Hello friend,

I hope you've had a good week and are well into the swing of 2026.

My week has been heavy on domestic activity and chores. The cold, windy weather has made me even more pro-staying-in than usual. On the plus side, I have been productive in an area of my life that can sometimes get neglected.

A highlight of "staying in" this week has been realising how helpful AI can be in supporting my sourdough (and other fermentation) experiments. I now have a chat set up in Google Gemini called "Sourdough Starter Helpline". My AI assistant noticed I'd nicknamed my starter Audrey 2 and found that particularly amusing... (in case you missed the 80's musical reference, here you go).

Anyway, enough sourdough chat, let's get to your digest for this weekend.

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✏️ Doodle Essays

This week's doode essay introduces the Japanese word "Yutori", which means spaciousness or room to breathe. If you've not yet chosen a word for 2026, this would be a good one. Whether you want to create space on your calendar (I've written about margin and buffer time here and here) or focus on making more mental space, Yutori could be the way to go.

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📚 Read

Here are three articles from other creators I thought you might enjoy:

• If one of your goals for 2026 is to read more, this article from Scott Young will be helpful.
• On the subject of goals, this article from Work Brighter reminds us that smaller can be better.
• I loved this article by Bree Groff, author of Today Was Fun, which encourages vintage habits (I need more Grandpa Mornings in my life).

If you're curious about the books I'm reading, you can see my library in Tana here: Library.

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📺 Watch

This "human-made" lo-fi music channel has been the backdrop to my work this week. I particularly like this one and am listening to it as I type:

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🎧 Listen

I've listened to a lot of podcasts this week. Here are three recommended episodes:

• Feel Better Live More: How to Stop Overthinking and Start Moving Forward With Dr Shadé Zahrai #608 (lots in this one).
• Women's Running: Episode 1 Half Marathon Bootcamp (just in case anyone, like me, has a spring half coming up... the link to YouTube, but you can also subscribe to the audio in your podcast app).
• Squiggly Careers: Spaciouness, How to Manage Your Attention, Not Your Time (I thought this linked nicely with the idea of "Yutori").

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That's all from me today. Have a great week, and I will be in touch again next weekend.

Best wishes,

Martine

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