Self Awareness | Casey Yardley

A few ideas to make tomorrow better.

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Casey Yardley

I’d like to start doing three things each night before bed to improve the following day.

First – Prep the coffee machine. Until recently, we used a french press for our morning brew and it was simple. Add water, steep the grounds, pour cups of motivation, and rinse. Now we have a machine that could be programmed to have me a cup at 7:30 am each day if I would set it up. I have yet to do that so in the meantime, I’ve started adding water, a new filter, and grounds for the next morning. So when I’m ready to go when I push the brew button. Easy peasy but a life changer.

Second – Read more before bed. I had a great routine of reading before bed for nearly a year. It was a great way to end the day and begin resting. I would usually read a cookbook, a self-help-style book, or a history/adventure book. Something that was engaging yet easy to read. Anything complex would get my overactive mind moving back toward my phone and the mindless searching and scrolling. Reading at night helps me rest up better than staring at my phone as a fall asleep.

Currently, I have a list of four books I’m planning to read this month:

The Nordic guide to living 10 years longer – Dr Bertil Marklund
A Portrait of British Cheese: A Celebration of Artistry, Regionality, and Recipes –
Angus D Birditt
Winning Without losing – Martin Bjergegaard
Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive – Bas Van Abel

I suppose here is my commitment to myself and to you. I’ll read 30 min a night before bed for all of March. I’ll follow up on April 1st.

Third and lastly, plan my day ahead. I hate task lists with all my being. They annoy my free-spirited nature but make or break the following day’s productivity. I need to use my task list on my phone better as a companion to my calendar to better plan my life out.

My partner is a master of this but me, a serial procrastinator, I do just that… Procrastinate my planning and have less productive days than I would like to. The value here is knowing what needs to be done and being able to do it one task at a time. Knowing myself I’ll do the easy tasks first then move to the more difficult ones as late in the day as possible. I ought to fix that.

So here goes nothing, three simple tasks that are going to help me have a better day tomorrow. Here’s to a month of coffee prep, planning, and reading before bed to make my next day better.

Till next time.

Casey

Time.

Posted on October 9, 2022 by Casey Yardley

It’s strange that it has been over two months since I last wrote here. Since then I have moved from an RV back into an apartment, started another semester at University(Just 2 more to go.), traveled a few times for work, and thought about writing here at least once a day. It’s strange how time can just get away from you like that.

Dutch designer Maarten Baas’ giant Real Time Schiphol timepiece replaces traditional clock hands with a 12-hour-long video performance.

My real question for myself is what was holding me back from writing? Was it fear that no one would be interested in what I had to say? Could it be I do not have the best work-School-life balance? Or is it that I just thought about what I could write then bowed back towards my phone and continued mindlessly tapping away at the touchscreen?

I’d like to say it was a combination of all of the above. A mix of everything that was calling out for my time and energy. Ultimately I do not have a reason other than I chose something else over a few minutes of tapping away at something to write and share here. Things feel heavy at the end of the day and the weight of it all leads me to looking mindlessly at my phone at the end of the day and trying to rest up.

This week I decided to take Friday off to spend a bit of time cleaning my house, playing with my dogs, and heading to spend time with my family and take some family pictures. I love driving home and seeing reminders of my time driving between the big city and my small hometown.

I count the landmarks down as we drive back home today just the same as I used to from the backseat of my parent’s car.

Mountain X, that looks like a face.

The old windmills that spin day and night.

A group of houses that are abandoned but I want to explore.

Reservoir Y where there are petroglyphs.

A dairy farm where I stepped in mud as a child with my new school shoes.

The bright lights leading us down main street.

And finally, the last bend at the high school and just a mile till we were home.

These are markers of time and distance I have used for nearly 30 years and I expect I’ll use them for another 30 years to come as I travel the road that leads me home.

Reading.

Posted on July 24, 2022 by Casey Yardley

I’d never declare myself to be a strong reader. I tend to slowly read things and often find myself rereading sentences and paragraphs to confirm I’ve correctly understood the material or story. Yet, despite my limits, I really enjoy reading as a form of attaining new information.

I try and have a physical book I’m working through nearby with a soft goal of reading a book a month about something I’m interested in or a story I’ve been told I’d enjoy reading from a friend or family member. Getting book ideas from friends and family can be the best thing or the worst thing for me. The people pleaser in me will read the book for the benefit of receiving further recommended titles but the procrastinator in me will very slowly read the book and derail my reading flow.

I never thought I’d be as much of a book person as I am. I try and read for at least 30 min a day. This gets me away from my computer and phone.

