Organization Equals Shortcuts

From http://www.getorganizednow.com newsletter (shortened)

A VERY simple aspect to effective organization
is finding shortcuts.

For instance, getting into the habit of making lists actually saves time.
Writing things down allows you to see the big picture and to approach your day in a systemized manner
that ends with you feeling productive.

For whatever reason, many people equate being organized as achieving an impossible feat.

Really, organization is about finding shortcuts
to everyday activities
in an effort to accumulate more time
for the things you really love to do!

Simple chores around the house can be made into shortcuts.
For example, don't make several trips up and down the stairs, or across your house to a bedroom.
When you have an item that has to go upstairs, leave it in a basket near the step.
When you have to go upstairs later, grab your basket and bring everything up in one trip.

Shortcuts also apply to your home office.
Every office should be well stocked with office supplies,
like pens, pencils, hi-lighters, calculators, the checkbook, stamps, envelopes, writing paper, Scotch tape, a stapler, paper clips, a calendar, and sticky notes.
In the end, a well- stocked office prevents you from running back and forth across the house trying to find your office supplies.

 

To Begin (Organizing)

From http://www.getorganizednow.com newsletter (shortened)

It's not really important where you start.
What's most important...is that you begin somewhere,
along with an 'I Can' attitude.

Sometimes you're able to organize a 'spot' but can never seem to finish a room.
Rather than beating yourself up because you didn't get to the entire room,
give yourself a pat on the back because you DID finish that one spot.
If you relax your expectations a bit, and congratulate yourself on your accomplishments,
you'll feel a whole lot better and will be able to get more done.

Instead of beginning with a room,
begin with donating and/or tossing items.
If you still have way too much stuff, start over again...

Keep repeating until your house is down to the bare essentials.
At this point, it will be way easier to maintain
since you will have simplified your home and your life dramatically--
just a little bit each day.

 

Don't Make Shallow Reasons To Spend More Than You Earn

 


 

Saving First

 


 

SAD PEOPLE Make POORER Financial Decisions

Summarized from Michael Estrin, "How sadness leads to deepening debt", Bankrate.com at 26 April 2013

 

Sad people exhibit present bias:
They tend to value the present over the future
(choosing immediate gratification and ignoring the greater gains associated with waiting).

"If someone is depressed or even just sad, their brain isn't getting enough of what it needs to make a good decision. And to compound matters, they may become even further discouraged or depressed because they're not able to make a decision." says Amy Jo Lauber, a fee-only financial planner in Buffalo, N.Y.

"Oniomania, or a shopping addiction, is not uncommon. What we sometimes call 'retail therapy' can give us a little boost, but for some people, it becomes very easy to overspend and spiral downward," says Dr. Elizabeth Waterman, a psychologist in Morningside Recovery Center, Newport Beach, Calif.
That downward spiral is especially worrisome because as the debt mounts, a person's mental health can worsen and become serious depression, Waterman says.

Catching the problem early doesn't always take a mental health professional.

But, when the debt becomes too much to take, it almost always has a negative effect on a person's mental health.
"If a client is filing bankruptcy, there is almost always a mental health issue, no matter what caused the bankruptcy," says Kimberly Sdeo, an attorney in Princeton, N.J.

Whether you're facing serious depression or a more mild mental health problem, health professionals say it's important to seek help.
Waterman says,

"Sometimes they just need to talk, or it could be more serious and require medication.
But in either case, just identifying the problem and starting treatment can make big improvements and allow the person to take care of their financial problems."

 

I'd Rather NOT Get Even

From Jesse Bering, "Getting even versus getting over it: Think twice before enacting your revenge. Punishing your enemy is bad for your mental health (But vengeful daydreams are okay)", January 26, 2009 (visited 6 January 2013).

 

When someone is jarringly rude, obnoxious, or unfair to me or to people I care about, I take a hidden pleasure in daydreams laden with retaliatory themes that, if committed to the screen, would make Quentin Tarantino cringe and look away. In fact, punitive thoughts such as these apparently “feel good” in a neurobiologically meaningful way. For example, in a 2004 study published in Science by University of Zurich researcher Dominique de Quervain and his colleagues, people asked to think about exacting revenge on an enemy experienced measurable pleasure: their dorsal striatum (the pleasure center of the brain) lit up in a PET scan while doing so.

... thinking about getting even is one thing; going ahead and actually doing it is a different psychological story.

Recent findings by Colgate University psychologist Kevin Carlsmith and his co-authors, Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia and Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, reveal that actually inflicting revenge on someone who has wronged us leaves us feeling anything but pleasure.

