Forget Habits; Try Rituals
Change is tough. We’re nearing the end of February and I wonder how you’re getting on with your New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps the great plans to exercise more, eat better, work less have all faded into another busy year. Perhaps you set yourself some Big Hairy Audacious Goals for 2012 but they are now just...
How To Be Happy at Work: A Pinterest Experiment
This Saturday, 11th February is World Happy Day when thousands of people will come together to watch screenings of the movie Happy. I am fascinated that World Happy Day is on a Saturday and not on a weekday which reminded me of research I read on the Action for Happiness site that found that in...
What Is The Most Important Thing?
”The mundane details of our life eat us up. Therefore it is important to keep asking ourselves again and again: what is the most important thing?” – Pema Chodron There’s something about this time of year. I don’t know if it’s the dark mornings, the grey days or the cold evenings but I just want...
A Simple Formula for Mindful Productivity
My journey as a productivity geek started in 2008. At the beginning of that year, after months of deliberately avoiding it, I picked up Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. His advice was simple: choose the work which is going to maximise your results (the 80/20 rule) and do it in the shortest time possible by setting yourself...
Mottainai: Getting The Most Out Of Your Digital Tools
Mottainai (pronounced moht-tai-nai) is a Japanese word meaning “a sense of regret concerning waste when the intrinsic value of an object or resource is not properly utilized”. There is no direct English translation, but it is similar to the idea of ‘waste not, want not’ and making proper use of resources. In my Toolkit workshops,...
Wu Wei and The Art of Non-Doing
Leo Babauta from Zen Habits is writing new book, The Effortless Life, publicly on the web (using a shared Google Doc in case you are interested). Reading it this week, I was reminded of the Tao concept of Wu Wei. Wu Wei is literally translated as ‘non-doing’ or ‘non-action’ but the meaning is closer to...
