Quotes About Time Management

I wanted to have a look at time management quotes, so I did. Please find below a collection of the 24 most meaningful time management quotes that I stumbled upon. Comments in blue.

Nature of Time

Time is an interesting element, isn’t it? It is impossible to control, and most of us forget to value it enough:

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke

Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
M. Scott Peck

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin

Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.
Peter F. Drucker

A man must be master of his hours and days, not their servant.
William Frederick Book

Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely.
Thomas P. Murphy

Look at Steve Jobs here below – that is surprisingly deep! Way to go Steve.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs

Procrastination

No better time to start than now:

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.
William Shakespeare

Do not wait; the time will never be ”just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
Napoleon Hill

Never leave ’till tomorrow which you can do today.
Benjamin Franklin

He who know most grieves most for wasted time.
Dante

This is a controversial one:

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
Robert Byrne

Didn’t we also say “what is worth doing, is worth doing well”? I guess that the point above is just that don’t be too much of a perfectionist. Please also note the word “often”; it is not “always”.

Mindfulness / Present Moment Awareness

There is no other moment than now (take a look at our article about mindfulness stress reduction):

The moment has no time.
Leonardo Da Vinci

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.
Elanor Roosevelt

You can’t change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.
Unknown

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha

The next time you find yourself in an argument, rather than defend your position, see if you can see the other point of view first.
Richard Carlson, PH.D

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
Abraham Lincoln

Remember to Enjoy Your Time

Don’t forget to have some fun too:

The happiest people spend much time in a state of flow – the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
Japanese proverb

Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.
T. S. Elliot

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.
Baltasar Gracian

Humorous

A few funny ones:

There is never enough time, unless you’re serving it.
Malcolm Forbes

I’ve been on a calendar but I have never been on time.
Marilyn Monroe

Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.
Unknown

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TIME MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

In this section we will discuss different time management software setups for maintaining optimal personal productivity. The most crucial part for anyone using time management software is choosing the best Personal Information Manager (PIM, for short).  With a PIM software you should be able keep track of the following things:

• contacts
• appointments
• tasks
• to-do lists
• birthdays
• email.

There exists many stand-alone PIM:s on the market, but they often lack email. I strongly feel for that you should also be able to manage your email through your PIM. Therefore, you use one of the following:  Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Mac Mail or Microsoft Entourage (Mac).

In many cases your workplace will provide one of the above for you. In the following I have collected some information about products I know something about.

There also exists a few quite good web based solutions. In some cases they are a welcome complement to your main PIM.

PIM SOFTWARE

Microsoft Outlook

Outlook is the software I currently use. Outlook is quite good in managing both email, calendar and tasks. It can be configured for quite nice time management. You will find some nice tips for this e.q. in Michael Linenberger’s book that you can find in our time management books section. David Allen Company also sells a configuration report on their web site.

Clear Context Outlook Add-on

Clear Context offers an Outlook Add-on that will make your Outlook more GTD enabled. I do not use it, and it is not necessary, but I did give it a shot for a while. But even if I prefer a hand crafted plain vanilla configuration, doesn’t mean you have to. Take a look at the Clear Context site. The software ships with a complete GTD documentation, so you can start without reading a book on the subject.

WEB BASED SOFTWARE

Web based software may be the way we are going on the long term. However, as long as networks are slow and  unreliable I will not recommend on-line software as a first choice. Still, they are a great to complete mobile setups, as they sometimes make integrations possible that otherwise could be hard to do.

Toodledo

Toodledo is a web based task management website, that requires registration. It integrates nicely to Outlook with an extra software (instructions on the site). Toodledo was one way to way integrate my Outlook to the iPhone.

Remember the Milk (RTM)

RTM is Another popular on-line solution for task management. This one does not, however, integrate to your Outlook.

MOBILE – Windows

Windows mobile phones have an advantage with Microsoft Outlook… wonder why? The built in calendar and email features should integrate nicely with your Exchange server. For the tasks you will need an external software.

Oxios ToDo List

When I was still using my HTC Windows Mobile phone, this was the task management application I used. It worked fine, and synced the tasks directly with the Outlook Exchange server.

