To create new habits use baby steps

Let's consider exercising. Exercising is good for you, but exercising is hard to do. It consumes your time and energy. It is recommended to have an aerobic exercise for two hours per week.

The main idea is to start with small and gradually increase exercise. For example, you could start with exercising for 3 minutes each day. Do some stretching, one push up, a little bit of running and jumping around (search for info on the Internet and consult your doctor about exercising). You will certainly be able to find 3 minutes each day and exercising for 3 minutes is not that hard. At the beginning there will be no much exercising and effects, but idea is to start a new habit.

After one week or so, increase exercising to 4 minutes per day (that would be 28 minutes per week). Increase exercising for one minute after each week. After one month you should establish a new habit, and you will exercise 7 minutes per day (or 49 minutes per week). After four month you will exercise about two hours per week or (about 20 minutes per day)

Remember: start will small and gradually increase. That is what babies do and walk and run after several years perfectly.

35 things you could do in five minutes

This list is not universal. You might find some things useful so use at as a starting point for your own list. The main reason for making such list is to be prepared for time gaps. Time gaps usually occurs when you wait something to happen. You should have appropriate materials with you (to do lists, piece of paper, ...). Filling ten such time gaps will give you an extra hour a day.

1. Socialize
   
2. Write down your ideas
   
3. Make a phone call
4. Relax
5. Decluter you area
6. Write a grocery list
7. Change your mood
   
8. Check your to do lists
9. Ask yourself "Is the following task really that important?"
10. Teach your child something
11. Clean your monitor
12. Watch people around you and practice reading body language
13. Visualize your goals
14. Pay your bills online
15. Change your clothes
16. Make up the bed
17. Scramble some eggs
18. Prepare food for further processing
19. Learn one word in a foreign language
20. Do nothing
21. Make a plan
22. Fix something that's broken
    
23. Walk a little bit
24. Prepare for a day
25. Try not to buy anything
26. Try to invest money saved by buying
27. Think about random thing in your life that you could improve
28. Exercise a little bit
    
29. Read a magazine or a book
30. Reflect about your carrier
    
31. Reflect about your relationships
32. Reflect about your job
33. Think about birthday gifts for loved ones
    
34. List your positive sides
35. Eat an apple
36. Finish 5 minute task from the most important project
    

Create a list of tasks you could finish in 5 minutes

Why you should create such list? We often have some time gaps between major tasks. Having nothing prepared to work on you will waste that time. So what we could do? Make a list of things that could be done in five minutes or less.

After that, prepare everything in order to work on such tasks (notebook, pencil, pda, ...).

Learn to recognize such time gaps and fill it with some useful work.

How to track expenses?

An ideal system for tracking expenses should be simple enough and good enough. It is hard to maintain both simplicity and quality. Therefore, you should think about things you actually want to catch using your tracking system. There are several issues you might want to track.

• date and time of spending
• amount
• specific product that you buy
  
• type of expenses
• point of sale
• manufacturer
• environmental issues (recyclable or not)
• ...

It would be nice to have all those features in our tracking system, but it would take several hours per week to type in all those data. One solution is to hire somebody to do it for you, but it is wasting of money if you don't need all those features. So what you could do now?

1. What types you are going to track? It would be nice to track gifts to family, gifts to friend, even maybe gift to a person, but it would take time. My suggestion is "No more than 10 types of expenses". Reserve one type called "Other expenses". Take a look at the following example:
   
   • transport
   • house maintenance
     
   • leisure
   • mortgages and other financial expenses
     
   • food
   • junk food
   • kids
   • clothes
   • investments
     
   • other expenses
     
   
   
2. Create a spreadsheet. Label three columns as: type of expenses, date of expense, amount spent. You could add one column for specific notes if you like.
3. Type in data daily or weekly.
   

Some recommendations

• Usually is doesn't matter if you miss accurate date. It is important to put in appropriate month. Therefore, you could even create combo boxes for choosing types, and months. Any actual data you have to type in is the amount of an expense.
• Even actual amount is not that important (there is not big difference between $27.89 and $28). Such data would be perfect but it could help to get a rough picture about your spending.
  
