Highlights of August 2017

I thought I would do a compilation with the highlights of the past month of August, just to look back and see what happened and what I’ve been up to.

This month of August has been about a bit hard, as it is the usual time when I take a long vacation, except that this time it didn’t happen. I took my vacation at the end of June and now it seems like a very long time till the next one, which will be December…

Anyhow, I can’t really complain. This month has been all about taking care of myself and putting my life in order. Letting go of stuff that was filling my head with negative thoughts and looking for the way back into positive thinking and getting things done. Here is what I’ve been up to:

1. Joined a Yoga class

   This is by far the best highlight of August 2017. I had been thinking about it for a long time but it finally happened in August. I had tried a couple of classes before but didn’t like the instructors or the setting. It seems like Yoga Movement has it all figured out for people like me. Beautiful studios with great instructors spread on a number of locations in Singapore. You can choose by class type, location or instructor and book your place online. Don’t need to take a matt, don’t need to take a towel. They give you everything and I was sold on the first class. Hot Yoga almost killed me though…

2. Started getting more organised

   Discovered Smart Sheets, Todoist and took out my paper diary. It seemed like too many but after a long time searching for organisation tools that worked for me, I finally found them. I was having a hard time sharing tasks with my team in China. Since Google and Dropbox are banned, it is a real pain to share documents, calendars or to do lists.

   Todoist is definately my favorite. Very easy to have on an open tab on your browser and make your list for the day, add tasks to projects and share with your team. If something doesn’t get done it automatically goes to the next day. And the best is that it is FREE.

   Smartsheet is great, it has a bunch of templates to choose from and awesome features that enable you to have a Gantt view and Calendar view. You can share the sheets with the team, add comments, upload documents to the sheets (genius), set alarms… It has it all and it is awesome. The downside is that you have to pay for it, but they have a 30 day trial to let you play around. After that you can still manage the sheets and if you don’t want to upgrade you can export them to excel or Google Sheets and keep working on them, which is great.

   The good old paper diary is not the first thing I reach out to, mainly because I hate carrying weight. I keep it at home and use it to layout the main events of the year and the month. I write any details I need to keep in mind, and that way I don’t miss important stuff. Google calendars is great for this as well, but for some reason I don’t use it as much.

   3. WAS GIFTED THE BEST BLUETOOTH SPEAKER EVER

   The Samsung Level Box Slim wireless bluetooth speaker is just making my day everyday. I use it mainly to listen to podcasts while I’m cooking, doing the dishes or any other house chore that doesn’t require concentration so that I can focus on the info I’m hearing. The sound quality is great and the size is like a smartphone, also perfect to pack it in the suitcase. Because it is wireless I can move it around with me in the house and did I say that the sound quality is awesome?  LOVE IT!

   4. I did my first solo trip

   It was just for two days, but it was great. I extended a work trip in Sri Lanka and went to Hikkaduwa, the only nice beach area close to Colombo. I hired a tuk tuk driver that took me around to see stuff. People were so friendly and I felt very safe the whole time. When I first arrived to the hotel I felt a bit uncomfortable. The weather wasn’t great and started wondering what the hell was I doing there. But surprisingly I found it awesome to just be by myself discovering new places, which is something I had never done before. Great experience that I will for sure repeat! Oh and I saw some elephants! They were sadly chained up as they were getting them ready for a local festival parade, so I won’t post a pic. But here is a pic of me with the elephants I had in my room!

   

*Credit for featured picture: @yogamovement