Absolute Bare Minimum™

the joy of slacking

iridescent ordinary: microdosing joy in our sucky-ass world with ideas, observations, and shenanigans

Some things we do not espouse over here at the Iridescent Ordinary:  raisins in cookies (or any baked good), racism, misogyny, trans/homophobia, littering, and productivity hacks. We’re a little bit on the fence about habit trackers and here’s why. 

Habit Trackers: yeah or nay? 

It’s not the doing-a-certain-activity every day of habit tracking that feels problematic, it’s the set-up-for-the-inevitable-feeling-of-failure when you miss a day, leaving you with a broken streak or an unchecked box.  And an ick in your overachiever nerd heart.

In the midst of striving for personal goals, it’s so easy to inadvertently make ourselves feel bad. Perhaps you aimed to meditate or do yoga every day this year. Five days in, perhaps you're finding that whoopsaroo, you forgot a day, and now, well, you’ve already proven you can’t do it and you suck so screw the whole thing and try again next year. 

Oh, my perfectionist friend, you’ve forgotten about the Absolute Bare Minimum™. 

I’m here to tell you performing one single solitary mountain pose (you can do it sitting down) means you’ve done yoga. Meditation: breathe in to the count of three, then slowly breathe out to count of five. Congratulations, you’ve done your daily meditation. 

Journaling? open your phone and make a voice note, I survived today. Boom: journal entry. 

Don’t think of this as a cheat, but rather treating yourself with compassion and grace. Life is hard, go easy on yourself. You’re looking to create these habits to foster a better ecosystem of you. Getting angry or disappointed for not arranging to be the most perfect version of yourself imaginable is not sustainable. 

Here is your actionable step: figure out your Absolute Bare Minimum™ for those times when you can’t give 110%. Where lies your threshold of the smallest effort possible to consider you’ve still accomplished the activity? 

If my daily aim is to complete a 20-30 minute yoga video, and exceptional is a 90 minute yoga class, but reasonable is a 10 minute video, what is at the very bottom of I-consider-I-did-yoga-today? In my Absolute Bare Minimum™ scale, one sun salutation would honor my commitment to myself. 

Same for meditation: say a 5-10 minute meditation is your aim, anything longer than that feels like leveling up towards nirvana. Are you okay with a series of 10 box breaths to complete your daily meditation goal on the days when you might have forgotten?

My Absolute Bare Minimum™ is that I’m not doing all of the thinking here for you, you have to figure out what works for you, based on your ambitions.

 I’m not advocating for you to abandon your goals and sloth around. I’m saying cut yourself some slack. It would be a shame to rob yourself of the joy of accomplishing little things by beating yourself up and quitting when you slide or life gets in the way of your hard cultivated discipline.

To my Wordle nerds: this is the exception. Absolute Bare Minimum™ only counts here if you guess correctly on the first go. Wordle is a binary: either you guess in 6 tries or you don’t. Your streak count doesn’t care if you think about a few 5 letter words as you drift off to sleep.

I’m always open to ideas, suggestions, shenanigans, tomfoolery, collaborations, cheese, snacks, and field trips.

You can find my art here and here. I offer custom workshops and design. I am the proud guardian/custodian of a 16 year old cheeseburger named Patty.

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words and images © Rubi McGrory 2021-2025