• Resist the need to modify types for first month or year. After that you can modify the list of types, but keep it simple as much as possible. The key point it to keep is simple because the more difficult tracking is, it is more is probable to abandon the tracking.
• You can group several expenses. For example: You buy apples for $5, carrots for $4, milk for $4.5 and pretzels for $1.5. You can type in:
  
  1. food, May, $13.5.
  2. junk food, May, $1.5
     

Using this method, you should spend no more than 30 minutes per week, or 3-4 minutes per day. And that is perfect for filling the time gaps in daily schedules.

How to deal with unpleasant tasks?

There are several strategies for dealing with the tasks we don't like.

1. Do it first thing in the morning. That way you fight procrastination and the rest of the day you should feel fine.
   
2. Make the task pleasant. If you don't like cooking, try with cooking exotic food or listen music you love.
3. Reward yourself. When you finish with task, reward yourself. Meditate, socialize or do something else that you like.
4. Delegate. Is it really necessary that you personally do that?
5. Eliminate. Do you really have to do it?
   
6. Split the task. Smaller task are less unpleasant.
7. Why this task is unpleasant? Find out the reasons for your negative emotions, and fix it.
8. Use calendar and to do list. Having unpleasant task in writing somehow makes you think about task as a fact.
9. Make a habit of doing something unpleasant every day. That way you will stretch your comfort zone and less tasks will be unpleasant.
10. It doesn't need to be perfect. The task should be done. It is not necessary to be perfect.
    
11. Start with the subtasks that are not that unpleasant. Not all tasks should be done in some order. You could attack the task from the point that you find interesting.
12. Tomorrow is your enemy. Keep in mind that this task will not be more pleasant tomorrow.
    
13. Stop negative thoughts. For example you might think: "I hate responding to all those emails". The more emails the more you hate responding. If you switch that line of thinking with "I wander if there is something that I can learn from this email?" answering emails could be less unpleasant.
14. Group unpleasant tasks. You could schedule some time for doing unpleasant tasks, for example every Monday (9-11).
    

What tasks you could delegate?

The answer is quite simple "All of them" unless you want to do it yourself. Here is a list of tasks that could be delegated. Brain storm and find what you would add to the list.

1. Communication (dealing with mail, phone and emails).
2. Document formating (desktop publishing, web site, presentations (power point)
3. Data processing
4. Fact finding
5. Bookkeeping
6. Writing
7. Marketing
8. Product selling
9. Product delivery
10. Photocopying, printing, collating
11. Packing
12. Finding prospects
13. Cold calling
14. Answering usual questions
15. Market analysis
16. Product manufacturing
17. Product development
18. Searching for credit
19. Gardening
20. Housekeeping
21. Mowing lawns
22. Dealing with laundry
23. Buying groceries
24. Cooking
25. Cleaning
26. Car washing
27. Car maintenance
28. Baby sitting
29. Personal tutoring
30. Personal coaching
...

Why to delegate tasks?

There are several possible reasons for delegation of tasks:

1. You don't know how to complete the task,
2. You know how to complete the task, but someone could finish it sooner and better,
3. You don't like working on that task,
4. You don't have the time for that task,
5. It is cheaper if someone else do it,

Some of this reasons we are aware of and we delegate tasks without thinking. For example when we are in legal trouble, we don't hesitate to ask or hire a lawyer. Lawyer know how to complete the task, and it is probably cheaper to hire a lawyer than to pay $100k penalty or even to go to prison.

On the other hand, usually we don't delegate regularly. We usually delegate in the case of emergency. I believe that we could delegate far more than we do. Decision process of whether you should delegate or not could look like this.

• Calculate the price of task if you have to do it.
  For example, you have a lawn that should be mowed. You have a low cost lawn mower and using it you could mow your lawn for 2 hours. Your pay per hour is 15$. Than the cost of you doing it is 30$+amortization of your lawn mower.
• Calculate the price of task if someone else is going to do it
  For example, The Lawn Mower corp. could mow your lawn for one hour, charging you 25$ per hour.
• Find out what is cheaper!
  In this example it is cheaper to hire The Lawn Mower corp. 25$ vs. 30$+amortization of your lawn mower. In that case you don't even need to have a lawn mower, and you can do something more purposefully with that money.

