Monthly Archives: June 2006
Tips on getting to sleep
| 20/6/2006 | Posted by Pete under General |
- Wind down prior to bedtime
- Do not smoke (nicotine is a stimulant) or consume caffeine
- Try warm milk or a light snack before bed (if this doesn’t interfere with another treatment you are using)
- Exercise daily, but not right before bedtime
- Take a warm bath, but not right before bedtime
- Keep a regular bedtime and rising time
- Get in the habit of going to bed when you are sleepy and sleeping where you sleep best
- Reserve your bed for sleeping only
- Don’t have any clocks visible to you
- Reduce the amount of time you allow yourself to sleep until you fall asleep easily (your health care provider can help with this form of “sleep restriction therapyâ€
- Schedule worry time during the day and put worries out of your head when it is time to sleep; you can write them down on 3×5 cards, and then let go of them
- Get up if you have not fallen asleep in 15 minutes and practice a relaxing activity (e.g. handwork, reading a boring book) until you feel sleepy
Similar Posts:
Getting Things Done
| 19/6/2006 | Posted by Pete under General |
This is a summary of what I’ve learned from the “getting things done” methodology.
Firstly, I haven’t been using the techniques very long, so what I say may be overly critical, because I haven’t got to grips with it yet. Secondly, I would welcome any feedback on how I could improve my usage of it, or tweak the techniques to become more efficient.
My initial impression was that it produces a lot of items in the todo list, which immediately made me think that there was too much to do. What I realised from reading the rest of the book after doing this, was that not all of the things on the todo list necessarily are worth doing. Some of the items can be delegated, ignored or postponed to a later date. Immediately after doing this, however, I did feel a relief that everything was written down, meaning I didn’t have to keep the todo list in my head. I could simply refer to it.
I chose to use outlook as a glorified todo list, you may well have chosen differently. The reason I chose this, is that I have access to it at work and at home, so I can maintain a common format between these two locations. I decided that for work items it really wasn’t much point in categorising by context, as my job does not involve much travelling (beyond the commute to work). I rearranged the categories to define the type of work that I was doing. My job is of a technical nature, so there is little scope for using contexts.
Having written some small vba code to interface with our current tracking software, I feel that this pretty much covered the collection phase, as everything at work that needs doing should in theory be logged in this.
Having attempted to do this now for about a month seems to be paying off. I feel a bit more organised. However, it does seem like I’m missing something here. There is no scope withing GTD for projects, other than as a list of connected actions. The handling of projects is left largely up to the opinion of the implementor, and no advice is given on this. I would have liked to have seen some more guidance on how to handle larger items, rather than as a small series of interconnected tasks. I found this to be extremely unhelpful in helping me to see the bigger picture of larger items. Your experience may vary on this. This particularly is what I’m interested in trying to improve. You are welcome to comment, if you have any suggestions, or think I’ve totally missed the point here.
Similar Posts:
To all those still using Internet Explorer
| 8/6/2006 | Posted by Pete under General |
Please download and install firefox, the mozilla based browser. Then hit Ctrl-T to open a new tab. There are a number of benefits to using firefox, not least the tabbed browsing functionality, but also increased security, and the easy access to a search engine of your choice in the top right hand corner.
A handy hint is click on Tools –> Extensions then click get extensions. There are a large number of extensions available which can make your life easier. Personally I would recommend getting adblock, which cuts down the amount of advertising you see on sites. To get rid of adverts, simply right click on them and select the appropriate option. You will never see ads like that again.
If you are a web developer, check out the Web Developer extension, which allows you to muck about with css and html as well as change the size of the browser window to simulate different resolutions.
Similar Posts:
Recent Comments