Here we are, at the start of February. The second month of the year, when the dust and glitter from the New Year’s excitement has started to settle, and when, as the kids so poignantly put it these days, shit gets real.
I have long disavowed the idea of New Year resolutions as anything other than symbolic, in favor of setting more realistic goals to work towards in life as well as throughout the year. Which essentially forms the tenet of my attitude towards 2017 – No Dreams, Just Goals!
Something I took away from the end of 2016 was the shift from a totally driven hustle to a soft focus on self and well-being. Mini-life hacks, if you will. For never has the saying – just because you’re not sleepy doesn’t mean you’re not tired! – rung so true to me before. In 2017, I told myself, I would try to bring a little more balance to my life, and correct the little inefficiencies, as well as give myself permission to enjoy myself and allow myself certain luxuries. Balance and moderation is where it’s at. And so here’s a list of the things I’ve set out to do over the new year, which I hope will carry over past end-2017 and also provide you guys some inspiration moving forward!
1. Making time to learn
With all the focus on work, very often I find myself working till its time to go to bed. Which is great for getting the minute things done, but not so great in achieving a sense of holistic well-being. I also felt like that just caused me to be really experienced in one thing, but not really give me the mental or physical space to expand past that.
So in 2016, I made a resolution to read more. And 2017 continues that on, with a strict rule: no using phones on public transport (unless I’m reading an e-book), use the time to read instead. I also give myself a half-hour to hour before bedtime each night to read.
And where do I get my books? E-books are aplenty on the internet, and most classics are free. I personally also gave myself a budget of 2 books per month from
Book Depository, which you’ll find is significantly cheaper than anything you find instore. For local or more curated titles, I go to
Books Actually. I do find that Book Depo is better if you know what you already want, and Books Actually if you don’t know what to read and would like some recommendations. Books Actually very affectionately dubs their staff BA Elves, and you can chat with them online or instore for recommendations! Both of them also give you the option to check out with PayPal One Touch, which makes it sooooo convenient to check out and have your books shipped to your address without having to retype everything over and over again.
2. Getting more productive by carving out a space of my own
Ever since mid-2016, I’d started renting my own office space at my favourite co-working space, The Hive. I do find that making a financial commitment (rent) to work as well as having a space to truly call your own really makes a huge difference in terms of the most simple things, like feeling happier when you wake up early to head to work! Productivity is up, as is generally work-life happiness.
This is a point that generally applies to freelancers a lot more than it does office-professionals, but I do think that if you’re an office-professional who finds that you bring home work a lot, you can make things easier on yourself by carving out a specific area at home as well as time period that you dedicate to completing extra work. And for freelancers – you need to find a place that’s suited to your needs. I chose The Hive because of it’s location, price, and its ability to let me work anywhere in the world in their international branches. Find something that works for you, and I guarantee you’ll find yourself free to work on other areas in your work life once you stop having to worry about when and where to set up desk for the day!
3. Getting properly organised electronically
This is really important to me because I am the WORST with organisation! I’m a little bit OCD, but also naturally a dash ADHD and thus really messy, which in turn drives my OCD crazy. My lame excuse is that I’m an arts student, okay?
But because of that I’m always on the search for things that can get my life in order for me, so to speak. Here are some of my favorite apps that I think would be helpful to nearly anyone...
Cloud
A basic and functional to-do list that syncs your tasks across your phone and computer. There’s a desktop app for this as well as a phone app, and if you’re on the latest iOS, Todoist is supported by Apple Widgets so you get a basic preview of everything you have due on the widget screen even before you unlock your phone!
I used to use iCloud’s calendar, but I find it too limiting in terms of how many platforms I can sync it across. So right now I’m mainly on Google Cal in addition to my paper planner (still a traditionalist at heart after all), and I love it for the same reason I love Todoist – you can have it anywhere, anytime, and it syncs to your phone so you get upcoming events pinned to your notifications center!
