two birds, one stone -- yummy dead birds!
I'm writing this from my treadmill, which I find simultaneously ridiculous and awesome.
I got a treadmill a few months back and have been using it regularly, recently upgraded to daily. The point was simply to be a little bit less sedentary; near-daily bike rides to school and occasional yoga constitute my official exercise, and in the summer I'm usually tromping about in the garden a fair bit (though inevitably less than I'd like). But I spend a lot of time just sitting on my ass in front of a computer -- this is the hazard of my particular combination of work and hobbies. So this summer, prompted by a conversation with
the_shoshanna, I got the treadmill and a laptop shelf and started walking while I make my morning rounds of the web, and occasionally while I watch something on Netflix Watch Instantly. It's worked very well.
But the reason I am making this post now is because I have discovered that this new morning routine is helping me keep up with my work-related email. This is a huge deal for me, because I hate work-related email and tend to ignore it if I'm not being really conscientous. About 5% of my email is time-sensitive pertinent questions from current students, 1% is updates from former students (and I'm working to shift them all over to my non-work account since they are now buddies rather than work responsibilities), another 9% is stuff I actually need to know and/or feel fine about dealing with, and the remaining 85% can be summarized as "please solve this problem you did not cause or clean up this mess you did not make" and/or "please show up for this useless meeting that should already be on your calendar from the previous 15 emails about it."
Left to my own devices, I recoil from work email as from a poisonous snake.
But I have been checking it! And answering it! Every morning! While walking between two and three miles! For weeks now! My halo is so shiny you can see it from space, I swear.
Of course I still have to deal with the backlog that predates my newfound mature responsibility. But I'm working on it! And hey, at least I'm not getting further behind.
We're calling this one a victory. And lord knows I could use those right now.
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I got a treadmill a few months back and have been using it regularly, recently upgraded to daily. The point was simply to be a little bit less sedentary; near-daily bike rides to school and occasional yoga constitute my official exercise, and in the summer I'm usually tromping about in the garden a fair bit (though inevitably less than I'd like). But I spend a lot of time just sitting on my ass in front of a computer -- this is the hazard of my particular combination of work and hobbies. So this summer, prompted by a conversation with
the_shoshanna, I got the treadmill and a laptop shelf and started walking while I make my morning rounds of the web, and occasionally while I watch something on Netflix Watch Instantly. It's worked very well.
But the reason I am making this post now is because I have discovered that this new morning routine is helping me keep up with my work-related email. This is a huge deal for me, because I hate work-related email and tend to ignore it if I'm not being really conscientous. About 5% of my email is time-sensitive pertinent questions from current students, 1% is updates from former students (and I'm working to shift them all over to my non-work account since they are now buddies rather than work responsibilities), another 9% is stuff I actually need to know and/or feel fine about dealing with, and the remaining 85% can be summarized as "please solve this problem you did not cause or clean up this mess you did not make" and/or "please show up for this useless meeting that should already be on your calendar from the previous 15 emails about it."
Left to my own devices, I recoil from work email as from a poisonous snake.
But I have been checking it! And answering it! Every morning! While walking between two and three miles! For weeks now! My halo is so shiny you can see it from space, I swear.
Of course I still have to deal with the backlog that predates my newfound mature responsibility. But I'm working on it! And hey, at least I'm not getting further behind.
We're calling this one a victory. And lord knows I could use those right now.
comments on Dreamwidth || Leave a comment at Dreamwidth || How to use OpenID