Category: General

Categories
Habits

Half Habits

I’ve come across quite a few personal productivity experts who recommend that you only attempt to change one habit at a time. That way you don’t end up overwhelming yourself, and can ensure that you have fully developed that habit before moving on to the next.

While this approach certainly has its advantages, I don’t think I have the patience to focus on a single habit at a time. Besides, the bad habits I want to get rid of and the good habits I want to adopt will take me several lifetimes to adopt into my character if I plan on taking on one habit a month.

Instead, I go by an approach I’d like to call “half habits.” Rather than attempt to fully develop a new habit, try to take a step in its direction. Don’t change your diet completely, but make slight adjustments to your meals or snacks. Don’t start a strict exercise regimen, but start becoming more active around the house, or begin with a few exercise sessions a week.

You move in the direction of a positive habit, or away from a negative habit, without feeling pressured or overwhelmed.

With this approach you can take on a great deal of “half habits” at a time, and the likelihood that you’ll stay committed to developing the habits completely is pretty high.

I started waking up early, cut down on junk food, began exercising, write one blog post a day and have mini-habits forming here and there without feeling burdened by the changes. In fact, I think some habits are supporting the formation of other habits, which is making my work much easier!

Give this approach a try, and see if you can begin to change your habits for the better and at a faster pace!

Categories
Coaching

How Coaching Works

Coaching can be an extremely effective tool in achieving your goals, but it is largely misunderstood. The common assumption is that you need a professional coach to guide you, but this is rarely the case.

Although there’s a great deal to mention about coaching, I’d like to begin addressing this topic here by first explaining how coaching works.

Thinking and Doing

To achieve any goal, you often have to think things through and get things done. But these are two different roles you are playing. Thinking has its own purpose and processes, and doing has its own purpose and processes.

Your performance might slow down while you are struggling to make sense of some ideas, or trying to come up with a comprehensive plan to achieving your goal. While you are busy thinking, you are delaying the doing.

This can be overwhelming at times, which leads to an eruption of unhealthy emotions, such as stress, worry, anxiety, fear, depression, etc.

So you are now dealing with 3 things: ideas you wish to clarify, actions you want to undertake and emotions you need to resolve. Juggling the three hinders your performance on all three fronts. You won’t be able to think clearly, you can’t get your work done and you can’t control your emotions.

Of course there are many ways in which such situations can be handled. Getting a coach is one of these ways.

Division of Labor

The reason why coaching is so effective is that it divides the labor between yourself and someone else: the coach manages the thinking and you handle the doing.

With this division, the negative emotions you experience will be reduced, because you no longer feel overwhelmed while oscillating between two different functions: thinking and doing.

You can then focus solely on single tasks, without worrying about the tasks ahead of you, or what your plan is. You simply get work done.

If you look at the way a football match is played, you will realize that a lot of thought is put into the way the players play. But do the individual players have to worry about coming up with winning strategies? Do they need to think of how the other players should work on the pitch?

No they don’t. This is handled by the coach. All the players have to worry about is playing their part and doing the best they possibly can.

Coaching can work in a similar way when it comes to achieving personal goals.

We’ll look more into how coaching is carried out in future blog posts!

Categories
Balance

Personal State of Emergency

In politics, a State of Emergency is a government declaration that extends the authority of government to a scope beyond its normal bounds. In effect, a democratic country can enforce dictatorial policies to respond to a threat.

This is something we’re hearing more about in recent years because of the threat of terrorism.

What distinguishes a democratic country in a state of emergency and a dictatorship is that a dictatorship is in a constant state of emergency, whereas democratic countries can only go into a state of emergency for a limited period of time.

So what has this got to do with personal growth?

“State of emergency” and “dictatorship” are useful terms to use when trying to understand how we can achieve balance. Our lives involve a number of areas, such as professional work, family time, etc (I will reveal the Seven Life Areas when I launch the Personal Growth Map E-book :D).

When we struggle to achieve balance, we are essentially giving one area of our lives more time and attention than it deserves, because it is taking our time and attention away from all other areas. This is how one area of our lives can act as a dictatorship. It prevents us from having balance, from giving our loved ones the attention they deserve, from pursuing our interests, etc.

However, it is sometimes unrealistic to expect to have balance when facing an emergency. To strive for balance would mean that you are not giving the emergency the attention it deserves, because it now deserves more attention than all other life areas. This isn’t to say that the other life areas should be completely ignored when faced with an emergency, but that they would not receive as much attention as you would like to give them.

When you are starting a business, for example, there are many, many things you will need to manage in order to set up a stable business. You cannot prolong the time you take to address these issues, because you might be in desperate need of cash. Therefore, you need to enter a Personal State of Emergency in order to effectively manage this life area.

This means that you knowingly go into a state of imbalance, grant a single life area more attention, while reducing your commitment to all other life areas. But this state of imbalance can only be done temporarily, until you manage the emergency, and can return to normal life.

What’s important about distinguishing between a personal state of emergency and a personal dictatorship is that you do not feel guilty for being in a state of imbalance when the circumstances you are in demand that you give more attention to a single life area. If this imbalance happens to be a chronic situation, then you are living in a personal dictatorhip, which isn’t a pleasant way to live.

Make sure you limit your states of imbalance to definite time periods so that you can manage your emergencies and get back to normal life.