Desktop (iMac)
Caffeine is a cute little coffee mug icon sitting on your dashboard that does just one thing, but does it well. When you click on it, it prevents your mac screen from going to sleep. Seems like such a small thing but makes a huge difference streamlining your workflow, especially if you always have to leave your desk to run errands! It’s a free app anyway, so why not eliminate the five seconds lag you have while waiting for your computer to warm up again? Small efficiencies, you guys!
I edit and store almost all my documents in the cloud, so I find that having Dropbox as an offline folder on my mac is insanely useful. If you’re lacking space on your desktop’s hard drive, just edit preferences under settings in the desktop app, and select “selective sync“. Keep only the folders you absolutely need on your desktop (work documents, etc.) and tada! The best of both worlds – lots of free space, AND nonstop accessibility to your files. I also invested in Dropbox Pro a couple of years back, and for 99$ a year you have all the cloud storage you’d possibly need for personal use, so I’d definitely recommend it! You can also set your recurring yearly payments to be made through PayPal, and get a notification on your phone whenever a payment is made – if you have the PayPal mobile app.
Franz is my favourite and most frequently used free desktop app because it allows you to have all your different chat services in one app! It looks exactly like the Desktop WhatsApp app, except with tabs for your other services like Telegram, FB Messenger, Google Hangouts, and more than one WhatsApp Profile if you use multiple phones for whatever reason like work or something. I really like it because everything is hosted on one app so you don’t need seven million different windows open at once, and you can see everything at a glance. Props for efficiency!
Phone
Polymail is my favourite mail app (iOS) because it’s super clean, organised, and gives you really useful functions like snoozing a mail (so you can remind yourself to read it later) and read receipts down to the exact timing (if you send out a mail from the app itself). This was especially freaky for my students, when I asked them why they didn’t do their readings or assignments when I know they read my email at 8:46pm two nights ago…
Because I hate running around looking for a scanner or printer! I actually hate using photocopier machines with a passion, because I’m convinced my paper will get stuck, spoil the machine, and leak ink all over the floor. Ah, our small irrational fears… Cam Scanner can’t print your stuff, but it does do a really good job of processing and scanning documents with the phone camera itself. Super useful if you’re always on the go.
One of my pet peeves about traveling is when the airline changes gates or makes random flight changes and expects me to realise from their muffled airport announcements! I understand that this probably only applies to Singaporean readers, but the iChangi app is great because it logs your flights and gives you push notifications when anything changes, and when the airlines release your gate number. In addition to that, you can log on to the free airport wifi THROUGH the app for efficiency. It also has a tab that lists ALL the services you might need by public/transit areas, so you can search for baggage storage, baby care rooms, free to use rest areas, so on and so forth. It’s basically the best app if you spend a lot of time in Changi airport – so if you’re a frequent traveller, or just someone who stays nearby and likes to work remotely from Changi. Goodness knows I spent half my life there after school when I was a student!
Fun fact: it always blows the mind of my friends abroad when I tell them we study in our airport. To them the airport is a place of bare function and utility, not a place to hang out. And it brings me so much national pride! haha.
Cleen is a godsend. It gamifies the boring act of photo deleting by using Tinder mechanics (swipe left if you want to keep the photo, down to delete, up to favourite) to help you sort through and quickly delete pictures in your photo album. I use it when I’ve got blocks of free time, like when I’m waiting for my food order to come, or in the queue for something. It’s surprisingly efficient, and definitely more productive than if you spend the same amount of time scrolling Facebook or something.
I’ve spoken about this app many times, but basically what it does is let you manually track your expenditure so you get a quick overview of exactly how much money you have, plus in and outflow. Not only is it easy to use, it helps you save money because the additional step logging your purchases creates a psychological barrier to spending unnecessary money. I love it!
*The apps here are all free, but some of them have optional in-app upgrades. You’ll be happy to know that you can now pay for
Apple app purchases with PayPal! A relatively new and
very useful development.
