This is an article by guest writer Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog.

Do you find yourself caught in certain loops in life? Situations that keep happening which you can’t help but wonder “Not again!” or “Why me”? In this article, I’ll share a technique you can use to break out of these patterns.

For most people, whenever something negative happens, their first instinct is to brush it off as just a one-off incident or to blame the environment.

The second time it happens, they may still do the same. Third time, they may think it’s a coincidence, but it’s beginning to trigger some thought that there might be something in them that’s attracting these situations.

Fourth, fifth, sixth time… soon, it becomes clear that this has become an established pattern.

A Personal Example

Throughout my life there have been recurring patterns. For example, one dominant trend that kept emerging when I was in school was that I was almost always late for my lectures and classes. At that time I thought that it was because I lived far away from the university and I would be on time if I lived nearer.

After that, when I started working after graduation, I continued to be late — this time for work and for meetings. This time, I rationalized that it was because there were so many things to do and the schedule was too tight.

Then, when I left my corporate career last year to help others live their best life, I switched to become a full-time coach and personal development blogger. Even then, I would still continue to be late for my appointments. Since my schedule was clearly of my own making now, it became evident that I was late solely because of myself.

There was something inside me or the way I was doing things that needed to be addressed.

Examples of Common Patterns

Here are some common recurring, negative behaviors people deal with in their lives on a day-to-day basis. If any of the incidents below have happened to you at least five times, then it’s likely to be a pattern attributable to you:

• Being late for appointments
• Not meeting deadlines
• Being absent-minded
• Getting together with the “wrong” guy/girl, resulting in destructive relationships
• Sleeping late; not being able to wake up early
• Emotional eating
• Not exercising even though you planned to
• Getting into arguments or losing your temper
• Giving up halfway through whatever you’re doing
• Staying back late at work; getting burnt out

How to Break Out of Patterns

Some people’s response to these recurring behaviors is to exert external force to prevent the occurrence (i.e., through discipline). For example, if they are not exercising according to their regime, they will just whip themselves to stick to their exercise plan. If they are not sticking to their diet, they will discipline themselves to eat properly.

This usually works… for a short period of time.

The issue with this method is it requires continuous expenditure of your energy to keep up the results. As soon as the external force is removed, you start to revert to your natural habit pattern. In addition, by investing external energy to address a particular area, you are left with less energy to deal with other things in your life.

The reason why that happens is because patterns occur as a result of the internal, fundamental frameworks you live by. These frameworks refer to the inner beliefs and values you hold. To get rid of these repetitive behaviors, you need to look inward, examine what triggers them, uncover the underlying causes and resolve them at the root level. The good thing is that since patterns are a result of our beliefs, we can get out of them by changing our beliefs.

Here’s an exercise which I find very helpful in gaining clarity on the root causes of patterns then addressing them. I regularly use it for self-improvement, and it has allowed me to break out of behaviors which don’t serve me, such as being late, emotional eating and not sticking to my exercise plans. I also use this in my coaching, helping my clients successfully break out of negative patterns and accelerate toward their goals.

Before you start this exercise, write down a list of negative patterns in your life, so you can better choose the one you want to get rid of.

1. List down the past 5–10 times you have been in such a situation

Start off by picking a pattern which you want to break out of. Then, list down the past five times when you were faced with it. Five is a decent sample size which lets us compare the incidents and spot similarities between those patterns. If you like, you can even list down 10 incidents just to be exhaustive!

Let’s take my example of being late for appointments. Not being on time was one of the dominant trends in the past. Whenever I went out to meet someone, it would almost be guaranteed that I would be late for appointments. The lateness would usually range from anywhere between 5 minutes to 20 minutes, or even 30 minutes or more.

2. List down the factors for each situation that led to the outcome

Now, list down as many factors as you can that led to each incident occurring. If you have a pattern of sleeping late, write down what the reason that led you to sleep late. Maybe you had work to do, you were talking on the phone with a friend, you had insomnia, etc. It may be possible that each incident has more than one trigger, so list out as many triggers as possible.

