It’s Monday, you need some healthy habits to add to your life. Here you go.

Biking
Now there are a million lists of such habits. However, I liked this recent one from the New York Times: Our Favorite Healthy Habits of 2021. Here are three of their favorites that are my favorites too:

Enjoy exercise snacks.
Take a gratitude photo.
Give the best hours of your day (or week – B) to yourself.

I’ve been doing the first one and I found it very useful. Even just some simple stretching each day makes a difference. As for the second one, every day I write down one thing I am grateful for and it makes me better too. As for the last one, I do that every weekend when I sit down to blog on Saturday. I need to it more often and during the week, too.

One healthy habit I need to revisit is biking/cycling. If you need convincing, read this by Clive Thompson. Austin Kleon is also a fan. Fun exercise is one of the best healthy habits you can take up.

Spring is a good time to adopt some healthy habits. I hope you can find some.

It’s time for spring cleaning. That includes the art on your walls. Here’s what you should do.

Art work for sale from 20x200
It’s spring cleaning time. No doubt you will be tossing out things from your house as you clean. While you clean and purge, consider tossing some of the things hanging on your walls* that you no longer look at because frankly you are tired of them. (Yes, you are.)

Now that you have bare walls, I recommend you get some new art for them. If you are not sure where to do that, I recommend one of the sites listed here: 12 Great Places to Buy Art Online | Cup of Jo. I am a fan of one of them, 20X200.

Twelve is a great set of options to choose from, but let me make it a baker’s dozen by adding this place to the list: Art Interiors / Toronto Art Gallery. I’ve been a fan of Art Interiors for some time. They have fine art that’s affordable. If you live in Toronto, you can even visit their gallery. The people there are fine too.

Bonus: Another idea is to check out bigcartel. For example, I found this artist online and she has her work there:Painterlady.

* If you can’t bear to toss your old art, at least store them for awhile and freshen up your walls with new work. But do consider putting things out on the curb for someone else to have. For them it will be fresh and new and valuable. Everyone benefits.

(Image from a link to the blog Cup of Jo)

Stop giving the praise sandwich feedback, and other advice on giving good feedback at work

Image of feedback

Do you use the “praise sandwich feedback” approach at work? If you don’t know it, the approach is this: you take a piece of negative feedback and layer it between two pieces of positive feedback. If you do know it and use it, consider reading these pieces for better ways on how to give feedback:

We all benefit from good feedback. Deliver it better. I’m sure you can.

P.S. One of the articles argues for Radical Candor. I can see it’s appeal, but I wrote before why it is usually not a good way to provide feedback. My arguments against it are here.

On the importance of intolerance and how it plays out in real life

Intolerance has a bad reputation. People will talk about having “zero tolerance” for something, which means they are intolerant of it, but they don’t want to use the “I” word in case it makes them look terrible. That’s too bad.

We need to be intolerant at times. Otherwise we run the risk that comes from the paradox of tolerance. If you are not aware of that paradox, I recommend you read this. You may have even come across practical examples of it, such as this: Bartender explains why he swiftly kicks out Nazis even if they’re ‘not bothering anyone’ – Upworthy.

Being intolerant is not just something that is limited to Nazis. I was thinking of this recently when the “trucker rally” moved into Ottawa. That band of malcontents were tolerated by the officials of that city, and things got out of hand. Meanwhile, they were not tolerated in other cities like Toronto, and things went better for the citizens there.

We see levels of intolerance on a smaller scale on social media. Blocking people is a form of intolerance. I generally put up with bad comments from people if they are infrequent, but others do not and block them immediately. That doesn’t make me a better person, just someone with a higher (and perhaps wrong) level of tolerance.

It can be hard to know what to be intolerant about. Too much intolerance is also bad. Too much intolerance can lead to rigidity which can lead to loss of opportunity, lack of understanding, bad feelings, and even destructiveness. Not all unwelcome behavior leads to a bad end for the tolerant. Be as tolerant as you can be, but have firm limits for those rare instances when you have to be intolerant towards those that overstep them (while understanding what if anything you lose when you take action).

It’s Wednesday. If you need a reset, read this

I often blog about Mondays. Mondays are pivotal days in our lives. Sometimes they are days we dread, sometimes they are days we get ahead and get on with things.

