These two things will make you sparkly & efficient
TTTWIYLQASWRLMI(IA) for $13.99 or less
Hello! It’s me. I’m writing with something that is not my What I Did Not Buy This Week column. WIDNBTW is a sort of anti-shopping guide (because if I didn’t buy it, well, maybe you shouldn’t buy it, but would enjoy looking at it!). This is a new column that will sometimes be a shopping guide, but not entirely, and may sometimes be solely comprised of free resources. There are only two things I can guarantee in this new colum: the things I suggest for you will be a) cheap, and b) easy.
So! Welcome to the first installment of These Two Things Will Improve Your Life, Quickly and Significantly, With Relatively Little Monetary Investment (If Any). That’s TTTWIYLQASWRLMI(IA) for short. Or just These Two Things, because those are words and not an initialism from hell!!
So, what are the(se) Two Things I’m discussing today? Here are two hints! One smells good and has glitter in it. The other one involves squares and charts, and can be done for free. Total cost of the things: $13.99. Here we go!
The first thing: Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Shimmer Body Oil
There’s a streaming platform—I’m pretty sure it’s Hulu but it might be Peacock—which showed commercials for this stuff twice per ad break in November and December. It worked! I am susceptible!!!
I’ve been a fan of glitter my whole life, and a fan of Palmer’s cocoa butter for almost as long, so I was already searching online for “sparkly Palmers body oil where to buy” before the first ad I saw had ended. I was delighted to learn that the body oil retails for $13.99 at your favorite hometown drugstore, though it often goes on sale for cheaper (I got mine for $11, which seems to be the going rate at Walgreens/CVS right now!).
Body oils can be a dangerous game. If they don’t smell good, if they’re too thick, if they’re too runny, if the packaging explodes: worthless. I’ve known those body oils, and depending on the viscosity and comedogenic properties, most of the disappointing ones wind up as overnight foot treatments or last-ditch hair masks.
I am pleased to report the Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Shimmer Body Oil is worth every penny! It comes in an easy-to-use pump bottle. It packs a remarkable number of glitter particles per droplet. It smells good. It makes your skin softer. It is a very oil-y formula—I know, I know, that sounds obvious. But it will TRICK you! At first pump, it seems thick, and it is, but it thins out as it warms up. You’ll want to put on pajamas or sweats after you apply, because it will get on your furniture.
The oil has a dry-but-slippery finish not unlike NUXE Huile Prodigieuse, a far more expensive and less efficacious product (IMHO) (In My Hattie Opinion). The glitter distributes evenly; I’ve never experienced a weird line of extra shimmer in, say, my armpit, or my knee fold. There’s a bit of golden tint to the shimmer, and I worried it would look like streaky fake tan on my Extremely Indoor 2007 Mall Emo flesh. Nope!
Ostensibly you could buy this and use it on special occasions. I do not recommend you do that. I think you should find a coupon, buy this for $11 and use it every damn day. In my younger and more vulnerable years, I saved my glitter body oil for “special” occasions, and then, when I used it, I always felt phenomenal. Because I was GLITTERY! And now that I am using this body oil on a regular basis, I’ll go to the mirror, ready to pluck a chin hair or something, and then I see how glittery I am, and I think “Oh hell yeah, this is awesome. I’m so glittery and it makes me feel great about myself. I am going to skip picking at my face and instead I am going to find more places on my body to put glitter.” Next time I go to the drugstore, I am going to seek out the “body gloss” lotion-gel which is from the same collection as the shimmer oil.
The second thing: An Eisenhower matrix
This one costs $0! It is a tool you can use to improve time management.
I learned about the Eisenhower matrix from Bull Garlington, aka the Analog Attorney. I stumbled upon his blog when I was trying to find a post from Analog Office, and while I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice, I sure as hell can/will take advice from lawyers. Especially when that advice is about pens and legal pads and organizational tools!
Here's how to make an Eisenhower matrix, also called an Eisenhower box, Eisenhower square, time matrix or prioritization grid.
On a sheet of paper or an index card, draw a large + to create four squares/an X-axis and Y-axis.
Label the columns.
The leftmost column is URGENT.
The rightmost column is LESS URGENT.
Label the rows.
The upper row is IMPORTANT.
The lower row is LESS IMPORTANT.
It should look something like this.
Look at your to-do list. Take the items which are both urgent and important, and write them in the top-left corner of the grid. Take the items which are important, but not as urgent, and write them in the top-right corner of the grid. Write the urgent but less important items in the bottom left corner. Finally, take the items which aren’t urgent and aren’t so important and
throw them in a dumpster and pour bleach on the dumpster and walk away, finally free from the obligations you have been saddled withwrite them in the bottom right corner of the grid.
So! Now, you can decide what order to complete the items which were transposed from your to-do list to your notecard. This is a huge, huge help if you have a long to-do list, because you’re made to think about what needs to get done in what order, not just the order in which it’s written down or the order in which you want to do it. Because, if you’re like me, and you have a mostly-functioning brain which sometimes decides to go totally offline, nothing can disrupt the whole system quite like an urgent task popping up while you’re in the middle of a less-urgent still-important task. Typically, I start in the top-left, then do the bottom-left, then top-right, and bottom-right is a “that’s nice if I get this done today” bucket.
OR!!! Going even further…you can use this system to determine what to do, schedule, delegate and eliminate.
It was actually during a work training that I first encountered these four “keywords” for Eisenhower matrices. I had been using this grid system for years, and then in a lecture on time management, I saw the familiar squares pop up with a new addition!
Really, it’s just a shorthand to help you understand the actions associated to each quadrant of the matrix:
If it’s urgent and important, you do it. Like…now.
If it’s important, but not so urgent, you schedule it. More on this in a sec.
If it’s not important, but it is urgent, you can delegate it. Depending on the task, this might look like “Hey, babe, can you pick up a salad kit on the way home?” or “Hey, esteemed colleague, can you send me that brief when you’re finished with it?”
If it isn’t important, and it isn’t urgent…Maybe you shouldn’t even do it! If you can, eliminate it.
When I use an Eisenhower matrix, I sit down with my to-do list, my planner, and notebook. I write my to-do list items into the four quadrants. Then, I take anything in that top-right “schedule” quadrant, and I give it a timeslot in my planner. I use an hourly, page-a-day planner, so this is a pretty straightforward task for me. After I’ve scheduled everything from that top-right quadrant, I start in right away on the top-left quadrant, and don’t stop til I’m done. After I get the top-left list complete, and the top-right list on my calendar, I figure out where the bottom two boxes fit in.
If you want to implement this practice into your daily life, I recommend drafting a sample matrix and keeping it with your planner or to-do list for easy reference. Here is my green notecard, which I keep paper-clipped to the back of my “matrix dashboard” (a special, index-card-sized notebook I use exclusively to write out my Eisenhower matrix each day).
You can also buy a planner which has an Eisenhower matrix built-in! I didn’t know this when I bought it ages ago, but the Ohh Deer undated planner from Urban Outfitters has a matrix printed at the bottom of every page. If you know you’ll forget to use an Eisenhower grid unless it’s pre-made and right in front of you, this planner is a godsend. It’s cute and affordable, too.
I hope the Eisenhower matrix can help you wrangle an unruly task list. It’s been immensely helpful for me. It makes the busy, complicated, stressful days seem more conquerable, and it helps me make the most of the days where I have a lot of free time in my schedule!