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	<title>productivityzen.com</title>
	<link>http://www.productivityzen.com</link>
	<description>Enhance your personal productivity now</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:30:39 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Free Webinar: Engineer Habit Changes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . Most people are unaware of why it&#8217;s so difficult to create lasting changes in their lives. Here&#8217;s the secret: it&#8217;s all about the mechanisms of creating new habits. Most people try to exercise, or become more productive, or start meditating &#8230; only to give up a few days or a couple weeks later. And then they feel bad about it, and wonder why they suck at making changes. What we don&#8217;t realize is that there are certain forces working against us, mostly because we don&#8217;t understand how habits are created. What I&#8217;ve learned is that you can turn those forces around, and make them work for you. On Monday, Sept. 26, 2011 at 3 pm Pacific/6 pm Eastern , I&#8217;ll share some of the things I&#8217;ve learned about creating habits (read My Story for some of the habits I&#8217;ve changed). I&#8217;m host a free webinar that will take about an hour. No signup or email address required. Just show up, listen to me talk about my habit system, and then ask any questions you like. Join me here at 3 pm Pacific/6 pm Eastern time ( Mon. Sept. 26, 2011 ): Free Habit Webinar I&#8217;m looking forward to talking with you guys. Note : Yes, this webinar will be recorded for those who can&#8217;t make it, but I encourage you to join me live so you can ask questions. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/free-webinar-engineer-habit-changes/</link>
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		<title>Unautomate Your Money</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Editor&#8217;s Note: This is a guest post from Baker of Man Vs. Debt . Every time we automate a process in our lives, we trade a piece of consciousness away for a piece of convenience. This can be fantastic, as long as we ensure that we automate positive, sustainable habits. The problem with automation comes when we try to apply it to areas in our lives that need more consciousness. We run into trouble when we try to solve a problem by automating it. Automation itself doesn’t fix anything. In fact, automating a undesirable process only buries the problem even further. &#8220;Problems can&#8217;t be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.&#8221; -Albert Einstein. We cannot solve problems by trading away consciousness. We need to reverse this trend. We need  unautomation . Unautomation is the act of deliberately trading back pieces of convenience for increased consciousness in return. In our financial lives, there are plenty of examples were we can benefit from unautomation : Creating a list of every item you own. While far from convenient, this will drastically increase the awareness of our clutter. Using a 30-day list for wants. Waiting 30 days to purchase an item can be a drag, but we&#8217;ll likely realize how little we really desired it in the first place. Tracking our spending with pen and paper. Carry a small pocketbook and record every purchase by hand rather than just on your plastic. Converting the cost of items into time we&#8217;ll need to work. This can be a tough exercise, but will put things in perspective quickly. Purging 2 items for every 1 you bring into your life. Yet another inconvenient (at times) rule-of-thumb that can raise awareness around just how much clutter we bring into our lives. Quit signing contracts. Until you&#8217;ve ever tried to quit signing them, you don&#8217;t realize how fundamental contracts are in our society. Spending with cash over plastic. Going without plastic isn&#8217;t easy, but you can&#8217;t get much more aware than we spending cold, hard cash. Taking public transportation. You may have to leave early or plan a little more in advance, but taking public transportation will open your eyes the other side of your daily commute. These examples are only a handful of hundreds of money instances where we could benefit from a path of less convenience and more consciousness. The next time you look to change a set of behaviors in your life, don&#8217;t turn to automation. Start with unautomation. Registration is now open for You Vs Debt , Baker&#8217;s 6-week online class with daily videos, challenges, and accountability forums to empower your battle against debt. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/unautomate-your-money/</link>