MOBILE – Nokia/Symbian

Read about my Nokia GTD solution in a separate article. Decent Nokia phones now ship with a software called Mail for Exchange, which will integrate your mobile phone to your Outlook Exchange server for email, contact, calendar entry and task synchronization. I have written a separate article about GTD on Symbian.

MOBILE – Apple iPhone

Read about my iPhone GTD task management solution in the GTD iPhone post.

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Mindfulness and Present Moment Awareness – What Is This About?

In this article, I will explain the benefits of mindfulness based stress reduction. Let us start of with two examples on mindfulness, in order to explain what it is. By the way, the terms mindfulness and present moment awareness mean the same, as we define them here at Time-Management-Solutions.com.

Is it possible to meditate and stay calm during your workday or in a meeting? By practicing mindfulness you come very close to this goal.

Example 1: Imagine yourself driving a car. The weather is beautiful and the traffic is normal. Suddenly, you realize, that you have been driving for at least the last 5 miles completely in your own thoughts. You have been daydreaming. When you think about it, you have not at all been thinking about the driving. In stead, you have been on autopilot, whoa!

The above example has most definitely happened to many of us. Is it mindful to be like that? The answer is no, of course! There is nothing wrong in daydreaming - we all do it, and it can be mostly enjoyable. During daydreaming we are just not being mindful.

You might also be attending a meeting with the same daydream mode on. That would be worse. In such a case, you would actually be showing disrespect to the situation, as you would not really be present. How can you be attending, if you are not present? You cannot. You are not.

You can even be in a one-to-one discussion with a person you care about, and still manage to mentally be somewhere completely else. Try to avoid this. In stead, remember that it is a great gift to anther person, to (really) listen to them. Remember that. It is also a good step towards mindfulness.

Example 2: You are at home in the evening, slightly tired, and for some reason, a little generally irritated too. Your spouse comes home and accidentally says something… that annoys you. “Grrr!”, you think, and direct your anger at them, with a mean comment back. You two end up fighting. The fight is almost identical to the five previous ones about the very same subject. You both end up feeling bad and sleeping badly, as you are not able to make up before bed time.

The second side of mindfulness is to acknowledge that you are not your feelings. As biological beings, formed by time and “survival of the fittest” type of genetic biology, we have strong responses to different situations. For this we should be thankful, it has brought us as a species here. However, sometime our automatic responses go too far, or are triggered unnecessarily. Our body perceived threats, and react to them. Have you ever thought if it makes any sense to get raging mad at another person in traffic? Let’s face it, we do not have that many threats anymore. The situation was different a few thousand years ago, when these mechanisms were developed.

We all react somewhat differently to different situations. A conflict situation might make you feel angry, aggressive, sad, or depressed. The key is this: When you are mindful, you don’t let your physical response completely take over your thinking. You should choose not to respond to small irritations. We encounter such all the time. You should accept that the world is not an 100% ideal place. Let small things pass by, even when you notice someone is purposely trying to piss you off. Instead, sit back. Enjoy the present moment.

How Our Mind Works

The key to understanding present moment awareness and mindfulness stress reduction, is to understand that the mind consists of two parts. Take a look at the picture below:

The mind, consisting of two parts: The mindful mind, and mind clutter.

One part is the random collection of thoughts and reactions, that constantly whirl through your mind. They can hit you at a great speed, in the scale of dozens per second. These are the hundreds of thoughts and ideas that pass through your mind every minute. They contribute to your stress, at least if you identify with them too often. One random thought might remind you that you were bullied 10 years ago back in school. If you identify yourself with that thought, it will strengthen. It might even temporarily get control of your body, making you angry, thus making your body produce adrenalin…  10 years after the situation! Ask yourself, does this make any sense? Heck no! Most of these random thoughts, should just be let pass by. In stead, you should focus on the present moment. We are after all living in the now, not in a situation e.g. 10 years back.

The second part of your mind is something I like to refer to as the true you. It is the true you who notices the thoughts whirling in your mind. It the true you who can prevent you from identifying with those thoughts time after time. It is the true you who is able to set you free from stress. Simply put, you do this by choosing not to let any random thoughts upset you. Just accept the thoughts or situations as they are. If you want to change them – even if it is impossible – you produce unnecessary pain. Acknowledge the thoughts, but do not identify yourself with them. You will notice that within 5-60 seconds – generally – the thoughts are gone. Hence, you have effectively avoided stress. It is so simple. Yet, it requires a lot of practice.

How Does It Feel to Be Mindful?

How does it feel to be mindful… to have present moment awareness… to be “in the now”?

I like to describe it as spending quality time with your friends. When you are out having fun with your best friends, do you think of yesterday? Do you generally worry? No, you don’t. That is because you are enjoying the situation fully. You are being present. You are being mindful.

When you are living mindfully, you get less often upset. This keeps you more calm. You learn to accept situations as they are. You learn to have less of a need to change what you see around you. You will be less often frustrated, less often angry.

So, you just missed the bus… CHOOSE not to get upset.

At the highest level of mindfulness you learn to instantly forgive your friends and family for actions, or things they might say, even when they hurt you. You realize that every now and then they are not being mindful, leaving room for frogs coming out of their mouths. That is life. You have hurt people too, even when you didn’t want to.

Still, that was advanced level, and not within the scope of this article.

Entering the Now

How do you enter the now? How do you start becoming more mindful?

First, you should start by learning to know your body. Learning to identify feelings in your body is key for success. A good meditation that will increase your ability to acknowledge feelings within your body can be found in our meditation stress relief section.

After doing that exercise for a few times (2-20), you should be able to enter the next level.

In the next level you start to anchor your mind in the now several times per day. Pay extra attention to being mindful when you get to critical situations… a conflict with a work colleague, at a frustrating line at a shop, or bad traffic, to name a few. When you feel that your stress is going up, focus on your breathing, as you otherwise continue normally. Breathe slowly and deeply.

You will constantly be hit by frustrating factors. When you encounter such things, try this three step process for maintaining present moment awareness:

1. Try to let the negative thought flow through you, not taking it into your conscious processing at all. Forget about it instantly.
2. If your mind nevertheless snaps it up, and parks it there… try to just accept the situation as it is, and let it be. Don’t fuel any negative thought that now have entered your mind. Focus on your breathing. Remember, you are not your thoughts.
3. If your mind snaps it, and you accidentally identify yourself with it, producing a physical reaction… just accept that too. Don’t overreact. Breathe slowly. Try to let any negative thoughts go away, which they will do shortly, when you don’t fuel them.

Happy experimenting! By following this advice you are certainly up for a very interesting ride. I warmly recommend “The New Earth” by Echard Tolle, and the “Present Moment Awareness” by Duncan Shannon,  as your guides to go further.

Read more about the benefits of mindfulness stress reduction from Wikipedia.

Manage Stress. Stress management is an essential skill in our hectic society today. Article discussing different possibilities, like leading a balanced life and meditation.

Time Management Solutions and Personal Productivity. Learn different time management solutions and be more efficient in everything you do. Increase your personal productivity and discover more free time!

Allen, David: Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress Free Productivity

David Allen is at this point the leading time management guru. His efficiency oriented Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology is widely used, admired, criticized, and it is commonly used as a benchmark against all other time management systems. This is especially true for the USA, but holds also for the rest of the world. Mr. David Allen has a cult status – at least within the time management community – and there exists many sites based on his approach to time management. Some of these sites are almost fan pages.

David’s philosophy materializes strongly around his Getting Things Done process. I have sketched the process in the introduction to time management section of this site.  The process admittedly captures effective working very well. It is suitably generic but still divides itself into clear, easy-to-follow stages.

David Allen emphasizes the importance of collecting actions and ideas on different categorized lists. Categorization in GTD is done according to contexts. Examples of task list subjects are therefore: At Work, At Phone, At Computer, At Home, etc. For contrast let it be mentioned that other methods use different approaches, like a single list, order by the due date, or organize tasks according to projects.

Having run pure GTD also myself, the most uncomfortable part for me in the GTD lists is the fact that the items do not generally have due dates. This leads to the user having many context based lists, packed with items that should be done, but no clear priority between the tasks. The prioritaion is left up to the user. However, for me, as real life is full of deadlines, it resulted that many of my tasks still ended up on the calendar in stead of on the task lists. For me, this blurs the difference between the calendar and task lists. I am all for separating the two.

I also found the act of categorizing every task and project a little wearisome. This is not made easier by the fact that David uses Palm’s devices. These support categorizing, as it is a built in feature (calendar entries, tasks, and notes). Windows mobile devices also support this, and that was what I was using. Nokia phones do not support this feature at all, which makes practicing GTD on a Nokia phone somewhat different.

David’s book is still very much worth reading. If you will only ever read one time management book, it should be this one. David’s book has both practical tips, but also has merits in painting the larger framework.

Best Time Management Books. Please have a look at my personal collection of the best books around this subject. From each one I have got at least one really useful insight

Time Management and Personal Productivity – Main Page. Learn different time management solutions and be more efficient in everything you do. Increase your personal productivity and discover more free time!

Do We Want to Be Efficient or Effective in our Time Management?

Do you still remember the difference between efficient and effective from your physics class? No? Don’t worry! Here is a quick recap:

Effective – producing or being able to produce an intended result. Focus on the output.

Efficient - being effective without wasting time, expense or some other resource. Focus on the input/output ratio.

Generally, in the context of time management, to be effective is said to be “doing the right thing”. To be efficient is to “do things right”. It is possible to be effective without being efficient, but also the other way around.

When we talk about effectiveness and efficiency, we should generally tell a little more… This and this is effective for DOING THAT. Something is efficient in THIS SENSE. Especially when talking about efficiency, it’s good to know in which way something is efficient. Is it fuel-efficient, cost-efficient, or maybe time-efficient?

Above we have a Toyota Prius, a fuel-efficient hybrid car. Below a Hummer – a relic from the times when it was super cool to own the least fuel-efficient, most bad ass car on the block. Nevertheless, it sure has an effective engine.

Table-form explanations:

Examples in table form.

For most of you all this was probably somewhat understood. For those of you who needed some crystallizing, I hope that this article was effective in doing so. However, if I go on for longer, it won’t be efficient.

Summary: Efficient versus Effective

So, effectiveness or efficiency, which one do we desire? Well, the answer, my friend, is that we often need both. Still, effectiveness is the basis and means that we are doing something in the right direction. To be efficient is the bonus. At Time Management Solutions we want to help you be both. When we manage to do both at the same time, it leaves us with the maximum amount of time to lie on the couch. And isn’t that cool!

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Book Summaries – What and Why

I don’t know about you, but I constantly struggle to be able to read as much as I would want to. Having read something in the order of one hundred business books, I have also been frequently disappointed. Thoughts like “Did this book really have only three main ideas?”, or “Could this not have been told more shortly?”, have frequently crossed my mind.

Most business books only contain a few REAL fresh ideas. Nevertheless, on the basis of Amazon.com reviews, or by just reading the book cover in a book store, it can be hard to tell beforehand.

My question: How could I save time?

So, with this background, a book summary service made sense to me, and hence, I recently decided to try one. After some searching work, and a careful selection process using proprietary metrics, I decided to try the service of Business Book Summaries.

Business Book Summaries is a 8-to-12-page summary service of the most popular business books out there.

The promise:

Book summaries for executives and business people on the go and have no time to read a business book every week. Summaries of the latest best-sellers are accessed in seven formats: PDF, online, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, mindmaps and video

Having used the service for a few weeks now, I really have to say that it is quite ok. As it gives a possibility for you, dear reader, to save some time too, I decided to share this idea.

What do you get?

• Instant access 500+ business book summaries (e.g. Winning by Jack Welch, or Built to Last by Jim Collins)
• The possibility to browse books as per titles, authors, or categories
• A free trial period of 2 days (full access to all reviews)
• Two new book summary pdf:s emailed every week

What do you not get?

• The summaries do not contain the key graphics of the books

The Anatomy of a Book Summary

There are different formats to choose from. The flagship format is the 8-12 page PDF business book summary. It has an author box, giving some information about the author, and it looks very nice when you print it out (good for short air flights and the likes). If you choose to read directly from your computer, you can read the HTML format with your browser.

My own favorites are the PowerPoint and the online video formats. The latter format is a combination of the Powerpoint (however, even simpler slides) and someone reading out loud the more comprehensive PDF format. It really feels like a mini lecture!

