Unplugging
This year I am making more of a point to be consistent about blogging, writing posts in advance and even setting reminders in my Google Apps calendar on the dates they are scheduled to publish. I’m better managing who I follow on twitter ensuring that as I follow someone I immediately add them to a list (this is helping me find the sort of content I’m craving). I’m also more diligent about my delicious bookmarking and revisiting blogs of interest.
Strangely, none of those have anything to do with unplugging, but simultaneously I’ve been pretty consistent on several goals I set back on January 1 that were inspired by reading all sort of other resolutions and what not. I don’t consider these resolutions, and if you remember It’s Leslie J Dot Net, then you’ll recall I am striving for “a year of simplistic joy and absorption for every moment.”
What are the unplugging activities I’m paying attention to?
- Getting good sleep. If you know me well, then you know good and well I am a terrific sleeping. The “clapper lady” in fact. As soon as my head hits the pillow I am out and I can sleep for ages. But I think I realized that it wasn’t necessarily good sleep. So I’ve been striving toward a more routine habit around sleeping. Targeting arrival in bed around 10:30 and reading for a little while (not geeky books and not the sort of reading I do on the iPad) before attempting sleep a little after 11:00. It doesn’t always work, but that downtime before bed seems to be better preparing me for rest and there are plenty of articles out there about how good sleep is essential for mental rejuvenation and productivity insurance.
- Electronics Free Time. This was inspired by “@HuffingtonPost: The absolute best resolutions from twitter http://huff.to/e9olse #happynewyears” One of the goals included: Have an electronics-free hour every day. Turn off and unplug all electronics when not in use. I am more conscious about ensuring the lights are off and general electronics are at least turned off (I’m not so good at unplugging them), but what was more important to me was the notion of electronics free time. My non-iPad reading before bed is part of this, and I am also trying to do it more at work. The environment there is inherently crammed with meetings and folks tend to just work on their laptops during meetings, so in order to be more engaged in the topic at hand, and to cut down on my gadget-dependency I am carrying around my trusty notebook and doing things the old fashion way at at least one meeting a day. It’s nice to have that time away from e-mail. I’m amazed how my brain feels better afterward.
- Move in the morning. Just as I am trying to be more tranquil when it comes time for bed, I am moving in the morning. 20 or so jumping jacks, crunches, jump rope, etc. Anything to move me around for about 10 minutes before I do some stretching. It just feels good, and helps me work off some of those lbs that happened to find me in 2010.