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		<title>5 Shortcuts to Finding Your Passion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . &#8220;Follow your passion.&#8221; It sounds so easy. So why do so many people struggle to find the career they&#8217;re excited to wake up to every morning? Today, I held a free webinar with Jennifer Gresham, founder of the No Regrets Career Academy , called, &#8220;5 Shortcuts to Finding Your Passion.&#8221; Jen took a thoughtful look at how to &#8220;follow your passion&#8221; and find your &#8220;fire in the belly&#8221; with confidence, and shared: How to tell if your passion is career material or just a hobby Anti-passions (and why you can&#8217;t ignore them) Why passion isn&#8217;t everything The #1 mistake people make when choosing a passion Advice for the extremely passionate (do you have to choose?) Jen and I also answered a ton of questions about finding your passion. Watch the recorded videos here: Leo&#8217;s Intro Main Presentation: Jen Gresham Leo Answers Questions ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/5-shortcuts-to-finding-your-passion/</link>
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		<title>The Joy of Scarcity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . Often we think of having very little as a hardship. It&#8217;s bad to be poor, right? It&#8217;s not easy struggling with low wages, with debt, with scarcity. And while all that is true, it&#8217;s also not true. There can be joy in getting rid of things, in living with less, in freeing yourself of debt and possessions. It&#8217;s all in your mindset. I grew up poor, and it wasn&#8217;t long ago that I was struggling with an income that was too low to meet my mounting bills and debt payments. One of the worst times of my life, actually. But as I worked to eliminate my debt, I learned to live with less. And I learned that it can be a wonderful thing. Struggle is hard, no matter how you paint it. But living in scarcity doesn&#8217;t have to be struggle. That&#8217;s completely up to you. Reducing Debt When my wife and kids and I began reducing our debt, more than five years ago, it was a scary time. We were overloaded with bills, over our heads in debt, and it was one of the most stressful things we&#8217;d ever faced. So we cut back on spending, which meant learning a whole new way of living. Zap &#8230; we got rid of the cable TV, magazine subscriptions, mocha coffees, regular outings to the movie theaters and restaurants and the mall, and more. We changed our entire lives. And yet, while we could have thought of this as sacrifice, in truth, we learned to enjoy it. We were living with less, but we were happier. We were happier because we saw this as an opportunity to reconnect with each other, doing things that were cheap or free. We took the kids outside more, and played with them. Playing kickball and soccer and tag &#8230; these things cost nothing. We dusted off board games and decks of cards, played charades, and had a blast. We visited family and friends more. We cooked at home and had better meals than ever, got healthier, enjoyed eating together. It wasn&#8217;t all roses and cream, but there were many, many positive things that came out of this scarcity. When you are forced to cut back, you can moan, or you can find joy. We chose the path that made us happiest. And once we were out of debt, that was one of the most liberating things ever. So we reached an amazing destination, but the journey was just was wondrous. Reducing Clutter Clutter is another scary thing for a lot of people. Just facing the piles of clutter in your home can be overwhelming. In truth, clutter is a mountain of procrastination &#8230; putting off decisions and fears and emotional issues and shopping addictions and more. Facing those fears and issues is too much for most of us. I faced them, and learned that when you deal with these fears and emotions, even a little at a time, it is freeing. You feel clean and spare, not just because you&#8217;re burdened with fewer possessions, but because you&#8217;re burdened with fewer emotional baggage that you&#8217;re hiding in the back of your mind. Reducing our clutter meant tough choices, it meant a lot of discussion about what we wanted and why we really need things, it meant learning a whole host of new habits. But it also meant getting rid of things that were weighing us down, that we didn&#8217;t need but that were still costing us time and energy and mental cycles. We learned to love a spare-looking room, and the amazing feeling of sitting or lying around in a room that was clean and uncluttered. Living with fewer possessions can be a pure joy that is unmatched by anything you can buy. Less Food Losing 70 lbs. has been a journey of exploring my relationship with food. In days of fatness, I ate because everyone else was eating, I ate because I was bored or stressed out and needed the comfort of food, I ate because I didn&#8217;t want to confront my health issues, I ate because it was one of the only ways I knew of finding pleasure. Now I know that less food can also be a joy. Eating simple foods, rather than fast foods or convenient foods or sweet or fatty or fried foods, can be a joy. I&#8217;ve learned the simple pleasures of drinking a cup of unsweetened tea made from whole tea