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Zen Habits

Simple Productivity


Re-Centering: Finding Your Way Back To The Life You Meant To LiveToday
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Eric Hamm of Motivate Thyself.

It’s amazing how far off course we can get when we’re not watching our steps.  We just wake up one day and wonder, “Where the heck am I and how did I get so far off my intended path?”

Let’s all take a second and travel back in time to what I like to call our ‘dreaming years‘.  This is the time when you’ve first opened your eyes to life as an adult.  The world is your oyster and the possibilities, endless.  Your desires are strong and yet simple in their structure.  The chaos of life has not yet stripped away your clear vision of what a healthy, happy life should be.

For me, this would be right around the time I started my tech consulting business.  I was excited about the early successes I was encountering and was just starting to move beyond the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.  I saw great opportunity ahead and started laying out my goals with bated breath.

One day I was walking some laps around my favorite park dreaming of the future.  I started working some numbers in my head, thinking of what my possible income might be 5 years into the future.  (I wasn’t so much interested in the money as much as the freedom that a healthy income can bring.  More time to live the life I desired was what I was after.)

This day dreaming turned into some real goal setting.  I did the math, made some assumptio

10 Simple Ways to Live a Less Stressful LifeOctober 5

“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” - George F. Burns

Stress is a major problem for many people — a hectic, stressful job, a chaotic home life, bills to worry about, and bad habits such as unhealthy eating, drinking and smoking can lead to a mountain of stress.

If your life is full of stress, like mine once was, there are some simle things you can do to get your life to a more manageable level.

Now, your life will probably never be stress-free — I don’t think that’s even desirable, even if it is possible, because stress is something that challenges us and helps us grow. At a reasonable level. But when stress gets too high, it causes us to be unhappy and unhealthy.

It wasn’t that long ago when I was working long hours in a very stressful job, with little time for my family, smoking and eating fatty foods and not exercising. I had a lot of debt and too many bills. I was unhappy and stressed out all the time. I was losing hair … OK, actually that was because of genetics, but still. I was pretty stressed.

So I made some drastic changes. I quit my job. I simplified my life. I quit smoking and started exercising and eating healthier. I began to eliminate my debt. And I learned some habits that, when applied on a daily basis, can really transform the way you li

13 Ways to Simplify International TravelOctober 3
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity, the author of the Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare.

I’m writing from my hotel balcony in Giza City, Egypt – just outside Cairo, and the site of the historic Pyramids. The sun is coming up right now, and the view is great. There’s only one problem:

A lot of other visitors here are unhappy.

They’re on vacation, far away from home, but they’re not enjoying themselves. Between the heat and the hassles, something has gone wrong… and unfortunately, the problem is not unique to Egypt.

From departure lounges all over the world to nice hotels on every continent, I see the same thing no matter where I go: some people are having the time of their lives, and others, well, would rather be at home.

There are probably several reasons for this phenomenon of unhappy tourists, but one of them is that international travel can be overly stressful and unnecessarily complicated. If travel becomes too complicated, you can end up defeating yourself before any external pressures even arrive.

To counter the stress, here are 5 “big-picture” strategies and 8 specific, practical tips you can use to simplify your next big trip. Some of them will help you save time and money – both worthy goals – but

Success Isn’t a Competition: Boosting Others Helps You in the Long RunOctober 1

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” - Bertrand Russell

As a blogger who has found some success amongst the seemingly endless sea of blogs, I’ve had to confront some old and rusty ideas I used to have about success and competition.

I examined these long-held beliefs early on in my blogging career, and discovered that they were false.

What I learned that has helped me tremendously, and these ideas can be applied to many fields of work and many areas of life:

  1. Striving for success does not requre competition.
  2. Boosting others actually helps you, in the long run.
  3. Envy of others’ success and trying to tear others down helps NO ONE.

The last one probably sounds obvious, but is also the idea that’s least used in reality by many people. For some reason, many of us get jealous when others are successful, and we try to tear the person down. We belittle them for their success, we criticize unfairly, we bad-mouth people, we become obstacles to their further progress.

It’s utterly illogical, and yet you can find it everywhere in life, in many different cultures and industries. How does someone else’s success become a bad thing for other people? This is a concept I’d like to explore a little today, and I’d also like to take a look at the converse: how boosting people actually helps you.

Success Isn’t a Competition

Blogging, for example, is

9 Fail-proof Tips for Eating Healthy at Social GatheringsSeptember 30

I have to admit that while I eat pretty healthy at home, my weakness is at social gatherings: family parties, weddings, gatherings with friends, barbecues, eating out at restaurants.

I’ve tried different strategies, with mixed success. So before I went out last night (for the FIFTH time in six nights!), I asked my friends on Twitter (follow me here) for some of their best tips on eating healthy at social gatherings.

They responded with some great, common-sense tips. While many of these are tips I’ve tried before, it’s good to be reminded of them. And a couple I haven’t tried yet, so I now have a good arsenal of strategies at my disposal.

I thought you might find these tips useful. All credit goes to Zen Habits readers on Twitter — thanks guys!

Please note that some of these tips might be a bit contradictory. You should pick the tips that work best for you, and not look at this as a step-by-step guide to be adopted wholesale.

  1. Eat before you go. This was by far the most popular tip, and probably the most useful. Fill up on healthy foods at home.
  2. Place limits. Try a 2 plate limit, and a 2 drink limit.
  3. Plan ahead. Find out the menu ahead of time and make healthy choices, before you go.
  4. Drink lots of water and eat fruits and veggies. You can eat as many veggies as you want without consuming many calories. Just avoid dipping sauces and dressings.
  5. Hav