How to Get Perspective on Your Life
Do you ever feel that you’re so caught up in the day to day and hour to hour routines of life that you never get a chance to step back and see the bigger picture?
Do you get lots done, but without a real sense of accomplishment?
Have you ever reached the end of a busy week and wondered what the point was?
I expect we all feel like that from time to time – but for some people, it’s the norm. Perhaps you’re juggling studies and work, or work and family, or multiple projects and goals. Maybe you have a nagging sense that there’s something wrong or that your priorities are skewed – and you keep promising yourself that you’ll be less busy next week/month/year.
The problem is, you always seem to be busy. You’ve got lots on, and your attention is on the details, not the whole picture. How can you get some perspective on your life? Read the Rest of This Article »
Procrastination: 4 Causes and Cures
Do you find yourself procrastinating a lot? (You might even be procrastinating right now, reading this blog post while you should be working or cleaning or ordering the groceries online.)
Procrastination can be a real problem for some of us, leading to wasted hours and days, and a lot of frustration. Often, we think that to cure ourselves of procrastination, we need to concentrate harder, focus ourselves better and become more self-disciplined.
But I don’t believe that procrastination is a disease. It’s more like a symptom. And by figuring out – and addressing – the underlying cause, you’ve got a good chance of ending your procrastination habit.
So, what might the causes be? Read the Rest of This Article »
Want a Quick Boost? Clear Some Clutter!
Ever had a day (or, more likely, a week) when you felt a bit miserable, for no clear reason? Perhaps you were stressed and felt disorganised and over-busy. Maybe it seemed like everything was piling up on you.
When you feel like you have little energy and no motivation, it’s easy to start spiraling down into feeling worse and worse. You might want to make big changes in your life, like losing weight or changing careers, but you just can’t summon up the strength to get going. You feel unhappy but you’re not sure how to fix what’s wrong.
A great place to start, and to give yourself a quick boost, is to start clearing some clutter out of your life. Read the Rest of This Article »
Long-Term Productivity Means Looking After Yourself
Many of us place a lot of importance on being productive. We want to achieve our goals, succeed in our ambitions, and accomplish something worthwhile. That’s all great … but sometimes it can go too far.
Have you ever pushed yourself too much, only to end up producing poorer quality work … or worse, getting sick or ending up just plain miserable?
To be truly productive over the long-term, you need to take care of yourself. In his bestselling self-help book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey distinguishes between our actual “production” and our “production capability”, explaining that we need to pay attention to the latter in order to continue to have the former.
So how can you take care of your ability to keep on working towards your goals? Read the Rest of This Article »
It’s OKAY to Spend on Stuff You Love
With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, we have a tendency to swing between extremes. Often, an excess of spending – with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress – prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. We make all sorts of good resolutions: a plan to reduce our debt, a savings account for our emergency fund, and so on … and somewhere along the way, we pick up the idea that we should only spend money on absolute essentials.
We might start off sensibly, cutting down on unnecessary spending to put some money aside for the future. But before long, we end up obsessing about every penny, denying ourselves even tiny treats like a weekly coffee or a magazine, because it’s a “waste of money”.
Are You Enslaved by Your Money?
Usually, being “enslaved” by our financial situation means we’re in debt, struggling to stay afloat. But I feel that there’s another sort of enslavement which we can fall into: forgetting that money is just a tool for us to use in whatever way we want. Read the Rest of This Article »
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