Three Years at a Standing Desk

Posted by On Filed under Doing Business Differently, Health
Three Years at a Standing Desk

A few years ago, I wrote about using a standing desk for the first time. I’d like to provide an update, especially since I’ve continued the practice for quite some time now.

When I started working at my last job, the furniture in my office was set up for an entirely different type of department, so I was lucky enough to be able choose all of my own furniture. I’d already seen another colleague at his own makeshift standing desk and decided to give it a go.

Read about that here.

When I started working at my current job in 2013, office spaces were being remodeled and re-purposed and, coincidentally, there wasn’t even a spare chair for me, so I took that as an opportunity to pull together some materials for a standing desk.

Keep reading →

Prioritize Your Bucket List (Or, How to Die Happy Any Time)

Posted by On Filed under Bucket List, Pause for Reflection
Prioritize Your Bucket List (Or, How to Die Happy Any Time)

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

If you’re like me, you have a lengthy bucket list and all of it sounds fun.  We want to skydive while traveling across Europe on our way to a meditation retreat at which we find the love of our life, right?

How do you prioritize your bucket list and make sure you actually start living your deepest dreams and goals?

Well, I took six steps toward my bucket list and the last two years of my life have been drastically different from the ones before. Give these a try and let us know how the steps work for you:

Keep reading →

The Bucket List Life

Posted by On Filed under Bucket List 2 Comments
The Bucket List Life

I’ve had a “bucket list” since I was about 13 years old. I didn’t call it a bucket list back then, but it was still a list of all the things I wanted to do with my life.

The list is kind of crazy. It runs the gamut, from learning lots of languages to learning how to use nunchucks, from traveling all over the world to living in a town where people know my name at the coffee shop. It’s clear that sometimes I was just on a roll and listed every musical instrument I might want to learn. Other times, careers were on my mind and I wanted to reach for the pinnacle of success. I wrote the list on index cards and added to it over the years.

Keep reading →

Getting Out of Debt: The Bucket List Goal to Make All Other Goals Possible

Posted by On Filed under Bucket List, Money
Getting Out of Debt: The Bucket List Goal to Make All Other Goals Possible

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

I’ve been racking up debt since college. A few years after graduation, I had over $42,000 of it, from student loans, a new car and the day-to-day reliance on credit. Over 1,500 BucketList.org users have “getting out of debt” as a goal, so we are not a small tribe.

After getting out of debt in 2013, I can definitively say that this is the one goal that will make many other goals possible.

Keep reading →

Non-Profits and Facebook Audiences

Posted by On Filed under Marketing 2 Comments
Non-Profits and Facebook Audiences

No one has been exempt from Facebook’s “curation” of our News Feeds. At any given time, you’re seeing 1/10th of the posts from all of the pages and friends you’ve liked, possibly even less.

As a non-profit (or small business) marketer, you’ve seen the flip side of this coin: your Facebook posts are going out to 20%, 10%, 3% or even less of your Facebook fan base.

If you’re on top of all the changes, you’ve improved your game by:

Keep reading →

100 Greatest Books (and more): A 28 Year Project

Posted by On Filed under Books
100 Greatest Books (and more): A 28 Year Project

Six years ago, I combined several 100 Greatest Books lists and began reading my way through some of the greatest literature available.

Read about the journey so far here.

It’s been a truly rewarding experience, especially as I begin reading through the older Pulitzer Prize winners. Andersonville, by MacKinley Kantor (1958), for example, took me a month to get through, but the characters have continued to live on very vividly in my imagination. The Way West, by A.B. Guthrie (1950), too was a refreshing migration-westward novel.

Others were a bit forgettable or, rather, it was interesting to ponder why they’ve become so iconic (ahem, The Old Man and the Sea).

Keep reading →

Getting to Zero Waste: Q4 Results and Year 1 Summary

Posted by On Filed under Voluntary Simplicity / Minimalism
Getting to Zero Waste: Q4 Results and Year 1 Summary

For the past year, I’ve been trying to minimize the amount of garbage, paper, plastic and glass leaving my home and heading for the landfill or recycling center.  While I’ve long been a re-user and recycler further down the waste stream, this has been my attempt at reducing my footprint from the point of consumption.

In the first quarter of the year (January-March), I realized I was a long way from zero waste. Although, at an average of 0.79 lbs of trash per day, I was also a long way off from the average American household, which disposes of 4.4 lbs of trash per day!

Keep reading →