LEIA OUTRUNS Todd in November

I first met Leia running the Hawk in September 2016. I was making a second attempt at completing a 50 miler after DNFing another race two weeks earlier. Leia was running her first 100 miler. That year, the weather forced us to run on the roads, which made it faster but certainly added to the beating on our legs.

I was impressed with the fearlessness Leia charged back out for two more 25-mile loops after completing the first fifty. I was in the pressence a true badass.

In October 2019, she placed first place female and fifth overall in the Heartland 100. She rolled throughf aid stations with a fierce competitive efficiency. At one, she took off before her pacer was fully ready. She is focused and driven.

In January 2020, I had the high honor of running the Second Best 100, a self-supported 100 she and I ran based out of the awesome coffee shop she and her husband own. That day the weather was crazy cold and an ice storm coated the ground the night before. In Yak-traks and screwed shoes, we ran up and down the Trolley Trail. She brilliantly led us to finishing by problem-solving issues as they arose, keeping us fueled and hydrated, and pacing us appropriately. I made it through that incredible run riding on her legendary coattails.

Leia keeps her runs on Strava private, so we played November Leia style. We didn't look at each others milage until the end of the month when we revealed our numbers during a zoom call. She outran me 112 miles to 92.

FOMO vs. JOMO

via GIPHY

On the scale of one-to-ten, one being not restrictive and ten being complete isololation and lock-down, my family and I would probably be an eight on the scale of restrictive criteria for staying safe during the Covid pandemic. We've kept our pod small. We've restricted our interactions - no groups larger than nine. No indoor dining outside our home. Curbside every opportunity we get.

That has naturally led to some FOMO. Friends are getting together and doing things that we're opting out of, which can be challenging and sad. I recently heard a fantastic twist on the concept of FOMO which is JOMO - the Joy Of Missing Out.

JOYS OF OPTING OUT:

• More purposeful leisure time. Reading, running, camping, trying new things.
• More time with family. Cooking, eating, playing games, and watching movies together.
• Less stress of running around and balancing schedules.
• Less anxiety and worry about catching or spreading the virus.
• More time to create. I've filmed and edited two videos a week since July.
• Connecting with old friends via phone or video chat.

A lot of healthy diet advice suggests changing your approach to food. Don't restrict yourself from eating certain unhealthy foods - that feels too much like you are depriving yourself. Instead, want more healthy foods. It's not, "I can't eat that because I'm on a diet," but rather, "I choose not to eat that because I prefer this instead."

That approach has worked well for me in turning FOMO into JOMO. "I'm choosing not to attend" instead of "I can't go."

Time Confetti

"All of my dreams, from the sky, drop like confetti." ~ Little Mix

via GIPHY

Time confetti is little, shredded fragments of time. I first heard Laurie Santos mention it on the Ten Percent Happier podcast with Dan Harris. Santos credits the term to Ashley Whillans, and Whillans credits the term to Brigid Schulte.

In the podcast, Santos talked about the fragments in a positive light - unexpected gifts of time like a meeting ending early, waiting for a friend to join you for lunch, finishing a project early. Her challenge to listeners was are we using this time confetti to enhance our happiness significantly - meditating or texting a friend versus playing Candy Crush or scrolling through Twitter.

In Time Smart, Whillans talks about time confetti more as a negative, "little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking." The example she gives is an hour of leisure being interrupted with emails, text, Twitter, and Slack notifications. It's a positive block of time shredded into smaller pieces.

I'm planning to use the term to refer to the tiny gifts as Santos suggests. I'm working to savor those moments of time confetti when they present themselves and use them more effectively. I'm also going to embrace Whillans framing of shredding productive time. How can I better prevent shredding from those bigger blocks of time where I can do deep work?

Two great challenges to refine my use of time.