When I examined the incidents when I was late, I found a whole list of factors such as (a) oversleeping, (b) being caught up with work before the appointment, (c) bus was late, (d) unanticipated traffic jam, (e) couldn’t find the location (the place was foreign to me) and (f) something cropped up just before the appointment.

3. Identify the commonalities across the factors

Look at all the factors you have listed. Are there any common factors across the incidents? Circle them. Chances are you will find 1-2 dominant trends across all the factors listed.

In my example, the common factor was that I was always caught up with work before the appointment. While there could have been additional factors in each case, I was almost always running late because I was engrossed in getting my work done.

4. Drill down into the cause of the factors

Now, drill into those common factors. What led to these factors? For each answer that comes up, keep digging deeper to identify the underlying cause. Keep asking “Why is this the case?” or “Why is that so?” until you hit a resonating point.

Looking into why I was getting behind, I realized it was because I wanted to finish the stuff which was supposed to have been done earlier but was not finished yet. As I looked deeper into this, I found:

• I had planned more than what was realistically achievable. I did not factor in for appropriate breaks and I had underestimated the time needed for each task.
• Instead of adhering to my work schedule, I was distracted during the work process and would be doing non-peripheral tasks instead.
• This happened because I overestimated my own capacity.
• Thus, by setting off for my appointments before I had finished my work, it meant that I wasn’t able to achieve what I had set out to do. I had let myself down by not living up to my envisioned persona. Because I didn’t want to accept that thought, I would keep working away at my tasks until I was already late beyond measure.

It is possible to have several causes behind the factors. As you work on this step, ensure you uncover as many of them as possible.

5. Identify action steps to address the cause

Now that you have uncovered the root causes, how can you address them such that they will not lead to a recurrence of the pattern in the future? Come up with action steps that will address the root causes, as well as any factors which you feel lead to the issue.

In my case, the action steps I came up with were:

• Create task lists which realistically match my current capacity.
• Place my schedule in a prominent spot so I’ll be conscious of the time and the tasks that need to be done.
• In times where I am not able to get the work done, accept that to be the case and create a separate plan to address the unfinished work later on.

As you come up with the steps, it may seem they do not address the patterns directly. For example, with my issue of being late, creating task lists may not seem like the most appropriate solution at first sight. Yet, because it addresses one of the causes (unrealistic planning), it has helped in breaking me away from the pattern. If you (a) correctly nail down the root cause(s), (b) identify the right action steps and (c) act on them, the patterns will start dissolving away in your life.

Additional Notes

• As you delve into certain patterns, you will often find that their underlying causes are one and the same. Thus, by dealing with that cause, you can get rid of many undesirable behaviors in your life in one fell swoop.
• Note that some patterns may be interlinked with others — for example, you may find that some causes can also be patterns themselves! Thus, it may not be easy to completely eradicate such patterns in one sitting. Focus on getting as much uncovered each time and progress from there. Subsequently you will come to a point where the root causes are properly addressed and the patterns are eradicated.

Try out the exercise and start breaking away from the negative patterns in your life! Feel free to give me your feedback — I’d love to know how it works for you.

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This is a guest post by Adrian Koh of Whakate.

The tussle between lifehacking and living the perfect life is as old as personal development itself. “Lifehacking” — a recently-coined word to refer to tips and tricks that lead to productivity boosts — focuses on a bottom-up approach of managing the input of work rather than goals and priorities.

To be clear, this tussle between hacking and living is not one of importance – when it comes to success, we would all agree that making sense of our priorities is far more important than being able to type 200 words a minute. 

The real decision people face is which one should come first: lifestyle design or lifehacks? After all, lifehacks can help you gain control of work so that you can start making sense of higher priorities. But have lifehackers got it all backwards?

The Thing About Lifehacks (The Bottom-Up Perspective)

I have been a serial lifehacker for years. I must admit to having had tons of fun fiddling with gadgets to enhance my productivity. All those years of tweaking my system have not been frivolous, though. I’m proud to say that I’ve mastered the art of email management, task list management and how to get my head “clear” to focus on the issue at hand. Skills like these are terribly useful and have served me well at life and work.