Categories
Personal Growth

“You Are Here”

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Theodore Roosevelt

If you had a map of the place you are in, the first thing you should look for on the map is the spot you are on (in malls, theme parks, etc. this spot is marked by a “You Are Here” sign).

If you don’t know where you are on the map then the map is of little use to you. You can’t get to your destination, even if you know where that is on the map!

That’s because for you to move towards your destination, you need to know which direction to go in from where you are. Getting to your destination depends entirely on that. You would have to go left if your destination is to your left, and go right if it’s to your right.

There is no universal direction you have to go in to get to your destination.

The next step you have to take, and the direction you have to take it in depends on where you are. Not where other people are. Not where you were. Not from where you want to be. But from where you are right now.

One of the main reasons why we feel lost with personal growth is that we compare ourselves to others. On a map, that’s like finding out where someone else is on the map, and trying to make your way to your destination from where they are!

That can get pretty confusing. The map wouldn’t reflect the reality that you’re living in, and you might come across dead ends that don’t appear on the map, simply because you’re looking at the wrong part of the map.

If you want to make progress in personal growth you have to determine where YOU are, what weaknesses you have, what strengths you have, what you need to learn, what habits you need to develop (or unlearn) in order to achieve the goals you want.

And you certainly cannot expect to take the tenth step before the first. This may seem like an odd comment to make when considering the analogy of a map, but this is a very common practice when it comes to personal growth. People assume they have reached a point that they haven’t yet reached, and begin planning their next step from there, when there is a gap between where they are and where think they are.

For them to make progress, they need to be clear on where they are, so that they don’t skip any steps that they need to take.

Where are YOU on your personal growth map, and what do YOU need to do to get to your destination?

Categories
Journaling

A Quick Start Guide to Journaling

If you’ve been putting off journaling for a long time, or have recently discovered the advantages of journaling but don’t know how to begin, then this post is for you!

But before we get started, it’s important to be clear on what the purpose of journaling is. That way, you’ll know exactly what you want out of it, and you’ll notice how silly the main obstacle to journaling is (we’ll get to that in a minute).

The Purpose of Journaling

The most basic purpose of journaling is: to express your thoughts in written form.

While your thoughts are floating in your head, you don’t really have a good grasp of them, or how they relate to each other. By writing your thoughts down, you can manage ideas as though they are building blocks that you can rearrange to form the structure that you want. This is almost impossible to achieve if you are simply thinking, without writing.

Writing is what brings clarity, and journaling is the process you use to express your thoughts in written form.

The Main Obstacle to Journaling

What prevents many people from journaling is the false assumption that their thoughts must be clear and well structured as soon as they put pen to paper. In other words, if they can’t see their thoughts flowing gracefully onto the paper, then they aren’t good at journaling!

But journaling isn’t about writing well. It’s about writing your thoughts down, no matter how scattered or messy they are. Your thoughts don’t even have to be true! What matters is that you write them down. You can then see your thoughts more clearly, and refine them later on.

Therefore, expect your writing to lack structure and your thoughts to lack clarity. This is normal. And this is what journaling will help you improve. You will begin to structure your writing and clarify your thoughts with journaling.

In other words, structure and clarity are the outputs of journaling and not the required inputs.

Now that we got this obstacle out of the way, let’s consider our journaling options.

Paper or PC?

There are two main ways you can keep a journal: on paper, or on a computer. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. To list just a few:

Paper Advantages:

– Portable (though smart phones can offer the same advantage)
– Comfortable for some people (myself included)
– Flexible (you can write, doodle, draw, etc.)
– Can see the entire page (without needing to scroll, zoom out, etc.). This might not be an advantage to others, but it’s certainly an advantage for me!

Paper Disadvantages:

– Strain on the wrist (which can get you to stop writing before you run out of ideas to write!)
– Can be difficult to read after some time (especially if your handwriting is as bad as mine)

Computer Advantages:

– Easy to search
– Easy to edit and organize
– Faster (especially if you increase your typing speed. A keystroke will always be faster than writing a letter)

Computer Disadvantages:

– Can lose your files if your computer files aren’t well organized

I actually use both approaches, to combine their advantages and overcome their disadvantages. I mostly use a notepad to write my thoughts down while I’m in a meeting, or for brainstorming, or planning, etc. I use my computer for when I need to write a lot and writing on paper would seriously slow me down. I also use my mobile phone to record my thoughts while I’m on the go.

Getting Started

1- Buy/Grab a notepad (preferably with a hard cover), or use a word processing software (it can be Microsoft Word, or Notepad, or a specialized software, like The Journal)

2- Think of an issue that’s bugging you, or is looping in your head

3- Give this idea a title (e.g. buying a new PC), and write the title at the top of the first page of your journal (or at the top of your computer file), and include the date (this can be important for reference)

4- If you already have thoughts on the matter, write them down as they come to you (but don’t force yourself to think more about the issue)

5- If you have another (unrelated) idea that’s on your mind, repeat steps 3 and 4, but on the next page of the journal (or under a new title in your computer file. Try not to write in a new file, because the files will be more difficult to manage later on)

Of course there’s more to journaling than that, but this isn’t called a QUICK Start Guide for nothing 🙂

Use this as your first step towards journaling, and I’ll give you more tips to make the journaling process much more rewarding for you.

The main advantage to a quick start is that you overcome the main obstacle of journaling and become used to writing your thoughts down, without caring about how structured or presentable they are.

Let me know what your experience of journaling is using the Quick Start Guide 😀