Think Simple Now » productivity

Simplify Your Life This Year

Rajiv Vij — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:09:36 +0000

By TSN Contributor Rajiv Vij

This is the season for resolutions. I reckon you have considered one or two yourself.

Unfortunately, as the year progresses, most New Years resolution tend to fall by the wayside and end up as mere intents.

Here’s an insightful approach towards creating a life that’s not only happier and more fulfilling, but one that also automatically responds to your most meaningful resolutions.

The Complicated Life

Driven sometimes by ambition and other times by a sense of inner incompleteness, we instinctively immerse ourselves in a myriad of pursuits. We often act out of the fear of losing out, compared to our peers or our social network.

We would rather be overwhelmed than miss out on the slightest chance to please the boss, make more money, enhance our status, accumulate more clothes or gadgets, or go to the extra social event.

We also find it hard to let up on instantly responding to text messages, checking our e-mails or facebook accounts multiple times a day or randomly watching television.

What suffers in the process is our attention to our most important priorities—the ones that actually make us feel fulfilled and happier. No wonder then we are unable to see through many of our resolutions, the New Year ones being no exception.

The Familiar Lesson

“A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2 inches in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was. So, the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. The students laughed.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled everything else.

“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things—your family, your partner, your health—anything that is so important to you that if they were lost, you would be nearly destroyed. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first (which is what we often do), there is no room for the pebbles, and the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.”

Three Things that Matter

Among all the innumerable activities that we get sucked into, it’s worth reflecting and determining the ones that really matter.

Based on my experience—both, personal and working with diverse clients—I find the discipline of clarifying three things that are most important to you in life very helpful.

Three is a magical number—big enough to cover what really matters and small enough that you are compelled to sharpen your focus and keep the list manageable.

I lead a simple life—a far cry from my 24/7 corporate days. On a typical weekday, I spend about six hours in my coaching practice, an hour at meditation, an hour exercising or playing sports, three to four hours with the family and a couple of hours reading and writing.

My days are built around satisfying my top three priorities: personal wellbeing & growth, family & friends, and helping others in their journey of personal growth.

The Impact

Becoming attentive to the most important priorities of your life starts to simplify your life. Rather than storing these priorities in your subconscious but staying busy with everything else, you begin devoting appropriate amount of time towards them.

Create the time for the “big rocks” in your daily and weekly calendar first, before other activities encroach on your time.

You would perhaps end up doing fewer things, but then those would be the most relevant few. This is not easy for most of us. It requires discipline and learning to say No to other distractions. It also demands building our inner conviction about what’s most valuable to us in life and overcoming the fear of losing out.

We then need to weigh every new commitment based on whether it serves our chosen three rocks or not. Simplifying your life, towards focusing on the most vital priorities this way has the magical power to make your days more fulfilling.

5 Questions to Get Started

Do you sometimes yearn for a simpler but a more meaningful life—one where your top priorities are well met and your progress is rather effortless? If so, here are five questions to reflect upon that may help you:

What are the three things most important to my life?
How much time am I currently devoting towards them in a day/week?
How much time do I want to start dedicating towards them to justify their importance?
What do I need to do to make that happen?
What am I willing to let go so that I have more time for it?

As you respond to these questions and commit yourself to this new way of life, not only would you be equipped to accomplish your New Year resolutions, but also experience greater happiness, peace, balance and fulfillment.

Wish you an Uncomplicated, Happy and Fulfilling Year ahead!

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Focus – How to Get It Done

Tina Su — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:56:25 +0000

Photo by Sandra Lara

By Tina Su

When ever I find myself feeling frazzled by the distractions and never-ending list of to-dos, the answer to finding peace always come back to focus. “Focus, focus, focus!” my heart would say, while my mind is off racing in a hundred different directions.

Lately, when people ask me, “How are you?” my response has been “Busy”.

It’s true. I have been busy. Yet when I reflected deeper into why I’m busy, I discovered that I am mostly busy thinking about how busy I am.

I mean, yeah, I have a lot of tasks on my plate, but when I observed myself from a place of silent presence, I discovered that a huge amount of my time and energy was spent cycling through my list of growing to-do items in my head.

The end result is that I do get some stuff done, but not nearly as much as I could, if I freed up all this extra energy used in wasted thinking. If I was focused on the task without wasting energy and being overwhelmed, I’m sure that I would have had a better time doing it.

Can you relate? Isn’t it annoying how our brains do that?

Seriously, do you know anyone who’s not busy? I don’t. Even friends of mine who are on sabbaticals–people who are not working–seem to be busy. Doing what? I don’t know. Probably like me, they too are spending a lot of time thinking about being busy. :)

If you think about it logically, there really is no end to being busy. There are always things and unimportant-yet-urgent tasks we can add to the list to keep feeding into this loop of “insanity”.

The cycle of unproductive insanity caused by the illusion of “busy” can only be broken when we consciously and deliberately decide to put an end to it.

Personal Story

I started exploring into the topics of “busy” and “focus” recently after observing that I am not getting very much done in the form of results, both in my personal life and professional life. I’ve also observed that psychologically, I’ve been carrying this heavy feeling of uneasiness, because I am overwhelmed by all that I think I should be doing.

In my personal life, I am surrounded by clutter and disorganization. We moved into this house a year ago, and many moving boxes are still unpacked—ugly boxes in our closet, office, and the garage. Our guest bedroom has an entire wall stacked with boxes containing unknown objects of more “stuff”.

In a corner, I had stacked all the unused baby things my son has grown out of. My original intent was to list them for sale on “Craig’s List” (online classifieds), but I never got around to it. So for the past 6 months, every time I walk by and see the stash, it’ll add to the anxiety of “more tasks to do that I don’t have time for”.

In my professional life, I have created so many projects for myself that I am unable to focus on any one in particular. I’m dabbling in so may things, as a result, I’m not making very much progress in any one direction. Additionally, my focus is constantly being pulled away towards other shiny opportunities in the marketplace.

To avoid the pain of “not getting things done” and feeling overwhelmed, I found myself procrastinating, and purposely scattering my attention to unimportant actions that provided instant gratification and a way to escape from the illusions of this moment.

To distract myself–in between feeling overwhelmed with to-dos and taking a little action–I would browse random blogs, refresh facebook, and check email every 7 minutes.

Afterwards, I would feel bad for having wasted so much time doing unproductive things, that I’d work extra hard, and usually late into the night. This destructive cycle caused a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.

This continued for a few weeks, until I finally hit a breaking point. In the problem solving article, I detailed the simple tool I used to regain clarity and perspective again. Through the baby steps I’ve taken in the past two weeks, I’ve had many personal breakthroughs and victories.

Focus Victory #1: “Craig’s List Stash”

On Saturday, I woke up and decided that I was putting an end to my “Craig’s List Stash” problem. I bounced out of bed, told my husband what I was up to, asked for his support, and got to work.

While he took care of our son, I put my imaginary blinders on (so I don’t get distracted) and focused on the task. In a matter of a few hours, I took photos of everything I wanted to sell, researched pricing, and put all the listings online.

By the time Sunday was here, every major item I had listed online was sold. I placed everything else unsold in a box to be donated.

It felt so good!

Focus Victory #2: Organizing My Office

Saturday evening, after my son was asleep, my project was to tackle my office, so that I can have a clean and organized space to think and work. Since this was the room I spent the most time in, it was important for me to feel peace and ease while being in here.

Instead of treating the task like an annoying hassle (what I used to do and end up dragging my feet to do it), I treated it like a gift for myself–gift of clarity—which motivated me to want to complete it. I felt determined, and gave myself an imaginary deadline, “One hour to get this place cleaned up!” I said.

I grabbed an empty box and moved everything from my desk surface to the box. I then picked up all the toys, books, and clothing off of the floor. In a matter of 10 minutes, I had a clean office space again.

The Power of Focus

In a similar fashion to the above two personal victories, I use the same steps to complete many of the to-do items I have spent many month cluttering my mind with. Tasks such as: getting all our light fixtures replaced (Jeremy did them), organize our closet, unpack moving boxes, de-cluttering the kitchen surfaces, moving forward with professional projects, etc.

The more I practiced these simple steps, the more I realized how much easier it was to just dive into focused action, instead of letting the thought rot in my head. I felt so liberated and empowered. I was no longer sitting around, waiting for the overwhelming thoughts to go away, I was doing something about it.

I learned how easy it was to hone-in my energy and just focus on one thing. Do that one thing with all my attention, and then it’ll be done! Simple. It’s all a matter of intention, decision, and discipline to follow through.

How to Get Things Done

I’ve distilled the steps I’ve been practicing to creating results into the following three steps.

1. Decision

Determination and commitment have power, and having them means that we’re not floating around like a flake.

If you just decide (decide right now) that you will do something, you will more likely take action. If you don’t make any decision, it will likely remain as a thought floating freely in your mind and it will continue to bother you.

Just decide to do one thing today, or decide that you will complete one simple thing this week.

2. Focus

Energy will go wherever we direct it. If we direct all our attention in one direction, progress will be made—this is the power of focus! If we direct our attention in a million directions, the energy given to each direction is so diffused and weak that no one direction will receive enough energy to proceed.

Think of it in another way. We’re on a lake, we want to cross the lake, and there are an unlimited number of boats next to the lake on our side of shore. If we took 2 boats, stuck each leg in a different boat, how long do you suppose it’ll take for us to get across the lake? A long time, right?

Similarly, if we took 4 boats, stuck each one of our arms and legs in a different boat, it would be impossible to cross the lake, right? The obvious answer is that it would be most efficient and effective to pick one boat, jump in it, and keep rowing until we get to the other side of the lake.

While this analogy seems obvious, this is essentially what we do in our lives. We live our lives trying to get across the lake using 4 boats, and we wonder why we can’t get anywhere, and we get frustrated.

No amount of frustration or feeling overwhelmed will make the 4 boats go away. The only solution is to pick one boat and start paddling. This is focus. Choosing one boat is focus. Choosing more than one boat is diffused awareness, and diffused awareness will take you nowhere.

Focused attention is the only way out.

3. Do It!

Once you’ve decided to do something, and decided that you will focus, the next step is to take action. Following our boat analogy above, taking action is the paddling step. Not taking action would be like sitting in a boat, and feeling anxious that you’re still not on the other side.

Once you start paddling, and if you keep focused on paddling, you will eventually get to the other side. Once you land on the other side, you’ll realize how easy it was to cross the lake, and you’ll likely wonder what took you so long in the past to simply: decide, focus and take action.

Getting results is easier than we think.

10 Tips on How To Focus

1. Set Boundaries

Decide in advance how much time you want to dedicate to doing something.

Personally, if I don’t set boundaries, such as “I will stop working at 5pm”, I will easily work until mid-night. Setting boundaries for myself tells my brain the urgency to focus, because my time is limited. By not doing so, I will waste a lot of time.

2. Do the Most Important Thing First

Similarly, I’ve created various rules for myself to better focus. Like the rule, “I won’t check email until I’ve written 500 words today, or I won’t check facebook until I’ve completed the day’s most important task.”

This is effective, because not only am I setting boundaries, but also, prioritizing and making sure that tasks important to me always gets completed first.

Personally, if I check email or facebook first thing in the morning, it makes my brain feel scattered and unable to focus.

3. Block Out Sound

This might not be applicable to everyone. I’m pretty sensitive to sound and get easily distracted by random sounds. My solution is to block out noise, by wearing a noise-canceling headphone.

4. Remove Distractions

Clear off your desk where you work from clutter. Close browser tabs (especially the one with email). Turn off notifications. Turn off the phone. I’d even go as far as turning off the Internet for a period of time, to focus on offline work.

Commit to being distraction free for a set amount of time, during which you will only focus on one task. And once the time is up, reward yourself.

5. Create Motivation

Getting clear on your motivation to do things will greatly enhance your ability to focus and get things done. Make sure you know why you need the focus, and get clear on what will happen if you don’t focus.

Did you know that we are more motivated to avoid pain than we are to gain pleasure? So it might help to understand how painful it will be if you didn’t do something. This might be the push you need to focus and move ahead.

For example, when I was wanting to get out of the rat race, I was having a hard time to take action to create the kind of results that would allow me to quit my job. What motivated me most was visualizing an alternate reality where I was stuck in a job I hated for another 10 years.

That image truly scared me and gave me the motivation I needed to take massive action. This blog, for example, is the result of such a massive action. In my story, in less than 8 months of taking consistent focused action, I was able to quit my day job.

Alternatively, you can imagine what life will be like if you took massive action in one direction. Imagine your dream life. Visualize it. Make it real in your mind.

6. Do One Thing At A Time

Pick just one thing to focus on. At any one time, ask yourself, “What is the most important thing I can do out of my list?” Pick one and commit to yourself, “I will commit to focus on this for the next three months (or until it is done) and I will work on nothing else.”

7. Create a Focus Ritual

We are creatures of habit. The more we do something, not only does it become easier, but also our brain knows to tune into it.

Writing, for example, requires tremendous focus. So I created a ritual around getting into the focused zone when I write. My ritual goes like this: I sit down with a hot cup of chai/tea/coffee, put on my headphones, turn on “Nawang Khechog” on the iPod, open a new Word document, and BAM, I’m in the zone!

This is a ritual I’ve created for myself over years of practice. The more I repeat my ritual (in the exact order of sequence), my brain is creating and strengthening neuro pathways to facilitate this, making it easier to arrive at the desired experience.

Go ahead and create a ritual where you will be focused. Take baby steps today, and watch it become easier over time.

The new ritual I am currently working on is to wake up early and write for 30 minutes every morning. (I’m still working on the how to wake up early part. *wink*)

8. Alone Time

If you are feeling overwhelmed and mentally cluttered. The best remedy is to take time out and reflect. It is important to do this alone, so you can connect with yourself, and learn to connect with the wisdom within you.

In spending quality alone time, learning, recharging and reflecting, you will gain clarity, understanding, and focus.

If you don’t know where to start, try the problem solving technique of “12 Answers”.

I also recommend meditation—a time where you can sit in silence, and become the silent observer of your mind’s turbulences.

9. Remember to Breath

As you go about your day, ask yourself, “Am I breathing?” then take a few deep breaths before continuing. Also ask yourself “Am I relaxed?” if the answer is “not really”, then stop for a second and take a deep breath.

10. Enjoy This Moment

After have written 150 in-depth articles on how to be happy, and how to live a good life here on TSN, my advice for you (and for myself) always comes back to this:

Enjoy this moment. This moment is all that we have. It is only in this moment that Life happens. Treasure it, bless it, thank it, and live it. Live it fully … regardless of what you’re doing.

I love you.

–Tina

March 17, 2011
Seattle, USA

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About the Author:

Tina Su is a mom, a wife, a lover of Apple products and a CHO (Chief Happiness Officer) for our motivational community: Think Simple Now. She is obsessed with encouraging and empowering people to lead conscious and happy lives.

* Click here to read all articles written by Tina.

How to Wake Up Early

Cat Li Stevenson — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 05:09:06 +0000

By Cat Li Stevenson

After reading last week’s article on problem solving, Tina casually mentioned wanting to wake up early. I felt inspired to write a piece on how to wake up early. For the past 4 months, I’ve been consistently waking up early—5am specifically. This article contain tips I’ve found helpful to become an early riser.

4:45 a.m. arrives and our bedroom becomes a full on symphony of battling alarms: my husband’s starts at 4:45, mine follows at 5:00, his chimes back in again at 5:00 (in unison with mine), and depending on the snooze capacity that day … we may even have one more finale at 5:15 a.m.

The coffee grinder is also programmed to go off at 5 a.m. The aroma and grinding sound of coffee beans travels all the way from the downstairs kitchen to our bedroom upstairs.

One year ago, this would have been an awful disturbance. One year ago, this would have been utter noise. One year ago, I would happily ignore any attempt of waking up early, curl back up in the cool bed sheets, and snuggle in that much more comfortably, knowing I could get away with sleeping in for a few more hours.

I was not a morning person, regardless of how much I tried to be.

Today, this has changed.

I am humbled and proud to be a recovering night owl with so much joy in waking up early well before sunrise. There is a certain bliss that comes from waking up to the darkness, right before the sun comes out.

There is a sense of peace and belonging in waking up before most of the world. There is an abundance of clarity and creativity that waits for me at 5 a.m. This routine of wellness-waking–as I like to call it–has brought tremendous energy and gratitude to each day.

How to Wake Up Early: 3 Keys

Here are three ways to transform you into a morning person, wake up well, and sustain the practice. The trick: In order to wake up early, it starts with the night before.

1. Prioritize

To shift from waking up two to three hours earlier means that you will have to prioritize tasks during the evening.

You may not be able to get everything done that you’re used to; however, the key to waking up early is to get to bed early.

So, prioritize the non-negotiable tasks—make a list of the recurring evening chores, rituals, must-dos—and let go of the others. This may mean sacrificing a favorite TV show—if you find this difficult—try to combine tasks, such as folding laundry while enjoying the TV show.

2. Disconnect & Prepare For Bed

Set a bedtime for yourself.

If your bedtime is 10 pm, attempt to disconnect from everything by 9 pm—TV, PC, phone, anything that requires your full energy—one full hour before lying down.

Then, take that last hour to make preparations for tomorrow morning: whether that is packing tomorrow’s lunch, picking out the gym clothes you’ll be wearing, organizing the calendar for tomorrow, or preparing the work outfit. Try to do as much during the evening to allow for ease of waking up hassle-free.

3. Sleep

We often compromise sleep, in order to squeeze in as much as we can in our day. Sustainability to the early morning “wellness waking” lies in the quality of sleep that you’re getting. Aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night.

I recently attended a presentation by Tony Schwartz, an expert on energy and productivity, and the CEO of The Energy Project. He states:

“Physical energy is the foundation of all dimensions of energy, and sleep is the foundation of physical energy. There is no single behavior that more fundamentally influences our effectiveness in waking life.

Sleep deprivation takes a powerful toll on our health, our emotional well-being, and our cognitive functioning. Make getting 7-8 hours of sleep your highest priority. Sleep is often the first thing we’re willing to give up in an effort to get more done. Even small amounts of sleep deprivation make us vastly less efficient.”

Motivation to Wake Up Early

The evening ritual smoothness determines whether or not the morning will work out as planned. So, ensure you’re prioritizing the non-negotiable tasks, disconnecting and preparing for tomorrow, and, most importantly, getting in at least 7 hours of sleep.

I believe that waking up early is–fundamentally– reliant on a healthy evening routine, consistent practice, and finding something desirable in the morning which can inspire you to jump out of bed.

You don’t necessarily have to get up to run 3 miles … or do yoga … or walk the dog; there are many other early morning possibilities that can kick-off your day with a state of wellness.

6 Things To Do In The Morning

Here are 6 ideas that you can start doing in the morning that will yield positive results on your overall wellbeing:

1. Journal

Wake up, find your favorite spot—whether in your home or at the local coffee shop—and write. There doesn’t need to be a theme. Simply relax and write: whatever is on your mind, let it flow onto the page.

There is clarity to be found in simply freefalling onto a piece of paper. This is a concept called “Morning Pages” by Julia Cameron—basically writing down on paper a stream of consciousness without editing, and doing so first thing in the morning.

2. Be Outside

The outdoors, whether a stroll around the block or to the park, can be incredibly nourishing to your senses and well-being.

Find your way to the front door and just take a stroll outside—zoom in on the way the sun feels on your body, the wind on your face, or the ground beneath your feet. Just be outside and allow nature to breathe with you.

3. Nourish your mind

The early morning is an optimal time to pick up a good book or read your favorite, refreshing blog (such as lovely TSN). It is a gift to you, your day and all the people you encounter by entering into the morning with a sense of mental, positive nourishment.

4. Nurture your body

Connect with the thing your body is asking for. Perhaps you have been sluggish and could benefit from a cardio workout to get your heart pumping. Perhaps, you have been overworked and could benefit from some yoga stretching.

Perhaps, your body feels soft to you and it’s time to tone up by hitting the weights at the gym. Nurture your body by giving what it is asking for.

5. Listen

Tune into your mood and feed it with music that is soothing. Listen to that uplifting podcast, the favorite song, or the energizing beat. Allow the music, the positive feelings, to accompany you on your morning journey.

6. Just Sit

Perhaps it may seem contradictory to wake up early to simply sit, but it truly can be a gift to the how the rest of your day unfolds.

I admire my husband’s ability to wake up at 4:45AM and just sit in silence for 15 minutes before he gets ready for work. I have witnessed such a shift in his ability to deal with the stresses in his day with much more ease.

By taking a few moments in the morning to first reach for your breath—instead of your cell phone or the morning paper—this will set the stage for calmness and clarity to follow.

Parting Words: How to Wake Up Early

There are many more ways to nourish in the early morning by waking up well. The key to sustain motivation is by zooming in on what you may be searching for in the early morning–whether that is peace, productivity, health improvement, or creativity.

What are some of the early morning goals you’d like to achieve?

****Good morning and cheers to each of you (coffee in hand). I am proud of you for making a conscious decision to explore the well-being that is waiting before sunrise****

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About the Author

Cat is an idealist that finds meaning and inspiration in all dynamics of her day – the strangers that become new friends, the synchron-destiny that reveals a little about the mysteries of life, the self-discovery, laughter, and transformations that happens on this adventurous journey.

For her day job, Cat is a corporate banker, and real estate agent, and nutrition coach. She embraces mind-body wellness; waking up before sunrise for yoga & meditation and closing the evening with a jog with her best running buddy – her super-fit hubby, who was also her high-school sweetheart.

* Click here to read all articles written by Cat.

Other Articles You May Enjoy:

External Resources on How to Wake Up Early

Tool: Alarm Clock on Wheels
Steve Pavlina: How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
Tool: Sunrise Clock
Tool: Wake up Light

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Problem Solving Secrets

Tina Su — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:19:46 +0000

Photo by aeschleah

By Tina Su

I recently discovered a simple technique for problem solving that I thought you guys would love. But before diving in to this effective problem solving process, let me tell you the background story.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with this feeling of unproductive frustration. Maybe you can relate: feeling like you should be doing something, but you feel stuck, somehow unable to take productive action towards some end goal.

My problem is that I feel like I have a million things to do; yet I am finding it difficult to make any real progress with any of my projects. As a result, a whole day can go by without me making any progress forward.

Each day, when I look up to see that it’s already 3pm, I’ll start to feel frustrated at myself. I’ll feel annoyed that I had allowed another fruitless day to pass. I’d kick myself mentally for having “wasted” another precious day, which doesn’t help to inspire me to productivity or happiness.

Today, I had one of these frustrating days. Actually this whole week has been like this.

It baffles me that after all this self-improvement training, I feel stuck. *smiles* I feel like something is holding me back from wanting to take action. It feels as if this invisible force is pulling at my leg.

As with any unproductive emotions, these uncomfortable feelings act as an alarm bell, alerting us that we need to examine our lives. It’s letting us know that there is something new to be learned.

Simple Technique for Problem Solving

The life lessons embedded in these problems, or opportunities of discomfort, usually turn out to be life transforming and empowering for our overall wellbeing. And so, I’ve learned to trust these alarm bells and to welcome the lessons they provide.

Instead of continuing to sit at my desk feeling frustrated and allowing myself to be engulfed in the emotion—which is what I did yesterday—I jumped up from my desk, stretched out my body, and asked myself the following question, “what do I need right now?”

The answer came with simplistic ease. “To relax”, my inner voice replied.

I went over to my—big, comfy—reading chair, opened my Kindle and started reading a book that Nadia had recently sent me as a gift. The book is called, “The Architecture of All Abundance” by Lenedra Carroll.

It just so happened that I flipped to a section where the author was talking about a simple technique she called “The 12 What Elses”.

The concept was expressed with such eloquence, simplicity and playfulness.

Basically, if you feel that you are stuck with a problem, ask yourself a question about it and brainstorm 12 answers to that problem. You can take one of the answers, turn it into a question and drill it further with 12 more answers. Keep going until you have the answer you need to feel better or solves your problem.

Example 1: Problem Solving Co-Worker Issues

A coworker was rude to you this morning, which caused you to feel upset. You can address this unproductive feeling by asking, “What could have happened that triggered the person to be short tempered with me?” Now, come up with the first answer that comes to mind, and keep asking yourself “what else?” until you have 12 answers (or more).

Some possible answers could be: someone from her family died, she is not getting enough sleep, she had a fight with her spouse that morning, her son is ill, she is not feeling well, etc.

By examining the possible reasons why the co-worker may have been short tempered, you start to view the situation with more compassion and perspective. Feeling compassion and sympathy is much more healing than taking the situation personally and fuming in resentment.

Example 2: Problem Solving Personal Direction

You can ask yourself “what is it that I want?” and brainstorm 12 answers. You can then drill it further by taking one of the answers, convert it to another question, and find 12 more answers.

For example, if one of the answers from the first question was “I want to find love.” A possible follow up question is “Where can I find love?” By the time you brainstorm 12 answers, you may be surprised with what you’ll find or learn about yourself.

Why this Question and Answer Process is Powerful?

As simple and trivial as this problem solving technique may sound, the results can be pretty massive. This simple process (which anyone can easily do) has the potential to open your mind up to a whole new realm of possibilities.

This simple exercise can help to shift your state of focus away from a train of thought that is limiting, to one filled with possibilities. I have found that it will also give you more clarity.

When we have a lot of unexamined thoughts (and limiting beliefs), they end up swimming in our consciousness, taking up mental space and physical energy.

I heard a clever saying recently that said, “no thought lives in your head rent-free.” It’s kind of true, don’t you think?

These unexamined thoughts are unconsciously running around in our heads. They become mental clutter. They cloud our capacity to think clearly and our ability to work productively.

I think the power of this exercise is to ask important and insightful questions which we rarely examine, and to answer them honestly.

Remember to be playful and not so serious (and adult like) when we are doing this. You can write down silly answers if they come to mind. Being playful with the answering step allows us to relax, and more easily access our inner wisdom—this will open up a treasure chest of possibilities and self-understanding.

How I Used This Process to Solve My Problem

Armed with my hardbound sketchbook—which I use as a journal–and my favorite black pen, I tried out the “12 What Elses” which I now call “The 12 Answers”.

I took a few deep breaths, allowed myself to relax, and knew right away the question I wanted to ask. I wrote at the top of a clean page: “12 Answers”. Underneath this, I wrote the question.

“What am I afraid of?”

I knew this was the question I needed to examine. I knew that fear was what had caused me to feel confused and thus unable to proceed with my work. It was the mental block I needed to uncover and to better understand.

I wrote the numbers 1 to 12 down the page, one on each line. Then I wrote an answer on each line next to the number. The 12 answers came very quickly and effortlessly, so I continued listing as more answers came.

Here are my answers (in the order they arrived in my mind):

Not having money
Wasting time (after investing a lot of time and energy into something to find it a waste)
Looking stupid
Failing
Not being liked
Taking too much time to do things
Dying
Not being happy
Someone else messing it up
Making the wrong decision
Not having security
Missed opportunities
Screwing up
Making a bad investment
Not having time to enjoy things that are important
Pain

By the time I was done, here’s what I felt:

Shocked that I came up with this list so quickly, and amazed that all this fear had been swimming in my mind. No wonder I couldn’t make any progress: too many conflicting thoughts.
I felt horrible, like having this knot in my stomach.
I felt relieved, despite the knot in my stomach. Relieved that my fears and conflicting thoughts are out on paper, and I can finally examine them and set myself free.

Wow, pretty cool huh?

After looking over the list of fears, it’s no wonder I was feeling uncertain, doubtful, cluttered and confused. I had too many mental roadblocks.

First, I wanted to feel better. To overcome the knot-in-stomach feeling, I wrote on a clean page, “What do I want?”

Here are my answers to “I want …”:

Peace & Serenity
Clarity
Security
Certainty
Laughter
Time to do as I please
Purpose
Children
Family & Closeness
To learn
To help people
Prayer + Gratitude
Love
Simplicity
Relaxation
Release of things that don’t serve me
Sunshine
Support
Order + Organization
To be Happy

Once again, I was shocked by how quickly, smoothly and easily the answers came. And right away, I felt better. I felt peaceful, happy and thankful.

Doing this triggered a spark and inspired me to ask more questions. It was like following my heart, and my heart knew the right questions to ask; my heart knew the answers I needed to unveil to be well again.

Some questions I continued asking includes: what do I want to do? What do I need to do? I can arrive at X goal by doing..?

I noticed that the shorter and more direct the question, the better. Instead of “Why is it that I seem to have such a hard time becoming an early riser?” change the question to “Why is it challenging to wake up early?” Remove the filler words and get to the point. This will make it easier for our brain to comprehend and answer.

I just simply followed my inner voice. As if it was gently holding my hand, my inner guidance gracefully led me to a place of inner serenity and clarity. From this place of stillness, I knew what I needed to do.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

I went back to each of the answers from “What am I afraid of?” and asked:

Is this statement true?
Where/what/who would I be if I didn’t have this belief?
(optional) What’s the worse that could happen? And if so, so what?

These questions are a modification to the self-inquisitive technique inspired from Byron Katie.

This is just a basic template. In addition to the first two questions, I made up questions as I went along by following my intuition.

The point is to examine each fearful belief with a magnifying glass. To examine closely its validity and to bring conscious awareness to the falsehood of each statement.

Example:

For the statement “I am afraid of not having enough money” here are the questions I asked and the corresponding answers. Comments are in parenthesis.

Question: Is this statement true?
Answer: yes, it is true for me.

Question: Who would you be, if you didn’t believe this statement?
Answer: I would be relaxed and peaceful
(Here, I realized how silly holding on to this belief is. If I just released this belief, then I could be relaxed and peaceful. Interestingly, being peaceful is the first answer under “I want …”)

Question: What’s the worst that could happen?
Answer: The worst that could happen, is I don’t have enough money to be able to buy food, pay for our house, and support our family.

Question: Is this realistic?
Answer: No, it’s not realistic. The worst that could happen is we move to a smaller house. I cannot see it being a possibility that I will not have enough resources to pay for food. There is always some job I could do for money, always.

(Here, it is clear how invalid and unrealistic this statement is. I can’t believe I’ve held onto this fear for so long. By letting it go, I’ve just freed up much bundled energy.)

Problem Solving Through Questions and Answers

I felt so liberated after the exercise (or playing the game of “12 Answers”). I felt—surprisingly—energized, and very much empowered.

By invalidating these statements of limiting beliefs or ideas that may be holding us back, we relinquish the energy this mental statement held, and as a result, we reclaim our personal power to move in the direction we desire, without mental roadblocks.

I wrote this article a week ago, and over the next few days since initially writing this, I noticed more issues starting to rise, which is both annoying and liberating. Annoying, because I just want to be free from all this baggage. Liberating, because now I get to shine a bright light over them, and I can finally examine and releasing them.

I am continuously working on this process, as more fears and questions and unexamined beliefs pop up.

Asking the hard questions and answering them honestly takes courage, and a conscious decision to face the truth. Even though avoidance of a problem gives temporary illusions of relief, not examining all these questions swimming in our mind comes at a price: fear, confusion, uncertainty, and stagnation.

If you want clarity, purpose and lasting happiness? Ask yourself the hard questions. Ask yourself the questions you’ve been avoiding.

You’ll discover that you have the inner wisdom and extraordinary guidance to problem solve any issues from life’s emotional turbulences.

Give the 12-Answers a try; either with questions to a problem you want to solve or one of the questions I’ve used as examples. Share your discoveries with us in the comment section.

Two more questions I’ve recently examined, and found the answers empowering: Why is it hard for me to focus? Why is it that I can’t wake up early? Good times! :)

Love you,
Tina

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How to Focus + My Goals

Tina Su — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:38:42 +0000

Photo by the talented Andrea D’Aquino. Follow him on facebook and flickr.

