Jessica's Friday Five: turning traffic jams into treasured time + Alaska adventures
Published 4 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader,
I'm back home after a delightful trip with my family and some dear friends to Alaska. Glaciers, whales, otters, husky puppies, delicious meals, so many board games, and beautiful scenery. A cruise is undoubtedly a great way to see that part of the world, and I shared some of our pictures here and here (and one of those ideas could be used in your workplace to build community!).
And guess what happened while I was away? We surpassed 15,000 subscribers! Which means another book-of-your-choice giveaway to 3 of you - be sure to click below to enter!
Ok, let's get to your Friday Five!
Rename to Reframe: Loved this idea from Laura Vanderkam on how to think differently about parts of your life simply by renaming them. Using these ideas, I'm changing the name of the money meeting my husband and I have on the calendar monthly to our "Money Date", and I'm going to reframe in my brain the post-school-dropoff traffic I abhor as "Audiobook Listening Time". I'd love to hear any reframes that come to mind for you - please hit reply and share them with me!
Buying a backpack? I just purchased a new one for my daughter, who is entering middle school in just over a week! I shared some tips with the kind folks at Forbes Magazine about how to choose a backpack for your kid in this article.
FlightAware: I've just added this to my personal travel checklist and wanted to share. You can receive free flight status alerts on the website www.flightaware.com, and I've found that they often provide updates on delays and cancellations before the airline notifies me. We're sending our two kids solo on a flight to visit their grandpa this weekend (and they'll attend a local summer camp near him while they're there), so I've already signed up for notifications for their flight.
Smart Home Ideas: If you have any "smart" gadgets in your home (like smart plugs or smart lightbulbs), here are a few ideas that have helped us: we have automations setup to turn things off that might accidentally be left on (for example, if the lights or space heater in my office are on at 6 pm, they automatically shut off). We also have our living room blinds close at sunset each day. Our garage door, if ever still open at 9 pm, is set to close at that time. During the winter months, I set up an automation so that my heated mattress pad, if it's on, turns off at 7 am, preventing me from accidentally leaving it on all day after waking up. Would a blog about how we set up smart home things like this be helpful? Let me know, and I can write one.
8 spots already gone! The morning before I headed out of town, I quietly opened the doors to the September cohort of Joyfully Managed Worklife (my group program for those who want to get more productive and organized at work without burning out), and 8 spots were snatched up while I was out of town. Wow. More to come soon on this, but don't wait if you know you want a spot because it looks like they might sell out.
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Last Friday's Most-Clicked Link:The website for finding unclaimed property - check for your name! https://missingmoney.com/
Enter here and I'll randomly pick 3 of you and send you a book of your choice to celebrate reaching 15k Friday Five subscribers!