Technology, love it. Hate it.

For as long as I can remember, my life has had a computer in it. Many of my life achievements couldn’t have been possible without them – No hours spent writing music, programming, breaking and fixing things, or creating websites.

I am grateful for the part of me that has invested my time in honing my computer related abilities, and indeed as I look to the future I see that many of my technical skills place me way ahead of the curve in some areas…but alas, in many respects, I have grown to loath modern technology.

Old Man Syndrome

As I get older, I find that I am placing a greater emphasis on what I do with my time – What I have concluded is that the simple things in life are more important – family, friends, relationships, good health…I have also come to a realisation that its quite difficult to maintain a simple life whilst suffering from information overload or locked in a room operating a desktop computer.

That said, shedding the technological corpses that cling to me like a bad smell has turned out to be really quite difficult. The problem is that new gizmos entice you in to believing that the simple life includes them, and to make matters worse the marketers do their best to have you buy a new one on a yearly basis. For me, these factors render new technology both a a blessing and a curse…

Technological Simplification

My first step into technological simplification was when I bought an Asus Eeepc. This laptop opened my eyes in the sense that I no longer had to be locked in my room in order to use the internet. I immediately moved my online time to bars and cafes. I distinctly remember the interest in my 7″ netbook from the people propped up at the bar, and was amazed to see these folk actually envious. Envious of a geek like me because I have a little computer?! Logically it makes no sense.

Computer games had been a near 20 year long addiction for me, but as the Eeepc was too underpowered to handle anything but chess, I soon found myself giving up gaming and with it my once highly percieved value of my Desktop machine swiftly faded.

My next major purchase was two years later – a G1 mobile phone. This little device has changed my life, but with it came some real problems. The first month that I bought it, I was like a crack addict! My partner quickly grew to detest ‘that stupid little white thing’ as she called it.

For those that don’t know what a G1 is – its a geeks wet dream. There isn’t much this thing can’t do. I have moved the majority of my work flow to this little device and even this article I am writing write now on its little screen via an ancient Unix program called Vi.

The G1 is in many respects, a curse in desguise. Whereas before I had to be in a specific location to give in to my internet addiction, now it is in the palm of my hand on tap at any time I crave it.

“I hate it because I love it so much!”

I feel like a slave to it’s bleeps and notifications, every new sound the ultimate potential distraction. Its like our handheld devices are modern day psirens. If the panned piper fable was written in modern times, the children wouldn’t be wasting there time with a man with a flute, when their own Iphone does the same thing is a multitude of different sounds! – There’s an app for that!!

One night, I found myself watching a BBC television programme called upgrade me (Of course, I was watching this programme on my G1). The presenter in this programme addressed the changes in technology that have come in the last half century and our dependance that has developled along with it. By the end of the programme I found myself looking at my phone and feeling rather disgusted for having bought it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that in my perfect life, technology is barely a footnote. And yet when I look around, I see a growing addiction and dependance that frightens me – It used to just be geeks like myself who spent their time tweaking electrical devices, but now even grandma’s are doing it.

It appears that the path that we are on is for some leading not to technological enhancement, but instead to an unhealthy dependence. To me, we are no longer looking at technology from a rational perspective.

Is this really the way that we want to go?

When I go on holiday, I make a point of leaving behind any technological devices bar a pen and notepad. I feel fortunate that I can ‘drop out’ in this way and reconnect with what’s important in my life. This ‘disconnecting’ is incredibly important in today’s lifestyle to prevent burnout, though I wonder how this will be possible in the future, when the internet will literally be embedded in your skull? Too much of something is most definately detrimental to our health…

My love of technology has led me down many a path, much of it good, but the the deeper into the cave I go, the more I wish lived without most of it.

photo credit: bennylin0724

You don’t have to be perfect in this world, but you do have to acknowledge your mistakes.

If you can’t acknowledge the things that went wrong, then you can never get over them…
If you can’t get over your mistakes, then you are doomed to repeat them.