Lifehacks made work a little more fun for me – and still do, to this day. I don’t think I would have been able to handle a promotion and a new family as well as I did with a good hack or two. However, once the excitement of increased efficiency wore off, there was a nagging suspicion that I didn’t really save the world with the hacks I had used. In fact, being at my productive best might have been a distraction from the more important issues in my life.

That’s when life design caught my attention.

The Thing About Lifestyle Design (The Top-down, All-round Perspective)

Whether you call it lifestyle design, life design, work-life balance, or enlightened self-management, the central idea is this: life should be lived consciously and deliberately, and not left to chance.

I first heard about the concept of designing your life in its entirety when speaking to the editors at Whakate. The essence of it struck me as a holistic approach to balancing your life. Starting with an understanding of my personality, responsibilities, roles and tasks, it set me on a discovery of “who” I was and “why” I did what I did.

The intention, of course, was to help me chart out a life designed with meaning defined by me – this is the “what” and “how” of life – and to get me to balance all my goals with the finite time that I had.

If that struck a chord with you, I’d like to show you how you could get started on life design too:

1. Know who you are. Get an objective perspective of your personality with tests like MBTI. There are free versions available (here’s an example) and there’s significant research backing them. It’s unlikely you’ll get many surprises from the tests, but it’s always eye-opening to see how people with similar traits succeed in fields that you have always been interested in.
2. Make use of your time. Monitor yourself and how you spend your time, identify and eliminate your time wasters, and start zeroing in on the things that you choose to be done. I can guarantee serious revelations into how you organize your day if you’ve never done this before.
3. Get organised. At this point, tweak, hack or get a bottom-up perspective if you must, but the focus of life design is to get moving. In truth, the only time management or productivity system that works is the one that actually makes sense to you and gets you to move forward. The difference is that now you’re armed with knowledge of your personality and your priorities (the top-down perspective) giving you a good platform to do what matters most.
4. Embrace your roles. Knowing what your roles are – whether in your career, family, or social circle – gives you a basis to set goals and develop the values you need to make your life work. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you’re getting it right the first time around. Our lives are a constant work in progress, with shifting goals and values as we go through life. The idea is to have an intimate knowledge of everything present in our life, and then start designing it for the desired outcome.

Closing Thoughts

While there’s a logical flow to how life design should be approached, there’s no one formula or set of values that will make life successful. The emphasis of life design is to create a life that you consciously construct for yourself. This makes your achievements and outcomes unique and personally satisfying.

The question to ask, then, is not whether one should exclusively choose life design or lifehacking, or bottom-up versus a top-down approach. Used in combination, they are two parts of a powerful personal strategy to balance and gain control of life and work.

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This is a guest post by Glen Allsopp of PluginID.

Have you ever read an informative book, only to later remember just a few main points — if anything at all? The problem might be that you’re using one of the least efficient ways of learning available.

The Cone of Learning

I remember back about 7 years ago when I was taking music lessons at school, there was a poster on the wall that really grabbed my attention. To be fair, it wasn’t difficult for a random object to attract your gaze as our Scottish teacher at the time didn’t have much in the way of keeping you interested. The poster outlined the different ways that we remember things and how different activities increase our chances of remembering something over others.

Image Credit

After doing some research, I found that the contents of that poster were based upon the work of Edgar Dale back in 1969. Dale looked at the most effective ways of learning by teaching people similar material in different ways and noted the ability to recall the information after the teaching was finished.

Today, many of you may know this as the Cone of Learning, but beware: although the cone is in fact based upon the results of Dale’s research, the percentage figures were never actually cited by Dale, and added by others after the initial investigation.

Even though the Cone of Learning that became widespread contains erroneous figures, it does represent a guideline for the most effective learning techniques that the human brain is able to acquire and store information from.

Based on the research we can see that:

• The least effective way to learn something is to listen to a lecture on the topic or read information about it.
• The most effective way to learn something is to teach others and use it in our own lives.

The Cone of Learning suggests why you are more likely to remember parts of a movie then you are from a book on the same topic. A film uses audio and visual aspects that the brain is more likely to store and hold available for recollection (memory).

