How I Created a Good Feeling Day

I am very excited to share this story, because it’s the kind of story I want to have everyday. Yesterday I decided in the morning to look for things that felt good (to pay attention to and think about) and only do things that felt good to do. And here is how it went:

In the morning Candice took the older boys to kindergarten and stayed to volunteer in Demitri’s class as she does every Thursday.  So I got to spend a couple hours with Eden and the babies (I guess they are toddlers now but we still call them babies) after sending off the older boys with Candice.  Eden wanted me to read her several books after breakfast, so I read to her while she sat on my lap with one hand while feeding the circling babies with the other (they are like birds, they take a bite and swallow it while walking around in a circle, then start again).  They finished the pot of oatmeal mush I made for breakfast after I read about 3 books to Eden, so then we all went to the basement.

I wasn’t inspired to work right away when we got to the basement (where my computer is), but I did read a few articles about google adsense (something I’ve thought about adding to this blog for awhile now).  I was pleasantly surprised to find that my old account I created over a year ago was still active so after reading a few success stories I created a medium rectangle of ads to put at the bottom of each single post.

Then the babies began crying so I got them an open bag of sunchips from the day before and they were happy again:)  I told Eden to hold it and share with them, but after she was done Nickalus grabbed the bag and joyfully tore it all the way open to get the crumbs.

After Candice got home at 10am I had a snack and decided to start working.  I had a page full of random notes from the long discussion I had with a client on Monday about his project but it felt better to focus on performance of the application, since that was what I think mattered most at that point.  There were a few web pages that were taking way too long to load because of the large data sets that were being queried.  So I took one page at a time and added timing functions around each database query in the code and was very surprised at what I discovered.  I learned that it was taking over 7 seconds to populate a single drop down with about 20 different values, for example.  I had fun with it, like playing with a crossword puzzle or rubiks cube.

A few hours later the page that took half a minute to load before took 2-3 seconds and another page that never fully loaded before (it always timed out because the script took longer than a minute to run) was being fully loaded in under 5 seconds.  Just when I was wrapping up my client called and I was able to share with him the progress I made.  He had experienced the slow pages and was excited to hear the good news – “How did you do it?” he said, like I had performed a miracle.

So that was how I created a day full of good feeling experiences yesterday, by consciously looking for things that felt good to think about and do.  I think I’ll try it again!

My Easy Button

Hello again,

After a several month hiatus I’ve been inspired to add to this blog again.  I will start by introducing my easy button.  I’m including a picture of it below for those in other countries who aren’t familiar with Staples or their USA based advertising themes.  I mentioned it to a client of mine in the U.K. and although they have staples there he hadn’t heard of it.

When you push the button there is a recording that says “That was easy!” – I have it on my desk and push it whenever I figure out a solution to something or get done with a task I set for myself.  It helps me to feel confident that I can do anything, because everything is easy once I figure it out:)

Candice has one in the kitchen, and I tell Kayin (our 6 yr old) to take mine with him whenever he complains that he can’t do something – like when he says he can’t get to the next level in a video game.

If you go to staples.com and search for easy button you can get one yourself if you want – they even have one in spanish now.

Easy Button