leaves. I&#8217;ve learned the deliciousness that comes from eating a single fresh fig, half a handful of berries, a few raw almonds. When you stop putting so much sugar and sauces on things, you learn their real beauty. When you stop killing animals and learn to appreciate the natural taste of plants, you feel incredible and alive. I now skip breakfast so I can remember what it&#8217;s like to feel a little hungry &#8212; something I never did when I was fat. I eat two meals a day because it&#8217;s easier to prepare, and I like a little scarcity in my life. I eat what I want, but I find that I enjoy the simple foods more than ever now. Fewer Choices We think we want a lot of choices, but really we want freedom. There&#8217;s a difference, and the overwhelming number of choices in our lives these days leads to confusion, paralysis, and unhappiness. Scarcity choices can be seen as a bad thing, but I see it as liberating. I&#8217;m not saying we should have no choices, but fewer is better. Try narrowing down your choices, in as many ways as you dare. Watch fewer TV shows by picking just three you watch every week. Pick just one book and read that until you&#8217;re done. Have a to-do list that&#8217;s only three items long each day. Make a weekly menu that only has two or three meals you cook in big batches, and eat those all week. You might worry that you&#8217;re making the wrong choices &#8212; you&#8217;re not. There are no wrong choices, there&#8217;s only the fear of making the wrong choices. I find limiting my choices to be an opportunity to let go of the worries about making the wrong choices, and to focus on enjoying the choices I do make. As I&#8217;ve explored scarcity, I&#8217;ve been left with this one truth: every path I take is perfect. Tw &#124; G+ ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/the-joy-of-scarcity/</link>
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		<title>The Four Things I Wish I Could Say No To</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Editor&#8217;s note : This is a guest post from Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons . You’ll know Michelangelo’s comment about how he worked, so let me paraphrase: “I just carve away anything that doesn’t look like a lion, and I’m left with a lion.” In that statement is the fundamental choice at the heart of Great Work : focus on the No to become clear on the Yes; define the Yes by clarifying the No. I think it’s the essence of doing more Great Work; or at least it seems to be the critical lesson I keep needing to learn. (You do know we teach what we most need to learn, don’t you?) Here are four elusive pairs I’d like to do a better job at saying No and Yes to, and the four experiments I&#8217;m going to start to see if I can move in the right direction. 1. Saying No to Control … so I can say Yes to Freedom My very first boss was creative, prolific and a touch insane. I remember one of my early Career Limiting Moves when, in front of the whole company, I clicked into mouth-operating-before-brain mode and joked he needed to have a finger in every pie. I have become that very same person. Pies? I&#8217;ve got pies everywhere I look, way too many pies. Or perhaps it&#8217;s not enough fingers. But in any case, we – and by that I mean I – have reached a point where it can’t go on. If I haven’t dropped a ball yet, it’s only a matter of time. And hamster-in-wheel is not a job description worth much. I&#8217;m inspired by Chris Brogan whose philosophy, as I understand it, is to start something, hand it over and then get the hell out of the way. Here’s the shift in thinking that might make the difference for me. Realizing I am not Box of Crayons but that I only serve Box of Crayons. And I&#8217;m going to test that by staring one thing, something I&#8217;d normally hold on to, hand it over, move aside and see if it will be the end of the world (which has been my theory to date). How about you? Where has staying in control become your own mind-forged manacle ? 2. Saying No to Popularity … so I can say Yes to Friendship I’m not super obsessed with numbers, and in fact am pretty lousy at metrics. (I mainly go with “Is this the right mix of Great Work and Good Work?” “Am I having fun?” “Are we in the poor house?” I hope for Yes Yes No as the answers.) But the rise of new technology means that one way of spending time is hanging out in the social media mirrored rooms waving at many (Woo hoo! 14,000 people on Twitter!) but never really holding hands, looking into the eyes and having a real conversation with a few. I notice that this week, Gwen Bell is leaving Twitter and moving to Google+, because she feels it&#8217;s a place where she can create intimacy, community and digital sanctuary . And Scott Stratten , one of the Twitterati, has said his greatest mistake was to follow back blindly. My shift in thinking is to recognize it as a width vs depth thing, and see if I can find the hunger for the depth. I think it&#8217;s there