1. Choose a task
2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the kitchen timer)
3. Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings (check it off the paper)
4. Take a break, something like a 5 minutes
5. Start over and make a longer break every four Pomodoros

One of the countless variants suggests using 15 minutes time boxes and forgetting about finishing the task – the act of starting to work on it is enough.

Variants of Pomodoro are the most basic and effective way of fighting procrastination (not some fancy GTD systems). The problem with procrastination isn’t with poor task management skills, but with psychological anxiety of doing the work we feel might be unpleasant or difficult. Tricking yourself into starting a task (in the most difficult case have somebody to “force” you to start a task) is typically enough to get rid of that anxiety. Once we get into “flow” (more on that in some other post), the emotional view of the work starts to fade away.

Differences in the approaches are a result of individual benchmarking of the time one needs to get into flow. Some advocate shorter boxes, some others advocate longer, but the most effective method for you needs some testing and the analysis of the work needed. For emails, I use 5 minutes boxes. For writing, half an hour is often a better idea.

The last thing to remember is that once you get into “flow” of doing the task and the alarm gets off, you have the option of turning it off and going back to the work. If you feel like continuing the task, it’s better to skip the break and move on if the momentum is there and you feel like you could go for another few minutes. Too often people treat the technique used as an assembly instruction – if you skip some parts, everything will fall and break apart eventually. Don’t fall into that trap – remember that once you started the work, the technique has already done its part.

Image via Wikipedia

One of the most common mistakes of modern green/sustainability movements is a tendency to cut back on quality of everything. While it makes no sense to buy expensive things you do not need, people often try to ignore the quality of things they use the most often. Look at your bed. You spend one third of your life in a bed, and there’s no reason to buy a cheap one. Another example is a chair. If you spend lots of time in front of a computer, why on earth don’t you get a decent chair? What about a large monitor, or two monitors if you make a living of computer-related work? Simply, things you use the most should of a high quality. Period. You can cut back on many other things you do not need or use that often. If you do not cook (or rarely), set of expensive knifes is going to be a waste of money. If you do not commute daily by car, a luxury car is an unreasonable expense.

We tend to think that luxury, high quality things or subcontracting some of your duties are reserved for the most rich ones. This is not true. The middle class aspires to “trade up” to a lifestyle of the riches (this phenomenon has been described in an excellent  book Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods – and How Companies Create Them).Income might not allow to trade up entirely, but making a dent by buying quality goods or outsourcing some of the unpleasant or complicated things is the supremely appropriate way of spending money. If you are a writer without much of technical skills, it is better to outsource reformatting you book for Kindle to someone who has the necessary skills, instead of making it by yourself, wasting a lot of time and energy in the process.

Do not let the script of sustainability to enslave you. Spend the money where it is worth.

Image via Wikipedia

Being a parent is a enormous task. You are responsible for shaping a new human being. It depends on us, and our values, who our children is going to be in the future. As we struggle to raise happy, independent and creative kids, how we should support them in their growth? Here’re eight rules of being supporting parent:

1. Respect the needs of a child. Fulfill the needs in respect to the needs of your own and other family members.

2. Make a child aware that you accept its emotions, even the difficult ones. However, don’t accept harming behaviour dictated by difficult emotions. Show to a child how to deal with emotions without hurting others.

3. Allow a child to solve its problems by itself. 

4. Allow a child to make its own decision and make him/her to accept consequences of these decisions. Of course, exceptions are decisions leading to obvious dangerous situation.

5. Encourage a child to cooperate and help, but with all respect to its opinions.

6. Create conditions for empathic listening, so you can enter child’s world with intention of understanding it. Don’t assess, don’t criticize.

7. Always go for a dialog, solving critical issues together, negotiation and creating solutions acceptable for all family members.

8. Accept, that problems in a family have to happen, no matter how much you try. This is how life of a parent looks like. Just be prepared to look for creative solutions

Use volunteering to face some of your fears. Push yourself to grow. Are you uncomfortable around children or homeless people? How do you feel about domestic violence? Do you avoid people who are dying? You can use volunteering to face your fears head-on, gradually replacing them with greater truths.

