5 Things

A short little post: Five things that make my day easier, make it more enjoyable, and/or are just great.

Evernote

I've downloaded Evernote on my Mac, my Android phone, and my husband's iPad and iPhone - all synced to my account, of course - and man does it make a lot of my tasks both for school but also around home a lot easier. I can add items to my grocery list from pretty much anywhere I am (and so can my husband) and have a method for taking notes on my essentially at all times. I use it mostly for simply things like lists and brainstorming ideas, but it can also be multimodal with the ability to record voice or insert images and graphics. I'm loving Evernote!

Yoga

Working on your PhD can be stressful at (the best of) times, and much of my first year was spent being too strung out about a lot of things. This year my goal has been to keep the work in perspective and remind myself that being an academic is only one component of my identity. Doing yoga has been a great way to have some personal time while also staying fit. While practicing yoga, I don't think about anything academic - I clear my mind and enjoy the fact that I have an able body and space to practice it, more than what some folks in the world do. I'm appreciative of that - yoga has brought me more peace this year.

Bolthouse Farms Juice

Of course, life can't always be peaceful, so when I'm crunched for time and need to eat something really quickly, I turn to this company's line of juices. Sometimes that's all I have for breakfast all week. But they are nutritious, delicious, and fresh -- all things we all need more of in our diet. My fave varieties are the Mango and Green Goodness, although they're pretty much all delish.

Mendeley

I've talked before about how much I love Mendeley, but I'll say it again - it's a great tool for taking notes on PDFs if you don't have Adobe Pro (which I do, but I still use Mendeley). And if you're an academic, then it's also a great tool for managing your citations - something I'm sure we all could use some help with. Spend thirty seconds each time you upload a new file, and I'm sure you'll save hours of time down the road when importing into a bibliography (or working on your diss!).

And last but not least . . .

My puppy 

There's nothing like a little puppy love to make your day complete. Chesney is also a really good listener and target audience for practicing explaining a complex rhetorical concept to test how well I know the topic. On top of that, when he snuggles up beside me, he encourages me to stay in place and keep reading (and not go off elsewhere in the house and get distracted) - so he's a work motivator, too!

I got the idea of doing a "Five things" post from several other bloggers out there and thought it might be a good kind of post to try every once and a while not only to share new finds (apps, software, goods, etc.), but also to think about the things that are important to me and remind myself of what makes me happy. What about you? What five things are you thankful for this week?