Yes, I know. We’re all so tired of being told to drink lots of water. And there’s plenty of evidence out there that the whole thing has been somewhat overblown. The original standard of eight glasses of water a day came from a paper written back in the 1940’s, and references to that study usually don’t include its caveat that much of the needed water comes from food. Also, other liquids besides water count. So if you drink orange juice (which you shouldn’t be doing, as it’s just sugar water, but never mind), or coffee, tea, or other beverages, all of those count as water. (Contrary to a very silly idea that circulated for awhile, coffee doesn’t cause you to excrete more water than was in the coffee to begin with.) The current state of medical advice is that your body will tell you if you need water, because guess what? You’ll feel thirsty.
Consistency
The New Rule: 5 Seconds to Act
I wrote a post some time ago called “Fifteen Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life.” This was a quotation from a former pastor, who may have gotten it from the book Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices, Change Your Life by Tommy Newberry. (I just googled the phrase and this book came up—it looks good! I now have it checked out from that great library service Hoopla.) Anyway, the window of opportunity has now narrowed from 15 minutes to 5 seconds. Very efficient, no? I found out yesterday about this totally, insanely motivating woman named Mel Robbins through a rather circuitous route that started with my usual Thursday listening of the “Happier in Hollywood” podcast hosted by Sarah Fain and Liz Craft. They were interviewing someone who had interviewed Mel on her own podcast, so I went over and listened to that episode (language warning) and then watched Mel’s TED talk (access below) and a video or two or her on her own. Now I’m a Mel Robbins fan.
Stand Your Ground without Being Disagreeable.
For some reason I got to thinking today about a situation from back in my grad school days, one which I may have written about before. For my master’s thesis and recital I had a teacher assigned to me for us to work one-on-one. She had extremely strong opinions about how my writing should be done; she was a writer herself, and she thought her process was the only way to go. So she informed me early on that I would have a certain number of pages due each week—five, I think. I protested. “I need time to research and think about what I want to say.” That was fine, she assured me. I might end up throwing those pages away, but I needed to do them anyway. Well, what a pain. I did what she asked, but in the end I wasted a lot of time, because I was being forced to follow her process instead of my own.
Wear “Real Clothes” in February
How well I remember the morning that the tree crew arrived to do some work on our 75-foot oak tree at our house back in Virginia. Gideon was little, and I was home with him. I hadn’t planned on going anywhere that day, so I had on my grungy “at-home” outfit, an old t-shirt dress that was frayed around the edges. It was easy to pop on. I think I had taken a shower but hadn’t done anything to my hair, a sure recipe for the Wild Woman of Borneo look. (No disrespect intended to the real women of Borneo!)
Yet Another Anti-Sugar Rant
Hope I’m not sounding like a broken record here, but I wanted to share some recent experiences with sugar intake that might save some of you from needlessly depriving yourselves of grain products. Many if not most people who think that going gluten-free is going to make them healthier are buying into a false premise. This is not to say, and I want to emphasize this point, that there isn’t real gluten intolerance, with the most extreme of course being full-blown celiac disease. But most of us need to cut out sugar, not gluten.
How Did My Time-Tracking Week Go?
I wrote last week that I had signed up for the Laura Vanderkam Time-Tracking Challenge for 2018, in which participants were asked to log their activities for one full week, 168 hours. I’m happy to say that I stuck to it for the full week this year (having almost immediately dropped out last January) and also thoroughly enjoyed reading Laura’s daily updates (link is to the first day’s post; you can then read the rest if you’re interested) on how she spent her own time. I used my fun app, toggl, which I’ve written about several times, most recently last week, and this morning I had a neatly categorized weekly report, all ready for me to look at and then send on to Laura. I managed to record a total of 167 hours and 22 minutes, so only a little bit of time fell through the cracks. How did I do? Here are some highlights:
Time-Tracking Tools
As you know if you’re a regular reader of this blog, one of the bloggers/podcasters I follow is a woman named Laura Vanderkam, a speaker and writer whose area of expertise is the efficient use of time. She tracks her own time regularly, and every year she invites her readers to participate with her for one week. Last year I started to do it but quickly fell off the wagon, as I couldn’t figure out how to characterize time spent sitting at the table and talking to my husband while at the same time eating a meal.
A Start on New Year’s Resolutions–Why Deny Yourself Pleasure?
My good intentions to write a separate post last week about each of my NYR’s went by the wayside, swallowed up in all sorts of family activities. I hope everyone reading this post had a great time with family and friends over the holidays, but I know it’s inevitable that for some of you this time of year is especially hard. The Ostroms over at Pinch of Yum lost their baby last year, and they struggled over what to do this year about various traditional celebrations. I know there are days to come when there will be empty seats at our table, but for now we’re all hale and hearty and thankful for it.
Don’t Be a Pushover!
If you follow this blog much you’ll know that I’m a great, great fan of the blogger, podcaster and author Gretchen Rubin. I was thinking today about how my own blogging and book writing was kicked off by the simple act of my reading a review of her first book on happiness, The Happiness Project (Revised Edition): Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Do You Have a “Project Brain”?
The hits just keep coming from Dana K. White, author of last week’s book pick, How to Manage Your Home without Losing Your Mind and of the blog A Slob Comes Clean. Remember how I said that she had me nailed with her description of someone sitting at a messy kitchen table reading about how to clean up her kitchen, when what that person really needs to do is . . . clean up the kitchen? Well, she has another concept that is so, so me: “project brain.”