TrulySimple

TSA #14 – Make a mess

Ben — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:05:58 +0000

I’m a fairly clean person and try to keep things organized. I ~~think~~ hope I’m not over doing it, but I really like knowing where things are when I need them, so I keep things neat and try not to make big messes as its also usually me who has to clean them up. Since I can usually find a hundred other things on my list that is above cleaning up, I try not to make big messes.

But this can be a problem. Sometimes I get too focused on the mess and avoid doing fun things that create that mess.

Sometimes Its just as little as not wanting to cook to avoid having to clean up the post cooking mess. Or its not wanting to get packed up to go on a fun adventure knowing there will be a big mess to clean up afterwards.

Last night with all my friends and their families, we packed up and headed to the beach too cook dinner and smores over a bonfire at the beach. I was excited, yet hesitant as I’m the one who has to unpack all camping gear from the garage and load up the Jeep, knowing that I have to put it all away when I get home and clean it all up etc. These little thoughts get into my head and then I’m not as excited and am frustrated at the work ahead.

But then the mess leads to great fun. We had an awesome bonfire at the beach. We cooked chicken and dumplings in the dutch oven over the fire. Then we had gourmet s’mores with 3 kinds of chocolate treats to choose from. The kids ran around on the beach, the adults sat around the fire and it was awesome. It was so awesome. It was well worth the mess. And it usually is.

So this week, your Truly Simple Action is to make a mess.

Start a project you’ve been putting off because of the mess you’ve been wanting to avoid. Get out the camping gear and take a road trip. Get out the neatly organized stuff that isn’t serving its purpose being neat and organized and put it to good use.

Make a mess. Have fun. Live your life. There will always be messes to clean up but the best messes are the ones that are the result of great memories being made. Making memories can be messy, but they are always worth it.

Go make a mess.

Ben…

TSA = Truly Simple Actions
The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time. Take time this week to do this one simple thing.

Previous TSA’s:
TSA#1 - Buy a meal for someone who needs it
TSA#2 - Go do something fun
TSA#3 - Enough with the plastic bottles
TSA#4 - Learn something new
TSA#5 - Celebrate Christmas
TSA#6 - Start off the new year with a clean room
TSA#7 - Improve
TSA#8 – Tell someone you love them
TSA#9 – Adopt some grandparents
TSA#10 - Organize your life: Inbox edition
TSA#11 - Try a new local restaurant
TSA#12 – Stop watching one TV show
TSA#13 - Do one thing that needs to be done

TSA #13 – Do one thing that needs to be done

Ben — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:32:39 +0000

I had a fun weekend.

My wife went to grab something out of the bottom of the hall closet the other day and noticed it was wet. That’s weird. There shouldn’t be water in the bottom of the closet. So I take everything out from down there and lo and behold the carpet is wet. That’s not good. I also notice some mold on the drywall of the closet. That’s really not good.

So I assume a water pipe has sprung a leak that runs through the wall of the closet and set out to repair it. I remove everything from the closet and tear out the carpet and remove the moldy drywall. Not fun. I inspect the pipes to find no leak. That’s not a good sign because now I don’t know where the water is coming from, except that in removing the drywall and such I notice more mold on the other side of the wall, which is where the bathroom is. So now I am assuming the toilet is leaking and is leaking water into all of the walls around it. Awesome. So I remove the toilet and notice a lot of water below it. I then proceed to remove the toilet, surrounding tile and all of the drywall around it. Good times.

That was my fun weekend. It will be a ~~small~~ project to get that all back in working order, but I will get it done.

Second story. Cut to this morning, and I’m on my way to catch the train to work and I notice my Jeep is driving a bit odd and making a noise when I’m on the freeway. I have a flat tire. So I pull over, inspect the damage and set about changing it. Its not terribly hard, but not super easy either. But I get it done and make it to the train station to catch the next train.

