Today was too hot to work.

Schools shut, there were heat warnings and travel bans in London, and my garden office turned into a sauna.

So instead of the day I had planned, I let the day become something else, and somewhere between a slow coffee with my father-in-law, a grocery shop where my brain refused to cooperate, a garden picnic, and water fight with the kids, and a barefoot evening watering the plants, I realised the whole day had been one big joy first experiment.

This one is recorded late, off the cuff, and a bit un-edited (you get to see exactly how last-minute this show sometimes is). But showing you all of it felt like the honest thing and very in the spirit of what this season is all about: what joy actually looks like in the messy middle. Not the pretty, pre-planned, beautifully spacious version we put on a pedestal.

In this episode:

• Why joy first living is a series of small choices (not one grand cinematic gesture)
• The "judgey clipboard lady" in your head, and what changes when she takes the day off
• Why entrepreneurs never seem to get the free passes everyone else does
• How to keep a commitment without letting time-scarcity turn you into a jerk
• Integrating joy into the chores and the to-do list, rather than treating it as separate

Take the Joy FIrst Audit Substack: https://joyfirstworld.substack.com/t/joy-first-audit

If this show gives you something, a review on Apple Podcasts helps more people find it. And come and find me on YouTube, where these episodes go up as videos too: https://www.youtube.com/@JoyFirstWorld/videos

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