Jawbone Up: Review

Packaging it comes in (not my actual Jawbone)

Recently I purchased the Jawbone Up band to help kick start this healthier lifestyle that I'm trying to live. By using this fitness tracker it has motivated me to move more, take more walks, eat healthier and go to bed a decent hour. 

The jawbone that I have is the regular one that cost $80.00 at best buy. I connect it  to my iphone and it track my steps, sleep and food intake. It is a rubber cuff that's embedded with motion sensor technology to track sleep, steps active time and idle time. You can manually enter activities such as yoga or cycling since these are non-step activities. It comes in 8 different colors and also has a band that allows you to connect via bluetooth no matter what or where. It has a battery life of 10 days so you don't have to worry about charging it every day. I've been taking mine off while I shower and letting it charge. 

Sleep Patterns 

I have weird sleep patterns and I'm always going to bed at a reasonable hour (or so I think ) but I still feel tired and grumpy when I wake up. Could be the fact that I'm not a morning person. But I wanted to know more about my sleep patterns. The band allows you to track your light vs. deep sleep, the number of times you wake up and how long it took you to fall asleep.You are able to set a goal of how much sleep you want to get each night. Right now my goal is 8 hours. I tend to meet my goal most nights. 

Meals

I've used myfitnesspal.com for the longest to track what I ate. Many times you have to manually put in what you ate or cooked. This is the same way you have to input your meals on jawbone. It gives you the option to take photo of your food and/or scan the barcode, but the feature hasn't worked on my phone/app since I started so I just manually put the foods I've eaten in myself. I try to track everything as much as possible so far so good. My only issue is I always forget to put my food in and sometimes the foods I eat aren't in the database. 

Physical Activity 

I've lacked in the area of doing physical activity besides walking with the band on. But it does show how many steps that you've taken for the day and also the number of calories you've burned. It does really good at tracking the number of steps that I've taken at games and throughout the day at work. Hopefully if my plan to go to the gym this evening works out I'll be able to give a review on the data that is pulls when I work out. 

Overall, I like the jawbone. I've got annoyed a few times when I was sleeping with having it on (I'm a wild sleeper) but other than that I enjoy it and the results so far. I'd rather be tracking something versus tracking nothing. 

Monday Career Motivation #MCM: 5 Questions to Start the Career Search

Starting on Mondays I'm going to be doing a MONDAY CAREER MOTIVATION (#MCM). Working in HR everyone feels that I should have the inside scoop on jobs that are being offered. Wrong! Even if I did it wouldn't be beneficial to you or myself for me just to push you through to get a job. So I'm going to be posting some helpful tips around interviews, resumes, healthcare, etc. also some marketing and management stuff (since I do have a degree and experience in that as well).

So to start this #MCM off we are going to be talking about searching and applying for jobs online. With the job market having it's ups and down, many people are looking for jobs nationwide, by having the convenience of the internet. (oh the joys of technology) Using the internet for job searches can be very tedious and time consuming, but if you are dedicated and willing to spend that extra 20 mins filling that application out, you possible could move on to the next phase.

The first thing we are going to discuss are 5 main questions that you should be asking yourself.


1.  Who are you? 
In terms of training, qualification and your previous job titles. (i.e. Administrative Assistant, Human Resource Generalist, etc.)

2. What do you do? 
This question is a two part question--the second question is what can you do and what do you want to do? -- You are basically looking at the skills required to do the job you want and asking yourself the three questions listed above.

3. What fields interest you?  
Many fields have subfield included in them. You also want to take that into consideration. For example, Human Resource a subfield would be Generalist (Recruiter), Coordinator, Assistant, etc. You want to understand and learn each function and skill set of these subfields.

4. Who do you want to work for? 
For me this is the biggest question that I have to answer. I've dealt with small businesses that gave off the impression that they were multi-million dollar companies and also companies that were the total opposite. You want to make sure the qualities that you bring to the table will be appreciated and also they mesh well with the companies you are looking at. You should also look at the characteristics of the employees that they currently have and if you will fit and work well with them.

5. Where do you want to work? 
As I stated before with technology you can apply for positions world wide. You want to figure out if you are limited to a certain area or a specific state. You should also take into consideration the cost of living in another area if you are planning on relocating.


These are the base line questions that will get you to start thinking about your career and the next steps you will take.

Next, the topic will be Steps to Searching for Positions Online.

I'm BACK..For Real For Real

Birthday Cake

Wow!  I knew it had been a while since I had posted to the blog, but I didn’t think it had been this long.  Soooo let's play catch up in August I celebrated my 28^th birthday!!  I had a small birthday dinner the weekend before with a few good friends and family. I always want to do something big and grand for my birthday(s) but over the years I’ve realized that friends that are reliable are few and far between. I always work myself up because I invite people that I feel are my friends but they never show or give some excuse as to why they can’t come. I’ve realized people make time for whom and what they want to and I’m just not one….and I’m okay with that. Sorry about that tangent I went off on. But we went to dinner had drinks shared some laughs and called it a night.  Chaz and I went to the outlets and did some shopping and went to dinner and ended the night lying in the hotel bed watching football. Great night huh!?! I enjoyed it and spent time with those that really mattered so it was perfect for me.   Plus I realized just how close to the 3-0 I am. It put into perspective that I've still got a few things to do in my 20's that I haven't done yet! Let the countdown begin to 30. 

College Football season is here and U of SC has some disappointed fans. Prior to the season they predicted us to go all the way. I had confidence that our team was going to do something this year. But being a Gamecock fan from the beginning of my life I knew that they would build us up with excitement just to let us down.  We lost our first game of the season to Texas A&M. There was some sore loser in Willy B that night! We beat Georgia and lost to Missouri and Kentucky….you know our fans are really mad now. Chaz reads the message boards and the whole time I’m saying I don’t want to hear it. I know the fans are mad and upset but come on…you hype these guys and coaches up as if they are the President of the United States. This goes to their heads …. No you aren’t the baller that you think you are and if you aren’t making plays or catches that you should be then you shouldn’t get recognized for anything. For any kind of recognition you should be outstanding on and off the field.  

Hair Before Cutting it

About two weeks ago I decided to go ahead and cut my hair. I gave into the creamy crack addiction. My hair was breaking off around the edges, my weave was nappy and I was over spending ridiculous amounts of money on natural hair care products.  When we relaxed it and washed it out. I thought my hair was longer than what it was, so I wasn’t too disappointed or emotional when she started to cut it. We decided that we would add some color to cover up my premature gray hair. So now I’m a red, blond, brunette…but it shows up as red. At first I was like OMG WTF… YIKES, because I thought it was going to be the ghetto red but it doesn’t stand out that much. The reactions at work were good; my boss stared at me majority of the day. He said it would take some getting use to! Then he proceed to tell me his hair journey.   Right now, I’m pretty happy with the change. I just want to make the color more permanent so I can start doing my hair at home more (washes and deep conditions).

NEW CUT

People think I was crazy to go back to creamy crack when I’ve been natural for over a year. Natural isn’t for everyone. When I started my hair was short and uneven so weaves became my best friend all over again so it would grow. It finally started to grow and I did bantu knots and it didn’t come out the way I expected it so It was right back in a weave I went. Plus I was always concerned as to what people at work would think. I work in blue collar (mostly white) male dominated work place, they would have no idea what I was going through if I would have showed up with my natural hair out.  For now I’m dedicating myself to getting my hair back healthy, with relaxers.  I think I’m going to keep this short style for a while—at least until after the New Year.

I promise the next post won’t be in three months. It will be within a few days. I have a few things brewing in this beautiful mind of mine.

Hope all my readers are doing great!