What's it for?

The Pulse Smartpen works just like a normal pen, but it has electronics in side of it. When you write on special paper (more on that in a minute), it will capture everything you write or draw on that paper and store it digitally. You have the option of recording audio along with it, and the audio is automatically time-synchronized with what you wrote.

LiveScribe has a strong focus on students, providing a means to capture notes and audio from lectures to enhance your ability to recall information from lectures. I find that it works equally well in a business environment, and it's particularly useful in the way that it frees you up to focus more on participating in group discussions instead of spending all your time trying to take really detailed notes. It is also great for capturing "chalk talk" diagrams so you can refer to them later or share that information with others.

How does it record?

The Pulse has a built-in microphone that captures information from the room around you. I find that it does a very good job of picking up voices in the room, even in large conference rooms. If you need higher quality recordings, you can use the included headphones which have tiny microphones in them. These headphones allow you to store higher quality, stereo recordings of the session you're in and create "3D sessions" you can listen to later.

As mentioned above, you need special paper to take advantage of the Pulse's power. Their paper (I use the Moleskine-esque LiveScribe journals) is specially encoded so the pen can tell which notebook you're using (it can track multiple notebooks simultaneously, and which page you're writing on. The pen has a small 'camera' of some kind built into it that allows it to see microscopic dots on the page and record page number and pen position. It also uses this information to synchronize the audio with what you wrote on the page.

You can choose from a variety of paper types, including Journal style, spiral notebook style, lined, unlined, etc. and the prices seem reasonable compared to the "normal" alternatives of similar paper quality.

What can I do with my notes and recordings?

Store: After you've captured your notes, you synchronize them with the included LiveScribe Desktop software using a small, USB docking/charging station. The LiveScribe software imports your drawings and audio, then organizes it into a very user-friendly interface so you can browse, search, and share your notes with others.

Review: You can easily review the notes you've captured within the LiveScribe Desktop software, and listen to the audio associated with them. For the notes with audio, you can easily jump around by clicking on the part of the drawing or notes you're interested in and the notes and audio will instantly jump to that part of your notes session. By the way, you can also go into Page Review mode while the session is still stored in your pen and listen to notes from your page just by tapping on the page with the pen (very cool - see a video example here)

Search: The software automatically indexes the words you've written on the page, so you can search through large amounts of information and find what you're looking for very quickly.

Print: You can print out your notes on any printer, with the option to print or omit the background lines (if you're using a lined notebook). The printouts look great, and I have used them to share whiteboard diagrams and concept sketches.

Share: LiveScribe's sharing capabilities are very interesting. Not only can you share hard copies, paste notes into email, Evernote, OneNote, etc. but you can use LiveScribe Online (an account on the sharing site is included with your purchase) to share your sessions with others. You can control access to these sessions by inviting specific people to view your sessions, or make them public. I have posted a brief, public walkthrough of the LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen so you can see what kind of results it creates (you can also click on the image of my diagram, at right).

You can go into full screen mode by clicking the "expand" arrow from the player. When you view this session, experiment with moving around the session by clicking around on the diagram. Incidentally - the audio you hear was recorded by the internal Pulse microphone as I drew the images you see.

I'm very glad I bought this pen

I haven't used the SmartPen all that long, but I am already a fan. In addition to the points above, here are some other things I've observed:

• The battery life and storage capacity are excellent. I have gone over a week without docking the Pulse and still had plenty of battery left.
• I haven't had to significantly change my habits to get the benefits of the Pulse Smartpen. I just write like I normally do, and the pen does the rest. The only new habits are a) remembering to turn the pen on so my writing is captured, and b) remembering to start and stop the recording when I'm doing audio capture.
• The pen is a tad thick, but it is comfortable to write with.
• I don't want to forget the pen, so I bought a folio cover and epoxied the pen sleeve to the inside cover to make them a single, portable unit (see picture here). This has been very useful.

The bottom line: I like the LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen and recommend it highly.

That being said, with the commencement of school it's more important than ever that we, as families, get organized.  If you're someone who's primarily responsible for getting everyone where they need to be, you know that the after school hours can be a frustrating cycle of drop offs, pick ups, and hours spent next to a field, court or studio.

But the good news of GTD, Getting Things Done, is that the system gives us a "smarter way to live and work".  By defining, capturing and organizing all of the items on our to do list into concrete "next actions", you and I can make the most of those little ten and fifteen minute blocks of time that seem to populate our busy afternoons.  By having a good list of Next Actions that ultimate contribute toward the list of projects we currently have underway, we automatically know what to do with the time spent waiting in the school parking lot when Johnny is kept after for ten extra minutes. 

If you haven't already read David Allen's great book  Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, now is the time to put it on your "must read" list.  If you're too busy to read it, you can easily download it from iTunes or listen to the audio version - I actually keep my audio copy on my iPod for a refresher whenever life's feeling particularly chaotic.

