Today I am introducing the new No Rainy Days List. It is a list for anyone who agrees with the idea that life can’t wait for a rainy day — that it has to happen today. As a short way of saying this, I like to say that there are “no rainy days.” The following excerpt from the very beginning of Fear of Nothing explains more about what this means.
April 03, 2009
April 01, 2009
Get Your Whole Life Organized in 10 Minutes!
It’s the first day of a new month, and time to finally get organized. And not by the same old techniques like making lists or spring cleaning that have never worked in the past, either. With these quick tips from Michele Connolly of GetOrganizedWizard.com, you can get your whole life organized in just ten minutes!
March 16, 2009
The Clothing Swap
You want to breathe some new life into your wardrobe, but you can’t spend much money and you have too much clothing already: that’s exactly the situation that calls for a clothing swap.
February 02, 2009
The Groundhog Day Effect
The movie Groundhog Day depicts a man forced to live the same day over and over again. Life seems like that sometimes, when today does not seem much like a new day, just the day after yesterday. The feeling that every day is just another version of the same thing is what I call the Groundhog Day effect. It’s a problem because when you start to expect more of the same, it becomes hard to find or create anything new.
In reality, every day is different, with different actions and different situations. You cannot escape the Groundhog Day effect by trying very hard to do something different, because you’re already doing something new and different every day. It just doesn’t feel like it. The way to escape the Groundhog Day effect is to put more of your energy into the things that make every day different.
January 18, 2009
Not Missing Out on Inauguration Day
The United States will inaugurate a new president in two days, and at least one in 50 people in the country is personally involved in the event, going to Washington to be part of it, going to an observance elsewhere, or helping the rest of us keep up with the events. It is a ritual built up around an oath of office that, in a pinch, could be done by four people in less than a minute, yet millions of people will be spending most of the day on it. And others worry that they may be missing out.
January 07, 2009
A Good Time to Throw Things Away
You throw things away every day, but this month and perhaps this entire year are an especially good time to throw things away.
One reason is low fuel prices. Fuel prices are half of what they were recently and near their lowest levels in five years. They may not stay at these low levels for long, so it’s good to take advantage of the current low prices. Fuel is the main material cost of throwing things away — imagine how much fuel it takes to drive one of those big garbage trucks full of garbage. Throw things away now, and they can get hauled away at the current low fuel prices. It won’t cost any less to throw things away in the future, so if you have things to throw away, you may as well throw them away now.
December 28, 2008
When Spring Comes 3 Months Early
The weather today is a perfect example of why it doesn’t always make sense to plan ahead. The temperature is already (before 9 a.m.) higher than the high temperature that was forecast a day in advance, and if the sun comes out, we could have May-like weather and a record high temperature. It’s not the weather anyone could have planned on, but here it is, and it’s a great day to do something outside, or get an early start on spring cleaning.
December 21, 2008
No Snow Days
When I say, “There are no rainy days anymore,” I mean it doesn’t make sense to set aside tasks to do on days when you aren’t so busy. The things that interrupt our schedules are not frequent enough or disruptive enough to throw us off. That means, if you know you can’t do something today, it’s safe to assume you won’t be able to do it tomorrow either.
