Gearfire Productivity

10 Gadgets to Help You Sleep Better

Geoff — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:25:48 +0000

In last week’s Ultimate Guide to Sleeping Better and Waking Up Easier, we briefly mentioned sleeping gadgets such as Clocky to help people sleep or wake up better. After seeing the response I decided to follow up with a list of the top 10 sleep-related gadgets to buy. All of these products are on the shelf, so no concept design products, however cool they may be, made it onto this list.

Clocky: The Alarm Clock on Wheels – For those of you who who are constantly tempted by the snooze button, it’s time to try something new. Clocky is an alarm clock that runs away from you when it goes off, so you have to get up to catch it. Although potentially very annoying, it is no doubt effective at waking you up in the morning! Clocky can take up to a three-foot jump off your bedstand, and will proceed to run around your room wildly, knocking things over and chirping loudly at an affordable $30.
SleepTracker Pro – Picked as one of the best inventions of 2005, the SleepTracker is a device that monitors your sleep cycle via accelerometers inside a watch which you wear when you go to sleep. You can set a window of time during which you want to wake up in, and it will decide based on your sleep pattern when is the perfect time to wake you up feeling fresh. You know when you sometimes wake up and you are completely disoriented and confused? That is likely because you were woken up during deep REM sleep. The SleepTracker monitors your sleeping patterns and, if possible, wakes you up during light, non-REM sleep, so you wake up easily and refreshed. You can also plug the watch into your computer and download sleep data into the Sleeptracker software, which is a great way to keep track of your sleep patterns over time. I am the proud owner of a SleepTracker, and I can vouch for it’s effectiveness, as long as you give it a long enough window of time to decide when to wake you. It can even be set to vibrate before it rings, so you don’t have to wake up to a chirping clock every morning, but rather you are nudged awake by gentle vibrations!

Sleep Cycle iPhone App - If you don’t want to dish out $175 for a watch, there’s an app for that. If you are an iPhone user, you can get the Sleep Cycle app through iTunes for $0.99, which replicates the features of the SleepTracker. It even shows you your sleep graphs on the device. Unfortunately it will be inherently less effective, as the iPhone is placed on the corner of your mattress and detects vibrations through it’s accelerometer, while the SleepTracker sits right on your wrist, allowing it to pickup much more minute movements.
AXBO Sleep Phase Alarm Clock – Although less affordable than other options on this list at $300, the AXBO alarm clock has a similar premise to the SleepTracker and Sleep Cycle app, but with some interesting features. The actual device is an alarm clock which communicates with fabric wristbands that the user wears. The wristband contains a vibrating mechanism and an accelerometer, so it relays your sleep information to the alarm clock. The AXBO will wake you up within 30 minutes of your set alarm via the vibrating wristbands, and the alarm will go off when you set it if you haven’t woken up yet. It comes with two wristbands, and the clock will support two users at a time, so you can both be woken up at different times using this product.
Chillow Comfort Pillow – Everyone knows that there is nothing better than a cold pillow, and nothing more annoying than a hot, humid pillow. If you find yourself flipping your pillow three or four times before you can fall asleep, the Chillow is for you. The Chillow is a pillow insert that slips inside your pillow case and keeps the top of your pillow cold, while still conformable, using soft thermal gel and memory foam.
Bed Fan – Another comfort device for someone who gets too hot in bed, the Bed Fan sits at the foot of your bed and streams cool air up through your sleeps to keep you cool at night.
Pzizz Sleep Software - If you have trouble falling asleep, Pzizz generates an iTunes track with soothing sounds and voice that are scientifically-proven to usher you towards a restful state. They also have a great student discount, where you can get all their software for $20.
Light Timer – For the true DIYer, a simple light timer can be used to turn on lights in your room a couple minutes before you wake up, easing you into consciousness.
Philips Wake-up Light – If you’ve read our Ultimate Guide to Sleeping Better and Waking Up Easier, you know that light and sound stimuli cause us to naturally wake up. If your looking for a good way to implement both, look no further than the Philips Wake-up Light with iPod Dock! You just plug in your ipod into the dock and set the alarm before you go to sleep. As your alarm time approaches, the light begins to glow brighter and brighter, and a minute before your alarm goes off, one of four gentle wakeup sounds, among them forest and bird sounds, will begin to play, increasing in volume over a minute and a half until your alarm goes off. No matter what time you are waking up, you can feel like you’ve slept in on a Sunday!
Zeo Sleep Coach – A fairly new product on the sleep gadget market, Zeo Sleep Coach focuses on tracking your sleep patterns in detail, but not on waking you up according to them. Zeo has a particularly attractive web interface, so for those who want detailed and thorough sleep records, Zeo is the way to go.

The Frugal Student: Tips for a Low-Cost Road Trip

Geoff — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:03:24 +0000

Most students can’t afford to fly off to Europe after their semester is over. It’s much more likely that they will head out on the open road for a little vacation with their friends. Saving money on your student road trip will be a lot easier by using some of the following tips.

Hit up the grocery store

Avoid the fast food restaurants and gas station cuisine. Try to stop at as many grocery stores as you can find along your route. You might also want to bring along a cooler so that you can store food in it. Planning meals as a group, such as having cold cuts one day and PB&J sandwiches the next will help to dramatically reduce money spent on food. If you have enough space then even pack a small camping stove so that you can have tasty warm meals whenever you like. If you need a meal cooked by someone else then look for early bird deals and get off the main route for better prices.

Find a free place to stay

Bring that old tent you have kicking around the closet and look for campsites along your route. You can often get a nice site for as little as $20/night. A campfire with friends is often a great alternative to an expensive hotel room. If you’re driving through major cities then look to websites like CouchSurfing.org, which connect travellers with local residents offering their couch for the night. You might have to return the favor at some point in the future but it could be a great way of meeting new people and seeing new cities. Thee are couch surfers all over the world so you don’t have to stay in North America either.

Using Less Gass

Start by choosing your vehicle wisely. Obviously you will need a certain size of vehicle, but if the choice comes down to your friend’s or yours, opt for the newer vehicle, it will offer better fuel efficiency throughout your trip. Next, take the vehicle into the mechanic and get an oil change and check for any other problems before you start your trip. Remember to check your tire pressure as well! Not only will this improve your fuel efficiency, but car troubles on the road are a costly affair.On the road, use common sense to save gas. Driving at a constant speed is much more fuel efficient than stop-and-go, and most vehicles are most fuel-efficient at about 80 km/h. Use tools like the Gas Buddy app for the iPhone to find the lowest prices on gas, you can search all across North America with this tool and website.

Avoid Traffic

Another way to save money on gas and to increase the enjoyment of your trip is to avoid traffic. A lot of students go on road trips during long weekends and other national holidays. Traffic can be very high at times like this so it might be best to leave a day early and/or come back a day late. Miss the traffic and save some money. If someone has a smartphone with GPS, you can check traffic on major routes using Google Maps. Those are just a few ways that you can save on your next road trip. The key is to do a bit of prep work before you head out on your trip and figure out where you might want to stay and what you want to do. It’s that simple.

This is a guest post by Gary Kohler from the life insurance website LifeCover.ca

Ultimate Guide to Sleeping Better and Waking Up Easier

Geoff — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:27:10 +0000

There is one thing that students wrestle with continually over their four years at university. It’s a slow, drawn out, down-hill struggle: sleep. We are always seeking more or better sleep, and ways to wake up in the morning without feeling like we’ve been hit with a truck. We’ve written a couple of times on the subject of sleep at Gearfire. We’ll it’s time to sum it all up into a go-to reference guide for students. A lot of people use coffee to help theme wake up in the morning, but caffeine is not a replacement for good sleeping habits. Use these tips to fall asleep easier, sleep better, and wake up feeling great!

Fall Asleep Quicker

Avoid Physical Activity & Eating 4 Hours Before Bed

After exercising or engaging in heavy physical activity, your body’s resting heart rate is increased for up to 6 hours after you stop activity. While this makes you feel great after exercising, it prevents the slowing of your heart rate and cooling of your body that facilitates sleep. Eating causes a similar effect. Immediately after eating your body begins working to digest the food, which is great and all, but it conflicts with the slowdown of bodily functions as you enter sleep.

Know When to Go to Bed

You should never spend more than 15 minutes trying to go to sleep. If you are lying in bed awake after 15 minutes, your body is not ready for sleep. You should get out of bed and do a light, restful activity such as reading until you are sleepy.

Your Bed is Used for Two Things…

… and sleep is one of them. Avoid reading in bed for long periods of time, studying, or using your computer while in bed. If you train yourself to consider the bed a place of rest, you will have an easier time falling asleep.

Prepare Things the Night Before

If you’re like me, you’re not a morning person, and that means that you do not function very well in the morning. It may take a couple hours for your mind and body to wake up fully. Try to do things the night before that you would otherwise do in the morning, such as preparing lunch, packing up your bag, or getting things together. When I have to wake up especially early I pack everything ready-to-go by the door, with my laptop in my back but also plugged in, charging over night. 10 minutes of preparation can save you 20 minutes of stumbling around half-awake in the morning. Not only will it save time, but your mind will rest easy knowing that it has nothing to worry about.

Empty Your Mind on Paper

If you have something on your mind, specifically things to remember, it can be very difficult to fall asleep. For this reason I always keep a pad of paper and a pen in my drawer, so that if I think of something I need to do in the morning just before I fall asleep, I can jot it down without getting out of bed.

Getting a Better Sleep

Ensure a Sleep-Friendly Environment

Make sure that your sleep is not disturbed by an increase in temperature, noise, or light during the night. That means turn off your phone, or at least put it on silent with the screen down. Vibrate can be surprisingly loud in a silent room, and receiving a text can light up the entire room. Blinders and earplugs are great if your roommate is waking up at 3 AM one morning to fly home or something like that, but if you use them routinely you will become accustomed to them and it will be very difficult to sleep without them.

Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Sleep!

College students generally required 8-10 hours of good sleep per night to function optimally. Unfortunately, you cannot run a sleep deficit during the week and make up for it on the weekend. Your body can make up for only 1 hour of lost sleep by sleeping more the next night.

Lack of Sleep Deteriorates Mind Performance

After an entire week of 6-hour nights, not only will you feel groggy, but your mental capacity will be functioning as if you had been awake for 24 hours. Statistics show that after 18 hours awake, your physical and mental impairment while driving is equal to being just above the legal limit. By depriving yourself of sleep, you are effectively attending class drunk.

Wake Up Easily

Develop your Body’s Internal Clock

If you’re like me, you reflect nostalgically on your elementary school days, where you woke up at the same time every day for school for four years. You even woke up early on Saturday to watch Saturday morning cartoons! You may remember how well-trained your body’s internal clock was. woke up at exactly 6:59 (Just before my alarm went off) and fell asleep at 10:40, like clockwork (pun intended).

If you force yourself to wake at roughly the same time each day, your body will begin to calibrate itself to that wakeup time, and your tiredness levels at night will adjust accordingly. This is an important thing to keep in mind when arranging your class schedule. Starting Tuesday at 12pm might sound great on paper, but if your waking up at 9am Monday and Wednesday, you might as well be consistent, your morning self will thank you.

Replicate Natural Waking Conditions

Your body naturally responds to environmental stimuli to determine when it should wake you up. Temperature, sound, and light all factor in here. Because your body temperature declines at night, reaching it’s lowest point at 4:00 AM, and then rises again before you wake up. If you have a programmable thermostat, lowering the temperature near bed-time and overnight will give you a deeper, easier sleep, and raising it before you wake up will help your body naturally wake up. Your body responds similarly to light. Try leaving the blinds open, so that the morning sun will fill your room, waking you naturally.

Sound is a little different. Your body doesn’t respond in a specific manner to sound, however you can use a slowly increasing volume alarm tone to gently nudge you out of sleep. I used the free audio-editing software Audacity to create a rising-volume track of bird songs, followed by an alarm tone near the end. I’ve never actually used the alarm tone, because a minute of loudening bird noises will wake almost anyone up.

Avoid All-Nighters at All Costs

Ah, the all-nighter. Simultaneously loved by students as a last minute quick fix for their bad studying habits, and hated for their devastating recovery period. An all-nighter completely wipes your body’s internal clock, which can be a good thing at times, but generally it is not. In fact it is common practice to pull an all-nighter to fight jetlag when between time zones. However travelers often set aside a day or so to rest and adjust, but as a student you’ll be right back in class the next day.

Position your Alarm Clock Outside of Arm’s Reach

A problem much more common than sleeping through your alarm is turning it off before you’re fully awake. If your alarm is always in the same place, you are conditioning yourself to turn it off. Eventually, when you hear the distinct sound of your alarm, your body will turn it off using muscle memory without you even being conscious. You can prevent this by moving your alarm clock out of arms reach, putting it in slightly different places each night, or by having one that is difficult to turn off. All of the above will require you to be more awake to disable your alarm. You could even try some of those novelty alarm clocks such as Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away from you.

What do you guys think? Share your sleephacks in the comments!

From the Archives: Preparing for a New School Year

Geoff — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:31:10 +0000

As you’re all gearing up for first semester in a couple weeks, take a look at some “buried wisdom” from the deep, carvernous archives of Gearfire.

Why You Need to Ask for Help as Soon as You Need It – Definitely something to keep in mind going into the new semester, especially for freshmen. It is super easy to fall behind, and if you don’t ask for help when you are confused, it will only get worse. Talk to a professor after hours for extra help, before your little confusion spirals out of control!

The Dual Screen Suggestion – Most students have laptops these days, with the exception of graphics design or film students. When buying a laptop there is a trade-off between screen real estate and portability. That 17″ Macbook Pro looks great, but it probably won’t fit in your bag, and that 13″ Thinkpad seems really nifty, until you start craving more than 13″ of screen real estate. The perfect compromise is to get an external monitor! No matter what your laptop size, your productivity will definitely benefit from having an additional screen. At $100-250 for most LCD monitors these days, it can make a very good addition to your birthday/Christmas wishlist.

Going Paperless with PDF – As little as five years ago, computers were considered a great creation tool, but whatever it was used to produce, be it word documents, spreadsheets, or flyers, were generally destined to be printed. The tables have turned, and computers are now becoming the primary medium, complimented by paper. Students have little need for large binders anymore, as any informational sheets can be scanned onto their computer, put through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and turned into searchable text in Microsoft OneNote.

7 Important Factors in Choosing a Good Work Environment – Within a couple weeks at university, most students realize that their dorm room is not a good place to study. Here are some tips on picking a good place to crank out some concentrated work.

How to Take Killer Notes and Cut Your Studying Time by 50% – Starting the year with a solid, well thought-out note taking method is a great way to improve over last year, and to minimize time spent scrambling before a large test.

10 Tips for Highly Effective Brainstorming Sessions – You may not be doing much brainstorming at the start of the year, but as your mid-term essays approach, these techniques could come in handy!

The Frugal Student: Get Microsoft Office 2010 for $80

Geoff — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:23:57 +0000

The Frugal Student is a weekly column on personal finance for students, brought to you by Chuck over at The Thrifty Lifestyle. Check out TheThriftyLifestyle.com for more frugal tips!

Money is often tight in college, and so students have developed many creative ways to save money. Unfortunately between productivity software like Microsoft Office and media software like Photoshop, computer software is often a big expense for students. Luckily software companies tend to recognize student need for software, and offer a lot at greatly reduced student pricing. Using the websites below you should never have to pay full price for software as a student again.

The Ultimate Steal: Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Academic for $80

Every year near the start of school, Microsoft starts up their Ultimate Steal promotion, where you can get the latest version of Office for pennies compared to a regular license, and all you need is a valid email address at a recognized post-secondary institution. For $80 you get a license key for the new 2010 version of Office, which includes all the regular fare plus OneNote, which is a great note-taking application for students. The license key is valid on two computers at any time. Get Microsoft Office 2010 for $80 here. You can also get a copy of Windows 7 Professional for $40. This is great to either upgrade your current Windows 7 installation for additional features, or to send home to Mom and Dad as a Christmas gift, as it would cost them $200 to buy it.

Get Adobe Software at an actually affordable price

Adobe is well known for pricing their design software to professional designers and graphics artists, leaving students with almost no choice but to pirate their software. That’s fine and all for the casual user, but for design students or people using the software for commercial applications, there is a big appeal to having a legit license, including less hassle and updates. You can get a copy of Photoshop CS5 Extended Edition for $200. Or, for the photographically inclined student, a $90 copy of Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a great addition to any photographers toolkit.

If neither of the above really apply to you, you can still get the Elements 8 Bundle for , which includes Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8. Both pieces of software are great for students, from editing last night’s party pictures to splicing together a professional looking video about your family vacation, anyone can benefit from this deal.

Look for Discounts in your Campus Bookstore

Campus bookstores often carry great deals on various computer hardware and software, because almost all of their customers are students. Apple is well-known for giving student discounts or bundling their computers with a free iPod or printer. As a student, you should rarely have to pay full retail price on computer software.

The Frugal Student is a weekly column on personal finance for students, brought to you by Chuck over at The Thrifty Lifestyle. Check out TheThriftyLifestyle.com for more frugal tips!

Catch up on Personal Reading Over the Summer

Geoff — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:11:59 +0000

For many of us, August is the most lazy month of the year. You are well adjusted to summer, summer jobs are dying down, and if you are going on a summer vacation, it is likely now. It’s also the perfect time to re-kindle the bookworm inside you. Your mother always told you to read more, and everyone knows it is important, but it is often pushed aside for other activities when we are busy. Whether your lounging on the dock at the cottage, the beach in the Caribbean, or your lawn chair at home, reading is the perfect activity for our laziest days. Here are some great resources to help you out!

The Best Books of the Year… So Far – If your looking for new reading material, take a look at Amazon’s list of the best sellers for the first half of 2010. Current books are a great conversation starter at parties!

New Amazon Kindle Wi-Fi – If you still haven’t bought a Kindle, here is your excuse to get one. The New Kindle WiFi is a sleek new redesign of the Kindle minus the worldwide 3G coverage, but for an even lower price of $140. If you’re trying to get yourself to read more, the surest way is to invest in a Kindle. Your weekly reading will dramatically increase when you have your books on a small, portable device that can be taken anywhere. (If you already have a Kindle check out How to Get the Most out of your Amazon Kindle)

The Pursuit of Laziness – Over at the XKCD blog, Randall strives to achieve the ultimate position for reading in bed with his Kindle. Definitely a great DIY project for any Kindle owners out there.

How to Slash your Book Expenses by 90% – Reading is already a financially smart hobby when you consider time vs cost, but you can make it even cheaper by using your local library, trading with friends, or using an online book swap service such as BookMooch.

What Should I Read Next? – This is a great way to find similar books based on what you like. Another great tool if you are low on reading material.

DIY Filofax Personal Organizer

A.Y. Daring — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:23:12 +0000

I’ve wanted a Filofax since the heavens opened up on me and showed me their beauty. But alas, there is little I love about them other than the aesthetics. The price and what you get inside for it is a bit of a turn off for me. The one shining glory of Filofaxes in my eyes is their quality- these things are built to last. I will probably end up getting on eventually. But for now, I have some beef, people!

The idea of a Filo is great. Insertable, customizable pages that you can arrange and order as your heart desires. And you can customize your tabs and sections and all those good things. Except when it comes to buying your Filofax and setting it up, you cannot mix and match the pages when you buy them from the company. (I called and confirmed my grievances!)

As in, if you know you’re not going to use the Contacts pages (which are quite a few pages) you can’t ask for them to be replaced with note pages. In retail stores, nearly every single one I called said that the most they’ll swap out the calendar pages in your Filo. So if the one you’re getting comes with a Week-Per-Page diary and you want a Day-Per-Page diary, they’ll do that swap out for you. But you’d still have to have those annoying contacts pages, and everything else you don’t want. And you can’t just buy the empty book, have them take out the price of the inserts and then buy the inserts you want seperately.

Now, maybe I’m just a big fat diva, but having to do that much customizing to get a product usable when it’d purchased to be used right off the shelf is a deal breaker for me, quality regardless. I’d rather just buy an empty small three ring binder, some lined paper, a few sticky tabs, and customise my own journal, then sit tight until I have enough disposable income to not care about buy extras for a $200 planner. Like I said, I will eventually get a Filo because they’re The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. So that’s what I did to tide myself over and how much it all cost me, in Canadian dollars (cause I live in Canada, not cause I’m trying to be weird):

One small three-ring binder. The cheapest one I could find was this Avery brand one. It was $5 or so at Staples, but there were a variety of colours in lots of other brands.
8-1/2″ x 5-1/2″ hole-punched paper. This is the size for the smallest kind of binder you can buy. It’s availible at every office suply store, but difficult to find and are more expensive than full sized lined paper. A pack of 50 was about $3 and I bought two. But 100 sheets of paper is a lot and I’ve been using my binder for a while now and I have yet to use all my paper, and I have a lot of sections.
A packet of sticky-tabs. Sticky-tabs are kind of an expensive product, but they last, so it’s worth the 4.99$ I paid for a pack of 20. And I still have quite a few left for other projects after making my biner, so it’s no biggie. I’m also kind of obsessed with all things Post-It and 3M so I was willing to buy from my favourite company. You can for sure get cheaper sticky tabs.
A fine point Sharpie. I already had a bunch laying around but I believe they’re only $0.99 each at Staples. Or maybe that’s the Dollar Store. Anywho, they’re cheap, and using Sharpies to label things makes for a bolder line than using pen, and a better looking label. True!

OK, so then what you do is throw your paper into your mini binder, make sections as you need to, and badda-boom, badda-bing, you’ve got yourself an organisational binder to help you keep your life together.

I’ve heavily modified GTD to suit my personal work style, and I divided up my binder like so: Current Goals, The Piazza Room (the business I started this summer), Action Lists & Schedules, Long-Term Goals, Life List, School, Statements & Affirmations, General Reference, Buy These, Budgets & Money, Quotes, Inbox. With the tabs I used, I could only line up four in a row before having to start from the top again, so that’s what I did.

From Drop Box

So you see, I have a great number of tabs. I sectioned it off according to the lists that I’d like with me at all times, hence having a quotes section and a tab for my life list. I like to group my actions around certain areas of my life, like school, and work, where I keep my projects lists and my action & context lists. They are very discrete sections. My Current Goals section is where I pull actions from all different areas of my life and I store daily to-do lists of things that MUST happen that day, lest my life go up in smoke.

And that’s how I DIY’d a Filofax to use for GTD. Feel free to approprate my methods!

5 Ways To Spruce Up Your Room on the Cheap

A.Y. Daring — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:49:48 +0000

1. Ask your artistic friends if they have any paintings that no longer want. You can get art wire on the cheap, and use those removable wall hooks to place art strategically around your walls. Generally, the centre of a painting should be at eye level, but rules were made to be broken!

2. Fresh flowers! It’s probably rude, but I like to pick flowers from gardens I see while I walk home. Yeah, like flowers from bushes in front of people houses. It’s free, but don’t go telling peope I do this! I mean, you could always go to the grocery store, but that’s expensive, and this is sprucing things up on the cheap!

3. Glass containers. I love, love, love glass containers for storing everything from my lipgloss collection, to cups for pens. It is a cheap and easy way to instantly make a storage solution elegant. Comb through local thrift stores, garage sales and your parent’s basement to see what they’ve got to offer.

4. Decorate with books. No, not your textbooks. I’m talking all your favourite leisure books. Grab two bookends, which you probably have lying around anyway, then line up your favourite books along a desk. Arrange them in some sort of clever fashion. (I like to do height order, but colour order looks much more chic and takes much more time than I have patience for. ) Put a glass vase (see tip #3) on each end, fill with flowers (see tip #2) and you have an instant visual interest piece that doubles as a storage solution and triples as making you looks like a smart kid who reads.

5. Paste up pictures, notes, tape stolen flowers to your wall, etc. Change the elements often and keep the edges of your scrapbook fluid and uneven. If you’ve ever watched a PogoBat video on YouTube, you’ve seen this idea in action. If not, take a look at the wall behind Dan Brown’s head in this video:

6. (Bonus tip) I got this tip from a friend who’s landlord was a bit of a lazy bum: cover holes in your walls with strategically placed posters. So those are my tips for decorating on the cheap. Do you have any?

Tattoos, Piercings and Other Things That Seem Cool Now…

A.Y. Daring — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:55:28 +0000

Ok, before I start this post, I want to mention that in pretty much every industrialized nation in the world, it is illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on physical appearance. That means that an employer can’t pass you over for a job because you have an eyebrow piercing. Know your rights!

But that said, people hire people, not resumes. If you look good on paper, but look aggressive and offputting in real life, and your interviewer is getting bad vibes from you, their prejudices could potentially put your career to a halt. The truth of the matter is that a septum ring and two full sleeves and a bright pink mohawk don’t exactly make for the most welcoming face for a lot of people, no matter how sweet your insides. So the question then becomes: as students and young adults not yet fully integrated into the professional world, how should we go about making the highly personal and individual decision of body modification?

I have two tattoos, but only one can be easily covered up, and I’m currently working on building two full sleeves which will hopefully be finished by age 27. (I want to take my time!) I’ve spoken about my first tattoo before here (in case you missed it, I have a big one on the back of my leg). A pant suit will cover it right up. The second one however, will show quite easily if the sleeves of said pantsuit rise even an inch- like when I’d be reaching out to shake the hand of my future interviewers.

