Power of the ask
Oh, hi friends!
I learned a lesson last week about the power of asking.
I was working at home and getting riled up because my shoulder was feeling so pinched I needed to lie down every hour.
The reason was because my desk chair isn’t actually a desk chair. It’s one of 20 comfy folding chairs that my brother and I bought when we put on some plays in my apartment a few years ago. (Audiences deserve comfy.)
A folding chair is fine for a two-hour show, but not for sitting in 50 hours a week.
I browsed Wirecutter for best office chairs — their top pick is $970. No thank you.
So I posted on Instagram asking for chair recommendations.
Fifteen minutes later, my brother Eric responded and said, Hey, do you want this chair?! My old roommate left it and I was going to give it away.
It was a perfectly respectable, high-backed, black IKEA office chair. It was exactly what I wanted.
He brought it on the subway and it was in my apartment an hour later.
My shoulder had instant relief.
If I hadn’t asked for advice, he wouldn’t have known I could find value in the thing sitting in a corner of his apartment.
Asking is hard.
But if it leads to solutions…how can we not try?
PS — Thanks, brother!!
Photo by Vicente García Pérez on Unsplash
“Activities pursued for no reason other than their intrinsic value play a crucial role in the human experience. When your phone is your constant companion, such activities get pushed to the periphery. When it’s not, you’ll find you had more time than you realized for these vital pursuits.”
A good reminder from Deep Work author Cal Newport.
I’ve been scrolling my phone too much lately. But on Sunday, I went for a lil’ run on the Brooklyn Bridge Piers (there they are, above!) and felt so good I thought, why, I should hop on this Citibike! So I rode a few miles, dropped off the bike, then ran home.
This one hour of activity gave me so much energy — and Vitamin D ahhhh — that I started to think about how I felt after an hour of scrolling Instagram. Definitely…not the same.
Which pursuits are most vital to you? And which can you rescue from the periphery?
John Mulaney (and special guest star Jake Gyllenhaal) strike again with this musical parody “Airport Sushi” set in LaGuardia. You will laugh...
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara