Did you ever have to wash dishes when you were younger as part of your chores? I did and I hated it until I found a quick way to do it.  At this point you might think I’ve lost it and am actually going to write a post on how to wash dishes, well I am and I’m not, keep reading you’ll see what I mean.

When I had to wash the dishes I done it haphazardly, wash a knife here, wash a dish there and consequently it took me ages to do them and they weren’t done properly.  I was then shown a way to do them which seemed to make the chore less of a chore and I would zip through doing the dishes.  Now I have shown my children how to do the dishes properly they see it as less of a chore as well (no we don’t have a dishwasher thank goodness).  My son said he done his homework the same way  I showed him how to do the dishes, when I asked him to explain I thought the intelligence required to link dishes with doing homework was amazing and I told him so.  Having expanded on it a little more you could apply washing dishes system to anything in life.

How to wash dishes

Pre-preparation

About 10 minutes after dinner, in my house, you’ll always hear me shouting through ‘who’s not rinsed their plate off?’ and one of the boys will come trundling through and rinsing their dinner plate off under the tap.  Rinsing the plate will obviously make washing the dishes a lot easier, especially if they sit for half an hour before they are washed and dried.

So it is with any chore or task, pre-preparation is a good habit to get into.  Imagine you’ve been given a report to write for next week, you have a thousand other things to do so can’t do it right away.  What you can do right away is a little pre-preparation.  You quickly skim the task and find out what it is about and in your mind what you will have to do to prepare it, you write this down and put it in with the folder for the next time you pick it up.  What this does is sets unconscious triggers in your mind and your mind starts to work on the report without you doing anything.  It keeps it fresh in your mind and when you sit down to do the report a lot of the work has already been done, without you even knowing it all because you’ve done a little pre-preparation.

Preparation

So the dishes have been rinsed half an hour before they are due to be washed.  The next stage is preparation.  This involves making sure all the cups are emptied before washing, any bowls have been rinsed, the sink is cleaned before washing , all the dishes are grouped together and the right amount of hot water and washing up liquid is put in before starting.

This preparation is applied to any task.  It is a vital component of reducing any stress when starting a task.  You get everything ready before starting any task.  I work as a homeless tenancy support worker and I see about 30 clients week who are at various stages of homelessness.  My week is prioritised and I see the ones who need a lot of work done on a Monday and Tuesday and I prepare any paperwork that they might need done or any information they might need before going to see them.  This could involve filling out a benefits form, getting more information on an education course, or helping them with an application for funding for furniture.  Then I group the clients together in order of area as I have to cover an area of possibly 100 square miles in a week, grouping them makes it quicker and easier to get through all the work required. Every single task in the world requires preparation, if no preparation is done then time, money and energy is wasted which causes undue stress.  I always leave about 90 minutes per day in case of emergencies and for writing notes.

The task

Now it’s time for the dishes to be washed.  These are done in groups; cutlery first, plates, cups, glasses and then pots and pans.  Grouping makes them easier to stack and quicker to get through.  Each dish is washed and then rinsed to make sure there is no dirt, if there’s still a little dirt it is then washed and rinsed again.  To make the task a little less of a chore I remember playing games in my head when washing dishes.  I used to play cutlery Olympics whereby all the cutlery was  put in the sink and I wanted to see if the knifes, forks or spoons would win the gold medal i.e. what one would finish being washed first, there were four possible winners as the spoons had teaspoons in them as well. I always willed for the underdog and hoped the teaspoons would win, I don’t know why but the teaspoons always used to come last and the knifes or forks used to win.

When writing articles I use the same method as above.  I group my writing tasks on subject.  So if I have 5 articles to write and two of them are on self help, two on property, and one on making money online, I group the and write them in order of groups.  I also find photos to go with each.  To make the task more interesting I try and finish as quickly as I can without compromising on quality.  I then re-read the articles and make sure they are okay and feel okay to publish.  This often involves, in fact, always, involve a little re-writing.  I then publish them to various blogs, or compile an ebook or send out to a newsletter group.

Post task

The dishes have now all been washed and rinsed and stacked on the rack.  It’s time for a cleanup.  This involves cleaning any water and soap bubbles off the sink area, cleaning the sink out and rinsing out the sink.  Voila dishes are done in record time and the forks have won the gold medal again.

Going back to writing articles, after I have completed checked, and published  them I always save the files to somewhere I can find them quickly and easily.  I also answer any queries via email on the various articles or any blog responses, although I have become a bit lax with this lately.  I then sit back and chill out knowing I have done a good job and done it to the best of my ability.

Now, go and get the dishes done!

Life can become a movie sometimes where we are the ones sitting back and watching life pass us by. We have many ideas to make our lives better but we seem to be stuck in an inertia phase.