I usually switch from a physical copy of the book to an audiobook format and listen to the book while I bike or drive. This lets me follow through with the recommended reading so I can follow up with the recommender and learn something I might not have sought out myself. I thank the inventor of audiobooks all the time as they’ve helped me through some dull reading at 1.5 speed. (Insert laughing track here)

Some of my favorite books to read include cookbooks, Autobiographies, Informational Books, Coffee Table-esue books that highlight a journey, lifestyle, etc and from time to time I enjoy a well-written trilogy. It’s nice to have something I can step outside of my day to day and enjoy for an hour and just be in the moment. Slowly reading the words over and building the story one line at a time as I go. I’ve used reading as a way to decompress after school, work, and sometimes after family events.

As I mentioned last week I’m still studying at university and I do end up reading heaps of information for my classes. Somehow through all that time, I haven’t lost my love for spending a little time with a book for fun just to zone out. It’s a strange thing to spend hours researching, reviewing, and writing for school on subjects I’m neutral about but if given the opportunity to discuss some of the things I’ve learned from my own reading outside school I’m happy to go all in on these topics anytime, anyplace.

I think I’ve rambled plenty for now so I’ll leave you with this, a few good reads from 2022 thus far.

Currently, I’m listening to Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson and currently reading through The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less by Michele Hutchison and Rina Mae Acosta. I’m also reading Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design on the side.

Thanks for reading,

Casey.

Education and Work.

Posted on July 17, 2022 by Casey Yardley

I’m saying it.

My years in college have drug on far too long.

Work isn’t the worst but it takes up time in my day that I could be doing more enjoyable things.

I guess you could say that waking up in the morning to look at a screen, talk to people, troubleshoot, consult, run scenarios and coach people on how to ____ is an interesting way to spend my day.

Then after my shift is finished at work I close my work computer and open my personal computer and log onto the school site and begin nearly the same amount of time each night learning about what I do in my day job from a different perspective. It’s interesting to be this far in my career and still be a university student at night. It’s not a sad thing, just a draining one that has caused me to feel older than I am yet younger than I am because my time at university has extended far past the usual years one would traditionally spend as a student.

I enjoy learning but dang, I’ve been spending too many hours in a desk at university.
https://www.pexels.com/@cottonbro/

Am I mad or sad about this? Sometimes.

Am I grateful that I have been able to attend college and further my education for the workforce? Yes.

It’s a real balance of thought for me to have always seen the value in a degree. My father never completed school but has ran a business effectively for nearly 40 years, having learned meaning things on the go and as they come up on a need to learn and know basis. I’ve always been of fan of learning things that way so I understand the application of the information rather than just a theory.

In school I’ve often been told this could happen but is unlikely so we’ve decided you need NEED to know it and its going to not make any sense but, you need to learn it to move forward and enter the workforce. That has never made sense to me spending so much time of “What if..” and not effectively running through real world tasks that I can use right away in my day to day work. I once had a class in 2018 where a professor shared data from a pre internet marketing era expressing his belief that the internet would fail sooner or later and print ads still held their weight as the primary marketing we should be running. It was a wild time.

All the “What if…” of school makes me think of this moment from Hercules.

Yet, I’ve seen many people step into university with one plan for their life and walk out with a completely different passion after taking the lower level intro classes. So for some the value changes as they grow and develop. I too changed my major a few times when I started school and yet business and marketing keeps me anchored as my goal for a degree.

I suppose these are just a few of my unorganized thoughts on education and work, with the focus being on school and how I feel about it. I do see an end finally after nearly a decade as a part time student who had worked full time and beyond during that time. I’ll finally see my degree in the spring of 2023.

Thanks for reading,

Casey

Failing To Follow Through: Where I Am.

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Casey Yardley

I like many others start out a new year with ambitions to do more of ____, less of ____, and just enough of ____. While I set off each year with good intentions somehow I only see about half of my goals through. This becomes increasingly frustrating year after year and seems to set my vision lower each year as I fear I cannot reach a high bar and see it through to completion.

If I’m being honest I feel like I’ve started out this year much the same as mentioned above. My mind dreams up big opportunities and rarely do I write these down or move them past the idea stage. It causes me to spin in place, become distracted out of necessity, and finally a little less confident than I was before. This is a strange place that I never thought I would be in as an adult and a younger me might have a few thoughts on how unproductive and unsuccessful thirty-one-year-old Casey is.

There isn’t a lot of fear in sharing these truths because I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I’m not alone in feeling things have happened differently than I expected them to.

All I know is where I am today and where I hope to go moving forward. I’ll share more about my desired destinations in my next post. Until then enjoy this graphic I found on LinkedIn.

-Casey