TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

Photo courtisy of Nicolas Valentin

Tina Su from the blog Think Simple Now has written a great post about how to organise a day of - what I would call mindfulness to regain focus and spend quality time with yourself. By scheduling a clarity day like Tina suggests, you can ‘reconnect with your inner self’.

I’ve always been attracted to the idea of a Spiritual Day or a Clarity Day, in which you spend the whole day disconnected from the information world and the many distractions of modern life, and start to connect within yourself.

If this sounds too mystical, don’t get caught up with the words, they are just linguistic symbols to communicate ideas. When you really get into such a day, it can become a source of great bliss and understanding of one’s self. During these times, we can experience tremendous personal growth, peace, and satisfaction.

Find clarity in one day

Too busy to meditate? Why not start a meditation group in your workplace? Put an announcement on the intranet and find a quiet place to sit together in a small group once a week (Wednesday) before lunch.

Read more about this idea on the site Sit at Work.

One of my favourite blogs Lifehack.org has a good article by Shane Magee about how to maximize time for yourself by creatively adjusting your daily schedule.

Sometimes it seems like your life just isn’t your own anymore - work, family, and other obligations swallow it up to such an extent that we often look back and wonder where all the time went! No wonder, then, that many of us feel as if life is just passing us by, and we can do no more than helplessly watch. However, with these tips and a little willpower, you can create time to center yourself and face the world with renewed enthusiasm.

Five Hints to Reclaim Time for Yourself

Tejvan Pettinger of Pick the Brain has written an article about the benefits of meditation that I found was a good read.

In a modern world that values activity, achievements and results, it is perhaps surprising that more people are turning to meditation. For all the activity of modern society, many still feel a fundamental need for silence, inner peace, and a moment of reflection. Meditation can reduce stress and help us relax; but, it can also give us a lot more. These are some of the benefits that daily meditation can give us

Read the full article

There is a great post on Zenhabits.net about creating a simpler, more content life for yourself. It has a lot of links to previous posts on Zenhabits that fit right to the context.

At the end of the day, we’re often exhausted and stressed out from the grind and the chaos and the busy-ness of the day. We don’t have time for what’s important to us, for what we really want to be doing, for spending time with loved ones, for doing things we’re passionate about.

And yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to live a simpler life, one where you enjoy each activity, where you are present in everything (or most things) you do, where you are content rather than rushing to finish things.

Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment | zen habits

I have have found an excellent video that shows 500 years of art history:

There is a hilarious short story from Robert Benchley that was published in 1949 (four years after his death) and is about how you can be very productive doing all kinds of things, when you should be working on something else.

The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

The article, apart from being humorous and well written shows that productivity is best served by using your intuition when picking the next action.

How to Get Things Done - Robert Benchley

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried working. I have and I don’t recommend it. I never did develop a natural enthusiasm for it the way some people do. I’m quite good at watching other people work. But my natural inclination is just to avoid work altogether.”

This week, I discovered a site that advocates slowing down, drinking lot’s of tea and doing less. It has a section with well written stories about slow living. I love the irony and humor of this (Mambo?) site, which features a mailing list and a blog as well.

In Praise of Slow is an elegy to the art of joyfull slow living and claims that there is a growing ‘Slow’ movement. In this age of great speed, distraction and mulitasking, it is refreshing to see that a growing number of people value the quality of a slow, but attentive life. The book’s author, Carl Honoré, delivers many examples where slow is better and as contradictory as this may appear, very often slow is faster. Chapters are devoted to different areas of life, such as cooking, city planning, psychology, medicine, (tantric) sex, work, leisure and children. Carl showes that the industrialisation and urbanisation in the west has caused the economy to run round the clock and that we do not seem to have enough time for all the things that claim our attention. Our market-driven world urges us to total efficiency, even to the point where we try to ‘organise’ the time with our spouse and children. The remedy against this rat-race is simple: Do everything slower! If you start with taking the right amount of time for everything, you can appreciate things and enjoy the richness of the moment more. If you go out to eat for instance, you can have a splendid evening if you savor every course with full attention while you take time to get to know your company better and enjoy the conversation. When you are allways in a hurry, you enjoy the now less.

Slower can mean faster

Slow can also produce faster results, however contradictory this may seem. When for instance you are writing a report and relax and take as much time as you need, you will find that because of the ‘no hurry, no worry’ attitude, creativity is boosted. You will find it easier to devote your full attention to your task. Anxiety and fear are reduced, because there is no time pressure. When fear is less, expression and creativity is more, and so is the quality of your output. An atmosphere arises in which you can be more productive. Often, people can create far better results in these conditions. But remarkably, they also can produce more in less time, because, during an afternoon of relaxed and focused work, knowledge workers can cover a lot more ground than distracted, fearfull and hasty people working the same amount of time.

I think the key-words for the success of the Slow movement are focus and attention. The tortoise knows more about the road than the hare. If you do not live with a constant time pressure (and this means taking up less commitments and appointments) and take a more laid-back and relaxed attitude to daily existence, not only the risk of getting exhausted is diminished, but you notice more of the colorfull details of ‘ordinary’ things and events and can understand and appreciate them more at a deeper level. A hurried life is a shallow life.

Carl Honoré has done a great job in showing us the advantages of the ’slow’ approach, worth reading.