If you don’t take action, you will regret it, whatever it is you need to take action for. You are someone who is filled with the get up and go to change your life in so many fantastic ways if only you would get up and do something about it.

Here are 8 ways you can get up and take action:

Wipe the slate clean – If you have too many projects on the go, clear them all and start from scratch. When you have wiped the slate clean, concentrate on thing at a time until it’s finished and then move onto the next. If you can’t clear everything, just drop them temporarily, concentrate on one thing until it’s finished and then move on. You will find you move a lot quicker through everything you need to get done.

List everything – Make a list of everything you would like to do, whether it be cleaning the house to taking the dog a walk. Write it down.

Prioritise – Pick the most important thing you have to do for the day, or week or year, and then pick the next most important thing and so on until you have reached the bottom off your list.

Eliminate distraction – No I don’t mean kill your partner! Eliminate the things you do from day to day that distracts you from taking action for example TV, books, computer. When you eliminate distractions, your mind wants something to do and this makes you more inclined to take action on the things you want or need to do.

Take a day off – Maybe a bit contradictory this one. It’s a simple piece of advice but one that is hard to do. Just take a whole day off, the world will still turn, the work will get done and nobody will die because you are not there. You will come back refreshed and ready to take action again which means you will be a lot more productive than you would have been should you have kept going.

Clear the clutter – Clearing the clutter, whether it be from your desk, your house, or your wardrobe. When there is clutter in your life there is clutter in your mind, clearing the clutters clears your mind.

Analysis paralysis – This is the term given to people who are analysing things too much and it keeps them from moving on. Stop analysing and just do it. There comes a time when you have to stop evaluating something and just bite the bullet and do it, if it doesn’t work out do something else and start again.

Change the narrator of your thoughts – Do your thoughts predominantly sound like Elmer Fud on dope; ‘Yeah, I have to get up but I can’t be arsed, I’ll do it tomorrow’. Change Elmer Fud to someone who gets you going, someone who can motivate you into doing something. It can be anybody from your best mate to your wife or a film star, anybody as long as they can motivate you. This can be quite amusing and the results can be great.

I have been thinking about ways to help my son with his concentration levels, as he gets distracted easily. I used some techniques, which I had tried when I was younger, and made some new ones up, more fun ones.

This gave me the inspiration for this article.

Concentration can be taught and learned and can aid us in so many ways. A few benefits of developing your powers of concentration are:

• It benefits short and long term memory
• Helps us to focus better
• Gives us inner strength
• Choose your own thoughts (instead of drifting)
• The ability to decide quickly
• Greater will power

10 concentration exercises

1. A candle flame – sitting in front of a candle and concentrating on nothing but the flame for 5 – 10 minutes will enhance your powers of concentration considerably.

2. Stumbleupon – Stumbleupon 100 sites without stopping for a break. Great for traffic to your blog as well.

3. Have a freezing cold shower – One of my favourites. Have a freezing cold shower. To take your mind off the cold think of all the things you are grateful for in life and your mind will be taken off the fact that your bits are almost frozen solid.

4. Do one thing at a time – I have a huge problem with too much stuff going on in my head at once. I have so many ideas about different things it’s hard to concentrate. When I focus on one task at a time, it helps my concentration enormously.

5. Get rid of worrying thoughts – Sometimes as you are trying to concentrate on a task other worrying thoughts will pop into your head; like you remember you’ve got to pick up some work from the office, you’ve got a meeting at the school, etc. To get rid of these distractions write them down on a piece of paper. This way you do not dismiss the thought altogether and you are telling yourself it is important enough to write down.

6. Count from 100 backwards down to 1 – This may sound simple enough, and it is, however it takes a bit of concentration to do it.

7. Recall a photograph – Study a photograph, which is unfamiliar to you. Do this for 5 minutes and then try to recall as much as you can about the picture.

8. Spell words backwards – This is great for kids as well and has the added bonus of helping them to spell.

9. “I went to the shops and bought…..” – This is a great car game and is a great one for concentration.
10. Do mathematical calculations – When I am driving, I like to do some mathematical calculations in my head e.g. I have 20 miles to travel, I am travelling at an average speed of 50 miles per hour, how long will it take to get to my destination. Nothing huge but things like this are great for your concentration skills.

I hope this has helped you. If you would like to add more concentration exercises why not leave a comment.

Creating a parallel you

There are many things we wished we could change about ourselves. Being more productive, being thinner, being well off financially, and being more intelligent: a whole host of other attributes that we would want for ourselves.

Imagine a world where there are multiple your’s, there is another you walking about who is 14 pounds lighter, there is yet another you who is 14 pounds heavier, there is another you who is a millionaire and there is another you who is homeless and destitute. Sounds like science fiction but we cannot say for sure that this is not the case.