There are things that we don’t want to do. Sometimes we can put them off. Sometimes we are forced to do them. I was forced to change the tire this morning. I could have put off the bathroom remodel project til a a later date, but I knew it had to be done, so I did it.

Your Truly Simple Action for this week is to pick out that one thing on your list that you know has to be done and do it. Pick that one thing that you really don’t want to do. Pick the one item that has been causing you stress for days, weeks, hopefully not months and just get it done. Start doing that one thing and you will realize something. You wil learn that it wasn’t so big and scary as you thought it was. It will prove to be easier than you had made it out to be in your head. And when you check off that item from your list you will feel amazing and empowered to conquer anything else that might be on your list.

Whenever we have a list of things to do, we tend to sometimes put the big scary items at the end of the list. Or we tend to do all the little easy ones first, just dancing around that big one, knowing that we will have to get to it someday. This is a bad way to do things, because the entire time your mind is thinking about that big item. Its obsessing, worrying, stressing out over that one thing. We make it into such a big deal that it causes us to be distracted and stressed out until its done. Don’t do that.

Tackle the big thing first. Identify that one item that you know you have to do, but have been putting off. Put a firm deadline on it of sometime this week. It could take you an hour, or a day, just put a date and time by which you will have it done. Now go do it. No more excuses.

Ben…

TSA #12 – Stop watching one TV show

Ben — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:21:03 +0000

This weeks Truly Simple Action is very simple. Just stop watching one TV show.

You don’t have to stop watching TV completely, although thats not a bad idea. This week you only need to cut out one show. Pick a show that you just don’t watch that much any more. Pick a show that you have several episodes backlogged on your DVR and just stop watching it. Pick a show that you only watch when there is nothing on and that has no redeeming value and just stop watching it.

We just watch too much TV. I know I go through phases where I watch too much and then I try to scale it back and do other things.

This method helps me do this in small steps. Just pick one show. It could be a great show that you really like but somehow haven’t been keeping up with. That gives you a nice chance to say, obviously its not THAT important or I would be watching it. So stop watching it. Or just cut out any silly “reality” show on MTV/VH1/E etc. And I put reality in quotes because you know it isn’t real. Its not even close to being real.

So this week, your Truly Simple Action is to pick one show and stop watching it. Quite an easy task really because its actually requiring you to do no work.

So take that extra time that you have and take a walk or read a book or go do something nice for someone else.

Ben…

TSA #11 – Try a new local restaurant

Ben — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:33:07 +0000

This weeks Truly Simple Action is a fun one. You know that little restaurant down the street that you keep telling yourself to try one of these days? This week, your Truly Simple Action is to go eat at that restaurant.

This economy is hard for everyone, unless your rich, and 9 times out of 10 I would recommend staying home and cooking something awesome, but this week I’m recommending you go out to eat. But don’t just go out to eat at some fast food joint or the local chain of whatever restaurant. Go support a local small business and seek out a small family owned restaurant. Give your money to the small business and support their restaurant and what they are doing. Also if you like their food and service go above and beyond and write up a nice little yelp review or recommend it to your friends.

Here is my recommendation:

My wife and I ate at the Yellow Deli yesterday. I’ve been wanting to try that place for way too long now and we finally went. It was AMAZING. The food was so good and the people were really nice. The cream cheese pie with strawberries was the best thing ever. They have several locations around the country and I recommend you check them out.

So that is your assignment this week. Go to that cute little family owned diner down the street and help spread the word about their business.

Ben…

1-A-Week: Week 3 & 4 – Hats and tile

Ben — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:42:53 +0000

For weeks 3 and 4 of my 1AW project I am donating some old ski hats and giving away some free leftover white ceramic tile.

The tile has been in our house since we moved in 10+ years ago and I dug it out of the garage rafters while cleaning out some stuff the other day. I don’t need to store it so I’m giving it away on Craigslist so someone can use it on their project.