Of course, another part of the equation would be the pleasure for mowing your lawn. Don't delegate a tasks that you enjoy doing just for couple of dollars.

Twenty tips for beating procrastination

1. Designate a couple of minutes for the task you procrastinate. A couple of minutes of any task is not mission impossible. I hate washing dishes, but washing dishes only 2 minutes is not that hard. After that, you can continue with procrastinated activity or do something else.


2. If it comes to your mind that you should do something, then do it NOW. It might not be possible, but start with it anyway. For example, you could watch the TV, but it pops into your mind that you should wash the dishes. Usual response, is "I'll wait for this show to finish and then I will wash the dishes". Of course, after that you will be tired, or something else. This behavior becomes a habit. You must stop with this habit. Therefore, whenever it comes to your mind that you should do something do it instantly.


3. Designate some time for doing unpleasant things and be very specific. For example, I will wash my dishes from 7pm to 7:30pm every day. Use alarm clock as reminder.

4. Split tasks to very small subtasks. Such small tasks would not be that hard to do.

5. Create a reward system. For example: for each plate I wash, I will spend 1 minutes watching TV,

6. Create a list of unpleasant tasks. Do everyday something unpleasant from that list, starting from the least unpleasant. That way, some tasks will not be unpleasant and there will be less tasks that you procrastinate on.

7. Modify you internal thinking. If you think "I hate to wash the dishes" and hate every plate that you wash, you will certainly delay washing. When washing the dishes start to block that line of thoughts. For example, whenever I wash the dishes, I will listen for sounds that I make, or I will think about my family, or something else that makes you happy.

8. Set a deadline for finishing a certain task. For example, I will finish washing the dishes before tonights game.

9. Imagine the negative consequences of not finishing a task.

10. Imagine the positive consequences of finishing a task.

11. Find the reasons behind procrastination: If it is physical (tired, hungry, thirsty ...) fix it is possible. If it is psychological change the line of thinking: If it is not fun, then find something funny inside of it, if you are scared find something in it that you are not afraid of.

12. Block the things that you use when you procrastinate. For example sell your TV, turn off your computer, or block the Internet.

13. Find something that you like to do about this task and do it.

14. Do only one thing at the time. You cannot do two things at the time, and if you try to do it, one will certainly be postponed.

15. Make a daily schedule, and try to stick with it.

16. Make a habit of finishing tasks. Even if it is boring. We usually procrastinate on unfinished tasks.

17. Read and learn about task management and similar topics.

18. Schedule some things that you like to do. Don't work only on task that you dislike. Life should be fun.

19. Delegate things that you can delegate. You could even pay someone else to do it if possible.

20. Find someone who will beat you until you finish the task. Well, not literally. Someone that phone you and nag about finishing the task could push you to do it eventually.

An easy way to modify undesired behavior

Let's look at my example. Not long ago, I found myself spending some time on the game solitaire. That, of course, is not the most efficient use of my time, but somehow it became a habit. In order to stop with playing solitaire, I decided to do something useful before each game.

I have chosen a task that takes two ore three minutes to complete. The task was to translate 10 words from a foreign language, as I was trying to make a small dictionary. After completing the task I allow myself to complete with some other task or to play the game. There were several reasons for doing this.

• I will do one useful task at least,
  
• I will have less time to play the game,
• In order to play the game I have to do something, so playing game is not that interesting as before.

How can you implement this method in your life?

• Find undesired behavior,
• Find some useful task that doesn't take much time (3 minutes max.) that could be done before undesired behavior. Ideally the task should be continuable (you can do it more that three minutes),
  
• In order to indulge yourself with that behavior, finish the task first,
• After finishing the task, decide what would you like to do? Start with behavior or continue with the task
  

For example:

• You watch to much TV,
• Useful task could be to wash two dirty plates or to do some exercise (two push ups) ,
• Oblige yourself that before watching any TV you must wash two plates.
• When you start
  

It is important to notice that if the task is time consuming, you will avoid to do it. That is the reason that the task was to wash TWO plates, and not all dirty dishes (or to finish complete aerobic session).

Three methods for prioritizing your tasks

After creating a task list, the next step is to prioritize tasks in some way. That means that you should determine if a task is more important then other tasks. How to manage such list? There are several methods to do that.