My Own Summary

Business Books Summaries is a handy service that enables you to save time reading unnecessary books, as you can preview a book before you dedicate numerous hours to read it. At best it may also convey all the crucial ideas of a low content business book, rendering the purchase of the book obsolete.

As it is offered for the annual price of only a few good books, I will myself most likely be a happy subscriber for the foreseeable future.

Link: Business Book Summaries

Sometimes It’s Good to Take a Break… Even From Time Management

After a creative pause of about four months to contributing to this site, I’m finally back posting. I am very excited about all the new ideas I have, and I hope you will find at least some value in the topics to come. In the foreseeable future I will be posting new articles at least two or three times per month, so be sure to come back again! It really feels good to be back.

Creating this blog last autumn to its current extent of about 40 articles took some long hours and a decent amount of work. It was the time to rest and cultivate more fresh ideas. Personal themes of mine from the last few months  have included work,  better sleep, increasing the amount of exercise, and a general emphasis on well-being, which has also meant a change in my diet and some other basic steps towards a healthier life style. That’s a whole lot!

All in all its been a great start of the year. I hope you have had one too!

Luckily, all this given me lot’s of new ideas to write about here.

By the way (back to my my favorite theme…), at some point we also will have to take a look at how YOUR annual goals are ‘cooking’… mine are doing fine, just look above! If you still haven’t defined at least some goals for 2010, I encourage you one more time to do so now, at the goals in life section.

Whereto now?

This site is now in an interesting junction. We have plenty of directions we can go to. Interesting new topics include:

• project management
• orderliness & organization
• time management book reviews
• technical time management solutions
• creativity and problem solving
• practical leadership
• and more…

We also have a lot of room left to expand the current categories.  Nevertheless, I think we will start a new one soon. If you have a preference of the topics above, feel free to drop me a line at harri.jussila@time-management-solutions.com or leave a comment below.

I also have ideas for some more controversial articles.

All the best. See you soon again!

-Harri

Time Management Solutions – Main Page. Learn different time management solutions and be more efficient in everything you do. Increase your personal productivity and discover more free time!

Importance of Values in Everyday Life

We previously defined values in life as follows:

Values: A group of moral and ethical concepts that steer our behavior and our choices. How?

The concept of values is quite broad, and there exists many schools of thought. I in this article I will, nevertheless, try do my best in order to give you a brief summary. I will also try to help you discover and see more clearly your own values, in a simple way. Knowing your values adds yet another piece to the puzzle of YOU. In other words, thinking about your values is an additional tool in helping better to understand yourself. And as I always like to add, this will also benefit your time management.

The better you know your goals and values in life, the better you know yourself. Knowing yourself better translates into a more confident, independent and efficient you.

In everyday life, we all have physical things that we value very highly. It can be a car, a set of photos or a piece of jewelry that you have got from your mother and that has been with the family for ages. Likewise, there exists a special set of highly valued thoughts of life inside our minds too. These immaterial values define how we see and feel about things around us, and they are also very important for us. In fact, they are, in reality, more important than any physical possessions we might have, as they define, and are part of, our core identity. Therefore, they also affect the choices we make and how we feel about them. Our internal values exist and are in place consciously and as most often, unconsciously.

Despite their big meaning for us, it is not usual to stop and think about our values, even if that can benefit you greatly. Therefore, I recommend that you go and get a nice cup of coffee  make this exercise too.

Three levels of values

There exists on paradigm that says that values actually exist in three different levels. The levels are:

• Fundamental truths/principles – the moral compass of humanity that almost everyone acknowledges on some level:
  • “Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself”
  • “Personal responsibility”, etc…
• Internal values
  • A person’s own set of values – these may even change during time
  • More practical and down to earth
• How we behave
  • Can be different from the two above
  • The reason is often a persons own internal limiting beliefs, e.g. “People cannot be trusted.

These levels are just good to know. If you find out that you behave regularly against one your core beliefs, then maybe you should do something about it at some point it in the future.

Your Important Values in Life

Now, let’s get into our exercise.

To give you some examples of values that people have, let’s look at the results of a study performed by Professor Shalom Schwartz and his team. It surveyed 25 000 people in 44 countries.  Schwartz looked for cross-cultural values, which he then grouped into ten categories:

Most likely, you can find at least some of your own values from the list above too. Even so, remember that this is just one way to look at values – there exists others too. And in all cases we all have different weights on the different components.

Next, print a copy of the ready-to-use form I have prepared for you. You will find it here:

[Discovering values PDF]

Now, fill in your own. Here is an example:

A key value in life for a REAL family man (provided as an example only).

Ready? Good!

Having looked at your values should help you in:

1. Making choices, as you know what you really value in life
2. Handle setbacks, as you have a bigger picture of what is really important for you
3. Help to drop unhealthy habits, as they are often the result of an inner restfulness, due to a sense of “being lost”

Sounds great, doesn’t it! Well, you will see for yourself when you try, won’t you. Enjoy!

Goals in Life. In order to be an efficient time manager, you must know what are your goals in life. Clarify your own life direction using ready forms for defining your goals.

Time Management Solutions – Main Page. Learn different time management solutions and be more efficient in everything you do. Increase your personal productivity and discover more free time!

How to Be

I paid a visit to a book store the other day, where I came across an intriguing book written by poet Tommy Taberman and Dr. Jussi Koski. It was called “How to Be” ^(*.  I liked part of the insights in it, so I thought I would share some of them with you.

The book consists of random facts, poems and citations. The concept was smart, even if it made it hard to identify original sources.

How does this relate to time management? Well, good books induce thought. This is a good start, as the only way to start being more aware and conscious in life is by independent thinking. Consciousness will lead you to your goals faster.

Nevertheless, here are some random picks:

On Work Life

To which group do You belong to?

Three things that wake you up at night:

1. My job is boring. I know it too well. It cannot offer me any challenges. I am stuck. I do not learn, grow, nor develop.
2. My job is too requiring. I cannot control this situation. Too much is expected of me. I have went too far.
3. I have a perfectly interesting, inspiring, and appropriately challenging job. But it has stolen me from myslelf, my close ones and my hobbies. I do not have anything else anymore.

Wipe your sweat:

1. When you meet a stranger, do not ask him what he does for a living. Instead, ask him what he enjoys the most: a flower, a  book, birds singing, silence. If he gets confused and does not know what to answer, you have met someone infected with work.
2. When you suddenly call what you do work, stop doing it.
3. The difference between a passionate person and a workaholic is that a passionate person might just as well just stop doing something and start dancing on a table.

This is a fact:

1. The UN organization for work is called ILO (=  JOY in English)

On Three Kinds of Persons

The authors also had one page on three groups of persons. Do You recognize yourself?

1. The numb person (90% of the population) is not fully aware of life. He does not have original ideas, nor does he actively look for possibilities to develop himself. He is just one in the masses.
2. The fundamentalist (9% of the population) takes a set of ready beliefs, clings to them like they would be his life blood. Once the direction is set the fundamentalist cannot really adapt beyond those beliefs. He is rigid, even if he himself often experiences a strong feeling of control.
3. The thinker (1% of the population) studies, synthesizes and tailors himself a personal view of the world. He is ready to change as a person, when needed also his opinions.

Quotations

Do you think this is the way to do it?

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
- Blaise Pascal, mathematician, philosopher

What about this one?

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- Oscar Wilde, Irish poet, novelist, critic

Bottom line

You should never stop developing and start clinging to the past. Strive for higher consciousness. This will also help you with your time management, as you will find and achieve your true goals faster.

Time Management Solutions – Main Page. Learn different time management solutions and be more efficient in everything you do. Increase your personal productivity and discover more free time!

^{*) = the original title is “Kuinka olla” and all translations (including the title) from Finnish to English have been made freely by me}

“Chapter 1: The 79 Cent Therapist” – Kathleen Adams

Introduction to Journaling & Stress

Journaling may first sound like something girlish or geeky… something that only Anne Frank did back in the days. But it is not like that. In my opinion, using journaling for stress relief is a very good idea. I write regularly into one (or  a few) myself and do not hesitate to recommend this habit to others too. I guess the benefit of journaling depends on your personality. If you haven’t tried it before, you can decide if it could suit you after having read this short article.

Three different journals I use or have used. From the left to right we have: a three year journal, a training diary (for sports), a topic based journal.

