It’s Tax Time! Are You Ready?

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Image via TaxGeeks

Image via TaxGeeks

It’s one of my least favorite subjects but I’m forcing myself to talk about it because it’s important. It’s tax season and the deadline is creeping up. I know that this is a stressful time for people, and a lot of people worry that they might be accused of having unfiled tax returns or owing back taxes.

Just do it — and get it over with! Then we can make lists of things to do with your refund!!
Here are a few ways to get your taxes in order this year:

Evernote: You know how I love it. I use it every year to organize all the expenses that I want to keep track of and everything is easy to find when it’s time. Then you can scan or email your finished return right into Evernote to keep track of for years to come. It’s really the easiest method. Read more

I’m Going To B-School!

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Screen shot 2014-03-09 at 9.17.42 PMI never thought I’d be going back to school — but I am!  Today is the very first day of Marie Forleo’s B-School and I couldn’t be happier to get started.  I found Marie a few weeks ago through Twitter and have been devouring her content ever since. She teaches people how to be entrepreneurs and turn their passions into much more.

It’s an 8-week online course and there are people from almost every inch of the globe participating.  Just check out the map of participants — insane, right?  I’ve done a few continuing education classes here and there since graduating college. I’ve taken a novel writing class, a children’s book writing class and of course a bunch of cooking classes — but never anything like this.

Getting ready for class has been exciting and scary.  Here’s a list of my preps in case you find yourself in a similar situation one day:

1.  Get a notebook you love.  Seriously — this helps calm my fears.  I chose a notebook that a close friend gave me for my birthday — so it has some sentimental value.  It’s the perfect size to stick in my purse if I need to take my work on the road.  And the best part is the cover.  It’s plastered with stamps from fabulous places all over the world that I want to visit.  It’s an excellent inspiration for the traveling I’d like to do in the future.

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Join National Unplugging Day

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It’s one of the hardest things to do — yet it can have such a huge benefit.  I’m talking about putting your phone down and unplugging.  Just giving yourself a few minutes to relax instead of compulsively checking your Facebook, emails, Twitter, text messages, apps, games, etc. is really scary actually.  I get that!  Just last week when I was forced to unplug because of a cable company snafu I thought I was going to lose my mind.  But there are many benefits to just taking a breath and unplugging like:

1.Relaxation For Your Mind All day long our heads are buzzing with a million different to-do’s. This mental clutter can cause a lot of stress. So giving your brain a break can allow you to unwind, and de-clutter your mind. I think our hectic brains deserve that every once in a while!

2. In-Person Socializing Is that still a thing?! Unplugging will allow some quality face-to-face time with friends and family (and FaceTime doesn’t count.) It’s so easy to text and email people, that I actually find myself sighing when my phone rings. Actually — I never answer my phone if you don’t have an appointment with me (really -I even have a YouTube video about it! ) But it’s nice to let go of the phone and talk in person!

3. Distractions Be Gone Ever find that it takes you three times as long to complete a task because those tweets lighting up your phone were just too funny not to read? I understand! Well, unplugging can help you to focus on tasks and not get distracted by that next level of Candy Crush.

4. Health Benefits Being connected 24/7 can actually have an affect on your health. Our smart phones pump out electromagnetic radiation, which is linked with cancer. This is why you should kick your phone out of bed, and try not to have it on you for extended amount of times. Your eyes could also use a break from staring at screens for so long.

5. Less FOMO (fear of missing out). Out of sight, out of mind, right?  Unplugging can help ease the anxiety of constantly wondering what emails you are getting , or what photos your friends are uploading to Facebook. It’s nice to take a break from what everyone else is doing and focus on yourself! And don’t worry too much, it will all be there when you decide to reconnect.

Even Randi Zuckerberg (former Facebook exec) who built her career around technology says it’s important to detox every once and a while to help you get reconnected with yourself and the ones you love.  She even wrote a book about it called Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives and a children’s book called Dot, which is about a little girl obsessed with electronic devices.

So how do you do it?  How do you officially unplug?  Here’s a kickstarter — tonight marks the start of the National Day of Unplugging.  From March 7th at sundown to March 8th at sundown get off your devices!

That means:

No cell phones
No iPads
No iPad Minis
No eReaders
No computers
No social media

You can join the National Day of Unplugging by signing the Unplug Pledge and disconnect.  The campaign encourages you to connect with people in your neighborhood and have interrupted meals with your family.

Happy Unplugging!

Automate Your Life

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Screen Shot 2014-03-04 at 6.33.55 PM

Daily to-do’s can get tedious and overwhelming. I get it! Between responding to work emails, deciding what to do for dinner, paying bills, managing social media accounts, and running endless errands– when is there any time to just relax? That’s why you should let technology work for you and automate your life!

When I interviewed Ari Meisel, master automator and the author of the book Less Doing, More Living:Making Everything In Life Easier (Check out his site here), he told me:

“First of all, people have this false notion that all the things they do in their life, only they can do. You know, like you’re the only person who could possibly schedule appointments for yourself. And it’s kind of a weird thing, people like hoard this. No – it’s because they don’t think about what’s required to do it.

This couldn’t be more true! So I made a list of 5 ways to cut down your to-do list and have your tasks automatically disappear!”

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7 Ways to Deal When Cable and Internet go out

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no-cable-tv

no-cable-tv (Photo credit: hjl)

As many of you know — I’m getting ready for a big move to a brand new apartment.  With that comes a lot of coordinating and planning.  Our cable company made one very big mistake about our move and shut off our service in our current apartment a month too early!  So yes, we were left without TV, Internet, and phone service for two days.  Who cares, you may think.  And I would have said the same — until it happened to me.

When you’re on vacation, you are ready to unplug, you need it and you want it.  But in the middle of a work week when you are unexpectedly thrown off of your routine and contact with the outside world is ripped from your grip — you get angry fast!  So as I was pulling my hair out with frustration, as our nice field tech Rich tried to get our service turned back on, I wrote out a list.

This is a list of things to do when your cable and Internet go out without warning — like when your cable company screws up or something more dramatic happens like a blackout.

1.  Go to the movies. It occurred to me that we had been binge watching Netflix for so long (House of Cards is amazing!) that we hadn’t actually been to a theater in months.  It was great to get out and see something new.
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