How Do I? Archives - Sustainable Sue

Quitters DO Win Sometimes!

I often have people talk to me about abandoning books. I have no shame in my DNF (Did Not Finish) game. I am not afraid to abandon a book and encourage you to look at why you would not stop doing something that was not lighting you up. Life is too short to read books that do not put wind in your sails just as life is too short to stay friends with energy vampires and life is too short to wear jeans that are too tight.

It is not that it is a bad book. Despite what James Joyce said, I do not believe there are bad books. I can appreciate how hard an author works on a book and to call it bad just seems like a big kick in the pants. I hope anyone reading what I write will give me grace when something I write doesn’t land with them.

It is hard to abandon books that critics and the public RAVE about. Sometimes I think it is the chapter of life I am in vs. where the author was when he was writing. More often I just decide I am different than everyone else and move onto the next book in the stack.

Let’s talk numbers though. I do believe in skipping the rating if I have not finished a book. I would not want to bring down the average rating for an author if I have not finished a book. I have a specific shelf in Goodreads for DNF books so that I can make sure they do not count in my annual book statistics.

Tell me all your thoughts and opinions about DNFing!

By Susan Sanders|2019-12-12T19:10:38-05:00May 21st, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

When Dimensions Collide

It is true that we need uncluttered spaces – remember Gretchen Rubin’s Rule of Adulthood, “Outer order leads to inner calm.” And it is true that we should surround ourselves with the things we love – and for me one of those things is books. But sometimes those two ideas are in conflict with each other. What happens when a principle from your mental health dimension collides with a principle from your environmental dimension?

When this conflict – or any conflict really – arises, we need to consider falling back to our priorities. For example, I love to see books on my nightstand. I am excited to see what potential there is in the books that are coming my way. I think books are beautiful – the colors, the fonts, the pictures or photos all lend themselves to an ever-changing decoration scheme of my side of the bed. It is a priority to have things I love around me and easy to access. Its easy to read before bed when there are options at my fingertips.

I don’t love clutter though. Clutter makes me anxious. As Barbara Hemphill tells us: Clutter is postponed decisions. Postponed decisions make me anxious. Therefore, the photo above would be doubling down on that anxiety for me – clutter and procrastination. My palms are sweaty just thinking about it.

In this example I would fall back to my priority of decreasing chaos (i.e. anxiety) by removing SOME of the books from my nightstand. I usually have a stack of about 5 books that are next in line to be read. This allows for books to be part of my landscape (allowing for beautiful things that bring me joy to be visible) while still minimizing clutter because most of my books live in other places around the house. Additionally, I generally do not reread books so when I am done I am very eager to share them with people so books are always leaving my house. While I do have some books that have meant a lot to me that I do keep (admittedly considerably more than the Marie Kondo recommended 30 books), I make sure they are stored / contained / displayed in a way that does spark joy. I can hold both principles at the same time.

Try thinking of the phrase “both / and” instead of “either / or” when making your decisions. It is a way to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water while still remaining true to what speaks to your soul.

By Susan Sanders|2019-05-20T11:18:34-04:00May 21st, 2019|Environmental Surroundings|0 Comments

Digital Organizing – Books, part 3

Parts 1 and 2 showed how to use the scanner to add the books to our TBR, and what to do when that goes awry. The next step I do is to mark them as books I own so that if I want to loan it out or give it away after talking about it with someone, I have a quick reference. Also, there are times when I am grounded from the library and book store (maybe Bixby will need to do a guest post about that). If I know what books I have in the house, my “Read My Shelves” blitz is a little easier to organize and carry out.

Note: Currently the instructions outlined here are only available on the desktop version of Goodreads, not on the mobile app.

Click on the “My Books” section of Goodreads and you will see the screen below. On the right most column, you will see “edit / view” as in the blue circle below.

After we click “edit,” you will see lots of options for adding details about your book. Below you will see how I edited Goodreads to indicate I own Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou.

At the bottom of the screen, you will see a box next to “I own a copy of this book.” Click that box.

