RSS Feed

Posts Tagged ‘goals’

  1. Tips for the New Year

    January 3, 2016 by Diane

    Gone Fishing

    It’s time, once again, for me to take a break from my blog. But I’m leaving you with some handy tips to help you navigate 2016. Some of these nuggets of nuttiness, er, wisdom, I’ve posted before. Others are goodies I’ve discovered over the past year. Enjoy!

    Do you want to gain or lose weight? Curious about how many calories you’re scarfing down daily, and whether you’re getting the right amounts of vitamins, minerals, carbs, fats and protein? Check out Cronometer, a free web application for tracking your nutrition, health data, diet, exercise and biometrics (whatever the heck those are). It’s an eye-opening experience.

    Is this the year you start writing your novel? Need a support group, maybe some guidance? Sign on to Now Novel, a structured method to help you start and finish your masterpiece. You’ll be prompted with questions about mood, theme, character, plot and so on, guiding you to develop a blueprint of your novel. You’ll also have the opportunity to get feedback from other writer’s on the site, as well as give feedback. This might be just the nudge you need to reach your fiction-writing goal.

    Okay, you’re ready to warm up those writing muscles again, but you only have fifteen minutes a day to devote to your creativity. Here are fifteen writing exercises you can do in fifteen minutes. Set your timer!

    If you’re starting a blog this year, here are 8 tips about blogging from one who knows (and my nutty take on it all).

    Looking back at 2015, do you have any regrets? Any incomplete actions, unfulfilled dreams? Turn your regrets into intentions for 2016 in one easy step.

    Got stress? If not, I want to know your secret. But if you’re like me, reeling from the holidays (or is that holi-daze?), you need some easy stress busters. When I was riffling through some old files, I happened to come across a list of 52 proven stress reducers. I don’t know where they came from or who proved them, but I’ll share four with you now. Try one a week for the next month:

    1. Go to bed fifteen minutes earlier. If necessary, use an alarm clock to remind you.
    2. Every day, do something you really enjoy.
    3. If an especially unpleasant task faces you, do it early in the day and get it over with.
    4. Do something for somebody else.

     

    Last but not least, if you’re an introvert and you want to get out of your comfort zone and attend an event, I offer hope for introverts who feel like party poopers.

    Happy 2016!

     

    Category Ain't Life Grand | Tags: ,,, | 11 Comments

  2. Ten Tips to Make Life a Breeze

    February 8, 2015 by Diane

     

    Man Lounging In Hammock

    A breeze, eh?

    Well, the title made you click on this post, right? That’s the power of a headline. Now…can I back up that powerful headline with ten good tips?

    Well.

    Er.

    Okay, here goes…

    Tip number 1: There’s a right way and a wrong way to make a To-Do list

    First off, To-Do lists might as well be called To-Don’t lists, because most of what’s on the list to do never gets done. Why? We dump whatever’s in our brains onto a pad of paper, manage to knock off one or two tasks, and then we add five more. In other words, the list never ends! How’s that for motivation? So here’s the new rule: write down a reasonable amount of tasks to do, say, two or three. (Making a list for the week? Jot down seven items; one for each day.) Now…you can’t add anything to the list until you’ve done everything on it. That’s it. That’s the rule. I don’t care how long that thing hangs on your refrigerator door, you must abide by the rule. Trust me, the To-Dos will get done.

    Tip number 2: The tickler file to the rescue

    But I’ve got all these things that come up during the week, and if I don’t add them to the list, I’ll forget! Not so. Why? Because you’ve got a handy-dandy tickler file. What’s a tickler file? A shoebox. An in-basket. A plastic file nailed to your wall. Whatever. You get the idea. Now, when those ideas come rushing in, jot them down on a scrap of paper, one scrap per idea, and toss them in the file. Then forget about ‘em. Come Sunday (or whatever day you designate), you go through the file and do one of three things:

    Do the task (if it takes less than 2 minutes)

    Delegate it to someone else

    Defer it to another day. That doesn’t mean you add it to the To-Do list. It means that you write it in a notebook in one of several categories:

    Calls to make
    Stuff to do at home
    Stuff to do on the computer
    Errands to run
    Someday/maybe

    Then, next Sunday, after you go through your tickler file, you scan your notebook and pick seven tasks to put on your new To-Do list. Got it? Good.

