Have you ever stood in the middle of a room full of cardboard packing boxes, felt completely paralyzed by the sheer volume of stuff, and realized you needed a way to bypass the dread?
Welcome to the very first actual episode of the Curiosity Clinic: Proceed at Your Own Risk! This is a brand-new, low-pressure playground built for perfectionists who want to take a break from performative adulthood and embrace some nonsense and play.
First, a quick warning: I have absolutely zero scientific, behavioral, or traffic-safety credentials. I am a master creativity coach taking my very best human guesses at your questions, so please do not go betting anyone or testing these theories out on a busy street!
In this inaugural clinical dispatch, we diagnose two excellent inquiries from our first “patients”:
- Lin wants to know how to make the exhausting, daunting task of packing up, moving, and unpacking an entire house actually fun.
- Suzanne wants to know why drivers refuse to stop for pedestrians in unmarked crosswalks when they’re headed toward a red light anyway.
For Lin’s moving question, we look at how to bypass resistance and make a heavy chore feel lighter using some of my favorite creative coaching tools. For Suzanne’s traffic question, I step back from professional coaching to offer my amateur, observational human guess on driver behavior.
Get Your Clinic Takeaways:
- Download my free credit report and customizable bingo card to make overwhelming or tedious projects easier to tackle.
- Submit your own weird, confusing, or absurd question to the clinic here.
I’m Nancy Norbeck, your Messy Muse Mentor. I help people feel alive again through curiosity and play.
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I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com, or contact me on Instagram, or Bluesky.
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Case File #1: Housewarming Bingo, Subconscious Hacks, and Crosswalk Confessions | Curiosity Clinic
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the Curiosity Clinic with this first episode. And I have two questions for you today. I am answering these pretty much in the order that I’m receiving them. And I appreciate everybody who has sent me a question so far. If you haven’t and you would like to, there is a link in the show notes or the description wherever you’re finding this. And I really appreciate you using the form because it really helps me keep track of them. So without further ado, the first question that I have is from Lynn who says, what are some ideas to make moving, clearing out our old house, and arranging our new house more fun? This is indeed a daunting task, and I don’t envy anybody who has to go through it. But as we know, generally speaking, the end result is worth it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:53]:
So how do we get there and how do we make it more fun? There are a couple of things that I recommend. So the first thing to make it easier is to break it down into tiny, tiny little steps, which is a tough thing to do with a daunting thing. And I only recommend this if you’re feeling stuck, because otherwise, you probably just wanna jump in and, like, do the big stuff. This is for the moments when you feel stuck, do the tiniest little thing that you can get yourself to do. The, the thing that is so small that there’s absolutely no question you could do it like that. If I said to you, can you put that pencil in this box? Or if you’re unpacking, take it out of this box. You would look at me like I was stupid and say, of course I can put the pencil in the box. That’s small enough.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:41]:
That’s a small step. So break it down into stupidly small steps because when they’re that small, it’s really hard to get in your own way about them. So that’s one idea. But you also talked about fun. And most people would say, man, packing up and moving and unpacking is not fun. And in a lot of ways that’s pretty accurate, but there are ways to make it more fun. One of them is to use a small question, which is my favorite companion to the small step. The trick is to make it small enough.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:16]:
You notice this is a theme with both of these. A small question is super tiny, and the trick is that you ask yourself the question, but you do not attempt to answer it. And what happens when you do this is that you leave it with your brain, which cannot handle an unanswered question. It might let it go the first time or two, but when you ask it your to yourself a couple of times a day, eventually, it’s just gonna sit in the background. Your subconscious mind is gonna churn on it until it starts to pop up answers. When you least expect it, things that you’re not necessarily expecting as answers, they may come to you as, oh, I should do this. Or it may just be that you notice that you’re starting to do something differently and you didn’t consciously make that decision. But in this case, the question I would go with is really obvious.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:12]:
How can I make this more fun? But don’t try to answer it. Just ask yourself a couple of times a day, let it go and see what happens over the course of several days. Give your subconscious the chance to do its magic and, and just leave it. There’s no work required for you here. So this one is is easy, but it’s deceptive because you’re gonna wanna answer it because your brain doesn’t like an unanswered question. So so that’s one thing I would try. Lynn is somebody I know, and so music came up in this conversation, which I did not answer this question beforehand, but Lynn mentioned music. Music can help a lot.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:53]:
Music is my favorite mind altering substance precisely because it is not a mind altering substance. But I think you have to be really careful with music because if you get something that’s way too jazzy and bouncy and energetic, it can start to wear you out too. So just be aware that music that you use should match your energy level. If you’re starting to wear out and you keep pumping really loud music at yourself, it’s gonna start to wear you out. So if you’re starting to lose energy, make the music match a little bit, but you don’t wanna have to be, you know, really consciously DJing your experience all the time either. So I wouldn’t do too much of that. Follow your own energy. Now there are two other things that I really recommend, and there are different schools of thought with this first one.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:41]:
I will tell you my own based on my own experience. So one of my favorite coaching tools is a credit report. A credit report is a list of all of the things that you’ve gotten done because most of us do not give ourselves proper credit for the things that we have accomplished. We do all the things and at the end of the day, we think, why am I so tired? I didn’t do anything all day. When in fact, we did a lot. So keeping a list can actually help you appreciate, holy cow. No wonder I’m exhausted. I did 83 things today.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:19]:
And usually, when I suggest this to people, I tell them, like, write down the small things too. They’re as important as the big things. So you get to define what you wanna put on the list. Now here’s my caveat. Every time I have tried to do this consistently over a period of weeks, I won’t even say months, It has started to become a chore and it has started to stress me out. So I save the credit report for times when I really need it because it’s a great confidence builder, but if it starts to become a chore, it stops working for me. I suggest that you go with your own experience. If it really builds you up and you love doing it every single day, do it every single day.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:03]:
But if it doesn’t, don’t beat yourself up about it. Good tools should never be things that you beat yourself up about. Now I have a printable download for a credit report and because I’m just like that I made it pretty, I made it something that I could laminate and reuse because I thought I was gonna want to do this every day until ask me how I found out. And I made it so that this area at the top is where you can fill out the things that you did. You notice it’s not huge, but if you’ve laminated it or if you’ve printed it, there’s room on the other side, but I also added a couple of little sections. So one of them is current small question down in the corner and right above it there’s space for your next three small steps. Make them small. Do not make them I’m gonna write a new chapter tomorrow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:57]:
Make them I’m gonna write a new paragraph tomorrow. K? Or whatever the thing is. I’m I’m gonna, you know, find space for three new things as I take them out of a box might be a small step. One thing actually is probably a better small step. And then I also have over here sorry, I’m trying not to put this in the way of my microphone. On the other side, I have a space that just says how do you feel? Because I think it’s really important to keep track of how do you feel having done of all these things today. Because you might just feel exhausted. That’s an honest answer, and it’s okay to write that here.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:36]:
You might feel accomplished. You might feel like you can take on the world. You might feel like you can’t wait until you’re done unpacking stuff. Just write down the honest answer. There is no need to lie. I’m not coming to your house to make sure that you wrote the right kind of thing on here, and there is no right kind of thing. But it can be useful to see how you feel at the end of the day and just be honest about it. And, I’m putting this up so that you can get this from me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:02]:
There will be a link wherever you are watching or listening to this if you want your own, and you can print it and use it as much or as often as you like. And along that line, I do not have one of these handy to show you. I also have another tool that I really love, which is a customizable bingo card. I freaking love bingo cards because you can make them for whatever you want. And, you know, I know gamification is such a huge thing these days. I am not into the, like, bells and whistles kind of thing, but I love anything where I get to just stamp off something, check it off, black it out, whatever way you prefer. And again, you can make one for yourself if you think you’re gonna use it over and over and laminate it and not have to print, you know, one every week or whatever. But just you can add whatever things you want on the bingo card.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:55]:
You can get one of those bingo markers and just use that to block them out. You can cross them out. You can do whatever you want with it to to black out your spots on your bingo card. You can play it according to whatever rules of bingo you like. It is entirely up to you. There is no one right way. There is only your way. Just make it fun.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:17]:
So you could use the bingo card for the things that you really dreading, because then you get a little dopamine hit every time you get one of those things done. So that that’s how I would use the bingo card. But you might have a different way that you might wanna do it. Doesn’t matter. Do whatever way works for you and just have fun with it. And and the bingo card in particular can be a lot of fun. If you’ve got family members working with you, you can each take one and you can all make them the same. You can make every one of them different.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:47]:
You can be shouting bingo through your house as you’re, you know, getting things packed or unpacked, whatever. You could even have a deal where the first person who gets bingo gets treated to lunch or get some kind of special prize that you all settle on. It is totally up to you. But if you wanna make packing, moving, clearing stuff out, unpacking, all of that more fun, Those are my best ideas off the top of my head. And I wish you all the luck and very quick process and, you know, a lot of fun arranging your house. So I hope that it is a wonderful experience, especially when it’s all done and you can enjoy it. Now the second question is from Suzanne, who says, why do people not stop to to let a pedestrian go on an unmarked crosswalk when they are driving toward a red light asking for a friend? So, Suzanne, first of all, tell your friend that I have absolutely no expertise in this subject, so I am gonna take my very best guess here. It may be completely wrong, so don’t go betting anybody on this or testing it out on a busy street.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:01]:
K? I mean, I hope you wouldn’t anyway because it’s a busy street. But my best guess here is that this is basically applied main character syndrome. I think what happens is that when we get in a car, we forget, as we do almost everywhere else in our lives, let’s be real, let’s be honest, that we are not actually the main character and the only one who counts. And I think when we are behind the wheel of a car, we are more prone to that because a car is a powerful thing, and it enhances our own sense of our power. That said, that same person who’s driving that car, if you put them in that crosswalk and I think the unmarked crosswalk is a factor here because I think people are much more willing to stop for people in a marked crosswalk because that tells them, hey. There are rules. And an unmarked crosswalk I mean, there are some people who would even probably go so far as to to say that an unmarked crosswalk might not even legally be a crosswalk and what’s that person doing there. And that might be a factor.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:07]:
But if you put the same person on foot on that street trying to cross the street, they’d probably be just as irritated by the person who’s not stopping. And so I think that whatever the given situation, because this is very situational, I think that we in our current situation, whichever one it happens to be, see it through our own eyes much more and think that we deserve the right of way, rightly or wrongly. That could be a whole other topic for another day, and I don’t think I would touch that one. But I I think that’s what happens. I think we forget that there are other people and they have a right to use the road too, even if that’s not what we would prefer. And I think if we stop and look at our own behavior a lot of time and we do it honestly, we would probably see that we are just as guilty of doing that many times as other people that we see who do it to us. And really, I think that probably many problems in the world would be solved if we all stepped back inside, took a look at our own behavior when we get upset with other people for doing things that we don’t like, and asked ourselves really, really honestly, am I do do I tend to do those things too? Am I, you know, being a little bit of a hypocrite here? Could I do better a lot of the time? And then if we assessed ourselves honestly, went out and tried to do better at those things. That’s my guess.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:38]:
But remember, I could be completely wrong about this because I am not a behavioral psychologist or anything like that. So I don’t know. That’s just my best guess from many, many decades of being a human being on planet Earth. So that is it for the clinic today. If you have a question you would like me to take a crack at, there is a form, as I mentioned, and I hope that you will use it. I look forward to seeing what you’re curious about and to giving you my best crack at an answer. Thanks for joining me today. See you next time.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:12]:
Got a question for Curiosity Clinic? Send it in at fyc. Questclinic. That’s clinic with a capital c. There’s also a link in your show notes. You never know where a good question might take us.