Reboot 002: Tech for the Rest of Us

The case for building your familiarity with the best software solutions available today

Hey friends!

Let me start by getting this off my chest. It is daylight savings day as I am writing this. To be specific, spring-forward day. I have a strong dislike of time change days. They really mess with my biorhythms and have me feeling out of sorts for at least a week. They mess with my dog, too, who is expecting to be fed at certain times and pesters incessantly when the times don’t match up with her expectations.

On the flip side, it will be a real treat to have it consistently light out when I leave work. My office is windowless, and long days without any natural light are not good for anyone. To experience daylight on both my commute in and my commute home lifts my mood and gives me energy. To be able to spend time after work in the outdoors while it is still light out brings me joy.

Spring-forward day means spring is approaching, my favorite time of year. A time of new beginnings and anticipation of good things to come. New life and fresh starts. Birds singing and tender green leaves emerging from the ground. Ahhhhh, spring!

My life is a perpetual cycle of fresh starts and new seasons. I have nicknamed my current season of life Rebooting Renee because I am working to improve my health, my personal growth, and my professional skills. And to achieve the right balance, or mix. Each day is a fresh opportunity to make new choices.

The name of my newsletter, The Monday Reboot, is a natural extension of Rebooting Renee. I am hoping my words will encourage and inspire others to take steps to become the very best version of themselves.

The world around us is constantly changing, too. Whether we like the changes, or not, the days move forward and factors that were put in place decades ago are having a big impact on our world today. Whether it is climate change or the ghastly invasion being played out in Ukraine, we are all impacted by seeds of change that were planted long ago.

Much as we’d like to, we can’t control what is taking place outside our windows. Heck, we often can’t even control what is taking place in our own homes! We can, however, control our response to situations, to people, and to our evolving world.

Change is hard. In my observation, it might even become more difficult as we age. I don’t want to make any blanket statements, and if you are an anomaly to what I am describing here, please share your thoughts in the comments below. I will be thrilled to hear your feedback!

A stereotypical area where people have difficulties adapting as they have more years under their belt is using technology. Whether we like it or not, technology is an important part of our lives and will continue to be so. To avoid technology is to miss out on opportunities to keep your skills fresh and to leverage its power in your daily life.

There are zillions of YouTube videos that help tech geeks get the very most out of technology. The technology portions of my newsletters are written for the rest of us, to introduce (in a more user-friendly tone) the average Joe (or Jane) to other ways of using technology. Technology for the rest of us.

Cool Things that Make My Life Better

What I’m eating —

My sister and brother-in-law thoughtfully gifted us a box of Honeybell Tangelos from Pittman & Davis. There aren’t many left, but I’m enjoying the sweet and juicy flavor down to the last tangelo. These mouthwatering citrus fruits are a delightful grapefruit and tangerine hybrid. They are the perfect size for a snack or alongside a salad or sandwich for lunch. You can simply peel and pop the sections into your mouth. Or in my case, share one with the dog!

Honeybells are only available at certain times of the year and they are available now. You can order yours here. They make a great gift or healthy treat for yourself!

It’s the little things —

Yep, I’m one of those (is it PC to say geeks?) who has been wearing glasses since the 4th grade. I don’t remember ever cleaning my glasses as a kid (gross!) but as an adult with anti-reflective and blue light filtering coatings on my (um) progressive lenses, I need to clean my eyeglasses at least once per day. If I don’t, they are hard to see out of and the smudges and fingerprints make me look disheveled and messy.

Enter individually wrapped lens cleaning wipes. I am currently using Care Touch lens wipes, which come in a box of 400 wipes on Amazon. The thing I like best about the individually wrapped alcohol wipes is keeping a few stashed in my handbag, my SUV console, and my desk at work. I never have to worry about the lens cleaner leaking or freezing, and I always have one nearby. Bonus tip: after cleaning your eyeglasses or sunglasses, use the moisture left in the wipe to clean the smudges and smears off your smartphone screen. It’s a 2-for-1!

What I’m glad I put time and energy towards —

Getting educated about my finances. Have you ever heard the saying, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”? Some sources credit this bit of wisdom to a Chinese Proverb, but the concept also appears in a 2,000-year-old Jewish story. I’m not sure of the exact origin, but it sure holds water!

My financial history is similar to many people who went from having very little to having a better financial outlook. For the longest time, an increase in pay meant an increase in purchasing power. Got my first full-time job, bought a new car. Got a job that paid better, bought a new mini-van (this was in the days before SUVs). First husband got promoted, bought a big house in the suburbs. Had to shell out money to furnish and maintain that big house in the suburbs. Sound familiar?