I thought I'd also share the following tips and tricks for making the most of the time we have during the busy weekday afternoons:

• Have a system and the tools you need to GTD.  Whether you choose David Allen's method, Franklin Covey Day planner, an online service like Remember the Milk or Jott, or an old fashion paper and pencil "to do" list, have a plan.  Carry your list with you and keep it full of small items that can be easily accomplished in five to ten minutes (call the bank, send Aunt Louise a birthday letter, review an article, etc).  When you find yourself in a waiting situation, automatically turn to your list and get busy crossing something off of it!
• Have "to go" work.  I carry a bag with ongoing projects, articles and paper and supplies needed to take my show on the road.  I keep it with me for busy afternoons so that I can make the most of the time I spend shuttling my sons to their activities.
• Socialize.  If Social Networking is an essential component of your business plan, go mobile.  Use your iPhone, BlackBerry or PDA to keep in touch with your contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Plurk.  I find waiting time to be a terrific time to check up on these utilities. When I'm at my desk working, they can be a distraction, but catching up on them on the go is a fun and useful way to pass time.
• Think outside the box.  Use this time for other, non-work related items that may populate the list of things you'd like to accomplish.  During your son's soccer one hour soccer practice you could take a 3 mile walk, read a significant portion of a good book, take time to pray/meditate, have a long conversation with a family member who lives far away, or do volunteer work by offering to help coach the soccer team!

Enjoy the fresh opportunities offered by a new school year to get a new outlook on Getting Things Done and before you know it, it will be time for summer vacation again!

Yes, even productivity bloggers procrastinate at times. That’s partly because we don’t always follow our own advice, but also because procrastination isn’t always bad. In Producticity Secrets I wrote: “Procrastination separates the urgent from the non-urgent tasks.”, changing my category structure wasn’t urgent at all. I even had doubts whether it was even important.

Covey’s quadrants in full swing

That all changed when I moved to Dreamhost. In the process the categories didn’t come through as they should have. I won’t go into the technical details, but in short: I just screwed up. Changing the category structure (or getting my old structure back) suddenly became urgent. I still wasn’t sure about their importance though.

That too, changed rapidly. Only days after writing that I kicked ass because I was on Alltop, my feed was taken down again. ACK! That’s not good at all. I soon figured out that it was most likely due to the fact that almost all my feed items changed over night, because they publish a category-feed! The same is true for the ultimate GTD index, and when I checked my status there, it quickly became clear that my category-feed was all messed up.

That sure was experiencing first-hand how the dynamics work throughout the quadrants of Covey’s time leadership matrix! Useful? Yeah. Enjoyable? Hmm.

The new categories

Back to the categories: the need for working on the category structure did not solve the very reason of my procrastination. I didn’t know yet what I wanted to do with them! But I’d better figure that out fast, because I needed to fix them on short notice.

The approach I took was to first sit down with my moleskine and start writing, drawing, mindmapping and so on. This usually sets my thoughts in motion. After that I sat down behind the computer and browsed my own blog thoroughly.

That was fun! I “discovered” quite some old posts that I had forgotten about. And somehow they pointed me towards what the category structure should be, and that a category - subcategory structure would fit me best. In the footer there’s a sentence about what How to be an Original is:

“How to be an Original is about discovering who you are, deciding what you want and learning how to get it.”

There you have it, it states the three main topics:

• WHO are you
• WHAT do you want
• HOW to get it

Not all posts fit into those three, so I made two more categories. One of the is called “My Story“, and it contains all the posts that are about me and my path towards living my legend, changing my habits, achieving goals and being productive. In the post about passionate bloggers I stated that How to be an Original is a personal blog, and I stand by that statement. But it’s also a topical blog, and the new category structure reflects that pretty well.

And yes, there’s one more category. It’s called “The Other Stuff“, and it contains…pretty much everything that doesn’t fit into any of the other categories. It’s kind of like the purgatory, only more fun

Meta-blogging

I realize that this is another post in which I write about writing, or blog about blogging. They are not the main focus of this blog, and as such they are in the sub-category “General” that resides under “The Other Stuff”. Enuff said?

Image by laffy4k

Then, quietly, something happened.  They went mainstream.

So too with David Allen and Getting Things Done.  Don't misread me- I'm not lamenting this.  Only putting words to the obvious- GTD is going mainstream.  Consider the following as noted in a recent article in Business Week:

• The David Allen Company is now an $8 million enterprise
• Allen's third book will come out in December of '08 and is sure to be a smashing success
• Big box stores like Staples will soon be selling DAC co-branded products
• The GTD Global Summit will most likely become huge success in March of '09, much like the TED conferences have become for creative and design folks

None of this is a bad thing.  In fact, it's probably a natural progression from the early days of GTD. It does however mean that GTD will no longer be a fringe band like Phish and Guster.  As the start-up "feel" of GTD evaporates, practitioners will have to maintain its raw and timeless spirit- get it out of your head, tools matter but not so much as habits, what's the next action, etc. 

Time will tell as to how GTD shakes out over the next few years.  The 7 Habits of Stephen Covey morphed into a line of products and moderately successful stores but now seems so mid '90's.  Will GTD stand the test of going mainstream?  As they say, time alone will tell.

In an effort to delete unnecessary expenses, I began to investigate how I could trim my cell phone bill.  The data plan was right in the middle of the bullseye.  After some online research, I deactivated my Blackberry and began to use an old Palm Treo that had been in the drawer for some time.

