Tag Archive for: Health

Five Books That Changed My Thinking in 2024

A grand library interior with tall, ornate wooden bookshelves filled with neatly arranged books. The shelves are framed by decorative columns, and the ceiling features a series of curved wooden arches with metal accents, creating a symmetrical and majestic architectural design. Warm lighting enhances the richness of the wood and the historic ambiance of the space.

As a kid, I was never far from my children’s encyclopedia; I was a voracious reader and especially loved non-fiction. However, as an adult, I do most of my learning through audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube. That is until a few years ago when I started rebuilding my reading habit by switching from scrolling social media to reading ebooks.

Even more recently, I have come full circle back to physical books. Mainly because I realized that reading on a phone just looks the same as scrolling social media and doesn’t help me model the reading habit I want my son to build. As a bonus, I got to experience these five books, which have significantly shaped my thinking. Perhaps one will resonate with you too.

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Apple Watch- The First Two Days

Person checking their smartwatch during an outdoor walk in natural coastal setting, illustrating health and activity tracking in a wellness context

I have been interested in the Apple Watch since they were announced, but I was not compelled to purchase one until the Series 2 came out. This past weekend I purchased a 42 mm Aluminum Space Grey Series 2 Apple Watch. While that is a mouthful to say, my experience so far as been as smooth as I would expect from an Apple product. With two full days under my belt here are my first observations:

My Apple Watch Face
  • The ability to have multiple watch faces is pretty pointless for me. I made the one watch face I needed and removed the rest from my watch.
  • The bulk of the apps that installed automatically were worthless, but the process of deleting them was helpful for me to learn how to interface with the watch.
  • The watch app is helpful, but splitting control between the phone and the watch to change settings on the watch takes some getting used to. I think of the phone now as the “System Preferences” of my watch and haven’t had to use it much since I set up and customized the watch.
  • This is a device for health and consuming notifications. I have not been very successful with “heavier lifting.” Messages is fine, but Slack crashes more often than not for anything other than reading notifications.
  • I know it was likely due to the shiny new toy effect, but I did have one of my most active days in a while yesterday with the watch on.

This is the first watch I have worn regularly since I had to wear a watch for student teaching. It is comfortable and only pinches some hairs off my wrist when I first put it on in the morning.

So far I have the greatest benefit from the Breathe app, which has been much easier to use (in that I have a lower motivation requirement) than the Calm app I have been paying for since last year.