If you are in the US you can start by visiting VolunteerMatch or you can just ask around if somebody near you could use some free help. However, before applying for volunteer work, keep in mind that each type of help requires different skills and mental attitude.

1. Seniors

You might be involved in facilitation of various activities (such as games), spending hours just talking one on one (often just listening), or helping people moving around. Be prepared to face depression and learn how to deal with unfriendly or withdrawn people (especially in convalescent homes – seniors are rarely visited by their relatives there and there’s very little they do beyond watching TV, despite all the efforts of the people who run the place).

2. Disabled or ill children

Children are full of energy and joy. Most of the time you are going to focus on channeling their energy in a positive way. Their activities are pre-planned and adjusted to their disability, so typically you become part of these activities instead of inventing them on your own (it’s very important – some ideas might not fit well with their abilities and attitude). Slightly different case are terminally ill children – volunteering for such work requires often psychological strength and excellent communicating skills, because often you need to help not only a kid, but their families as well.

3. Community

Image by vastateparksstaff via Flickr

Typically thought as something people with legal troubles end doing. However, if you keep your heart open, there are plenty of ways to help local communities: from picking trash (probably not the most fancy idea, but have you heard about Earth Day?), planting flowers, picking up kids from school, etc. If you are a computer geek, organizing and maintaining internet forum or board is also a good idea.

4. Carreer

This is something people don’t typically recognize as a volunteering, but nevertheless it’s still is. How does volunteering by a career looks like? You work because you want to make a difference. You are motivated because you are giving your best to change the world a little bit, not because your boss told you or money are on the table. With this attitude you might pick a career on public service, non-profit organization or church of some kind. Or you might start a socially-aware business, that serves an important role in a society, instead of just reaping the money from the sales.

Image via Wikipedia

Audio learning is an extremely attainable option as it could be carried out at any time and according to your convenience – you can study in the car or truck or when doing the laundry. Audiobooks tend to be more limited in their variety than conventional books as well as e-books, but you will find thousands or thousands to pick from in the business and personal development areas. They are easily available through Amazon online marketplace or from direct download at Audible.com or iTunes. Most resources come in ca. one hour long pieces, nevertheless, you can without difficulty absorb the content in half an hour or less. When you practice for enough time, it’s even possible to accomplish it in under fifteen minutes.

Current media players can play audio at faster rates than normal, and they’ll also instantly alter the pitch to ensure the voices appear faster yet not distorted. Windows Media Player has this feature integrated (simply click Enhancements -> Show Play Speed Settings, it will bring up the rate settings that permit you to boost the speed of your files you’re playing), some player need a plug-in for that. When you’re not with the laptop or computer, it is possible to alter the tempo of the track in audio editing program, like Audacity, and save sped-up copy to CD or mobile player.

You should have no problem understanding spoken audio tracks material at 1.4x speed. And after a couple of moments very likely you are going to deal with 2x without any decrease in comprehension. That can reduce your audio learning sessions right down to 50% of time. Your brain can potentially deal with the faster input rate than 2x, since you can think considerably quicker than anybody can speak.

I would recommend working with earphones when listening at rates over 2x, simply because it helps in cutting background noises and makes it much simpler to continue to be concentrated. The grade of your headsets will primarily determine how deformed the sound recording gets to be at swifter playback rates.

In case you leap directly to a rate of 4x and up with no rehearsing at reduced speeds, the content may appear so garbled you will not be capable of making a sense of it. On the other hand your mind will ultimately adjust. You are going to begin to detect phrases and words, and with ongoing training, you will become efficient at determining what exactly is being said. Even at 4x speed, you could be still listening deliberately. Chances are you’ll miss a couple of words in some places, however, you will be able to understand the meaning. Even more, most probably you are going to discover that whenever you pay attention to audio content at the faster than usual rate, your understanding and retention of the material increases significantly. As opposed to becoming slowed down within the low-level specifics and examples, you emerge with a clear sense of the big picture.

This hint can be applied to video lessons as well, however most players do not have this feature. Therefore I recommend excellent and free player VLC – as one of the very few video players has the option of changing the tempo of the video.