And we’ve collected way too many winter ski hats over the years and while getting out our ski gear to go skiing the other day I set aside a bunch of hats to donate.

so nice to have the extra room.

Ben…

1AW is a project by which I’m getting rid of at least 1 thing each week that I do not need, want, or use anymore. Doing at least one thing per week helps me reduce the clutter in my life and make room for what is truly important.

What are you getting rid of this week? Leave a comment and let me know.

TSA #10 – Organize your life: Inbox edition

Ben — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:11:35 +0000

Part of the aim of these Truly Simple Actions is to make your life better. I’m going to throw a sub-section into these around organizing your life. There are many simple things we could do each week to help organize the space we inhabit and there in turn make our lives a little better. Here is a big one.

Not big in the amount of time it takes to do, but big in the impact it will have on your life. Everyday we are bombarded with advertising, messaging, memes, and actual letters from friends. Unless your recently new to email, you probably receive too much of it. If you are spending any amount of time deleting unwanted email, you are doing it wrong.

The Truly Simple Action of the week is to organize your inbox.

Your inbox should only be filled with messages you want to receive from people you know. Period. Full stop.

If you are spending time removing unwanted messages, then its time to fix that. The good news is that email systems today have incredibly easy tools built in to help you achieve this goal. I’m going to use Gmail as my reference. I believe they are the best email out there today and if you are frustrated with yours, it may be time to switch.

This is a simple 2 step process.
Step 1: Remove everything you don’t want
Step 2: Filter everything else

Lets jump right in and get started with step 1.

Step one is to remove everything that you don’t want. You need to go through your inbox and find every message that you just don’t care about. You want to start with all of the reoccurring messages you get that you never read. Go through all of the newsletters you signed up for. Go through all of the advertisements you signed up for. Anything that you regularly receive that you never read, just unsubscribe from it. Now you don’t have to unsubscribe from every advertisement, although I would try it and see if you miss it.

Every email you sign up for is required, by law, to have a simple unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email they send you. Some hide this link and make it a little tricky to find, but it’s there. Simply go through all of those emails that you never read and unsubscribe from them. Even if you get my TrulySimple Newsletter each month and never read it, just unsubscribe. It won’t hurt my feelings…too much.

Go through all of your email and unsubscribe. Do this in one big chunk and then follow up and do this as the messages come in this week. This will cut down on all the time wasted removing unread and unwanted messages.

Ok onto step 2. Filter everything else

After you have unsubscribed out all the unwanted mail its time to sort the mail you do want. We are going to do this with filters. You are going to want to create a few filters that your emails fit into. Here are the filters I created for myself.

Stuff to by
Stuff to do
Travel
Social
Bills

I have a few other miscellaneous ones, but those cover a large majority of the emails. Now I recommend that as part of step1 you unsubscribe from any and all advertisements possible. There may be some advertisments that you do still want to receive. I’m all for saving money and there are a few places that I like to shop at so I stil receive those emails, but they never get to my inbox. I setup a filter for all of my email for sales, deals, etc and they all get labled with “stuff to by” and then they all skip my inbox. This way when I am ready to buy something I can quickly scan my stuff to buy folder and see if there are any deals, but I am no longer spending my time reading these emails.

Here is how you create a filter in Gmail:

Open the message that you want to filter. So in this example I want to filter all messages from Woot.

Click on the “More” options in Gmail and select “filter messages like these”

Gmail will now set the filter. It will usually set it to filter by from address first and that is what we want. So now all emails that come from “no-reply@woot.com” will get filtered for me.

Next click on “Create filter with this search”

Now we are going to put a check mark in the boxes for “Skip the inbox” so all of these emails will get filtered and will not come into the inbox. Next check the box for “Apply the label” and select the appropriate filter label or create a new one. For this example we will choose the “Stuff to buy” label. You can also select the box to apply these settings to all those that the filter found.

Click “Create Filter” to finish.