Learning Almost Anything

After we discard the erroneous percentage figures, we still must take the cone as just a guideline — one which is subject to change depending on the learning style of the student or the studied subject. Different aspects such as what you want to remember and how often you put it into use will greatly impact how well you remember something. That being said, other things equals, the cone is a great guideline to follow to better imprint something to memory.

On that note, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the best ways to use the Cone of Learning concept, and apply it to an everyday example that we can relate to. The example I’m going to use in the following tips is looking at the best methods you could use to learn what yoga is and remember the necessary positions that are used.

• Give a Lecture. Although receiving a lecture is one of the worst ways to remember what you are being told, giving a lecture is one of the most effective. You could go into any college or university and offer to give a lecture on the topic of yoga and the many positions that are used.
• Write an Article. If you have a blog or a website you could spend time putting together an article on what yoga is all about and the movements that are often used in this meditative practice. Additionally, you could also create images to be used on the site to help explain the certain actions involved.
• Make a Video. Even if you don’t have your own blog or website, there are plenty of video portals such as Youtube and Metacafe that will allow you to upload your own videos for free. This will be effective as you can teach in the lecture format but know that you are instructing to a potentially worldwide audience.
• Discuss with Your Friends. One of the easiest teaching options that you have available to you are the members of your social circle. Wherever appropriate, bring up a topic you would like to discuss and share your wealth of knowledge on it. The more people you can discuss it with the better your ability will be to remember it in the future. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of ways you can discuss it online using the likes of online forums, twitter or even niche social networks.
• Do it Yourself. It’s no use trying your best to teach others about Yoga if it’s something you aren’t interested in and don’t do yourself. If you teach people the importance of controlling their breathing, then when you are performing Yoga in your own time… make sure you are controlling your breathing. Whatever you would teach others, you need to make sure you are implementing yourself.

There are certainly more ways that you could look into teaching others and applying things into your own life. From holding classes in your house to simply creating an audio file of you speaking, see how you can apply teaching about your subject to learn more about a topic.

Exceptions to the Rule

As with most things in life, this isn’t going to apply to every single person, every single time. For example, from my research into this, it is claimed that autistic people are much more likely to learn from visual images rather than trying to teach someone else or do it themselves. Also, I know many people who have a strong preference for auditory learning over visual, for instance.

Additionally, as stated, the figures in the cone are to be used as a guideline, some people will have a high success rate at learning through teaching others while for some it may not be as successful. Generally, look at the ones which are deemed to be the most effective and try the ones which work best for you.

So, what are you going to do to improve your learning now?

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This is an article by guest writer Don Campbell of Expand2Web.

“A genius! For 37 years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!” –Pablo Sarasate (Spanish violinist)

Think of the greatest athlete, musician, artist or business professional that inspires you. The amazing talents that really stand out. Michael Jordan. Tiger Woods. Warren Buffett. They were each born with a special gift: wired from birth with talents and abilities that most of us don’t have access to, right?

Research is showing that it’s not that simple. In fact, many child prodigies don’t go on to major success in the area of their early gifts. And many of the greatest performers, athletes and business people never showed any early signs of aptitude.

So, how did they become great at what they do?

A couple of years ago I read an article by Geoffrey Colvin in Fortune, What It Takes To Be Great. The article is fascinating and delves into the question of innate abilities, usually referred as “the talent myth”.

The Research on Great Performance

In 1993, Florida State University professor K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues published a paper on ‘expert performance’ which, along with the additional studies around the world that it inspired, made some very interesting discoveries:

• Nobody is “great” without lots of work. Early aptitude is not a predictor for greatness in a given field without consistent practice over a long period of time.
• The most accomplished people in any field need about 10 years of hard work before they become “world class”. They call this the 10 Year Rule.

Many of these scientists are now saying that “targeted” natural gifts do not exist at all. You are not born a CEO or chess grandmaster. Rather, greatness is achieved by hard, focused work over many years.

Charlie Parker, widely considered one of the most influential of Jazz musicians, showed no sign of musical talent as a child. He started playing saxophone at age 11, and was thrown out of his high school band because he was so bad. But this drove him to practice intensively for many years, for four years up to 15 hours a day. It was many years after that before he was noticed.

