3 Easy Tricks to Eat More Fruit

Picture by Michael Geipel

Vegetables are quite easy to incorporate into our diet since they're a part of our main meals, but unless you eat fruit as a desert or with breakfast, it can be difficult to give it a place in your diet. Fruit makes an ideal snack, however, as long as it's readily available when you feel like snacking.
Healthy eating is always a concern of mine, and with another life growing inside, it is now more so than ever. So I try to consume at least 3 pieces of fruit a day. Here's how I do it:

1. Pick fruit that's easy to eat on the go. It's tangerine and banana season here, but apples, grapes or berries are great too. Put a piece of fruit (or a bag of grapes) in your purse/briefcase so you have it with you when you're out of the house. You'll find yourself reaching for it when you're in the mood for something sweet because it's so close at hand.
   
2. Make a smoothie or shake to go with breakfast or as an in between snack. You can pack smoothies with quite a bit of different fruits, and you can add milk or yogurt for extra calcium, or orange juice for extra  vitamin C. Adding ice-cream is delicious, but kind of defeats the purpose. We've been loving our banana-yogurt-cocoa shakes lately!
   
3. Wash fruits right when you bring them into the house, and then display them wherever you spend the most time in the house. Having it already washed means you can just reach and take a bite. It also means you can let your fruit soak in salt water which is a great way to remove pesticides.
   Remember to wash your fruit even if it is organic because there are bugs and parasites in dirt too!

For me, fruit is a great way to satisfy that craving for something sweet without having to feel guilty about it. It also gives you fast sugars if you're feeling low on energy, so it's a great pick-me-up.
Fruits are full of wonderful nutrients, so every piece is a treat not only for your taste buds, but for your body too! Enjoy!

5 Tasks that Take More Time than You Think

Instant Noodles (source)

We're notoriously bad at gauging time. If you've been with this blog for a while, maybe you remember the post I wrote about Time: a User's Guide by Stefan Klein. You can read the post here if you haven't yet.

We overestimate and underestimate how long something takes all the time. When we overestimate we end up with extra free time we didn't expect, which is nice, or put something of we could've done, which is not so nice. But when we think a task is much shorter than it really is in reality, we can end up planning too much and stretching ourselves too thin.
To avoid that, have a look at these 5 common activities that may take more time than you think. Next time you do one of them, try to time or pay attention to how long you spend on them to get a more realistic idea.

1. Getting ready, whether it's in the morning, to leave work or to go out, always takes time. My hubby and I often find ourselves rushing out the door because we turned off the computer at 7:15, which is also when we have to leave. Gathering your stuff, putting on coats and shoes and checking you got the keys are all tiny time-consumers not to be forgotten!
   
2. Checking e-mails (or online networks) is an activity that can take anywhere from 3 seconds to 3 hours. It all depends on where you let the e-mails take you. If you're going to click through links and check out stuff online, you're on the dangerous path to losing track. Instead, try to focus on responding to important personal/business e-mails before diving into newsletters and notifications.
   
3. 'Preparing instant food' is a deceiving name for an activity that is usually anything but instant. It takes time to get stuff together and unwrap/put in bowl/heat up/or whatever else you have to do to prepare your meal. I've found very little difference between heating up instant stuff and making a salad in the amount of time it takes me to get the food on the table.
   
4. Shopping without a list is dangerous. Not only will you undoubtedly spend much more than you planned and buy lots of stuff you don't really need, you'll also need more time as you remember things in random order and find yourself running back to the produce section 5 times in one trip. Use a grocery list instead!
   
5. When it comes to dealing with people there are no quick fixes. Whenever you need to discuss something with another person, make sure you have set out enough time to do it. Relationships don't benefit from being rushed, so show your love and respect for those around you by not underestimating the time it takes to communicate with them.

Time is precious and knowing how much time you need to spend on anything can be the difference between feeling frustrated and rushed or feeling calm and in control. Do you find yourself often losing track of time? Or do you notice that the time you've taken out to do some thing just doesn't suffice?