somewhere. I’m going to start taking the Call a Friend option once a day to connect to people I love. You? 3. Saying No to Money … so I can say Yes to Impact For the last eighteen months I&#8217;ve been walking a fine line, working on the business that I love and that pays my bills, and working on my Great Work Project , a new book whose sale raises money for an important cause. It has been a constant struggle to give this Great Work the appropriate time and space to come together, and that&#8217;s primarily because of the seductive comfort of Good Work. Great Work, because it&#8217;s work that truly matters to me, makes me fret, gives me sweaty palms, and invites all sorts of doubt and self-sabotage. Good Work on the other hand is the relatively simple task of rolling up my sleeves and getting things done, having some fun and making some money along the way. And yet, Great Work &#8211; unsafe and uncertain as it so often is &#8211; is where I hang out on the edges of my own competence and ambition, learning what’s possible for me and for the world. Great Work is also where I can most easily invite other extraordinary people in to help me create the meaning and impact I&#8217;m hungry for in my life. The shift in thinking is to remember (and remember and remember) that Great Work projects take time and need time, and your calendar never lies about what really is most important to you. And the experiment for now is to look again at &#8220;the bottom 10%&#8221; of what I do, to see if I might say No to that in some way, to say Yes to Great Work. What is it for you? Where might you trade money (or time) for meaning? 4. Saying No to Plans … so I can say Yes to Now Truth is, I’m unlikely to ever say No to plans. I love them – which is one reason at least that I hang out with Charlie Gilkey , who&#8217;s a master at them. I’ve got plans for the week, the month, the quarter, the year. When in doubt, I pull out a piece of paper and start sketching out a plan (which, it must be said, often looks exactly like the plan I’d done two weeks earlier and then “filed” somewhere safe and forgotten about.) But it’s time to plan a little less. Leo has been talking about No Goals for a while, and (following in his footsteps as I so often do) I am becoming aware that the price I pay for planning is that I spend more time in the future and less time in the here and now. For instance, the last few months I&#8217;ve been deep in the planning of today&#8217;s book launch. The price I&#8217;ve paid is that summer has slipped by largely unnoticed. I haven&#8217;t stopped enough to feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders, to hear the ice clink in my drink on the deck, to give myself up to the swing of the hammock. And as I write this now, the first of intimations of Fall are here and I know I&#8217;ve missed a season that I won&#8217;t have back. The shift in thinking is to realize that planning comes at a cost. A price I’m willing to pay, but perhaps to pay less these days. My action is to not fill up the final months of the year, but to try to wander a little in the white space that&#8217;s there. Got any non plans? Yes is too easy But a strong Yes is hard, and say a strong Yes to the things that really matter is harder still. So rather than starting with the Yes, start with the No. Get to the heart of the choice you want to make, then design your own experiments to see what might be possible. ? Michael&#8217;s Great Work Project is End Malaria a collection of essays on Great Work from 62 brilliant people and where $20 from every book sold goes to Malaria No More. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/the-four-things-i-wish-i-could-say-no-to/</link>
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		<title>Toss Productivity Out</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . For at least a couple of years, Zen Habits was one of the top productivity blogs, dispensing productivity crack for a nominal fee (your reading time). I&#8217;d like to think I helped people move closer to their dreams, but today I have different advice: Toss productivity advice out the window. Most of it is well-meaning, but the advice is wrong for a simple reason: it&#8217;s meant to squeeze the most productivity out of every day, instead of making your days better. Imagine instead of cranking out a lot of widgets, you made space for what&#8217;s important. Imagine that you worked slower instead of faster, and enjoyed your work. Imagine a world where people matter more than profits. If any of that appeals to you, let&#8217;s look at some traditional productivity advice, and see why we should just toss them out . 