Wednesdays are a different beast. Wednesdays we are in the thick of things. Even on the best of Wednesdays we can feel over our heads and wondering if we are succeeding or even managing.

If that’s how Wednesdays feel to you, read this: How to Make the Most of Your 24 Hours. It’s a great piece on how to reset your approach to your days. You can read it on any day, but I think today is the best day to read it. Take a break and do that. You might find your week improves going forward.

It’s Monday. Here’s how to work smarter and speak better

To be your best at work, you need plenty of skills. Hard skills for sure. But soft skills are the thing you need to really have a successful career. Here’s two good sources of information to help you with those skills.

First, check out this article on how to speak better in public: Demystifying Public Speaking . Whether you are talking to 2 or 2000 people, knowing how to do it effectively is an essential soft skill to have.

Second, if you want to have a long and successful career, you need to work smarter, not just harder. For ideas on how to do that, study this: Why Simply Hustling Harder Won’t Help You With the Big Problems in Life .

Ok, break’s over. Go and have a good Monday!

How to write a long sentence

This piece has convinced me to reconsider long sentences: How to Write a Long Sentence: Tips + Example Sentences. I was skeptical when I first read this:

Long sentences get a bad rap. Because many writers abuse long sentences, cramming too many thoughts into each sentence, muddling up their message and leaving readers confused. So, the main trick to composing a beautiful long sentence is to communicate only one idea with clarity.

After I finished it, I was won over. You will be too if you read it.

Long sentences are like semicolons: easy to misuse but excellent when well employed.

It’s Monday. Family Day. Here’s a guide to getting the rest you need, today and other days

It’s Monday, but it’s a long weekend here on the blog, thanks to Family Day. I hope you are getting a chance to spend time with your family and loved ones.

Long weekends are also good for catching up on your rest. But what sort of rest? It seems like an odd question. But after I read this, I realized it’s not odd at all: The seven types of rest: I spent a week trying them all. Could they help end my exhaustion?

If you truly want to get some rest, read the article and reflect on what kind you need. For many of us, we think of rest as physical rest. But I know that sometimes I am not physically tired, but emotionally or mentally tired. And in times of great grief, I was spiritually tired.

We all need rest from time to time. Read that and make sure you get the kind you need.

Analog: a beautifully simple non-digital way to be productive

If you find yourself struggling with too many digital tools that don’t seem to help with being productive, consider this tool: Analog: The Simplest Productivity System – Ugmonk.

It’s a very smart, very simple, and dare I say very productive way to get work done. If you love simplicity or love paper or both, then you owe it to yourself to check it out.

I linked to one of the images, but you really want to see all it is capable of by going to their site.

Hey, I know there is no one tool that will make you productive. But some tools are better than others, and you could find that Analog is one of those tools.

Decluttering 101

I like this piece: Why We Clutter, and What to Do About It – The New York Times. If you never decluttered your place before, it’s a good place to start.

Decluttering is like dieting though: you can make an effort to cut back, but unless you address the thoughts and behaviors that lead to clutter/overeating, you may end up back where you started.

I recommend while you are decluttering to take note of what you have excess of. Is it too much paper, clothing, books, utensils, tech stuff, or something else altogether? Those are the areas you need to focus your analysis of if you want to have any hope of living with less clutter. In the end you may be fine with periodically paring down the amount of clothes or books or stationery you have from time to time.

It’s winter. And cold. You could use some flannel sheets

Yep, good flannel sheets can be such a pleasure in the depth of February in Canada. If you agree and you’d like some, check out: The Best Flannel Sheets for 2022 | Reviews by Wirecutter. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get good ones either.

Hey, it’s tough outside: make it nice inside.

Thinking of moving from Spotify to another service?

If you are thinking of moving from Spotify but you don’t want to because you have all these great playlists, then you might want to consider the site TuneMyMusic.com . It’s a service to help you do just that. I haven’t tried it yet but it could be just the thing if you are thinking of going from Spotify to Apple Music or Tidal or one of the other music streaming services.

Thanks to Navneet Alang for point it out.

