DevYou

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Rankin.

Here in New York City, winter is upon us. Grey skies and cold temperatures, a noticeable lack of major outdoor events, and the high cost of heating seem to be the complaints muttered by everyone from local newscasters to bus drivers to dog walkers. At least in December, they lament, we had daily religious festivities, secular festivities, shopping festivities and a million other reasons to be festive. But now, in this long, frigid stretch between New Year’s and Memorial Day, all we have to hope for is that global warming will bring about a quick demise to winter so that we can get through spring and then onto summer—when things really get good. Ironically, just when the people who are currently pining away for the dog days of summer are finally happily baking away in a mid-June heatwave, a whole other group will start grumbling about how all we have to do is survive another five months until the temperatures drop, the snow starts to fly, and winter returns—when things really get good.

Sadly, when we spend a whole season either complaining on a daily basis about how we wish the weather were different, or we waste away our time daydreaming about a future season, we miss out on a lot of great opportunities. We miss out on a lot of life. As a recovering autumn and winter addict who’s learned to enjoy spring and summer for their own unique qualities, trust me when I say, the whole year’s a lot more fun when we learn to enjoy the season we’re dealt. And, when we’re able to make each year a little better, we’re ultimately making our whole lives a lot better.

From Traditional Chinese Medicine to Pagan belief systems to environmental ecology, it seems that a lot of people talk about the benefits of seasonal living. That is, shaping your life activities to work in conjunction with the nature around you. Now, I’m not going to try to tell you why you should consider living in harmony with the seasons; I’m just going to assume that you already have your own reasons for wanting to give it a try. What I do want to address, though, is a point that I think is often overlooked in a lot of the materials on this topic—how to get started living seasonally when you simply don’t like one or more seasons. There’s no magical formula that will allow you to wake up one day and suddenly start loving every part of the year. But, there are some simple and somewhat universal ways that I think anyone can use to start to change their views on any season.

1. Eat Seasonally – Not only can this be a fun way to introduce new foods into your diet, but it can also help you save money. Simply by focusing on buying food (produce in particular) that’s in season locally, you’ll start to feel a little more tied to the season at hand.

2. Decorate for the Season – This idea can extend to almost anything, from your apartment/house, to your car, to your computer desktop and icons. Put out decorations or use colors that are tied to what’s going on in the nature around you.

3. Dress for the Season – Going outside in the snow in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts is simply living in denial. And, as we all know, denial is often the first sign that you have a problem. By dressing appropriately for the weather, you’re taking the first step toward acknowledging what’s going on around you.

4. Go Outside – So long as you’re already following suggestion number three, then you shouldn’t have any problems with this one. Get yourself outside to experience, first-hand, the seasonal changes taking place in your environment. You’re just not going to feel it if you spend your entire life going from your home to your car to some other indoor setting.

5. Find Holidays to Celebrate – So, maybe there aren’t any holidays in February that you look forward to, but have you ever thought about seeing what holidays people in other parts of the world celebrate at that time of year? There’s nothing to stop you from adopting other culture’s holidays and traditions. Not only can you learn something new about other parts of the world, but you can also give yourself a new reason to look forward to an otherwise lackluster part of the year.

6. Create Seasonal Traditions – Along the same lines as suggestion five, one way to jump-start your excitement about any part of the year is to create your own traditions for that particular season. They don’t have to be elaborate, and they don’t have to mean anything to anyone else but you.

7. Learn from Others – Take the time to find out what other people like about a particular season. Do you hate autumn but know other people who seem to look forward to it all year? Talk with them to find out what they like so much about it. Or, even better, tag along with them on a seasonal adventure. Just getting a fresh perspective on it will help you learn to appreciate any season in ways you might not ever have thought to otherwise.

8. Learn about the Season – One of the best ways to conquer fears, biases, or any other negative thoughts about almost anything is to learn about it. If you’ve got a season you simply don’t like, spend some time researching what changes happen in your area at each time of the year to make it a unique period. You might be surprised to learn some interesting facts that make the season seem a lot better.

9. Adopt a Seasonal Hobby – If you’re still struggling to get into a certain season, why not try to start doing an activity that can only be done in your region at that time of year. This will give you an on-going project to work on and look forward to year after year.

10. Go on a Seasonal Trip – Regardless of where you live, there are certain places in your vicinity that epitomize the changes associated with any particular season. So, go on short trips in your area to see those places. Seeing the season at its best may be enough to change your mind.

