In this vlog, Noelle Russell—host of the Work Life Harmony blog— introduces herself, describing her life on a Washington farm, her four children (including a child with Down syndrome), and her mission to empower women and anyone interested in tech careers. She highlights a striking statistic that people are 900% more likely to achieve goals they write down, and explains how the act of writing aids memory through multisensory engagement. Noelle then opens her backpack to showcase the resources she carries: the book The 7‑Day Mental Diet (mind‑nutrition), A Developer’s Guide to Building AI Applications, a refresher on Learning Angular, an Entrepreneur magazine featuring a female founder, a low‑cost durable calendar, and a purpose‑focused journal with a Venn‑diagram layout. She shares her belief that many creators don’t consider themselves developers and encourages them to claim that identity, offering support to bridge that gap. The video concludes with a concrete homework assignment: write down your goals for the coming year, even if you later discard the list, to turn intentions into action.
Chapters
Hey everybody, it's Noelle Russell. So good to see you. For those of you who don't know, I have a blog called Work Life Harmony, and basically it's all about the different things that I've got going on in my life. Everything from the work that I do kind of professionally, 9 to 5, to my family at home. I have 4 kids, one with Down syndrome, my dad. It's just amazing. And we live on a farm in Washington State, and, uh, and I'm super passionate about just helping women and really anyone who has a desire to have a career in technology or really in anything, just giving you guys some, some, um, confidence in the fact that it is possible, that you could have a whole bunch of stuff going on and you could still be as successful as you want to be. Um, so today actually I wanted to share with you guys something, uh, I was working working on and talking about. The first part of it was, oh, did you know like that most people don't even write down their goals? So sad but true. Today, like, we are coming to the end of another year. Now for some of you who are watching this, you might be young enough where you're like, meh, haven't been that many. But now I realize there's been a few to go by and I haven't done nearly the things that I've wanted to. Now this year actually was pretty good. I, uh, I did quite a bit of what I wanted to do, but most of the time not nearly what I want to do. Um, so I found out recently there's a statistic, like something like you're 900% more likely to do what you say if you just write it down. Um, I also found that like pedagogically you if you write down things as you learn them, you're also more likely to retain that information, even if you never look at your notes again, right? Just write stuff down. I think it's the act of combining senses, right? Where, you know, you take a pen and now you're hearing it, which is one sense, you're writing it, which is kind of tactile or kinetic. I bet if I read it out loud after I write it, it would even stick even further. We should totally try that. Now, one thing I do want to share with you is I, I took a book that was super meaningful to me. It's called, um, The 7-Day Mental Diet. And the cool thing about it is that, you know, oftentimes, like, especially this time of year and certainly in the new year, we're always thinking about, oh my gosh, I need to take— I need to be on a diet, or I need to lose some weight, or whatever. Um, And that's always like one of the resolutions some, you know, many of us have, uh, to be better shaped, to go to the gym more, whatever it is. And the interesting thing about this book that I found was that that kind of concept of doing that assessment at the beginning of the year is also extremely important related to the nourishment of our mind, right? What food are we giving our mind? What What content are we reading? I'll tell you in my backpack. This should be like a weekly thing. What's in Noelle's backpack? So this week in Noelle's backpack, you will find startups, because I'm always kind of interested in seeing what's going on there. Oh, this is a good one. Learning Angular. It's just a refresher. I actually built a bunch of apps in Angular, but I wanted to refresher. So that was good. What else? Ooh, Entrepreneur. I liked it because it was a woman on the front. Not just any woman, but Maria, of course. Um, and then let's see, of course my calendar, it's very important. I used to buy these super fancy expensive calendars. No, never again. They— I end up getting through just kind of like I am now. I get through like a few months and then it sits there and I never go back to it. This one's actually lasting longer than I've ever seen it last, and it cost me like $6. Do you know how much I spent on calendars? Anyway, so that's awesome. Um, I printed out the new book. Two of my friends wrote this, Wee Hung and Anand, so I was super proud of it. So I printed it off so I could go through it. Not enough practical application, you know, how to do this right now, but really, really good stuff if you want to get into AI. It's called A Developer's Guide to Building AI Applications. Really cool. Oh, And my personal favorite, this is my new book, um, that I bought, and it's actually a journal, which is another reason why I like it, because I also love journaling. And no, no, no, I love buying journals, not so much the journaling, though I do like journaling. I mean, look, I think I have— I got this journal, I have this journal, I have at least 2 more in my bag. Like, it's a crazy thing, but this one's really cool. Look at this diagram. Right? It's basically a massive Venn diagram to determine like your reason for being, your purpose in life. I'm all about that, especially in the new year. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to start talking all about what I'm learning as I go through this book. Hopefully you'll appreciate it, but if not, maybe you'll find it entertaining as I go through. Okay, 2 more books I'm gonna show you. This is all in my backpack. Let me show you my backpack. This is my backpack, right? It's empty right now. This is it, and all this stuff fit in it. So this magazine I bought, I think you guys saw one of my Instagram shows had this on it, but it says "Less artificial, more intelligent," and I thought that was a very— I was like, "Meh, let's see what this actually means." So I'll spend a little bit of time on a future little YouTube video talking to you guys about that, and this might Another favorite book, right? One was more about like my inner being and who I'm gonna be, but this is about how I can help other people who are struggling with this idea. I will tell you that I've worked with people, I've worked with developers, okay, they don't even call themselves developers, right? They will have built an app, they will have infused a machine learning model into that app, and then they will come to me and ask me to kind of review it, and they'll say, "I'm not a developer," But I just want to, you know, I'm playing around with it. I'm like, so you built a Node.js application and it's got, and it's a computer vision model? Yeah, I think you're a developer. So claim it, people. So what I want to do is really help people like myself maybe back in the day, or like you, really understand that like, hey, you might already think like a coder, but once you start building, like, claim it, own it. You are a developer. It's totally fine. And it's actually cool. And if you can't claim it yet, I can help you get there. So this book will help us do that too. Anyway, I love books. I have thousands of them in my house. I am, you know, I'm one of those people that keeps Barnes Noble alive. You're welcome. But anyway, it's a crazy time in that backpack, but it's awesome. I just love having books all the time. Don't even ask me about the Kindle books I bought this weekend. Maybe I'll talk about that next time. All right, I'll talk to you guys later. So first homework assignment. Think about what you want and just write it down. For goodness sakes, you can write it down and throw it away. It would mean more than just keeping it in your head. So think about what you want for next year, write it down, and we'll start working on how we can make that stuff happen. Talk to you later. Bye.