    (You can thank David Allen for this one. His book is: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity)

    Tip number 3: Schedule ten-minute tasks

    Need to clean out those old files? Go through that teetering stack of magazines? Get rid of clothes you never wear? Any project can be tackled in ten-minute increments. It’s surprising how much you can get done in ten eensy-weensy minutes. Just set the timer and have at it. When the timer goes off, stop. Ta-da! You’ve made progress. Doesn’t that feel good?

    Tip number 4: Take a break, kid!

    We’re more productive if we take a break every ninety minutes. A break can mean walking around the office, talking to a co-worker (oh, you do that constantly? Cut it out!), running up and down the stairs, meditating, having a donut. Whatever. As long as you step away from whatever you’re doing, your batteries will get a nice recharge. If you doubt what I’m saying, read The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. (Wow, that’s a mouthful!) It’s a whole book on the subject of productivity, backed up with lotsa studies.

    Tip number 5: Do one thing at a time

    I might have said this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. When you work, work. When you talk, talk. When you listen, listen. When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep. One thing at a time, buster. Mindfully. It makes the moment seem longer. It makes you feel more relaxed. Give it a try!

    That’s it!  Five tips to make life a breeze.

    But wait, you promised ten tips!

    Oh yeah.

    Well, you’ll just have to tune in next week.

    * * *

    Did you like this post? Give it a “like” on Facebook.

    Category Ain't Life Grand | Tags: ,, | 6 Comments

  3. Questions to Ponder for the New Year

    January 4, 2015 by Diane

    Fresh start chapter one printed on an old typewriter

    I have a friend who has a soft feather pillow he’s owned since he was a kid. He’s now in his mid-fifties. That pillow has been places. It’s been to Pennsylvania on a plane. It’s been to Detroit on a train. It’s been across country in a pickup. And it’s picked up passengers along the way, little critters that feed on dead skin cells. Yep, that baby is loaded with dust mites. Invisible to the naked eye; but in microscopic images those mites look like something from prehistoric ooze–not something you want to cozy up to at night.

    What things, habits, beliefs, memories, people, do you hang onto? Is it time to let them go?

    A co-worker gave up lattes to afford a gym membership. I gave up writing The Great American Novel to vacuum the carpet. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade.

    What have you given up? Was it worth the sacrifice?

    I spent New Year’s Eve driving around downtown looking for my tribe. Not a creature was stirring. The only place open was a liquor store. I sauntered in and bought a miniature bottle of Chardonnay from a clerk who was wearing a bright turquoise shirt unbuttoned to the navel, revealing a tattoo on his chest. “Nice shirt,” I said, and drove home with my two-dollar wine and drank a fifth of the bottle and it tasted like cat piss.

    Someone said, “The way you spend New Year’s Eve is how you will spend the rest of your year.” God, I hope not. Someone else said, “Keep on doing what you’re doing, and you’ll keep on getting what you’re getting.”

    Are you happy, doing what you’re doing? If not, what changes will you make?

    This morning I wrote a list of my regrets, the top twelve things I wish I had done in 2014. Then I crossed out the word REGRETS at the top of the page and wrote the word GOALS. These are my intentions for 2015. One per month. I might not succeed at reaching them all, but at least I won’t look back, never having tried.

    Do you have any regrets? What are your goals?

    Questions to ponder.

    And for you literary types: Are you a pantser in life, or do you plot everything out in advance? Where in the library would we find the Book of You? Romance? Travel? Mystery? Fantasy? Inspiration? Where would you like it to be? How does your Chapter One begin in 2015?

    Category Ain't Life Grand | Tags: , | 6 Comments

Older Entries
Newer Entries