This is how many of life’s situations are created, though we are often too blind or too occupied to see the problems that lie directly ahead of us.

A life of faded dreams and failed relationships. These are the norm. The mark by which others compare themselves.

You are not on this earth to be merely normal.

Comparison can only hold you down, and bring you the very things that you wish to avoid.

• Take some time to seek out the mistakes that have shaped you. Find the emotions that you have buried.

• Unearth your emotions and then let them rise through you. In allowing this process, you plant a seed that will bring change.

Change is your saviour, your lifeforce and harbinger of good health.

Change is the perfection that you seek, presented in a form that that you fear.

• See through your emotions and open up to honesty. Let things follow their natural course. Do this, and time will create a friend of your mistakes.

photo credit: fdecomite

For some, having free time is little more than a traded commodity. For the truly unfortunate, free time is like a holy grail, an escape from a hellish life of self inflicted drudgery and poor circumstance.

Every one of us takes it for granted that our lives are primarily time driven. We live and die by the clock, defining our lives by the hours that are given away. It’s one of the defining features of our society.

Smarter types consistently try to cheat time, in order to get more out of it. No doubt you probably do this every other moment of the day without even realising it. We are after all a nation of multitaskers!

How often do you work, read, or use a computer while the television is on? Do you do something else in the 90 seconds it takes to heat something in the microwave?

Productivity is now part of our rising corporate world culture. Learn life hacks here and there, take shortcuts to skip the more mundane tasks that we all hate – You only have to take a quick look on Amazon to see how many books there are offering to teach you in this field.

Are you a productivity devotee? Is it working well for you? Has productivity freed up your time, or has it led to you taking on more work?

Forward, and as fast as possible

In terms of productivity, speed means faster output and in turn quicker results. What a great idea! Learn to be more productive and then use the time you have ’saved’ to enjoy yourself.

Except, who follows this advice?

We are the productivity junkies, filling our day with yet more of the same. We walk gleefully into the idea that the more you get done now, the less you have to do later. While in theory this is a great philosophy, the practicality of the modern world makes later closer to never.

Free time and getting things done are not mutually exclusive by default.

For those of you who think that accelerating your productivity levels is the best thing since sliced bread, allow me to challenge you with another way to tackle embrace your time.

Learn the art of Wu Wei

In English, Wu Wei translates as “Action without action”.

Wu-Wei is about employing a different, and yet still practical perspective on how to get things done.

Imagine for a moment that you are the CEO of a huge company. You have a never ending pile of paperwork, bills to pay and a board of directors that want to know your future plans for progression.

How do you handle such a mammoth workload?

Answer = You delegate. You give your work to someone else, so that you can focus on what matters the most to you. Without this indirect action, no business could ever be successful.

Wu Wei works in a similar fashion, only the work that you delegate is not given to any one person or necessarily any one thing. Wu Wei is about taking the perspective that the world can take care of things for you, or to put it another way – You do not have to control every little aspect of you.

To take this blog as an example. When writing it the words came naturally to me, flowing from mind to page. As any great artist or writer will attest, to force work only meets with frustration. Good ideas come when I am thinking freely and naturally, observing the world go by as it naturally does. When I blog, it’s as if the world around me is giving me the ideas and I am merely capturing them in written format.

You’d be surprised how much the world is willing to do this kind of thing for you, and its not limited to only creative pursuits either.

I’m sure at this point your probably thinking that you can’t just delegate everything and hope that it works out for the best. Yes, this would be silly!

Again, to take my example of writing. While the words flow naturally, there is still work involved to finely hone the resulting product.

Wu Wei is about focusing on what matters, and forgetting what does not.

There is a lot of talk on doing what you love, and thats because Wu Wei is not an all encompassing answer, but it is the fundamental concept that carries you consistently to that often dreamed of outcome.

Some level of inner character is required to fully utilise Wu Wei.

