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.

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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.

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^{*) = 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.

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

Tips and Solutions for Better Organization

Some times you can gain much only by using small scale solutions. Here is our collection such fast tips regarding personal organization. Even if these time management and organization tips are small, they might have a big impact.

Organization tips:

• Allow yourself to work more undisturbed and increase efficieincey with this small adjustment to your email alert settings
• Where are your keys? Find important things faster using centralized collecting points
• What a great idea! But how will I remember this? … Capture Ideas And Tasks by Recording
• But what about these piles on my table? Try using a cabinet based filing system in order to find your files faster.

Other tips:

• If you haven’t done it already, take 15 minutes to think about your goals in life using our simple 3-step process (it will benefit your time management)
• Furhterhmore, subscribe to our monthly newlsetter and stay informed

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!

Links Relating to Career Success, Learning, Personal Development and Time Management

Here are some links to other related sites. Explore and enjoy!

Business Coaching
Set your goals with the full range of life and business coaching available from My Life Coach

Stresshelptoday.com
Articles relating to stress management

Time Management Links
A collection of links relating to time management

Purdue University Student Success Center
Academic “success links”

Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development
Academic staff development resources

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Filing Papers at the Office

One measurement of your organizing skills is definitely your ability to find and retrieve the right files when you need them. We highly recommend using a filing cabinet. Here follows one solution for that.

My own filing system at work. I store the papers in plain manilla folders that are inside hanging folders. The file folder frame has been installed into a normal cabinet that was right behind my back.

Organizing the Files: One way for organizing the files is to use one single alphabetical filing system per entity. That way is suggested by e.g. Mr. David Allen. It is however not for me. I group the files into groups. I am currently using the following classification:

• Customers – one folder per key customer (other customers for the rest)
• Collaborators/Suppliers – one folder per key supplier (other suppliers for the rest)
• Projects – project folders with project specific material
• Company – our internal brochures, policies, strategy reports and financial analysis I have printed out
• Organization & Staff – staff related material
• Articles & Other – general stuff
• Personal – for files that don’t relate to work, but have somehow ended up here for filing

In stead of an alphabetical order I always put the files I have last used as first in their group. This way the files I use most often end up in the left side of each category. There is no need for alphabetic ordering.

Using the File Folders: The idea is simply to store paper in file folders in stead of having them in piles on your table. Create one folder per suitable entity. Often a company or project name will do. I use a label printer for labeling the folders (black ink on white tape). A simple battery driven hand held label printer is quite cheap, approx. $ 30-50.

Keeping your system up to date: This requires some discipline. Try to file all your papers lying on your table at least once per week, but don’t just file everything; you should avoid filing, if you can throw something away.

Personal Organization. Small practical tips for increasing your everyday productivity. Improve your productivity and your time management with these tips now!

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!

“Relieving stress and finding meaning in everyday life” – D. Nichol & B. Birchard

Introduction

In this short article I will explain the benefits of a regular meditation praxis. Meditation is one way to achieve better stress management. Better stress management is one key to better time management.

My three main thesis regarding mediation are like this:

1. Meditation is really good for managing stress and developing your mind
2. Meditation is easy – you can do it too
3. It is very hard to keep up with a regular meditation praxis

Before I go on I want to stress out that my recommendation is not based on any far-Eastern philosophy. I fully respect such views to meditation and acknowledge it may be from where meditation originates. At the same time, however, meditation has benefits on pure physiological and psychological levels. These benefits have also been proved in different studies. Hence the esoteric aspects to meditation are irrelevant.

Meditation is often associated with far-Eastern believes, including different energy points and channels. However, at Time Management Solutions we concentrate purely on the stress management benefits derived from the relaxation that comes with meditation.

Let us start with a short discussion on how you would know if meditation could be something for you.

So, What’s With Meditation?

If you are like most people, there exists an endless chatter in your mind. Nichole and Birchard (in their book “The One Minute Meditator”) do a great job describing the mind of a teenager :

You can imagine the types of thinking that play over and over: Can I make my grades? Do I like chemistry? Why am I even taking chemistry? Will I pass the class? Am I ever going to get a girlfriend (boyfriend)? Should I be in school? The one-minute mind runs back and forth over this and other territory time and time again.

Never ending thinking is however not a problem of teenagers only. Except for certain gurus of the mind, we all do it.

All the action inside our heads make it hard for us to stop and just sit down. In stead we constantly feel the urge of having to do something… so we watch television, go for a smoke, drink alcohol, have sex, go shopping… get excited over all kinds of real and imaginary thoughts in our head.