1. Get Organized . Sounds good, but getting organized is just rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It does nothing to stop the ship from sinking. Instead, simplify. If you have a desk with 5 things in it, you don&#8217;t need to organize. If you have a closet with only a handful of clothes, it doesn&#8217;t need a closet organizer. If your day has only one or two appointments, there&#8217;s no need for a detailed schedule organizer. Simplifying means making important choices about what&#8217;s important, rather than ignoring that question and just trying to cram everything into your day (and space) in a logical way. 2. Keep an Idea List . The idea is that whenever you have an idea, you should write it down. Then you&#8217;ll never lose an idea, and you&#8217;ll always have a list of ideas that you can come back to. Sounds great, right? Except in practice, the idea list is never filled with your best ideas. That&#8217;s because when you have a really great idea, you get so excited about it you jump up and want to work on it immediately. Your best ideas are ones that you can&#8217;t put off until tomorrow. That&#8217;s how you know it&#8217;s a great idea. The ideas that go on the Idea List are not your best. 3. Set a Lot of Goals . Only five years ago, I had a long list of goals for each year, and I was pretty decent at getting them done (better than 50% at least). Then I experimented with three goals a year, and I was even more focused. Then I did One Goal , and that was amazing, because it really helped me focus everything I did. Now I do No Goals , and it&#8217;s best of all. I let go of future-focused thinking, and focus on what inspires and excites me now. I get even more accomplished, but let go of all the time I used to spend on goal administration (it&#8217;s more than you might think) and all my mental energy is freed to do what I want to do right now. You might not want to do No Goals, but try One Goal or three goals. 4. Track Everything . If you want to change it, you have to measure it, right? If you want fast results, you need to track it. Except that&#8217;s complete crap. Why do you need such fast results in the first place? And who says you need to track something to change it? I&#8217;ve found more meaningful, lasting results when I don&#8217;t track, but focus on enjoyment of the activity. For example, if I focus on enjoying running, that makes me want to run more often, and that&#8217;s a habit that lasts much longer. If I focus on tracking the running (mileage, speed, VO2 max, intervals, etc), that takes the enjoyment away from the activity (running) and focuses on the results. If you are so focused on the results, the activity becomes only a means to an end. That makes the activity less enjoyable, and therefore less sustainable over the long run. I&#8217;ve become fitter than ever by not tracking, but instead enjoying being active. I&#8217;ve grown my site more now that I don&#8217;t track stats, but instead enjoy the writing. Over the long run, not tracking is better. 5. Be Productive When You&#8217;re Waiting . Lots of people do this &#8212; you bring a laptop or mobile device or some papers to do some work while you&#8217;re waiting at a doctor&#8217;s office or at DMV or on the train or in traffic. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with this, really, except in the philosophy behind it: that every second should be filled with work, or it&#8217;s wasted. I object to this. Sitting in a waiting room, doing nothing but sitting in silence or watching other people, is a beautiful way to spend your time. Reading a novel on a train, or taking a nap, is also wonderful. Waiting in line at DMV or the post office and eavesdropping on other human beings, or making conversation with someone, or just soaking in the sounds of humanity, is arguably more important than doing more work or reading work-related documents. Life isn&#8217;t only about work, and productivity isn&#8217;t everything. Try some unproductivity instead. 6. Keep Detailed, Context To-Do Lists . In the early days of Zen Habits, back in 2007, I did exactly this &#8212; I kept a series of contextual to-do lists for home, work, phone calls, errands, someday, and so on. This became too much work for me, and so instead of organizing, I simplified. I now focus on one or two things to do each day, and if when I get them done, my day is golden. Everything else I do that day is gravy. And the to-do lists gather dust, which turns out to be a very productive thing for them to do. 7. Work Hard in Bursts, with Frequent Breaks . Work hard for 10 minutes and take a break for 5! Or maybe 12 and 3? Maybe 30 minutes of hard work and 10 minutes of break? The exact numbers really depend on your flavor of productivity, but at their heart they miss the point: you shouldn&#8217;t be forcing yourself to work hard on something you dread doing, and then take a break to reward or relieve yourself from that dreaded work. You should work on stuff you love, so that you can&#8217;t wait to do it, and taking a break is just a matter of enjoying something else (maybe a nice walk, a nice book, a nice conversation with a friend). Life where you work hard in bursts, with some breaks, is dreadful. Life where you&#8217;re always doing something you love is art. Tw &#124; G+ ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/toss-productivity-out/</link>
