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Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links | 13-Sep-11

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I got a big kick in the pants last Friday, a kick that knocked me into depression and frustration over where I’m at in life and the direction my career is headed. So what do I do? I clean, of course.

It always makes me feel better, and why wouldn’t it? Instead of walking into my work space to see a cluttered desk, I see lots of clear space to work in. Instead of cringing when I walk into the kitchen because of the piles of pots and pans (i.e. handwash-only items) left over from a week of preparing several new recipes at home, I walk into a sparkling kitchen. The work itself makes me feel better even. Then, I spent some time polishing up my organization and workflow processes on Sunday afternoon.

So today I’m going to share some links with you that inspire and guide my cleaning and organization.

Cleaning

FlyLady: I’ve talked about FlyLady before, but I’ve been finding recently that when I feel weighed down by life, I can still “do anything for 15 minutes.” I’ll make a list of three or four tasks I need to get done, set a 15-minute timer, and just go on auto-pilot. At the end of the day, my depression isn’t compounded by the fact that I didn’t get anything done today.

Organization

Craft the Perfect Calendar and To-Do List This Weekend: This post inspired my Sunday-afternoon workflow makeover. It’s chock-full of links to other great productivity posts, so read it through, then read it through again and read the linked posts.

How to Use 6 Calendar Views to Be More Productive: I’ve already separated my personal and work calendars, but this post suggests I go a little further. Sounds a bit like creating horcruxes, but definitely not as bad. Anyway, I’m not sure I’m going to follow this method, but this post really got me thinking.

Upgrade Your GTD Calendar and Keep Up with the Times: If you’re a GTD fan, you need to read this post. Again, I don’t think I’ll be using this exact method, but this post helped me think outside the box as far as modding popular methods to fit how I think and work.

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links | 6-Sep-2011

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Today, I’m going to share links to my current favorite blogs. Most of these are written by dear friends, but there’s one blog in there that is pretty famous, and they’re the ones that I check regularly.

Baby Mildren

My besty since 4th grade, Beth, and her husband James are having a baby boy in January and she’s got a baby blog going with a weekly update post, always with the requisite baby bump picture. Love it! I can’t wait to meet this little guy.

A Fool of Myself

My besty since grad school and favorite running partner, Sarah, went on blogging hiatus in the spring, but she’s back now and she is sharing lots of healthy recipes and interesting insights.

Slightly Flighty

If you remember my post about Coffee, Crafties, and Besties Night (aka Besties Night), you’ll remember that it’s me, plus Sarah and her besty, Jenny–Beth, we miss you!. Jenny’s blog is all about crafting, so if you embroider or sew, you’ll want to add this one to your RSS feed.

Thrive Personal Fitness

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve started personal training with Pamela Hernandez in order to get fit and stay fit, and so I’ve really started reading her blog. Good stuff, folks. If you’re looking for inspiration for your own fitness journey, along with loads of practical advice and tips, this is the blog for you.

Lovely Chaos

Even back in grad school before we were really friends, I loved seeing Sarah’s adorable vintage outfits. Now she’s dressing her 2-year-old daughter and baby son in them (not the same ones she was wearing…), and posting pictures and how-to’s. She tells readers how to make kid clothing from vintage finds and how to craft home decor from scratch or, again, from your latest flea market treasures.

Penelope Trunk Blog

Oh man, do I love the way Penelope Trunk mixes her personal life in with business advice! It’s so real, and so applicable. I read this blog for the stories about her marriages, kids, and career advice. Oh, and the writing is excellent.

 

That’s it for today. What is your absolute favorite blog right now? Share it in the comments, shameless self-promotion welcome!

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links | 23-Aug-2011

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I’m beginning a new leg on my fitness journey, so today I’m going to share several pages and resources which help or inspire me, starting with Pamela’s post on Thrive Personal Fitness which explains this new direction I’m taking.