The stress relief benefit of journaling is that you get things off your mind. I would not use a computer for journaling, as for this kinds of things I just trust paper more. It also feels more real. I also often tend to journal just before going to sleep and do NOT want to have the portable with me in bed.

Different kinds of Journals

1. A daily journal. To a daily journal, which by the way isn’t always used daily, you should just write casually things that are on your mind. You are writing to yourself, so don’t be stressed about how you do it. Journaling is a great way to take things off your mind and put them on paper and to this way relax your mind. By writing about things you often get a better grip on them yourself. The only rule you should have is that you always date your entry. After the date your writing should be free and you should really concentrate on allowing it to be free and thus flow freely. If you start building different kind of rules about your journal writing, you will prohibit your free mind talk.

A daily journal can have many forms. I have had many different journals of different shapes and sizes. My favorite size is “medium” (as specified on the picture), which allows enough space for a reasonable amount of text, but is still neat and portable. There exists nice 5 year, 3 year and 1 year journal formats. For some reason I like these ready formats and I am currently writing in a three year book. The only problem is that the entries in such books have to be quite short. Most of the time I write very shortly what happened during the day, but really concentrating on what I learned during the day.

Keeping track of what I have learned in life is for me a driver to continue with my journaling habit. I write a short entry quite regularly on evenings. I do not punish myself if I miss a day, or a few, or even a week. One has to be dynamic in life and be ready to admit that there exists more important things in life than regular journaling.

There are however other types of good blank journal formats too. I might myself consider using next a one year journal with one full page per day. But the point I am trying to say is that you really do not have to stick with the ready format. You can get suitable nice empty journal books for under a dollar. After you write your first date and entry, it is a journal. Your journal.

I also used to have a divided journal with different sections. This way I could keep track of sections llike A) positive things that has happened, B) what I have learned and C) etc etc. But that format was not suitable for me. It could still be a good approach for you.

2. Specific journals. As an example of a specific journal we could mention the training journal. If you go regularly to the gym you might want to keep track on how well you did on the different moves you made. Along time you should see progress. Most likely your progress will be faster if you keep track of it.

If you are doing cross-training, you might want to mark  down what you did on a specific date. Every now and then you also could make some short entries of your weight and morning pulse. I would not combine a training journal with a personal journal, as you might want to show your training developments to a friend or a personal trainer. I you have personal worries jotted down on the on the same page it will make it harder.

Other specific journals could have something to do with another hobby you have; you will know if you have this kind of a need. If you do,  just go for it.

Writing for Stress Relief

What should you write in a journal. Here are a few ideas:

• Write about what happened during the day
• “The worry throw up”: Write for 20 minutes about your current worries and just let your mind flow. Write about your worries, and analyze them on the pages and don’t restrict your writing. Instead try to write fast and don’t stop to correct your writing. Follow the threads in your writing, even if you get off track. This is a very good, calming, anti-stress exercise.
• Write about three positive things that happened to you during the day. Do this for one month in row.
• In stead of flaming someone with an angry email, write an unsent letter in your journal. Most likely you will look less stupid in real life. Many times writing an unsent letter will still calm yourself down.
• If you have problems starting, use springboards. They are sentences that suddenly stop in the middle, and where you should continue with your own thoughts. Examples of springboards are:
  • What’s the most important thing to do now?
  • What have I been thinking about today?
  • How am I feeling right now?
  • Today was a …… day, because…
  • My biggest [secret, wish, love] is …
  • My ideal work would include…
  • I’m happiest when…
  • Keep a list of springboards like this in your journal.
• What did I learn today? Describe shortly how you discovered this. If you write some ah’aa that happened last week it doesn’t matter. You’ll be surprised how you will be able to mention something every day.

I hope those ideas get you started.

Privacy

I don’t recommend ever giving your journal to someone else for reading. For me, my journal is strictly private. Furthermore, I recommend that you write on the first page of your journal something like this:

This is XXX’s privat journal. You will most likely not find anything that interests you here. If I have lost it and you find it I really appreciate if you could return it to me. My contact information is …

I once forgot my journal in an airplane. I actually did get it back, which was nice.

Summary

Journaling is a great way to learn to know yourself better. It will definitely also help you to manage your stress.

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