If you are constantly oversleeping, chances are you end up having bouts with lethargy the rest of the day.  While lack of sleep is a bad health problem, sleeping too much is not very good either and can have serious consequences in your social, work and financial life.

My girlfriend consistently gets headaches when she stays in bed too long.  This happens a lot on the weekends when she refuses to get up until around noon.  While understandable due to the lack of sleep she gets because of work on normal days,  this affects both her productivity social activities and general mood.  Her weekend basically sucks and, since I’m a part of her day, I am negatively affected as well.

She has recently agreed to work with me to get over this tendency to sleep in for long periods.  We’re trying to figure out a system that can work for us.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

Ever felt like you didn’t have time to do the things you wanted? Like get around to starting that new business, or get that skill cerification, or finally visit your parents? Yet when you take the time to write down all you have accomplished, you come up with a blank.

It’s not very uncommon. You’ve kept busy doing nothing.

Being busy has always been nothing but an excuse for me. Like when someone invites me to a party and I don’t want to go, I tell them I’m busy. When people ask me why I haven’t been going to the gym as much as before, I tell them I’m busy even though I’m really just sick of going to the gym and will probably stop for a few months.

I’m dumbfounded everytime I see people talking about how busy they are. I’m sure many of them really are busy but I can’t help but think how easily avoidable I’ve always found busyness to be.

From what I’ve seen, there are two ways that people are actually busy:

1. Physically busy like they’re driving somewhere or running errands or playing

2. Mentally busy like examining a problem, thinking things through or worrying about something

Both types can be productive, depending on how they are used. In the same breath, they can also both be huge wastes of time and resources. I like outlining busyness as a quadrant divided into four areas where any activity that adds to your busy lifestyle can fall into: Physical-Productive, Physical-Wasteful, Mental-Productive and Mental-Wasteful.

Unfortunately, many people spend much of their busy time engaging in activities that fall into the Wasteful area. And because of this, they accomplish nothing or very little, despite spending an inordinate amount of time on them.

I have a list of my personal activities that fall into each of the above. When I catch myself doing any of the wasteful stuff, I hold back and see how to either: do things differently to make them productive or stop doing it and focus on something new.

Here’s a sample list for each of the above classifications.  Surely, you’ll have your own.  Edit the list and put in yours.

Physical-Productive

• working out
• working on my internet projects with a clear goal in mind
• learning new skills
• going someplace or doing something for the first time (always stimulates the imagination)

Physical-Wasteful

• playing videogames
• talking about making money with people who aren’t making money
• idly tweaking my websites or marketing campaigns
• spending more than 1 hour at the mall

Mental-Productive

• learning new ideas from books and audio programs
• meditation
• planning with a clear goal in mind
• thinking about ways to enjoy my activities more

Mental-Wasteful

• entertainment television, radio, magazines
• entertaining doubts - they never run out
• talking and thinking about negative outcomes
• thinking and gossiping about other people

The wasteful stuff will keep you busy - sometimes for days on end  - but lead you nowhere that you’d care to be two months down the line.  They add no value to your present moment and, in fact, diminishes it.  Most of the stuff that keep people busy simply add no value to their lives.  Why would you spend your precious seconds that way?

Technorati Tags: busy, add value

There are moments when we feel a sudden surge of anger.   We all have different emotional resources available to us, so when we do, we all react differently.

Some people get violent, some get obnoxious, others will just cry.  I used to like bottling it in, now I just lash out.  Sometimes I get in trouble but I’m always able to appease it after I cool down.

The problem when you bottle your anger in is it never goes away.  Two days will pass and you’re still angry everytime you remember whatever triggered the emotion.

It’s silly because all you have is a memory of the event and it’s not even affecting your present moment in tangible terms.  Yet you still feel the same. In this situation, I used to always wonder: Am I really angry again?  Or am I simply justifying the old emotion by reliving how I felt?

When I first read Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty, one of the best resources, there was one passage there where he said something along the lines of : “Just because I’m mad at you at 8:15, doesn’t mean I have to feel the same way at 8:45.”  It made such an impact on me.  I realized that all my anger for past events and people I feel have wronged me, is just me working to stay congruent to my original feelings for those events. And that act of holding on to old emotions was keeping me trapped in my past.

In the heat of the moment, the best way I’ve found to get rid of the anger is to let it out.  I’m a pretty scary guy.  And when I’m mad, I literally see people fold up.  I’ve made peace with that and I just lash out.  After I calm down, I make apologies when I can.  Nothing broken can’t be fixed.  I didn’t believe that when I was younger, but I’ve seen and done enough now to know that it’s true.

When you find yourself angry all the time, it may be a different story altogether.

If you’re always angry at your spouse, check how satisfied you are with the relationship and get counseling if you can.  If you’re always angry at your kids, check what you feel your kids are depriving you of.  If you’re always angry at someone or something, sit down and check what area of your life is making you feel inadequate and unhappy.  It will normally be related to that.

Some people will be worried that when they get angry, they will lose control.  The reality is, if you allow the anger and express it with no further judgment, it goes away in a matter of seconds.  If, instead, you express your anger and, at the same time, keep justifying it in your head, you’ll jump from angry to incredibly frustrated to possibly another negative feeling.  It will loop and never end until you simply allow the emotion and not judge whether it’s wrong or right.  Learn to deal with the feeling as something that exists which you need not judge nor expound on further.

For example, a guy bumps hard into me at the bar. I get angry and scream,”Be careful! Watch where you’re going!”  I’m usually done.  If, instead, I question what I just did and wonder whether I over-reacted, my tendency will of course be to justify my own rage.  Whether I do it by thinking how that guy is an asshole, or by being even angrier or something else, it doesn’t matter.  I’ve refused to simply accept that anger is an emotion that can come and pass and I hold on to it for fear of being wrong.

If he gets angry right back, I’ll go out of my way to make apologies.  Sometimes, you’ll get trouble.  Most times, it ends there.  Whatever happens, nothing broken can’t be fixed.  I believe that and it’s true.

Technorati Tags: anger, being angry