Nirupama P.R.V.'s Blog: Catty Opinions of a Book Loving Couch Potato, page 30

Monday Motivation

Preschooler Thanksgiving Craft- what are you thankful for?

Filed under: Photos Tagged: Blessings, Crafts, Fun, Preschooler Activities, Thanksgiving

Spare Moments & Saving Time

One of the interesting concepts I learned from Laura Vanderkam’s books : “168 Hours” and “I Know How She Does It” is – the concept of ‘time confetti’.

Coined by Brigid Schulte, author of ‘Overwhelmed: Work, Love, And Play When No One Has The Time’, she explains the idea of “time confetti” – a fragmentation that impacts our health, quality of life, productivity and creativity. This fragmentation amounts to “contaminated time” that prevents pure enjoyment, relaxation, focus, and mindfulness.

Interesting as it was, coupled with Laura Vanderkam’s excellent suggestion to keep a list of 100 dreams and activities to indulge in during our spare time, I am totally inspired to use all my spare Moments wisely. Considering that as a SAHM, my schedule revolves around ensuring other people’s schedules, it becomes even more important for me to keep energizing and progressive tasks at arms reach. Thus begins the ‘Spare Moments’ posts on my this blog*: for accountability, commitment, encouragement and the clarity that comes from a written chronicle.

I am really excited about the exercise because like money, minutes add up. And when we are deliberate on what we invest those moments in, it all adds up to a large return. Obviously, not all spare moments can be used for inspiring activities or for all the tasks we wish to do. Like our money, not all free time can be invested or saved. You need some for downtime, some for backlog tasks, some free moments don’t lend themselves to any or inspiring activities. But, we can still do a lot with the few we have.

With the holidays coming up and my time coming in more bursts, I hope to use my spare time wisely and share my successes and lessons here.

*These posts used to appear in my other blog that I discontinued recently owing to the fragmentation of my thoughts and ideas. Not to mention the double tasks of posting on this and the other blog. While a most excruciating decision, I understood that I need to focus more on blogging and less on maintaining two blogs, especially after reading the bookBlog, Inc.

Filed under: Life, time Tagged: Blogging, Laura Vanderkam, Spare Moments, time, Time Management

10 Ways to Read a Book or more- before 2018!

Holiday season is here. November is almost gone and the end of the year is fast approaching. Everyone is super busy and moaning about how swamped we are with work and plans and responsibilities. In a week or so, it will be time to reflect on the year and think about New Year resolutions. But what of the old ones? What about those exciting but now impossible-to-achieve Goodreads Reading Challenges? 

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CEOs are making time to read a book a week and we barely get to finish a handful in a year. But not to despair. We still have 39 days left. (Yes, even in Australia, where the New Year arrives first.) Definitely enough to think about our to-read pile.

In this post, I’ll show you just how to make time* for reading. 10 ways to Read a Book or More and that too, before 2018:

Lower your Expectations


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2 phrases to take from this image: “Ignore Others’ Expectations” and “Read”

Who says you have to read a Classic? Or a bestseller? Or the latest title your book club is raving about ? Or even an entire book? [This title is just for inspiration] Find a book you like and read as much as you can.  Even if it is one paragraph, you’re still ahead because: 1. you decided to read 2. you selected a book 3. you implemented the task of reading. YAYY!

2. Take Baby Steps

A corollary to the above step,  aim realistically. Take baby steps. You know you have a job, a family, upcoming holiday events to attend and shopping to do. Throw in bad weather, sickness, duties, distractions, temptations, and now you realize why your to-read list is stalled since January. Hence, aim small. Can you read 10 tweets without interruption? That’s how long a paragraph is. [Remember, Twitter now allows 280 characters] Are you adept at skimming a blog post such as this? Then you are ready to tackle a single page. Go do it. This blog post can wait.

3. Pick the Right Format

Ever went to a restaurant with friends? Even though the cuisine is the same, everyone has different preferences. Assuming the foodie in your group makes the ordering decisions, our individual choices still dictate what we drink, how quick we eat, the way we eat, where our attention is, and so on.

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Reading is no different.