By Tina Su

Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of things you want to focus on? Yet, you find it hard to make real progress forward? Perhaps, it’s time to slim down your list and focus on just one or two larger goals. I too didn’t know how to focus until an unexpected conversation with my husband exposed my problem. This is that story.

For New Year’s Eve last year, Jeremy and I were looking for something to do—a traditional party with an actual countdown, mingling with strangers, getting dressed up in swanky outfits, holding champagne, kissing at midnight, etc.

I felt so relieved when we were invited to such a party. “Finally, we’re not going to be orphans this year,” I thought. However, the Universe had other plans for us; something sweeter, something better.

The plan was to put Ryan to bed, have dinner, and then go to the party. As we were having dinner, one conversation after another, we ended up on the topic “What do you want in the New Year? What are your goals? What do you want to focus on?”

What started as a simple ten minute conversation over dinner grew into a two hour long, delicious sharing of our hopes and dreams for the future. It was one of the most honest conversations we’ve had. It was beautiful and worth savoring every breath.

One thing that became apparent was how scattered I was in what I wanted. My husband Jeremy had to stop me with “Oh wait, that’s too many things to focus on at once” as I listed all the things I wanted to focus on this year.

Despite my best efforts at simplifying my goals and my understanding that the more we focus on, the more diluted each goal becomes in its realization, I had too many “wants” and sometimes they conflicted with one another.

Using his supreme focus and sharpened managerial skills, Jeremy gently guided me in reorganizing my goals such that they were sorted in a hierarchical structure—with one big goal at the top to focus on, and lots of little goals that went underneath the big goal.

For my business, I had two big goals that were the most important which I will be focusing on. After examining all the loose goals, we determined that any career related goal had to fit under one of the two big goals. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be working on them.

Too many loose goals become a distraction, taking energy away from what matters most. If you don’t have a definite goal, you won’t know what you should be focused on and will end up drifting wherever the wind takes you.

It makes sense: We only have a limited amount of time each day. If we give attention to one thing, that means we now have less attention to give to another thing. Real results are produced as a product of focused attention. Scattered attention, attention focused on too many things can never produce real results.

I often violate this rule, especially last year, when I didn’t have any definite focus. I was floating around. Whenever something came along that sounded attractive, I would dive in and try it out. In the end, they were all distracters. As a result, I didn’t produce much. My heart wasn’t in it and my attention was being split into too many parts for any one part to become potent.

In the year 2010, I dabbled in wedding photography, internet marketing, consulting business, and the good mood blogging contest—all things which were nice to-haves, but took me away from what I wanted most: to create products that can help people, and to grow this happiness blog.

In chapter 1 of Napoleon Hill’s 1925 classic “The Law of Success”, he talks about the vital importance of having a definite purpose —the thing you want to focus on. The thing you want most to become realized.

Here’s a related quote from that chapter,

“Until a man selects a definite purpose in life, he dissipates his energies and spreads his thoughts over so many subjects and in so many different directions that they lead not to power, but to indecision and weakness.

With the aid of a small reading glass, you can teach yourself a great lesson on the value of organized effort. Through the use of such a glass, you can focus the sun’s rays on a definite spot so strongly that they will burn a hole through a plank. Remove the glass (which represents the definite purpose), and the same rays of sun may shine on that same plank for a million years without burning it.“

Wow.

Thinking back to the times when I succeeded in producing concrete results, whether it was my first online business selling apparel, or graduating from university, or starting my blog, or even winning the good mood gig contest, I was completely focused, completely fixated, unwavering, razor sharp, focused on the end result (and on nothing else).

“Ah, that’s the key I’ve been searching for, ‘focus’, and having a ‘definite purpose’,” I thought to myself.

I sat back, and watched as Jeremy excitedly helped organize my goals, and to simplify them, so that I can actually focus on just one or two things instead of fifty.

At an hour to midnight, Jeremy said, “You know, we can either go to the party and mingle with a bunch of people we don’t really know or—while the topic is fresh—we can go grab our laptops and organize our goals in a share doc, so we can keep each other accountable. And afterwards we can watch a movie and open a bottle of wine. What do you think?”

It was so delicious an idea that there was only one possible answer: Of course, I would rather spend the night doing something personal and meaningful with my life partner.

Since, I had already gotten ready—all dressed up with my hair done and makeup already applied—which I pointed out to Jeremy long enough for him to say “Oooh, ahhh, pretty”, I ran upstairs like a little kid to change into warm comfy house clothes.

I then marched into my office, sat down at my desk, opened a Google doc and started typing. A few minutes later, Jeremy came in with two glasses of freshly opened red wine and his laptop. He sat at the reading chair—where I could see him in the dim shades of the reading lamp.

I had my goals organized in three major categories: professional, personal wellness and couple goals—as per Jeremy’s clever suggestion.

If you are curious, my two professional goals were: product creation and increase site traffic. From that moment on, I made a commitment to myself that everything I work on will fit into one of these categories. If not, I will not do it unless I choose to.

For my personal wellness goals, I had several loose goals. But the number one goal is to live consciously to the best of my ability by redirecting negative thoughts so that I am not stuck in a painful place caused by dwelling on the past or a nervous place caused by worrying about the future.

For couple goals, I wrote down the first thing that came to mind, “alone dates once a month”. I am so silly, I was in complete logical mode and was thinking about the actions to do, instead of the end goal those actions provided.

When Jeremy added his goals to the shared Google doc and it refreshed on my screen, I quickly scrolled to the bottom to his Couple Goals section. He wrote, “End 2011 with a closer relationship than 2010” and under that, he had “2 date nights per month” and “listen instead of argue.”

I almost died when I read that- died in a land of happiness, a land of roses and rainbows. Jeremy is just so sweet. He’s always been so much more genuine about our relationship than I and so much more thoughtful. I have a lot to learn from him.

I looked over at him, there beyond my open laptop screen, under the warm lights of that reading lamp, with a kind of fondness that is indescribable. Tears welled up in my eyes. Those simple words on the screen meant and conveyed so much to me.

I jumped up from my desk , skipped like a bunny over to the reading chair in utter joy, and landed promptly in his lap. I pushed his laptop aside, snuggled up real close and said, “I love you babes. Thank you.”

In the end, we didn’t do countdowns, or have champagne(we don’t even like champagne). Instead, we had the gift of a night, beyond anything I could have planned—a focused roadmap for this year, wonderful wine, delicious popcorn, priceless moments of connection, and a phenomenal documentary called “The Cove”(which I highly, highly recommend. Beautifully written, moving, uplifting and heart-warming).

Now that is a beautiful start to a new year.

What are your goals for this year? What do you want to focus on?

Consider, going through your list and pick just one or two things to focus on. Give it your whole attention and I am sure your focused attention and dedicated action will cause it to come into reality. I am reminded of a saying, “Where attention goes, energy flows.” It’s all a matter of deciding where to put our focus, and then allocating our time towards action for the fruition of that which we are focused on.

The same formula can be applied towards parenting or to improve a relationship. Focus, focus, focus is the key.

Remember, it is not possible to focus on many things. Pick just one and focus with all your attention to make it a reality, before moving on to the next thing.

Which one to focus on? That’s up to you. What does your heart tell you? What inspires you the most and gives you the most reward? Which goal gets you most excited about your future? Pick that one.

Please share this on Facebook, tweet it on twitter, and email the site to friends. I really appreciate your help. You make this site possible.

And make sure to check out our facebook page, click on the Like button to gain daily inspiration and join our daily conversations about happiness. You may also be interested in my TSN Insider newsletter, for a casual view of life from my perspective

Overwhelmed? 8 Ways to Overcome It

Tina Su — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:13:02 +0000

Photo by Andrea D’Aquino

By Tina Su

“Slow down and everything you are chasing
will come around and catch you.”
~John De Paola

Do you have so much on your plate that you’re left feeling overwhelmed and stressed out? What can you do to get back to a place of controlling ease and relaxation?

In an age of fast paced lifestyles and heightened commercialism, everywhere we turn is a demand for our attention. On top of the information overload, we are working longer, and taking less time off. The result? More stress and less time to ourselves.

Juggling between work, family and our personal needs, it’s easy to get sucked into the never-ending list of to-dos and end up feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

This article looks at 8 simple stress management techniques to overcome this sense of overwhelming anxiety in order to live a more relaxed and stress-free lifestyle.

Personal Story: How I Became Overwhelmed

This past year has been a roller coaster of a ride for me, where I was away in India, experiencing pregnancy and pre-term labor, overcoming depression, moving to a new house with a newborn and becoming a full-time mom. I was pretty much offline, and have not actively worked on the demands of this site.

Once, I’d (relatively) adjusted to mommy-hood, and was ready to work again, I was faced with several hundred emails, and a huge list of tasks that needed to get done.

At the sight of so much to do, I dove-in head first, and started tackling the list. Silly me. It didn’t take long for me to become completely overwhelmed. There was simply – too much to do.

On top of the responsibilities of caring for a baby, working strictly from a to-do list without a plan or strategy was a formula for disaster. I was spreading myself too thin.

On the verge of break down, I stopped what I was rushing to get done, and focused on overcoming this feeling of overwhelming anxiety and its associated stress.

6 Ingredients to Overwhelm and Stress

First, let’s look at a few common causes that leaves us feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

1. Expectation

The number one source for stress and overwhelming anxiety is our expectation on a particular outcome. In trying to satisfy that expectation, we place unnecessary pressure on ourselves, thus causing stress.

When we place strict expectations on ourselves or on a particular outcome, if things do not turn out the way we imagined, we feel a sense of discrepancy between what we want and what is in front of us.

2. Take on Too Much

We have an innate drive triggered by survival instincts to please others and to avoid displeasing. As a result, many of us are not good at saying no. Or sometimes, our well intentions have us committed to more than we can realistically take on.

Observe yourself with awareness next time you want to say ‘no’ to something, but feel a resistance within yourself. It is natural for us to want to win people’s approval, and we don’t want to let others’ down. As a result, we often give in to this tension of unease that we feel, and we sacrifice our time and energy.

Saying yes to many unimportant things (unimportant to us, and does not contribute towards our own wellbeing) leaves us very little time for the important things that actually matter to us – like pursuing our dreams, or spending time with our family.

3. Pressure on Self

There is a voice within our heads that is constantly chattering, and often telling us what we’ve done wrong, or how we are not good enough, or why we need to get everything done in one sitting (else our life will end).

As a result, we place unnecessary (and unreasonable) pressure on ourselves through self-criticism and other negative self-talk.

Sometimes, no matter what we do, or how much we’ve gotten done, there is always something our mental voice will disprove of.

