The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll give a summary of a book I just read called The Like Switch by Jack Schafer.  I've boiled down many of his points into just the basic formulas and tactics for getting people to like you.  This is the second of two parts. In the first video, I talked about Schaffer's tenure at the FBI, training agents on the friendship formula and friend or enemy signals.  Next, let's talk about reading Body Language It is useful to be able to read someone’s body language to determine whether they are happy with you or not.  In order to do this, you should practice by watching other people interact. You can tell when people are getting along because they do the following things: they smile, use expressive gestures (not aggressive ones), lean into each other, women tend to flip their hair, they mirror each other’s behavior and posture, they nod in agreement, they have an open stance (wit

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll give a quick summary of a book I just read called The Like Switch by Jack Schafer.  I've boiled down many of his points into just the basic formulas and tactics for getting people to like you.  This is the first of two parts. I just read this book called The Like Switch: An FBI agent’s guide to influencing, attracting, and winning people.  It’s written by this guy Jack Schafer, who as stated, was an FBI counterintelligence agent and psychologist. He developed all of these strategies to convince people to do stuff — like spy on their own countries or confess to crimes.  His whole view is that, if you can get someone to like you, they are WAY more likely to do what you want them to do.  Like that saying, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Now that is a pretty manipulative premise, but I think you can put a lot of these techniques to good use — with just getting people t

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share how I use Google Sheets and Toodledo to throw our annual party with a minimum of fuss. I used to feel kind of intimidated about throwing a big party, but now I’ve got it down to a science.  We throw a big annual night-club themed dance party since we both love to dance and we’re too old and suburban now to go to actual night clubs.  Our party is NOT going to end up in a magazine spread, but it is easy to pull off year after year.  And I find that I can actually enjoy myself when I'm not being a slave to perfection.  Here are some of my requirements for our annual party: Large  - I actually prefer large parties since I get stressed out about narrowing down the guest list for smaller parties.  I will definitely enjoy the party less if I’m worried about hurting people’s feelings. Easy  - Hats off to people who seem to effortlessly throw beautiful, complicated parties with a lot o

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share my secret to always remembering to follow up on emails. How many times has this happened to you?  You ask someone a question over email, you mentally cross it off your list, and then you totally forget to follow up to actually get the answer to the question?  Then, a couple of weeks later you’re like “Crap!  Did I ever hear back from so and so on that??” Okay — I’m super forgetful, so this used to happen to me all the time. I tend to remember when a question is urgent, but when I don’t need the answer right away — poof, it leaves my head as soon as the email leaves my outbox.  Some people are fantastic and quick at email responses, some are terrible, and some are pretty good some of the time. The thing is, YOU are the one that needs the answer to the question, so you can’t just assume you’ll get a response eventually.  It’s up to you to follow up.  So, here is my solution. For e

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my system for making unique and varied stir-fries with no fuss.  So, I have this weird thing where I don’t like making the same recipe more than once. It’s one of the odder things about me, I think.  And there are QUITE a few to choose from.   But there is one thing that I make almost every week — and that is stir fry.  I can do that because when you factor in all of the different choices in vegetables, protein, and sauce — there are practically an infinite number of varieties of stir fry.  Plus, it is healthy, my family generally likes it, and it’s an all in one dish.  It’s also something that I can make on autopilot — I know the sequence of events by heart.  The only complication is making the sauce, but I have a solution for that I’ll talk about afterwards. Oh, and even though I would love to take credit for all of this, I have to give a shout out to the good folks at Cooks Illu

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share some of my tips for getting organized over the holidays using Google Sheets and Toodledo.  I love the holidays, but like everyone else, I frequently feel overwhelmed by all of the additional tasks during holiday season — decorating the house and tree, ordering and sending holiday cards, and buying and wrapping Christmas presents.  All this amid lots of late-night seasonal festivities and, for us, holiday travel.  My very first order of business is that I cut myself some major slack around the holidays. I would highly recommend doing an analysis of what is critical to you and what is not and then prioritizing accordingly. For example, weekends are hectic for us at this time of year — my husband travels, my kids have a bunch of activities.  It was getting increasingly difficult to plan enough time on a weekend for all of us to go out, get a tree, put it up, and decorate it. Along with

