Coaching practices for Filling the Well
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Filling the Well, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My downtime is all screens
- I keep tinkering with what I do day to day and it’s not moving the needle, and I’m starting to think I’m fiddling with the wrong thing entirely
- Every gap in my day, every pause in a conversation, I rush to fill — and I’ve got a nagging sense that all this packed busyness is exactly why nothing new ever has room to surface in me.
- I’m running on empty and my whole instinct is to stop the bleeding
- Every time I get the thing I was sure would finally make me feel like enough
Practices that may help
- Fill the well
Deliberately take in sensory, novel experiences so there’s something to draw from.
The Artist’s Way, Made Practical - Identify the stocks before diagnosing a problem
Ask "what is accumulating here?" before deciding how to intervene.
Stocks and Flows - Find the use of empty space
Create deliberate emptiness — in your schedule, your mind, your output — and let it do its work.
Wu Wei — the Practice of Effortless Action - Build the inflow before trying to stop the outflow
In depleted stocks, restoring an inflow is usually more tractable than eliminating the outflow.
Stocks and Flows - Living close to the ground — contentment with enough
Cultivate contentment with what is sufficient rather than perpetually seeking more.
The Tao Te Ching, Made Practical - Map your key stocks and flows
Identify what accumulates in your work (stocks) and what adds to or drains it (flows) — this reveals the real bottleneck.
Systems Thinking for Personal Productivity - Pair pages with weekly solitary play (the artist date)
Morning pages drain; the artist date refills — both are needed for the full cycle.
Morning Pages, Made Practical - Fierce provision: identify and meet your own needs
Ask yourself what you need right now and take action to supply it — without waiting to be asked.
Fierce Self-Compassion, Made Practical - Communicate your Why to those who already believe it
The most efficient expansion is not converting skeptics — it is finding people who already share your belief.
Start With Why: Leading Through Purpose - Treating friendship as the most essential pleasure
Invest in the quality of a small number of close friendships as your primary wellbeing strategy.
Epicurean Philosophy: Practical Happiness
Related concerns
- When Stocks And Flows Manage Inflows Before Outflows
In depleted stocks, restoring an inflow is usually more tractable than eliminating the outflow.
Build the inflow before trying to stop the outflow
- Donella Meadows Stocks Flows
Stocks are accumulations — the quantities that build up or deplete over time (money in an account, trust in a relationship, skills, energy). Flows are the rates that change them — inflows add to a stock, outflows reduce it. Donella Meadows shows that virtually all system behavior can be understood through stock-and-flow structure, and that stocks create delays and momentum that make systems hard to reverse quickly.
- Flow Engineering The State Of Total Absorption After A Loss
Flow, described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is the state of complete absorption in an activity where action and awareness merge and time distorts. It is not random luck — it tends to appear under specific conditions: a balance between challenge and skill, clear goals, and immediate feedback. You cannot force flow, but you can deliberately set up the conditions that make it likely.
- Inflow Outflow Management
In depleted stocks, restoring an inflow is usually more tractable than eliminating the outflow.
- Rebuilding Depleted Stock
In depleted stocks, restoring an inflow is usually more tractable than eliminating the outflow.
- Stock Level Assessment
Ask "what is accumulating here?" before deciding how to intervene.
Identify the stocks before diagnosing a problem
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