5 Ways To A Longer Life

March 19th 2007 Health 1 comment

We all know about the typical ways of improving your health for a longer life, such as taking exercise, eating healthy options, quitting smoking and so on but what about other not so obvious aspects of your life? Below I’ve picked out five less obvious (hopefully) ways to increase your chances of a longer life.

Cut back the number of hours you work. There is a strong correlation between those who work long hours (long hours also tend to be associated with high stress jobs) and high blood pressure. Furthermore while you are stuck working all your time, you are not exercising, eating well, relaxing or getting enough sleep. Speaking of which…

Sleep well. Lack of sleep makes it harder to de-stress and messes with your hormone and energy levels. If your energy is down you are more likely to laze around and not do stimulating activities, not go for exercise and you will choose easy food options like take-away and microwavable meals. Conversely, this does not mean get lots of sleep. There is such a thing as too much sleep and it can be just as bad as getting too little. Know what amount you are comfortable with (the average is 7-8 hours) and have a regular undisturbed sleeping routine. Have no noise or lights on in the bedroom, have a comfortable mattress/pillows and don’t stimulate your brain with things like TV and games just before going to bed.

Avoid putting your body through too much physical strains over any lengthy period of time. Sitting down can put more pressure on the back than standing up, and as more and more people are finding themselves sat at computer desks for a time as part of their work this is becoming an increasing issue. Be sure to regularly sit up, walk and/or stretch out for a few minutes.

It doesn’t just have to involve sitting down either; consider your sleeping arrangements for instance. Do you have the right number of pillows? Is your mattress comfortable? Just think of the long term strains you can be adding to your body as you sleep if your neck is not at a comfortable angle on the pillow or your back is arched on a bumpy mattress.

Don’t hold things in. Be prepared to express yourself both vocally and in any creative ventures. Pent up emotions are often said to be toxic to the body. Are you angry about a person? Talk to someone, get it off your chest. Is your job dragging you down and making you bitter? Leave! Bad work environments are a huge source of negative emotions. Try writing a journal or seeing a councillor, or even talk to your friends. Having a strong social life is very effective as it provides a good network to express yourself. Things are rarely as bad you percieve them to be, being able to let out negative emotions and look on the bright side is very good for your health.

Keep active. People who stay active with social groups, volunteer work and hobbies often live longer because they have a reason to keep going. When people retire they often find an empty hole in their life where their work used to be. Have activities now so that the hole is never empty!

Video Of The Week: Office Accident

March 18th 2007 Videos 0 comments

Typically the third in the series is normally where it jumps the shark but I can always rely on good old fashioned office based tomfoolery to get me through…

Organize IT Recap: Horizons Of Focus, Work/Life Balance

March 17th 2007 Recap 1 comment

Its recap time! Below is stuff I have found/thought about this week

• The book Your Best Year Yet that I mentioned in my post on the productivity cycle also threw up some interesting stuff on roles and how to define them. I have been trying to work this thinking into the GTD vertical map and seeing as I have been meaning to write about these different levels (50,000ft, 40,000ft etc) expect a few posts in the near future on this area. If you have any experiences/thoughts on the vertical map (otherwise known as horizons of focus) then please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear about it.
• I’ve recently joined the Getting Things Done feed which you can subscribe to here. It is a pretty large feed incorporating all the other feeds from the many GTD, productivity related blogs out there. This is where I make a little plea for readers to subscribe to both the GTD feed and Organize ITs individual feed because its very encouraging to see the subscription stats increasing everyday.
• Daily PlanIt had some nice words to say about Organize IT recently so I feel its only fair to return the favour and suggest you go check her blog out. The Discover U series is especially worth checking out.
• I found this post about scheduling play first rather interesting, especially because recently I have been writing a lot about making sure you create and schedule rewards for your work. I’ve bought House series 1 and 2 recently and I’m struggling to do anything else other than watch that so maybe I should try scheduling a ‘playtime’ for it instead
• As mentioned last week I have started a MyBlogLog. Nobody as joined up to it yet. This may be my fault, or nobody wants to join it (whoops!). If its just the former, then please give it a try, I think Organize IT would really benefit from a bit of a community behind it. You can join by going here.

Random Links Part 04: Finances Edition

March 16th 2007 Links 0 comments

There hasn’t been a links update in quite a while so I thought now would be a good time to have one. Rather than just listing a bunch of links covering a wide range of topics, I thought I would try and keep things more coherent and simply cover financial related blogs this time round. Let me know what you think!

• Wisebread
• The Simple Dollar
• Get Rich Slowly
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Getting Finances Done
• John Chow
• Saving Money
• Common Sense Investor
• Earners Blog

Mind Mapping: Mindomo Review

March 14th 2007 Tech 0 comments

I discussed mind mapping a while back and recently came across another online tool called Mindomo. Like bubbl.us it gives you the option to try it out without signing up so there is no harm in giving it a try.

The obvious thing about Mindomo is compared to bubbl.us it is much more complex. This is both good and bad and I really can’t quite decide which way to go with it. Mindomo allows a lot of control over the looks of the mind map, including being able to choose font options, edit the bubbles, their shapes and colours, add hyperlinks and images…the list goes on. This allows you to create a mind-map that is attractive and exactly how you want it. However is this necessarily a good thing? With bubbl.us there is no choice over the look of it so I don’t have to worry about it, I can just sit down, type what I want, press enter for a new bubble and basically bang something out in minutes. With Mindomo I have to avoid the temptation to fiddle with the looks as though it is some piece of art (and you will probably want to fiddle as the default options are not the most appealing). That’s great if it’s part of some presentation or for display, but from my personal experience of mind mapping, I’ve only ever used it practically for brainstorming and rough note taking purposes. This won’t be true of everyone but out of curiosity it would be great if people could leave a comment saying in what context they have to create mind maps, whether it be for rough planning/brainstorming or for work/meetings.

Anyways, Mindomo is good enough to have some ready made mind maps up for you to check out, here and here. I have to admit bubbl.us wouldn’t be able to create something like that with all the images.