Exercises for Getting in Touch With Origin
On Sweet Somethings
A man had given me a definition so that I could love him better, that I have since used to love everything better. He chided me years ago that I was not following proper etiquette on our anniversary. I had imagined that it was a gendered holiday, like Valentine’s Day or my birthday, in which I am the object of attention and get nice things. I was told that perhaps this is not the correct assumption for anniversaries.
He told me that it is nice that I dressed up for dinner, and that I told him I loved him, and took photos with him, but it would be really meaningful if I also made something or scheduled an activity to show that I was a more active participant in the celebration.
I was confused – wasn’t I already participating in the anniversary? He told me that this was more than enough, and I don’t need to do anything big, but that it would mean a lot if I did anything. There is a dimension in which there is a large difference to him between me doing something and me doing nothing, and that difference is that doing anything is the difference between doing literally nothing and doing literally something. He didn’t want to be emotionally abandoned in the my girlfriend did literally nothing for our anniversary category.
This made sense to me and stuck with me for many years as an antidote to perfectionism. Your own ideas of perfectionism don’t often correspond to the ideals of another person. Another person often notices that something isn’t happening at all, more than something happening and it not being perfect. If it’s not perfect, but present, then often it can be discussed and improved on.
I considered it a compelling argument, that doing literally anything is often, both technically and conceptually in the spirit of the context, the difference between doing literally nothing and literally something.
A few examples: bringing a gift to a dinner party (they might not open it then and there but would appreciate it), drinking water (a little is better than none), wearing socks (it doesn’t matter if they don’t match, they protect your feet).
You can imagine a dog needing to go on a walk, or a plant needing to be watered. Most plants do not care if you are using the perfect cup, or if you are watering it. They do care if they are never being watered.
Similarly, a dog does not mind which exact path it goes on, or if you are 20 minutes late or early. The dog does mind if it gets to be walked. Plants and animals often do not have the resilience of perfection.
You can do these following exercises with the same spirit as the man who offered me that original definition. These are not meant to be difficult, but rather as invitations to be present for yourself and the people, creatures, and projects you already care about. There is no need to leave things undone or abandon what and who you care about just because you can’t be perfect for them yet.
Exercise 1: Animals, Plants, and You
This is for practicing with non-human beings first, where the stakes feel lower.
Choose one animal and one plant.
For the animal, list its basic needs in a day that it might consider vital from its perspective. Its perspective may be different from your own!
Leave the list alone for 15 minutes, then come back to it. Are there any edits to the list? Does something you have written down need to be expanded on or simplified? Is there an entire category that you missed for your chosen creature?
Exercise 2: Inventory of Literally Somethings
Pick one domain today for which you feel vaguely guilty or perfectionistic: relationships, health, work, home, or a personal project.
Name the domain in one sentence.
“My relationship with my cousin.”
“My neglected art practice.”
“Unread emails”
Write down what “doing it properly” would look like in your head.
Long, detailed, unrealistic version is fine.
Example: “Answer every email, reorganize folders, clear all notifications.”
Now, ask: what is the smallest non-zero action in this domain that would take your actions in this domain from literally nothing, to literally something?
Reply to one email.
Open your sketchbook and draw one doodle.
Call your cousin.
Consider doing that that action today, explicitly labeling it to yourself as:
“I am doing literally something, which is not nothing.”
After you do it, write 3–5 lines about what that felt like, and what changed.Did your sense of yourself shift, even slightly?
Did the sky fall? (Unlikely.)
Do you have more confidence to take an action again?
The point is to feel in your own nervous system how large the gap is between zero and one, compared to the gap between one and ten.
Exercise 3: The Bad Wine Game
There are people who really know wine very well, or scotch, or chocolate. They are very fond of these things, have specific tastes, and do not like inferior versions. When you show up at their house, you should probably bring something high quality, or else nothing at all, right? Not necessarily. If you do not know what to get, or cannot afford the expensive scotch, you can still bring something that is a different category of item. You can bring cookies for example, or ice cream. For these items, you are still making the gesture of bringing a gift, but the stakes are lower.
Within the next week, choose one social interaction where you will show up with a “bad gift.”
A friend hangout, a coworker meeting, a family call.
Decide in advance on something slightly off from your internal ideal.
Showing up somewhere with a supermarket chocolate bar instead of an artisanal dessert.
Sending someone a meme instead of a carefully written letter.
Having a two-minute call instead of a long catch-up.
Before you go, write down:
“My perfectionist brain says this is inadequate because: ______.”
“The spirit of the context might actually be: ‘They did anything at all.’”
Do it anyway. Gift the imperfect thing.
Afterward, note the actual response.
Did they reject it?
Did they seem more tuned in to the fact that you thought of them, than to the quality of the offering?
Were you more or less emotionally present because you weren’t optimizing?
You are building out what it feels like for “present but imperfect” as often legible as care, while “absent but theoretically perfect in your head” is legible as nothing.