So, make sure you are reading in the format that suits your style, comfort and schedule. If your Kindle with sync and bookmarking ability and long battery life works, go for it. If you enjoy plopping on the bed with a book like me, shoot. Switch an audiobook with your song playlist while doing tasks like folding laundry, ironing, cleaning up, running, etc. If reading in the bathroom is your only option [I know, kids, pets, etc.], stash your copy in a drawer. Just don’t proclaim it. You can always pretend you woke early to read.

SAHM to Recognized Expert

My go-to author on personal branding and networking is definitely Dorie Clark. I loved her books Stand Out, Reinventing You and can’t wait to read her latest- Entrepreneurial You!

As her avid fan and a subscriber to her newsletter, I am constantly inspired by the wealth of information and techniques she shares to take charge of our careers and branding. The best two resources definitely are her Recognized Expert Evaluation Toolkit and her 48page Stand Out Self Assessment bonus material. The first helps determine how far along we are in our journey of personal branding. The second one is a questionnaire [139 Qs] to unlock our very own breakthrough ideas.

 

Overview of Recognized Expert Toolkit:

In her book Stand Out, Dorie Clark makes a compelling case for the benefits of carving a niche for our ourselves no matter what our title, area of expertise, experience or job security is. From novice to reigning guru, the necessity of having a USP and actively maintaining it is vital in today’s cut-throat and rapidly disruptive work landscape.

Dorie’s book also guides readers through the steps necessary to launch their own efforts to become [or stay!] a Recognized Expert. This ebook contains her three-pronged approach to become a leading expert. It also contains the toolkit to assess and score our current station and provides measures to progress to the ultimate goal.

The three different elements to becoming a Recognized Expert are:

Creating Content
Establishing Social Proof
Building Your Brand

This toolkit commences with the self evaluation on these three facets. Each answer has different scores and we need to add up our three scores. The total determines which of five categories we fall in. My own outcome [for my professional blog] was ‘On Your Way‘. This is the lowest range. [Sigh!]

The advantage of this toolkit is that it not juts informs but also clearly shows the way forward. From our current position, it details out multiple steps to progress through the five levels to finally materialize the goal fo being a leading authority in our respective fields. Whether you are breaking into a niche or an influencer taking the quiz as a regular check, this guide has precise instructions on how to progress and sustain our momentum.

Final reminders on the investments [time and effort] needed to become and maintain a position of expertise keep this guide practical and realistic.

Steps Ahead:

For anyone reading this blog post, here are a few steps you can take:

Subscribe to Dorie’s newsletters. Her emails are short and useful. They also contain information of her upcoming webinars and courses.
Read her books. Don’t buy them because I said so. They are available at most libraries in paperback or e-books. But be warned- you might be so impressed, you end up buying it anyway.

Monday Motivation

 Reading list Themes: Business, Communication, Training, Psychology 

  

Filed under: Photos Tagged: MondayMotivation, Reading [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

DIY Dollhouse Furniture Project for Peppa Pig family

Over the weekend, T and I attacked a long outstanding craft project of ours- Dollhouse Furniture. Using our imagination and repurposing existing odds and ends, we spent the whole weekend engrossed and amused.

 

T has been demanding a doll house for a long time now. We tried making one a few times with boxes, but they sadly fell apart. Plus, we were always flummoxed as to where to place it.

This past weekend, we cleared out two shelves in our storage-cum-toy room to serve as our dollhouse for the Peppa family. A simple box made the children’s room and acted as a partition for the Master Bedroom. Our Peppa Family dolls came with a kitchen cut-out. This provided the open plan kitchen. T taped a  tree cut out and placed our Little People Tree set to make the perfect garden with pool and a Muddy Puddle. Hurrah!

  

We then turned our attention to the furniture. As a four year old who has often stared mesmerized at miniature homes in our library and doctor’s clinic, T had a clear vision of how her dollhouse should look. It also didn’t help that our elephantine-memory-posessesing kiddo is pumped up with advertisements (sans the Skip Ad feature) of Barbie play sets and Peppa Houses and Shimmer&Shine castles and the likes. She definitely knows the items she needed in her dollhouse. 

This library dollhouse’s decor changes with seasons too!