For me one of the main purpose of meditation is to silence this inner voice – to shut it up – giving room for inner peace and moments for true rest.

We all know how this true silence feels, as we most likely have had our minds shut up during:

• Flow – doing something you love and you master.
• Peak Performance – those moments when everything have gone just right during some performance, e.g. during sports.
• Peak Moments – moments that have been so beautiful that they have just stopped your mind. This can happen e.g. in nature.

In short, meditation brings you from the state of mindlessness, into the zone of mindfulness. When you are mindful you are truly present. Your mind is not in the past, it is not in the future, it is not day dreaming. In stead you are in the moment.

The Physical Benefits of Meditation

Many studies have shown that meditation has positive health benefits. Two often quoted persons having studied the effects of meditation are Herbert Benson and Jon Kabat-Zin. In their studies they have found beneficial effects in fields like:

• Lowering experienced stress
• Reducing blood pressure
• Reducing experienced anxiety
• Reducing experienced chronic pain
• In fighting dependencies (as the mind calms down people felt less need to escape into drugs and alchohol)

Still, I personally want to highlight the aspect of developing your mind. With meditation you will get closer to to your sensations, thoughts and perceptions. You may also catch them before you are about to overreact, feel fear, get an urge to act in some irrational way, or judging something you see. You will begin to make truly conscious decisions.

How to Meditate in Order to Relieve Stress?

The meditation I recommend is simply put “breathing, without thoughts”. As easy as it sounds, it is not. But please try.

In order to get into a meditation mood, you might use some soft music in the background. I normally don’t use music and prefer silence, but relaxing music is sometimes a welcome addition also for me. The music should in that case give a calm ambiance, and be without lyrics, or you might be distracted. Alternatively you could use some sounds from nature (from a cd or generator).

Do like this:

1. Sit upright with your back straight and hands on your knees. Don’t “sink” into the chair. Alternatively you can lie down. When lying I prefer lying on the floor and to use a pillow. Remember that meditation is something you do, it is not sleeping or resting. It is not meant that you fall into sleep.
2. Breathe through your nose and with your belly. Some people breathe IN through the nose but OUT through the mouth, and that is ok too, but using only the nose is more simple.
3. Feel the air going in and out. Concentrate on how it feels in your nostrils and the top of your nose when the air flows.
4. As you continue to breathe, run a relaxation pattern starting from the top of your head and going to your toes. Just feel and think about one area in your body and ensure it is relaxed. You can use e.g. this order: top of head, forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, mouth, vocal chords, chin, throat, shoulders, arms, fingers, chest, belly, hips, groin, thighs, knees, feet and toes. This takes 30 seconds to 5 minutes,
5. After the relaxation pattern, choose a second focus point, in addition to the air flow and your breaghing. In addition you can also (at the same time) concentrate on how your belly moves in and out, or then you can concentrate on the sound of your breathing. The main goal is to have two focus points at the same time. This calms your mind and makes silences somewhat your internal chatter.
6. This is now the state that you should maintain from 3-30 minutes. You are now meditating.
7. As you breathe, thoughts WILL arise from the endless chatter of your mind. This is normal and a part of meditating. It is an especially strong tendency the very first times you meditate, and it can be very distracting. When thoughts or worries pop up, just acknowledge them, but refocus on breathing. Don’t start to think about the thoughts that arise. Do also not judge them in any way, or judge yourself for the fact that you can’t shut up your thinking. Just accept the situation. Forgive and be gentle to yourself. Aknowlegde the thought, forgive yourself and refocus on the breathing. Most likely you will have to do this again, again and again.
8. With some training you will start to experience moments without thoughts. This is progress. You are now in the moment.
9. Continue 5-30 minutes. My own preference is about 15 minutes.
10. When you decide to stop, give your mind 10 seconds to reactivate. Imagine yourself activating your circuit board and restarting your systems.

After the meditation you should feel refreshed. Your mind should be more relaxed. After the first times it could be just confused.

As you learn, you really start loosing your sense of time. Therefore I recommend using a meditation timer which come in many forms: a computer software, a  mobile phone add-on, or just some sort of clock.

Meditation as a Part of Your Everyday Life

Meditation will not work if you don’t commit to a regular praxis. I recommend you start by trying it for at least ten days. For the first five days you could meditate for 10  minutes. The next five days you could meditate 15 minutes. Only after this period you should make up your mind – could meditation suit you? There is no way you will “get it” during the first days.

After your introduction period, you could choose to have a regular daily meditation routine, or you could aim at 3-5 times a week. Have patience. The benefits will come with time. You should judge your overall benefits only after 2-3 months.

