2/28/13

Let's have a Moratorium on...And 4 Ways I Kill Time

Can we please stop....


...When someone wants to sit down on the train and the person sitting down in a row with an empty seat gets UP and gives the person the INSIDE seat, instead of scooting to the inside seat themselves.

...Using startup industry lingo/confusing and indirect language in articles advertised on social media and meant to appeal to everybody.

...And, as always, taking photos of one's food at restaurants.

And here's 4 fun things I do on the Internet:

Youtube stuff I want to learn

(In order: lockpicking, nail art, dubstep dancing, interior design for small spaces, and budgeting.)


Polyvore


Polyvore is hard to explain, even when you see this picture.



It's a sort of way to create outfits based on mood, or colors, or something you read in a magazine, or a famous person, or an event. Then, you save the outfits and other people can see them and vote on them. It's a good way to make your personal style more interesting, which is important if you're in the public eye (and especially if you're a woman). I realize this still sounds very dorky. Ok, here's something else: Polyvore has 1.4 million registered users that create 30,000 fashion sets each day. This data is what Polyvore sells to department stores and designers. As opposed to Pinterest, which doesn't make money at all. Internet companies are strange indeed.



Learn some new workouts

I love this website.

This is the only place I ever go to figure out what to do a the gym. If you're around 30, then you are probably aware that things are not bouncing back like they used to. And the fastest thing you can do to make yourself look hot again is lifting weights +stop eating so much. The link sends you to the exercises page. What I do is just pick an upper body muscle group and a lower-body muscle group, choose 3 exercises that look fun from each (they have videos showing exactly what you're supposed to do), set my timer for 45 minutes, and go do those at the gym. Then, in a day or so, I choose different muscle groups and different exercises and do it again. I am not a personal trainer and I haven't consulted one, but I'm not seeing any loose flab on my body and it's giving me much better results than just cardio alone. And as Penelope Trunk will tell you, what you look like matters at work.

Mess around on Eat This Much.


 I love how much you can play and customize the meal plans on this website in such a short amount of time. It will give you meal plans based on how much time you have to cook, what your dietary restrictions are, how many calories you want to eat (and coach you on how much you should be eating), and what percentage of protein, fat, and carbohydrates you'd like to eat in a way that is beautifully-arranged and intuitive. It's just a nice simple platform that does one thing well. Good for people who get overwhelmed with planning meals but definitely want to remember to eat.  

2/10/13

Unfinished Projects: Hacks for the Distracted, Overworked, and Unmotivated

I have so many unfinished sewing projects, and I think, because I'm processing some other things in my life and trying to move forward in a major way, I'm organizing and paring down so that I can have clarity and tie up some things that have been hanging around the house for years.

Managing these unfinshed projects is a great excuse to talk about my little hacks that allow me to complete an enormous amount of projects and feel like an awesome accomplisher of things. Whoohoo. This is how I organized my unfinished sewing stuff, but this is the system I use for moving forward in a lot of areas of my life (for example, with all of the books I plan on reading this year):

  1. Take photos of all of my unfinished projects. This helps me remember all my projects at a glance. If it helps to make them pretty, try Pixlr, an online photo-editing program that is incredibly rich. 
  2. Upload them to my Trello board. If you don't know what Trello is, it's an awesome board sort of like post-its but on the internet. You can share them or assign them to others, and archive them when they are complete. I have 4 rows of "cards" that are broken up into: To Do Week of [Current Week], Spiritual, Mental, and Physical. I put the unfinished sewing projects into Mental, because I think they are helping me clear away both Mental and Physical clutter. 
  3. I take a look at my google calendar and figure out when I'd like to work on these projects. Some I am excited to work on, and some I need motivation for. I block the hours in my calendar, and I decide if the ones I need motivation for should be something I do with friends, or hire someone to help me with. 
  4. If I need help getting motivated, I post a task on TaskRabbit, Facebook, or ask a friend to come over for craft day. I'll also create a reward. I keep a list of treats I've been wanting for myself on Keep.com or Pinterest. I did a project for Keep last year.  It's a pretty cool platform, similar to Pinterest but everything must be able to be purchased. 
  5. At some point, I have to actually do the work. If the calendar announcement goes off and I can't bring myself to do it, well, it could be because I didn't have enough free time in the week, so I make an effort to take more time for myself, and reschedule for the next week. Or, I just do it anyway, then later feel tired yet satisfied. 
  6. The best part of this process is when I get to archive a card, because that means it leaves the board forever. It's satisfying. I think I might be a good candidate for of a project management platform that uses gamification. Or maybe I can invent one. 

Anyway, here's a bonus collage of all of the projects I've finished this month.