And, before I go any further, I want to say that I know there are some people out there thinking to themselves, “Yeah, that’s great, except where I live January is the same as February which is the same as March and every other month. There are no distinct seasons here!” Now, I’m certainly not a biologist, climatologist , or any other kind of natural scientist, but I do know that even in the desert, the arctic circle, and the deepest rain forests, nature changes throughout the year. The changes may be very subtle compared to other parts of the world, but they’re there. And for you, that might just mean that seasonal living is more about nuance than it is drastic lifestyle changes throughout the year. I’d suggest you start with idea number eight to learn about what changes actually take place throughout the year in your region. You might just be surprised to learn that nature changes seasonally in your area a little more than you would have thought.

No matter what your reasons are for deciding to live in harmony with nature and the seasonal changes, the first step is learning to appreciate all the seasons you live in. And while this list of suggestions is by no means exhaustive, there are hopefully few ideas that anyone can use to start to re-think a dislike for any season. Ultimately, learning to acknowledge, accept, and even enjoy every season is just an extension of learning to be mindful and fully in the present moment.

I’m the first to admit I have too many feeds in Google Reader. As of this moment, I have 137 subscriptions. Since many of those feeds have rather frequent updates, that’s just too many feeds to read every day.

The trouble is, though I do go through the list and prune away the less entertaining or useful feeds now and then, I tend to always have around this many subscriptions. Sure, I could prune all the way down to, say, a dozen feeds and be more productive, but what about those rare cases when I have some free time to waste on the less important feeds?

My preferred way to handle this problem would be to use nested folders. I’d have a high priority folder with all the folders containing feeds that are actually important in my day-to-day work and personal life, a low priority folder for the folders with important but not critical feeds, and finally a folder for folders with purely entertaining, time wasting feeds for when I have a little time to waste and want to be entertained.

The lack of nested folders thwarts this plan, but I’ve come up with a workaround that seems to be doing the trick just fine for me.

I started with the 25 folders I was already using. For example, I have a folder called “clients” that contains all the feeds published by my consulting clients; a folder called “nerd, dev” for feeds about programming; a folder called “firehose” for the high traffic, pure entertainment feeds like BoingBoing, and so on.

Since I couldn’t put those folders into folders, I simulated parent folders by prepending a three-letter code to the beginning of each folder name. For example, “clients” became “aaa.clients” because those feeds are in my “A-list”, the high priority feeds. Google Reader naturally sorts aaa.* to the top of the list of folders. For B-list folders, I prepended “bbb.” to the beginning of the name (eg. “bbb.nerd, dev”). And finally, I prepended “ccc.” to the beginning of all the fluff feeds.

Now, when I bring up Google Reader, I have three, sorted, clearly-labeled categories of feed folders. When I’m busy, which is almost all the time, I whip through the A-list folders. If I have a bit of extra time, I do the B-list too. Once in a blue moon, I do all three categories — or even just the C-list.

This technique has dramatically decreased my feed reading time, and yet I’ve been able to keep the goofy, entertaining subscriptions I enjoy from time to time.

Give it a whirl, and see what you think. And if you have other, cool Google Reader tips, feel free to share them in the comments.

In my recent post — Clear Your Mind, Clear Your Desk
– I posted a photo of my physical desk in all it’s ridiculously tidy glory. Today, purely coincidentally, one of my editors asked me to send a screenshot of my computer desktop. The virtual one, not the physical one. She’s preparing a talk for MacWorld Expo, and she needs an assortment of people’s desktop screenshots. So, I took a screenshot and emailed it to her. When I was looking at the screenshot, I realized my virtual desktop is as absurdly neat as my physical desktop, and for the same reasons. Have a look:

(click for a full size view)

For those of you who are wondering, this uber-neatness doesn’t extend to all aspects of my life. My clothes, for instance, tend to end up in sloppy little mountains here and there in my home. But that’s okay. We all have habits we want to improve. I’ll refactor over time, and all will be well. My point is: I don’t make neatness an obsession, but in places like my workspaces, when I need to be tidy, I can be super tidy. Now… where did I put my socks?

Following on the same theme as my last post, here’s another quick trick you can use to increase your mindfulness and pull yourself more firmly into the present moment. I learned this in a bit of a strange way. A friend of mine and I were watching a video of a musician performing on a television show in France. As the host of the show delivered his introduction of her on stage for the audience, a camera recorded her pre-entrance ritual backstage. She sat quietly, apparently meditating. Just before her cue to go onstage, she raised her head and, staring straight ahead, said aloud, quietly but firmly: “This is now.” Fully focused, she stood and walked to the stage door.

My friend and I were both struck by this little ritual, and we agreed that “This is now” is a great thing to say to bring oneself fully into the present. This is now. This is now. This is now.

Try it yourself. First close your eyes and watch your breath for a few cycles. Now open your eyes and say aloud, “This is now.”