Exercise 4: A 7-Day “Break the Zero” Game
For seven days, keep a log organized around one simple question: “Where did I move from nothing to something today?”
Each day, make three headings:
“For myself”
“For someone else”
“For a long-term thing”
Under each heading, write exactly one action that qualifies as “literally something.” This should be something that is something you actually want to do, but that feels like it is possible, and relatively painless.
For myself: “Spend 5 minutes stretching.”
For someone else: “Said one compliment.”
For a long-term thing: “Looked up how to learn a skill.”
If a heading is empty, you don’t scold yourself, you just try again the next day.
At the end of the week, look at all the sparkly new things you did, that you would not have done otherwise.
If you want, you can pick one domain and consciously upgrade one action from “something” to “a bit more something” in week two. But that is optional. The core is building the habit of crossing from zero to one.
Of Nothings in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars*
In the previous exercise, we considered how to turn certain “nothings” into “somethings.” In this exercise, we will consider certain things that are already “not nothing” but are really quite something!
Let’s come up with a parade of nothings and decorate them. We can give them beautiful scarves, hats, banners and batons.
Let’s take digestion for example. How many times has a friend called you and asked what you were up to, and you said “I’m just hanging out, merely digesting.” (Note too that if you are having an issue with the digestion, it would quickly not feel so mere!) You might have noticed after you eat certain foods, you feel different immediately after, different again in the hour after, and then different again later. Some people get many unpleasant reactions to food, so they organize their life around not having negative effects, only positive ones.
For coffee and alcohol, you probably know the ways that these affect you personally, or you may have noticed that drinking water immediately makes you feel better.
Then there are more esoteric ones. Spicy foods. For me, any kind of shellfish or small variable fishes, like a spread of sushi, usually leaves me euphoric in a distinct way, as if I’d absorbed the souls of many little fishes whole and now they’re inside me, doing something fascinating. Chocolate is a common food that can change mood in an intense way, depending on the kind, and has had studied effects over cultures and eras as people try to perfect the effects.
And then there are teas—healing teas, herbal teas—which sound like they couldn’t have that big an effect, as if their little packages are false advertising for marketing purposes.
However, many herbal teas are not a business strategy — a lot of them do indeed work for many people and have different effects. Chamomile and mint put me right to sleep; dandelion and catnip tea make my face completely red.
They say it takes approximately 200 calories to digest protein. This is not nothing – this is more calories than it takes to digest every other macro, and this is part of why it is recommended to people hoping to lose weight to eat protein; it burns calories, grows your muscles, keeps you full, and you can only eat so much of it.
Eating food clearly is not nothing!
Sleep, too, is not really nothing. You think you’re gone, but there’s activity: dreams, memory consolidation, things rearranging themselves for when you return. The hour in bed after waking, or the dreamy drift before sleep, is full of mental sorting,
What else can we think of?
Maybe there are things that you may be afraid to admit is either nothing or something – things that are uncomfortable to name because putting them in either category has strategic consequences. Sometimes making “doing nothing” be like doing something can be very helpful, and then the opposite is true as well; making “doing something” be like doing nothing can be helpful or strategic.
Things that can fit into either category depending on the strategic intent of the person can include: feeding your dog, going on a walk, doing your writing, calling a friend. Each of these can be a genuinely important activity, an excuse disguised as an important task, something you do without thinking in between other “important tasks,” or a lifesaving intervention to save another creature, depending on the situation. Then, regardless of what the actual situation was, an enemy of yours can tell you and tell others that it was the complete opposite!
The social confusion is why it can be important to return to the original realities of the things you are doing.
You can also spend some time thinking about the moments when you are planning to do something, getting ready to do something, starting to do something, getting out of doing something, or relaxing.
In high school, I got obsessed with transitions because I was doing too many things, and I couldn’t just not do them. I wanted to do everything that my school offered. I became really obsessed with training a certain way, with moving my energy in ways such that I could do well at all of my activities. Removing unnecessary or wasteful transitions in a day became necessary.
Much of daily existence is built from these “nothings” — transitions, intervals, pauses, recoveries — that are in fact the tissue connecting everything else.
And some of these “nothings” are really quite massive.
The title of this section is based on Chapter 57 of Moby Dick, titled Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
Exercise 1: Inventory of Supposed Nothings
Take one ordinary day (today is fine) and do a short inventory.
Make a list of 10 things you might normally describe as “nothing,” “just hanging out,” or “I wasn’t really doing anything.”
Examples:Eating lunch
Scrolling on your phone
Waiting in line
Lying in bed before sleep
Walking between rooms
Staring out the window
Standing in the shower
Sitting on the toilet
Zoning out on the bus
Making tea
Playing with your cat
Brushing your teeth
For each item, write two lines:
“What was actually happening?” (Physically, mentally, emotionally.)
For example, if you were scrolling on your phone, what kind of material were you looking at or reading?
“If I treated this as not-nothing, what would I call it?”
