Ten tips that make life easier - yay!

We found this short, fun gem of a talk by Tech columnist David Pogue. He shares 10 simple, clever tips for computer, web, smartphone and camera users and we certainly learnt a few that will make life easier. We are pretty certain you will too.

Enjoy friends!

Manage your energy to manage your time: Part One – Physical Energy

A critical and often overlooked aspect of time management is energy management.

If we take a look at our average working day, our energy levels fluctuate throughout.  These energy fluctuations are different for each and every individual and it is essential to monitor and understand your peaks and lows in order to prioritise your workload accordingly. 

As human beings, we have different types of energy that we need to be aware of.  The first and most obvious category is physical energy.  The second category, mental energy, is linked to, but not always dependent on physical energy levels. Have you ever gone to bed physically exhausted, but found yourself unable to sleep due to an overactive mind? 

Sometimes our bodies are tired, but our minds are still capable of high priority tasks.  The third category is emotional energy – our very psychology and source of motivation.

At The Time Clinic we believe time management isn’t about managing the hours in the day, it is about managing yourself; a complex organism with various facets in response to the numerous tasks that you are required to perform and objectives you wish to achieve.  Understanding the three different types of energy and how to renew each resource is critical to your success.

How healthy are you? Increasing your physical fitness not only increases your stamina, but counters stress and improves overall vitality.  Taking measures to increase your physical fitness may initially take more time out of your day, but the increased benefits will soon outweigh the sacrifice.

Eating a low GI diet will improve your physical stamina. And the grains, seeds and good fats characteristic of a low GI diet will also feed your brain at the same time, assisting your mental function and mood.

So often we chastise ourselves for being different to others in terms of the hours we are inclined to keep. Have you ever wondered if this thinking is serving you, and if there is a way you can rather rearrange your day to correspond with your energy levels? For example, by exercising at the correct time of day for your specific genotype, you will obtain better results.  One of the things we do at The Time Clinic is identify individual genotypes and assist people in optimising, and adjusting their personal biorhythms. 

Once you have made every effort to optimise your physical energy, analyse your typical day.  What tasks require more physical resources? Perhaps you function better when you arrive at work earlier rather than later? Could you schedule a walk at lunch time to get some exercise whilst refreshing your other energy resources?  How can you rearrange your schedule to optimise your physical energy?

We will continue this discussion and include mental and emotional energy management in our follow-up articles, but we challenge you to consider these questions in the meantime and wish you all the best on your journey to vitality and optimal personal and time management!

Find out more about our training courses at www.timeclinic.co.za

Image by chanpipat www.freedigitalimages.net

Beat stress once and for all!

Need to manage the stress in your life? In order to do so, you need to manage your allostatic load. This may sound like a mouthful, but is a concept that is useful to explain the load that is upon your shoulders including the worries that prevent you from sleeping at night.  Allostatic load is a negative form of stress that literally ‘weighs us down’ and eventually causes us to become ill.

This toxic negative stress also leads to inflammation of the brain which prevents us from forming new neural connections – in other words we become unable to learn, develop and grow.  So what can you do to lighten your allostatic load and combat stress?

The first thing we need to accept is the lifestyles that we are living in today’s modern age are not healthy, nor are they natural.  Every delegate who attends our course complains that their ‘work life balance’ is a big problem, and wish they had more ‘me’ time.  We are living a life that is out of balance and in crisis. As a result we lose sight of the very things that help us cope and stay healthy; the aspects of our lives and ourselves that keep us in balance.

 The human body was not designed to be sedentary, sitting behind a desk from nine to five (or seven to seven!).  Exercise has been proven to not only the reduce stress hormones in the body, but also causes neural pathways to grow and form: in other words, exercise keeps you young!  Dramatic results have been found in seniors who simply start walking for an hour every day.  Exercise is crucial to helping you rediscover your balance, however neuro-scientist Bruce McEwen has revealed that exercise can be more effective in a social environment.  

Social support is a dimension that is necessary to balance the human being.  In times of crisis, many people withdraw from their friends and loved ones.  Being lonely can also add to your allostatic load.  We must attempt to increase our social contact and nourish our important relationships rather than neglect them during times of crisis.