4. Perfectionist

The same mental voice in our head also tells us that things have to be perfect, or else our life will be over. Even if we don’t consciously register this, we feel the resulting anxiety and stress in our body, unsure of its cause.

Sometimes, we mask this need (triggered by the voices in our head) by telling others – almost arrogantly – that we are a “perfectionist”.

A perfectionist is a label, a story that takes a lot of energy to keep up. Often, the need to play the part of one who is a perfectionist leaves us overwhelmed with needing to do everything perfectly.

5. Control

Grasping for control is another source of stress, because many times, we cannot do everything ourselves.

One of the resistances to releasing control is our lack of trust in other people, and trusting that they can do the job as well as us. So we end up doing (or wanting to do) everything ourselves. But at the realization that we don’t have the capacity to do it all, we’ll be hit with an overwhelming sense of this daunting reality.

Often, we’ll be left feeling overwhelmed at the mountain of tasks that needs to be done – on our own.

6. Overachiever

Like ‘perfectionist’, ‘overachiever’ is another label we give ourselves. This one is a socially accepted and impressive label that makes us feel special, even admired.

There is nothing wrong with having a lot of accomplishments under your belt. However, many of us do so for the sake of overachieving, while paying a stressful price.

Having too much on our plate can leave us feeling overwhelmed.

8 Ways to Cure the Overwhelmed and Stressed

1. Step Out

You can’t get away from feeling overwhelmed from a place of overwhelming confusion. You have to step away to be able to view your circumstances from a fresh perspective.

Move to a different room, get up from your desk, sit in a different chair, go out for a walk or go sit in a café. Stepping out from the current situation and changing your physicality will help you gain clarity, and shift you away from the overwhelmed state of mind.

2. “What is Most Important?”

When we are feeling overwhelmed, our mind becomes clouded by the task at hand, and by the thoughts that cause us to feel stressed in the first place. When you step out, ask yourself, what is the most important thing for me? How do I want to feel?

Many times, we get so caught up in the doing, that we forget why we are doing it. Instead of being busy doing and then hoping that it will lead us to what we want, start with asking, “How do I want to feel?” And then focus on feeling that way. Then ask, “What is important to me?” And then focus on doing things that are important to you, instead of lots of unimportant tasks that overwhelm you.

Another technique to figuring out what is important is to start asking the question of why we are doing something and following the answers with another why. Asking ourselves the question of Why, and following each answer with another Why can lead us to the trail of wisdom and self understanding.

For example, “Why am I working so hard at this job? So I can make lots of money. Why do I want to make lots of money? So I can provide for my family. Why do I want to provide for my family? Because I want to make them happy. Why do I want to make them happy? Because I love them and they are the most important people to me, etc. In this example, maybe the discovery is that your family is the most important thing, and perhaps, there is another way to make them happy, like spending time with them and spending less time stressing about work.

3. Journaling

Whenever we are feeling overwhelmed, there is likely a lot going on inside our head. Ideas and thoughts swimming in our minds, cluttering up our mental space. The best thing to do is to dump these thoughts out through writing what’s on your mind.

Grab a pen and a piece of paper, or a notebook, and start jotting down everything that is in your mind. Write without editing, and write out every thought. If you have a bunch of to-dos running in your head, list them out. If you have an idea, brain storm on paper.

I’ve always found it therapeutic to sort out my thoughts and ideas on paper. Many of my articles on this personal development blog first start as bullet points and random scribbles in my journal.

Remember to not worry about keeping things looking neat and perfect. This will limit our freedom to dump whatever we want onto paper, both junk that’s keeping us feeling overwhelmed and helpful creative ideas.

4. Giving Up Control – The Quickest Way to Cure the Overwhelmed

We can try to do everything by ourselves, or we can do just the parts we enjoy and spend the rest of the time doing something important to us.

What I’ve done with this site is to do everything on my own; from designing, to coding, to writing, to editing, to marketing, to answering inquiries, to finding advertising. I do this, because I have a false believe that people can’t be trusted. I felt that I could do it better than anyone I could afford to hire. This is arrogant thinking and very limiting in nature.

It was fine when I started, but the site grew to a point where I could no longer keep up. I became the bottleneck. And when I could no longer keep up, the site suffered. I created not only an insurmountable mountain of work for myself, but also unnecessary stress.

I started allowing other writers to contribute to Think Simple Now and am in the process of removing myself from other areas of the site such as the technical side. And already, I’ve experienced a lighter load on my shoulders and a feeling of being much more relaxed.

5. Asking for Help and Allow Help

You’d be amazed at how many people are willing to help. Often, we are the problem that is disallowing help from happening through our limited thinking. We think they will say no, and so we don’t ask.

Just give it a try. Ask for help, and be prepared to be amazed at the generosity that others are willing to provide.

When my husband was out of town for a week, I asked friends for their help and people willingly came to help me watch Ryan, so I could have some midweek breaks. One friend -who works as a nanny- even agreed at a discount, to sleep over one night and take the middle-of-the-night-shift for Ryan. This made my life much easier and more manageable.

Also through asking, my mother-in-law agreed to come watch the baby twice a week, so I could have focused and uninterrupted creative time. I am so thankful.

People are amazing. Just ask, and be open to receiving what others are willing to provide. You never know what will happen. Just think, what’s the worst thing that can happen? They say no. Not a big deal.

6. Creating Boundaries

Time is our most precious commodity. It is the only resource that is un-renewable. So spend it wisely and consciously. Because we have a limited number of hours per week, per day … if you could design your life (and you really can), how would you spend it in an ideal situation?

Start with what is most important to you and how you want to feel? Then figure out what activities will support those feelings and things of importance. How long and how much? How much alone time do you need to re-charge? How much time do you want to spend with the kids, and doing what? How much do you want to engage in creative pursuits? Etc.

Once you’ve decided what’s important and how long you want to spend, create boundaries around important activities and do not budge with any incoming distractions. Do not allow unimportant noise and activities to creep in.

I’ve designed my week such that I spend two days during the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) on focused creative time, or work time. I spend the other three days with my son. During this time, if Ryan is awake, I do not work and he has my full attention. We play together, go to mommy groups and meet other babies, read books, cook delicious food and nap.

Then the weekend is family time, where the three of us spend quality time together. During family time, we refuse to meet up with other people or engage in social obligations we don’t wish to participate in. We do what we please. We go out for breakfast, go to the park, sit in the sun, play catch with the dogs, have family cuddle time, watch movies or talk about our dreams.

And everyday, I make sure to do at least one thing for myself by myself. Alone time is important to me. I do this either early in the morning, when Ryan is napping, or late at night. I either take a hot bath with candles, or sitting with a cup of chai tea while reading a few pages of something inspirational, or writing in my notebook.

Because email can be such a time suck, I’ve set boundaries around it such that I check email once a day for 30 minutes, do what’s absolutely necessary, and anything that doesn’t get done during this time will just go in the queue for a future time (if at all).

It’s true that I cannot answer every email that comes in, or get to every chore on my list. But it is ok. I realized that I am not obligated to do anything, and that I am in control. I designed my life and have the freedom to create the rules.

At the end of the day, my alone time, time with my son, time with my husband, and our family time together is most important; everything else is secondary, no exceptions.

7. Shut Out Noise

When we feel overwhelmed, it feels comforting to do something mindless to unwind and relax, like watching TV, reading the news or browsing the Internet. I personally like to watch reality TV shows when I feel this way. What we forget during this time is that the extra information that comes in becomes noise that further clusters our already overwhelmed state of mind.

The best thing we can do for ourselves when we come home feeling overwhelmed is to leave the TV and computer off. Do something that slows our mind down. Consider reading something that expands our consciousness, or close our eyes for 30 minutes in silent meditation. Sit back and listen to some smoothing music, or engage in a creative project that is meaningful to you.

8. Bedtime Ritual

The state in which we go to sleep is the state in which we wake up. Doing things that quiet your mind instead of cluttering it will help you sleep more settled and wake up feeling more refreshed.

One thing I do before bed that’s been incredibly beneficial to me is the ritual of gratitude. I start by asking myself, “What are my favorite parts of the day? What did I enjoy about today?” Then I give appreciation for the things, people and circumstances in my life that make me happy.

My plan is to proceed to body gratitude, where I give thanks for each part of my body. But I’ve never get to body gratitude, because I usually drift into sleep at an earlier step feeling incredibly lucky to be alive and thankful to be in my body. Every morning (or mid night when the baby cries) I wake, with the first thought always being that of appreciation. It’s a beautiful way to start the day.

Parting Words

Treat the feeling of overwhelming anxiety as our friend, for it is an emotional indicator letting us know that we need to slow down, and to readjust our center of focus on something else that makes us feel better.

It is also a reminder that life doesn’t have to feel bad, that we have choices, and that we can design our day and especially our experiences.

And no matter how rough our day was today, or yesterday may have been, every morning is a new beginning, a new chance for you to rewrite the story of your life. How will you tell that story?

* What do you do when you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed? Share your thoughts and wisdom with us in the comment section. Or see what others are saying on facebook.

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7 Keys to Reading Faster

Scott Young — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:08:10 +0000

Photo by Nathiya Prathnadi

By Scott Young

Want to read faster?

In this article, I’m going to share the lessons I learned that doubled my reading rate, allowed me to consume over 70 books in a year and made me a smarter reader. I’m also going to destroy some speed-reading myths, to show you it isn’t magic but a skill anyone can learn.

How I Started Speed Reading

My first introduction to the concept of speed reading was from a book, Breakthrough Rapid Reading. I’ve since moved away from a few of the concepts taught in the book, but the core ideas were transformative. In only a few weeks, my average reading speed went from roughly 450 words per minute, to over 900.

More than just words per minute, speed reading helped instill a new passion for reading. Because I gained more control over my reading abilities, my desire to read went up. That new motivation made me a voracious reader, in one two year period, I had read over 150 books.

Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from several years of speed reading:

1. Use a Pointer

Your eyes don’t actually stay fixed in one spot. They are frequently making brief twitches away from your center of focus to gather more information. These movements are called saccades and they represent the first tool novice readers can use to read faster.

Normally, when your eye twitches away, it must relocate in its previous position. Unfortunately, when you read, this position is constantly moving. Saccades (and just general distractions) cause you to slow down as you must search for your current reading position. The solution is to use a pointer.

The easiest pointer is just the tip of your finger. Simply place your index finger below a line of text and move it as you read. Initially, using a pointer will be slower than regular reading. But after you’re used to the motion, you can read more effectively.

Note for Advanced Speed-Readers: You can further increase your speed-reading rates by keeping your pointer 1-2cm away from the margins of the text. Your eye can catch the words in about a 1″ radius, so this can shave off a bit of reading time.

