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Avoid Going Through the Motions – At the Barre and Beyond
Throughout business school and my work in both management and consulting, a very popular and often invoked truism has been “what gets measured gets managed.” And while in those settings this has usually been in the context of devising specific ROI targets, service level agreements, or key metric performance trending, the same concept can be applied across a broader spectrum within our own lives. When we monitor and track our actions we usually do a much better job at managing them whether it’s our eating, sleeping, exercise, spending, etc. By tracking and measuring our activities, we raise our level of self-awareness which can increase our resolve and self-control and allow…
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The Precious Resource of Time and a Whole30 Slow Cook Tuscan Chicken Dinner
Today is my turn to pose one of those infamous hypothetical questions: what do you value more highly – time or money? I generally tend to overanalyze this type of proposition with thoughts of all the many tradeoffs to consider. If I had more time without money, what would I do and would it bring as much satisfaction as other activities, events or hobbies which do require some type of financial investment (travel, theatre, shopping, dining out with friends, etc.)? Conversely, if I had more time, could I use it to find new or better ways to generate additional income? Of course I don’t want to end up with more…
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Silly Questions and Whole30 Spaghetti Puttanesca
A few years ago, I remember going out for lunch with my sister and the youngest of my brothers, who at the time was probably about 10 or 11 years old. Sam has always been quite chatty and inquisitive by nature and LOVES to ask relatively random hypothetical questions. We might be folding laundry together and he decides he must know whether you would prefer to be blind or deaf. We could be packing our bags to head out for one of his soccer practices when he asks if I think it’d be better to know how to fly or to be invisible. Once he and I drove 6 hours…
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Flow, Optimal Experience, and Intrinsic Motivation
When I was in Milan last weekend, I had the opportunity to see Michaelango’s final work of art, a marble sculpture – the Rondanini Pietà. He had originally intended for it be incorporated into his own tomb and had worked on a few versions of it in various stages, dissatisfied with his progress and the direction it was taking more than once. It is not known as one of his most famous pieces of work, nor the most beautiful, but I was especially intrigued by it when I heard that he had been found working furiously on it into the late hours of the night with a candle strapped around…
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Contentment and Enjoying the Process
Yesterday as I was leaving Cork Coffee Roasters, I walked by Unbound, an adorable little gift shop, and saw a sagacious thought for the day. In the window display sat a letter board which reminded passersby to “never let the things you want make you forget the things that you have.” And although the general (and generally vague) concepts of contentment, gratitude and thankfulness are all around us, especially this month with the American Thanksgiving, I felt this was a particularly powerful prompt in light of what I had read recently in Juliet B. Schor’s The Overspent American. She cited a study which reported that “61 percent of respondents ‘always have…
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What I Read Last Month :: October
In honor of the tradition started last month, today I am sharing the books that I have read throughout October. As I mentioned, my Happiness Project for the month was centered around money – I updated my budgets and kept up to date on my Mint app to monitor spending, I abstained from purchases aside from groceries and coffee for the whole month up until my planned exception in Milan. I tried to live generously each day and I worked on spending out, using up and clearing out anything which was broken, old or otherwise obsolete. Some days were better than others of course, but I enjoyed working on these…
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Heuristics and Healthy Fish and Chips
When you think about “healthy food” what comes to mind? The thought might conjure up particular words like organic, raw, kale, superfood, or vegan, or perhaps images of bland steamed vegetables with boiled chicken or a #saddesksalad pop up in your head. Although there are nearly as many different definitions and opinions of what actually constitutes “healthy” as there are people out there, we all have some construct or idea what “healthy” looks like. The majority of people may not know how they learned or exactly why spinach is more healthy than a Boston Crème Doughnut, but somehow they know. This is possible because we have we have established what…
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Magnifico Milano and Whole30 Paleo Lasagna
Buongiorno from Milan! I am currently traveling back from a fantastic and fashionable anniversary weekend. Both Jonathan and I love to travel and over the past two years of living abroad, we have taken advantage of the opportunity to do so quite frequently all throughout Europe. It is always fascinating to see the dramatic uniqueness of each place in juxtaposition with the many similarities both nearby and otherwise. This trip, like our tour through southern Germany this summer, was a good mix of city and smaller towns and villages with a boating excursion on the stunning Lake Como and stops in Como and Bellagio. We had full days of sightseeing,…
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Sharing Joy Increases Joy
“Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it” – Albert Schweitzer There is something very exciting to me about sharing something I am passionate about. Once I commit to something, I am really invested in it, so I tend to not take on too many different activities or interests preferring to go a mile deep rather than wide as far as most things go. And when I find things that I do enjoy, I tend to be very zealous and intensely focused on them. Consequently, my enthusiasm often overflows into my conversations and interactions with others (AHEM, case in point -this blog!). And reciprocally, sharing my joy…
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Clarity and Celebrating 2 Years of #mandjhappilyeverafter with Paleo Chocolate Wedding Cake
A long time struggle of my has been around clarity and prioritization. When I was very young, my dad posed a question to me, my sister and brother which illuminated this issue very clearly. He asked – “would you rather be good/very good at 10 different things or the best of the best at 1 thing?” (I have already mentioned I am not particularly good at these “would you rather” questions anyway…). Kyle, Caleb, and my dad all agreed unequivocally that it was better to be the top performer in one area. For me, it wasn’t that simple and I refused to accept that those were the only two options.…
