No, I’m not going to talk about The Lion King! Instead I am going to introduce a common self improvement tool, called the circle (or wheel) of life. I’ve always found it to be a very clear-cut, visual approach to analyzing how satisfied you are with different areas of your life, something that is not particularly common in the self help field. Oddly, it’s not a technique that seems to have much explanation on the internet. Hopefully this post (and potentially the mini-series that will follow it) can go some way to clearing that up. Let me know if you try it out out and whether it was useful.

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It’s something of a tradition at this time of year that everyone writes advice about new year’s resolutions. Whether it be on TV, in magazines or on blogs (ahem…), they all seem happy to dish out ill thought advice left, right and center. However I am going to buck this trend and provide a damning indictment of the new year’s resolution. Much of the tips offered are generalized and recycled junk that end up offering nothing practical for the readers. Instead they build up the clean sheet nature of a new year and leave people with a naive optimism about what they can achieve. The result? Badly thought out and totally unrealistic resolutions that are destined to fail. Remember the rule of starting small.

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My series on boosting your creativity is one of the most popular on Organize IT. In the previous three parts, I looked at the basics, inspirational locations and the attitudes you should adopt to foster creativity. For this post I want to cover the subject from a different angle and look at those issues that have the opposite effect on your creativity so that you can avoid them in your day-to-day life.

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Every year I hear more and more people complain about Christmas, how it’s not the same as it used to be, all that money and effort and you end up with another pair of socks as a present. Oh, and everything on the TV sucks! Sound familiar? The problem for a lot of people is that they somehow build up unrealistic expectations of the Christmas period so it all inevitably comes crashing down. Maybe we still cling onto the idealized image of the holiday from years ago. Or maybe it’s the way the media portrays it. Either way, it doesn’t have to be like this!

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During the day our energy levels fluctuate and ultimate decline as the hours pass. The same principle applies weekly, monthly and yearly and our bodies can really be compared to batteries. For instance, our energy levels can peak one week then plummet two weeks later. And it’s not just our energy levels, it’s our productivity levels, happiness levels, concentration levels, motivation levels and so on. It’s all part of the natural ebb and flow of our lives. Animals largely live their lives around these fluctuations, and many years ago, humans would have done the same (what could be described as surfing the waves). Nowadays of course, we have so many commitments and distractions that we often have to just deal with everything regardless of whether we are peaking or sinking (just push through the waves the best we can).

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