2. Speed Reading Is About Control, Not Speed

I dislike the way speed reading is often presented because it makes the skill seem to be only about increasing your top speed. As a result, many people are quick to judge that people can’t physically process more information or point out that comprehension goes down while speed reading.

To me, these arguments miss the point. Speed reading is about controlling your reading rate, not just going faster. If you’re in a racecar, top speed is important, but even more important is the driver’s skill at adjusting speeds to make careful turns. The ability to control your speed will make you a much more efficient reader than just blazing through text.

A pointer helps with control because instead of just using your eyes, you can physically move your hand to adjust your reading speed. If you move your hand faster, you will be forced to read faster. Also, if you slow your pointer down, your reading will slow. This kind of control allows you to carefully read confusing or important sections of text and go faster through obvious text or pieces of fluff.

For example, in a book I’m reading right now, the author frequently resorts to the same 3-4 paragraphs of description to explain a recurring idea. The paragraphs aren’t identical, but similar enough that I can use my pointer to skim through the content and still get the message.

3. Read Without Subvocalizing

When most people first learned to read, they spoke the words aloud. “Jill goes up the hill,” each word being pronounced earnestly by the young student. Eventually, you graduate from speaking aloud because it slows your reading speed. However, most people still vocalize the words inside their head, “Jill goes up the hill,” silently repeated in our minds.

Subvocalization isn’t always a bad thing. It helps us understand and follow a narrative. Just realize it isn’t strictly necessary for comprehension. Jsut as msot poelpe cna urndesnatd tihs secntene, most people don’t need to grasp every single word to get the meaning of a sentence.

Being able to read without subvocalizing is like adding an extra gear to your engine. It can open up the top speed of your reading rate, which is particularly useful for easy to understand or text with a lot of fluff. It isn’t the same as skimming, you’re still moving your pointer across every word. It’s a method speed readers can use that most normal readers don’t.

Practice moving your pointer faster than you can read words inside your head. This will break you of the habit of automatically subvocalizing.

4. Active Reading

Most people read passively, that is, reading a book hoping the information will strike them across the forehead and declare, “Learn Me!” This is a fine practice when you’re just reading for sheer entertainment, but what if your reading serves a specific purpose?

Speed reading requires active reading. That means, instead of just assuming the information will jump out at you, you become an inquisitive, seeking animal. Before you start reading, prime your mind by asking what you’re hoping to get out of your reading session. Even if you aren’t 100% sure of what you’ll learn, this priming exercise allows your brain to notice relevant details more quickly.

Active reading also means stopping to think about what your reading, as you read it. Stopping to think may not sound like much of a speed reading tactic. It’s not, but it is a smart-reading tactic that everyone should employ. If you find something interesting, pause either to reflect or even note the information in your book.

Would you rather read something today and forget it tomorrow, or read it deeply and make it a part of you?

5. Know When to Slow Down

As I mentioned in key #2, speed reading is about control, not just speed. Many people I’ve talked to after introducing them to speed reading brag about how quickly they dashed through a book. But, these same people later confess that they remember little about what they read.

Just as it is sometimes useful to speed up to move quickly through writing with a low information density, you often need to slow down to catch the important or confusing bits. Let’s view reading as if you are driving a car: If you’re on a straight, well-maintained divided highway, feel free to speed up. But if you’re doing hairpin turns on a dirt road in the mountains, slow down.

More than anything else, speed reading should give you an awareness of your speed. Most people read information with only 2 speeds: skimming and reading. Speed reading is about opening up all the intermediate layers. Now you should be able to skim, read without subvocalizing, read rapidly, read, read slowly and even crawl when faced with confusing or difficult ideas.

6. Make the Material More Interesting

I know, it sounds impossible. How can you possibly make statistics/accounting/Jane Eyre interesting?

But you can make material more interesting if you put some effort in before you pick up the book. No, you can’t make boring topics come alive as if they were the latest thriller fiction. But you can make them interesting enough that you can stay focused while reading.

I know it sounds like something out of a Tony Robbins‘ seminar, but attitude matters. When you’re approaching a book, imagine if you changed your perspective from, “Oh no, here’s some junk I have to read,” to “What could I gain from reading this, if I was really creative about it.” It’s not about confessing a secret love of accounting, it’s about keeping an open mind as to what accounting could teach you.

If you find the material more interesting, you’ll be able to read with complete focus. Complete focus can cut the amount of reading time in a third, without any loss in comprehension. That should be incentive enough to tweak your attitude.

7. Reading Rate Comes With Practice

Although less glamorous than subvocalization or pointer-enabled reading techniques, the best speed reading technique is this: read more to read faster. When you regularly read a book per week, your reading rate will improve.

First, if you aren’t reading in your first language, language proficiency will be your biggest obstacle to high reading rates. I’m an intermediate with French, and my French reading is a crawl compared to my English reading. That’s because every paragraph contains a new word or unfamiliar grammatical construction.

Once again, the way to overcome low proficiency is through practice. Even if you are reading in your first language, some authors will throw big words down you may not understand. My suggestion is that if you encounter such words frequently, look them up. I used Google’s define feature (example, “define simple“) religiously when reading through all of David Foster Wallace’s verbose tome, Infinite Jest.

Second, if you read more frequently, you get a better sense of what speed to go for the type of content and your purposes. NASCAR racers weren’t made that way. They became great at adjusting speeds through practice. Similarly, if you aren’t sure how fast to read a textbook or a novel, those intuitions can be strengthened with practice.

I also suggest for new speed readers to practice reading rather than just read. Practice reading involves taking a fresh book and using the techniques of a pointer and eliminating subvocalization to scroll faster than you can comprehend. This can help train your upper speed-limit reading speeds.

Try It Out!

Want to know your current reading speed? Pick up any book and do the following:

Setup a timer for one minute
Mark the line you started reading
Start reading and stop when the minute is up
Mark the line where you stopped
Number of lines – Count the number of lines you’ve read
Number of words per line – Take the second line and count the number of words in this line (including short words like I, and, etc)
Number of lines X Number of words per line = WPM, your words per minute reading speed.

Try the above steps with your regular reading pace, and after practicing several tips from above, try the measuring steps again to see how much you’ve improved. Let us know how you did!

* Got speed reading tips of your own? How did you do after trying some of these tips? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section. See you there!

If you enjoyed the article, please join TSN on facebook (add Tina here) or follow us on Twitter. And we’d love it if you can share this article on twitter, thumb it on StumbleUpon or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thank you for your support. :)

Other Articles You May Enjoy:

External Resources on Reading Faster:

Book: Breakthrough Rapid Reading
Video: Memory (Swamiji’s Discourse)
Book: Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It

You may also consider this modern speed reading software to master speed reading.

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How to Learn Without Memorizing

Scott Young — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:29:11 +0000

Photo by Edwin Stemp

By Scott Young

Rote memorization is an inefficient way to learn. Just retaining a single formula can mean pounding the same information into your skull dozens of times. If your computer hard drive had this accuracy, you’d probably throw it out.

Unfortunately, you’re stuck with your brain. The good news is that you don’t need to learn by memorization. The vast majority of information is better stored in your head using a completely different system – learning through connecting ideas together.

A few years ago, I noticed that smart people seemed to learn differently than most other people. While most people would review the same information dozens of times, smart people only needed to review once or twice. While most people would apply ideas to problems in the ways that they had been taught, smart people used the ideas in many different contexts.

While there are undoubtedly some genetic advantages that allow some people to learn effortlessly, I think part of this difference in success comes down to strategy. While most people were trying to memorize, smart people were coming up with creative connections between ideas. These connections made the ideas easier to remember, so less memorizing was required. Additionally, the new connections made the ideas easier to understand, so learning itself was faster.

Is Your Brain a File Drawer or a Web of Ideas?

A computer stores information as thousands of electrical 1s and 0s in a linear fashion. Your brain doesn’t. Your brain is made up of billions of neurons connected together. Many people try to learn as if there brain were a computer: by memorizing the information in a sequence.

However, your brain isn’t a sequence of bits and bytes, so this approach doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense to learn the same way your brain is designed, by connecting ideas together into a web, rather than trying to store them with rote memorization.

Other Forms of Learning

What I’d like to advocate in this article is a more creative, spontaneous form of learning than the style you were probably coached for in school. Instead of repeatedly scanning the same information for minimal benefit, invest your time learning in creating connections with the information you are learning. Not only is it a more natural way to learn, it isn’t painfully boring like most memorization tasks are.

There are lots of ways you can learn creatively:

1. Learning Through Metaphor

Connect ideas together by relating them to something you already understand. Relate complex physical equations to their real life counterparts. Imagine a derivative as the speedometer on a car. See a binomial equation as a game of Plink-O.

You can do the same thing with less technical subjects. When I read the book The Prince, I related Niccolo Machiavelli‘s thoughts on politics to my own social life. If you relate an abstract example to something more commonplace it is easier to understand. You are effectively creating a bridge between what you understand intuitively and the things you struggle with.

2. Learning Through Diagram

Create diagrams showing the relationships between ideas. This is a manual way you can create connections. The importance is that you explore as many different ways to connect ideas as possible, not just repeating the same diagrams. If you have varied connections, then if you happen to forget one, you’ll remember the ideas through another.

Diagram ideas based on time and place, author or other similarities they have. If you’re learning a comprehensive subject, like chemistry or physics, why not diagram out how all the ideas relate. Many equations are counterparts or derivations of each other, so you can learn complicated formulas more easily by connecting them to simpler forms.

3. Learning Through “Like, But…”

Another way to link ideas is to relate one piece of information to another, noting their difference. “It’s like this, but it has that instead.” Using this method of understanding can link ideas together, even if you don’t have a perfect metaphor or relationship to diagram.

Examples:

Confucius was born around the same time as Socrates, but lived in ancient China.
Amortization is like an asset version of a loan payment, except there’s no interest.
Acceleration is like gravity, but in any direction.

The relationships don’t need to be perfect. You aren’t trying to build a perfectly accurate map of the surrounding, just a sketch. Creative connections, even if they are only 80-90% accurate are more memorable than dry connections that have 100% accuracy. If you understood the subject when you were learning it, then the specific accuracy of a metaphor won’t be as important as the connection itself.

4. Learning Through Visualization

Another way to make ideas more concrete is simply to imagine them in a visual format. When I was learning computer programming, I often tried to connect the abstract concepts of variables, functions or polymorphism into more vivid, visual descriptions. If a variable becomes a jar or a function becomes a crazy pencil sharpener, you’re more likely to remember the relationship later.

If you are a non-visual learner, you can apply the same strategy to your other senses. It may be more meaningful for you if you mentally attach sounds or sensations to the ideas you’re trying to store.

