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Got this lovely idea from Ernie who got it from Caterina who got it from a friend.

Also, Kevin told me if you Google for singletasking you get this Zen Habits blog entry that points you to a wonderful little tool called NowDoThis. If you are the type to get distracted by your web browser, you can load this tool in your Firefox sidebar.

Categories: productivity, work-life balance
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This weekend we saw several friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. It was so nice to catch up with them. The get-together was held at one couple’s new home, so this was a housewarming as well. When my friend gave me the tour, she showed me her writing corner, a cozy nook she set up in the corner of the living room to do her writing. She preferred it to the study because she felt more comfortable writing here.

The concept intrigued me and Kevin. Both of us have a lot of writing ahead of us in our academic and professional lives, so this topic is ripe for discussion. On the drive home, we immediately started talking about our optimal conditions for writing. So far here’s what we’ve talked about:

• Neither of us has an ideal place to write at home. We usually use our laptops at the dining table, which isn’t ergonomic at all. The last time I spent an entire weekend writing, I had a horrible backache for 2 days.
• Both of us get interrupted constantly at work, mostly by emails. If we cut down the number of times we checked email, we would find more solid chunks of time to write.

What is your ideal writing environment?

Categories: productivity, writing
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These past few months I’ve been talking to a lot of medical professionals. Each time they ask me, do you exercise? I have to answer with an embarrassed no.

As it turns out, there’s nothing terribly wrong with me. My primary care physician decided to be thorough, just in case, since I hadn’t had a checkup in AGES. I have fantastically low blood pressure, and my BMI looks just fine, as always. I did learn that I have a benign growth on my gallbladder, which I wasn’t even sure was a vital organ until I looked it up. I also needed a prescription for a terribly annoying but non-life-threatening problem, which is now no longer a problem. The rest is just lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and — in my opinion — stress.

Surprisingly, I’ve been learning to resolve my problems with stress through my graduate coursework on organizational leadership, which itself adds a lot of stress. By default I guess the two cancel each other out, but I’ve also been given a lot of new tools to use to analyze the world around me, which has been very exciting.

I’ll go into further detail about that later. Meanwhile, here are a few ways I’m adding exercise into my life:

• Take the Stairs Tuesdays at work: there’s a big sign at the bottom of the escalator telling me I’m a loser if I don’t take the stairs. You think I’m going to ignore it?
• Pushing the jogging stroller around Disneyland: everytime I do this I start jogging. Seriously.
• Buying the big kids new bicycles at Toys R Us: self explanatory.
• Tuning to our local indie radio station and hearing polka music…

Categories: health
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