Hootsuite: Social Media Management Lifesaver

Posted by On Filed under Marketing
Hootsuite: Social Media Management Lifesaver

For non-profit and small business staff juggling multiple social networks, Hootsuite is a lifesaver.

If you’re not familiar with the social media management tool, here’s the run-down: Hootsuite allows you to manage most of your social networks in one place.

Like a web browser, you can set up one tab per network, so you can toggle between, say, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Within each tab/network, you can monitor a home screen (feed, wall, etc.), your own sent and scheduled messages, and searches and mentions of your brand or specific keywords.

Furthermore, you can create and schedule messages, on one or many networks, with features like shortened links, images, location tagging, and more.

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How I decluttered 1,000 things in 3 years

Posted by On Filed under Money, Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism
How I decluttered 1,000 things in 3 years

I moved to Vermont in 2003 with too many things, into a too tiny apartment. I had wall-to-wall stuff and when you constantly have to dust, step over, move or ignore things you don’t even like, it’s time to declutter.

Even when I moved to a huge apartment three years later, I still noticed the sporting goods piled up in the corner and the spare bedroom full of boxes of more stuff.

A bit like Goldilocks, that first apartment was too small, the second was too big, and my current apartment is just right. Nonetheless, I continue to develop an ethos and aesthetic that revolves around simplicity, utility and beauty in all areas of my life.

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Was 1934 the greatest year for literature?

Posted by On Filed under Books 2 Comments
Was 1934 the greatest year for literature?

I’ve been working on a “greatest books” list for several years now. I recently reorganized my list and double checked my sources. My version of a “greatest” list comes from Pulitzer and National Book Award winners, Modern Library’s 100 Greatest Novels, and a list of lists from GreatestBooks.org.

Download the Greatest Books list here.

As I added more details, I started to wonder if there were trends in these data points.

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My Favorite Reflection Resources

Posted by On Filed under Pause for Reflection
My Favorite Reflection Resources

In 2012, I wrote up a post with links to some of my favorite reflection resources. I included more than 300 questions, prompts or affirmations from more than a half dozen websites that I’ve personally used.

As you may know, reflection is an important part of my life. I regularly make time for planning, pondering, reflecting and meditating. In 2012, I even set up my Google calendar to remind me of my favorite reflection prompts every few days.

In the last two years, I’ve come across more resources and thought it was time to provide an updated post with links and suggestions.

Here are some of my new favorites:

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A Bookworm Bucket List: Meeting Your Favorite Author

Posted by On Filed under Books, Bucket List
A Bookworm Bucket List: Meeting Your Favorite Author

This post was previously published on the BucketList.org blog in January 2015.

Authors are like rock stars to bookworms. So any bookworm bucket list will include meeting your favorite author, poet or essayist.

Who would be on your list? The author of your favorite book from childhood? The poet whose words were your first true love in a high school English class? Or the journalist who wrote the book that opened a whole new world to you?

At the top of my list are Wendell Berry, Thomas Moore, David Whyte, and Vicki Robin. Some of my favorite authors are no longer living, but I fantasize about asking Rumi, Alice Miller, Tee Corinne, or Flannery O’Connor to sign a book for me.

Luckily, I’ve met David Whyte and Thomas Moore and they were definitely bucket list experiences.

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Review: Carbon Footprint Calculators

Posted by On Filed under Pause for Reflection 2 Comments
Review: Carbon Footprint Calculators

Tracking your carbon footprint isn’t the easiest thing to do. There are several online calculators, but a footprint is a moving target, changing with each meal, each type of mile driven and each time we turn up the heat or air conditioning.

In this post, I’ll review some of the biggest or best online carbon footprint calculators I could find. This will be eye-opening for me personally, but I hope it will help you determine which calculator might best serve your needs.

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The Staycation Bucket List

Posted by On Filed under Bucket List
The Staycation Bucket List

This post was previously published on the BucketList.org blog in December 2014.

Did you know that every US state and Canadian province and territory are represented on BucketList.org? Not just by BucketList.org users living all over the continent, but every state, province and territory appear on someone’s bucket list. That means that someone actually wants to come to where you live no matter how boring you think the place might be.

So here’s a quick guide on how to build a local, staycation, even, budget bucket list for your very own home state.

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