Episode 14: Sustainable Sue Cleans the Kitchen

Sometimes on the podcast we will talk about existential questions like why we do the things we do, what happened in our childhood to make us the way we are, and how to move forward when you are so burned out you can’t sit up straight. Today, it is a topic that might seem more trivial and purely surface level. But I assure you there is always more to what meets the eye. Listen to the latest episode for a look into how Sustainable Sue cleans the kitchen.

Listen at the link below or search “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” wherever you get your podcasts.

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

By |2023-05-08T08:57:15-04:00May 8th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Episode 13: Literary Life Lately

Its time to see what’s happening in Sustainable Sue’s literary life lately! It has been awhile since we have checked in on what Susan is reading. This episode expands past books to include magazines and prepping reading material for business travel or vacation. Of course we talk about a few books Susan read since we caught up last. Some books were a hit, some a miss, and one was in the paranormal fantasy genre. Yep, not a typo – paranormal fantasy. And that is not one of the books she abandoned.

Listen at the link below or search “Sustainable Productivity with Susan Sanders” wherever you get your podcasts.

Links mentioned in this episode of the Sustainable Productivity podcast:

By |2023-05-01T06:09:38-04:00May 1st, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

February Reading Round Up

This episode is about one of Susan’s favorite things in the world – books! Reading is one of Susan’s favorite hobbies, and hobbies are a component of the Mental Well-being dimension of Sustainable Productivity. On average, Susan reads about 15-20 books a month, but the recap provided in the episode is limited to the books that stood out because just running down every book each month would be the audio equivalent of watching paint dry.

Links mentioned in the Sustainable Productivity episode about reading:

  • Sign up for episode emails, weekly essays, and links so you never miss a thing!
  • You can see the complete list of books Susan has read on Goodreads, linked here.
  • Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler can be purchased at this link.
  • Seatmate by Cara Bastone is an Audible exclusive available at this link.
  • God is Closer Than You Think by John Ortberg can be purchased at this link.
  • This is Marketing by Seth Godin can be purchased at this link.
  • In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner was the favorite book I read this month and it can be purchased at this link.
By |2023-02-27T09:22:27-05:00February 27th, 2023|Show Notes|0 Comments

Everyone Else Is Doing It….

We just passed the midway point to the year, and you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a “Best Books of the Year (so far)” article. Or is that just a bookwork problem?

I regularly send out my 5-star reads via the Sustainable Sue Bookmobile so the cat is already sort of out of the bag there. Not the aforementioned dead cat being swung. This is a different, literary secret keeping very much alive cat.

But I want to share some of my 2022 reading adventures thus far.

Book Sale

I have started volunteering for a local book sale and it is GLORIOUS. Talking books, shelving books, cleaning books, pricing and selling books – DOES IT GET ANY BETTER?!

YES! I got to shop too! Here is my haul.

“It’s always better to have too much to read than not enough.” Ann Patchett

A few of these were actually on my To Be Read list! Toughness by Jay Bilas was the first book I put on Goodreads when I first started my account. And listen, I don’t need anyone naysayers. Don’t come at me with that nonsense about all the books already piled on my nightstand, in Bixby’s nightstand (shhhhh, don’t tell him), on hold at the library, etc.

I could be collecting weirder, unhealthier things. Just watch Hoarders to find that out.

Book Stats

My goal for 2022 was to read 100 books. I have started 89 books and completed 75 so far. Yes, I have quit 14 books – almost 20%. Life is too short to read books that you don’t connect with. I have no shame in my DNF game.

Here are the books I am currently reading:

  • Audiobook: Hidden One by Linda Castillo
  • Physical book: Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (I already watched both TV adaptations, but its great for the pool)
  • Non-fiction: The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion by Sharon Salzberg
  • Kindle: Out of the Ashes by Samantha Grosser

I am not linking to any of these yet since I have not finished I am not sure I can recommend them.

Book Fashion

In related news, I want to be able to read no matter WHAT and my aging eyeballs were not cooperating. I was losing easy readers all over the house, forgetting which easy readers were the right prescription for laptop, work computer, car, crafting, and physical books, and generally hating having to put contacts in to see distance only to need to put glasses back on to read.

So I bit the bullet and shelled out mad cash for some bifocals. Or progressives as is said now. I am not sad about it.

What are you reading these days? Come find me on social media or wherever you got this post and let me know!

Until then… Read on!

By |2022-07-12T09:55:36-04:00July 12th, 2022|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

2 Quick Tips for Fellow Bookworms

I am a bookworm for sure. I wear this moniker proudly and love to give quick reading tips to fellow bookworms. A friend of mine gave me a sticker that declares this, and I have proudly posted this on my monitor in my office. I recently came across a Tweet with names for bookworms in other countries and it is FANTASTIC.

