Personal Growth & Transformation

17 Tips for Being Organized, Staying Sane, and Getting Things Done

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being organized

If you read last week’s post Well… I Have A New Job, you will be aware that I am now also working as an editor for the popular self improvement blog Pick The Brain. I was very excited when I was offered this job a month ago, but I also realized that I would need to be on my best game if I were to perform well not only in this new role, but also in all the other roles I have in my life.

In the past being organized has not been a strength of mine. I was that person in university who would hand an essay in that I had had months to work on with only minutes to spare (and this was only after several frantic coffee-filled days of last minute research and writing). Anyway I have changed a lot since then, so as promised last week I will let you into my life and show you how I have prepared myself for this new commitment. I hope, of course, that you may pick up a couple of tips and tricks that may be of benefit.

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Actors, Astronauts, and that Thing We Call Happiness

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happiness

Well Heath Ledger is dead – another young person gone in their prime. I must admit this loss hit me harder than your average death as Heath hailed from my home city of Perth, was also a father, and apparently battled depression.

Why is it that Heath Ledger and all these other celebrities we see going to rehab – Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, etc – are/ were seemingly so unhappy? They have the world at their fingertips, right? Well from my experience there is more to happiness then first meets the eye. The depression I mentioned at the start of the article is now long behind me, and I would like to share what I consider to be 4 key ingredients to a happy life that may help to explain all this unhappiness we see.

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How to Kickstart Your Day

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kickstart day

How do you start your day?

Do you greet the morning by hiding your head under the covers and swiping your hand madly around in search of the alarm’s snooze button? Or are you eager to get out of bed and jump into the new day? (If the snooze button is your best friend, I’d suggest Peter’s article describing how he won the battle of the bed.)

And once you are awake, what do you do next?

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Understanding the Role Humility Plays in Everyday Life

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“Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.” – Henry David Thoreau

When do you consider your life “finished”? At what point can you hang up your hat and say that you truly have done everything you wanted in life, you are perfect in every way and that you have learned all you need to know? The answer for all of us is the same – never. None of us can ever say with absolutely certainty that we have truly arrived and there is nothing more for us to do. Just like life is a never ending journey, the goal of being all that we can be in life is also never ending. We all have work to do – be it in our personal lives, our careers or in our community. There are always areas we can work on improving, new ideas we can learn and new experiences we can have and share with others.

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What Are You Doing That’s Different?

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doing different

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” — E.M. Gray

I write this having just returned from an early morning run. The local neighborhood looked beautiful covered in a thin layer of snow, but as you would expect I had the streets to myself at 5.30am.

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LASIK Eye Surgery. Have You? Would You?

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If you were to ask me what one thing would dramatically improve my life, my answer would very likely be “to have perfect eyesight”.

At the same time, however, I have always been uneasy with anything to do with eyes. For example, those movie scenes where a sharp instrument comes agonizingly close to piercing the eye have always sent shivers down my spine. This probably explains why, despite wanting to have better eyesight and it being a fairly common procedure these days, I haven’t really explored the option of LASIK eye surgery up until now.

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50 Tips From My Year of Change

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year of change

This has been a major year of change in my life – I became a father for the first time in February, I began blogging in April, I relocated from Australia to Canada in July, and I started a new job in November. Along the way I have picked up a variety of tips that I have incorporated into my daily routine to make life happier, healthier, and more productive. Here are 50 of my favourites:

1. Start with the fundamentals: if you want to live a great life, start by getting the fundamentals right. Examples of what I consider the “fundamentals” include an open mind and a willingness to change. If you would like to read more, check out my article 30 Fundamentals of a Wonderful Life (it was one of my most popular in 2007).

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How to Live Forever

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“When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.” – Ancient Sanskrit saying

Last week Todd, founder of We The Change, challenged me to write my own eulogy. In his words, “although morbidly sounding, this exercise can be quite powerful and help you generate a crystal clear vision of how you want your life to turn out.” So here it goes….

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Who Else Wants to Live a Sweet Life?

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Some things, to me, are very black and white. Take, for instance, the case of a Minocqua, Wisconsin, gas station. A Store employee made the mistake of entering the per-gallon price of gas as 32 cents instead of $3.29. The employee then left, leaving the station unattended, yet open for pay-at-the-pump customers.

What happened? Local residents spread the word to others, and, before the error could be corrected, cars had lined up and 42 people purchased 586 gallons of gas before a local police officer saw the commotion and called the store owner.

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How to Be Annoying

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annoying

“You never know just how you look through other peoples’ eyes” – this is a line from a well known song when I was growing up (Pepper by the Butthole Surfers for those interested). There is definitely a lot of truth to this. That said, there are some things that, if you do them, are guaranteed to piss people off.

Now just to be clear here, the following are things I recommend you don’t do. And one more thing: I’m certainly not perfect, and there are a few things on this list that I’m guilty of doing. If anything, writing this list has helped me identify some areas I can work on.

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5 Essential Personal Development Podcasts

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Podcasts are basically pre-recorded audio programs you can download. The great thing about podcasts is that you can download an episode and begin listening to it in just minutes either on your computer or portable listening device (iPod, Blackberry, etc). This means you can listen to them anytime, anywhere (eg while jogging, driving, working out or taking a walk).

Below are 5 of my favorite personal development podcasts. Enjoy!

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