The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you about my big review of all of my regular monthly expenses.   I think I established in a couple of my other videos that I am a bit of a budget nerd.  I like setting up a budget, tracking expenses, and maintaining the system.  But, as with any project, I’m always most excited about the setting up part.  The problem is that, as you live your life, you add new things to your monthly expenses and expand your budget to accommodate them, but if you are like me, you rarely take a good, hard look at everything to determine if you REALLY need to spend that money, or if you might be paying too much in each category.  In this video, I am advocating doing this process once a year.   Now, this can be a pretty big project depending on how trim your budget is or how good you are about researching things before you sign up for them.  For me, it had been a while since I had taken a hard look a

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my rule of thumb for deciding whether I needed smartphone insurance and for how long.   I’ve been going though this process of examining each of our monthly payments and to determine whether I’m paying too much and whether they are still worth the price.  One of the areas I looked at was our smartphone insurance.   Smartphones are expensive, easy to break, and easy to lose.  The fact that we have them with us at every moment makes the risk of loss or damage even higher.  Someone recognized all of this and is making big money off of smartphone insurance.  We are good candidates for insurance.  Both of my kids have ADHD which makes loss or damage almost unavoidable and, although their phones are not top of the line, they are definitely not cheap.  Not all insurance is created equal — some only cover manufacturer defects, others cover your phone even if it is lost or stolen.  So, ho

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll give you a top-level overview of the Enneagram Personality Type system and I’ll tell you why I think it can help you be a better person.  I love personality tests. When I was in high school, I did a whole science project on whether the Myers Briggs Type indicator predicted employment plans — it sort of did.  I have forced many people to test their introversion levels with this test that i keep on my phone. And I like to categorize people into foxes and hedgehogs based on my family’s unique take on those economic metaphors.  I know these tests aren’t usually data driven.  In other words, there isn’t much evidence to support that people who are, for example, classified as ENFJs behave similarly in a given situation. The one personality description that IS based on statistical factor analysis is the Big 5 Personality Traits. Those are just 5 dimensional traits that are statistically pred

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll share some tips on how to organize your Gmail folders on a browser or iOS device. If you are like me, you spend a bunch of time during the day going through emails.  I try to get to Inbox Zero once a day, so this means that I'm making decisions for each email -- Delete, File, or Act on.  I have lots of videos about managing email if you are interested in this topic.  This video specifically covers those emails that you have decided to Save or File.  I've talked to a bunch of people who are fine to either delete emails or act on them, but really don't save many.  There are a bunch of reasons for this reluctance, but let's start by explaining how to  Add Folders This is pretty easy on both a browser or iOS device, but let's walk through it quickly.  On a browser, hit the More arrow below all of the existing folders, scroll down, and select Create New Label.

Hi, everyone.  This Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my tips on how to focus. Okay -- I am mildly ADHD inattentive type.  I have a whole series of videos on the tools that I use to overcome my natural forgetfulness and inattention.  However, even if you are NOT particularly inattentive, there are still so many distractions in today's world, that it can be very difficult to focus when you need to.  So, let me give you my tips. 1 - Block your calendar We all do better if we give ourselves a chunk of time for deep thinking.  I'm talking about when you need to write, analyze, read, or do any number of things that require more than just superficial concentration.  If you have couple meetings scheduled in the middle of the morning, but nothing in the afternoon -- pick the afternoon as your time to focus and think deeply.  In the morning, you can do all those tasks that require less of you -- like answer emails, organize p

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I eliminated my duplicates on Google Photos. I'm a big fan of Google Photos and I have been urging folks to offload photos from their iPhones onto Google Photos to save space and as a long-term photo storage solution. A little while ago, I started getting duplicates on Google Photos.  I have an iPhone, so this video is specific to iOS issues.  My duplicates looked like this.  So, I would go through my photos and arbitrarily delete one of the duplicates.  The problem was -- I would go back later and I was losing some of these.  Instead of just deleting one of the them, Google Photos would have neither of them!   This was clearly an unacceptable situation.  After some trial and error, what I realized is that, for nearly all of my duplicates, I would have one that would look like this and one that had a tiny round arrow icon at the bottom.  I determined that th