5. Can You Explain it To a Five-Year Old?

Another trick to connect ideas together is to connect a very difficult idea, to something you understand easily. If you had to teach whatever subject you’re learning right now to a five-year old, what would you do?

This exercise forces you to simplify. Instead of dealing in abstracts you now have to deal in concretes. I’m not suggesting you can teach senior level chemistry courses to a first-grader. However, if you get in the habit of simplifying things for yourself, it will be easier for you to understand it yourself. Teaching something is often the best way to learn it.

I once heard a story about a prominent university professor who was writing a paper in his field. Instead of using the normal academic speak, he decided to simplify the findings and terms of the article as much as possible. His goal was that, by doing this, the article might be accessible to journalists who don’t have academic training.

To his surprise, however, his article became one of the most cited works within his field, from other academics. It appears that the extra simplification of concepts was helpful not only to journalists, but other researchers with doctorates in his field. The lesson: we often underestimate the simplification required.

When you juggle ideas only at an abstract level, you make fewer connections. It’s like trying to weave a basket using two ten-foot pole rods, while the basket is suspended off your roof. Make connections and bring the basket down to earth so you can grab it with your hands and make more tangible connections.

6. Childhood Creativity Meets University Courses

I’m suggesting you bring back the same crayon-box imagination you had when you were five. Back then, nobody told you it was incorrect to link weird and bizarre combinations of ideas together, you did in naturally. However, at some point the system encouraged you to conform, so you started asking what the correct answer was, rather than the most interesting answer.

Don’t give up your critical thinking, just enhance it by allowing yourself to explore ideas more thoroughly before you decide what they look like. What would happen if you inserted a minus sign in the middle of your physics equation? If you had to explain the formula in terms of real world objects, how would you do it?

These aren’t time-wasting exercises, they are keys to better understanding. The smartest people I’ve encountered are often the people with the easiest time generating creative descriptions of whatever they need to learn. If you didn’t have to review every idea 5-10 times before learning it, then a creative approach would probably save you time, rather than waste it.

7. Learning With a Group

Most memorization is a solo pursuit. But connecting ideas doesn’t have to be. If you get several people together and work to try to explain a subject to each other, you get the benefit of several brains forming connections to the same topic. This is applying the wisdom of brainstorming to help you learn faster.

As with brainstorming, accuracy isn’t as important as volume. You aren’t trying to remember every specific connection you make, so it doesn’t matter if they aren’t perfect. You are, however, trying to better understand and remember the subject itself, so group exercises where you share ideas are great for this purpose.

The 70% Rule for Self-Education

Whenever I try to learn anything on my own, I strive to maintain a 70% rule. This means I try to achieve 70% understanding and memory of a set of ideas before moving forward. Even though I’m missing 30% of the information, I can cover ground more quickly. Besides, I can always come back to reacquaint myself with something that was missed in the first pass.

The reason this approach works is that it takes as much effort to learn the last 20% of information as it does to learn the first 80%. By moving forward, you can ensure you’re focusing your learning efforts on what really matters, and not the minute details of a subject.

This approach isn’t practiced in school because, for most purposes 70% is a C+ or a B. In some programs, 70% memory could qualify as an F. So following this rule to the letter probably wouldn’t result in an exceptional GPA.

However, you can modify this rule when creating connections between ideas. Understand something to 70% proficiency, then dive deeper and understand the ideas around it. Here are some examples:

Understand a formula 70%, and then dive into its proof.
Learn a philosophical argument to 70%, and then examine the counterarguments.
Read to understand a management theory 70%, then view it’s applications.
Remember 70% of the words of a new language, then practice using them in dialog.

If you use this approach to study, you can start building those connections earlier. Instead of waiting until you have something memorized before you start connecting ideas, you start exploring immediately. This reduces the burden of memorization and helps you learn faster.

When is Memorization Necessary?

Like all rules, the practice of connecting ideas has places where it doesn’t work terribly well in. When you need to remember bulk information, with no particular meaning, sometimes rote memorization is the best way to go. Human brains are meaning-makers, and learning through connections is an approach built off that function. So when you have to understand copious amounts of information that have no logical relationship, you may struggle to form connections.

I hesitate to say this, however, because 95% of information isn’t meaningless, otherwise you wouldn’t bother learning it. There is a pattern, and if you invest some time in finding it, you greatly increase the chances it will stick to the inside of your skull.

* Got any tips for retaining information that’s worked well for you? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below. See you there!

Editor’s Note: Speaking of slipping the rules, while Jeremy was editing this article, he stopped at one point, to colorfully curse out the upstairs neighbor for making loud bizarre noises. Then we both looked at each other and laughed at the irony. Another lesson learned.

Other Articles You May Like:

External Resources:

Video: Memory
Video: Memory – Part 2

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Personal Change You Can Measure

Scott Young — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:37:51 +0000

By Scott Young

As we approach mid-year, are there any goals you had set at the start of this year that you want to make progress on? Here is a simple tool that can help you in becoming more productive and effective.

There is an old business adage, “what is measured, improves.” I believe that lesson applies, to not just your business, but also your life. If you measure something, you gain conscious awareness of it. If you gain conscious awareness, you increase your ability to control it.

Today is the third day of a week-long diet log I’m running. My diet log is simply recording everything that I eat for an entire week. Recently, I set a few fitness goals, and I wanted to ensure that my eating habits were matching my plan of action.

I measure more than just what I eat. I record personal expenses, how I use my time, what books I read and many other personal metrics. This may seem a tad obsessive, but I’ve found it greatly helps me in staying productive and reaching my goals. Besides, a little obsessiveness isn’t always a bad thing when it comes to reaching your personal targets.

Why Measure Personal Change?

Reaching your goals is a delicate surgery. Now, would you like to do that surgery with a scalpel or a baseball bat? Measurement adds precision to your goal-setting efforts, and helps you see whether your efforts are on target.

The biggest reason to measure personal change frequently is that people (which includes you and me) are self-delusional. The vast majority of car drivers believe their driving skills are above average. And if pressed in a survey, most people believe they are better looking than average. I’d also wager that, if you don’t measure, you probably underestimate how much you eat, what you spend money on and how much time you waste in a day.

These biases are unavoidable. The only cure is actually recording what you do to see if your mental picture measures up to reality. Personal metrics are an escape from the carnival house mirrors that twist and distort your life.

Another reason to measure is feedback. Feedback is incredibly important for growth. Some authors note that surgeons tend to improve more over the lifetime of their careers than do general practitioners. The reason is that surgeons have access to immediate feedback for every decision, which enhances their skill. Whereas, the general practitioners must wait weeks or months before receiving feedback on whether a diagnosis was correct.

By measuring, you gain access to more immediate feedback. Is your new diet working? You can find out whether you’re eating too many calories on a daily basis, rather than waiting a month or two to see if the pounds shed away. Is your new routine successful? A daily time log and productivity analysis can help you measure your output per hour of work.

Immediate feedback allows you to make quick corrections. I’m conducting a diet log so that I can see, with relative accuracy, whether my current eating habits are in line with my goals. Without doing a log, I can only guess and hope. That’s the difference between using a scalpel and a baseball bat to reach your goals.

Isn’t Measuring Time Consuming?

Instead of that question, I pose an alternative question: “Isn’t sloppily reaching your goals, time consuming?“

Still, I suspect many people are hesitant to jump into the deep end of personal metrics because it becomes one more thing they need to do each day. The good news, however, is that this really isn’t necessary. There are two ways you can add more regular measurement to your life without it becoming a distraction.

1. Habitual Measuring

The first way to make measurement painless is simply to create a habit. If you measure something frequently, you won’t even think about it. It will become a part of your routine. I recommend this approach when pursuing longer goals, where the measurement isn’t too intensive.

For example, I am currently in the habit of writing down all of my expenses. For the first few weeks, this required deliberate effort. However, after over a year, I barely think about the habit and it consumes only a few minutes each day.

For those few minutes, I get precise information about how much money I’m spending and where the money is going. This helps me be smart when using my money instead of simply being cheap. I can see where my largest controlled expenditures are, and see whether these match my goals. For about an hour over the span of one month, I greatly increase my success with my personal savings goals.

2. Burst Measuring

The other approach to personal metrics is to record detailed information for a few days or a week. The total time commitment is negligible, and it can give you a lot of information when you’re trying out a new plan.

My week-long diet log is an example of this. I’m recording everything I eat for one week. This is too much detail and sorting to carry on permanently, but it’s fine to run for just seven days.

I like to regularly record myself for various metrics: food, time consumed, productivity, etc. Each time I record, I learn valuable information that allows me to make corrections into the future.

Time-logging

One way to get started is to keep a record of when you start or stop any activity throughout the day. Optionally, to simplify things, you may only want to record the time from when you wake up until you finish your daily goals, completing your workday.

To do this, keep an index card and a pen with you at all times. Every time you switch tasks, even something like going onto the Internet during work or using the bathroom, make a quick note of it on your index card. Afterwards, you can enter the data into a spreadsheet and sort it into categories.

There are two interesting findings I see whenever I do a time log:

The number of interruptions
The amount of time spent on each activity

Interruptions

When I first started time logs several years ago, the first point that became obvious was the number of times I interrupt myself when working. A phone would ring, or I’d use the washroom. In some cases, the interruptions would be a few per hour.

I don’t need to explain to you the problem of frequent interruptions. Interruptions break your concentration, lengthening the amount of time you need to work. I love my work, but I don’t want to spend eight hours to accomplish a task that should only take three. Interruptions are a major cause of this.

But, unless you get some data regarding the amount of interruptions you face, it’s hopeless. Recording metrics can help you identify not only how much time is wasted from constant interruptions, but also what causes those interruptions. Knowledge gives you the power to fix those problems.

Time Allocation

Generally, if I do a time log, I will record the time spent on every activity of the day. This allows me to see where I actually spend my time. When I started doing this, I didn’t like what I saw.

I started to realize that the chunks of time I spent on mindless entertainment far outweighed the amount of time I spent on the things that matter most to me. I also realized that the things that added the most value to my wellbeing, didn’t really take that much time at all.

Time logging can be a reality check for many people because it forces you to acknowledge that you don’t spend your time in the way you’d like. But, with that awareness comes the power to experiment with new changes. With better knowledge of my time usages, I had more time for new activities like joining Toastmasters, learning to salsa and reading more books.

Diet-logging

Another personal metric to record is what you eat. This is a big source of self-delusion. Is that donut you ate a one-time treat, or actually a fairly regular habit? If you’re trying to gain muscle, are you eating enough clean calories and protein to reach that goal?

Even if you consider yourself in good shape and want a healthy lifestyle, diet logging is a good idea. It allows you to place a benchmark for your eating habits, to know whether or not you are living up to the standards you would like for yourself.

