Tag: mindfulness

One Word for 2018

Leave a comment

freestocks-org-158328

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Like most everyone else, January is my time of thinking ahead for the year. I typically take off either the week before Christmas or the week after New Years to reflect, regroup and plan out the upcoming year. It’s a tradition I look forward to more and more every year.

Looking back over 2017, it was a crazy year that far beyond anything I could have planned. My word for 2017 was “acceptance,” and I hoped to get better at accepting all the things in my life I simply can’t change. Mindfulness played a big part, and in many ways, I’d say my year of acceptance was a success. Fewer things trigger my anxiety, but it’s still definitely a work in progress.

For 2018, my one word is “slow.”

Mindfulness has allowed me to notice that a great deal of my stress is simply due to my tendency to rush from one thing to another. Rushing leads me to feel as though I’m barely treading water, and it’s downright exhausting.

My year of slow will be focused on being present and intentional in the things I do. That means more paying attention to how I feel throughout the day, more focused attention on what I want to accomplish, and taking some time to enjoy all the incredible things I actually get to do.

Now, onto being present in the rest of my day.

 

Healthy Habits with Keyboard Maestro

Leave a comment

By this point, pretty much everyone knows about the dangers of sitting in front of a computer all day. Unfortunately, some of us work desk jobs and just don’t have a choice. Even more unfortunate is my tendency to forget to get up and move around unless I’m reminded. I don’t have an Apple Watch to remind me to move, and I’m hesitant to create too many alarms on my Fitbit Charge HR that might detract from my main reason for using alarms, medication reminders. Thankfully, Keyboard Maestro has saved the day once again.

Inactivity Reminders

A little over a year ago, I bought an app called Healthier. It’s a simple app that lives in your menubar reminding you to take a break by overlaying the screen after a time period of your choosing (between 10 and 90 minutes). Unlike most of the break reminders, you can override it so that it doesn’t prevent you from working when you’re in the zone, which I like.

I found having Healthier running all the time a bit too much though. For instance, if I’m in class, I can’t always get up to take a break as much as I’d like. Thanks to Keyboard Maestro, I was able to set up a macro to launch Healthier only when my Time Machine back up in my office is attached. This allows me to get reminders to get up when I really need them, sitting in my office, rather than all the time.

Note: If you don’t want to buy Healthier, and just want notifications or alerts to get up and move (without the screen overlay) you can also just use Keyboard Maestro to send you reminders periodically. Keep reading for more information.

Hydration Reminders

I’m terrible at remembering to drink water throughout the day. Even with a water bottle in front of me, I still forget, so you can bet I’ve spent a lot of time looking for the best app, water bottle, reminder – anything to remind me to drink water. None of the things I tried managed to stick though. It turns out Keyboard Maestro is perfect for this too (provided I don’t need reminders on my phone).

I have two separate macros enabled. The first sends me a notification reminding me to drink water every 45 minutes between 11 AM (when I’m typically done my morning coffee) and 4:30PM. The second is a bit more extensive, and actually prompts me to enter my how much water I’ve had and then enters it on the Fitbit website twice a day. (All I need to do is hit submit.) I have a tendency to forget to track my water intake, so this removes nearly all the friction of having to open the app or go to the website.

Mindfulness Reminders

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m fairly high strung and easily get worked up about things, so I’m trying to be better at staying calm throughout the day. There are plenty of mindfulness reminder apps available but most seem to rely on a chime of some sort. Since I normally keep my Mac muted at work, none of these really worked for me. Much like my hydration reminders, I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro set to remind me to take a deep breath every 90 minutes while I’m in the office.

Keyboard Maestro seems to be the app that keeps on giving, and keeping me healthy is just one more reason to love it.