The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll share the apps and systems that I use for paperless note-taking.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   I'm not sure what initially drove me to be semi-paperless in my personal life. It was probably a combination of being overwhelmed by all of the paper streaming into my home, wanting to have access to my files where ever I was, and the giant technological advances that made it not just doable, but also pretty appealing. Whatever it was, once I got my iPad, I stopped relying on paper. Evernote My primary note taking app is Evernote. It is cross platform, which is a recurring theme and a priority to me. It means that I can access it from my iPhone, iPad, any web browser, or Windows software on my computer. It started out with rudimentary functionality, particularly the mobile...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll discuss how I use the AnyList app for shopping lists and errands.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization. I'm the head procurement officer in my house.  One of my many quirks is that I absolutely HATE grocery shopping. I'd rather clean bathrooms than grocery shop -- really. Because of this, I only do it once a week. I will go to extreme lengths to avoid going more often than that.  I also have issues with running out to do a single errand. It feels like a giant waste of time. This must come from my childhood when we carefully budgeted gasoline and did our errands all at once and infrequently.  Because of these quirks, I require a good list system to remember the things we are running out of and errands that I need to run, so that I can do them all efficiently in one ru...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll review all of the systems and apps that I use for reminders.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   Okay -- if you've seen other videos in this series, you know that I use a bunch of systems to help me remember events, tasks and correspondence.  I rely heavily on three tools: Gmail (single stream email), Google Calendar (scheduling), and Toodledo (task management).  I commit to checking these 3 apps daily and keeping up with my commitments for each.   But even so, some things were still falling through the cracks. So, in some cases I needed additional help to plug the holes.  Timers Okay, so I'm very distractable. If I put a load of laundry in, it could be days later when I realize I haven't moved the wet clothes to the dryer. Yuck.  Partially for ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you about the system I use for task management.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization. Okay -- so, I have a video that gives an overview of my organizational processes and apps. Then I have a video that describes how I use Gmail to funnel all of the digital information coming into my life into a single stream.  This video discusses one of the core elements of my organization system -- task management. I am a list keeper -- always have been.  One of my weaknesses is in working memory, which is the ability to keep more than 2 things in your head actively.  I was a waitress for a couple of summers and I was a perfectly good waitress if I had a pad of paper to write everything down.  But things really fell about when customers asked for things as I was rushing th...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in this video I'll talk about using Gmail as a single stream funnel for the electronic information that enters my world.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization. If you've watched the overview video of my organizational apps, you know that I use Gmail as the central funnel through which all electronic data enters my world. Kind of like having one single inbox to check and work through. I just wasn't keeping up well when I had four different inboxes to deal with. Let's walk through what that looks like for each kind of information: Landline voicemail - okay -- this is archaic and I know a bunch of people who never check their landline voice mail. But I have a couple of old school relatives in my life who would be none too pleased if I never responded to their urgent voicemails. Verizon is the provider ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'm going to share an overview of the organizational tech systems I use to compensate for my ADHD forgetfulness and distraction.  I come from a long line of folks afflicted (and blessed) with ADHD Inattentive type. Everyone in my family of origin has some degree of ADHD and I've passed it down to both of my kids. They are, as you can imagine, eternally grateful. I've never been diagnosed and I don't take medicine for it, but I definitely have many of the symptoms: distractibility, organization problems, forgetfulness, and tragically bad working memory (or the ability to keep more than 2 things in your head at one time). Even though I didn't have a label for what I was dealing with early on, I knew I needed to compensate for my clear deficits in these areas, just to get stuff done and not be constantly apologizing for not responding, missing appointments, and forgetting things.  The wa...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'm going to talk about why I quit Facebook.  I joined Facebook back in the early days and was immediately delighted by the ability to instantly contact people from different eras of my life.  I never posted much, but I was a promiscuous friend acceptor -- accepting requests even from people I couldn't place immediately. My rationale was that my memory is terrible, so I probably knew them, right?  I soon amassed hundreds of friends -- each from different eras of my life. Which brought me to my first problem: Diversified Audience  - I believe strongly in tailoring my message to my audience. This might sound inauthentic, but I believe that it is easier to build understanding by first establishing common ground.  For me, there were too many disparate groups among my Facebook friends. I grew up in a rural, conservative area -- and as a result many of my high school friends hold v...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'll discuss using Blue Apron as a Culinary school in a box for your kids.  I would like my kids to be competent cooks.  They are 13 and 15.  I'm not looking for next contestant on MasterChef Junior, but I want them to be able to find their way around a kitchen and make some reasonable meals. To this end, I have tried a bunch of systems with varying degrees of success starting when they were in early elementary school.  Let's see if I can remember some of the highlights: I joined a monthly mail away cooking club that sent these adorable cookbooks and little kid-sized kitchen implements, I created a summer cookbook for the kids to work through with easy recipes for lunch, I've signed them up for pricey classes at our local culinary school, I assigned them weekly nights to sous chef for me, and most recently, I implemented a Kids in the Kitchen Night once a month where they took ove...

Hi, everyone!  It's Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'm going to tell you about my military style solution to bowls and towels everywhere courtesy of my kids.  Two years ago, I basically lost it. I do laundry once a week on Thursdays and this time I washed and folded -- I kid you not -- 21 TOWELS.  18 bath towels and 3 beach towels. For a family of four -- this was beyond ridiculous.  Particularly when I noted that my husband, my daughter and I only had one towel a piece. That means my son managed to use 15 bath towels in one week.  Again, this strains credulity since this is the kid who requires incessant nagging just to get in the shower once a day.  Maybe he was using a different towel for each body part? His problem is a combination of forgetfulness and laziness. After showering, he leaves his towel in his room -- generally on the floor although we DO have hooks to hang them in each kid's room.  But he the nex...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in this video I'll discuss why you should talk to your kid about the fuzzy line between cheating and not.  First off -- I don't think your kid is cheating. I don't think my kid is cheating. That is -- I don't think they KNOW that they are cheating.  The reason I think this deserves a conversation is because life is so different now than when we grew up. Technology makes everything faster and easier and there IS an impact on our kids' perception of some basic schoolwork dos and don'ts.  We assume our kids know not to lie, cheat or steal, right?  But these are not the absolutes we would like them to be -- with each tere is a range that goes from okay in some circumstances to totally unacceptable.  Let's take stealing for example. We can pretty much all agree that stealing is objectively bad. If there was a dollar bill laying on the counter in an office kitchen, most people would not ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today we are going to discuss the dreaded "sex talk" with your kids.  I am by no means the perfect "sex talk" parent model -- and certainly not from the beginning. I knew that I wanted to have an open dialog with my kids about sex eventually, but I was squeamish just like everyone else.  For the longest time, I let my kids think that babies came out of an incision in the mom's belly.  I had had 2 c-sections and, to be fair, they only asked specifically about their own births. When they were in early elementary school, I got shamed into doing a better job because our local Anglican priest, who's kids were around the same age, had already had this very specific and detailed conversation with his kids. And I refused to be bested by an Anglican priest! Now -- I'm a sex education teacher at my church. The church that I belong to is very liberal and takes the view that sexual educatio...