Category: productivity

Friday Five: By the numbers

5-years-old-handIt’s the third Friday of 2014, and I haven’t done a “By the numbers” post yet? #slacker

Here we go:

  1. 101 creative habits to explore. Great ideas here. Something for everybody. Stuck in a rut? Pick a random number between 1 and 101, go to this site, read the text next to the number you selected, then do it.
  2. 10 tools that aid in web design feedback. Good stuff from the .eduGuru gang.
  3. 2 tools to help you tackle what 2014 will bring to your #highered job. Karine Joly of CollegeWebEditor.com shares a couple of tools she uses to stay focused and track how she uses her time.
  4. 50 must-read higher ed tech blogs. This “dean’s list” from Ed Tech Magazine includes many of my favorites, as well as some new ones to explore. (Hat tip to Katherine Delaney for sharing via Twitter.)
  5. 9 digital marketing trends to watch in 2014. 

Photo via woodleywonderworks on Twitter.

I was going to blog about being too busy to blog

But then I read this post from Harvard Business Review.

I hope you aren’t too busy to read it. But just in case you are, here’s a taste:

To assume that being “busy” (at this point it has totally lost its meaning) is cool, or brag-worthy, or tweetable, is ridiculous. By lobbing these brags, endlessly puffing our shoulders about how “up to my neck” we are, we’re missing out on important connections with family and friends, as well as personal time. In addition to having entire conversations about how busy we are, we fail to share feelings with friends and family, ask about important matters, and realize that the “busy” is something that can be put on hold for a little while.

… [I]n using it as a one-upping mechanism, we’re failing to connect in a very substantial way. And we’re making the problem worse: When everyone around us is “slammed,” it’s easy to feel guilty if we’re not slaving away on a never-ending treadmill of toil. By trying to compete about it, we’re only adding to that pool of water everyone seems to be constantly “treading” in. And all this complaining is having serious effects on our mental health.

This guilty feeling even gnaws at those of us who blog when we lay off for a week or so. The result, for me, is usually a post like this. It serves as filler between posts of any substance.

Now all I need to do is come up with something substantive to blog about. That’ll keep me feeling busy, or guilty, for a while.

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