The authors summarize their findings this way: “[People] underestimate the extent to which punishment will make them ruminate about the [transgressor], and they fail to realize that this is especially true if they instigate the punishment, as opposed to seeing someone else do it.” The reason for this paradoxical finding, the authors argue, is that rumination prolongs the negative emotions that punishers are trying to escape in the first place—the act of having punished someone keeps us thinking about them.

Carlsmith and his coauthors stop short of explaining exactly why punishment makes us continue reflecting on this person we loathe, but to me it’s fairly obvious.

You may think you’ve restored justice by inflicting the punishment. But from the other person’s perspective, you’ve gone overboard and now it’s their turn to punish you.

So, guess what? Now you’ve made a real enemy and have to be vigilant about them returning the retaliatory favor. Evolutionary scholars reason that punishment is “costly” in this sense because it can rapidly escalate, placing you and your family (and thus your genes) in harm’s way.

Of course, if you’re an anonymous punisher that threat becomes minimized.

Just have a look at websites such as bitterwaitress (check out “The Shitty Tipper Database”) or RateMyProfessors.com, where underappreciated restaurant servers and disgruntled students can body slam the reputations of their antagonists while wearing the mask of an encrypted IP address. (Or for a really depressing glimpse into human nature unfiltered by fears of revenge, have a peak at some of the spirited adolescent comments left on the average YouTube video.)

 

Get Your Motor Running

From Get Organized Now - Special Edition (January 1, 2013)

 
Even those of us who are self-motivated with most things,
may procrastinate on things that don't necessarily come easy.

We all need a little push sometimes.

 
Whether it's a word of encouragement from a friend, a friendly reminder from a parent, a gentle nudge from a spouse, or advice from a total stranger,
those little outside 'pushes' often help to get our motors running.

Whenever possible, designate a person (or two) as your own personal Motivational Coach.
If something needs to be done, ask this person to tap you on the shoulder from time to time to ask if it's being worked on. This may be the little push you need to get started.

Another option is designating some-THING as your Personal Motivator...
like a reward you can enjoy pending the completion of the project at hand.

Yes, it's good to be self-motivated.
But,

accept those little outside pushes from time to time.
They're great for helping us get more done than we would have done alone.

 

Are You Kidding Me?

From Get Organized Now - Newsletter (January 6-12, 2013)



My daughter is a very good-natured little girl, but every once in awhile, I think she's
possessed.
This generally only happens with she's over-tired, which is rare.
She'll come home from school, and not want to do her homework. She will stand in front of me, whining for 20 minutes before starting.
During these rare times, I hear myself saying, 'Are you kidding me?!
For all the whining you've done in the last 20 minutes, you could have had your homework done!'

As adults, sometimes we are also possessed by the 'I really don't want to do (you fill in the blank)'. But,

for all the time we waste fretting about it or complaining about it, we could have had it done in the first place.

If you ever catch yourself doing this,

stop,
and immediately start doing whatever it is you don't want to do.

Even if you're not loving the process as you're doing it, getting it done and out of the way will be rewarding in the end.

 

Pendapat NEIL PEART Mengenai RENCANA Dan MASA DEPAN

 

 
Neil Peart memberikan pendapatnya mengenai membuat rencana atau pun menyusun ekspektasi untuk masa depan.
Pendapatnya ini tentu berkaitan dengan kariernya bersama Rush, yang sudah berlangsung selama kurang lebih 40 tahun.

Berikut ini kutipan dari wawancaranya di bulan Juli lalu dengan Andy Greene dari Rolling Stone yang berjudul Q&A: Neil Peart On Rush's New LP and Being a 'Bleeding Heart Libertarian':

“The next two years are mapped out pretty well, and that's enough.
We usually only plan one year in advance.
So that's the other funny thing about longevity,
because we watched one year go by and two, three, four, each one one at a time,
but we never planned, ever, more than a year in advance.
Now we're planning the next two years,
so that's more than enough future for anyone to dare to presume.”

---

Dua tahun ke depan sudah diplot sebaik mungkin, dan itu cukup.
Kami biasanya hanya membuat rencana untuk satu tahun ke depan.
Jadi ini adalah satu fakta lain yang menarik mengenai kemampuan bertahan lama,
karena kami mencermati satu tahun berlalu kemudian dua, tiga, empat, satu demi satu,
tapi kami tak pernah membuat rencana, sama sekali tak pernah, lebih dari satu tahun ke depan.
Sekarang kami membuat rencana untuk dua tahun ke depan,
jadi ini adalah rentang masa depan yang lebih dari cukup untuk diperkirakan oleh siapapun yang memberanikan diri.

Bagi saya, ini bukan suatu saran atau pembenaran agar tidak membuat rencana jauh ke depan.
Pendapat ini berguna untuk meringankan stres,
bagi siapapun yang sudah berusaha dengan segala upaya ataupun dengan susah payah untuk membuat rencana jangka panjang, tapi kerap menemui halangan sehingga tidak sampai pada perwujudan yang diinginkan.