I don’t like to be too obsessive about what I eat. I want to eat tasty foods and not worry about number crunching every calorie or snack. I’m not suggesting you start to mash up and weigh everything before you consume it. Eating is not just about nutrition. It is also about enjoyment, socializing and experiences.

Recording what you eat doesn’t have to remove the gustatory pleasure you get from food. All it does is open up the option for you to improve the way you eat. If you have a fitness goal, this may be in changing what you eat to reach it. If you simply strive for healthy living, this will shine a light on your eating habits to see whether your menu is delicious and healthy, or simply fast junk.

Here are a few things you can do with the knowledge gained from recording a temporary diet log:

Reduce/increase calories. Do you need to eat 1800 calories a day to meet your health goal, then a diet log will quickly tell you whether you are going to reach it.
Change the types of food. See a lot of processed foods, fast food and junk food on your list? A diet log can expose your broader eating habits so you can make a shift.
Increase the variety of foods. Record for a week and see how frequently you eat the same meal. Life is meant to be an exploration so maybe you should broaden your menu?
Change the timing of when you eat. If you make a note of the time along with what you eat, you can see whether you are eating multiple small meals or one huge meal. Your blood sugar has a huge impact on your energy levels, so if you see large gaps or spikes of processed carbohydrates, that may help explain your fatigue levels in patches of the day.

Parting Words

Time, food and money are three ways you can become more conscious about your life, but there are many others. What you do depends on the goals you have and what you want to improve.

“What is measured, improves,” works in business because it focuses your attention on a key issue. When I measure statistics for my website or sales conversions, I’m gaining immediate feedback on all my improvement efforts.

Recording your personal metrics works the same way. By allowing unbiased, immediate feedback you can see any change of plan ripple into your measurements. If you’re going to spend hundreds of hours on a project or goal, why not spend a few minutes to see whether those hundreds of hours are being put to a good use?

** Which goals or areas in your life could benefit from being tracked on a regular bases? Any other productivity tips that help you stay on track? Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comment section. See you there!

Editor’s Comment: I (Tina) track many life goals using simple logs and free online tools. In one example, I wanted to develop a spiritual routine that included rising at 5am, meditation, reading, contemplation and yoga, so I keep a simple chart in a notebook, where I record my progress for each day. When I’ve completed each of the activities, I would check it off for the day. The chart/log/table allows me to quickly see an overview of my progress, where I am at, and each checkmark builds momentum that encourages me to keep going. Overtime, the activities becomes habits. I keep similar logs for managing our personal and professional spending (using mint.com and google docs), and various metrics for this site; Both, I create and review at the end of every month. It’s true what they say, “What gets measured, gets managed, and thus improved.”

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The 4 Hour Workday

Scott Young — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Photo: stock photo

By Scott Young

How to complete a full workday by noon? Sounds impossible, right? But on many days, by 12 o’clock, I have completed work that should normally take eight hours. And I don’t wake up at 4 a.m. to achieve this.

Actually, finishing everything by noon isn’t too difficult. If you add up all the time you spend procrastinating, distracted, or tired at work, it would probably make up half of your day. If you eliminated this wasted time, ending your day at noon wouldn’t be hard.

The problem, of course, is in the actual elimination of all that wasted time. A lot of productivity advice looks like simplistic dieting advice (“Eat less!”). Unfortunately cutting that wasted time is the tricky part. However, by making a few simple changes in your approach, you can make it far easier to cut the fat.

Don’t Pay Yourself by The Hour

If you view work as something that starts at 9 and ends at 5, you won’t be able to finish everything by noon. When you evaluate yourself for time spent working, rather than work completed, procrastination is often the result.

If you read the headline for this article and thought it was a scam, you probably suffer from this problem. Finishing by noon feels like cheating when you’re supposed to put in an eight hour workday. Unfortunately, it’s that attitude that causes you to procrastinate and stretch work out to keep you occupied until 5pm.

The solution is to stop paying yourself by the hour. Sure, you may continue to bill your clients by the hour. Or, your boss may continue to pay you a wage, and expect you to stay in the office until 5pm. But, that doesn’t mean you need to pay yourself that way. If you reward completion over input time, you will have a lean schedule.

In knowledge work, time input isn’t the point. As a writer, programmer or engineer, your value comes from your output. The end customer doesn’t care how many hours you spend behind your desk on Facebook or Twitter. Ultimately, your output will be what counts for your boss, clients or customers.

If You Work at Home, Never Work 9-5

If you are in a typical office environment (that rewards punctuality over performance), it will be harder to get your workday in before noon. Tim Ferriss – in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek – has some great suggestions for talking your boss into letting you work less, if you are more productive. If corporate policy chains you to your desk until late afternoon, I’d suggest you check out his book.

However, if you work at home, you have no excuse. Scheduling an eight-hour workday is wasting precious hours from your life. If you change how you evaluate your efforts, finishing eight hours of work in 3-4 hours is probable. You might even be able to increase your total output while reducing the amount you work.

Some people, however, don’t get it. I had a friend who owned an online business. He told me he had been working over ten hours each day on a new product. He said this without exaggeration, and I would say he honestly believed he was working at every possible moment.

However, even by judging his online activity, I knew something was wrong. He still had time to write long forum posts online and write lengthy emails. He made the mistake of judging his productivity by the amount of effort he was putting in, instead of results. Although it would have been less sympathetic, if he only worked five ultra-productive hours and rested for the rest of the day, he would have been more successful and less stressed.

How to Pay Yourself for Work Finished

I have a few productivity tricks I use to help remind myself of the “pay for completion” approach. The first I call Weekly/Daily Goals:

Weekly/Daily Goals

This is the core of my productivity system and it’s my key attack method to finish a full day’s work by noon. The idea is simple: at every point in the day, you keep two lists. The first list stores every task you need to complete that day. The second list stores every task you need to complete that week.

When you’ve finished all the tasks on your Daily Goals list, you’re done. If that happens at 11am, then congratulate yourself and go have a beer/coffee/tea/chai/nap. If that happens at 9pm, then put on another pot of coffee and keep working. Your day ends when your work ends.

This sounds obvious, but it is not how most people work. It is far more common to see someone finish at 11am, and then start working on another task. Or, after reaching 6 or 7pm in the evening, they give up and call it a day.

Instead of pay for completion, most people try to fit in eight hours. When they finish early, they add more. When they finish later than planned, they quit. Pay for completion is easy to preach, but pay for time wasted is more frequently practiced.

Keeping a list of daily goals puts only your work between you and relaxation, instead of some arbitrary amount of time for the day. Not a minimum amount of effort, just your most important tasks separate you and the finish line. This creates an incredible amount of motivation to cut distractions and keep the focus.

Why You Can’t Add More Work

If you finish early, the instinct will be to add more work. Unfortunately, you need to resist this urge strongly. The consequence of adding more work is that it defeats your system. The Weekly/Daily Goals system functions because you can’t add more work.

Imagine you are racing in a 400m race. If you pace yourself correctly, you should be completely exhausted by the end of the race. You will run as fast as you can within 400m.

Now imagine you were running a 400m race, but as you crossed the finish line, your coach yelled at you to run another 200m. If your coach did this frequently, you might start pacing your race to leave a bit of extra running energy for the end of your run, just in case you’re asked to run further.

The Weekly/Daily Goals system functions like the 400m race. If you keep adding on 200m whenever you finish quickly, you’re going to defeat the system. Instead of pacing your focus and energy to complete a particular set of tasks, you’re back to infinite to-do lists and ten-hour workdays.

Calibrating Your Weekly/Daily Goals

My productivity tripled when I started setting daily goals. But the disadvantage of this system is the irregularity. Some days will be light, because you accidentally under-scheduled. Other days will be incredibly hard, because you accidentally over-scheduled.

The solution to the irregularities isn’t to give up and go back to an unproductive pay-per-hour system. You simply need to calibrate yourself to the amount of work involved. As with anything else in life, you get better with practice and awareness.

Log Your Current Productivity

If you’re switching systems, the best way to calibrate is by keeping track of the amount of work you accomplish in a day. Quantify this into a metric you can easily use. As a writer, the best metric for me to use is the number of words I write per day, or the number of articles I finish.

Keep a daily log where you record the details of everything you’ve accomplished that day. At the end of the week, group up the different types of tasks and evaluate how much work was accomplished. This is your productivity baseline.

From there, you can set your daily goals to reflect this baseline. As a writer, I know I can typically write 3000-4000 words per day, or less if I combine this with non-writing work. By recording my current output levels, I can set my daily goals to match this amount. And I can make sure my daily goals list has at least 3000-4000 words of writing.

Why Bother Measuring?

If you know what your current productivity is in hard numbers it makes the switch to a new system more convincing. Without the hard numbers, you run the risk of feeling lazy when you finish early and take the afternoon off.

When I knew, from my old to-do lists, that I was accomplishing 2-3x more with this system than I had been previously, the choice to continue was obvious.

You can also use numbers like these to show to your boss. If I was an employer, I’d be happy if a worker could demonstrate, with numbers, how a new system had doubled their productivity, even if it meant they left the office early. And, even if you can’t convince your boss with the numbers, you can convince yourself.

Weekly Goals

The other element of my productivity system is keeping a list of weekly goals. The weekly goals list doesn’t need to remain as strict as the daily goals list. I find that the urge to procrastinate (and the motivation to work) stem mostly from the daily level, not the entire week.

The purpose of weekly goals is to ensure that everything you want to accomplish makes it to your daily goals lists. For years I’ve maintained a set of daily goals. It was only over a year ago that I decided to add a weekly goals list.

When you have just a daily goals list, some tasks are likely to be pushed off until tomorrow. That is, when you are planning your daily goals list, you may not include some tasks that you want to add into the next list. This form of meta-procrastination can be beat by having a separate list of to-do items for the entire week.

Finishing Your Entire Workday by Noon

Finishing everything by noon is just one benefit of using the Weekly/Daily Goals system. My goal isn’t to complete everything by noon. I use the system to get the maximum amount of work out of each day, so I can reach the goals I’ve set for my business. I love my work, so I use the Weekly/Daily Goals system to get more of it.

But I’ve also used the system to minimize the work I hate. If I’m doing work because I have to, not just because I want to, the Weekly/Daily Goals system works well. It allows me to finish work I would otherwise avoid or procrastinate indefinitely.

In some ways, the productivity difference is even more noticeable with work you dislike. If you enjoy work, it is easier to focus on it without distractions or procrastination. The power of the Weekly/Daily Goals system is that it forces you to get work done that you don’t want to do.

* What is your workday like? What can you do to make it more productive? Share your story and thoughts with us in the comment section. See you there!

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