  • The Great Fitness Blogging Experiment: Pamela’s introduction to our partnership (mine is coming soon!)
  • Why You Should Keep a Food Diary: One of the first tasks Pamela gave me was to write down everything I ate. No calorie counting, just an honest record of what goes into my body. Here are some reasons why.
  • HalHigdon.com: This is where I get my training programs, even though sometimes I use it for inspiration to craft a training plan that takes into consideration my current time availability and current running level
  • Ozark Greenways: Are you running in Springfield? This website shows you all of the great places to run in Springfield, with marked paths, good parking, and even some restrooms.

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: Wear Palettes [Quick Reads]

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Today’s Quick Read is purely visual. No words. Well, you can read the titles, but they are so small on the page compared to the palettes and images, so they don’t really count. Click on over to Wear Palettes and take a peek.

I like this site because I am known for my bad color palettes. Back when I took English 627, I got teased for making web sites that look like clown pants. I made some pants once that looked like clown pants. I know there’s a picture of them somewhere around here and when I find it, I’ll share it with you. And by share it with you, I mean immediately throw it in the fireplace.

Anyway, Wear Palettes presents daily inspiration from an image of “street outfits” and a palette of colors from that image. Here’s one that pulls from a Star Wars image. Wear Palettes wins one brownie point. Unfortunately, they insult the brilliant minds behind Star Wars in the post title. I’m taking that brownie point back. Sorry, guys.

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: Indexed [Quick Reads]

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Today’s Quick Read is a visual / pseudo-mathematical delight: Indexed. Jessica Hagy posts all sorts of charts and graphs and Venn diagrams that show sometimes funny, sometimes cynical, almost always accurate, and always insightful, observations about the world. Some Indexes are more complex and require more time than others, but most posts can be enjoyed in 10 seconds or less.

Another benefit: once you start reading Indexed, you start thinking that way and seeing interesting relationships between parts of your life too.

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: One Sentence [Quick Reads]

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Today’s Quick Read link is a OneSentence.org, a site fueled by reader submissions. As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, each entry is exactly one sentence, thus the title of the site.

The idea is to collect entire stories contained in the neat little package contained by a full stop. I have submitted a few myself, and usually when a “One Sentence” event happens, you know it. Like that time I saw an Elvis impersonator on a highway in Kansas City. I like One Sentence because it celebrates the art of writing, and writing concisely at that.

Bonus: Want to see unapproved stories and vote on them? You can now influence whether or not stories get featured on the site here. It’s fun. :)

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: I’m grateful for… [Quick Reads]

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Today’s link is the website of a dear friend of mine, WW, and it’s called I’m grateful for…. She posts one thing she’s grateful for each day. I keep a gratitude journal myself, where I record five things, events, moments, items, that I am grateful for from each day, so I love reading someone else’s journal. I subscribe to this blog because I like the reminder each day. Her posts are short and succinct. Here a few of my favorites.

I’m grateful for…

What are you grateful for?

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: It Made My Day [Quick Reads]

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Back when I started my Tuesday links posts, we lived in Germany and I had much more time for blogging than I do now. I mean, I could blog every evening if I wanted to, but I’m striving for more balance in my life. I have restarted blogging after taking a break, but I’ve decided that in order to keep up my Tuesday link posts, they need to be shorter, less time-intensive. So I want to start sharing some links that will be shorter, less time-intensive for you too. I have a group of feeds in my Google Reader simply called “Shorts.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing those with you on Tuesdays. Here’s the first one!

It Made My Day!

I don’t remember how I found this site, but it was probably through the Twitter hashtag #immd. This fun site asks users to post “Little Moments of WIN!” that readers can vote thumbs up or thumbs down. The best posts get moved to the front page, and they’ve even recently introduced a page of winningest wins. Each post is funny. Some are punny, some intelligent, some reference pop culture, are some are just toilet humor. Here are a few of my favorites.

All day today I thought it was Thursday. It’s Friday! IMMD.

In my university’s student center we have a piano that anyone can play on. A guy sat down and has played nothing but Zelda music from Ocarina of Time. IMMD

My niece woke up in near tears on the morning of her 11th Birthday because Hagrid had not come for her in the middle of the night. IMMD

A friend of mine told me a story about how he was working at the movie theater the night of the New Moon release. He was working concessions when he saw a group of girls hovering around a giant Edward stand-up. He turned away for a moment, then looked back to find that they had put a Hufflepuff scarf around its neck. IMMD.

