The State of the Blog: 10/13/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 13, 2007July 5, 20100 Recent housekeeping issues I have decluttered my sidebar much more Moved a lot of stuff to the footer I added a graphical link in the "Features" to 25 Tips For Less Stress I added a question mark logo thing at the top of each article, which links here I added a favicon that should be showing up in the address bar I moved all of the Blogroll links to a separate page I added links to a few Social Bookmarking sites onto each post I added tags and a tag cloud at the top of the site Many of these things happened last weekend. Just in time... This has been a crazy week for So You Want To
Less Stress: Declutter Your Car Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 12, 2007July 5, 20101 If we've been following the stress reduction tips so far, we now have a clean desk at work, a clean computer desktop at work and home, we have begun to organize our email habits, and our house is beginning to look nicer. All of those things can be great, but if we have a 30 minute commute to and from work each day, a messy car will only take away from those efforts. I have a 5 minute commute, and when my car is messy, it bothers me. Keeping the car under control is a pretty simple process of simply bringing things inside after each trip. As with everything this week, the problem comes in actually establishing those habits. Other
Less Stress: Declutter Your House Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 11, 2007July 5, 20101 Well, this is one of my weakest areas. I have my work environment very organized and neat, but my home is not. Part of my problem is that I know what to do and how to do it, I just don't seem to find the energy after working 11-16 hour days to come home and do it. And in the marching season, many of my weekends are taken up traveling out of town to football games and/or marching competitions. During the rest of the school year, I am generally pretty good about it, but still not perfect. Why is a clean home important? Again, the same as a clean desk provides peace of mind, so does a clean home. The goal is to
Less Stress: Declutter Your Inbox Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 10, 2007July 5, 20100 We now have our Desk and Desktop under control. But how do we keep them under control? Better yet, how do we keep from having too much stuff coming into our lives that we allow to become clutter? Email Inbox Something that many teachers can't seem to figure out is how to archive their old emails. Instead, they just leave them all in the inbox. I was at an inservice and the presenter apologized to one of the other teachers because she had been gone for a few days and overlooked the teacher's email because it got lost in the shuffle. She didn't get around to it until two weeks later. That's just plain inexcusable! So how do we avoid
Less Stress: Declutter Your Desktop Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 9, 2007July 5, 20100 Yesterday, we began decluttering our desk. Today, we will declutter our desktop. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I install a new program and it leaves all sorts of icons on my desktop. It also drives me crazy when I have all sorts of popup notifications in my Windows taskbar telling me everything that I don't need to know. These are nonurgent situations presenting themselves as though they were urgent. It disrupts my life and it's something that I finally decided to put a stop to. I am not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel on this one. I have found some great articles that thoroughly go through processes for getting things organized. What
Zen Habits Interview Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 8, 2007July 5, 20101 I want to extend a special welcome to all of the new visitors coming to me from Zen Habits. I am in the midst of a series this month on Stress Reduction Tips. These tips are specifically geared toward educators, but can be applied in practically any setting. I hope you'll stick around. On the very same day that I wrote an article on decluttering your desk, Leo at Zen Habits has posted the first in his series on reader success stories. I am thrilled to be one of his featured reader success stories. His blog has over 18,000 readers. That's huge! Though I don't look nearly as cool as Blain does, I woke up this morning to find that
Less Stress: Declutter Your Desk Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 8, 2007July 5, 20104 I have written about having a clear desk before in passing, but here is a little bit about why to do it as well as how to do it. This is a real picture of my half of the office at work. Imagine coming to work each morning and having a nice, calm, clear workspace. Do you think it would help jump start your work day? I know for me, I am able to get to work, sit down in my (clearly uncomfortable) chair, and relax. We've all read the sign atop a messy desk: "A Clean Desk Is The Sign of a Diseased Mind." That is an excuse given by people who don't want to bother with coming up
Less Stress: Kill Your TV Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 5, 2007July 5, 20102 This is perhaps my most favorite tip of them all! I haven't regularly watched television since I was in 11th grade, but I have watched quite a bit of it. When I read "The 4-Hour Workweek," Timothy Ferriss suggests a low-information diet. His theory is that if you simply ask people "what's new in the world," you will find out about most news. He also points out that most news that comes across as events are unfolding is either incomplete or totally inaccurate. I tend to agree. So I have made the decision this year to completely unplug my television. I will actually get rid of it soon, I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with it. It'd
Less Stress: Increase Healthy Foods Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 4, 2007July 5, 20100 Now that you have eliminated junk foods from your diet, it's time to replace them. So what kinds of foods should you replace them with? Well, I guess it all depends on what your goals are. I personally try to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I can reasonably get into my body each day. This means that I eat a salad or two nearly every day. Either for lunch or dinner, I will get one. Just that one simple step really helps me out as far as my mindset goes. For me, I have debated the idea of eating "sugar free" foods, but I just don't want to. I eat fruits as desserts and they do a good
Less Stress: Eliminate Junk Food Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 3, 2007July 5, 20100 Junk Food. We hear the term tossed around all the time. What is junk food? Basically, it's any food that lacks substantial nutritional value. White flour is a perfect example. They take something healthy (wheat flour), bleach it, and kill any nutrients that may have been there. Fried foods are another example. Soft drinks and desserts also have loads of sugar (or comparable unhealthy sugar substitutes) in them. I used to eat them all the time. Since this school year began, I stopped. If it's yellowish in color, it wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid it! Tomorrow, we'll look at how I have replaced the junk food. In addition to drinking almost nothing by water, the elimination of junk
Less Stress: Wake Up Earlier Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 2, 2007July 5, 20100 I used to wake up every morning about an hour before I wanted to be at school. I try to get there by 7:20, so that meant waking up around 6:20. That resulted in an extremely rushed morning. Plus the traffic at my new school is way heavier than the traffic was at my old school. I literally have to leave my house at 7 to make it there by 7:20. And I live less than 3 miles away... So I have gotten into the habit of waking up around 5:30 or earlier most mornings. This lets me have some time to stretch and get my body moving some before getting in the shower and not being rushed. I am
Less Stress: Drink Water Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 1, 2007July 5, 20103 I used to drink sodas all the time. I drank Dr. Pepper numerous times daily while I was in junior high and high school. I "became smart" and started drinking Diet Coke when I got to college. Still, daily. I cut out caffeine from my diet last August but continued drinking Diet Sprite every day. Then I learned how important water is to the people of the world. I learned that most Americans are chronically dehydrated. So I tried it out beginning last Spring Break. I began drinking virtually nothing but water. I have eliminated all carbonated drinks from my dietary intake, as well as most juice and other non-carbonated drinks. I feel better. I have also learned that there