes through clearly. And he uses Russian (WATCH EPISODE FIVE NOW!) powerfully and tenderly. My heart is fully open to Ilya.

Three: I’ll just mention this to avoid spoilers, but, from episode six, I totally love STUPID CANADIAN WOLF BIRD.

IYKYK.

I’m ordering one of these T shirts as soon as I finish writing this post. My friend Norah told me she saw one of the yoga teachers at our local studio wearing one.

Stupid Canadian wolf bird T shirt. IYKYK.
Stupid Canadian wolf bird T shirt. I must have this. They also do mugs, if you prefer.

Four: the soundtrack is fabulous! It’s a combination of older and newer pieces, even using Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as accompaniment to Ilya’s Russian dialogue in episode five (which you need to watch ASAP). I’m still singing along to this cover by Feist of Sea Lion Woman (spelled See-Line Woman when Nina Simone recorded it). I missed it when it came out, so I’m glad to hear it now.

Five: I love how this series and these young lovers are making me feel. About love, about sex, about evolution and acceptance. And all this at a time when things are really falling apart. It’s not just a respite; that it surely is. But it’s also offering a note of hope. Call me sappy and naive, but I’m loving the love on the screen and the love piled on by just about everyone who’s seen or read this story. Clearly we needed it.

That Guardian article I mentioned above is worth reading for its reporting on reasons why women are responding so positively to a gay male sex and love story. There’s lots for think about here, and I may write more about it. For the moment, though, I’m just going to bask in the feelings, deferring analysis until later.

Six: Heated Rivalry has me thinking I need to up my sexy time game. Watching this show, I’ve rediscovered all kinds of feelings that I tend to associate with my teenage years: head swimming with images, heart full to bursting, and loins fully activated. This was surprising but not at all unwelcome. By the way, I blogged about self care and solo sexy time here ten years ago. Maybe it’s time to go back to the store to see what new products they have developed in the meantime.

Readers, are you watching Heated Rivalry? What do you think about the show? What do you think about the media carnival about the show? I’d love to hear from you.

Oh, and here’s a super-cute Instapic of the actors hamming it up for the camera.

A drawing of gold stars that are placed at the intersections of thin black lines. Go Team 2026: Easy Tasks, Hard Tasks, You Still Rock
advice · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Easy Tasks, Hard Tasks, You Still Rock

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

In the process of considering, developing, planning, and working on your new practices, you have probably (DEFINITELY!) noticed that some parts of the process are easy, some are hard, and some fall somewhere in between.

And when I mention it like that, you probably thought something like, “Of course, Christine. That’s kind of obvious.” *

Ok, so that brings to me to a question:

If we all know that, in the abstract, some parts of any given practice will feel easy, some parts will feel hard, and some will feel somewhere in between, why do so many of us default to dismissing our efforts when it comes to the easy tasks, blaming ourselves when we struggle with the hard tasks, and barely noticing how much work we put into most of the tasks?

You see, the easy tasks still take work even if that work is familiar, enjoyable, straightforward, or quick. We often find tasks easy because they fall within our existing skillset, because we have had a lot of practice at that sort of thing, or because they are the kind of task we enjoy. That doesn’t mean we should dismiss the effort involved.

In fact, we should make sure to take the time to celebrate that effort, to notice how we built, shaped, or chose to apply the skills that made it feel easy. We should notice how much we rock for being able to do those tasks with ease.

When it comes to the hard tasks, we can often default to assuming something is wrong with us, that we aren’t trying hard enough, while not even noticing that we are in the process of figuring out how to do this thing. We may even start dredging up past examples of things we were unable to do just because…wait, why on earth do we do that to ourselves? Does our brain think that is helping us somehow? Brains can be such jerks!

Sometimes tasks are hard because we don’t have the skills yet, sometimes they are hard because we don’t understand them or because we need a different system, sometimes they feel hard because they involve stuff we don’t enjoy doing, and sometimes tasks are just inherently hard.

It’s ok to have to put a lot of effort into something, it’s ok to need help, it’s ok to have to make adjustments or to have to work up to being able to complete a task or learn a practice. It’s ok to struggle more than someone else who is trying this same task (they probably struggle with something else that you find easy.)

Even amidst all of those struggles, even though the task feels SO hard, we still rock. Even if it takes us many, many tries, all of our efforts matter. They all count. They are part of the process of completing that task.

Our struggles don’t say anything negative about us, they speak to our persistence, our tenacity, our willingness to do the work. Those qualities are a great demonstration of how much we rock.

And, when it comes to the routine tasks that aren’t easy but aren’t hard?

We rock for doing those, too. I mean, think about it – trudging our way through tasks that don’t have an immediate payoff like an easy one does and that don’t provide the interesting challenge of an hard task? We should give ourselves extra credit for those things.

Besides, even though a given task FEELS easy, hard, or routine, it still requires effort. Our feelings about it may change our perception of the work but it doesn’t change the fact that there is work involved.

Reminding ourselves to notice the work, to commend ourselves for doing it, to accept our gold star for our efforts, can help us to see how far we have come, to stick with our practices, and to pay attention to how awesome we are for finding ways to move toward the lives we want.

So, Team, whether today’s tasks are easy, hard, or routine, I hope you will take the time to celebrate your efforts and remember how much you rock.

