Hi friend 👋 -

You made it to the end of January. Whew. How are you feeling about 2024 so far?

January is a slow month for me with client work. It was the same in 2023. But November and December are always wildly busy, so I'm trying to appreciate the change of pace.

Plus, if you live in the U.S., you've been receiving your tax forms. Tax preparation has been demanding a bunch of my time. As humorist Dave Barry says, "It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta."

1) Reflection:

January has been really busy at home. I went on a quick weekend trip to Florida with my oldest son. My youngest child spent a weekend preparing for the school science fair. We went to the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Suddenly, the month was over.

I enjoy quiet winter afternoons, doing something like a puzzle or working on an art project with my kids. We follow a weekend routine in our house of "quiet time" between noon and 3:00 pm. People either take a nap or work on something quietly in their rooms. Then we have this afternoon time before dinner. But it feels like our days have been full. I'm hoping February is slower.

2) Tip:

There's an Instagram thing going around right now: share a photo from when you were 21. For me, that was... a while ago. But I could easily pull up photos because my entire photo history is in Google Photos.

This happens automatically between my iPhone, my spouse's Android phone, and our shared Google Photos directory. I don't even have to think about it, all photos are just there, going back to my earliest smartphone days. Highly recommend setting up automatic backups, if you don't already have this. And Google is great at recognizing faces so I can find all photos of the same person (or pet!).

Then every few months, I'll do a secondary backup to an external hard drive. If my Google account got hacked (like somehow hackers bypassed my 2-factor authentication) or Google somehow goes out of business, I still have my photos.

3) Product:

Every year, I have a book of my social content printed from My Social Book. It's like a ready-made photo album that I don't have to organize. I have books of my Facebook content going back to 2009. You can also print Instagram or Google Photos. I love flipping through prior books, and my kids love it too.

I'll usually wait until My Social Book emails me a coupon for 40% off, which they do regularly.

That's it for this issue of Tinkering! See you again in two weeks.

Cheers,
Anna

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Want more ideas?

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→ Project management is different for everyone. Check out this article I wrote about building your own system.

→ If you work with a lot of clients, adding folders in Google Drive can be a drag. Here's a tutorial showing you how to create new folders automatically.

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