Whatever it is that your dealing with in any given moment, it’s probably not life or death. A struggle to finish can only bring you further struggle. Use Wu Wei though, and you will finish without really doing anything.

Experiment

You can make use of Wu Wei right now. That thing that is on your mind, that is bugging you. Delegate it. Leave it for the world to handle.

The moment you are in now will never come again, so why waste it on something that can most likely be forgotten?

Take a look at nature to see Wu Wei in action everywhere.

Does a cloud look for a place to rain? Or does it move through the sky until the inevitable happens?

Be like the cloud and make your goal inevitable. Know where you want to be, and then use Wu Wei to delegate the work to the world. The opportunities will come, the work will take care of itself. The desired outcome will arise.

Of course, this is only a brief introduction to Wu Wei. And so I would recommend further research on the concept.

Below are some links to start.

Tim

Further reading on Wu Wei:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei
• http://c0c0c0.net/node/706
• http://www.brucealderman.info/blog/2005/10/wei-wu-wei.html

photo credit: Symic

Regular exercise is one of the most important habits you can have in creating and maintaining a positive lifestyle.

Here are my top 5 ways exercise before work can transform your life.

1. Become more attractive

Who doesn’t want to look sexier? While exercise in general can shed pounds and keep you lean and sexy, there are great benefits to working out first thing.

Losing weight with exercise is all about increased metabolic rate. When you do your exercise early, you kick start your metabolism and keep it that way for well after you have finished and arrived at work. You can even burn extra calories for the whole day based solely on that morning workout.

Exercise early on an empty stomach, and your body will get its energy from stored fat instead of from the carbohydrates in your breakfast. Burning fat without prior eating can increase your fat loss by up to 300 percent!

3 times the benefit in 1/3 of the time? Its quite simply the smart thing to do.

Morning exercise can also help you to maintain a moderate diet right through till the evening. Exercise reduces your appetite, which means heavy foods become less appealing. You will also find that your perspective on eating will become healthier too. If you are doing positive things for your physique already, its only a small step to improving your diet.

Why grapple with temptation when you can kill it dead?

Get up early and do those stretches…It all starts there.

A morning exercise routine, is easier to maintain then at other times of the day. So start early, and you’ll start a habit that could change your life.

2. Sleep like a baby

Exercising in the morning improves the quality of your sleep. Create an early morning exercise routine, and you will find that your requirement for long nights begins to subside.

In the first few days that I started to exercise early, I found that I typically saved an hour of sleep each night.

1 hour of morning exercise can lead to breaking even time-wise, giving you all the benefits of exercise for free.

When you get up earlier, you are more likely to go to bed earlier too. Exercising in the morning helps to create a routine that helps to align your natural sleep cycle to your environment.

Start by rising 15 minutes earlier than you normally would. Then move it to 20 minutes, and keep increasing the time each day until you are waking up an hour earlier.

Equally, make sure that you are getting your head down earlier too.The positives far outweigh any negative points. If you put in the effort, doing becomes easier over time.

4. Unleash insane levels of focus to become super productive

Workout in the morning and you will subject yourself to a surge of oxygen supplied directly to your brain.

Mental capability increases for up to 10 hours after exercise. Imagine how much more you could do in a day with extra IQ points?

Just think about all those people thanking you (yourself included), because you met that deadline with time to spare.

For people who like to hack their life and maximize productivity, there is no better way then to maintain peak physical performance. 5 shots of coffee and handfuls of sugary snacks can boost your performance in the short term, but sooner or later you will crash. Exercise in the morning though, and you will maintain solid focus throughout your day.

Morning exercise becomes self perpetuating.

The further you get through the day, the less likely it becomes that you are going to be able to fit exercise into your schedule. When that happens, its the first thing that you will drop.

You can never predict what will happen. So don’t. Get your exercise in early and leave the rest of your day to getting things done.