Example:Brushing your teeth
Actually happening: “Brushing my teeth, also thinking, also checking out my body to see if my new workout is working”
Renamed: “Groom-and-look-at-myself-time”
Put a star next to any item where your body or mind did more work than you usually admit. These are your “hidden labor” slots.
Exercise 2: Mountains and Stars
Honor the massive “nothings” that are so big you forget them.
Make two short lists:
“Mountains”: slow, huge, background processes in your life.
Long friendships
Ongoing therapy
Years of learning a skill
Your body
“Stars”: distant but structuring points.
Long-term hopes
Ideals
Abstract commitments or beliefs
Pick one mountain and one star.
For each, write:
“If I tell the story of my life as if this were nothing, what does it sound like?”
“If I tell the story as if this is one of the main somethings, what does it sound like?”
Notice which version feels truer in your chest, even if socially you’re incentivized to tell the other one.
You’re allowed to rearrange the hierarchy of what counts in your own narrative.
Exercise 3: Food and Drink as Mood Devices
We’ll treat digestion as a parade float instead of a background process.
For 3 days, keep a small “ingestion diary” for at least one meal or drink per day:
What you consumed (food/drink).
How you felt:
Immediately after
1 hour after
3 hours after
Use plain language: “sleepy,” “sharp,” “weirdly euphoric,” “face went red,” “socially brave,” etc.
Circle any patterns you notice.
Does coffee make you confident and then brittle?
Does a particular tea reliably sedate you?
Pick one item (coffee, alcohol, chocolate, shellfish, herbal tea, whatever is true for you) and write:
“If I admitted this is really not nothing for me, what strategic changes would I make?”
Example: “If I admit chamomile knocks me out, I stop drinking it before I need to be alert.”
Optional: reclassify one item from “harmless background thing” to “tool” or “hazard,” and act as if it is a real phenomenon for one week.
Exercise 4: What Is This Transition Really Doing?
This exercise is for the socially confusing transitional categories in life.
Step 1: List the Transitional Activities
Make a list of 5 activities in your life that can slide between meanings:
Important care
Excuse / procrastination
Background routine
Lifesaving intervention
Examples:
Feeding the dog
Journaling
Cleaning your room
Checking in on a friend
Answering an email
For each of your 5 activities, write four tiny one-sentence vignettes where it plays each role:
As genuine care: “Feeding the dog so he doesn’t suffer.”
As excuse: “Feeding the dog so I don’t have to start my scary project.”
As background routine: “Feeding the dog because it’s 7pm and that’s just what happens.”
As lifesaving intervention: “Feeding the dog so he doesn’t die.”
You are mapping how the same visible action can be four different realities.
Step 2: Map the Transitions Around Them
Now, draw a simple timeline of your typical day:
Wake
Main work block
Midday break
Afternoon
Evening
Bed
Between each major block, write what actually happens in the transition, in unflattering detail:
Wake → Work: “Phone, bathroom, scroll, stare, half-dress, get distracted by dishes, finally sit at laptop.”
Work → Lunch: “Keep working until I crash, stumble to kitchen, eat over sink, continue phone scrolling.”
Notice where your transitional activities live. Do you always “check email” in one particular gap? Always “walk the dog” in another?
For each transition, give it a one-word label:
“Noise,” “bridge,” “leak,” “recovery,” “procrastination,” “reset,” “rest,” “fun,” “interest,” etc.
Step 3: Choose One Transitional Activity
Pick one of your 5 activities that shows up in a specific transition. Notice when it happens.
Examples:
“Checking in on a friend” always happens in the Work → Lunch leak.
“Journaling” always appears as a stall before starting work.
“Walking the dog” lives between Evening → Bed and decides what kind of night you have.
Then, today or this week, watch it closely:
When you do it, ask: “Right now, which role is this activity actually playing for me?”
Important care, excuse, background routine, or lifesaving intervention?
Write down:
“Today, [activity] was functioning as [role], in the [transition] between [block] and [block].”
Step 4: Design a Small Upgrade
For that same transition, design a 3-step micro-protocol (maximum 5 minutes) that turns it from “noise/leak/stall” into a “designed bridge,” using your chosen activity consciously.
Examples:
Wake → Work with journaling as bridge:
Drink water.
Write three sentences about how I’m arriving.
Write one line of intention for the work block.
Work → Lunch with walking the dog as recovery instead of escape:
Close the laptop physically.
Take the dog out and notice 3 concrete things outside.
Decide what I’ll eat for lunch.
Run this protocol for 3 days.
After each day, note:
“What changed in the blocks on either side?”
“Did the ‘nothing’ reveal itself as structural?”
Step 5: Reality Check vs. Outside Narratives
Finally, for one instance of this upgraded activity-in-transition, ask:
“If someone hostile to me described this moment, what story could they tell?”
(“She’s procrastinating again,” “He’s doing the bare minimum,” etc.)
Then ask:
“What is the truer story from inside my own body right now?”
Write both sentences down next to each other.
This is practice in returning to the original reality of what your actions and transitions are doing for you, instead of only seeing them through other people’s categories of “nothing” and “something.”