 

But, this Momma has more than one trick up my sleeve. Thanks to parent blogs, magazines and Google searches, I knew we could whip up furniture with objects lying around the house. All we had to do was to quote the lovable purple Dinosaur Barney: use our imagination!

I found the answer in my pantry- empty cereal boxes. 

Sturdy enough to use, easy enough for the preschooler to cut and color and simple to  craft, we spent most of our weekend making memories and surprisingly, not much of a mess. 

  

The above picture does not look like much. True, no one would put it on Pinterest. But it is a legit dinner table with four chairs that push under the table surface. It holds the Peppa family without collapsing and you can color on it. Or add a table cloth and fabrics to make it fancy. The two shelves at the corners, the upright cupboard and the TV-style shelving unit are inspired by IKEA bookcases that you can place upright or on their sides. We plan to make little bric-a-bracs during Thanksgiving holidays to complete the homes with Playdoh, old magazines and Shopkins toys. (*For instructions on how we made them, scroll to the bottom of this post.) 

Final Version as of this week: (we plan to fill the dinner table with more Playdoh pretend food dishes) [image error] 

The biggest two benefits of our little enterprise were: time and teaching. These crafts take long enough to make memories together but lesser than would be frustrating (for parent and child). Second, it teaches recycling and applying our minds to build stuff. All we needed were scissors, tape, the cereal box and our creative mind.

Closet made with Cereal Box

Especially in light of the fact that we were cooped indoors owing to windy storms and Hubs working on the weekend, this dollhouse project was a fantastic way to spend our Saturday and Sunday. When you factor in the cost ($0.00) and the time (hours of fun and barely any cleanup later), it is really was awesome. 

Do share your tips and thoughts on DIY dollhouse furniture in the comments below. Until the next post, adieu! Stay warm, stay safe.

* Dinner table:

Flatten the cereal box by carefully opening the ends. Mark straight lines parallel to the ends, about three inches from both ends. Cut off. You get an a shape like the cover of a matchstick box. This is your table. The chairs fit under the open edges. You may color or decorate as you like or simply make a table cloth. 

  

Chairs: cut a large thin rectangle. Width as much as you want in the chair. Simply fold to form a “P” shape and tape the ends to make a chair. Again, color and decorate as per your preferences. 

Shelf: just use the leftover ends from the box used to make the table or use a new box. Cut off two inches from the end. Take a long rectangular piece and fold to make a digital “C” shape. Tape this to make the shelf partitions. Use as many as needed based on how many shelves you want. Stand upright or on its edge as per utility. Decorate as required.

 

For the large closet. Simply cut a larger length as for the closet. And cut open one of the sides a little to form doors or simply cut open the entire front. Just ensure that the partitions are bolstered if keeping doors and that the door frames and walls of shelves do not coincide; as they can tear off. We made an open closet as seen in picture above Instructions.

Filed under: Adventures Tagged: cereal box doll furniture, DIY dollhouse furniture, Fun craft activities, imagineering, Kid crafts, Simple recycling crafts

Monday Motivation

 

Unleash your Creativity!

Pumpkins decorated as famous characters from Children’s books at the local library. How many can you guess?
Filed under: Photography Tagged: Children's books characters, Creativity, Fall Arts and Crafts, Monday Motivation

The Four Tendencies- Book Review

This week’s post is a review of Gretchen Rubin’s recent book “The Four Tendencies”.

Primarily an analysis of personality types, the author of “The Happiness Project” shares insights into how our tendencies shape our habits and behavior. With anecdotes and examples, she shares how understanding tendencies: ours and others’ can help us interact better, playing to our unique strengths and weaknesses and even make lasting change.

 The Four Tendencies as classified by the writer are: Upholder, Obliger, Rebel and Questioner. The segments have been created after analyzing responses to the related quiz taken by a million folks  and is available for free online. You will have to share an email address to access the detailed reports though.

The book first reveals the common characteristics of each tendency. Then, the bestselling writer shares strategies to deal with persons who possess this tendency: parent, spouse, child, patient or co-worker. The book  then moves on to  the lay out how different Tendencies interact and the good and bad of these pairings. It finally concludes with a short chapter on how to apply this knowledge and how to better ourselves and others too.

