Last night, I forgot to bring my Kindle Fire HD home with me from the office. I generally let it charge while I'm at work all day and of course I use it during lunch, commutes, etc. when I'm reading. It's a wi-fi only model, which means that I can only do offline activities with it during my commutes and whenever I'm out of wi-fi range.
And guess what? The sky didn't fall. And I got a whole lot more stuff done this morning before heading to work.
The Kindle Fire is a great little tablet, don't get me wrong. I use it for lots of stuff, including books, magazines, social media, my Evernote usage, and more. It's really convenient to have all that in one package wherever I go - as long as I remember to take it with me. :)
But there's almost nothing I need on it that I don't also have available via a PC or my iPhone. So it's more used out of convenience, and for when I want to read and not blind myself with the tiny text on my phone. A career in IT has made me a bit farsighted and I need reading glasses to do TOO much on my iPhone at this point.
But what did I do this morning without my Kindle? Well, I downloaded the latest episodes of the podcasts I listen to. I wrote in my Five Minute Journal. I got in a great run/movement workout (check out my Instagram pic from the workout, below!). I caught up with some messages in social media and set up some posts to go out throughout the day. And all that was done without getting lost in my Kindle playing games or messing around with stuff that didn't need to be messed with.
While a lot of these tasks are things I can get done every morning with a little bit of willpower and discipline to simply adopt a better morning routine, not having those distractions in my way certainly helped and made that process easier. And there's not any need to have to challenge yourself with stuff like that if you don't need to - save that discipline for more important stuff! Willpower is a finite resource, after all.
So perhaps some will consider it a draconian measure to wipe a lot of that stuff off my Kindle. Games, notifications from social media, etc. are all leaving (with the exception of a couple of games my kids and I play together). I don't need the distractions there, and I enjoy the process of getting things done before the rest of my family wakes up for the day.
It's amazing to me just how much you can learn from a slight mistake if you practice proper awareness of your actions and surroundings.
What sorts of things have you learned from slight mistakes like this?
And guess what? The sky didn't fall. And I got a whole lot more stuff done this morning before heading to work.
The Kindle Fire is a great little tablet, don't get me wrong. I use it for lots of stuff, including books, magazines, social media, my Evernote usage, and more. It's really convenient to have all that in one package wherever I go - as long as I remember to take it with me. :)
But there's almost nothing I need on it that I don't also have available via a PC or my iPhone. So it's more used out of convenience, and for when I want to read and not blind myself with the tiny text on my phone. A career in IT has made me a bit farsighted and I need reading glasses to do TOO much on my iPhone at this point.
But what did I do this morning without my Kindle? Well, I downloaded the latest episodes of the podcasts I listen to. I wrote in my Five Minute Journal. I got in a great run/movement workout (check out my Instagram pic from the workout, below!). I caught up with some messages in social media and set up some posts to go out throughout the day. And all that was done without getting lost in my Kindle playing games or messing around with stuff that didn't need to be messed with.
While a lot of these tasks are things I can get done every morning with a little bit of willpower and discipline to simply adopt a better morning routine, not having those distractions in my way certainly helped and made that process easier. And there's not any need to have to challenge yourself with stuff like that if you don't need to - save that discipline for more important stuff! Willpower is a finite resource, after all.
So perhaps some will consider it a draconian measure to wipe a lot of that stuff off my Kindle. Games, notifications from social media, etc. are all leaving (with the exception of a couple of games my kids and I play together). I don't need the distractions there, and I enjoy the process of getting things done before the rest of my family wakes up for the day.
It's amazing to me just how much you can learn from a slight mistake if you practice proper awareness of your actions and surroundings.
What sorts of things have you learned from slight mistakes like this?
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