Sit up a Tree

Want an extra 14 hours a week?  Really, it is possible, and no, you don’t need a time machine!  All it takes are a few simple lifestyle changes, each of which can gain you an extra 7 to 14 hours a week of time that you can spend more productively.

Just imagine what you could do with all that extra time!

• Get up an hour earlier and go to bed an hour later
  Most people are getting way too much sleep.  If you sleep 8 hours a day, that mounts up to 56 hours a week (or 2,33 days!).  Over a month that is a whole 10 days spend in bed.  Live to be 90 and you’ve spend 30 years in your pit. 
  Claw back some of that time by getting up an hour earlier and going to bed an hour later.
• Make use of car time
  If you spend a lot of time in your car, make good use of it.  Turn your car into a learning machine and listen to audio books and personal development tapes and CDs.  Install a car phone so you can be conducting business while on the move.  Don’t look at car time as wasted time.
  If you travel by train or bus instead of car, there’s no reason why you can’t make use of that time constructively either – in fact, you can do more since you’re not driving!
• Do you really need to take a “lunch hour”?
  The answer is no, you don’t.  Eat quickly and then use the remaining time constructively, either by getting more work done or doing something that you really want to do.
• Cut down on telly time
  The TV will suck your time like nothing else.  Plan what shows you want to watch in advance, watch them and then turn the TV off and get on with your life. 
  Want to watch a series?  Why waste time watching it when it airs – buy it on DVD when it’s out and watch it when you want to watch it.  This has the added advantage of not having commercial breaks that waste your time.  Alternatively, use a system like TiVo to record your programming so you can watch it later.
  Very few people get to the end of their lives and say “I wish I’d watched more TV”.
• Plan your day in advance
  Many people waste a lot of time because they haven’t planned what they are going to do during the day.  As a result of this they pinball between tasks in an inefficient way.  Five minutes of planning will save you at least a hour each day.

Enjoy the extra time you gain!  Use it wisely!

Want to give up Coca Cola? You’re not alone, may people have found themselves drinking too much Coca Cola and want to cut back or eliminate it completely from their body. I used to find myself drinking as many as six or even eight cans worth of Coke a day. Way too much. To tell you the truth I felt dependent on it and needed it to be able to function properly. In fact, whenever I tried to cut back, I suffered severe headaches (caffeine headaches). This made me drink more cola. Ugh. When you’re drinking so much Coke that cutting back give you headaches, you’re drinking too much.

But why is Coca Cola (and other colas, Pepsi and the others are no better) difficult to give up? Simple – they contain a LOT of caffeine and sugar, both of which are chemicals which alter your body’s chemistry. Whether Coke is addictive or not is not an argument that I’m interested in getting caught up in, suffice to say that people do find it very difficult to give up.

So, how should you give up drinking cola? Well, the first thing that you need to do is decide 100% that you want to cut down or give up. Be honest otherwise you’ll be sucked back into drinking the stuff. Set yourself a goal. Write it down and make it a commitment. To be honest with you, in the long run it’s easier to give up completely than it is to cut down, however, cutting down might be a good route to giving up. It might help to remind yourself how bad cola is – the sugar, the calories, the caffeine, the acid rotting your teeth … pick what works for you. Decide that enough is enough! If you can’t come up with a good reason to dump cola, you’re not yet ready to do it. Have a good long think about why you want to quit cola and come up with at least two strong reasons.

Remember to be kind to yourself too – if cola is one of the biggest hurdles facing you, you’re not doing too badly at all!

Secondly, replace the cola with something else. Lemonade, green tea, water or water with a dash of lemon are good alternatives. You’ll need to keep your liquid intake up. Drinking between 1.5 to 2 liters of water a day will help flush toxins out of your body and take your mind off cola.

Now to the part that people find difficult – the giving up part. There are two ways that you can approach giving up:

– Go cold turkey, decide to quit and then quit
– Ramp down over a period of time

When I quit I went cold turkey because while it’s harder during the initial stages, the process is faster overall. I also quit coffee at the same time – a double whammy.

So what can you expect during your first few days of quitting? Here’s some of the symptoms you might experience:

– Headaches
– Lethargy
– Excessive thirst
– Inability to concentrate
– Disturbed sleet patterns

If you experience one of more of these symptoms, don’t panic – they will pass after a few days (week at most for most people). If you’re aware of the fact that things are going to be a little difficult before you start, you’re less likely to become disheartened and give up.

Keep your fluid intake up – that will lessen the symptoms. Also, remind yourself regularly that you don’t drink Coke any more.

“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”
“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”
“I don’t drink Coca Cola!”

The urge to give up and reach for a cold Coke might become quite strong, but resist this at all costs because one can can and probably will undo all the progress you’ve make and all the suffering that you will have been through will have been for nothing.

Also, make it harder for yourself to fall off the wagon. Firstly, don’t buy Coke – if it’s not in your fridge, it’s harder to drink. Also, try to avoid places where you’d normally buy cola (or alter your habits while you’re there – that starts by being alert to falling into the old habits). Resist giving in. You can do it!

After 7 days you should be free of most of the withdrawal symptoms and after 21 days, you’ll have installed a new Cola-free habit. Congratulations!

We all have habits that we’d like to be able to install.  At the same time, we have habits that we’d like to get rid of.

The trick with habits is giving them enough time to install, or allowing enough time to pass that the old habit has been uninstalled. As a general rule of thumb, you need 21 days to both install a new habit and get rid of an old one.  For example, let’s say that you want to install the habit of exercising every day.  Most people think that after a couple of days of exercising daily that the habit is installed and they can take their eye off the ball. 

Not true! 

No matter what habit you are trying to install, you are looking at an uphill slog for at least the first 14 days and taking your eye off the ball for this period is a mistake.  It is at this early stage that you want to be have schemes to remind you of what you want to be doing (employ the use of Post-It Notes or other people!).  During this initial period be careful about letting anything get in your way.  If one day you don’t feel like exercising this could be enough to allow you to break the habit’s install routine.  Force yourself to stick to the routine!  If you just go tot he gym for 10 minutes, you’ve done it and that will help reinforce the routine.

Same goes if you want to uninstall a habit.  You’ve gotta give it time.  Say you want to stop biting your nails, you’ve got to be really vigilant during the first three weeks that you don’t bring those nails up to your mouth in that time – you really have to catch yourself doing it because the habit (this one being a bad one) is installed so deep that it’s automatic.  Those fingers will make their way to your mouth by themselves if you don’t watch out for it!

Make the power of habits work for you!  But remember, give them time.  Don’t expect to install a habit in a few hours.  Plan on having to work at it daily for a few weeks and you’ll then notice after a while that it’s become a habit.  That’s when you can start taking your eye off the ball and relaxing a little.