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

What is Stress?

According to the American Institute of Stress (www.stress.org) there is actually no single definition of stress that everyone would agree on. Stress is a subjective feeling, what is stressful for one person may be pleasurable or have little effect on others and we all react to stress differently.

In order to have a working definition we could however say like this:

Stress is a subjective feeling that puts us in the mercy of our anxious self. It causes a fight-or-flee reaction in our body that on the long run is unhealthy, and that may be destructive for our mind and body.

This definition may not be perfect, but it is good enough for us.

Todays high speed, hard competition society, with its incredible information overflow, causes stress in people. Burnout is an extreme syndrome of stress. We all probably know people who has went through such a period.

If you are too stressed, you time management will suffer. Luckily there exists many ways and habits for keeping stress under control.

Stress Management: Keeping Stress Under Control

At Time Management Solutions we have a 7-way approach to stress management. It consists of the following parts:

A diagram showing seven ways to prevent and cope with stress.

The techniques above all represent different approaches to the same thing. There is no single right or wrong way. They are all useful and you should use what works best for you.

Let’s dig a little deeper to the different approaches.

Personal productivity skills and time management is what most of this site is about. When your productivity is on a level where you know that you perform efficiently at work, you will experience less stress. A good place to start exploring for more information is our section on Introduction to time management, if you aren’t familiar with it yet.

From here on they are in some sort of a ease-of-implementation order:

Physical activities and doing sports is beneficial in many ways. Physical exercise releases built up tension. It also releases hormones that make you feel good.  A fit body helps your mind to stay focused and it also can handle stress for longer physically.

Doing sports also forces you to be in the now, which makes it impossible to worry about stuff and things on your mind. This gives your mind a possibility to relax.

Journaling (writing a diary) is an excellent way of learning to know yourself better. It can also work more acutely; if something is stuck on your mind a good exercise  is to write it down and just to discuss the matter in your diary for 10-20 min. You don’t even have to come to a conclusion. Still it will calm you down. Read more about journaling for stress relief.

Meditation may to some of you sound esoteric. Nevertheless, I recommend trying it. You may also only use a relaxation CD (or mp3), which can easily buy on e.g. Amazon.com. Meditation calms down the whirlwind of thoughts in your head. The effect is immediate, and done regularly it will be even stronger. Regular meditation will result in a generally calmer you. But most of us never manage to do it regularly. Read more about meditation stress relief.

Leading a balanced life is about having more than one important thing in your life that you value highly. You should not base your identity merely on your job, income, or family, because it is risky. Due to some unexpected event you could lose your “precious” and due to your one-pillar mindset that would make you lose your identity too. In stead you should be living on more fronts than one. This also makes it possible to relate stressful things at let us say work, against a richer context of things in other ares of your life. Stressful things won’t blow out of proportion.

Leading a balanced life also means that you don’t have any harmful dependencies of alcohol, drugs or let’s say food. Furthermore, it means that you sleep enough. Leading a balanced life is a broad concept, but I think you got the picture.

Conflict resolutions skills are one part of social skills. Many times stress and bad feelings are a result from social situations. People problems, as they say. In order to resolve difficult social situations you need to be able to face reality, the problem, and to lead difficult conversations. Your mindset should not be tuned for avoiding problems. To put it shorty, conflict resolution requires maturity.

Present moment awareness (aka. mindfulness)  is a more conscious and generic skill of living in the now. In practice, living in the now means that you are not constantly re-living moments from yesterday or 5 years back… the time you did some grand mistake in your life or some random angst you had in school. We all should stop dwelling about such things and just let go! However, present moment awareness also means that you don’t live too much in the future. It is O.K. to have dreams about your future and to enter that dream every now and then. But it is not O.K. to live a deferred life, where you are holding back on things because “one day” when you will have the perfect moment you will finally do this and that. That “one day” will probably never come, so start doing things you want to now.

By re-living bad moments from the past our body actually reacts partly in the same way that it did during the original experience. This is why you actually can feel the “stress” of uncomfortable things that happened years ago when you think about them later. Our poor bodies are not completely able to differentiate if something really happens now or if a moment is re-lived in the mind. By re-living bad moments we create a bad feelings and vibes in our bodies. This leads to increased stress.

Present moment awareness is a skill. You can learn it too.

What now?

If you feel stressed, pick a few practices from above and work on them for a while. This way you will find the ways that suit you the best. We will also be adding more specific resources and advice to this section, so stay tuned.

An easy way to start a new practice is to use the weekly follow-up form, found in our goals section.

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!