Now all of my advertisements and daily deals etc go into a box where I can scan through them if I want to. Instead of being bombarded by advertisements, I go looking for deals when I’m ready to shop.

Repeat this step for all of those ads that you still want to receive and unsubscribe from all the ones that you no longer want to get.

Now create filters for the rest of your inbox. The “stuff to buy” filter is my biggest one. Next up is my “stuff to do” filter. I filter in all the latest concerts, movies, and things happening around me. So all the emails from Fandango, Ticketmaster, local events etc go into that category. My travel filter is for all the travel sites and frequent flyer emails I get. Again, when I’m ready to book a ticket, I dig into the travel folder and see what deals are there. I’ve setup all of my bills to be paid online automatically and I’ve elected for paperless billing so I don’t have to go through and recycle any paper at home. I set up the bills filter so I never have to read these emails, but I like to keep them for reference. And finally I have the social filter to capture all the Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Anybeat, etc messages I get. Actually somehow in some upgrade Facebook stopped sending me mail altogether and its quite nice. You don’t need to know when someone new is following you on Twitter that very instant. You don’t need to know that your aunt on your mother’s side likes your status update. Filter all that noise out. Put it all in one place where you can scan over the messages you do want and you can skip the rest.

Now you can create whatever filters that work for you. I would suggest creating a few big bucket filters that can catch a lot of the email and then go nuts and create some smaller ones to help you keep things organized. What you should end up with is an inbox that only has messages that you want to read. These should be from friends, family, co-workers etc. That is what your time should be spent on. You shouldn’t be wasting your time trying to find a real email amidst the noise of all the advertising.

Take some time today and clean up your inbox. And then spend the rest of the week refining it. As you get a new message in your box that you will never read, instead of just skipping over it or deleting it, simply unsubscribe. And for all those messages that you want, but maybe aren’t that important, filter those out of your inbox. Keep the inbox for you. Let that be where you spend time interacting with real people. Let your email work for you

Ben…

Stand up for what you believe

Ben — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:11:10 +0000

The government is trying to push through two pieces of legislation aimed at curbing Internet piracy. Both of these proposals would do little to effectively combat piracy but would censor the internet in a harmful way. It would also cause great harm to companies working on the Internet today and any young companies trying to start their business online.

These bills are brought forward from Hollywood, an industry that refuses to adapt to new technology and would rather just sue competition out of business verses innovate.

I have been fortunate to work both in Hollywood and within the technology sector and can tell you stories first hand of these lawsuits that have destroyed good companies.

I firmly believe the Internet should not be censored. I also believe that hollywood lobbyists should not be allowed to buy the laws they want passed.

Take one minute today and call and wrote your senator and congressman. Simply tell them that you do not want the internet censored and you do not support SOPA or PIPA. Tell them that if they vote for these bills you will not vote for them.

Its just that simple. I have already called. Please take a minute and stand up for what you believe in.

Here is what you can do right now.

Call your local representative & Sign the online petition

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Ben…

TSA #9 – Adopt some grandparents

Ben — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:54:10 +0000

If you are lucky enough to have your grandparents still around, go spend time with them. If your grandparents are no longer around, adopt some new ones.

I was recently watching this really cute cooking show featuring 96 year old Clara showing us how she makes her spaghetti and it reminded me of my Nana. Her mannerisms are similar and my Nana always used to make me the best spaghetti.

Fishing with my neighbor Don

While both sets of our grandparents are no longer with us, we are very fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood that is filled with wonderful older people. They have adopted us as their neighborhood grand kids and we have adopted them as our new grandparents.

I help them setup and fix their computers and they bring us fresh baked treats. Its a wonderful arrangement. Actually they do a lot more for us. They are always watching our house, our dogs, and always there to help lend a tool or help with a project.