Kutipan ini menjadi pengingat agar tidak melampaui batas kemampuan sendiri (dalam hal ini adalah perencanaan),
sehingga tetap dapat menerima atau bahkan menikmati naik-turun di sepanjang jalan kehidupan.
Karena,

ternyata,
ada yang sudah menjalani karier selama sekian puluh tahun dengan sukses dan tidak pernah merencanakannya terlalu jauh.

 
Foto: Ethan Miller, Getty Images

Jangan Berdiri Di Ambang Pintu Jangan Bimbang, Putuskan!

Bagai katak dalam tempurung,
tempurung yang hangat dan menenangkan,
tapi mulai membosankan.

Satu langkah keluar,
terasa sudah waktunya.

Tapi kenyataan yang terasa dingin,
menyambut di luar.

Terpaku sang katak,
di ambang pintu,
antara kehangatan yang jelas tapi datar,
dan kenyataan yang asing tapi menjanjikan.

Tak bisa selamanya berdiri di situ,
pintu yang terbuka tak baik baginya,
mengusik kedamaian yang telah ada sekian lama,
tak juga meraih yang ada di luar sana.
 

You Cannot Allow Your Fears Turn You Into An Asshole In The Land Of Women (Jonathan Kasdan) - Kristen Stewart & Adam Brody

TAKE THE PAIN, DO SOMETHING!

When one dislike something of others',
check for something disliked in oneself.

Evaluate,
identify,
accept,
evolve...

Let him, that would move the world, first move himself.
Socrates

BISA KARENA BIASA

1.		Set pikiran.
		Perkuat pikiran yg mendukung (gw bisa, gw yakin, gw seneng,..), lupain pikiran yg menghambat (gw gak bisa, gw gugup, gw salah terus,..).
2.		Coba keluar dari zona aman.
		Ambil risiko. No pain, no gain.
3.		Latihan.
		Practice makes perfect. Hal yg paling gampang kita lakukan adalah sesuatu yang kita biasa lakukan.

Gw kutip secara sangat2 bebas dari kolom Leila Ch. Budiman di Kompas.

INTUISI

>		Dengarkan diri sendiri.
		Sisihkan waktu untuk mengisolasi diri ke tempat tenang, contoh paling gampang: toilet..
>		Netralkan diri.
		Jangan takut salah/sial atau merasa harus selalu benar/mujur.
>		Latihan.
		Perhatikan hal2 yg terjadi pada kita, yg seringkali bisa jadi petunjuk u/ mengambil keputusan/pilihan. Bisa dibantu dgn membuat jurnal pribadi.

---

QUOTES:

>		Menyisihkan waktu untuk mengisolasi diri bisa juga bermanfaat untuk mendekatkan diri kepada Sang Pencipta.
>		Rata2 orang cuma memanfaatkan sekitar 5% kemampuan otak mereka.
>		Bakat itu penting, tapi gak bisa terus bermanfaat tanpa latihan.

---

Dari 'Selamat Pagi Jakarta' - O Channel (7-8 WIB). Host: Erwin Parengkuan & Jill van Diest. Bintang tamu: Reza .

Gw gak inget kata-per-kata (juga nama lengkap bintang tamunya), jadi di atas itu kalimat gw sendiri dari inti2 yg gw tangkep.
 

HERO OF THE (BEGINNING OF THE) YEAR

>		Two NYC men save falling toddler - Yahoo! News
>		New York's Second Samaritan Save This Week - ABC News

We all can use more hero around...

TO VALUE LIFE

These people are so ill,
but the sickness fuels their will.

>	'I take my oxygen tank swimming'
	"I know how important it is to keep fit. After all, my life depends on it."
>	'I could die waiting for lungs'
	"Whilst I am not scared of dying, I love my life with a passion, so the thought of not being here makes me incredibly sad."
>	Keeping a healthy distance apart
	"They are amazing kids. They are quite remarkable and they do not make a fuss about their illness."

BBC News

REASON VS REALITY

>	I'm not ready because I'm still afraid
	Fear is normal for a human being, who feels bad or uncomfortable with something unfamiliar or unknown. If you wait until the fear goes away before making changes, you'll wait until forever
>	I need to feel more confident before I make a breakthrough
	You'll never get the real confidence about your potential until you really use it
>	This is not the right time to do it
	You'll never sense the right time to take risks (which require you to step out of your safe zone), but you'll feel right to to take the risk once you find the courage from and the value of the experience
>	I'm not really sure I wanna do it
	You're lying to yourself if you believe that you don't want to change. You'll doubt the validity of the new path that you're about to take until you see where the path leads you to

Barbara De Angelis