The people who seem calm aren't less busy. They've decided what they're allowed to miss. Life design starts with a list of things you will not check, not follow, not finish. Write it down. It frees more than any productivity trick. #selfcare
Matt Tilmann
@mittendad.bsky.social
Writing about calm, creativity, and building a life you don’t need to escape from. Parent. Analyst. Systems thinker. Mitten Dad Minute 👉 https://mittendad.eden.so
Looking for cards to celebrate the Brewers win? Open to bundles and stacks here! share.collx.app/mittendad/st... #brewers #milwaukee #thehobby
CollX • Matthew Tilmann • Milwaukee Brewers!
Milwaukee Brewers! — 18 cards from Matthew Tilmann on CollX.
share.collx.app
Across the board, financial literacy runs 96% behind core subjects in academic standards. Let that land. #personalfinance #parenting #selfimprovement mittendad.substack.com/p/money-stor...
The Money Class Nobody Got
We hand kids a diploma and let them figure out credit on their own. Here's why, and the one conversation that fixes most of it.
mittendad.substack.com
In honor of 10/10, I’m running a 10 cards for an extra 10% off! Bundle and save, it’s a great way to complete any sets you may have been looking to complete. Just add any 10 cards (or more), and take the additional 10% off at checkout in your offer. share.collx.app/mittendad #thehobby
CollX Profile • Matthew Tilmann • @mittendad
CollX is the fastest way to figure out what your cards are worth. Snap photos of them and instantly get the current market price. Add them to your collection and track your overall portfolio value. Yo...
share.collx.app
What's really weighing you down? I built a short quiz, that only takes about a minute to help out. mittendad.eden.so/form/what-s-... #mentalhealth #selfcare
What's Really Weighing You Down? · Matt Tilmann
Find out what's adding to your mental load and how to lighten it. Takes about a minute.
mittendad.eden.so
8 out of 10 of you told me you have trouble saying no to things that eat the part of the week that's actually yours. The skill isn't complicated. The script's been in front of you for years. The hard part is using it at 3pm when the ask is real and the guilt does the talking.
"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities," said Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki. "In the expert's mind, there are few."
In honor of today being my birthday, I thought I’d do a little something fun on my CollX Store. Meet the $4.20 seller minimum, and I’ll throw in 1 .99 and under card of your choice for as long as supplies last! Lots of moderns, 90’s and more to choose from! share.collx.app/mittendad
share.collx.app
The moments your mind keeps returning to tell you more than any personality test. Pay attention to what you reach for when it's quiet.
Søren Kierkegaard called boredom “the root of all evil — the despairing refusal to be oneself.” mittendad.substack.com/p/boredom-no... #productivity #mentalhealth #burnout
Open the Fridge Three Times and You'll Know
7 small quests that break the photocopy of your week
mittendad.substack.com
Everyone who says they're "not creative" was told that once. Probably by a teacher, a boss, or a version of themselves trying to stay safe. The people you call creative just kept going past the part where it got uncomfortable. No perfect mornings required. They just never got the message to stop.
You want to take the kids to Hawaii, but you don't have 200 hours to plan the logistics or the desire to pay full retail.
Dinner. Laundry. The mental tally of everything you're the only one tracking. That's Round 2. The burnout most of us feel isn't from the job. It's from the second shift nobody calls work. open.substack.com/pub/mittenda... #worklife #burnout #parenting #mentalhealth
The Second Shift Nobody Calls Work
Give me 5 minutes between rounds and i'll show you where your energy actually goes
open.substack.com
Talking to yourself is just externalizing the processor. Some brains need to hear it before they can sort it. My daughter does it while building LEGOs. I do it while writing. The only difference is she hasn't been told to stop yet.
How often have you found yourself drifting out of the moment, instead of just being present? Read on for a way to help you be more present with those you love: mittendad.substack.com/p/stop-curat... #selfcare #parenting #mindfulness
Stop Curating the Moment. Start Touching the Carpet
The internal auditor trades real presence for a mental highlight reel. Three ways to fire it tonight.
mittendad.substack.com
Sometimes I feel like I get interrupted 40x a day, so I built a fix: park what you're doing with one hotkey, come back and pick up right where you left off. $14.99 this week. Interrupt Stack: apps.apple.com/us/app/inter... #productivity #parenting #writing #deepwork
Interrupt Stack App - App Store
Download Interrupt Stack by MATTHEW PHILIP TILMANN on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Interrupt Stack.
apps.apple.com
I don't recommend tools often. Most don't survive the first week. Eden did. I've been using it since it was called Kortex. It shows you what's actually working before you write a single word. Real outlier posts. Not AI guessing. Then it helps you make the idea your own.
If you’ve ever answered a question about your loved one’s day with the same vocal temperature you used on a budget call, you already know the feeling I’m describing. You were standing there. You just weren’t in the room. Read on for more: open.substack.com/pub/mittenda... #selfcare #productivity
You Can't Out-Schedule a Lack of Transitions
Nobody taught you how to close a tab in your own head. Here's the missing skill.
open.substack.com
I said yes to something before I read the fine print. Turns out it was joining the launch team for Jesse Mecham's new book — the founder of YNAB. @ynabofficial.bsky.social is the only budgeting method that actually changed how I think about money. Not tracking. Thinking.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison
Most #burnout advice assumes you're just tired. But for a lot of us, the problem isn't that we did too much. It's that our nervous system has been processing the wrong kind of demand for too long. Rest doesn't fix a wiring problem.
If you've spent 6 months trying to pick a niche and still feel hollow, you're probably avoiding the harder question underneath it.
☕️ Daily Refill - A notebook system that beats most apps. It's $2.99 right now. dailyrefill.beehiiv.com/p/bullet-jou...
☕️ Daily Refill - A notebook system that beats most apps. It's $2.99 right now.
The Bullet Journal Method Kindle edition hit its lowest price in 30 days. No subscription. No notifications. Just paper, a pen, and a framework that doesn't need your Wi-Fi password.
dailyrefill.beehiiv.com
The problem isn’t capture. Our intake is fine. Most of us are excellent at saving things. Screenshots, highlights, bookmarks, “I’ll come back to this” tabs. The funnel is wide open. The drain is clogged. Nothing comes back out. Read on for more: open.substack.com/pub/mittenda...
Stop Building Your Second Brain
The system was never the point. A retrieval-first approach for people who've rebuilt their folder structure fourteen times and abandoned every one.
open.substack.com
Your phone is a slot machine with better branding. Political texts are just the current jackpot. There will always be another one. Do Not Disturb is the wall between the world's noise and your 12-minute window. Turn it on tonight. Not just for the texts. For the window.
Most modern decisions aren't made under swords. They're made under Slack. The samurai had a filter for fear and ego. You'll need one for urgency. "If I die tomorrow, does this choice still matter?"
Corporate work has no ritual for endings. Theatre does. A curtain call. A dressing room. A walk to the car in the dark. You're grieving something real without permission to name it. Nobody told you the commute was your curtain call.