It’s Monday. Your resume could use a tuneup. Here’s a easy and fast way to do it

Chances are you have a weakness in your resume and you don’t even know it. (I did.) The weakness is the word “helped”. Sure, helping is good, and helping is likely something you did on the projects you worked on. But compared to other words, “helped” sounds weak. I’d advise you to upgrade it. For help on that, see this piece: Stop Saying You ‘Helped’ on Your Resume (and Use These Verbs Instead)

It’s a small thing, but I bet when you make the tuneup you’ll be glad you did.

It’s Sunday. A good day to be useless. Here’s a guide to being that way

You may laugh and say “I know how to be useless”, but to truly appreciate the value of uselessness, I recommend this: How to be useless | Psyche Guides.

It talks about the ideas of the great Chinese philosopher, Zhuang Zhou and his work, the Zhuangzi. (You may know him as Chuang Tzu from the great book by Thomas Merton on him.) If you have to do something useful this Sunday, I recommend you read that. Then go make yourself useless. 🙂

The way to tell your kids how to live is to show them

There is no one way to teach your kids things. You try things and some things stick and some things don’t. Additionally you as a parent are not the only influence on your kids. Sometimes the things you try and teach your kids is undone by others.

It’s a hard job but it’s worthwhile. To make it slightly easier, I want to share this good advice from Austin Kleon. It’s gleaned from this piece he wrote, Love what you do in front of the kids in your life. Here it is:

You can’t tell kids anything. Kids want to be like adults. They want to do what the adults are doing. You have to let them see adults behaving like the whole, human beings you’d like them to be.

If we want to raise whole human beings, we have to become whole human beings ourselves.

This is the really, really hard work.

Easy, right? 🙂 Seriously, in retrospect I have found my kids have adopted things I have demonstrated love for in my life. Not everything. But more than I could have imagined.

Here’s the other thing. Even if they don’t, you have spent your time doing things you loved AND raising your kids. Some people sacrifice things they loved and went on to becoming bitter and resentful. You have to sacrifice some things when you raise kids: make sure it is not the things truly dear to you. Who knows: your kids may up loving them too. And loving you more as well as understanding you better. What could be a better outcome than that?

It’s Monday. You want to be more productive. Maybe you need to be less available.

With all the ways people can reach you, you may find that you spend much of your time responding to requests and less time doing work you consider productive. Being responsive is good but not at the cost of being unproductive. If that sounds like you, I recommend you read this: I’m Not Sorry for My Delay – The Atlantic.

Much of the time we respond quickly because we feel we must. Being able to comfortably separate the times we must respond quickly versus the times we can respond slower is a worthwhile thing to cultivate. Reading that article can help you get there.

Here’s 100 ways to improve your life by tweaking it slightly

I love this: 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying | Life and style | The Guardian. While it’s great to tackle big resolutions in the new year, sometimes small changes are fine.

Here’s a few of the 100 to give you a sense of what they recommend:

24 Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend.
25 Look closely.
27 If possible, take the stairs.
30 Be polite to rude strangers – it’s oddly thrilling.

I especially like 30!

While the Guardian says they are slight, I think some of them take a bit of work. But see for yourself. Look closely. 🙂

How I track my goals and my year using spreadsheets: my 2021 review. (Maybe you can steal this approach)

I’ve used a number of ways to track my goals and my year, and I have found spreadsheets the best way to do it.

Below are snapshots of the two worksheets I used in my spreadsheet. The first image is the worksheet I use for the goals I have regarding my responsibility for people and other things. The second image is the worksheet I use for the goals I have regarding myself. Each row is a week in the year. If I did nothing to advance the goal that week, I colour the cell red. If I did something but fell short, I use yellow. If I had a good week, the cell is green, and if I had a great week the cell is purple.

What’s nice about using colour like this is that I can zoom out and see how I am progressing over the year.

In the first two columns above I track how much I do for my son and daughter. Pretty good there. The next column is what I do for my brother and sister: I started weak but picked up throughout the year. It was good, and better than last year, but it can be better still. Next column is for keeping in touch with friends. It’s tough in a pandemic but I could email and use social media. The last three columns are my home, my finances, and my involvement in politics. I was much better with political engagement last year: this year the pandemic wore me down. Likewise I did ok managing my home and finances this year but it could be better. All in all too much red and yellow in those last 2 columns. (Part of the problem is I find them thankless tasks that provide little or no good feedback.)

