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Your Fitbit: Friend or Foe?
Wearable pieces of tech are motivational and fun, but there are issues of accuracy and privacy that we’d rather ignore. Writing is ultimately a desk job. Unless we install a treadmill in front of a stand-up desk, the only real movement we do on the job is slouching off downstairs to make tea or fetch a biscuit. Freelancers have an advantage: We can just decide to go for a run halfway through the morning if we feel like it. While writing full-time in a ‘real’ job these last few months, in an actual office with air-conditioning, it wasn’t so easy to maintain any kind of fitness routine. I walked to…
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Adventures in Mindfulness
I think have time-anxiety. That’s not a clinical term, if you’re wondering – I’m pretty sure I’ve just made it up. But it seems an accurate description. I always need to know how long things are going to take, and if I don’t know (or can’t make a good guess), I get anxious that I’m going to run out of time. I can trace this back to three years ago, after I had a big operation. I still had deadlines to meet, but everything took me twice as long as it had previously because I was still recovering. Then I had to return to my day job, which is teaching…
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Balancing Project Priorities – A Recipe
Four ingredients: Basics – Pay the rent. Plan – Expand portfolio. Fold into Basics and leave to set. Motivation – Sprinkle with expectations and nudging emails. Compulsion – Scratch brain-itching ideas onto paper. Makes fuel. Mix haphazardly.
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This Week I’m Researching … Nutrition and Shakespeare
I like finding out stuff so I’m always researching something. And I love learning. If there was such a job as a Professional Learner (outside the upper echelons of academia), I would be doing that. Imagine my glee when I discovered FutureLearn. This is an online education site, globally accessible, with free courses delivered by real universities. Currently, I’m learning about nutrition and Shakespeare (the two topics are unconnected … so far). I’m also currently behind schedule in both courses, as I’ve taken on too much – kind of like piling a load of lovely food onto your plate then discovering your eyes are bigger than your stomach (figuratively, of…
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A List of Reasons Why I Love Lists
Tickable, cross-out-able, tear-up-able, burnable ( unless the list is on an electronic device – blow-up-able?) – very kinesthetic. Procrastination enablers – especially if the list is colour-coded, frequently rewritten for neatness, or annotated with once meaningful symbols to be puzzled over. Everyone does this, right? The illusion of industry – it looks like you’re working and being organised, without actually having to do anything. Yet. The small explosion of brain chemicals reacting to produce a pleasant sensation when you’ve ticked everything. This is also the time to start a new list, to re-experience that brief neurochemical rush in the near future. Perfect productive activity for bouts of insomnia when your…