We’ve been meaning to take them out to dinner to thank them for watching our dogs and finally took the time to do it last night. So my wife and I took two sets of our neighbors/adopted grandparents out to a cute German deli/restaurant for dinner and it was the best thing in the world. We both asked each other why we haven’t done that sooner and how could we do it once a month moving forward.

We talked about their time in the military and all the places they have lived. I always enjoyed hearing the stories of my grandparents and loved hearing their time of service and how they lived. We shared a meal and laughed together as we shared stories.

This weeks Truly Simple Action is to take some time to spend with your grandparents, if you are lucky enough to still have them with you. If your grandparents are gone, just adopt some new ones. Invite over your older neighbors for dinner or perhaps go volunteer down at the local senior center.

I cannot wait to do this again soon and often.

Ben…

Best cookie in the world – Take 1

Ben — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:12:25 +0000

I set out on a quest the other night. To make the best cookie in the world. I was craving a good cookie, but also had a brilliant idea. I set out looking through the various cookie recipes and made some plans as to what to try. Here are the results from the first attempt.

They were pretty spectacular and here’s how you make them.

Here’ s the usual cookie ingredients:

1 cup butter
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cups granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender to a fine powder)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 small box of vanilla pudding

And here’s the brilliant idea. Instead of chocolate chips I had an idea to use Frango’s. I’m not a big chocolate person, but I LOVE Frango’s.

They used to be sold at a store called the Bon Marche that went out of a business a few years ago and now you can find them at Macy’s around the holidays. I bought a box for my wife because they are awesome and because I wanted to eat a few of them. After eating ~~a few~~ way too many, I had the great idea for an amazing chocolate chip cookie made with Frango’s.

First you need to blend the oatmeal. These aren’t oatmeal cookies, but they have oatmeal in them and it makes them extremely soft and chewy.

Throw it in a food processor and process into a fine powder.

Now add your box of vanilla pudding to this mix. I saw this on a few other recipes and thought I’d try it in the mix. Set that mixture aside and grab your big mixer.

Add in your brown sugar

and white sugar

mix it up

add your butter

and eggs

Real vanilla from Mexico is awesome. Use it if you have it. If you don’t have it, go to Mexico and get some.

Throw the vanilla in

Then add the flour

finally add the oatmeal mixture

Now for the magical chocolate chips made from Frango’s…

I chopped them up into different sized chunks

I knew I was onto something good at this point

Preheat the oven to 375. Mix the choloate into the dough and spoon out onto your baking sheets.

bake at 375 for 10 minutes and voila.

yeah they were pretty damn awesome. Soft, chewy and a hint of mint.

Did I reach my goal on the first take? Its hard to say. They were amazing out of the oven and everyone in the office devoured the extra’s I brought in, but I think there is room for improvement. I was also going to shave a chocolate bar from Trader Joes and add that in, but I had enough chocolate with the Frango’s so I didn’t end up using that. I also don’t know that I needed the vanilla pudding mix. It was good, but maybe not necessary.

I’m going to continue the quest and tweak the recipe and search for some new ideas, but these are definately a keeper and something I’ll make around the holdiays. The mint in the chocolate is just to die for in these.

Ben…

1-A-Week: Week 1 & 2 – Beginning again…with shoes

Ben — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:19:53 +0000

I have not started off well this year with posting my continued 1-A-Week project updates. With the time constraints of the new job I may not be posting these each week as they are not the most compelling content, but rather a reminder as to what you could get rid of each week and/or hopefully some helpful hints on how to do it.

I still plan on keeping with the program until I run out of stuff to get rid of, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

For weeks 1 and 2 of January its all about shoes! I never get rid of shoes until they fall apart and my wife never gets rid of shoes ever. This is always a fun topic of discussion between us so I was shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, when she handed me a pair of her shoes to get rid of for her.

So my old pair of shoes will get donated and her’s, while still in great condition, but just don’t fit her, will go up on eBay for some lucky person to own.

Ben…

What are you getting rid of this week? Leave a comment and let me know.