After my responsibility to others, my goals are managing myself. I found I did poorly on the hard parts of this but better on the soft parts. lol! The first two columns above are fitness (do more exercising) and reading (do more reading). I get a D to an F grade for much of the year there. The third column tracks how much I draw and do other art. Again, D or maybe a C-. I did well writing (column 4): I wrote every week in my main blog, and sometimes elsewhere. After that comes column 5 and IT skills development: I got maybe a B- there. Often that takes a backseat to other things. In terms of cooking (column 6) that was easy in a pandemic! I did a lot of cooking and cooked hundreds of different recipes. (I track all the meals separately because I am a nut.)

For a long time I felt homebound and never did things for myself, so I tried to improve that and make them goals. So the last three columns are Treats, Restaurants I’ve tried, and new and good things I have done. Mostly I’ve done well there, compared to reading and fitness. Sigh. Ah well. (Those are easy to do, since the feedback you get once you do them is really good.)

The colour coding is subjective, of course, and in a pandemic the bar to green and purple is lower. But as a consultant, I quite like this way of tracking my goals.

Now I have a lot of goals, I admit. One thing nice about that is that I usually feel like I am accomplishing something. So if I am not getting in shape, at least I am keeping in touch with people and taking care of other things.

I also don’t track everything in a spreadsheet: I have some goals I track elsewhere, for example for some relationships and responsibilities. Likewise I sometimes have goals that are in a limited time window of weeks instead of months: they don’t go here.

It may seem like a lot to track, but I find I spent a few minutes each day then I can get it done. Plus I can course correct this way too and shift my priorities around.

If you struggle with goals and tracking them and moving forward, I recommend this approach. It’s fast and painless.

Here’s to achieving your goals, small and big, in 2022.

Great dumbbell exercises and other good things to get back in shape post holidays

If you are past Christmas feast you may be thinking of getting in shape as a New Year’s Resolution. If so, good for you. But you may need help. Here’s some links to do that.

I am a big fan of dumbbells, both at home and in the gym, and I think they are a great way to get stronger and fitter. This particular guide is one of the best ones I’ve seen: 19 Best Dumbbell Exercises for Building Muscle 2021 | Garage Gym Reviews. If you want to take them up or get back into them, read that.

If you aren’t sure how often you should work out, read this, How to Motivate Yourself to Exercise Every Morning, this Can You Do a Full-Body Workout Two Days in a Row?, and this I Stopped Working Out Daily. Here’s What Happened.

If you want to get started but find the idea of it daunting, read this, How to ‘Grease the Groove’ and Exercise Easy – The Atlantic and this, From Zero to 45 Days in a Row: How I Built a Habit of Daily Exercise.

Good luck! Get up and go!

(Image from Garage Gym)

How to easily buy wine as a gift at the LCBO

You want to buy wine for a gift at the LCBO. Maybe you know nothing about wine. Maybe you only know a little bit. Unless you know a lot, here’s what I recommend. It’s simple.

Go into your local LCBO. Ask for where the Wines of the Month are. Buy as many of those as your budget allows. That’s it.

You can also go to the web site and look for Vintages New Releases. Once on that page, look for Explore our featured products and click on it. Then look for Wines of the Month. Easy peasy.

What’s great about this is you can be sure those wines are very good and carefully selected by staff at the LCBO. Not only that, but most of the time they are around twenty bucks. Want to spent $40? Buy two bottles. If you want to spend over a $100, you can consider getting a half case or more. Or mix in a bottle of champagne: you can’t go wrong with that.

If you know what the person likes, then you can buy that. If you know wine, then you should pick what you think is best. Otherwise, follow this and you won’t go wrong.

It’s Monday. The Holiday Season is Upon Us. You need help

The holiday season is upon us! If you need help, The Washington Post has your back with these tips for decorating — and staying organized — for the holidays.

Included are such classics as:

How to stay organized
How to pick a tree
How to do your lights

And more. Don’t fret. You can do it. It’s not too late. Grab a piece of paper and a candy cane and get working on planning, and more importantly ENJOYING, the holidays. Cheers!