4. Allow myself the small luxuries
I.e. Sleeping in…
For the past semester, I’ve been teaching the 930am class in Nanyang Technological University, which is exactly on the opposite end of the country that I live in. By public transport it takes two hours or more to get there, especially during peak, and more often than not I succumb to taking an Uber there and sleeping in a bit more + the entire ride there. But then I feel guilty over it for ages after, because it’s so, damned, expensive!
Midway through, I gave up. No more beating myself up over it. I have a job that needs to be done, and sleep that needs to be had in order for that job to be done effectively. If a forty dollar expense per week can make me 30% more efficient at my job, and help me be at least marginally productive for the rest of the day (because trust me, otherwise I just turn useless after I conclude the class), then it’s justifiable to me. Why not sleep earlier the night before, you ask? Ah, if only the luxury could be had! But no – the amount of preparation for class, ongoing thesis research, not to mention the commercial work that I do, makes this impossible. So, yes, the Uber to NTU is a luxury. But it’s one that I’m forgiving myself for, one that improves my moods and efficiency significantly. So, justified it is!
Ever since I started working, providing for my family past the monthly allowance I give my parents has also been something I wanted to work on in 2017, in ways that extend simply past a monetary gift. So part of allowing myself small luxuries is also giving my parents the same luxury – I set up an Uber Family profile earlier in the year, and my mum and dad’s Uber rides get charged to my PayPal account (PayPal is one of the accepted payment modes for Uber as well!). They’re super frugal and so would never splurge on an Uber unnecessarily, but now I can get them to where they wanna go and take that burden off them, even if I’m working remotely. It’s not so much paying for their rides, it’s more like the act of offering that means a lot to them, and so it’s something that’s worth it for me, especially since my mother’s love language is Acts of Service.
Other small things that I’ve indulged in that I feel makes me enjoy little parts of my day more:
– Got myself bluetooth earphones and a bluetooth waterproof speaker at home. I listen to music all the time, in the shower, on public transport, when on the move.. And I just got tired of dealing with the damned wires all the time! So I bought myself wireless earphones from Sudio Sweden (honestly, when you can just check out with a click on the PayPal gateway, all you need is that one little push..), and when I’m home my sisters and I have a little karaoke party with the Bluetooth speakers (I use the Logitech UE Boom) which honestly has been so well utilised by everyone in my family!
– A family netflix subscription. I have said over and over again that this is the Golden Age of Television, and there’s so much to be learnt from current shows in terms of political/social commentary, witty writing, and good old entertainment value. So I upgraded my subscription, and my entire family is on Netflix now. It’s been a blast!
– An AUX cable. This is a small thing, something that seems silly, but finally getting my hands on one and FIXING IT UP has allowed me to play my own music in the car when I drive, which just makes me so much happier because sometimes, it’s about the small things in life, okay?
– When i finished teaching the last class of my first ever semester, I went right out and bought myself a wine subscription. This means two bottles of red will be delivered to my door every month. And I was like, I’m an adult now! Hahaha. There are several places that will do this for you, and one that I really like is Thirsty, a local PayPal merchant (support local!) that imports really cool draft beers. I gifted my girlfriend Roz a three month subscription from Thirsty for her birthday, and it was a hit!
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The bottom line was, I decided that I wanted a life that I not only worked hard at, but that I also allowed myself to enjoy. Balance, after all, is key. And that’s something that had been missing from my game plan for a long, long time. This is something that I’ll keep working at through the year, and it’s something I encourage you all to as well – not just setting and working towards goals, but also trying to achieve a healthy sense of balance in the meanwhile. It’s a funny and pleasant discovery that many of these changes I implemented were linked to PayPal partners and merchants as well, which really gels with PayPal’s ethos of enabling great experiences in your life :)
Alright guys, that’s it for now. The 2017 goals, if you’ve noticed, are very broad based and conceptual, with the little details of execution left down to the individual. I hope you’ve found something in there that you resonate with, and that 2017 will be the year we all slay. Till then x
X
Jemma