Here’s a productivity hack: it’s faster to have a feeling than to avoid it.

Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anyth [Coach Tony]( Coach Tony [@tonystubblebine]( Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ~ M. Scott Peck Happy Valentine’s Day to you. I am wishing you a day of love and romance if that is your goal. Sarah and I have just started an extended trip to California and are connecting with family and friends who we haven’t seen since before the pandemic. So I expect many of these connections will pop into the newsletter. For example… Where do you score on the Autism/Asperger scale? We had lunch yesterday with an autistic cousin (pronouns they/them) who has done an inspiring job of reconciling being neuroatypical in a neurotypical world. They always have me seeing the world a bit differently and they highly recommended that we take this 80-question diagnostic: [Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised](. It’s quick. You don’t have to share — just consider both your own score and what it might be like to be someone who scores high on this scale. (I scored low.) _ If video calls burn you out, try phone calls or letters. My cousin is now one of many people that have talked to me about how much they are trying to avoid video calls. My cousin said they’d polled one of their neurodiversity support groups and almost everyone found video calls exhausting. But I’m in that boat too, and I bet a lot of you are as well. So how do you stay socially connected? Try phone calls or try letters. [Sílvia Bastos]( has a very nice essay on [writing letters](. One thing that popped out was the way the pace of letters may lead to healthier and deeper communication: The intervals between each email prevented us from getting bored of each other — which sometimes happens when you communicate with someone exclusively via digital media — because we always had something interesting and new to say. If you are celebrating today with a date, try upgrading your compliments. Very good tips in this article, [How to Improve Your Relationships by Making the Best Compliments]( from [Manuela Putz](: Instead of saying: “I like x and y about you.” Say: “I have noticed multiple times how considerate you are towards your partner.” Or: “I admire your interest in this very complicated field.” Or: “I adore how well you can cook and that you make me dinner regularly.” It’s OK to have feelings, even bad ones. Even though most of my coaching experience is in behavior and productivity, I still end up finding that most problems are caused by deep and rarely examined beliefs. Possibly the most common of those is simply that “feelings are bad.” When we have that belief, we jump through extensive and unnecessary hoops to avoid them. So along the lines of that belief pattern, here is a good point from a [Twitter thread]( by Lisa Feldman Barret (author of [7.5 Lessons About the Brain](). The most expensive tasks that brains do are (1) moving your body and (2) learning something new. They have a metabolic cost that may feel unpleasant. So, feeling bad doesn’t always mean that something bad happened. You might just be doing something really hard. _ This newsletter gets read 500k times every month, which is really quite a bit more people than I was expecting. If you are one of those regular readers, would you help me find even more readers? All you have to do is forward this to a friend and tell them why you like the newsletter. Don’t miss out on the other issues by Coach Tony [Become a member for $5 per month]( Did you enjoy this issue? [Yes]( [No]( [Coach Tony]( Coach Tony [@tonystubblebine]( Tips, inspirations, and knowledge on productivity, happiness, health, and making an impact on our world. Official email of the Better Humans publication on Medium. (@bttrhumans) You can manage your subscription [here](. In order to unsubscribe, click [here](. If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe [here](. Created with [Revue by Twitter](.