This of course coincided with a simple realization: I don't like surfing the Internet on a small screen.  With a laptop five feet away nearly all the time, why would I want to torture my eyes with my Blackberry?  I'm sure if I traveled more or was on the road I would feel differently.  Thankfully, my work is pretty localized.

Not to mention I could save nearly $400 a year without a data plan.

So that's what I did, venturing off without my Blackberry and with the Treo.  Interestingly, I fell in love again with the old girl.  Sure, the Treo is a little overweight and is beyond her years but she's nice in the hand and has an uber-simple operating system.  Sort of like an old car, a few scrapes don't really make a difference.  If it falls on the floor- what's the big deal?

I then inputted five phone numbers- that's it.  The calendar and other information would have to be accessed by my laptop.  Streamlined for sure.

After a week into my experiment, some realizations:

1. I don't get that many phone calls.  I'm not complaining about this, mind you.
2. There are no emergencies that arrive via email.  If someone really needs to reach me, they can find my by phone.  This has happened only once in the last ten years.
3. I don't miss my Blackberry.

While this experiment was taking place, I've been reading Tim Ferris' The Four Hour Workweek.  In this best seller, Ferris preaches what he calls the "low information diet".  He writes:

"Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources."

Was I one of those gluttons for information?  Did I really need 30 blogs in my Google Reader?  As is often the case, trial and error is a powerful teacher.

My experience has been great so far.  I don't miss the RSS reading, the emails while I'm waiting in traffic or the preoccupation with having an expensive device in my pocket.  My only regret- that I didn't streamline sooner.

Photo by velcr0

The temperature around here has dropped in the last week or so. The geese are starting to fly South and that means one thing, fall is on the way.

Back in March, I posted 9 Energy Saving Tips for Spring. Now it’s time for some energy tips for autumn. Direct Energy lists nine things you can do in the spring to make you home more energy efficient:

1. Seal all leaks around doors, windows, and electrical outlets. Heat from your home escapes out of these cracks. By sealing these leaks you can save on your heating bill.
2. Fall is the best time to clean the chimney and get vent systems checked. Pipes must be properly connected and there should be no signs of rust or damage.
3. It’s also time to remove the window air conditioners for the winter. If they must stay in place, be sure to seal them with caulking or tape and cover them with an airtight, insulated jacket.
4. If you are thinking of replacing your furnace, consider getting one that’s rated 90 percent or higher in efficiency. Replacing your old furnace with a new, more energy efficient one can save up to 30 percent of your heating costs. Remember to look for the ENERGY STAR® label.
5. Is your insulation up to par? For a minimal cost, you can upgrade the insulation in your exterior walls, crawlspaces, basements and attics. Insulation may come in batts or loose fill, which can be blown into place and get those hard to reach places.
6. Did you know you can lose heat through your electrical outlets, light switches and lighting fixtures? Consider installing foam gaskets behind these outlets and switches or install plastic security caps to reduce heat loss.
7. If you have single-pane windows, add storm windows to cut heat loss by up to 50 percent. Better still, replace single-pane windows with energy-efficient double-pane windows with inert argon gas fill, warm-edge spacers and low-e coating.
8. Make sure your heating vents aren’t blocked by furniture or drapes and the dampers are open. Vacuum out dust and pet hair from warm air registers and cold air returns so your furnace runs more efficiently.
9. It’s time to take a look at your water heater. If its surface is hot or even warm, some of the energy used to heat the water is being wasted. Wrap the heater in an insulating blanket. Be sure to check your user manual and labels on the tank first.
10. If you’re building a new home make sure you place the water heater as close as possible to the kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms. Heat is lost as it moves through long pipes so the closer the unit is to these rooms, the more money you could save.
11. Did you know that if you never run out of hot water, then you’ve probably set your hot water thermostat too high? Before the winter comes, set your thermostat between 43 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) and 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit).

Recommended: The Mind Mapping Manifesto A Practical Cure for Information Overload

You can sponsor me online by following this link and all the money goes to Cancer Research, so please feel free to give generously.

Motivating ones self to go out running is one of the hardest things to do. How many people do you know, maybe yourself included, who have started a personal fitness regime with great vigor, only to give up after only a few sessions? Go to any gymnasium and ask about the number of members, and then look at how many members are in the gym at any one time.

However, sign yourself up for an event and you find this is a great call to action. I used to train in Kickboxing around 10 years ago. I always remember my teacher telling me that when you have an upcoming fight, it really motivates you to pound the street and the heavy bag, to avoid your head getting pounded in. Well, a similar thing has happened with me and the 10k run. I am not a good runner and the 10k will be the furthest I have ever run. With this end goal in mind, I have been very focussed to allocate what is in fact very little time to go out running against a training schedule, hitting the trails three times a week.

So, do you want to reach some personal goal? If so, make a commitment and book something that means you cannot back out of it. Get support from friends and family and get them to sponsor you. The pressure really now is on and this will lead to you taking action to reach the goal, simple!

I will leave you with a great quote from Zig Ziglar, “You cannot hit a target that you do not have”.