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		<title>Improve Every Moment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . I&#8217;m a big proponent of slowing down , simplifying , doing less , and being less busy &#8230; but what if you can&#8217;t? What if your life can&#8217;t be made less busy &#8212; are you doomed to a life of anxiety and unhappiness? No. I&#8217;m going to share with you a very simple tool that might just transform your life. It&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve been trying in the last few months, and I can attest that it works brilliantly. This one little method will help you to: Be more present, so life doesn&#8217;t rush past you without you noticing. Enjoy every activity you do more, so life is better all the time. Feel more relaxed, so every day is as good as a vacation. Be ready to handle anything that comes your way. Not bad for a very tiny method, no? Let&#8217;s dive in. Busy vs. relaxed Normally we have two different modes in life. There&#8217;s the busy of our everyday lives, and then there&#8217;s the relaxed mode, which happens when we have some unstructured time: vacation, a day at the beach, a spa getaway, some time in the park with the kids. Relaxed mode is one where we perhaps think less and feel more. We just soak in the sun, the sounds, the sensations. This is a child-like time, because it&#8217;s the mode that young children are in the most. We do our best to train kids not to be like this, so they can be good workers when they grow up and serve our corporate masters. And so we grow up to be in busy mode most of the week, and if we&#8217;re lucky we get a day or two, maybe only an hour or two of relaxed mode. When the Internet sucks us in, we have less relaxed mode because the Internet keeps us in our minds, and we forget about the physical world around us. How can we change this? How can we bring the child-like relaxed, sensory mode back into our everyday lives, not just during breaks and meditation/yoga time and vacations? It&#8217;s not that difficult, if you practice. The Zen State When we are in relaxed mode, we notice the sensations of the wind and sun, the sounds of water and laughter, the brilliant colors of nature, the smiles around us, the grass or sand between our toes. We are feeling instead of thinking. The sensations of our bodies flow into our minds, and it makes us relaxed, happy. We can re-learn this mode of being with practice. Do it now. You&#8217;re reading a computer or mobile device screen, so your mind is in the world of the Internet &#8230; but your body is in the physical world. If you&#8217;re sitting, your butt can feel the chair. Your back might be a bit hunched. Your fingers are on a keyboard or mouse. Is the air around you cold or warm? Are there sounds you can notice? Is your jaw clenched? Notice your breathing. When you put your focus into physcial sensations, you are entering relaxed mode instead of thinking mode. It&#8217;s not that you&#8217;re completely relaxed, but you&#8217;re in the same state of mind as the times you are relaxed, like yoga or the beach or lazing away a Sunday in bed. Once you learn to do this, you can do it any time. In fact, all the time. If you&#8217;re taking a shower, feel the water running down you, soak in the temperature and the sound of running water. If you&#8217;re eating, taste every little nuance of the food, smell the food, feel the texture in your mouth, feel the movement of your hand going to your mouth. Do this as you work, as you talk on the phone or respond to emails or walk to a meeting or drive to an appointment, noticing the sensations on your skin, the colors around you, the sounds of humanity, your breath coming in and leaving you. Do this at home, as you do chores or prepare food or clean up or get ready for work. Do this throughout your day, and you will be in a constant state of relaxation and enjoyment. It will transform everything you do, if you do it. It will turn busy-ness into being present, harriedness into enjoyment. Life will be lived, instead of ignored. Tw &#124; G+ ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/improve-every-moment/</link>