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll talk about Marie Kondo’s book the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and 5 tips that I find really useful.  This is the second of a 2 part series.  In the first video, I talked about how reading Marie Kondo’s book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up changed my overall philosophy about keeping things. In addition, I found 5 really great ideas that I still employ: Cull, then organize  - maybe this goes without saying, but a lot of people (including me historically) start by buying a bunch of organizing stuff and then make decisions about what to keep later.  The first step is getting rid of stuff. Once you have a smaller pile, then you organize.  Getting rid of stuff is the hard part. Do it first.  Cull constantly  - I tend to think of organizing like a project. When it’s done, it’s done!  Wrong. It is a process. Stuff wears out, goes out of style, becomes less endearing. Get rid of it.

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll talk about Marie Kondo’s book the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and how if changed my philosophy about keeping stuff.  This is the first of a 2 part series.  A couple of years ago, we had our basement finished.  Before renovation, it was about 3/4 storage.  Since I was decreasing that to about 1/4 storage, I really needed to get rid of some stuff.  And I was sort of frozen with overwhelmedness, so I picked up this book to give myself some inspiration.  And it worked!  Let me tell you my takeaways.  The book was a true sensation for a couple of years when it was released.  I would recommend reading it— but here is the main and most important point of her system. You have to change your whole philosophy about the stuff that is in your life.  So, I come from a family that, let’s say, KEEPS things.  Not hoarder-level keeping, but definitely not super healthy.  My parents keep different

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you about my family’s Selfish Gift Exchange tradition that we do every Christmas.  Okay — I’ve found that most extended families eventually come to a point where it doesn’t make sense for every person to give every other person a holiday gift. When you get to this point of family reckoning, there are generally 3 ways to handle it: 1) you stop giving gifts altogether, 2) you pool money for a group charitable contribution or 3) you draw names so that each person gives to just one other person.  My family started out doing #3 — drawing names. The problem was, we were not seeing some of my more geographically distant cousins enough to make even an educated guess about what they liked so — we were either giving complete dud gifts OR playing it totally safe and just exchanging gift cards.  There is nothing that feels more pointless than swapping $30 gift cards. Why even bother? So, my fam

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I keep my purse organized! There are a billion of these videos out there, but everyone has their own spin, so I thought I’d throw my system into the mix.  I should say at the outset that I am not at ALL brand oriented AND I am practical to a fault. These things drive my handbag choices, so this video is NOT going to appeal to you if you differ from me too much on either of these preferences.  In terms of gendres, this is more organizing than lifestyle video. Right around the time I read the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I completely changed my purse philosophy. I used to believe that the bigger and roomier the better. My bags would hold a plethora of things and it would take me forever to find anything in them. The bigger problem was that I started getting shoulder pain from carrying around such a heavy bag. So, I changed my purse philosophy.  Now, my bag con

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I take all of the passages that I've highlighted in a Kindle book and either stick them in Evernote or format them for Google Sheets. It probably won't surprise you, based on my penchant for paperless everything, that I prefer to read books on the Kindle.  I still miss some things about physical books, but for me, the benefits of reading on a Kindle far outweigh them.  In particular, I like the search function and the highlight function.  Since I do most of my reading in bed, I really like not having to wrestle with a highlighting pen and a heavy book while reclining.  You might have noticed, if you highlight like I do, that even when you are on the Kindle app for iPad, you can't just copy and paste passages of a book that you want to share. Probably for copyright reasons.   That said, what Amazon DOES have is a unique website for you that compiles all of

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share how I get organized and stay on top of my assignments for my part-time grad school program.  First of all, let me just say that although my life seems hectic to me, it is no where NEAR what some of my fellow students are experiencing.  There are lots of folks who are part-time students, working full time, and raising small children, some of them as single parents. Hats off to them.  That said, I think my methodology could be helpful for anyone — regardless of how crazy your schedule is.   I started grad school this fall, so I’m still working through some of the tools I’m using. I started out with a different organizing system than the one I use for everyday life and promptly discarded it after a couple of months.  Life is too crazy to have to check multiple systems.  If you’ve seen any of my ADHD videos, you’ll know that I use Toodledo for a task list and Google Calendar for schedu