After you click the box next to “I own a copy of this book” you will see the screen below. I generally do not fill these boxes in because my plan is to not keep my books unless I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. No sense for me to spend the time entering these details if I will just give the book away. These details do not help me choose books to read or rate them.

Also note you see the box is checked next to “Add to my update feed” at the bottom. If this is a book you do not want others to know you are reading (in case you are reading a book about how to fire your hairdresser and you don’t want her to find out), uncheck this box and it will not be posted to your feed or the weekly summary email others receive about what you are reading.

Then click “Save” and repeat the same for each of the books you own.

This process may seem time intensive and laborious to some of you. That means it is not something that is a high priority for you and not something to spend your time on. That is ok. I am here to give you permission to NOT do this if it does not put wind in your sails. If it does not help you retrieve books in a way that will help you save time.

Let me know how this works for you or if you have other tips and tricks!

By Susan Sanders|2019-05-14T09:46:27-04:00May 16th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Digital Organizing – Books, part 2

Yesterday we looked at using the scanner to add books, but alas – sometimes technology fails us. Let’s talk about what that looks like and how to maneuver around it.

We pick up this book, scan it…

Sparkly dots? Check. Must mean I am killing it on the scanning. And reading about improving communication? Fantastic! Except….

This was really the book I was trying to scan. We all get a little mixed up from time to time. It happens. My general process is to scan the bar code, flip the book over to check what the cover says matches what the app says I scanned. For this book, when I flipped it over, the scanner did the sparkly dot thing on the cover and corrected itself.

This is another book I tried to scan the barcode (note the sparkly dots trying their darnedest), yet failing and announcing its failure so dramatically, “No books found!” Calm down Goodreads, no need to panic. We have a workaround.

On the landing page / home page / first page you hit in Goodreads, there is a search box at the top. Simply type in the name of the book that did not scan. When you click on the title, you will see the selection’s details as show below for this example.

On the left third of your screen (see below) you see a green box that defaults to “Want to Read.” If it is green, it is not selected. Hover your mouse over the green box to get the drop down list of “Read, Currently Reading, Want to Read” (the other lists of 2017, 2018, etc. are ones I added). Choose “Want to Read” unless this book is going straight into service, then change to “Currently Reading.”

By Susan Sanders|2019-12-12T19:11:16-05:00May 15th, 2019|Environmental Surroundings|0 Comments

Digital Organizing – Books, part 1

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is the Read and Return program certain airports have. On this particular trip, I popped into the shop and bought a book that sounded right up my alley, made my purchase, and tucked into my seat at the gate (and by that I mean sat uncomfortably in a seat surrounded by strangers coughing up lungs). After about 10 pages I realized I read the book already. So I went back and did a regular return and bought another book. Back to the gate and seat made of concrete only to find I HAD READ THAT ONE TOO. I decided this was nonsense, and I needed to get it myself organized.

I use the website / app Goodreads to organize my books. Apparently there is controversy about the reviews and ratings there and who the website is more geared towards – authors or readers. However, organization is about retrieval – it does not matter how easy something is to put away or how pretty it looks when it is put away if you cannot find the thing / information when you need it. I store book information for 2 specific reasons:

I want to know if I have read it so I don’t waste money with repeat purchases. My library also only allows 5 holds at a time so I also don’t want to spend that precious real estate on a repeat read.
I want to know if I have read it so I can talk about it. I refer to my rating and quick Goodreads review to refresh my memory on whether or not I liked the book.

This post is part 1 of 3 to show you how I add books to Goodreads to organize my actual books and the digital record of them. Let’s say for example I went to a book sale and arrived home with 2 bags of books – just hypothetical, of course. Today’s post will cover step one in the process – using the scanning feature to add my new friends to my Goodreads TBR list. It is easier than it seems – WAY easier than scanning my own groceries and saves so much time from entering them by hand typing in the title.

On the screen shot below, you will see the main screen of the Goodreads app on my phone. You will see “Scan” (circled in blue above). Click on that and hover over the bar code on the back of the book you would like to enter.

You know it is working when you see the little sparkles appear as in the screen shot below.

The book you just scanned should show up in the “Scanned Books” tab where you can add them as a batch to your To Be Read list. The picture below shows you what this will look like.