Here are today’s gold stars in honour of your efforts to move toward the life you want AND in honour of your efforts to notice how much you rock.

Be kind to yourself out there!

Go Team Us!

A drawing of gold stars that are placed at the intersections of thin black lines.
Image description: a drawing of 12 gold stars of various sizes against a background of thin intersecting lines. I have placed a star at each point where lines intersect.

*Your tone and degree of snarkiness probably varied but that’s your business. Luckily, I am not cursed with the ability to read people’s thoughts. Can you even imagine what a burden that would be? How would you ever rest?

Nat’s back in the pool!
Sat with Nat

Nat’s back in the pool!

natalieh (she/her)

My beloved and I are both cajoling our middle aged bodies these days. Our physiotherapist, Emily, recommended rock climbing or swimming for our upper body mobility and strength.

Monday morning we sat drinking coffee and looked at our options. Family membership at the Y runs $180 a month. Goodlife pools are not for doing lengths.

Membership at Western for both of us ran about $1000. Yikes!

Thankfully for people looking for once a week lane swim the City of London has 10 visit pool passes and a convenient location just a couple clicks from our house which runs about $5 a week.

Indoor pool lanes are so calming and comfortable.

Monday night we got goggles, cap and suits. Wednesday night we were doing laps. Easy peasy.

I love swimming and I feel at home there. It may be almost 10 years since I last did a lap. My body remembers.

Warm up of kicking and pulls. Easy front crawl. Breast stroke. Pulls. Front crawl. Breast stroke. I didn’t focus on speed or distance, just form and breathing.

I cooled down with sidestroke, sculls and a quick stretch. Michel had more structure to his workout. We left satisfied and committed to going back next week. Yay!

A drawing of a large gold star against a colourful background. Go Team 2026: Give Yourself A Break
220 in 2020 · ADHD · advice · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Give Yourself A Break

Christine Hennebury

Hey Team,

Your new habits and practices will be stronger if they are built on reality rather than on an attempt at perfection.

Some days are going to be challenging, some days are going to go sideways, some days you’ll be sick, or you’ll have an injury, sometimes you’ll sleep so poorly that it will feel like your ADHD meds aren’t working at all and you’ll feel like you are dragging yourself through mud just to get your basic tasks done.*

When those things happen, please give yourself a break.

That may mean doing your practice without your usual enthusiasm, it may mean modifying your practice or doing the bare minimum, it may mean opting out of your practice entirely and it definitely means being kind to yourself about the whole thing.

If today is too complicated, too hard, or too unmedicated-feeling, practicing self-compassion is the only sensible way forward.

In case the specificity of that last example didn’t give me away, I didn’t sleep well last night and I feel unmedicated and I have been dragging myself through metaphorical mud to do necessary tasks.

At first, I was trying to write the post I had planned but when I couldn’t get my ideas to weave together I decided to take the advice I would give to someone else:

Give Yourself A Break

And I did.

So, as so often happens, this post is not just advice for you – it’s also advice for me.

I hope I’m being a good example of how to dial things back on more challenging days.

As always, here is your gold star for your efforts today. Those efforts may be working towards your new practice or they may be directed towards giving yourself a break and practising self-kindness.

Either way, you get a gold star for your hard work.

Go Team Us!

A drawing of a large gold star against a colourful background.
A drawing of a large shiny gold star with black trim. The background of the image has been divided into 8 triangular sections that meet in a point behind the star. The sections are coloured in purple, blue, orange, and green – one section of a lighter shade and one of a darker one for each colour. Each section is decorated with gold dots outlined in black. Each section is divided by a black line.

fitness

My Dumb Smartwatch

Diane Harper1 Comment

Last week, I wrote about fitness guidelines encouraging 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activities a week. But also noted that that we need to count all incidental movement, not just structured activity.

Counting more activities is a good thing! I say this as someone who does at least three hours a week of structured physical activity that never triggers my fitness watch to count it because it is not of sufficient intensity. Or maybe it’s because I have a dumb smart watch. I have to put all my swims, dance classes, Pilates and yoga manually because my watch doesn’t track any of those things.

Plus I often get near the 7,500 daily step goal Participaction recommends, simply by walking around the pool rather than sitting during long lifeguarding shifts, or when I walk to do errands, but none gets counted unless it is sufficiently intense AND I have turned on the “walk” tracing function.

That said, I used my bike several times for short trips lately, and suddenly my watch is showing that I met or exceeded that 150 minute exercise goal. And if I remember to turn on “walk” to measure my walks to the grocery store or whatever, that gets counted too.

A friend said she got her watch to count the movement involved in snow shovelling by setting it to “cardio”. I just tested that with a short walk at the pool and it looks like I can update to “swim” and still retain the heart rate info. I’ll test that at my next swim practice.

Sadly, using “walk” while lifeguarding doesn’t get me any intensity minutes because I don’t get much heart rate high enough – a good thing in this context. I didn’t even get a fun squiggly GPS map because I was walking indoors.

I wonder what other ways I can trick my dumb smartwatch into counting movement. Maybe jazz class?

Lily Tomlinson shows off her jazz hands

Do you have any tricks for tracking your more intense workouts? Do you even worry about having some sort of evidence or external motivation to hit those Participaction goals?