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Todoist to manage my work in graduate school. I've been using two task management platforms in parallel to manage my work for grad school this semester.  I just did some videos recently on how to use Trello to manage school work in college/university and also high school.  This video is about Todoist.  Apologies in advance if you've already seen the other videos -- there will be a little duplication. Although I really like the versatility and richness of features from Trello, in the end, I've decided to use Todoist based on my requirements and needs.  I've actually started using it for all my task management, but in this video, I'll just talk about managing college work.    I'm in a part-time, partial distance learning program and am taking three classes this semester.  Because of this, my set up will be a little simpler than it wou

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I helped my kids organize their high school work using Todoist. I'm a bit of an organizational system junkie, but obviously not everyone is.  I've been trying to find a system that works well for organizing tasks for each of my kids and they both have really different styles.  I started out using Trello with both of my kids -- you can see my video on that.  My son almost immediately found it too complicated and confusing to use.  Fair enough.  He really just wanted to use one of those super oversimplified homework apps, but after trying a couple out, I thought they were way too limited.  So, he's now using Todoist to manage school work, chores, and his college application process. Because we were looking for a simple system, this use of Todoist is fairly straightforward.  Simple is important though -- the more complicated you make things, the less incli

Hi, everyone!  This is  Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I've helped my kids set up Trello to organize their high school assignments and school work. I've been testing out 2 organization systems in parallel for my grad school work -- Trello and Todoist.  They are both great applications, but different.  Based on their preferences, one of my high schoolers is using Trello and the other is using Todoist.  In this video, I'll share how you can set Trello up to help you organize your high school assignments and work. I have a massive pet peeve about high school and the way assignments are given.  In middle school, assignments were given out day by day, but there was quite a bit of hand holding and some leeway to make sure students got things done.  In college, professors are required to give their students a syllabus at the beginning of the semester with the entire four months already entirely planned out week by

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll explain how you can set up Trello to organize your tasks and projects for college or university. I’ve been testing out a bunch of project/task management systems and am currently using two systems in parallel to organize grad school — Trello and Todoist. Both of them are great, but different.  In this video, I'll tell you how I organize school with Trello.   Trello is a great app.  I have a couple of videos on Trello basics and how I use it if you are interested.  As I’ve said in other videos, Trello is incredibly versatile — sometimes it feels SO versatile that you don’t even quite know how to get started.  Which is why is it nice to hear how someone else uses it for a similar purpose so that you don’t have to start from scratch. So, I’m in grad school, for the second time, this time getting a masters in social work.  I’m in a part-time, partial distance learning program and

Hi everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share the rule that I have for homecoming and other special occasion dresses. Fall is in the air and that means that means we will soon be kicking off the annual bickering about homecoming dress selection.   So I’ve talked ad nauseam to my daughter about clothing choices and the male gaze (I have a video on that if you’re interested), but in the end teenage girls want to look as “cute” as possible for homecoming and other dress up occasions. And that generally means that there is going to be some conflict between teenager and parents about their outfit choices. Unfortunately, looking “cute” many times means showing a little more body than I am generally comfortable with.   But that said, I was once a teenage girl, and I know it’s not gonna fly for me to make my daughter go to homecoming in something like this. She wants to fit in — I get it.  BUT there ARE some fairly scandalous styles that

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll give my argument for why I think you should declare email bankruptcy. If you are watching this video, you probably don’t have just like 35 emails in your inbox, right?  My guess is you have hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands.  In fact, you probably have that many UNREAD emails.  So your email badge looks something like this? This probably feels a little overwhelming.  So, what are the drawbacks to having that many emails? You miss stuff.   It is hard to remember what you have responded to and what you haven’t gotten to yet if you don’t have that reminder in your inbox. And we all get so many emails per day that important emails just get pushed farther and farther down into your inbox.  So if you find that you have forgotten to put an event on your calendar or forgotten to respond to an important email, it may be time for a new system. You can’t find stuff.    If you h