I enjoyed the book and agreed with most of what was stated for my tendency: Obliger. I also found it fun to visualize at least one person who would fit each of the other categories. While I am yet to try the techniques to persuade others, I feel it will work, even if not always. In fact, Gretchen Rubin herself stated that Tendencies are just a facet of our complex selves, so, context and perspective are important. This is especially underlined with the examples of pairings and career choices. What works in one situation ruins the other due to other factors at play.

I loved the easy flow and segmented approach of the book. It made it simple to  digest and enjoy. I am eager to recommend this book to others and can’t wait to use the tips.

Have you read the book? What were your thoughts?  How did you find it? What is your tendency? Comment in the section below.

Filed under: Book Review Tagged: Books, Four Tendencies book review, Gretchen Rubin, Inspiration, Obliger

Monday Motivation

  

Gearing up for Halloween 

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Eat that Frog – Book Review

Today’s post is a list of my take-aways from the book ‘Eat that Frog- 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time‘ by Brian Tracy.

A wonderful and easy read, this book had a great bunch of tips to accomplish more tasks and combat procrastination and may more distractions as follows:

Salami and swiss cheese techniques– amazing strategies to take back control of time and to-do lists
Attraction to Distraction – aptly explains the circle of how technology and social media lull us into a circle of interruptions, false sense of urgency and accomplishment and eventually into ‘busyness’ that is unproductive.
Rule: Long term thinking improves short term decision making
Future Orientation: resetting our attitude towards our “Time Horizon“
ABCDE method of prioritizing
Law of Three: a novel and practical approach to quickly discern between progressive tasks and inconsequential [or nearly so] chores
Book titled Learned Optimism about the benefits of optimism and how we can form this outlook.

Listed below are also the 21 steps as outlined by the author and some of the opinions and steps I intend to adopt for in my own life:

Set the Table

We bought a simple Whiteboard and markers. This works to keep our main goals [short term and long term] in plain sight and acts as a powerful reminder.

Plan every day in Advance

Especially as a Mom, I can vouch for this fact!

Apply the 80/20 rule to everything

Also known as Pareto rule, this applies to everything from blogging to life’s fun. 20% activities give 80% results. So, focus on the top 20%.

Consider the Consequences

Whether good or bad, effects and repercussions act as powerful motivators.

Practice creative procrastination

Saying Yes to inconsequential tasks means having to say NO to important, career opportunities or life boosting experiences. Hence, choose the few that count.

Use ABCDE method continually

As mentioned earlier, this method of taking stock of tasks and their importance is wonderful.

Focus on Key Result Areas




Apply Law of Three

One of my favorite tips in this book, three is also perfect for our short term memory. Power of three!

Prepare thoroughly before you Begin

As chef’s state: mise en place. Whether cooking a great holiday spread, working on this post, or any of life’s chores, having all the ingredients and tools is necessary to focus on the task.

Take it one oil barrel at a time




Upgrade key skills

In today’s rapidly shifting work atmosphere and technological landscape, it is more important than ever to keep ourselves abreast of all the latest developments. As one article on resumes and career development stated, make sure you add one new item to your resume every three months. Sounds easy, but is hard to lose sight of in the nitty gritty of our daily jobs and responsibilities.

Identify Key Constraints


Put pressure on Yourself


Motivate yourself into Action

Incentives or bribes, use what works.

Technology is a terrible Master

Allied with the Attention to Distraction concept, being embroiled in the circle of technological tools and social media can cause us to lose focus of goals and chase after easy finishes.

Technology is a Wonderful Servant

Whether helping non-profits, tapping into learning resources, using as a free and useful assistant [reminders, etc.], collaborating without geographical constraints, technology can be used for a lot of great work and improve efficiency.

Focus your Attention


Slice and Dice the task

SMART goals work fabulously and small wins help spur greater commitment and productivity.

Create large chunks of Time

This is one point that I really cannot adopt because as a SAHM, my schedule revolves around that of others. For most corporate employees and entrepreneurs too, this is the case. But techniques like Pomodoro can help with creating solid if not massive chunks of time.

Develop a sense of urgency


Single handle every task


Filed under: Book Review Tagged: Books, Brian Tracy, Chores, learning, Pareto Principle, Pomodoro Technique, Procrastination, Self-Improvement, Technology, Tips