Sponsor Me for the Cancer Research 10k by Clicking Here

But that was not the only thing I’ve done. I also started to read other spiritual authors, like Carlos Castaneda, don Miguel Ruiz, Osho and a plethora of motivational writers, like Og Mandino, for instance. It was an inner burst towards change and a more congruent approach to the way I lived my life. No wonder that during that period I started the relationship that eventually become my current marriage. I plan to write extensively on the spiritual, astrological and personal development topics, so I will stop here these ramblings, which only served as a context for the main topic of this post, which is raw food.

So, why raw food? What’s wrong with the cooked food? What are the ups and downs of being a raw foodist?

Benefits

The first and most visible benefit I felt after being a raw foodist was my weight, which almost magically decreased to the level where it was 15 years ago, when I was 20. I am 1,82 meter high and in 2005 my weight was about 95 kilos. Quite overweighted, if you ask me. After several months of raw food I measured again and I was 85 kilos. Almost perfect, if you guide after the saying that you have to weight the exact number of centimeters above 1 meter. This was the most noticeable effect.

But for me the most important benefits were those not se easy to spot, and I’ll try to outline them in a few words. First of all, there was this incredible feeling of clarity and focus. It was a mental state in which I could stay for hours without a single gap in focus. I could read, watch movies or write code for hours without a single minute pause. My body felt lighter, and my mind experienced almost the same thing. It was like the dirt of a window was cleaned and the whole picture was all of a sudden incredibly clearer than before. I didn’t know exactly who was responsible for this state of mind at that time, but after several years of going out and in into raw food habits I can tell you that this was coming from the diet. Of course, you can achieve more focus and longer periods of attention by training only your brain for that, like using NLP or transactional analysis, but I guess in the absence of a more natural diet the overall feeling won’t be the same. Raw food made it so much more enjoyable for me.

Another benefit was the ability to party more. Yes, I know it sounds strange, but at that time I had an immense urge for more social interaction and that came mainly from friendly evening gatherings in which we drank a lot of beer. I remember very clearly that I even measured the duration of a hangover and it was exactly 12 hours. After exactly 12 hours after the end of the party I felt again as a new born, regardless of how much I drank or the duration of the party. My body was completely cleaned on the inside and ready to start again. It was so exact that even become scary for me and stopped paying attention to it. Looking back in time I realize though that all those parties were just a form of intense communication and information exchange. It wasn’t anything involving addiction, boredom - which is always associated with parties, as an incentive for them - or lubricity. It was just an expression of enthusiasm and joy of life. I always remember that period with a lot of positive emotion and enthusiasm.

All in all, my whole body seemed to enjoy a lot more efficient metabolism. I started to sleep only 5-6 hours per night without felling tired during the day. I could walk for hours without feeling drained. And I can also tell you that my overall sexual performance was clearly better than any other period in my life. But, as I already told you, I always saw the main benefit of a raw food diet in the mental burst. 

Side effects

Eating raw is not easy. It depends on a lot of factors, from your gastronomical education, to the cultural and social habits of your current community. Eating raw in Romania, a country with almost any traditional meal based on meat, it was definitely something highly unusual. I will talk more about that below, but for now, let’s take a look at the side-effects.

First of all, there is a detox period and you must be aware of that. Even if you’re a vegetarian for years, when starting to eat raw you will experience major changes in your metabolism. Your body will try to adapt to a new way of incorporating energy and that will come with some attached costs. You will feel often tired or with a low level of energy. It’s not because of the raw food diet, it’s because of your own body, which has a memory of itself and it’s trying to remain attached to a pattern that it already knows. After several switches between cooked food and raw food you will observe that your body will spend less time in adapting to each new diet. It’s because it learned what is all about and it will be easier to adjust to something that it experienced before. But the first detox period will be really difficult.

Another pretty strange side effect is the way your feelings will affect your body. I know that will sound strange, but this is exactly how I felt. In a normal, cooked food diet, your body will be more dense, so at least this is how I perceived it. So your thoughts and emotions will actually be slower, they will propagate over your body at a lower speed. Sometimes they will stop in some areas of your body, those areas where you have unusual high matter density, and maybe they will cause some discomfort there, or even a disease… When eating raw, your body will be lighter and your emotions will propagate at a higher speed. This is interesting. Because your feeling of joy and enthusiasm will manifest into your body almost instantly. I guess every single person that embraced a raw food diet mentioned the abundance of the joy and exhilaration feelings. But the downside of this one is that your feelings of depression and sadness will propagate just as fast as those others. And that could be really annoying. A lot of raw foodists mentioned depression as one of the detox indicators but from my experience is not the depression itself, which might have been present into your body all the time, but the way it manifests in this new body. So, be aware of the fact that your emotions will be more intense, the positive as well as the negative ones.

Some other signs of detox are an extreme heat in parts of your body (I experienced it in my back neck in the beginning), some cold-like behavior like sneezing and a rush of nasal fluids, and sometimes unusual sweating. But all of these will go after some time. In my experience, the longer period of detox was 2-3 weeks.