A-B-C-D-E method

• Make a list of all tasks
• Mark a task with 'A' if the task is very important
• Mark a task with 'B' if the task is important
• Mark a task with 'C' if it would be nice to complete the task
• Mark a task with 'D' if it possible to delegate the task to someone
• Mark a task with 'E' if the task should not be completed at all (complete waste of time)

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with A, then with B, ... Never work on tasks that are labeled with B if you can work on task labeled with A.

Order the task list by priority

• Make a list of all tasks
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important (imagine that you are going to some trip and you have time to do just one task, which one should you execute)
• Label that task with number one
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important among the unlabeled tasks
• Label that task with number two
• ...
• Repeat the process until you label all tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with number one, then with two, ... Always work on tasks with the lowest label that are unfinished. Never work on task labeled with 4 when you have unfinished task labeled with 2.

Order the task list using important and urgent marks

• Make a list of all tasks
• Label all tasks that are both urgent and important with IU
• Label all tasks that are urgent but not important with U
• Label all tasks that are important but not urgent with I
• Don't do anything with unimportant and non urgent tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with IU, then with U, then with I. Don't do anything with unlabeled tasks.

Order the task list using the price per hour

• Make a list of all tasks
• Determine for each task how much time it requires (in hours)
  
• Determine the worth for each task
  
• For each task calculate price per hour (estimated worth/required time)

When you start to work, first finish the task that have the highest price per hour. Let's look at the example:

• Task A, required time 0.5 hrs, value 5$, price per hour 5/0.5=10$
  
• Task B, required time 0.25 hrs, value 3$, price per hour 3/0.25=12$
• Task C, required time 1.5 hrs, value 12$, price per hour 12/1.5=8$

The order of task execution should be:

1. Task B
2. Task A
3. Task C

Declutter your mind

Do we have a clutter in our minds? Yes we do. Clutter is any kind of harmful thought.

Can a thought be harmful?

Any thought that decreases your capabilities to adapt to reality is harmful. "I am going to lose my job because of crisis in IT sector." could be an example of harmful thought if that paralyzes you or prevents you from acting. Note that same thought might be inspirational for someone. It is not information that is harmful, emotions deep inside (fear, hate, jealousy, anger, shame ...) are the one that could prevent you fPublish Postrom adapting.

How to find your harmful thoughts?

You could make an inventory of thoughts throughout the day. Of course, you cannot note every thought, but you could notice some thought that are frequent. Even one thought is good for start. Ask yourself what does that thought mean? Does it make you angry, sad, ashamed, nervous, furious, frightened, disgusted? If it does than that thought is probably harmful.

Examples could be:

• "I don't want to make a public speech, everybody will laugh at me".
• "I am a bad student, I cannot go to the university".
• "I am fat and nobody likes me".
  

What you could do with those harmful thoughts?

For each negative thought create a positive thought. Then whenever you notice that you have that negative thought replace it with the positive one. It is usually the best if you could imagine a picture that represent a positive thought. For example you could imagine a picture (actually movie) of you finishing your speech, and the audience tapping your shoulder saying how good speech that was.

By replacing negative with positive thoughts, you will not be free from negative emotions. They will occur from time to time. For example sadness is natural if something bad happens. But is not natural if it stops you from action that is necessary to adapt to a new situation ("I am sad so I cannot meet anybody right now").

Declutter your time

After finding out where do you spend (waste) your time, you can start with blocking this wasting. Usually the biggest time wasters are TV and the Internet. Are those things necessary? Of course not. Remember the days when you were on some exciting trip (Hawaii, Paris, ...)? You probably didn't need the TV or the Net for being fully excited. So the idea is to throw away useless behavior and invest that time into something better (kissing your spouse, playing basketball with your kids, going to yoga, etc.).

You probably wander "What if I miss something?". You will not miss anything, believe me, and if you don't you can try to isolate your self from the TV and the Net for a week (or a day if a week is too long for you). There is always some catastrophe somewhere in the world. There is always some people doing something odd or crazy. The movies and series are no better than the evening news. There are some people killing other people, or chasing them with cars or something like that. I know that it might look like fun, but it is far better to find your own thrill in doing something than to watch some other people doing interesting things. Of course, if your profession requires from you to watch TV, that is another topic.

