Half a Mind to ..

Life after brain injury – one small victory at a time.

Author: Kelvin

  • When the Room Gets Too Loud (Insight 036)

    When the Room Gets Too Loud (Insight 036)

    There’s a particular kind of moment that I’ve come to recognise over the years. It doesn’t arrive with a bang. It creeps in.

    It tends to happen in the most ordinary of settings — a meal out, a gathering with half a dozen conversations flowing at once. Nothing unusual. Nothing dramatic.

    And yet, something begins to change.

    At first, I’m absolutely fine. I can follow the conversation, contribute, smile at the right moments, keep track of who is saying what. It all feels perfectly normal.

    Then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the effort increases.

    (more…)
  • A Daily Email Dashboard (Strategy 159)

    A Daily Email Dashboard (Strategy 159)


    My recent posts about “the email beast” and “email labelling” (see below) have been paving the way for this post that shows how I use email labelling and filtering together to create bookmarked dashboards.

    Labelling brought order, but it did not change how I began the day. I was still opening my inbox and scanning.

    What shifted things for me was not a new label, but a saved search.



    Over time, I built search expressions that gather together the messages most likely to require my attention. Instead of starting with the whole inbox, I now start with that one view.

    What my most frequently used dashboard Includes



    • Unread messages in Primary
    • Unread Forum activity
    • Drafts I am working on
    • Items labelled Follow-Up
    • Items labelled Ongoing Topic
    • Items labelled Today

    (more…)
  • Mind Pops, a challenge I didn’t expect (challenge 049)

    Mind Pops, a challenge I didn’t expect (challenge 049)

    In a previous post, I described a counting-based strategy I use to get to sleep. When that approach began to lose its effectiveness, I tried something different.

    Instead of numbers, I silently generated random, unconnected words, taking care not to repeat any of them. It felt lighter and less effortful than counting, and I wasn’t surprised to find that I could do it easily.

    That ease had a history.

    (more…)