Link: Sylvia Martinez « Ed Tech Journeys. I've been tagged! I discovered this as I browsed my Technorati feeds stored in my news reader this evening. Funny that Sylvia Martinez of GenYES named me in her own meme entry... It's a small blogosphere as I just noticed this new equivalent of an internet chain letter while browsing Henry Jenkin's blog today. FYI, the original post was created on March 7 by an Australian life coach.
Here are my responses....whether or not I am really that successful remains to be seen, but I'll give this a go.
Things I Do Almost Every Day to Be Successful
1) Read newspapers. I skim the Chicago Sun-Times, and sometimes the Chicago Tribune as I eat breakfast. I never thought I would prefer the Sun-Times over the Trib, but that's they way it's been recently.
2) Track blogs and news sources in my news reader. I use NetNewWire as my main news reader to track about 500 different feeds. Obviously, I don't have time to thoroughly read all of these, but I do scan my favorites every day. I usually do this while I am eating lunch at my desk. I also have a few email news alerts set up. For instance, I get breaking news alerts from CNN and I have a Google News alert set up to send me mentions of the Infinite Thinking Machine.
3) I learn from and respond to others in some way. I participate fairly actively in online communities for Apple Distinguished Educators and Google Certified Educators in addition to maintaining my own blog and contributing to the Infinite Thinking Machine.
4) I bookmark useful and interesting web sites. I use both Furl and del.icio.us. I am starting to like del.icio.us more and more every day. I'm intrigued by the social aspects of these services, and I learn a lot from the bookmarking habits of other people in my network. My username in most of the social networking sites I use is elemenous, by the way.
5) I read magazines. I love magazines, and my husband is highly annoyed by the piles I seem to accumulate. My favorites are Fast Company, Vanity Fair, National Geographic Traveler, Real Simple, and Wired. I don't always read them cover to cover, but I do get a lot of ideas from most of these magazines.
6) I try to read something for pleasure every night before bed. My reading rate hasn't been fabulous recently, which is frustrating to me. I think I just need to get into the right book. I'm about 3/4ths the way through the Green Mile right now, and I'm pretty into it. I also like to read biographies, and my next book to read is Anthony Boudrain's No Reservations.
7) Make lists. I usually use stickies on my Dashboard, Google Notebook, or to do lists in iCal. Sometimes I need a list of things I must do in order to stay focused.
8) I take a lot of pictures and spend time organizing them. I love my Nikon D50, iPhoto, and Flickr! It's important to me to catalog my family's life.
9) I record a few television programs I don't want to miss. I record a local news program called Chicago Tonight, but usually only watch the Friday news round up edition. I also TiVo Oprah, Inside the Actor's Studio, Entourage, and Grey's Anatomy. I know Sylvia is a Grey's fan too... she didn't mention that program in her post!
0) My family hits the health club just about every Saturday night. We all go out to dinner and to our health club on Saturday evenings. I usually get a workout in and then we all swim for about an hour. I should work out more, and my health club is open 24 hours, but I am not that much of a maniac.
Okay, now for the fun part... I'm tagging Larry Anderson, Christian Long, Tim Lauer, Westley Field, Kathy Schrock, Rae Niles, Lisa Harrison, Lucie delaBruere and my long shot response ... David Pogue. How he accomplishes as much as he has is beyond me and I'd be curious to hear about his work habits. Anyway, it will be fun to see if the aforementioned people find this and share their secrets. Don't forget to check out the original post for instructions!
