Strategy

Crafting a Season of Depth and Slowness

The Power of Getting Specific & Kicking off an Depth Journal

Mexico Beach. Photo by Rachel Thompson

Values Show Up Through Action

Last October, at a self-organized mini-retreat with a few facilitator friends, we did a values sort activity that I found both clarifying and reaffirming.

Values often seem nebulous generalities with little actionable purpose, such as saying we value respect or communication. Of course, we do. Respect and communication are important. They are foundational values for even sitting at the table.

Things get real when observable behavior shows the value in action, not just as a talking point.

Then we move past table stakes into those values that are deeply and specifically motivating. So, what values are so important that we’re willing to shift in our choices and behavior?

An underlying value motivating my choices is freedom of movement and time - it’s one reason self-employment fits me. Another is a desire for exploration and growth.

These values show up in my behavior in various ways. In 2023 I spent 77 days traveling, including a month in Spain. In 2024, it looked more local, general, and introspective. And now, leading into 2025, I’m feeling pulled toward crafting a season of depth and slowness.

Inspired by the idea of a depth year, how might I dial in the specifics to make a realistic plan of action?

Crafting a Season of Depth and Slowness

A thoughtful approach hopefully means a more satisfying experience. So, like I often do for myself, I start with a few questions:

What do I want a season of depth and deliberate practice to look and feel like for me? I want to feel spaciousness and progress around the activities, hobbies, or skills I decide to explore. I want to feel like I closed a loop or hit a milestone within a specific range of time. I want to feel good about the boundaries I’ll need. I know I’m going to need to say no, or not yet, to make this season of depth feel fulfilling.
For how long? A full year seems like too long of a commitment right now. Four months of depth, December 2024 through March 2025, feels more realistic. A natural alignment with winter and then a quarterly milestone to reevaluate.
How much structure would be helpful and supportive? What support might I need? I know I find external structures and containers (teachers, classes, projects, coworking groups) helpful anchors so I’m going to lean into those. And also, dial in the specifics, which is often hard to do, but super helpful when I do it.
How much freedom do I need to just follow my energy and curiosity? Balancing freedom and structure here would mean having a few anchor activities throughout the week and then movable activity blocks that I can rearrange on my calendar each week. And permission to iterate, or try a thing and readjust with more information.
What resources, like time and money, am I willing to commit to this? I’ve already committed money to various lessons, tools, and courses. The specificity of money helps make decisions. The time commitment is the wild card here. It’s more susceptible to outside forces and internal resistance. Time is finite but also full of confusion, diffusion, and competing options, so dialing in the specificity here is important. The range of time I’m able to commit to more practice time, more project time, and more slow and steady learning while doing time will impact the depth and forward progress.
What trade-offs might I need to make? And am I willing to make those? Knowing that I want to commit time to this, means I’ll likely need to say no to other activities - especially new ones. At least for a while.

The Details of Diving Deeper

The concept of deepening into my existing hobbies and activities sounds great - but it is also too general and vague to be helpful. Specificity around the details matters.

For starters, I’m picking a few activities to focus on. These are either already in progress or ones I keep circling back around wanting to do.

Learning to play the piano

Learning Spanish

Writing

Build creative production skills

Consume the stockpiles

The low-hanging fruit in this experiment is learning to play the piano and learning Spanish because I’ve already started on both for a year or so.

Learning to Play the Piano

Thursday afternoons from 3 - 3:30, I show up in person for a piano lesson. I’ve already decided to continue in 2025.

Depth → Practicing two times a week outside of my lessons. Simple, but not urgent which is why making a time commitment here is important. And also stacking practice time into my weekly routines.
Cost → $150/month for lessons
Time Commitment → 90 minutes a week total, including my lesson.

Learning Spanish

On Tuesday mornings from 10 - 11, I have a Spanish class via Zoom. I’ll also be continuing this in 2025. Plus I use the Babbel app and have a fairly consistent habit of practicing with breakfast.

Depth → I bought a Spanish workbook and a book of short comprehension stories, plus subscribed to a podcast my Spanish teacher recommended. Adding deliberate practice time during the week to work through the resources I already have would be the best way to deepen here.
Cost → $306 for the next session of Spanish classes
Time Commitment → Two hours a week total, including my Tuesday class. Mainly 10-15 minutes on weekday mornings.

The Challenges of Getting More Specific

The next few activities are more broad with less clarity and constraints so right now they are a bit unwieldy. And more likely to go off the rails.

Writing

The main challenge here is that I have a lot of different writing projects - articles, essays, newsletters, a novel, journaling, content ideas - on my wish list. Too many ideas that are too general to make progress on any of them.

Before I go deep I need to narrow and get super specific with the order of operations for my writing projects. More clarity around what I am committing to write and what I’m not going to work on right now.

So my central priority is to publish a weekly essay on Substack.

Even beyond that, I need to be specific about what I want to write by when.

I have little external accountability here beyond my commitment, so I know I need even more specificity and structure.

I joined Cody Cook-Parrott’s twice-a-week writing group Landscapes and have a friend writing group on Sundays, so my commitment is to show up and hold those containers for writing an essay each week for Substack first. And then once that essay is completed for the week, I can pick from the other writing projects to work on.

Depth → Lean into the containers I’ve already got to support my writing. And say no, or not now to doing other work during them.
Cost → Landscapes writing group is $55/month
Time Commitment → Five hours a week. Tuesday and Thursday 11 - 1 pm and Sunday’s 11:30 - 12:30 pm

Build creative production skills

I want to improve my skills in a few design software tools for a few creative projects I want to build.

One challenge is I need to separate learning the tool from building the thing. Another way, I need to let myself take the time it takes to both learn the tool AND build the thing.

It’s super helpful for me to have a specific project to help clarify the features I want to learn to use and to continue to have momentum toward a finish line.

I feel the time commitment here can shrink and stretch a lot which is unhelpful to making consistent progress and gaining momentum, partly because the action piece still feels general.

There are two ways I’m thinking about approaching this activity time-wise. I could pick a mini-project for the week and spend the time it takes to complete it. Or I could dedicate a specific amount of time each week to this and do as much as that container holds.

Depth → Pick a single mini-project for each software tool. I’m co-organizing a facilitation gathering which I’ve realized is a cool project to use for practice and it also has a helpful external nature. For example:
- Affinity Publisher → design the program's interior
- Affinity Designer → design a program flyer or graphic branding elements
- ScreenStudio → record a tiny about video
Cost → None, because I already own the Affinity software and ScreenStudio.
Time Commitment → For December, I’m going to try picking a mini-project each week and spending the time it takes.

Consume the Stockpiles

I feel this one is already a work in progress with my work creating a quieter inbox and cleaning out my to-be-read books, among other things. Still, I like the intentionality of it as a line item.

Depth → Read the books. Finish the puzzles. Finish or quit the courses. Consume digital resources.
Cost → Minimal, because I either already own the thing and can borrow most books from the library.
Time Commitment → Variable. I read a lot so I can just shift my reading sources to consume the books I already have. I think I’ll commit another afternoon to more digital editing, and then an hour or afternoon a week to consuming the remaining stockpiles.

The Depth Journal

Right now, one way I want to add external accountability is to share this season of depth and slowness here on Substack.

This is a container that I can use to add supportive structure, and also I can follow my energy and lean into the freedom of owning my narrative. Use this Substack as a Depth Journal with a mix of behind-the-scenes, work-in-progress, update notes, shifts and changes, and reflections.