5. Improve your health and vitality. Feel amazing.

Exercise in the morning on a regular basis, and you will no longer be chasing that euphoria that you feel when you get those endorphins flowing. Instead of avoiding sluggishness, having the routine can top up that great feeling and lead to more confidence.

Having high levels of energy from the moment you start work to the end of the day is life changing. If you are anything like me, you don’t want to just feel good some of the day, but for all of it. Exercising first thing is a fantastic way to achieve this.

After all, what can feel better than knowing you have improved your life situation before you have even started work?

A morning work out can give you a feeling of satisfaction. You know that you are doing something that is positive and is improving your health.

Nobody needs discipline when they are doing something that directly makes them feel good.

If you do your exercise outside, there is no air or noise pollution early in the morning. Being in a calm atmosphere can give you the space to collect your thoughts and understand what it is required of you in the day ahead.

So there you have it. I hope I have convinced you to give morning exercise some of your time and attention.

What will you be doing tomorrow?

photo credit: jesse.millan

Awareness (or rather lack of it) makes the difference between success and failure.

When we go about our lives, our level of awareness is absolutely crucial. If you are not in the moment then you are out of it, and that could be the difference between success or failure, or even life or death.

All it takes is one second lost in thought and everything changes. Your awareness has to be maintained when it counts, trained like a muscle and given rest when not needed. The good news is that the more you practice awareness, the more aware you become.

A biking trip to remember

I was recently reacquainted with the value of awareness, when one evening I was cycling home after being out training. Usually after I have been exercising, I tend to feel relaxed and at ease with the world, and this comes out in the way that I cycle.

I was cycling down an unfamiliar, steep road and because it was dark, I couldn’t really see where I was going. Before I knew what was about to happen, I was heading straight for a curb without enough room to brake! I must have hit the curb at around 25 mph and as you can imagine, I went straight over the handle bars. Luckily, managing to fall gracefully, I landed on the cold black tarmac with only localised damage to my right elbow.

I spent the next week with many hours of lost sleep, due to even the slightest movement aggravating the pain of my open wound.

Not being in the moment created weeks of pain and irritation for me.

I didn’t get on my bike again until 4 days later, and I could tell my confidence was shot. I was trying almost too hard now to be traffic aware, and as I turned my head to check for oncoming cars, I cycled into a wall. Luckily this time around, I was only going about 5 mph! Despite this set back, I continued on my journey and my confidence slowly returned to its prior state.

This experience taught me about the importance of knowing what is going on around you. What happened next though, really shocked my system.

The next week to the day, I was on my bike again (on my way to training this time) and having regained my confidence, I was taking care to be more aware.

I came to my third set of traffic lights and turned to cross the road. Suddenly, behind me I heard an almighty crunch!

There had been a cyclist only moments ago, parked in front of me – Now he was underneath a bus! I turned around as fast as I could making my way to where he was. Hopefully, he was alright.

Arriving at his side, I discovered that thankfully… he was. He got out from underneath the front of the bus, and I could see that he was not physically harmed, though I distinctively remember the look on his face. This certainly wasn’t an experience he was likely to forget for a long long time…The front wheel of his bike was completely crushed under the might of the double decker.

The bus driver leaves his vehicle and storms towards us swearing blind at the cyclist, adament that the biker was to blame for the accident. The cyclist was practically oblivious to the drivers presence, his face as white as a fresh linen sheet!

Lessons in awareness

Now, each of these linked events taught me a vital lesson upon reflection.

1. Safety takes precedence over personal gain

The bus driver was clearly not aware of his actions, even after the incident had happened, he was still only interested in his daily thoughts which were on the safety of his employment instead of those around him. Most likely he was thinking about something similar when the accident actually happened. Instead of shouting at the cyclist, ensuring his health and wellbeing would have been more worthy.

2. Know when and when not to be vigilant.

The cyclist hadn’t been looking at what was going on around him. I can imagine that his thoughts were probably on getting home, having a nice meal and a shower. I have been like this many times too. Until these experiences, I would regularly travel around on my bike wearing headphones and sometimes not even holding on to the handlebars. I can only have been heading for my accident.