How to escape from TV?

This is quite simple. Sell it, give it away, burn it (just kidding). Unplug it, remove antenna, put remote controller somewhere far away. Do anything that makes difficult to start watching TV. That will remind you that you should something else.

How to escape from the Internet?

Find out where do you spend your net time. Probably it is either news, pornography, blogs or socializing over the net. It likely that all of those is obsolete. It is better to hang out with real people than to socializing with some virtual people. If you are using Firefox for all of that, you could install FoxFilter addon and block all unwanted behavior on the net. I did a couple of weeks ago and it works and it is quite simple. Also, many firewall program has options for blocking certain sites.

What to do with all that time?

You will have to find out for yourself.

How to track usage of your time on your computer?

You can track usage of your time using a lot of different ways.

• Use a pen and a paper;
  
• Use some spreadsheet program with columns for task, start time, end time;
• Use some programs to do the same. For example you could find here a lot of alternatives;
• Use some free programs to do the automatic tracking. For example you could use TimeTrack;

Probably the best way is to start with TimeTrack (there is a free edition) and see if you need something more. TimeTrack is very automated. Actually, you don't have to do anything but analyze your work. TimeTrack will start automatically whenever you start your computer, waits in the tray and it is doesn't consume to much memory.

How should I declutter my stuff?

You can use organized and chaotic approaches to declutter your stuff.

• Organized approach
  
  First of all, you should make a list of everything you own. This might be a little bit tedious, but it is necessary. If you have a lot of stuff you probably cannot finish with list in one day. In that case, make a list of places that you could finish with in a reasonable amount of time (for example, the closet on the left in the living room, the closet on the right in the living room, ...)
  
  After that, note the date of last use for each stuff in the list, and process the stuff one by one.

• Chaotic approach
  
  Start anywhere you like (bathroom, living room) and pick a random stuff at hand, and ask yourself what is the date of last use of that stuff. Process the stuff and pick another one.
  

Processing the stuff

If you haven't use the stuff for a year or more then this is a candidate for decluttering. One year period is not fixed. For some stuff period should be shorter (for example the milk in your fridge) or longer (winter clothes). But the key is to ask your self: "Do I really need this stuff?". If you really, really need the stuff don't do anything. If you don't need the stuff than you have three options:

1. Throw it away
2. Give it away
   
3. Sell it

If something is for throwing than pile up the stuff at the entrance. If you would like to give away something, you should immediately consider to whom you will give it. Otherwise it could float around as if it is something you need. If you want something to sell, then you have a range of options, from ads on the net to ads on the windshield of your car.

Before getting rid of something, you should be aware if there is legal or personal limitation. For example, you cannot just throw away something dangerous. Also, some stuff you must hold such as tax related papers, health related papers, etc. On the other hand there might be some emotional value (souvenirs, photos, ...) that you wouldn't throw away just like that. Also, be aware that if you have family things could complicate. If you find something of no use, your spouse might object and be very angry. In that case, before getting rid of things, ask everyone in family to check if there is something that they would like to keep. Don't argue about that. Probably there won't be a lot of such things.

Why should I declutter my stuff?

Why should you do that? There are several reasons.

1. Stuff eats space, and space eats money. How clutter eats space? Everything has some volume. Therefore you should have enough space in your home to store stuff. You can even calculate how much money costs one cubic feet. If for an example, you have one thousand square feet apartment that costs $400,000, and the height of ceiling is 8 feet. Then you have in your apartment 8000 cubic feet and one cubic foot costs 50$. One cubic foot is a box which base is one square foot and which height is one foot. If you have 20 such boxes full of unneeded stuff, then you have lost one thousand dollars.

2. Stuff eats time, and time is money. How clutter eats time? First of all, everything needs some kind of maintenance, and maintenance eats time if you do it, or it eats money if you pay someone to do it. If you have two TV sets, than you will have to clean both of them. The second way that stuff eats time, is in increased effort to find something. For example if you have a pile of 10 magazines, with five useful, and five useless. Then each time you search for a specific magazine, you spend one half of search time unnecessary. There are examples even drastic examples.

3. Stuff eats mental energy. For example: you play with your kids, but something is nagging about what to do with that closet or garage that is full of stuff.