You have some difficult things you need to get done. What you need is a hate day

According to this, a hate day is…

…a day each week when I lump together all the tasks that steal my energy to knock them out in one long, extended punch.

So if you have a pile of things you have putting off, that might be a way to do them. Now not only will you get them done, but you won’t be thinking about them all the time.

Some additional thoughts:

if a day seems too much, pick a part of the day you think is best. Even an afternoon can be good.
if you don’t get them all done, you still got some done. Remember that.
treat yourself afterwards if you can. Hey you did a hard thing!
give yourself a lot of credit for getting the hard things done. You should be proud!

P.S. Yes, there is a German word for it. According to the piece, it is called a “Kleinscheiss Tag”—or, “little shit day.”

Good gift ideas: books (courtesy of Five Books)

Books usually make good gift ideas. While there are lots of ways to come up with book ideas, one way I think is good is to go to FiveBooks.com and check out their most recommended books. They have them all listed, here.

You can’t go wrong with any of books on the list. In the worst case, you can refresh a copy of a book the person may already have.

How I made my bucket list by making a reverse bucket list

Have you been thinking of making a bucket list? A few years ago I was thinking the same thing. Do you get stuck when you try to do it? Me too. I started creating one back then but it seemed blah and untrue.

Since I was stuck, I started researching what other people put on their lists. I wrote down the things people listed and then put them into groups. The main groups looked like this:

Fitness goals
Creative goals
Travel goals
Material attainment goals
Relationship attainment goals
Fame goals
Spiritual achievement goals

Within these groups there were subgroups:

Fitness goals
- Complete an event (e.g. 5K/10K/marathon)
- Complete certain fitness challenges (e.g. 100 pushups)
- Join a gym / join a team
- Lose / gain weight
- Change your diet, go on a diet and lose x pounds, become a vegan / vegetarian
Creative goals
- Write a book, play or poem
- Learn an instrument
- Learn how to draw, paint, sculpt, take photography
- Learn a language
- Act in a play
- Sing or play in a band
- Read certain books
Travel goals
- Visit certain countries
- Visit cities
- Stay at certain places
- Go to certain museums
- Eat at certain places
- Meet certain people
- See specific sites
- Travel in specific ways
Material attainment goals
- Own a certain vehicle
- Own a certain home/house
- Live in a particular place
- Start a business
- Save X amount of money
- Have certain investments
Personal and Relationship attainment goals
- Get engaged / married / divorced
- Disconnect or reconnect with certain people
- Have kids
- Have pets
- Complete college or university
- Learn a non-creative skill
Fame goals
- Win certain awards
- Meet certain people
- Perform in certain venues
- Appear in certain media
Spiritual achievement goals
- Perform certain pilgrimages
- Do specific religious activities

I used this as the basis of my reverse bucket list. I went through those categories and listed all the things I had already done. It was surprisingly a lot.

Then I took things not yet done and separated them into three lists: Want to Do, Maybe Do, Not Interested in Doing. The first two make up my new Bucket List.

So now I have a Bucket List of things I want to do, plus a Reverse Bucket List of things that would have been on the Bucket List of younger Me.

A Reverse Bucket List is a good thing to have: it can help you come up with a Bucket List and it can give you a sense of accomplishment. I highly recommend you make both.

P.S. I started thinking again about bucket lists after reading this: One Thing I Don’t Plan to Do Before I Die Is Make a Bucket List. That’s totally understandable.

Another thought I had is there are things I want to do again. Go to Paris and NYC were things I really wanted to do when I was younger and I did. But I want to do them again. You don’t have to always be doing new and unique things. Sometimes enjoy what is have is the best.

(Photo by Tobi Law on Unsplash)

Thoughts on getting my booster vaccine

I got my booster shot yesterday. It was different from my other two in several ways. My first two were AZ shots at my local pharmacy: this was Pfizer at the Toronto Metro Convention Center. Getting it at a pharmacy is very low key: at the Center it was a process. That said, it was a well organized and fast process. I went from entering the building to sitting in the waiting area in minutes. There are lots of signs and assistance everywhere and well done.

Like my other two vaccines the side effects occurred. I slept a lot. With this one, my arm was sore longer. Also I had flu like chills at one point. Overall though it was fairly mild.