Likewise, in my own case I hit that curb because I too was wrapped up in my own thought patterns. I was sat on my bike not focusing on my external senses, and so I was no longer in the moment – Not a good place to be cycling down a hill in the dark!

Since these events, I have learned to pay far more attention to my surroundings.

You never know what is going on around you until you look.

photo credit: jesse.millan

All you have to do to achieve is show up.

Thats it.

• There’s no need to worry about the how.
• No need to think about what if’s
• No need to be afraid of consequences.

Show up, and you will prove your worth every time.

You have unbound potential within you. Why not let it out?

You might think that turning up isn’t a big deal – but it is.

Life only happens when you’re in it.

*What are you going to show up to today? Tomorrow? For the next ten years?

…because If you’re not willing to show up, then your not willing to succeed at life.

photo credit: ЕленАндреа

In artistic or creative pursuits, how quickly you complete a piece of work has no bearing whatsoever on the result. Indeed, it is the feeling that comes from the work that makes it worthwhile in the first place. This feeling is only compounded when the work is finished and viewable for all to see. Nothing feels better than showing off something that you are really pleased with!

A good foundation is always better than racing through material as fast as you can.

Some of my own musical works I have been working on since 2001. I have shortlisted a handful of the best tracks to go into an album that I plan to finish soon. That is a long time to work on something, but it has never been a waste for me.

Even if nobody else likes it when they listen to it, the sheer amount of time that I have spent on my music means that I can appreciate it to a very high level. In ways, it has become an emotional anchor in my life. The songs that I have tried to force to completion have always ended up sounding lifeless and dull. Over time, I have learned that it is best to sit on a peice of work for a certain time before I make it public, that way I can come back to it with a fresh perspective and make sure that I’m not racing it.

Often I find that when I’m ‘in the zone’ its easy to think that I’ve come up with the worlds best record, only to find that when I come back to it later, it is a total dud!

You can race a piece of work and it will get finished faster, but will it be worthy of your time and appreciation?

What are you racing to complete right now that doesn’t need to be rushed?

How would taking more time and care over it improve its quality?

Buy at AllPosters.com

Wherever I look, people are talking about confidence – it certainly is a hot topic!

I find that people across the internet are asking questions like “How can I have more confidence?”, and while there seems to be a lot of conversation on how to have more confidence, I don’t see anybody explaining what confidence actually is.

So just what is confidence?

Well take away all the fluff, and what you are left with is a specific set of physical behaviours that create an internal feeling of control.

That’s right, physical behavour is a pre-cursor to confidence. In other words:

It’s WHAT you DO that counts in BEING confident.

Often, when a word is used widely in society, we have a tendency to attach certain feelings to that word which can influence our behavior. Confidence for many has some baggage with it and this can prevent us from acting in a way that would normally be natural to us.

Social expectations can cause many of us to think “I don’t feel confident.” or “I am not confident doing that.”

When this happens to you, it is an important moment, as you are illustrating to yourself and others a conformance to the status quo.

Lets move forward from this – Remember:

If you don’t feel confident, then that is your cue to do something.

Doing something creates a new feeling inside of you. A feeling that the doing wasn’t so bad after all. Do it again and that feeling grows. Do it enough and that feeling becomes congruent. Congratulations, you now have confidence!

Of course, by this I don’t mean doing anything. No, if you lack confidence in a certain area, then the solution is to act in regard to the very thing that makes you feel that way.

Confidence is a natural by-product of the following three stages:

1. Doing


2. Feeling


3. Being

So if you think that you lack confidence in some area of your life, you don’t!

The only thing that can be lacking, is the experience of one of the above stages.

Think about a situation in which you don’t feel confident.

1. What stage of the process is missing?
2. What are YOU going to DO about IT?
3. How does DOING make YOU FEEL?
4. Are YOU going to KEEP DOING IT?