Eating

Your eating habits will be completely messed up. You are, like 80% of the world population, raised with a 3 meals per day habit. Well, guess what, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should eat 3 meals per day. But it’s really difficult not to because this eating habit is so well incorporated into our social interaction patterns. When going raw you will see that your body can stay without food for much longer periods. And that the normal hours for meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, are not always the time when you’re hungry.

So, you’ll be eating somehow hectic until you establish your own eating routine. If you are the only member of the family which is a raw foodist - that’s my case, for instance - you will have to adjust to the other’s eating routine. For me it’s easier to eat with others than keeping my own eating hours, even if my meal is completely different.

You will also have to eat more than your regular quantities. Especially if you will ground your diet on fruits. In the beginning it will also be a stress factor, so take that into account. But then again, once you establish your own patterns, you will come up with a solution. Some raw foodists chose to eat every 3 hours, while others chose to incorporate more fat into their meals, basically through fat-rich fruits like avocado, or with a large variety of seeds or nuts, very rich in vegetal fat. 

Shopping

Other habits modified by a raw food diet are the shopping habits. In the beginning you will be shopping a little bit strange, sometime more, and sometimes less than you need, and you will have to do a lot of trial and error steps in order to set it back to a normal and understandable routine. I eat a lot of apples and peaches, and also a lot of bananas. After shopping every 2 days for 1 kilo of apples I ended up by buying a full package of 18 kilos which will last for at least a week, if not more. The same goes for bananas and some vegetables, like tomatoes, carrots or celery. Other stuff requires a more frequent visit to the shop, but it can be managed. 

The costs of such a diet are a little bit higher. I (still) live in a country which favors massive meat consumption, so there isn’t much profit for selling vegetables and fruits. Hence, the high prices for such food. In other countries, and especially in United States, it’s even cheaper to be a raw foodist.

Overall, keep in mind that you will not shop the way you shopped before, and there will be a significant impact on your budget, either up or down.

Hype

There is a lot of talking these days about raw food. Popular people are going raw daily, movie stars, singers, bloggers, you name it. There is a lot of hype, which means that some of the things you are reading about raw food are only speculations, suppositions or just plain lies, published only for bigger traffic and some money. Eating is one of the most important things in your life, it can dramatically influence your health, and your psychological behavior. It should be treated very carefully. If you plan to go raw, take it easy, don’t rush to the first diet to see on a blog (including mine). Talk to someone that’s already a raw foodist. Try to meat real people that are raw foodists for more than, let’s say, 2 years. Read all that you can read on the subject. Make some experiments in your own privacy. Try it out the easy way. At the end, decide for yourself. It can be a good thing for you, or it can’t. It’s entirely up to you.

Socializing challenges

As I said before, eating raw food is a big social challenge. Eating habits are so much melted with the social habits these days. Whenever you meat somebody, you have to do it while eating. Let’s have lunch sometimes, would you like to come to us for dinner? And so on… Being a raw foodist will surely make you a strange beast and you must be prepared for that. And, after all, they’re perfectly right, the normal way of eating is still cooked food. An entire civilization is based on that. You are the strange one.

My social experience as a raw food person was rather unpleasant. In the end, I had to succumb to the established social pattern and become a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (also pretty strange too in my country, but acceptable). I still think that you can have a raw food diet and a normal social life and I think I know how to do it know. 

The biggest problems I can see from a social standpoint are: meeting people in a formalized way (a business lunch, for instance) and trying to have some entertainment. Other than that, a raw food diet wouldn’t impact much on the social activity.

When meeting people in a formalized way I guess it’s best to tell in advance that your eating habits are different than most people habits, and iron the things out before the actual event. You can avoid embarrassing situations, like eating at a restaurant that can’t even give you a decent fruits plateau. And you can also clarify that your eating habits are not part of the business, if the meeting is about business, of course.

When you are going to have some social entertainment, options are very limited. I remember that, during my initial raw food period, I wanted to organize a party for my birthday. I decided to have the party on raw food, and I cooked one day and a half - with very precious help from my friends - and we end up with a pretty decent party menu. All raw food, of course. The term “cooked” is used in very different way, we made raw cookies, and we actually prepared raw soup and several other raw meals. All extremely tasty, if you ask me, and all raw… The party was a blast, but one thing I remembered was that in normal circumstances I just couldn’t set up a raw food party. It’s too different…

My raw food set up

I rebooted my raw food engine two weeks ago, meaning I started to eat raw food again, just weeks after I sold my company. I started without a plan, just feeling good about having only fresh fruits and vegetables in my diet. Didn’t embarked on a raw food diet challenge, nor did I joined a club about that. Just started to eat raw because I want to enjoy the benefits. After first week, I realized that I am starting to experience detox situations, like fatigue, and sometimes rushes of nasal fluids, and a decision has to be taken: would I stay totally raw, or would I go back and forth from raw food to cooked food? I decided to stay raw. I know the detox is not ready yet, and I know it will take some time until I will really enjoy everything about raw food, but the benefits are already showing up. I’m starting to lose weight, going from 93 kilos 2 weeks ago, to 88,7 kilos today. 