Procrastination and Being Late

Being late is often a common syndrome for procrastinating people. For me, this area has always been a challenge… I have belonged to the group that Diana DeLonzor, in her book “Never Be Late Again”, so elegantly calls punctually challenged.

I personally think running businessmen look stupid (maybe with the exception of an airport).  In the army we also had the saying “Running officers create panic among the troops”… i.e. if you are a boss you should avoid running in the corridors. Or what do you think?

Luckily I am slowly overcoming my lateness habit. For those of you reading this article and having the same challenge: I really recommend you start improving too. Being late really belongs to the group of bad habits. But of course, you already know this in you hearts, don’t you!

Why to Stop Being Late?

By being late…

1. you lower your own self-esteem. You are keeping to prove yourself that you are failing, time after time. When people arrive late, they also often even try to arrive as a “nobody”, arriving on their toes without a real presence, and excuse me written all over their habitus.
2. you also affect other peoples lives – negatively. If four people wait for you for 15 minutes, one hour of time has been wasted. Time is money. At minimum you will irritate your colleagues.
3. you give a bad picture of yourself. The respect for your among your friends will decline. You will become the joke among your friends, when talking about hooking up somewhere. You even give a bad picture to yourself (of yourself).
4. you may affect your career – negatively. Bosses do notice!
5. you try to deny the fact that in our western culture, being punctual matters!

There are many reasons for people being late. Many are personal. One reason can be bad time management. Other reasons include different negative attitudes, a passive need to control, a desire for attention, or excessive selfishness.

Suggested Cures

In stead of analyzing the reasons for being late, I think it is more important to focus on the cures. Here are some ideas:

1. Decide that you want to change. If you don’t do this, you won’t succeed. Promise a friend a bottle of some preferred Scotch if you are late. You will soon notice that being in time actually feels good.

2. Stop making your schedules according to the ideal situation. This is a funny one. It also used to be my normal trap, as I used to have the following idea in my head:  “I can transfer myself from any place to anywhere (within the capital area) in 30 minutes”. With this contaminated mindset I always then left 30 minutes before needing to be somewhere. It was however a real illusion. Admittedly and to my defense I probably managed to do all the distances in 30 minutes… one time out of five. But I always only remembered the ideal times when planning.

If you are in this trap, change any possible illusion regarding optimistic scheduling you have to reality.  Leave a little room for unexpected things, like finding a parking place, or not finding your passport when packing.

3. Try to make it early. You should actually change your whole concept of being “in time” from arriving “1 minute before” to “10-15 minutes before”. This is a small paradigm change and will take time. This should stop you from running in the corridors. Good for you!

4. Respect your promises. If you have promised to do something, do it with respect and honor. Don’t start protesting in the middle of a task. In stead, learn to say “no”, if that’s your problem.

Does anybody by the way recognize this often reoccurring phenomenon: 1. You friends ask you to come somewhere and you promise to come. 2. Later, you don’t feel like doing it. 3. You arrive with long teeth, maybe a little late only to show some protest. 4. But wait, you have a lot of fun! 5. Afterwards you ask yourself: what was my problem?

Closing Comments

Learn to leave all kinds of passive protesting behind you. Go with the flow. Don’t try to be in control of everything and all the time.

And by the way: the techniques above really work. Try them.

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Capturing Ideas Recording… We All Carry a Recorder, Don’t We?

Or do we? Yes we do: our mobile phone.

Practically all modern mobile phones have a recording tool. Before I started to use it for capturing ideas, I had actually never really found it to be useful for anything…

On an iPhone the voice memo tool symbol looks like this – there is however similar tools on all modern mobile phones.

Just think for yourself on all of those times when you have been driving.. and remembered THAT important task… or have got THIS incredible, almost-life-changing idea. What have you done?

Some of us start writing it on a piece of paper, or typing it in our mobile phone. But if you’re on the road, that’s not good – instead it’s outright dangerous. Pieces of paper get lost. Other of us try to remember it. And then they forget it.

Stop risking your life or wasting those super ideas! Use this tip instead. The only thing to remember is that you must have some regular process for emptying the “recordings” from your mobile idea box.

Suggested process for capturing ideas:

1. If you get a super idea or remember a task, but can’t write it down at that point on one of your lists, use the recorder on your mobile. Record it there instead.
2. Use 2 seconds every morning and ask yourself: did I record any ideas yesterday? This will become a habit once you get started.
3. If you did, listen to them and move them to your task management system (i.e. one of your lists on paper or computer)
4. Clear your mobile phone.

I really recommend you try this tip. It will increase the odds of this idea to be actually used.

Enjoy!

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