I knew this going into the tattoo shop that the placement of my quarter sleeve on my forearm would make it difficult to hide, and therefore potentially disadvantage me in the workplace. But I went ahead with it anyway. Why? Because, quite frankly, if anyone chooses to pass over my skills and talents just because I love body art, and they cannot see past archaic and outdated ideas about the definition of “professional image,” then I don’t particularly want to work for them.

I think that’s the mindset with which you should approach the decision if you’re considering visible body modification before entering the workplace. If the people or industry you’re going to potentially work for see your personal choices (which are frankly, none of their business) as reason enough to ignore your job related skills, then you don’t want to work for them anyway! It’s the same if you’re considering coming out in the workplace (or at least, choosing to not be closeted). If they judge you for it, then you’re better off without them!

These are just my personal views thought- what do you think about body modification at the age/stage we’re currently at? By the way, from experience, I’ve found that most employers under the age of 50 don’t really care- most find them cool, especially when I’m upfront about the fact that I have a tattoo that, even with the dress code, will occasionally be visible. Every job that I’ve had working for someone else has just told me to do my best to keep it covered.

But still, I want to here from you- body modification for professionals: yay or nay?

No related posts.

Miscellaneous Thoughts From A.Y.

A.Y. Daring — Wed, 19 May 2010 23:59:55 +0000

I’ve had the window of this post open for days, and as the hours tick past I’ve been going back and forth and jotting down ideas and realizations about high achievement, focus and miscellaneous ideas that are big enough to be useful, but not big enough for their own post. Most of these are just for entertainment value- I hope they make you think and/or smile!

Every minute you spend doing one thing is one minute that you can never spend doing something else. If you can pull future tasks into the present, you can free up time in the future. What you do with free time is all up to you. I personally, will be using this free time that I’m creating for myself to take over the world! (And maybe apply for a scholarship or two.)
Writing an outline before beginning an essay actually helps. Doing research first helps even more. As in don’t research and essay while writing it. The outline should be proportionate to the size of the essay.
Editing you iTunes while doing anything serious is a time waster. So is popping virtual bubble wrap.
When essay writing, keep a running list of all the sources you use. As in, make the bibliography as you go along, instead of being horrified by the realization that you forgot to change the “date accessed” part of your Bibme automatic citation just as you press print on your 20 page essay.
Working in your dorm room is a bad idea, but sometimes the library reveals itself to be the grey soul sucking place that it really is. OK, not really. But for days when you need to do your work in a place quieter than your dorm, but not as quiet as a library, use Wi-Fi Free Spotto find a restaurant or cafe in your city that has free wi-fi, and go to your work! I copied down the list of all the free wi-fi spots in my city into my planner, as well as the hours and addresses of those places so I can always find the closet one that’s still open.
There is always at least one bus route that runs from one end of a city to another, stopping in major central locations. Always have it’s map/schedule pamphlet in your wallet- it will come in handy at least half a dozen times, especially on weekends when you need a safe way to get home after one too many drinks.
On the back of that pamphlet, copy down the number of the local taxi company, in case the bus driver won’t let you get on. (Hey, it’s happened!)
When you have a course in which your grade is comprised entirely of two or three essays, no exams, it can be difficult to get yourself to class. But go anyway. Because it’s in the lecture that the significant of the readings will be discussed, and it is this understanding of the bigger picture that will take your essay to the next level, and really set it apart from the others. I like to keep a running mind map of my course that I add to during lectures. When essay time rolls around then, I’ll have an outline of it ready to go, with the big picture laid out for me.
When feeding yourself on a budget farmers markets are almost always cheaper than the grocery store, and planning out a weekly menu ahead of time can help you make sure you buy all the ingredients you need during that one trip.
Come to think of it, a good mindset to have about grocery shopping is that you’re “ingredient buying”. Think about the food you eat in terms of means to nourish your body and keep you healthy, not a way to just stave off hunger for the time being. Food eating and preparing should be an important part of your day and you should be very conscious of what’s going into your body. It’s the only one you ever get, eh? A large pack of Oreos or a box of Kraft Dinner should not be the highlight of your evening!
Libraries are awesome, but they really come to life when you ask the librarians for help. They know, like, a lot.