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		<title>Best Procrastination Tip Ever</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . Your first thought as you look at this article will be, &#8220;I&#8217;ll read this later.&#8221; But don&#8217;t. Let the urge to switch to a new task pass. Read this now. It&#8217;ll take you two minutes. It&#8217;ll save you countless hours. I&#8217;ve written the book on ending procrastination, but I&#8217;ve since come up with a very simple technique for beating everyone&#8217;s favorite nemesis. It is incredibly easy, but as with anything, it takes a little practice. Try it now: Identify the most important thing you have to do today. Decide to do just the first little part of it &#8212; just the first minute, or even 30 seconds of it. Getting started is the only thing in the world that matters. Clear away distractions. Turn everything off. Close all programs. There should just be you, and your task. Sit there, and focus on getting started. Not doing the whole task, just starting. Pay attention to your mind, as it starts to have urges to switch to another task. You will have urges to check email or Facebook or Twitter or your favorite website. You will want to play a game or make a call or do another task. Notice these urges. But don&#8217;t move. Notice the urges, but sit still, and let them pass. Urges build up in intensity, then pass, like a wave. Let each one pass. Notice also your mind trying to justify not doing the task. Also let these self-rationalizing thoughts pass. Now just take one small action to get started. As tiny a step as possible. Get started, and the rest will flow. Tw &#124; G+ ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/best-procrastination-tip-ever/</link>
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		<title>The Tragedy of Missing Out</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Post written by Leo Babauta . A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry. The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,&#8221; the father said. “Yes, but I&#8217;m worried I&#8217;m missing out on better fish,&#8221; the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?&#8221; “Maybe you should try,&#8221; the father said. And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,&#8221; the father said. “But what if there are better fish out there?&#8221; the son asked. “Maybe you should try,&#8221; the father said. And the son did, catching a bigger fish, then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on. At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?&#8221; The son hesitated. “I&#8217;m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn&#8217;t taste any of them.&#8221; The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don&#8217;t worry. They were delicious.&#8221; &#8212; We are all of us like the son. We all worry, at some time or other, that we&#8217;re missing out on things. It&#8217;s why we&#8217;re so busy &#8212; we take on so much because we don&#8217;t want to miss out. We take on dozens of goals and aspirations, because we don&#8217;t want to miss out. But here&#8217;s the bare truth: we will miss out, no matter what. It&#8217;s inevitable. We cannot do or try everything in the world, even with lives twice as long. We cannot see every town and city, read every interesting book, watch every important film. We will always, always miss out. Here&#8217;s the second, more important truth: if you always worry about what you&#8217;re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have. Don&#8217;t make a reading list a mile long &#8212; focus on the book in your hand. Don&#8217;t pack your vacation itinerary with every highlight of the city you&#8217;re visiting &#8212; walk around and enjoy what you find. Don&#8217;t worry about traveling the entire world &#8212; be delighted with the world around you. Don&#8217;t worry about what you&#8217;re missing online, or in the news &#8212; what you&#8217;re doing is good enough. And let go of your long to-do lists and goal lists. They are a futile attempt to keep from missing out. You will miss out, but in striving to do everything, you&#8217;ll miss out on the wonder of the thing you are doing right now. What you&#8217;re doing right now is all that matters. Let the rest go, and enjoy the fish you&#8217;ve already caught. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/the-tragedy-of-missing-out/</link>
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		<title>3 clear reasons to change careers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Editor&#8217;s note : This is a guest post from Jennifer Gresham at  Everyday Bright . I sat in my hospital room, anxiously twirling the strings that were not securing the gown behind me, waiting for the nurses to wheel me into surgery. My husband squeezed my hand and told me we&#8217;d be okay. Up until that moment, it certainly looked like I had it all. I&#8217;d spent 16 years in the military, and by all accounts, had a bright future in front of me. I wasn&#8217;t on the fast track, but my boss valued my ideas and was a gifted mentor. I was engaged with my work and liked my co-workers. I told myself again and again how lucky I was, but I still felt a kind of euphoria every time I took a day off. Worse, I couldn&#8217;t shake the feeling that the opportunity for the life I&#8217;d always wanted was disappearing with each passing year. It took a tragic loss, my second miscarriage in the space of twelve months, to realize what was nagging me. Life is too short to not spend it doing what you love. Sure, sure, we&#8217;ve all heard it before. But as I awoke in the recovery room, my belly sore and my emotions crushed from the loss of my second baby, I resolved to find the work that made me feel alive. I walked away from nearly a million dollars in pay and retirement benefits. Crazy, right?  