Quick tips for bookworms

One of my favorite questions to ask when making small talk is, “What are you reading right now?” Yes, this is what happens when you invite an Enneagram 1 Introvert to a party. We’re a barrel of laughs.

I met Bixby on Match.com and one of the questions that is on the profile is, “What is the last book you read?” Bixby’s response was, “Practical C++ Programming: Programming Style Guidelines.” I winked at him anyway thinking it was a joke. Alas, Dear Reader, it was not. But at least he reads SOMETHING.

If you don’t feel like you have time to read, check out how one of my favorite podcasters, Laura Tremaine, finds time to read. Also, you may have to adjust expectations in different seasons of life.

Quick tips for bookworms

Here is the stack of books I brought with me to read while in Indiana taking care of my dad. My brain is generally not in the space to read most of these. Luckily my mom was a voracious reader so I am rolling through all the books she has squirreled away all over the house and reading what the library sends my way via Kindle.

Many of you already do find time and ask for reading recommendations. Generally I get 2 different questions from readers that I wanted to answer today and help provide two quick tips for fellow bookworms.

Where do you get your book recommendations from?

I get book recommendations from all kinds of places – books, magazines, podcasts, blogs, newsletters, word of mouth, and in non-pandemic times, wandering around garage sales and used book sales. Here are a few tips.

Podcasts

My 2 favorite podcasts to get recommendations from are The Popcast with Knox and Jamie and 10 Things to Tell You. The Popcast gives green lights at the end of each episode and often includes a book recommendation. You can see a summary of their green lights on their website here.  Laura Tremaine is an avid reader and regularly brings book recommendations to her podcast, 10 Things to Tell You.

Blogs

I used to listen to the podcast What Should I Read Next, but something about Anne Bogel’s voice does not agree with me. I struggled through it for awhile because I have the same reading taste she does so I generally love her recommendations. But alas, that was not sustainable. So I changed to subscribing to the blog. Now her recommendations arrive in my inbox, and I read them in my head with my own grating voice.

Anti-recommendations

Just as important as recognizing a recommendation source is having an anti-recommendation source. There was a reading podcast that I listened to for about 6 months, but I noticed every time I read a book they recommended, I HATED it. Although I have no shame quitting a book (more on DNFing here), it sure saves time in virtual line at the library when I can just skip the ones I don’t like. What this looks like today is that I no longer listen to the podcast, but if I am on the fence about reading a book, I will check this podcast’s website. If they recommend it, I do not read it. This is nothing against the podcast. There are no bad books, just books that are not for me.

What books do you recommend I read?

The other quick tip for fellow bookworms is what books I recommend for you.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a website with a mobile app where you can keep track of what you want to read, have read, and are currently reading. You can see more about how to use Goodreads on this post. You can see all of my Goodreads shelves here and follow me to get a weekly notice from Goodreads about what I have added.

5-Star Reads

Some of you don’t want to sift through the 900+ books that I have reviewed on Goodreads. To make it easy to get 5-star recommendations delivered to your mailbox, click here. When I read a book that I give 5 stars, I will send you an email about it, including links to purchase the book if you want. I am an aggressive user of my local library and encourage you to do the same, but sometimes you don’t want to wait 6 months for the best book ever (I’m looking at you, City of Girls). Also, there is value to supporting the arts and part of that is buying books.

Your turn, fellow Ink Drinkers! Reply back to this email and tell me what you are reading or where you get your recommendations!

By |2020-08-17T09:29:45-04:00August 18th, 2020|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Meh. I reached my goals: the truth about setting goals

I met my goal, and I am not ok with it. 

I love December because I can look back on my goals and the way I spent my year. Then I can celebrate the victories and plan for changes to what I wasn’t celebrating so much. In a future post I will share my celebrations. This post is about what I want to change because I met crushed my goals, and I am not ok with it. 

For the last five years I have set reading goals through Goodreads. Every year I bump up the number of books a little more. Some years I do a reading challenge to try to expand my reading list. I scour lists of Best Reads to add to my To Be Read list and try to keep up with what everyone else had read and loved. Then at the end of the year, Goodreads summarizes the number of books and pages I have completed this year. 

2018 reading goals
Last year I started 188 books, but finished 163 books. I keep a separate list of books I abandoned so I don’t accidentally try them again. More on that in this post.