Tiger Woods started practicing golf at 18 months, and was encouraged to practice by his father. He had been practicing intensively for 15 years before winning the U.S. Amateur Championship at age 18.

But you and I both know people who work very hard. Many work for decades at a job or hobby without approaching greatness. Why don’t they become “world class”, then?

It turns out that it’s not just hard work that is required. What is required is focused, consistent practice over a long period of time. Something the researchers are calling deliberate practice.

Deliberate Practice

Truly great people in any field devote many hours to deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is an activity that goes beyond repetition. It is consistent practice where the goal is to continually improve performance, reaching beyond your current capabilities, and seeking feedback on results.

The article describes what is my favorite example of deliberate practice:

Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day — that’s deliberate practice.

And what’s great about these findings is that we can apply them to all areas of our life. Almost any skill is improvable. Giving presentations. Sports. Negotiating. Whatever it is that you do and have a passion for, you can improve and become truly great — if you are willing to put in the work, that is.

The Deliberate Practice Formula

1. Approach each critical task with an explicit goal of getting much better at it. Set goals that are just beyond your level of competency.
2. As you do the task, focus on what’s happening and why you’re doing it the way you are.
3. After the task, get feedback on your performance from multiple sources. Don’t get emotional about it, and make changes in your behavior as necessary.
4. Continually build mental models of your situation – of your industry, your company, your career. Expand the models to encompass more factors. (A good book on the concept of mental models is The Power of Impossible Thinking by Yoram Wind and Colin Cook).
5. Do those steps regularly, not sporadically. Occasional practice does not work. Consistency is the key here.

What Does This All Mean?

We don’t have to be born with a special talent in order to be great at something. We just have to have the desire to constantly work at and improve our skill. This is huge: it means that you can learn to be good, or even great at nearly anything!

Most people won’t go through the long and difficult process of deliberate practice. But this is what can separate you from the pack. This is what makes great performance rare: most people either don’t believe they can do it, or aren’t willing to do the work to become truly great at their passion.

So ask yourself, what is your ‘mastery skill’? What should you work on to improve regularly, practicing, getting feedback, improving and pushing yourself to higher levels of excellence?

Is it your career? Is it a sport? Is it art or music? Now that you know that excellence is a choice, a whole world of possibilities opens up. Are you ready to pursue your dream and become “world class at it”?

Article Mind Map

When I read something that I really want to remember, I create a mind map to help me conceptualize what I’ve read. My mind map summary of the article that inspired this post, What It Takes To Be Great, is included below.

• Download mind map in PDF format (333 kb)
• Download map in MindManager format (247 kb, requires MindManager)

Additional Resources

• What It Takes To Be Great (Fortune)
• The Expert On Experts (Fast Company)
• Expert Performance And Deliberate Practice (Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, Florida State University)
• Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?

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• 120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power

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This is an article by guest writer Lawrence Cheok of A Long Long Road.

I remember those nights when I tossed about in bed, unable to sleep because I couldn’t get my mind off my work. Work-related stress is increasingly affecting more knowledge workers as we get overwhelmed in trying to cope with huge amount of work demands.

According to David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, one of the reasons that so much “stuff” is on your mind is because you have not processed and organized these loose ends in a manner that you trust. As such, they continue to occupy your mind, bugging you.

In my opinion, with too much of these loose ends in your head and no way to offload them, it gets overwhelming and stress kicks in — the same cause of my insomnia. I feel like there are a lot of open items that require my attention, but I haven’t really gotten around to them yet.

From experience, practicing David’s Getting Things Done method facilitates clarity of thought, which directs my daily actions to getting things done. The increase in productivity alleviates stress, helps me in focusing on key issues and enables me to live in the moment.

The following are some common sense tips based on Getting Things Done to help you increase your productivity and have a stress-free life:

1. Think About Your “Stuff”

A knowledge worker is paid to think. However, thinking actually takes conscious effort. How often have you opened a piece of mail, read it and left it on the desk, piling up — simply because you didn’t take the effort to think about the specific required follow-up actions?

