Inspirational quotes for 15th September 2007.

Karl Menninger: “Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.”

Seneca: “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Helen Keller: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”

Charles Caleb Colton: “Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination - happiness; but few are going by the same road.”

As a slight change of pace I thought I would ask you, the readers, what your top five websites would be if you were stuck on a desert island with a big nasty firewall in place that stopped you viewing any other sites. Below is my selection along with explanations. Please do leave your own choices in the comments.

• BBC: The first place I go to if I want to get the latest news or if I want to find out the sports scores. Plus they have a load of radio streams.
• Lifehack.org: The biggest productivity site out there with both fresh and user submitted content. If I can’t view any other GTD sites at least this site will give a good idea of what’s going on.
• Zen Habits: My favourite producitivity site. It’s updated regularly and comes complete with a philosophy of simplifying your life that I can really relate to.
• Digg: If I want alternative opinions, tech news, cool photos and videos then this is the site to go to. Plus the comments are always entertaining :)
• ProBlogger: Seeing as blogging is one of my favourite hobbies right now, it’s only appropriate I choose the ever popular ProBlogger.

Yesterday I talked about laying the foundations of a new habit. One of the points I made was to start at the smallest level you can. One of the biggest changes in my lifestyle to date has been to take a more healthy approach. Below I have detailed some of the small habits I started off with that laid the foundations for this new lifestyle to give you a practical example of some of the logic behind yesterday’s article.

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There are a lot of intelligent posts written about building new habits. However a lot of them seem to focus on the later stages of the process, rather than those difficult early days where you seem to have more failures than successes. At this stage a lot of people become so disheartened when they give in to the temptation of a cigarette after the third day, or unnecessarily spend money when they promised they would become more frugal, that they stop trying altogether. This early stage often requires a different approach. It’s important you lay down the foundations of your new habit, and hopefully this guide will help you to do that.

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Very late Organize IT recap for 09th September 2007. Blame my phone company!

• If any other productivity site is interested in doing a link exchange please get in touch, via the contact link on the right on in the comments.
• I’ve never really taken to getting up early, I’m clearly more a night owl. However these 24 tips to being an early riser might be just what I am after.
• My Ikea is over 2 hours away which is a shame because I could make great use of Ikea Hacker. I think the name pretty much sums it up, but it basically covers inventive ways of using and expanding on Ikea products.
• GTD does its job most of the time, but if you find yourself procrastinating a lot, maybe you should consider the LAGTD system, otherwise known as Lying About Getting Things Done (scroll down a bit to read about it).
• Remember you can advertise with Organize IT. It all goes towards a new domain name! And the occasional beer, but let’s not focus on that part ;)