Certainly more than one person said so. Who wants to get paid to be unhappy? Then a strange thing happened: one person after another confided they were unhappy with their work too. Not the usual malcontents, but smart, vibrant, upward moving people, the ones who also appeared to have it all figured out. As friends and colleagues asked for my advice about what to do, I struggled with whether they needed a new career, a new job, or just a long vacation on the beach. Ultimately, I came up with three scenarios where I thought only a new career would do. 1. No &#8220;fire in the belly&#8221; When I announced to my dad I wanted to be a scientist, he responded with an experiment of his own: he left copies of magazines like Discover and Scientific American lying around the house. In two weeks, I never picked one up.  Not once. What I&#8217;ve learned in retrospect is this: if you&#8217;re not interested enough in a subject to research it, read about it, play with it, and find others to talk about it – it&#8217;s probably not the career for you. And it&#8217;s quite possible you haven&#8217;t yet discovered the work that excites you—after all, there&#8217;s a lot you haven&#8217;t experienced. When you have &#8220;fire in the belly,&#8221; as my dad called it, you&#8217;re willing to put in the time and effort to build your skills, even when you&#8217;re frustrated or depressed by how much you still have to learn. It&#8217;s what gets you through  Seth Godin&#8217;s dip. It wakes you up in the middle of the night with ideas, and then, bleary-eyed, makes you excited to get up in the morning. I was successful as a scientist, but as my dad&#8217;s experiment proved, I didn&#8217;t have the fire in the belly. Trust me, it&#8217;s worth finding yours. 2. The wrong success We think we know what success looks like, because society tells us over and over the importance of money, power, and fame. When we want to indicate someone is successful, we almost always invoke their salary or who they know to impress. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with any of those outcomes, but it&#8217;s entirely possible they don&#8217;t mean as much as you think. If you&#8217;ve ever felt a bit empty after winning some big award, you know what I mean. Define success for yourself, then dare to pursue a career that lets you achieve it. Maybe that means saving elephants in Africa or helping a small business hire their first employee. If you live your life trying to achieve someone else&#8217;s definition of success, you&#8217;ll always feel a bit of a sham, no matter how high you go. 3. Trapped behind a mask Even superheroes like Superman and Spiderman got tired of leading a double life. One of the things I hear a lot is that people want to be their true selves at work. For example, the military culture demanded I establish my authority and demonstrate my place in the hierarchy. But I&#8217;m an egalitarian at heart—I hated treating people differently based on rank alone. If you&#8217;re tired of holding back your true opinions, if you&#8217;re tired of working long hours for outcomes you don&#8217;t really care about, then it&#8217;s time to remove the mask and revel in who you really are. Don&#8217;t let tragedy be your teacher Some people resist change until a near death experience reminds them they may not have the luxury of waiting until the time is &#8220;right.&#8221; Others won&#8217;t change until they are laid off, admitting they never liked their career anyway. A friend of mine recently led a workshop for financial executives. He asked them to reveal one thing they were proud of. As he noted, &#8220;Not one of them mentioned the size of their office or the make of their car.&#8221; You don&#8217;t have to change careers tomorrow. But you should start spending some time figuring out what really matters—to you—today. It&#8217;s not always easy . You&#8217;ll have to battle the fear and the voices that want to keep you  mired in mediocrity . I spent 16 years wondering, &#8220;what if?&#8221; Letting fear make your decisions, instead of owning what you really want, is a lousy way to live. Now I can say unconditionally: Ignite that &#8220;fire in the belly.&#8221; Make yourself proud. Choose courage over comfort. And when people call you crazy for pursuing your dreams of fulfilling work, remind them what R.D. Laing said, &#8220;Madness need not be all breakdown.  It may also be break-through.&#8221; Jennifer Gresham is the founder of the  No Regrets Career Academy , which offers a free mini-course in  career change .  She&#8217;s on a mission to help people make Monday their favorite day of the week. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.productivityzen.com/3-clear-reasons-to-change-careers/</link>
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