When I say ‘think’, it’s a literal and conscious effort to define the “stuff” at hand. Do you need to act on it? If yes, do it now or later? If later, how can you be reminded? Do you want to keep it for reference? If yes, where to file it?

You see, that’s quite a bit of thinking required just to handle a simple item. The fact is that many people don’t have the habit of thinking about incoming items right away. As such, they leave stuff lying around and accumulate clutter.

Develop the good habit of consciously thinking about each item or issue that comes into your life. Determine there and then what is the desired outcome and action that is required. Once a decision is made, record the required action as a to-do item or calendar appointment so that you offload it externally.

Offloading allows you to temporarily forget about it until the point in time when you have a chance to act on it. This clears your mind to focus on new upcoming “stuff”.

2. Remove Clutter

To be productive, you must be able to focus on the task at hand without distractions. At the same time, you must have easy access to the required tools and information. The way to achieve this is to create a clean and clear working environment so that only information relevant to the task at hand is present.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed some information to complete a task but you simply couldn’t find it because it was lost in the stack of clutter lying on your desk? Instead of focusing on the task at hand, your attention and energy are diverted into finding the information you need. Sometimes, because you can’t find the needed information, you put off the task — unnecessarily adding to your to-do list. This is a great waste of time and energy and encourages further buildup of clutter.

I have learned that the best way to reduce clutter is not to let it build up in the first place:

• Make it a point to keep your work environment clear of unnecessary things.
• Use the act-file-delete principle (see below); clear your e-mail inbox and physical inbox every day.
• Maintain a physical and electronic filing system. This applies to things that you don’t immediately need, but have future reference value. The filing system ensures you can easily retrieve information when you need it.

3. Handle Mail by Act-File-Delete

How often have you read an incoming e-mail message and left it in the inbox, thinking that you would come back to it later but never did? Such approach is one common cause of clutter buildup. The best way to clear your inbox is to follow the principle of Act-File-Delete. It’s a conscious decision-making process for each message that you open:

• If you can act on it immediately and it will not take you more than a few minutes, do it now. It can be something as simple as looking up some information and typing a few sentences as a reply. Those few minutes will allow you to quickly cross one item off your to-do list. Rather than allowing these minor tasks to accumulate and weigh on your mind, you finish them quickly and never have to bother about them anymore. The sense of clarity and freedom that this simple strategy brings is often understated.
• Another common scenario I face is coming across an article or paper that I find interesting, but it is too long to read at the moment of clearing my inbox. As such, I leave it there and forget to come back to it. Over time, these “to-read” materials accumulate and become clutter. If the mail doesn’t require your action but you still want to refer to it in the future, file it immediately so you can easily find it later (see point on filing system).
• If the mail is purely for information and no action is required on your part, simply read it and delete it. Some people hate to delete or throw away stuff; they think “what if I need this later?” If you’re not sure, just make sure you file it. Don’t leave it there and accumulate clutter.

4. Develop A "Done It Once" Mentality

A common challenge I face with implementing the act-file-delete principle is that I have a tendency to procrastinate. Having to act or file immediately on each mail is quite daunting sometimes. There’s this nagging thought that says that I can always do it later. Yet, from my own experience, I know that ‘later’ often means ‘never’.

Some productivity gurus advocate the “done it once” mentality. It simply means processing each incoming item only once so that you never have to waste time handling it again. When you procrastinate and don’t act-file-delete immediately, you’ll have to read the mail a second time before you can act on it: waste of time. In addition, more often than not, there’s a chance that you will forget about it, adding additional clutter to your inboxes.

Nowadays, when my tendency to procrastinate kicks in, I summon up the slogan "done it once". At first, I drag myself to act on the task, but once the action gets started, things just continue easily from there. When it comes to fighting procrastination, getting started is usually the toughest part: once you do it, the rest becomes very easy.

5. Use a Filing System

Another key to productivity is to have a systematic way of filing so that you can easily retrieve information when you need it. I remember I once had to fill in some credit application forms that required my income tax details: because I couldn’t find my income tax statements, I procrastinated and the forms were left there in my inbox for months.