The pandemic is hard. Get your vaccine booster when you are eligible. Get a flu shot too.

Some consolation for “bad” sleepers

man yawning

Are you worried you are a bad sleeper? Do you wake up in the middle of the night often and think: OMG I will never get back to sleep?? Do you fret daily about what can be done about your sleeping?

If those things apply to you, first of all, read this: Shuteye and Sleep Hygiene: The Truth About Why You Keep Waking up at 3 a.m.

The key take away I took from it is this:

A mindset change may be what’s needed. “People might have this belief that they are a ‘bad sleeper’ and there is nothing that they can do about it. Sometimes it’s about changing people’s perceptions of what good sleep looks like.” Taylor says she “really cannot bear” fitness trackers, which monitor sleep, for focusing people’s minds on often inaccurate data. It is wrong to assume that you must sleep through the night, every night, she says. “We all have blips in our sleep – it’s never going to be that you sleep brilliantly all the time.”

Maybe I am not the good sleeper I wish I was. But maybe it is not as bad as I feared. That might apply to you too.

(Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash )

It’s Monday. You have a difficult decision to make. Use this approach to make it

a ladder

If you have a difficult decision to make, then the 5-minute ladder rule is a good way to approach it. Essentially the ladder rule allows you ” to climb, one rung at a time, to a resolution. For example, at the first rung, ask yourself:

“Will this decision have a measurable or noticeable impact on my people, my company, or society?
Is this decision time-sensitive?”

The rest of the rungs and the approach in general can be found here: Stressing Out About a Tough Decision? Make it Easy with the 5-Minute ‘Ladder Rule’ | Inc.com.

Dealing with tough decisions is like falling into a big hole — it can overwhelm us. The ladder rule approach can help you get out of such overwhelming sitations. Give it a try.

(Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash)

It’s Monday. You need some inspirational quotes to perhaps fire you up. Here’s 10

Mark Dymond, a senior leader in my part of IBM, has put together a good list of leadership quotes that I think can benefit a wide range of people. My favorite of them is from one of my favorite thinkers, Epictetus:

Anyone can hold the tiller when the sea is calm.

Check out his list for the other 9. Worthwhile.

(Image of Epictetus from Wikipedia)

Five digital tools to help you with Kanban (plus one analog tool)

Last week I extolled the virtues of Kanban. If you are looking to grab some tech to run yours from, here are 5 open-source kanban boards to help you get and stay on task from TechRepublic. I’ve used one of them (Kanboard, seen above) and liked it. Check them out and see which one works best for you.

If analog is more your thing, consider this tool featured on Yanko design:

You can easily work this into a Kanban type tracker. Plus it looks cool.

For more on it, see it here.

It’s never too late to….

It’s never too late to do many things. And the Times has an entire section devoted to it, here. For example, here is a lovely story on people who fell in love in their 80s. Here’s another fine piece about a woman in her 60s who learned how to swim.

If you are older and you feel it’s too late to attempt to do the Thing You Always Wanted To Do, read those pieces.

This goes for younger people too. Sometimes people in their 30s or 40s think it is too late to do something. Nonsense. It’s never too late to start. You may not reach the stars, as they say, but you’ll land on the moon. Better than than continually looking up wondering what if.

IBM Cloud tip: take advantage of tags to better manage your cloud environment

Last week I encouraged you to consider your naming standards before adding services. This week I’d like to encourage you to use tags as well to help you manage your IBM Cloud environment.

As this piece from the IBM Cloud Docs on Working with tags explains, you can use tags to

organize, track usage costs, and even manage access to your resources. You can tag related resources and view them throughout your account by filtering by tags from your resource list. To see a full list of tags in your account, go to Manage > Account in the IBM Cloud® console, and select Tags. You can apply user tags to organize your resources and easily find them later or help you with identifying specific team usage or cost allocation. By creating access management tags, you can control access to your resources without requiring updates to your IAM policies.

Here’s some examples, partially taken from the same piece:

Use tags to identify or even manage access to your development environment, not to mention QA, UAT, Production and DR
Use tags to identify or even manage access to a project: project:lw-wizard, app:poc-app
Use tags to define compliance requirements: dataresidency:germany, compliance:hipaa, compliance:pii
Use tags to help you automate optimization: schedule:24×7, maxruntime:12days

So use tags: your IBM cloud environment will be easier to operate if you do.