What has made your day?

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: It Made My Day [Quick Read]

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When I started the Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links series, we lived in Germany and I had much more time for blogging because our life was very simple. Now, things have pick up again and I am balancing several hats (or something like that), so I am trying to balance my interests. Blogging simply has to be a part of my life. I love writing and writing with a deadline and for fun too much to close my blog. But I need to make sure that I don’t let it consume too much of my time.

I’ve decided to post only one link on these TwLFL posts. Maybe some day in the future I’ll bring back a list of links, but for now, I’m going to share one link a week. For a few weeks, I’m going to be sharing some websites that I have listed in my Google Reader as “Quick Reads.” These are sites where it takes only a few moments to enjoy the latest post, so enjoying these links will require much less time than the type of links I used to share, which were typically blog posts.

It Made My Day

URL: ItMadeMyDay.com

Twitter hashtag: #immd

This page is so fun! Users post short descriptions of funny moments in their life that–you guessed it–made their day.  You can vote on posts, so it’s easy to waste time on IMMD.com. I recommend subscribing in your RSS feeder because that helps control how many IMMD posts you can see, and thus save you from the Black Hole. The posts range from innocently funny to nerdy, to geeky and toilet humor. Here’s one of my favorites which falls, of course, into the “toilet humor” category.

I own a coffee shop. One of my regulars who is lactose intolerant came in a specifically asked me to fix him a very large mocha, made with whole milk. It seems that the other guys at his work have been farting a lot so he was going to get revenge. While making his drink we discussed strategy. IMMD.

What made your day?

Tuesdays with Linden’s Favorite Links: Book Challenge 24 in 20-10

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Today’s link post is going to share just a few links. The first is to GoodReads.com. If you are a book lover, you need to be a member of this site. Good Reads helps you track the books that you have on you “to read” list, the books that you have already read, and even the books you are currently reading (if you keep up with it). Even more, Good Reads keeps you connected with your friends and what they are reading. I love getting book recommendations from Lyndsay, and Alex always posts great summaries of books he’s read! If you join (or already on the site), feel free to send me a friend request by viewing my profile.

My second link is to a Google Docs spreadsheet containing my reading goals for the year. I’ll be continuing work on my Ph.D., teaching online composition at OTC, running, and playing housewife and auntie this year, so I figure that I should be able to manage two leisure titles on average per month, making my book challenge is “24 in 20-10*.”

Here’s the current list, although since I reserve the right to change it at whim, you can always check the Google Doc where I’ve organized my list by clicking here. This spreadsheet also shows who recommended or gave the book to me, and I will be recording the dates I start and finish the book there.

24 in 20-10

  1. Is the Mormon My Brother? (James R. White) Done! Completed 16. Jan
  2. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Haruki Murakami)
  3. The Five Love Languages (Gary Chapman)
  4. Collected Novellas (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
  5. Der Vorleser (Bernhard Schlink)
  6. Dead Until Dark (Charlaine Harris)
  7. Dancing on My Ashes (Heather Gilion and Holly Snell)
  8. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
  9. Your Body’s Many Cries for Water (Dr. F. Batmanghelidj)
  10. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Walter Isaacson)
  11. Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ (John Piper)
  12. 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days (Dean Karnazes)
  13. Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
  14. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
  15. The Host (Stephanie Meyer)
  16. The Pilgrims Progress (John Bunyan)
  17. The Black Book (Middleton A. Harris)
  18. Les Miserables (unabridged) (Victor Hugo)
  19. Wishful Drinking (Carrie Fisher)
  20. Going Rogue: An American Life (Sarah Palin)
  21. Der, die, was?: Ein Amerikaner im Sprachlabyrinth (David Bergmann)
  22. Everything that Rises Must Converge (Flannery O’Connor)
  23. Siddartha (Herman Hesse)
  24. Walden (Henry David Thoreau)

What measurable goals have you set for yourself this year? Share in the comments!

Notes
* I’ve never called a year in this millennium “twenty-three” or “twenty-oh-four,” but this time, “twenty-ten” works and fits the rhythm.