Set up a filing system by having folders and storage for different types of information:

• Decide upfront the types of information that you want to file and reference back later.
• Label the folders clearly so that there’s no ambiguity.
• Stock up on filing stationery so that it is easy to file your documents.

6. Focus on One Task at a Time

In this age when multi-tasking is the buzzword at work, many are tricked into believing that we are more effective when we try to do many things at once. From my experience, that’s bunk.

The fact is that the brain works best when it’s focused on one task at a time. To perform a task, the brain has to retrieve relevant knowledge; information to help you act. When you switch between tasks, it introduces “processing overhead”, as it has to adjust to different contexts required by different tasks.

For example, I think that the e-mail alert is one of the worst enemies of personal productivity: it’s that little box that pops up in the corner of your desktop whenever a new incoming e-mail arrives. It’s surely an attention-grabber: I used to stop whatever I was doing and switch to reading the new e-mails. In doing so, my train of thought was broken. After reading the e-mail and acting on it, I needed some time to switch my context back into the previous task.

I have disabled the e-mail alert. Nowadays, I have learned to focus all my attention on the task at hand. Consciously, I refuse to get distracted by other thoughts or external events until the task at hand is completed.

Believe it or not, this single-minded concentration alone has increased my productivity a whole lot.

Closing Remarks

I have experienced first hand the differences that increased productivity can make in leading a balanced and stress-free life.

Getting things done eliminates worries. These simple tips help you act on things that need to be done, file away things that need to be addressed later and removes clutter that only serves to overwhelm you.

These are small daily actions that add up to make a whole lot of difference to your life. From my experience, it takes a while to develop these habits and attitude, but it’s not hard. Try these tips out for 2 to 3 days and feel the difference yourself — it’s a very rewarding feeling that once experienced will provide a very strong impetus for you to try it further and develop into a habit.

I wish you luck in developing these good habits and leading a stress-free life.

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This is an article by guest writer Albert Foong of UrbanMonk.Net.

Think about this: everything we do begin as a thought. Every action, every word, every human creation exists first in our imagination.

The ability to see things before they actually happen is what enables us to pursue our dreams and ultimately achieve them. In fact, the better we visualize the future we want, the better our chances to make it happen.

Training the Mind is Training the Body

Your brain cannot differentiate well between real action and mental action. There has been research done showing that thinking about an action — even while your body is at rest — will fire the neural pathways in your brain just as you were actually doing it.

To see this for yourself: hold a piece of string and let it dangle. Then, keeping your hand as still as you can, imagine twirling the string around. Most likely, the string will begin to move, ever so slightly.

And that’s the good news: mental training can improve almost all our skills and fast-track us towards our goals.

For instance, many psychologists and life coaches recommend mental rehearsal for all sorts of things. Usually it is social or work-related: to enhance assertiveness, smooth out an interview or a meeting, or even to enhance a date. Athletes at the highest level are also encouraged to use visualization to improve their technique, motivation and drive. When interviewing Olympic gold medalists, they discovered that several winners used visualization, not just for the sport technique, but also to capture the feeling of being awarded a medal.

5 Applied Visualization Techniques

How do we develop and apply the powerful skill of visualization?

Here I present five basic exercises in order of difficulty. Do them in order, moving on to the next one only when you have mastered the first. You can take as many days as you like to get really good at each level, there is no rush.

1^st Exercise

Find a photograph, and take your time to analyze it. Memorize every detail you can. Then simply close your eyes and try to recreate it in your mind. Bring in as much as you can: the colors, the birds in the sky, the freckles on the skin — whatever is there. Open your eyes to get more detail if you have to. Remember that this is not a test: do it until you get good at it.

2^nd Exercise

For the second exercise, we’re going three-dimensional. This time, take up a small object: perhaps your pen or your keys. Again, analyze all the details and memorize it. Take your time.

Now, close your eyes, and see the object mentally. The challenge here is to start rotating it. See every detail, but from all angles. If you feel comfortable, begin to bring in some surroundings. Place it on an imaginary table. Shine a few lights on it and imagine the shadows flickering.