For more on this, here’s a good blog post on tags, here: Characteristics of User and Access Tags on IBM Cloud | IBM

And this piece in IBM Cloud Docs is a good tutorial that will guide you:

…through the steps to centrally manage access to the resources in your account at scale (using tags). By completing this tutorial, you learn how to create an access management tag, add the tag to selected resources, and define a policy to assign access to resources based on the tags on those resources.

Good stuff. Start using tags more and you will find it much easier to manage your resources in the IBM Cloud. If you are unsure, start with a few for now (e.g. tag your production environment, tag resources belong to specific groups). You’ll start to see the benefits soon.

It’s Monday. You want to be more productive. Toss your todo list and project plans and use a Kanban board

It’s true: we can all get more done if we adopt Kanban boards, as this piece in TechRepublic argues. While todo lists are good, Kanban boards give you more. They show you your backlog (more or less your todo list). But they also show you todos in progress and what state they are in. That’s good. They’re more flexible than a project plan, which is great for when you aren’t sure of what it takes to get done. In effect, they lie somewhere between a todo list and a project plan.

Kanban boards are also good for prioritizing long lists of todos. The tasks that leave the backlog are the ones you have decided are the most important. That’s useful, especially if you are trying to communicate to someone else what is happening and what is on hold.

Kanban boards also give you a sense of progress. Sure there may be lots of things to do, but over time the Done column fills up. It can give you a real sense of accomplishment.

They have weaknesses though. If the tasks you include are too big, they may sit in one column for a long time. If the tasks are too small, they move quickly from backlog to done. That said, those weaknesses can turn into strengths. Items that are too big should be broken down into parts. Small items can be lumped together with larger items or left off all together.

There’s lots of ways to create a Kanban board. Simply sticky notes can work. You can use a window or whiteboard or even fridge to attached them too. You can also use software tools. You can set up a spreadsheet with the various columns. You can use a tool like Workflowy to manage them. Trello boards are another source. You can even build your own, like I did using IBM Cloud years ago.

While it may seem that they are tools for IT only, they actually can be used by anyone. For anything. Moving your home? Use a Kanban tool. Planning a trip? Kanban it. Staging a big event? Well, you know.

So get out your todo list or your project plan and turn it into a Kanban board. You will see results soon enough.

(Image from the TechRepublic article)

So you are thinking of quitting your job during the Great Resignation. If so, read this

If you are thinking of walking away from your job these days, you are not alone. As the WSJ says:

The ‘Great Resignation’ is on. Here’s what to do about your finances before embarking on the slowdown you’ve been craving.

Wait! You haven’t thought of your finances before quitting? Well stop for a second and read this: How to Prepare Your Finances Before Quitting Your Job – WSJ.

Change is good. Well thought out change is better. So get your finances in place and then make your move. Good luck!
(Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash )

IBM Cloud tip: consider your naming standards before adding services

Before adding services to your IBM Cloud environment, consider adopting a naming standard for them. By default IBM Cloud services will give them a unique name (e.g.IBM Log Analysis-4g, DB2-r0). While that may be fine, giving them a name that clearly identifies their role and service (e.g. DB2-Development, IBM Log Analysis for Production) helps the support teams do their job easier. It can also help later if you are deciding to pare back services. If you have 10 instances of DB2 or 100 devices, clear naming standards will also help you decide which ones to delete and which ones to keep.

It’s Monday. If you are feeling down on yourself and unmotivated, do this

It’s Monday. You are feeling unmotivated, insecure, lacking in confidence to do the things you have to do. One approach to deal with this is this? This: Motivate Yourself by Listing the Stuff You’re Already Doing Right

You may not realize it, but you already have such a list: it’s called your resume. Your resume is a list of stuff you’ve done or are doing right! Go check it out and see how great you are. If that isn’t enough, consider adding to it, even informally.

For fun, you can do a resume for all the other roles and skills you have, from

good friend, sibling, relative or support person
good cook, runner, knitter, bartender, painter, coach, joke teller
expert or teacher on your favorite topics
&c

We are all good at so many things. Instead of fretting on your gaps or deficiencies, focus on your strengths. Try and deploy them this week and get things done.

