Weirdly, and despite the fact that I am mysterious and unpredictable (just ask my family!), the list of things on my plate this week looks much like it did last week. I should be:

1. Working on the draft of my next book.
2. Critiquing another chapter for a friend and reading a completed manuscript for another friend.
3. Buying and mailing a birthday present for my other nephew – sorry buddy, it’s going to be late!
4. Doing my taxes – gah, still not done!
5. Catching up on the latest episode of The Voice (no wait, that’s meant for another list!)

Instead, I went for a stroll in the sunshine with a friend and took lots of blurry photos of birds. This one I’m sharing is a red-winged blackbird. After a long stalemate, he agreed to let me take this one picture, so long as I hurried on my way afterwards.

Alright, alright, this week’s tip?

» Make a public commitment to your goals. Whether that’s a list of to-do’s on your blog/FB/Twitter, a note on your fridge door, or a sticky note on your computer monitor, write it down somewhere.

So tell me, did you try out Trello last week? What did you think? Or do you have another list-making app that’s better? Tell me, tell me.

Chances are, if you’re like me and you follow lots of interesting blogs, you might be using an RSS feed reader so that you can check all your blogs in one place. If a blog provides an RSS feed, you’ll see an icon that looks something like this:

 or  

One of the most popular RSS readers, and my favorite, has been Google Reader. But Google recently announced that they are retiring Google Reader. So what’s a girl to do?

I’ve been trying out other readers, but none of them fit – I’m like Prince Charming searching for the owner of Cinderella’s slipper. Part of the problem is that in Google Reader I starred a bunch of posts so I can easily find them again, and when I import my RSS feeds into other readers, I lose those starred posts.

But then I tried Feedly.

With Feedly, I can log in with my Google Reader credentials, so it can grab all my RSS feeds AND it adds my starred posts to the Saved For Later group. And when Google Reader finally goes away, all the data will be pulled onto a Feedly server.

The icing on the cake, is that just as I was starting to get comfortable with Feedly, I (and other Google Reader outcasts) received a lovely welcome message from Edwin, CEO of Feedly, including a link to show us how to optimize Feedly to make it look similar to Google Reader. Now that is service!

If you’re looking for an RSS reader, give Feedly a whirl. I think you’ll like it!