Must say though that at the same time I started an exercising routine which consists basically getting myself everyday to the gym. The goal is to eliminate all the unnecessary fat I still carry within my body. The estimated time frame is 3 months from now, but from previous experiences I expect to be less. In normal circumstances it will be less, but I have to take into account our complete relocation in a new country and all the associated stress.

One other benefit is my psychological energy level: I’m much more clear and focused. I’m also experiencing a state of tranquillity in which I tend to be more understanding with other people’s problems. 

As for the food set up, I am eating roughly 50% fruits and 50% vegetables. I don’t prepare complicated meals, when I need to incorporate more food I just blend everything and drink it. The main goal is now to get over the detox period, and for that I need that the raw food should actually be eaten, or get somehow into my body. I plan to extend this diet in the future with more complicated meals, like soups, for instance, but for now it’s very important to stay on track, regardless of the color, texture, or taste of the food.

Other sources of information

I know how difficult is to find answers when you need them. So, if you want to know more about raw food experiences, I highly recommend you to read Steve Pavlina’s 30 days raw food challenge. There’s a lot of information in that series of posts, and I recommend you to read them all (there are 30 posts logging the raw food challenge, and then several others with conclusions). By the, way, several months after this challenge Steve Pavlina become 100% raw foodist. Another good starting point is to join an online raw food community, and one that I can recommend for now is giveittomeraw.com. I joined a week ago and I was surprised by the vitality of such a niched community. 

Well, that’s it for now for the raw food diet, if I will find more to share in the next days / weeks, I’ll do it again.

If you liked this article, feel free to share it, so others can enjoy it too.

Technorati Tags: raw food, diet, personal development, health

Si aun no usas un lector de feeds y si tienes varios webs que visitas frecuentemente: con un lector de RSS puedes ahorrar mucho tiempo, porque puedes leer todos los textos nuevos en un sitio centralizado. Un lector de feeds es como un diario personalizado. Además, ¿cuántas veces has visitado una página web solo para encontrar que nada ha cambiado?

Un buen lector es por ejemplo Google Reader (internet) o tu navegador favirito de internet (IE, Firefox y Safari).

• Schalten Sie die automatische Benachrichtigung bei neuen E-Mails aus. (Hat das in der Zwischenzeit mal jemand Frau Prof. Meckel erklärt, wie das geht?)
• Deaktivieren Sie laufende Instant Messenger (oder ändern Sie zumindest Ihren Status und halten sich daran)
• Schalten Sie Twitter aus (ist m.E. ohnehin ein völlig überflüssiges Programm)
• Begrenzen Sie den Zugang zu RSS-Feeds
• Gehen Sie zweckmäßig mit Pausen zur Belohnung um

und wenn Sie andere stören

• Machen Sie die Tür zu
• Arbeiten Sie an abgelegenem Ort
• Lassen Sie den Telefonhörer auf der Gabel und lassen Sie den Anrufbeantworter die Arbeit tun

Nun gut, die Tipps haben schon mal mehr geprickelt.

Powered by Twitter Tools.

I think he’s got Creativityist HQ pretty well beat.

a

michael pollan hq

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

If you could just pick one or two (or seven) habits to create in the next few months — habits that will have the most impact on your life — what would they be?

I often get asked this question, because people are overwhelmed when it comes to starting positive life changes.

They ask me: what one or two habits should they start with?

It’s not an easy question. There are so many changes I’ve gone through, from quitting smoking to simplifying my life to reducing debt to many more. And they’ve all seemed life-changing, and they’ve all seemed important.

But if I were to start again, and had to pick one or two, it would be the one or two listed below. The list that follows is in order of what I think I’d do the first 6-7 months of changing my life … but realize that every person is different. No one should follow my choices exactly — you’ve got to figure out what works for you.

That said, if you followed the program below, and worked to develop these habits, you’d probably do pretty well.

“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.” - Confucius

How to Develop the Habits
I’ve written a number of times about developing habits, but here are the basics:

• Do a 30-day challenge, focusing on just ONE habit.
• Write it out on paper, along with your motivations, obstacles, and strategies for overcoming them.
• Commit fully, in a public way.
• Log your progress.
• Remain publicly accountable — report on your progress each day.
• Have support for when you falter — either in real life or online.
• Reward every little success.
• If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again.

Read more:

• 13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits
• How to Establish New Habits the No-Sweat Way
• Engineer Life: Set Up Habit Changes So It’s Hard to Fail
• Autopilot Achievement: How to Turn Your Goals Into Habits

The Seven Little Habits That Can Change Your Life
OK, so now you know how to form a habit — and remember, only do them one at a time — but you want to know the seven little habits. Here they are, in my order of preference (but yours may be different):

1. Develop positive thinking. I put this first because I think it’s the keystone habit that will help you form the other important habits. Sure, positive thinking by itself won’t lead to success, but it certainly goes a long way to motivate you to do the other things required.

I learned this when I quit smoking — when I allowed myself to think negative thoughts, I would end up failing. But when I learned how to squash negative thoughts and think positive ones instead, I succeeded. This discovery lead to me practicing this over and over, until I was able to form just about any habit I needed. It’s been invaluable to me, and I think it could be to most people.