The human being has a spiritual dimension.  We are not referring to religion or new age philosophy, but simply the aspect of each and every one of us that seeks to find meaning.  Viktor Frankl, famous psychologist and holocaust survivor, pioneered the idea that the strongest motivational force we can tap into is the meaning we are able to create for ourselves.  A concentration camp survivor, Frankl noticed that the prisoners who had a sense of meaning in their lives survived, whilst those who couldn’t not find it sadly perished under the dreadful circumstances.

 So how does one find meaning when one feels out of balance? When we neglect ourselves during times of toxic stress, we forget the things in life that bring us joy.  So many of our clients arrive for training and have lost the ability to desire things on a personal level.  This is purely a result of chronic toxic stress and the loss of connection with self.  To restore the balance, we need to find and make time for the things that bring us joy on a daily basis. We need to make time for ourselves once again.

Living with the world resting upon your shoulders is neither a healthy nor a sustainable option.  The good news is change really is possible if we simply focus on the restoration of balance by making time to appreciate ourselves as individuals – physically, emotionally and spiritually.

For more information on stress management and making time for the important things contact info@timeclinic.co.za.  

To find out more about the toxic effects of stress read this article: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/how-stress-gets-under-the-skin-qa-with-neuroscientist-bruce-mcewen/

Image by Stuart Miles www.freedigitalphotos.net

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do!

Goals.  So many of us hear that word and cringe.  Perhaps you relate goals to New Year’s resolutions, and have had about the same measure of success? Or perhaps you have this nagging feeling that you really need to create some goals, but when you think about it you find it really hard to want things for yourself? Sound familiar?

Did you know that only 3% of us actually write down our goals.  The sad reality is if we are not writing down our goals, we may as well not bother with them, as they remain a ‘nice to have’.  When we put pen to paper, we are far more committed psychologically to attaining them.

Think of goals as arriving at the train station.  If you have no goal – or destination – you may as well climb on an unmarked train and wonder where it will take you.  One thing I have become very convinced of is that what we expect out of life, we will receive.  And this is not a new-agey spiritual concept, it’s common sense that we play a hand in creating that reality for ourselves!  If you have no goals, you will tend to regard yourself as a victim of circumstance.  However, by setting our destination and deciding what it is that we really do want from life, chances are we will receive it.

It makes sense to have goals, no one can dispute this. Yet one of the hardest parts is creating these goals for ourselves.  Some of you may find it much easier to create career and money goals, but will struggle with spiritual and personal goals because it is much easier to think of other people than to think about yourself.  Others will find the opposite – personal goals are easier, but career and money goals are more difficult. If this is the case, you are probably not feeling fulfilled in your current worklife, and need to evaluate your direction in order to set some goals that will enable you to create a fulfilled career.

There is a concept known as ‘locus of control’.  If you have an internalised locus of control, you believe that you are the master of your own destiny and that you can create the life that you desire.  A person with an externalised ‘locus of control’ believes the opposite – that they are a victim of circumstance;  that fate decides their path and that no matter what they do, external circumstances will override their intentions.  An externalised locus of control does not cause us to be happy or healthy.  Yet we can really turn this around by creating goals and taking back the reins of our own lives.  As little by little we achieve success, our mindsets will automatically shift into a healthier space, one where we accept and practice self mastery over our own lives.

 Goals will involve some introspection; we need to spend quiet time with ourselves and decide what it is we want from life.  Do not think this is selfish behaviour, rather it is crucial for your personal development, mental and physical health!

Commit to discovering and writing down your goals today, and take back your power and control so that you can create the life you really want to lead.

If you would like to attend a goal actualisation workshop where you can discover how to overcome the obstacles to attaining your goals, contact info@timeclinic.co.za.

Image by Tony Curtis Freedigitalphotos.net

Why do we procrastinate?

You know you should be doing that important task, but you find yourself creating other things to do that are either more pleasurable or more ‘important’ instead. Well, they are not really more important, who are we kidding! But we will go to extreme lengths to find tasks to distract us from the very things we are avoiding in order to justify the guilty that we are feeling. Some of us even help others to avoid the issues in our own lives. Sound familiar?

Have you ever wondered why we do this to ourselves? And is there ever a legitimate reason to procrastinate?