3^rd Exercise

This third exercise builds on the second, and can be hard for some people, although others will find it very easy. This time, recreate your little object, but with your eyes open. See it in the real world, right in front of you. Again, move it around, rotate it, play with it. See how it interacts with the objects in front of you. Imagine it resting on your keyboard, casting a shadow on your mouse, or knocking over your coffee cup.

4^th Exercise

This is where things start to get fun. This time, we’re bringing you into the picture. Think of a pleasant location. I like to use my favorite beach. Now, imagine yourself in it. It’s important to be in the scene, not just thinking of it.

Bring in your other senses, one by one. What can you hear? Are the leaves rustling, are there people talking in the background? What about the sense of touch? Can you feel the sand you are standing on? What about smell? Can you imagine eating an ice-cream, and feeling it slide down your throat?

Again, make sure that you are in the scene, not just thinking of it. Make this mental movie as strong and vibrant and detailed as you can.

5^th Exercise

And in the final exercise, we’re going to make things a bit livelier. Bring up the mental location from the previous exercise. Now — begin moving around, interacting with things. Pick up a rock. Sit on a bench. Run in the water. Roll around in the sand.

Then, bring in someone else. Perhaps you could bring in a lover, and then choreograph a dance with him or her. Or you could imagine a friend. Hold a conversation with him or her. Imagine them smiling as you tell them a joke. Now, imagine them slapping you on the shoulder playfully. What does that feel like?

Detail and Realism

The reason we emphasize detail and realism is simply because practice doesn’t make perfect. As you might have heard, only perfect practice makes perfect.

If I asked you to imagine the execution of your goals — whether it be doing well in a business meeting, or a date, or sports — you probably saw yourself doing it perfectly straight away. You win big, you look cool, and everyone falls in love with you. This feels good, and can increase motivation but, to put it bluntly, it’s mostly a waste of time.

Realism is the most important consideration in visualization. Soldiers train in almost exactly the same gear they are going to wear in combat. None of them got really good just by playing shooting games on the computer or by playing paintball.

It is the same with mental training. Everything has to be as realistic as possible. I used to be an amateur boxer, and developed my visualization to help me train. My first mental movies were of me moving and punching like Muhammad Ali. But reality soon hit me in the face — the first time I met a live opponent in training, I got destroyed.

My mental imagery up to that point had merely been fantasies — building castles in the air. I had been wasting my time.

But when I began visualizing properly, I found that I made all my usual mistakes, even in mental rehearsal. My heart was beating fast, my fists clenched, and I felt overcome with the same fear. And all this, while I was sitting on the couch!

Did that mean I failed? No, it meant I succeeded. From then on, my mental training began working for me. Because I carried over all my flaws and fears into my mental arena, any improvements I made there would also begin to carry over into the real world.

Applying Visualization to Your Goals

Now, what if we’re not dealing with a physical skill? What if you had set a goal for something like money, a new career or a holiday?

Visualization applies in much the same way. Here are some tips for applying it to your goals:

1. Focus on the positive. A common mistake is focusing on the opposite of what you want. When I wanted to lose weight, I initially made the mistake of posting pictures of my fat belly all over my room, thinking it was motivating me. But that was the wrong way: by focusing on my fat, I was just keeping the fat there. I should have been visualizing the stomach I wanted.
2. Have it, don’t want it. Think of something you really, really want. Now, do you have it? Probably not. Most often, wanting is the opposite of having. So when you visualize, don’t think about wanting something, see yourself as already having it.
3. Be consistent. You have to really work hard on this. Your mind is a muscle, just like your body. The top bodybuilders didn’t get to where they are by working out for two minutes a day. They worked hard for it. Make your goal your burning obsession, a passion and purpose in life.
4. Be specific. Most people have vague goals. They vaguely want to be rich, or they want to travel somewhere nice. Where? Oh, never thought about it much. It’s like getting into a car with a vague goal of wanting to buy… something. Not going to happen, right? You want to have a specific goal: I’m going out to the supermarket to buy myself some shampoo and a toothbrush. It is the same with your goals. Set it in as much detail as you can: a specific amount of money, a specific outcome from a meeting, whatever it is.

Visualization is a very powerful tool for helping achieving your goals, and I’m grateful that Luciano is giving me a chance to share it with his audience.

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