One of the keys to my ability to work 40 hours a week and homeschool two kids is that I have great time management. Which is to say, I say no to just about everything. But learning when to say no is still a work in progress. Here's what I know about saying no to phone [...]

I make a plan where I write enough on Sunday so I don’t lose my mind trying to write posts all week in between dealing with two kids.
And then I decide writing seems too hard. And I decide I should take a bath.
You might think this is my way of relaxing, but it’s not. We [...]

Melissa rides her horse every morning before she goes to work, at noon, which is when her boss gets to work. I am sad that Melissa is happy because now she will not come back to the farm and be my permanent photographer.

I used to feel sorry for Brad and Angelina because they had photographers [...]

The best thing about going to a rural school is that there are not really vacations. I'm not sure why. Maybe because we had bazillion snow days. Or maybe it's because no one needs two weeks off to go to Bermuda in March. Or maybe it's because kids need to get out of school early [...]

If you're here because you read the Tim Ferriss article in the New York Times today, you will probably want to read the blog post I wrote about my experiences with Tim Ferriss:
5 Time management tips I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss
And, here are some other posts you might enjoy:
What it's like to [...]

Here’s how I got my job at BNET. Paul Sloan asked me if I write for other publications. I said no because I love my blog too much. (Where else could I write a post about what it’s like to have sex with me?)
Then Paul said that he would be my editor. So I said [...]

You become the people you surrounded yourself with. Once you accept this, it’s much easier to answer tough questions like “Where should I live?” or “What job’s right for me?” or “Who should I marry?” I think the biggest barrier to making decisions based on how we become the people we hang out with is [...]

It’s true that I am publishing my gift suggestions too late for the biggest gift-giving season of the year. But I think it’s okay, because the gifts are totally impractical.
In fact, I think this is actually my wish list—stuff I wish I had been given over the years to keep my career on track.
1. A [...]

My new thing is self-discipline.  I am going to get better at it.  I am nervous writing this, because I don’t want to fail.
So this is the first thing I know: If you are really serious about doing something, it’s painful to tell people, because fear of failure is so high. Once you decide that [...]

This is a guest post from Fabian Kruse. His blog is The Friendly Anarchist.
“May you live in interesting times,” a Chinese curse goes. It’s true: “Interestingness” is a dangerously broad term. Having a chronic illness can be interesting but it sucks. Wars can be interesting – but they suck even more. And maybe you too [...]

It’s my birthday. So I get to write about anything. I get to indulge. The first thing is that I want to republish a poem that I published a long time ago, when I thought maybe I could get away with publishing poems on my blog. Now I know that for sure, poetry kills traffic.
But [...]

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that meditating is not a high priority.
First of all, if you don’t realize how much science there is behind meditation, you must be living under a rock. And the book I'm currently kvelling over, The Happiness Advantage, says that meditation, just five minutes a day, is one of [...]

It’s time for the farmer to check to see how many of his cows are pregnant.
Here’s what he does:  He puts five bulls in a field with 130 cows. And the bulls have been waiting all summer to breed, so they can pretty much get all the cows pregnant quickly and then all the calves [...]

I’m deciding if I should take a sleeping pill.
I know tons of people who take them. I never understood the need, to be honest. I remember when I was in a mental ward. My group therapy was a bunch of eating disorder girls (which I was part of, but a little old for) and a [...]

It’s amazing that people admit to being perfectionists. To me, it’s a disorder, not unlike obsessive-compulsive disorder. And like obsessive-compulsive disorder, perfectionism messes you up. It also messes up the people around you, because perfectionists lose perspective as they get more and more mired in details.
We can never achieve perfection — any of us. Yet so [...]

When I was in high school, the police took me out of my parents’ house and put me at my grandma’s house. (Here’s the story.)
My grandma spent a lot of time telling me I was special. That’s exactly how she’d say it: “You’re special.” And I used to think she was lying, saying that to make [...]

When I was a single parent, I would get up at 6am to get ready before my kids woke up – all advice for how to get ready in the morning recommends this. But then the kids realized that if they woke up early they could watch videos, because what else is there to give [...]

We drove to Iowa City yesterday, to have Rosh Hashanah with my family. I took the kids out of school and told their teachers it’s the Jewish New Year so the kids will miss school. I said it in front of the kids so I can teach them that we take off a day for [...]

When I first met the farmer, I knew he was not a normal farmer because normal farmers don’t email bloggers for a date. But also, he gave himself away because he quoted Garrison Keillor to me. Then, when I thought I could not put up with him dumping me anymore, and this time would be [...]

It's frog and toad mating season on the farm. The nighttime is noisy with nature sounds and the pond water ripples with round tadpoles. The farmer is full of mating factoids, like toads enjoy a threesome. Here's a photo from the farmer:

Meanwhile, Ben Casnocha sent this link to me about sexual harassment at work. I write a [...]