Tag: productivity

  • Kid Routine Help: Brili Routines

    Kid Routine Help: Brili Routines

    Intentional routines are important to me, and I reevaluate key routines at the start of each semester for myself and my children (primarily morning and evening routines). While I view routines as key to completing the day in a less stressful fashion, my kids (5 and 9) are generally less committed, and this can make…

  • 2023 Planning Setup

    2023 Planning Setup

    Each year, I recalibrate my planning setup slightly, and 2023 is no exception! This year, the notable switch is from an assortment of paper planner to digital planning on my iPad. So, what’s in my 2023 planning line-up?

  • Managing all of the inputs

    Managing all of the inputs

    It’s November, which is my academic corner is one of the most stressful months of the season! In this post I thought I’d tackle a topic that is becoming increasingly challenging for me, managing the sheer number of inputs in my life.

  • Surviving April

    Surviving April

    Last semester, I wrote about taking the stressful edge off of November, and in my life at least, April is November’s stressful Spring cousin! In addition to the usual almost but not quite the end of the semester exhaustion and duties, plus tax and allergy season, this April brings some extra stress with all the…

  • Strategies to make mundane tasks more interesting and less painful

    Strategies to make mundane tasks more interesting and less painful

    I’ve had a few conversations recently about the annoyance of mundane tasks and chores, such as laundry and email. While none of these activities would make a list of things I’d do for fun, I realized that I’m less annoyed by them than the people was I was talking to, or even my past self!…

  • Using Trello for Home Management

    Using Trello for Home Management

    Although I’ve written before about how I use Trello to manage my academic work, travel, large events and projects, and teaching, I realized I’ve never written about using Trello for home management, even though this is arguably the most complex area of my life in terms of managing projects and tasks. So, in this post…

  • Summer Planning: Yes, really, even this summer

    Summer Planning: Yes, really, even this summer

    Needless to say, this summer looks very different than other summers. Our STARTALK program is postponed to 2021. One conference was canceled, and another has gone virtual. All the dancing events are canceled. I was on the planning committee for the U.S. Championships that were going to be in Denver this Summer, so this is…

  • Trello Templates for Repetitive or Recurring Tasks

    Trello Templates for Repetitive or Recurring Tasks

    I am a longtime fan of checklists, especially for repetitive types of things like packing, teaching prep, weekly planning, etc. Recently, Trello added template cards, which as the name suggests allow you to create new cards from a template, rather than a blank card. Trello cards also allow you to add checklists, which means that…

  • Spring 2020 Semester Plan

    Spring 2020 Semester Plan

    Every semester, I make a plan using my semester planning sheet. In previous posts I’ve discussed my semester planning routine, and you can also read about my Fall 2019 plan. In this post, I’m sharing my 2020 semester plan, which looks a little different than most because I am on sabbatical this semester, which means…

  • Fall 2019 Review

    Fall 2019 Review

    Happy 2020! Given the number of decade in review posts I’ve seen around, perhaps I should be doing that instead. As it happens, however, this was quite an eventful decade for me, and every time I think about reviewing it, I just want to go to sleep instead. So, I’ll stick with Fall 2019, which…