Worth Every Minute

Wednesday is the time for me to share some of the great stuff out there on the web. You can find the whole series of Worth Every Minute here.

It's summer time, and for many of us (including me) that means the reading rate goes up. I have a lot of family and friends whose idea of a relaxing time is reading a book in a park somewhere. It's how my sister and I spent half our time in Beijing last week.

I love reading, and I always want to read more. That is, I want to have already read more. There are so many books I want to experience, and so little time I have to read them. Summers are great for reading, but also for drinking cocktails, playing frisbee and having BBQ's. I can increase the time spent on reading, but I'd like to do the other stuff too. Are you the same?

One of the things that can help, is trying to increase your reading speed. Don't worry, you don't have to race through your books like a maniac, but a few little tricks can set you on the way to reading faster and reading more.

You can get some great tips in the following article from Lifehack.org:

7 Speed Reading Tricks by a Former Book-Hater by Karol Krol

Have fun reading!
Let me know what books you guys are into, I'd love to exchange ideas.

I recently finished The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry and thought it was pretty great. Difficult to put down.
Also read Elizabeth Gilbert's Commited and learned a lot about marriage. Very insightful!
Both books make excellent holiday reading!

PS. Today is my hubby's 25th Birthday ... so Happy Birthday honey!

Read 'The Science of Getting Rich'

There's a book that I read every single month. It's the book on which 'The Secret' was based, and it's called: The Science of Getting Rich. It's not my life's ambition to get rich, but it is my ambition to lead the life I want to live, and that's what the book helps me focus on. It offers great ideas on how to bring success into every area of your life.

I read it once a month, and every month I focus on a new part. I rediscover something I forgot, or I suddenly find myself interpreting the old words in a new way. The book is a bit dated, so the language is a bit old, but you adjust quickly.

So how is this a 5 minute activity? Well, the chapters are really really really short! It takes me about 5 minutes (or less) to read one chapter. Alright, admittedly, I'm somewhat of a fast reader, and by now I just have to skim to be reminded of the content, but still... I couldn't resist sharing this with you.

I've summarized the main lessons I learned from the book below (there's plenty more than these 5 though):

1. You cannot get what you desire by thinking about the opposite. No one ever got rich thinking about poverty, no one ever became healthy by thinking about disease. So we should focus on what's good in our lives. (Positive thinking motto)
   
2. Feel grateful. This brings you in alignment with the forces of the universe. Or, if you're not impressed by this occult stuff, it makes you happy to focus on the good things you have. It also makes you seem kind. That's always a boon!
   
3. Make every act a success. If everything you do - no matter how small! - is a little success, you can't fail to lead a successful life. Everything you do is either a success or a failure. It's either efficient, or a waste of time. These little successful acts can lead to great wealth.
   
4. Impress the thought of increase on every interaction. When you deal with people, try to make your actions beneficial to them. You're going for a win-win situation. People will be drawn to you, when they get this feeling of increase from you. Of course, don't let them take advantage of you, that's something else altogether.
   
5. Prepare to receive what you want. It's not enough to wish for something in your life, your job is to make sure that you're ready to receive it when it comes along. There's no point wishing for a Mr. Right when you're still with a man you don't love, right? If your Prince Charming came along, you wouldn't be able to be with him anyways.

I've learned a lot from this book, and I hope you will too. You can download it for free (it's so old, there's no more copyright on it!) here.

Let me know what you think, or if you've read it before, or if you've read 'The Secret', or seen the movie, or heard about it and think it's rubbish...

Stop Multitasking

Picture by Ruth Elkin

Multitasking is very fashionable these days, especially if you're a woman. Somehow we have gotten it into our minds that doing several things at once is better than doing each thing in its turn.
In fact, there's no such thing as multitasking. It's a myth. There IS, however, such a thing as ultra-fast task-switching. But, no matter how fast it is, it's not faster and definitely not better than just doing each thing in turn.

In The Myth of Multitasking: How "Doing It All" Gets Nothing Done (Amazon link), Dave Crenshaw explains that there's a difference between background tasks and tasks you need to focus on. Somehow, I think we can intuitively tell that exercising while watching a movie is not the same as answering a phone while writing an email. The latter is made up of two tasks that are not yet automated. When an activity becomes automatic, it can be combined with another to multi-task. But before that happens, you're only fooling yourself.

