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
Weekend Wrapup 08/20/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 20, 2007July 5, 20102 Happy Monday morning. I begin staff development this week. School begins in Texas next Monday. This spring, I began to make myself familiar with the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to personal productivity. My views on effectiveness went into overdrive this summer as I read The 4-Hour Workweek. Timothy Ferriss has recently posted The Not-To-Do List, 9 things to make you more productive. Just a Substitute Teacher points us to an article in USA Today that has a great list of things that some school districts or schools do to get more subs. Check out How to Lure Substitute Teachers. Athena gives us a list called 10 Things I Learned In My First Year of Teaching. How many of us
Clarity Leads To Organization Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - June 15, 2007July 5, 20100 In my last post Organization Leads To Sanity, I wrote about how I personally get organized at work. In this post, I am going to give some pointers that I have and that I plan to begin implementing that will allow anyone to get and stay organized much more easily. These tips apply both to the physical workspace as well as the digital workspace. I am going to spend the next few weeks implementing them in my home as well in an effort to bring me a greater sense of purpose in everything I do. Declutter I touched on this one recently, and I seem to touch on it frequently, because it is vital. Eliminating clutter will
Efficient vs. Effective General by Joel Wagner - June 6, 2007July 5, 20101 This week, I began reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. It's an outstanding book. One of the points that he makes in the book is that of being efficient versus being effective. I have prided myself in some ways on being very efficient in most of the things that I do. There is definitely a place for efficiency. But is efficiency to be the goal of everything that we do? I propose that it is not. This can be seen in many things in life. An efficient pitcher in baseball is the one who throws the least pitches. And effective pitcher is the one who has the most results. Now, clearly being both effective and efficient should be the
The Dip Inspiration by Joel Wagner - May 27, 2007July 5, 20100 It came in the mail on Friday. I read it on Saturday. This was my first opportunity to read a book by Seth Godin, and I sure was not disappointed. "The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (And When To Stick)" and that's exactly what it is. Although Mr. Godin is primarily an internet marketing guru, the book can easily be applied to anything we do in life. Anything from relationships to business to where you are teaching to even overall career choice -- it's covered here. The book is broad in scope, and can be applied to any and all of these areas. At 76 pages (and not very tall pages at that), this baby