Focus on this habit first, and you’ll have a much easier time with any of the others. Start by becoming more aware of your negative self-talk — do a little tally sheet throughout the day, marking a tally each time you notice a negative thought. Soon you’ll recognize them, and you can squash them.

Read more:

• Top Motivation Hack: Positive Thinking
• Can You Spot These 10 Thinking Sins

2. Exercise. People who’ve been hearing me harp on about exercise might roll their eyes. Sure, exercise is healthy and all that, but how exactly is it life changing? I’m glad you asked:

• It makes you feel better about yourself, and more confident. That leads to better success with other positive changes.
• It reinforces the positive thinking habit — you need to think positive in order to sustain exercise.
• It relieves stress and gives you time to think — this leads to better mental well-being in your life overall.
• It helps with creativity. Don’t ask me to prove it, except to say that my best ideas and brainstorming sessions come from when I exercise.

Here’s how:

• 4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise Habit
• How to Make Exercise a Daily Habit
• 7 Ways to Build the Exercise Habit

3. Single-tasking. The opposite of multi-tasking — you’ve heard me harp on about this one as well. Why is it life-changing? A couple powerful reasons:

• You’ll be more effective with your tasks and get more done. It’s hard to achieve important things if you’re constantly switching tasks and distracted by other “urgent” things.
• You’ll be less stressed overall and (in my experience) happier throughout your day.

Read more:

• How Not To Multi-task: Work Simpler and Saner
• Now Do This and the Single-tasking Philosophy
• The Magical Power of Focus

4. Focus on one goal. Just as focusing on one task at a time is more effective, and focusing on one habit at a time is more effect, so is focusing on one goal at a time. While it might seem very difficult, focusing on one goal at a time is the most powerful way of achieving your goals. When you try to take on many goals at once, you’re spreading thin your focus and energy — the two critical components for achieving a goal.

What if you have 5 goals you want to achieve? Pick one to focus on first. Break it into a mini-goal you can accomplish this month, if it’s a longer-term goal. Pick an action you can do today. Keep doing this until the goal is accomplished — do an action every day, finish the mini-goal, pick the next mini-goal to work on. Then, when your One Goal is completed, focus on the next goal.

Some goals are ongoing ones — like blogging every day, or exercising every day. In those cases, turn them into habits — focus exclusively on turning the goal into a habit, until the habit is ingrained. Then focus on the next goal.

Read more:

• A Simple Guide to Setting and Achieving Your Life Goals

5. Eliminate the non-essential. First, identify the essential — the things in your life that are most important to you, that you love the most. Then eliminate everything else. This simplifies things and leaves you with the space to focus on the essential. This process works with anything — with your life in general, with work projects and tasks, with emails and other communication.

This will change your life because it will help you to simplify, to focus on what’s important, and to build the life you want.

Read more:

• Eliminate All But the Absolute Essential Tasks
• Haiku Productivity: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential

6. Kindness. Yes, kindness is a habit. And it can be cultivated. Focus on it every day for a month and you’ll see profound changes in your life. You’ll feel better about yourself as a person. You’ll see people react to you differently and treat you better, over the long run. It’s karma.

How do you develop the kindness habit? First, make it a goal to do something kind for someone each day. At the beginning of the day, figure out what that kind act will be and then do it during the day. Second, each time you interact with someone, try to be kind, be friendly, be compassionate. Third, try to go beyond small kindnesses to larger acts of compassion, volunteering to help those in need and taking the initiative to relieve suffering.

Read more:

• 18 Practical Tips for Living the Golden Rule
• Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness
• A Guide to Cultivating Compassion in Your Life
• 25 Ways to Help a Fellow Human Being Today
• The No. 1 Lifehack You can Implement Today to Make the World a Better Place

7. Daily routine. It’s so simple, but creating a daily routine for yourself can make a big difference in your life. The best routines, I’ve found, come at the start and end of the day — both your workday and your day in general. That means, develop a routine for when you awake, for when you first start working, for when you finish your workday, and for the end of your evening.

How will that change your life? It will help you get a great start to your day, and finish your day by preparing for the next day. It’ll help you firmly root the productive habits you want to firm in your everyday life. It’ll help you focus on what’s important, not just what comes up. It’ll help you make sure you get done all the things you really want to make sure gets done everyday. And that can mean a lot.

Read more:

• Tips to Establish a Morning and Evening Routine
• 12 Ideas for Establishing a Calming Routine

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” - John Dryden

—
You can now follow me on Twitter — the great experiment continues!

If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)

Quand on parle de journal personnel (ou journal intime), on a tous en tête l'image de jeunes filles adolescentes notant leurs amourettes dans des carnets roses. Avec l'âge, certains perdent l'habitude d'écrire leurs mémoires. Pourtant, il n'est pas si ridicule de continuer à noter nos expériences tout au long de notre vie.

Certains penseurs tels que Ira Progoff, inventeur du concept de journal intime intensif, le considèrent même comme un outil crucial pour le développement personnel. Les diaristes ne se content plus alors de dépeindre leur vie sentimentale au jour le jour. Mais ils décrivent chaque facette de leur vie dans diverses sections.

