Jessica's Friday Five: If you're an insect magnet, change a life with a post-it, and app rec

Hi Reader,

Like last week's, this newsletter was written a few weeks ago as I was heading out for a trip with my family and friends. I'll be back on Monday, and I'm so excited to catch up with all of you. I've been taking my own advice to stay out of my inbox while on vacation—I literally deleted my work email account from my phone while I am gone and didn't bring a laptop. As you're reading this, there's a good chance I'm on my final day of surf lessons in Portugal and maybe even have been able to catch a wave. I'll have to report back next week on whether that happened.

Let's get to your Friday Five!

1. Pause right now - make a plan to use a gift card: You probably have an unused gift card, don't you? So many of us do! I want you to think about when you can use that gift card and put it on your calendar right now. Maybe you put a calendar appointment to go out to dinner at that spot this weekend. Maybe you set a reminder for tomorrow morning to head to the store and spend those gifted dollars once you're up and caffeinated. Text someone and say, "I have a gift card for ___ that I need to use up - wanna go this weekend?"
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2. Need to get more organized at work? My group program (Joyfully Managed Worklife) sold out the last time I opened the doors, and I expect that will happen again when I open up the next cohort (which I expect to be later this month or early August). It's all about getting more organized at work - from getting email under control to project management and planning your week. If you'd like to be the first to know when it's opened up, click here and I'll put you on the waitlist and keep you updated.
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3. Thermocell Mosquito Repeller: Prevent yourself from becoming dinner for mosquitos and snag this little thing. We have it and it really helps me, the resident bug magnet in my family (I'm the kind of person who will sit outside for twenty minutes and end up with 13 bug bites while the person next to me has zero). It makes such a big difference that I take the trouble to bring it with us on trips where we'll spend time outside.
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4. Help your friends find jobs using a post-it: Our brains are great for having ideas and terrible places for keeping ideas. So if you're like me and occasionally hear about friends and former colleagues that are looking for their next job, create a little private place you can keep track of the names of who is currently looking. For a long time, I had a purple post-it near my desk at home where their names would go. When a job posting popped up in my world, I'd look at the Post-it and think about whether any of them might be interested and send it to them. These days I use a lightweight personal CRM with a little group of job seekers, but the post-it worked for a decade before that and has resulted in me connecting more than one person with their eventual next role!
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5. Travel App Rec: This comes from a college friend (hi Donna Lee!): "A travel app that I love that you should share with everyone is Rome 2 Rio. It’s great because when you’re unfamiliar with a location, you can get all the local transportation options available to you. It compares pricing between all the different ones as well as time so you can get a sense of what makes the most sense to get between one place and another when you’re traveling." We got this before our trip to help us out!

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