If you use Chrome as your regular browser, read this and make it better

If you use Chrome as your main browser, you owe it to yourself to read this: 11 of the Best Free Extensions for Google Chrome.

I’ve used a number of them and continue to use Momentum and Grammarly. They make it a better tool.

P.S. And speaking of making tools work better, if you want to have better search results from Google in Chrome, read this: 20 Google Search Tips to Use Google More Efficiently

How to get rid of those things you can’t seem to part with? Use the Box and Banish method

If you are trying to declutter and you are struggling, why not grabs some boxes and practice the Box and Banish Method? Essentially what you do is take all those things you consider “maybes”* and put them in a box and…

… close it up. Yep, close it, and put it somewhere out of the way, like the back of a closet. Then set a reminder on your phone or in your calendar for a date about six weeks from now.

And after six weeks (or six months, but not six years), take those boxes and either trash them or give them away.

If you don’t trust yourself, recruit someone to do it for you. You’ll be glad you did.

(* Maybes are all those things you aren’t sure of that you may want to keep but aren’t sure. )

When it makes sense to eat your lunch while you work

It’s easy to find articles condemning the act of eating lunch at your desk (for example, this one ). I get it. That said, I believe there are three times when eating at your desk is ok:

You have too much to do and even a 15 minute lunch break seems too much.
You want to downplay lunch.
Your work is not good but your lunch is.

Now #1 is not a good situation, but sometimes that just the way it is.

#2 makes sense if you are trying to decenter or downplay food. If you are in a place where you find it tempting to overeat and are trying to avoid temptation, this strategy can work. (I can vouch for it.)

#3 is often overlooked and is often tied to #1. Sometimes your work is just awful but you have to get it done. At least eating something you like while you do it makes it bearable and even a bit enjoyable.

These three reasons to eat lunch while you work are not ideal, for sure. But not unreasonable either.

(Written while eating my lunch :))

(Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash )

Yep, it’s the weekend. Time to clean. Here’s how to do it better.

If you are like me and somewhat dread cleaning on the weekend, perhaps you need an alternative approach. One approach to consider is to spread it throughout the week so when the weekend comes it’s not so bad. The problem with that approach I have found is that the week speeds by and you are left with all the cleaning piling up into Saturday and Sunday.

One way to deal with that is having a cleaning schedule. If that sounds good tto you, read this: How to Create a Cleaning Schedule You Can Stick to | Apartment Therapy. Lots of good tips there, such as “throw things out as you go”. After all, why keep moving things around you don’t want or dust things you no longer like. Trash them, or better still, give them to someone who could use them.

May your (laundry) loads feel lighter after you put that article into practice!

How to easily redirect your Netfirms domain to another domain/web site

Recently I wanted to take a new domain registered at Netfirms (netfirms.com) and point it to another domain, so that if people put the URL of the the Netfirms domain in their browser (e.g. berniemichalik.ca), their browser would get redirected elsewhere (e.g. blm849.github.io).

I thought: this should be easy to find out how to do in 2021. I was surprised it wasn’t easy or obvious. Much of the advice was dated and not useful.

Now that I found out how to do it, I will show you what I did to get it to work in 7 easy steps:

First, login to netfirms. It should take you to a web page like this: https://www1.netfirms.com/controlpanel/foundation/
Click on “Domains” on the top left of screen
Look for your domain (e.g. berniemichalik.ca) Click on the “Manage” button underneath it
On the left, look for “Pointers and Subdomains” and click on it
The web page your browser will go to will look something like this:
https://www1.netfirms.com/controlpanel/foundation/berniemichalik.ca/pointers-subdomains. And the page you see should look like the image at the top of this post.
Click Under “Pointer Type” and set the value to “URL Standard”.
In the box to the right, under “Directory”, put in the URL of your web site (note, put the entire URL, including http:// or https://).
Click the “Save” button.
Test it. Point your browser at the Netfirms URL and see if it gets redirected. (For me, if I type in berniemichalik.ca I get redirected to blm849.github.io). It may take some time, up to a few hours. But it will work. (If it doesn’t seem to be, try different browsers or ask someone else to try.)

That’s it. I hope this helps! Good luck!