I am blessed and fortunate to have been exposed to a variety of financial planning advice over the past 10 years that has been steadfastly transforming my views on money. I want to thank my husband Dave for sharing his knowledge and approach. I also want to thank all of the investors and wise money managers I have crossed paths with during my professional life as an accountant/CFO. I am still on the journey, but I am grateful to all the people and resources that have played a role in shaping my evolving outlook.

The pivotal point comes when you stop identifying as a consumer and start identifying as an investor. That shift in your mindset will help you begin evaluating the things you spend your money on and encourage you to start looking for ways to get your money to work for you.

Personal finance is a deep and wide topic, and there is much to share. I look forward to exploring various facets of personal finance with you in future issues of The Monday Reboot. Some of the suggestions I will be sharing in the future on improving your own financial situation include:

1. Building your safety net

2. Living within your means

3. Paying off debt

4. Increasing your contributions to a 401(k) or individual IRA

5. Improving your financial IQ

What I’m Learning (aka Tech for the Rest of Us)

In my last newsletter, I introduced you to the software solution Notion, a personal knowledge management tool. In laymen’s terms, Notion is a tool you can use to organize your thoughts, projects, and various pieces of information. All in one place.

Currently, my top uses of Notion are:

• Managing my to-do list

• Recording books I have or want to read and my notes on those books

• Organizing research and information on a variety of personal and work-related topics

• Super quick access to the cost basis for my cryptocurrency purchases

• Tracking my health metrics over time

A View of My Notion Dashboard

The “More Life!” dashboard that I have set up is the launchpad of my Notion workspace. I can use this dashboard as a means of quickly accessing the various sections I have developed.

I have organized my main sections of Notion under the basic categories “Daily” “Life” and “Resources.” I have also included three pages that I want to be able to access super easily at the bottom of my launchpad — my to-do list (Work Smarter!), a resource section I have on learning French, and items I have related to motivation.

To navigate to a specific section, all I need to do is click on the name of the section. In the example above, I can click on the “Books” section under the “Resources” column.

Clicking on “Books” opens up my “Books” section, which is structured as a table.

A View of My “Books” Table

I have labels set up for the various columns of my Books table and I can sort and filter the list by those tags. For example, I could filter the table above to view only the titles I own in the Audible format, or only the books that are related to “business” + “productivity” genres, which in this case would be Deep Work by Cal Newport.

If you like the Books table format, you can grab a template of it here (thank you Ali Abdaal for making this resource available!) I added the “Recommended By” and “Format Owned” columns to make the table more suitable to my needs.

If I feel like taking notes on important concepts in a book or including comments on how the topic relates to my life, all I have to do is click on the title of the book and a nested page will open up where I can record my thoughts.

I will continue to showcase Notion over the coming weeks so you can get a better understanding of why this app is my absolute favorite organizational tool!

Photos of the Week

These beautifully packaged, shiny tangelos arrived in perfect condition. I was really impressed with the care Pittman & Davis took in wrapping and arranging them. Thank you to my sister and her hubby for sharing their favorite fruit delivery with the Melville family! I know we will have these yummy Honeybells on reorder for years to come.

I’m borrowing this next image from Scholastic as a means of encouraging you to take a few minutes to read a book to a child in the coming days or weeks. These statistics and the impact reading has on a child’s intellectual development simply blow me away.

My sister and I were very blessed as children to have a mom who read to us and encouraged us to read. We both became bookworms and developed a passion for the written word. This life-long habit provided us with great advantages during our academic years and we continue to reap the benefits during our professional careers.

Thank you, Mom, for a parenting job well done! And a shout out to one of our favorite children’s books, The Big Tidy-Up, written by Norah Smaridge.

Thank you, Readers!

If you feel so inclined, please “heart” this article or share it with a like-minded friend, because man did it take a lot of time to pull all this information together for you!

I do want to let you know that no part of this newsletter is subsidized and I earn absolutely nothing by sharing my experiences and opinions on various products with you. That may change as my writing evolves and my influence grows. I have no idea where this journey will take me.

Substack is now available as an app

I have exciting news to share: You can now read The Monday Reboot in the new Substack app for iPhone.

With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never be cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.

As always, if there is anything you would like to learn more about, or just want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you.

If you want to add a comment about the changes that are taking place in our world right now, please remember to be tactful in your approach. Everyone has different opinions, and this is not the place for rants, political or otherwise! There are plenty of other platforms that you could use as an unfiltered avenue of making yourself heard.

Living my best life,

Renee Melville