Weekly Reads – December 8th

I don’t know about you, but my Christmas mood is still going strong. Our tree is up since mid-November, and we’ve already started opening a present each, on every Advent Sunday. Oh, the perks of doing all of my Christmas shopping early! Now all the work is done and this month is only about enjoying myself.

I also closed my activity challenge for November successfully by achieving a perfect month on my Apple Watch – this means I closed my move, exercise and stand rings every single day. And let me tell you it wasn’t really piece of cake and it required quite a bit of discipline. I am however happy I pushed through it and worked out pretty consistently as well as went on long walks pretty much every day of the month. I took the first week of December to rest and get to enjoy the evenings with cuddles and hot chocolate but I have been craving the workouts so this week I am back at it.

How are your activity levels looking in December? Are you taking the month with a relaxing pace or are you looking to incorporate more activity/workouts?

The Weekly Reads

Ten pandemic interview questions and how to answer them. As a general rule, I love being prepared, and interviews are the perfect occasion to put in the work and reap the results. If you are interviewing during this time, chances are you will be asked a pandemic related question – from how you’re coping with the pandemic, to how remote work is impacting you and even how are you managing your workload on the daily with work from home. Career Contessa has the perfect guidance to answer these questions “correctly” so make sure to give it a look.

On giving feedback. Giving feedback is a challenge for many people. In my perspective, the ability to giving compassionate yet constructive feedback is a unique and highly effective way of building good teams and relationships at work, because as the giving party it shows that you care, but it also requires both parties to be vulnerable and it helps both of them grow one way or another. NY Times brings us some tips on how to give compassionate yet constructive feedback.

“… it’s when we combine directness and compassion that we create a culture in which people can truly thrive at work.”

Turns out it’s pretty good to have a desk. I (almost) never doubted the need of a desk in my house and I already had a dedicated workspace before the pandemic and work from home were a thing. I did also love working (for studying mainly) from bed though, so I can understand the full cycle one might need to go through. But seriously, desks are really good to have.

Weeknight dinners. I have been cooking a bit more than usual lately so I am looking for (easy) recipes to add to my repertoire. The Every Girl always has the best recipe roundups and these 15 healthy sheet pan dinners definitely do not disappoint.

+ What I am watching. All the ads and the talk on Season 4 of “The Crown“, got me wanting to watch it. So we started with season 1 a couple of weeks back and are now at season 3 and, of course, can’t wait to get to season 4. Thoroughly enjoying it so far but also continuously debating whether it’s morally right to release such a show. I’ve also watched “The Queen’s Gambit” recently and absolutely loved it. The story was so compelling and I loved the fashion a lot; so much so, that I want to say that “The Queen’s Gambit” delivered in terms of fashion (in addition to the brilliant story) what I was expecting to get from “Emily in Paris”.

Thank you for reading and I hope you are having a great week and a lot of Christmas cheer is urrounding you!