5 Ways to Get Your Spark Back
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We all feel low sometimes, right? Grouchy, fed-up and bored are all words you could use to describe what it’s like when you’re feeling in a rut or like you’ve lost that spark you used to have. Times like those are part of the deal with being human (sorry to break it to you), but you’ll run the risk of losing an important piece of yourself forever if those grouchy days and off-times merge together and last weeks, months or even years.
Here are five easy ways to get out of the rut and get your spark back.
1. Shake Things Up
If you’ve established systems and routines for getting things done it certainly makes life smoother. Of course, the flipside is that if you have everything tightly coordinated and run according to that routine you leave little space for anything else. You become blinded to any ideas or choices that sit outside of that routine, and everything you do every day becomes the norm. You end up running on auto-pilot, and it becomes your whole world.
So start to shake things up. Make one or two simple changes to your day – whether it’s your breakfast routine, your radio station, workout schedule, route to work, lunch routine, etc. It doesn’t matter what the changes are or whether they’re right or wrong, just make a couple of simple choices that will add some variety to your day.
Doing things differently and changing parts of your routine instantly takes you out of the norm and allows you to shake off the things that make you feel confined. Stepping out of your routine puts you in a position where you’re able to make different choices, see things differently and get a different result. It’s the starting point for having a different kind of experience. Read more
10 Ways to Simplify and Eliminate Waste in Your Life
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Everyone gets too busy. They pile up their tasks, responsibilities and often over-promise while struggling to maintain any kind of work life balance. It’s a hectic lifestyle that many lead and while I’ve written some articles on how to simplify your life and mind to get around this, there are other ways to help address this problem with the work and tasks you face.
I learned a key principle while going through a training course for work and while reading Lean Thinking. The idea is to identify and eliminate waste. This can apply not only in a production environment like the book is targeted for, but in life in general. There is so much going on around us every day we need to really strive to find and eliminate the waste that consumes our valuable time in life.
Finding Waste
When I first read the book, I didn’t connect the dots. Most people understand that creating waste in a production environment results in lost resources and money. However, as my thinking expanded outside of work, I saw areas of waste in everything. Some of the areas I quickly identified are:
* Repetitive communication in multiple formats
* Entry of data or documents in multiple locations/formats
* Dependencies between people waiting for each other
* Tools that make development slower or difficult
* The workplace environment with policies / procedures that exist but are not always useful
* Rework to fix problems caused internally
* Rewrites of software due to unexpected changes
* Failed attempts to solve a problem
The list could carry on for a long time in nearly everything we do. Anyone can find waste in life and there is always room for eliminating some of it. I’ve learned a couple of areas that drastically help with finding and identifying the waste we each experience. Read more
Software Freebies
I have just been to a grocery store. There were salesladies giving out free food. Yup. I took one of each type and enjoyed eating every one of them. Somehow, food tastes better because it was given for free. But aside from that, we could find a lot of free things out there — particularly in the web. Free software. Yeah. that tastes good. So, let me give you an initial list of software freebies which focuses on protecting your computer.
Knowing Your Strengths
We have been used to focusing on “how we could improve” when in fact, what we should be focusing on is our strengths. There are people who become famous because they have improved on their weaknesses, but if you look at history, the great people become great because they make use and develop their strengths. So, at this point, you might be asking: so how do I know my strengths? I’ve got here some questions which might help you:
Read more
Moving Better On Your Computer
Gone are the days when what is infront of us are papers and pens. We either have a desktop or a laptop on our desks and using those things, we do the thing we call work. Anyway, I have asked some people on how to become efficient while working with our computer, and they gave me the following tips: Read more
Life Lesson Learned from Washing Dishes
Since we kicked out our helper months ago, we have established an unwritten rule in the house. That is, wife will take care of cooking while I do the washing of dishes. That part is clear and no one seems contest that internal law.
So here I was doing my dishes when I suddenly noticed something about the way I wash the dishes. Apparently there is a pattern and I just realized it. Instead of washing what ever come first, I always choose the biggest items in the sink (like plates etc) first before the smaller one. Yes, even if that piece is located deep down the mountain of dishes. I then try to figure out why do I wash dishes in such a way, bigger plate first and then the smaller plate. Here’s why… Read more
Hassle-free Travelling
It’s actually fun having to travel to different places. I consider myself lucky because I have been to Rome, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and a bunch of wonderful places in the Philippines — Bohol, Cagayan De Oro, Surigao, Davao, Mindoro, etc.
Anyway, I realized that moving fast when in the airport really removes the hassles. So, what I have here are ways to make us more efficient in the airport:
Read more
Making The Most Out Of Your Single Hour
Most of us have a universal goal. That is we want more from our life. Like that Centrum ad, “I want to be complete”. However, there’s one problem. We can only do things one at a time. Most of the time, with so many goals and targets in mind, we have a hard time keeping them in track. Keeping things like career, studies, relationships, business etc make things more complicated. Hence we end up spending more time on only few areas like career or business while totally neglecting other more important things in our lives like relationship.
Trying to balance all goals and life’s target is really mind boggling. Planning them can make life really stressful, less enjoyable and the idea that you’re making your life follow a certain template (e.g based on other people’s own templates) doesn’t sound right too. So I come up with this – making the most out of a single hour in your life. Read more
How To Pay Your Bills Faster
Most of us work from 8am – 5pm. Believe it or not, sometimes we just don’t have the time to pay for our bills. I mean, this is especially true when we have a lot of things to do in the office. But, what then should we do? We have to pay our bills. I have thought about this a lot and ever since I started organizing our bills, I have done the following:
First, I tried having someone else to pay the bills for me. I prepare the bills, fill up the forms (if there are any) and give the forms to somebody else. That released me from having to go the different bayad centers we have and instead focus on other things. But then, it still takes time to prepare the forms and the cash or cheque. So, what I did was to make it easier for me still. This brings me to the second item. Read more
Prepare Everything Before You Begin
Maybe, there is indeed art in chaos. It’s funny how a girl, for example, with an unkempt room would actually know where things are in a heap. I really was like that, but then I realize I couldn’t keep up with the heap and I just have to do something.
Being productive actually means knowing where things are. Being able to do so, would save you a lot of time from looking around. Just imagine having to do something but being cut-off because you were just not prepared. Anyway, here is a great tip to become more productive: Prepare everything before you begin. What do I mean? Read more