Procrastination was built into us as a biological defence mechanism.  There really is a legitimate reason we procrastinate.  Let us imagine that I was to ask you to invest in a new business proposition that you were unsure of.  Or perhaps I ask you to do something that initially appeared ‘above board’, but the more you thought about it, the more unsure you became?  Can you relate that uncertainty to a ‘gut feeling’? Well your gut is correct in some cases! That feeling of uncertainty is there to caution you, to warn you of potential danger in situations where you might be at risk, or where you could be potentially compromised. A useful mechanism, agreed?

This legitimate reason to procrastinate somehow got corrupted along the way when our brains realised the benefits of procrastinating over ordinary things.  At a subconscious level, this biological mechanism has gotten confused when in today’s world we are faced with tasks that we do not feel like doing. We beat ourselves up over the fact that we are procrastinators, but to procrastinate is a human response. However, it is a habit that is not productive, and a habit that does not need to control us and can indeed be overcome with the right set of tools.

The good news is that no human being was born a procrastinator.  Every single human being has developed their own pattern of procrastination along the way. You are not alone. And you really can shed the shackles of procrastination.

For more information on procrastination and how to overcome procrastination email info@timeclinic.co.za This information is copyright of The Time Clinic and unauthorised distribution is prohibited.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles www.freedigitalphotos.net

The Puzzle of Motivation

I'd like to share this really interesting TED Talk with you that is turning what we think in business regarding motivation upside down.  An important talk for us to better understand ourselves, and an important talk to watch for us to better understand our working environments.  Dan Pink was Al Gore's speechwriter and is a career analyst who incorporates social psychology. Enjoy!

Nose pickers, muscle men, and chandeliers

We present our most entertaining guest author to date, Leslie Longueira, Director of Ignition Health!

 

“I don't have time to go to the gym!”

We have all used this excuse, even me.

And if you think about it, it is a fairly reasonable excuse, as far as excuses go. After all just by getting to the gym after work, you would have to set aside 30 minutes to drive next to someone who thinks it’s okay to pick their nose because "no one will see them". Next you find yourself on a highway that resembles a parking lot, whilst being nearly pushed off the road by some very important driver who insists on squeezing in front of you, despite the fact that wasn't enough space between you and the car in front to fit a tictac!

By the time you have reached the gym, you have already had a long day at work, and perhaps you are reflecting on the nature of management in a somewhat less than positive manner.  So you procrastinate a little, and finally, manage to get out the car, secretly wishing you were rather at home having a beer.

Finally you make your way inside to get changed, ready to get that body into shape. However, the truth is you have already wasted 45 minutes stuck in traffic, just getting there and getting ready! The next challenge is waiting for a piece of equipment because  some people on the treadmill are afraid to catch a speed wobble lest they smudge their make-up and fail to impress the muscle men, who are busy grunting away in the free weights section!

So that would be at least an hour of your day gone by - without being overly productive. Can we really afford to waste precious time like this?

The good news is you do NOT have to put up with this time wasting routine in order to stay healthy and exercise. Studies show that the minimum exercise requirement is 30 minutes, 4 times a week of elevated heart rate exercise!

So if you really are pushed for time, go for a walk during your lunch break, or when you get home with your family. Now we are not talking about a Sunday stroll, rather a fairly brisk walk. You want to get that heart rate up. After all, if you are going to be swinging off the chandeliers and getting the heart rate up in other ways (if you know what I mean), make sure you are completing your 30 minute sessions to enhance your stamina!

Oh and make sure you stretch after as well, you wouldn't want to pull a muscle or injure yourself.

“I don't have time,” should never be an excuse. All you have to do is set 30 minutes aside each day and you WILL be able to live a healthier and more productive life. 

Leslie Longueira is the Director of Ignition Health, a dynamic team of personal trainers and a 702 Small business awards finalist.  Ignition Health's trainers provide personal training at your home or at their intimate setting in Melville, and also assist corporates in fitness and wellbeing at work.  The Time Clinic recognises Ignition Health as a true time generator and agrees that physical fitness is key to personal effectiveness.  All Time Clinic clients qualify for a special introductory offer with Ignition Health.