There are a couple reasons why I am not excited about crushing this goal. While reading may not be your thing, I wonder if some of these reasons will resonate with how you are feeling about your goals. Don’t just consider the goals you hit – maybe you sabotaged your goals because you saw some of this sooner than I did. Either way, I want to talk about a different way to think about goal-setting, or the lack thereof. Let’s dig into it. 

1 – Now I have to raise the goal

We are all familiar with the idea of fear of failure. Most likely we are experienced at fear of failure. That cold clammy feeling when we think about everyone we are letting down when we cannot come through on the expectation or promise. But what about its wicked step-sister, Fear of Success. 

The idea behind fear of success is that when we reach a goal we have to immediately keep improving. I was a varsity athlete in college. At the end of my freshman year I was handed a list of goals I was to reach before returning to campus in the fall. 

  • A certain time for the mile run.
  • A number to hit for body weight and a more strict number for body fat.
  • Several targets for lifts in the weight room (bench press, squat, etc.).  

I worked my ass off that summer. Before going to my maintenance crew job, I lifted every day at 5:00 am. I got off at 3:30 pm and played basketball or ran or both until 8:00 pm more days than not. Weekends were filled with various tournaments or working a second job in a sporting goods store. I carefully planned meals and ditched my favorite Dairy Queen M&M Blizzards. Alcohol was not even an option.

I returned to campus, crushed all of my goals. OK, not the mile time – I squeaked by on that bad boy. But I reached it. To this day I still remember how proud of myself I was that fall. 

I met with my coach at the end of the pre-season expecting celebrations. Instead I hear: Good, now we know what you are capable of so we can set some real goals. 

That summer schedule took everything I had. And it was deemed not “real goals.” Crushing my goals crushed me. I had an intense schedule that I could barely sustain and now I was asked to significantly add to it.

Now, upping my reading game is not as soul crushing as sitting in that office hearing about my “good start,” but as I was looking ahead to my 2020 reading goals I started getting that familiar voice in my head.

  • What will I give up to make this happen?
  • How will I fit it all in?
  • What can I drop off the life schedule to get this done?

Its READING, guys! I refuse to let one of my favorite things in the world become something that squeezes out life. I will not be bumping up 2020 expectations just because I hit my 2019 goal. 

But there is another reason I am not increasing my goal. 

2019 reading goals
This year I started 168 books, but finished 143 books.

2 – What does this goal cost me?

If we return to our Young Susan basketball player analogy, it becomes clear what I exchanged. When I was a sophomore my boyfriend was so mad that I missed him playing baseball in semi-state playoffs that he cheated on me with one of my biggest rivals from our school’s biggest opponent, then dumped me while I was playing in a national tournament. Then my senior year I skipped all graduation parties and many friends’ open houses to travel to tournaments out of state. 

It may not seem like a big deal now, but to a teenage girl it was devastating. 

The parallel for me now is what am I not doing so that I can read for the sake of raising my goal. And this one was the clencher for me. When I read I am in the zone. Checked. Out. I am in Three Pines. Or playing Quidditch. I am right there with the gone girl on the train in the window

What I am not doing is:

  • Connecting with my people
  • Crafting something of my own
  • Writing words that might resonate with you
  • Engaging with nature to restore my own soul

I have decided I am not ok with this trade. While it may seem productive – read more, nature will always be there! It is not sustainably productive. I cannot maintain this every increasing number while abandoning other interests and passions. 

For a couple years I have needed to check out and numb to difficulties to get through a rough patch, but I feel myself coming out of that and into a new season. Reading is not going to go away AT ALL. Now reading will find its right sized place for this new phase of life for me. It is going to get to become a hobby that is sustainably productive instead of a competitive obsession that I have to hard charge forward with, consequences of what I am leaving behind be damned!

Do you have a goal that just feels tiring to keep expanding on? What would it feel like to maintain, reduce, or even abandoned it? What if you deemed yourself good enough – just as you are today?

By |2020-06-17T17:16:05-04:00December 30th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Bookish Humor

Use your library

Use your library, people. Seriously. At any given moment I have about 15 books on hold at the library – Kindle and audiobook. I use two different apps for this: Overdrive and Libby. They are made by the same company and there are pros and cons of each. I am less interested in that as I am having one app for Kindle books and one for audiobooks.

By |2019-12-12T19:02:27-05:00September 30th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Bookish Laughter

Buying new books

I laughed out when I saw this. It generally isn’t the situation in our house. I tend to limit my book buying more than Bixby does. I generally don’t re-read books so I feel guilt when purchasing books. Guilty because a bunch of trees died for me to just have the book around my house and guilty because I spent money on something that is not useful. READING is useful, but I don’t enjoy books as decoration.

By |2019-12-12T19:02:59-05:00September 23rd, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments
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