Nous allons explorer dans la liste suivante les bénéfices qu'apportent la tenue régulière d'un journal personnel :

1. Une première ébauche pour votre autobiographie

Si vous attendez vos vieux jours pour écrire votre autobiographie, il est probable que l'exercice soit pénible tant votre mémoire à long terme aura diminué. Sans compter que la plupart des témoins de votre vie tels que vos parents ne seront plus de ce monde pour vous apporter des détails. Vous devrez alors vous contenter des quelques bribes d'anecdotes racontés régulièrement aux enfants et petits enfants (j’exagère mais on ne sait jamais dans quel état sera votre cerveau).

Pour que votre vie ne sombre pas dans l'oubli, il est donc crucial de noter vos expériences. Cela doit venir naturellement, inutile de se forcer à écrire chaque jour, ou vous risquez d'abandonner complètement après avoir raté plusieurs jours. Essayez simplement de noter régulièrement et de manière détaillée les anecdotes les plus marquantes ainsi que les grandes étapes de votre vie :

• rencontres
• changements de résidence
• nouveaux départs professionnels
• voyages

Gardez surtout les noms des personnes rencontrées, les dates et adresses de vos lieux préférés, ça vous évitera des recherches pour plus tard.

Il peut être utile aussi de conserver certaines "reliques" : tickets de transport ou d'entrée à un concert, place de cinéma, lettre,… qui symboliseront les moments forts de votre vie. Ou encore mieux : capturez ces moments (ou même ces reliques) sous forme de photos ou vidéos.

2. Un instrument de motivation

Un des principes les plus importants pour se prendre en main en tant qu'individu est d'avoir une estime de soi suffisante pour saisir les opportunités de la vie.

Pourtant, certaines personnes en situation d'échec semblent baigner dans une culture de la pauvreté irrémédiable. Ils se sentent submergés par le groupe auquel ils appartiennent et peinent à ressentir la réalité de leur propre existence. Ils sont comme effacés par la masse. De fait, ils ont du mal à imaginer qu'ils peuvent améliorer leur sort.

On peut citer comme exemple certaines populations fragiles comme les prisionniers, les adolescents ou les habitants de quartiers défavorisés. Mais ceci peut être généralisé à tout individu affaibli psychologiquement.

Le journal intime peut alors jouer un rôle important dans la prise de conscience de nos capacités. Certains ateliers menés par Ira Progoff dans les prisons ont ainsi démontré qu'après avoir tenu régulièrement un journal personnel pendant plusieurs mois, les diaristes reprenaient espoir. Ils ne pouvaient qu'être émerveillés devant leur oeuvre : la réalité, la force, et souvent la beauté et la sagesse qu'ils avaient écrit était une preuve irréfutable de la créativité dont ils étaient capables. Ainsi pouvaient-ils réaliser qu'ils avaient la force de changer les choses et accepter l'abondance que la vie pouvait leur offrir.

3. Mieux piloter sa vie

En explorant de manière détaillée le chemin sinueux qui nous a mené là où nous en sommes actuellement, il est possible de prendre conscience d'une certaine forme de continuité au fil de notre vie, une certaine logique qui contraste avec le chaos apparent des événements qui ont eu lieu. On y trouve des modèles, des cycles de vie. Par exemple une alternance de périodes productives et de relâchements, de moments de solitude et d'activité sociale débridée. Grâce à cette vue générale, on peut évaluer la prochaine direction à prendre, un peu comme si on traçait la tangeante d'une courbe.

Pour faciliter ce processus, Ira Progoff conseille de créer dans le journal personnel les deux sections suivantes :

Steppingstones (paliers) : ce sont les grandes phases de notre vie. On peut les découper par exemple suivant les relations amoureuses, les endroits où on a habité, les années scolaires, les positions professionnelles occupées, les voyages, les maladies, un divorce, un deuil, etc… Rappelez-vous comment vous vous sentiez à l'époque, quelles étaient vos contraintes? vos croyances? vos buts?…

Roads Taken and Not Taken (routes empruntées et non empruntées) : ce sont les choix que nous avons fait. Par exemple, une rencontre ou une expérience particulière peut nous pousser à changer de cap. Imaginez alors quelle aurait été votre vie actuelle ou celle des autres si vous étiez resté dans la même voie ou si vous aviez emprunté un chemin différent.

Cet exercice se révèle très instructif lorsqu'on est à un point de transition et qu'on cherche une direction pour entrer dans une nouvelle phase de la vie. On reprends ainsi conscience de l'étendue des opportunités qui s'offrent à nous. Et il est possible de s'engouffrer à nouveau dans un chemin à peine exploré jadis, menant vers un ancien but qui n’avait jamais été atteint. Au final, cela nous aide à prendre les décisions susceptibles de développer l’ensemble de notre potentiel.

A suivre…

Articles relatifs

• Téléconférence gratuite sur la motivation chez Sébastien Night (1)
• Le zapping de l'efficacité - volume 4 (1)
• Inauguration des forums de l'efficacité et du développement personnel (0)
• Il y a un an sur C'éclair! - août 2007 (3)
• Création d'un moteur de recherche du développement personnel (10)