If you need to answer the phone while you're in the middle of a project, do it. Don't let me stop you from doing your work. But instead of talking while staring at your computer screen, turn away from the computer and give the caller your full attention. It will make the call more efficient and the caller feel better.
Multitasking when at work makes you inefficient. Multitasking in your personal life ruins your relationships. People can instantly tell when you're not paying attention to them. You can tell when others do it to you, right?
Save that incoming email for later, and handle your emails one by one, in batches.

To make sure you don't fall into the multitasking trap, turn off electronics that aren't essential to your work. If you're not expecting any phone calls, just turn the phone off. Trust me, if there's an emergency, you'll find out! Bad news travels fast.
If you're worried about forgetting the other things you need to take care of, keep a piece of paper next to you where you can quickly jot down whatever pops into your head. That way you can let go of it for now, and do it later.

I've had to re-learn to focus during my conversations, and not do something else in the mean time. It's especially tempting when I'm talking to someone on skype, and the Internet is staring at me, waiting to be surfed. But I've gotten much better, and I enjoy the conversations so much more!

Do you often multi-task? Are you good at it? What kind of tasks do you find easy to juggle?
This article offers more background information about multitasking. It's a fascinating read, if you have a couple of minutes more.

5 Interesting Time-Facts

(Note: reading this post should take the average reader 3-4 minutes)

 Learning about Time is one of the best ways to start cherishing it. I recently finished a very good book, called Time: A User's Guide by Stefan Klein (this is the Amazon link) and it completely transformed my thinking about time. Actually, it's one of the reasons I started this Blog.
I want to share with you some of the key-points that I picked up about experiencing and using time. If you're interested in how to make time move slower, or how to enjoy every moment to the fullest, then by all means, read on!

1. Every cell a tiny clock
Every part of our body, every single cell, is governed by a sort of biological clock. It knows exactly when to do what. If you lock up a person in a cave without access to daylight or a clock (and yes, they have done this before, several times!), then their body will start running off of a biological clock of about 25 hours.


2. Time speeds up as we grow older
In our day to day lives, it seems as if time keeps running faster and faster. Stefan Klein explains that this is because our impressions of our environment become less and less memorable as we become older. As a child, every experience is new and worth remembering. When we look back in time, there are more memories, and that makes it seem as if there was more time. It's also the reason we remember our childhoods better than later parts in life.


3. Make time slow down
Stefan (by item 3 we're on a first name basis, naturally) suggests trying to be as much 'in the moment' as possible. Not such a novel idea. Mindfulness is an ancient Buddhist practice of being aware of the moment. Stefan Klein explains that the reason 5 minutes seem long when you're waiting for the bus, is that we take in everything at that time. We're in the moment (even if we're annoyed, irritated and stressed). If you focus on the good moments with the same intensity, they will last longer now and take up more space in your memory. That's why hours in front of the TV always seem like they lasted only minutes in hindsight: your brain didn't register much worth remembering ^^
This blog offers plenty of activities that help you focus on the HERE and NOW!

4. Morning or evening person
Whatever you are, that's what you are. Some people are genetically built to be morning people, others are evening people, and there's little to nothing you can do to change this. Better just learn to deal with it and accept who you are. Then you can find ways to schedule your life to your optimal daily rhythm.


5. Ups and downs
We all have ups and downs during the day that are related to our biological clock. We can't change these patterns, we can only try to work around them. Have you found that you're sleepy right after lunch? Don't plan any important tasks at that time. This could be a good time to do some stuff around the house. Tasks that are basically no-brainers. Write down for one or two days when you feel most awake and energetic, when you feel most focused, and when you'd rather curl up with a book or go to sleep. 
If you have the ability, schedule your tasks around this. The most focused time could be kept for the most demanding tasks, the somewhat less productive time for the routine ones. You catch my drift.

I thought this book was accessible and easy to follow. It might not satisfy the most scientific minds, but it has a lot of background information in case anyone wants to dig deeper.
Learning about how we spend our time and how to make life slow down a little is something that everyone could benefit from!

How do you experience time? Have you ever had the experience that time just flew by? Or that it dragged out forever? Let me know! Comment below! (that rhymes!)

zuì jìn 最近1

1.最近 {zuì jìn} recent; recently, lately, of late, in the near future, soon