5 Chores that Take Less Time than You Think

Picture by Cielo de la Paz

How often have you made the excuse that you 'just don't have time' to do this or that. We leave the dishes piling up in the sink because we figure that it takes too much time to do them right away, and we'd rather do something else. There's dirty laundry in every corner of the bedroom because we just can't find the time to sort through it and put it in the machine.

But these are only two of the many tasks that we often over-estimate. Somehow we fool ourselves into thinking that these tasks take more time. Maybe it's because of the different steps they contain, or the fact that we dislike them so much. But knowing how fast you can complete some of these chores can give you incentive to just finish them as quickly as possible and stop letting them nestle in the back of your mind.

1. Breakfast dishes really only take about 5 minutes to finish if everyone helps. Bowls and plates are easy to wash and dry. There are usually no pots to scrub, so it's a matter of minutes altogether.
   
2.  Cleaning the sink is just a matter of getting some product and wiping everything down. Unless you've recently cleaned out paint brushes in there or spilled something nasty, it doesn't take nearly as long as you might think.
   
3. Clearing up can be done in an incredibly short time. Set a timer for 5 minutes and see how much clutter you can clear away. Don't linger over stuff, just put it where it needs to go (or toss it out if it's useless.)
   
4. Making a proper breakfast is just a quick and easy task that there's no excuse for eating cereal every morning. We usually make some toast, scrambled eggs, and get some fruit on the table in about 3 minutes. It'll take me 5 if I have to do it myself. But even if you're one to roll out of bed and rush out the door, you can still enjoy a nourishing bite beforehand.
   
5. Making the bed doesn't take minutes, it takes only a couple of seconds. Don't know why you'd make your bed in the first place? I explain some of the reasons in this post.

Any other tasks that you can think of which seem to take much longer than they really do? Feel free to share in the comments below! I love to hear your opinions and ideas.

The "Right Time" Will Never Come

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There is no such thing. The 'right time' does not exist. Sure, you may have had those moments where everything just clicked: the work went great, you felt like you were exactly where you were meant to be, everything just happened naturally. But I bet your own mind played into it much more than you realise.

Waiting around for the right time can be a great excuse to procrastinate when you don't feel like starting a task. The typical movie-example is of a character waiting for the right time to tell the truth, which of course always backfires because by that time, that character's already been lying for so long it doesn't really matter anymore.

The idea that a single moment is better than a whole lot of other ones, and that we should instinctively be aware of this one moment, is a useless and paralyzing notion. Waiting around is a waste of time. The only time we ever have is NOW. We don't have yesterday anymore, that time has come and gone. We don't have tomorrow, that time will be ours later (or may not be, you never know) and it can never be ours this very moment. So the only time you ever have to do anything is right now. 
That makes right now the only right time you will ever have.

Are you postponing an important task? An annoying chore? A vital decision? Don't wait around for any other time but now. Make the most of the present moment and use it to the best of your ability. 

And that's my cue to get up and get to that pile of clothes to iron that's been waiting for me to decide the time is right.

Worth Every Minute!

Every Wednesday, here on Minutes Worth Hours, I share something from around the web that I found truly inspiring or informative.
Today I went to share anothe article from SimpleProductivityBlog.com, one of my favorite blogs. This is an article about clutter and collections, that I know will ring true to some people in my life.

Moving from country to country has forced both me and my hubby to give up on the idea of collecting pretty much anything, although we both will have to face collections that we have at home when we return to our countries.

In this post, LJ Earnest talks about taking a good look at the different items in your collections and asking yourself whether 'being part of a collection' is really a good reason to keep anything.

You can read it for yourself!

Get Rid of Clutter by Weeding Out Collections by LJ Earnest on SimpleProductivityBlog.com

Go ahead and check out LJ's blog for more advice on productivity, simplicity and organization.

For more articles and videos worth every minute, check out the other posts in this series.