Your world is just a theory

Now it may be hard to imagine a world like this, after all it’s just fiction posited by some mad science fiction writers. Not so, there are now many scientists working with superstring theory and other theories that postulate that our world is possibly made of lots of worlds all within a millimetre of each. One such theory called the M-Theory brings together all other superstring theories and is a complex and unfinished theory, which proposes that there could be multiple universes existing side by side.

What the hell theories have to do with our lives. Well if we think about it, we are living our life based on theories.

• We believe that the study of psychology is a science, therefore fact, when in fact it is all based on theories.
• We believe in evolution when it is really based on a theory, albeit a very convincing theory.
• Most of us believe in a God of some kind; yet again another theory and a belief system, one that most people get angry about when questioned.

Now these three statements alone are a huge part of most people’s lives but they are all theories and nothing more. Yes, there has been evidence put forward for evolution, there has been studies carried out in psychology but they are still nothing more than theories.

Our own world theories

Why not come up with our own world theories? A lot of us do not think we are intelligent enough to come up with a theory and leave it to scientists to do that kind of stuff. A scientist is someone who has managed to get a great education and has undoubtedly studied hard and spent their lives, some of them, studying a specific field. However that does not mean their theories are any more valid than our theories.

Beliefs and theories

We live our lives based on the theories of the world and we base our beliefs around some of these theories. What about if we change our beliefs and our theories about the world.

I am not suggesting proposing a theory of the universe, although it is possible, but rather come up with micro-theories and change our lives around them.

For example, imagine a world where there were multiple universes and another you were living your dream life in another universe. Now imagine seeing the other person knowing that you are living 1 millimetre apart and the time difference between your dream life and your current life is whatever you want it to be. For example, a thin you is only 1 millimetre away but they are 1 year apart. You now know you will reach one of your ultimate goals; to be thin. Knowing this could change your perspective and your life. Now it is just crazy thinking stuff like this as it is not true! Who is to say it’s not true? You are living your life based on theories, make your own theories and make them work for you.

Question your beliefs and live your own theories.

I think a lot of us live our lives without questioning our beliefs. I know I have spoke about this before but it is worth re-iterating. Question everything you believe in. We have based our lives on what other people have told us when we were young and we have been brainwashed to a degree, we naturally believe our parents when we are children, but our parents were conditioned when they were children by their parents and peers and their parents and peers conditioned them.

We are all special enough to question ourselves, our beliefs, and the theories of the world.

I am working on a theory whereby I can control the cells in my body to burn fat quicker. It might take a few years to get my brain to believe this theory, when it believes my theory the cells in my body will follow my brain.

Hi Everyone! This is Laura Young, the Dragon Slaying member of the Positive Blog Network. I’m filling in for Steve today while he’s on vacation. This goes out to everyone who thinks a bit of discipline is all they need to make them more productive. Maybe. Maybe not. Discipline flunkies, take heart!

“I need to become more disciplined.”

This is a common problem for many, particularly creative and entrepreneurial individuals. Many people believe if they were simply more disciplined they would have caught up on their taxes by now, have a clean home, a profitable, well-managed business and, most importantly, the peace of mind they imagine will come with all these achievements. The problem is that setting a goal of being more disciplined is a difficult one to get enthusiastic about. In fact, for some it may take the creative wind right out of their sails. For people who create by breaking rules and challenging conventions, trying to maintain a commitment to become a better rule follower and schedule minder often ends up as a series of false starts, frustration, self-loathing and Ben and Jerry’s binges.

While the desired end results of discipline may be worth dedicated pursuit, perhaps focusing on discipline as the means to goal achievement creates more problems than it solves.
For example, Twyla Tharp, a highly disciplined dancer and choreographer wrote an excellent book on this subject entitled The Creative Habit.

Sounds much more appealing than “The Disciplined Dancer,” yes? Developing a habit seems far easier that developing discipline. This may be a matter of semantics as in the end their outward manifestations may look quite similar but consider the energy and connotations each of those words has for you. Habits are easy to follow and hard to break. Discipline on the other hand sounds like work every day. Discipline is continually applied effort to achieve a certain end. Relax your focus and discipline falls apart. By contrast, habits take on a life of their own, apparently driven by their own power whether you want to engage in them or not.

In my experience, when people talk about having a need to be more disciplined, they are really talking about a need to be more consistent in the pursuit of their endeavors. What can be done to help you become more consistent?

Stop talking about discipline unless you really love the word. In fact, any word that feels like it has lead weights attached to it is one to strike from your personal vocabulary. If you want to make sustainable lifestyle changes they have to feel positive, powerful and attractive or you will be doomed from the start. Anyone can be disciplined for a weekend, but if the goal is consistency and the creation of habits which support you over a lifetime, you have to be enthusiastic about the process.

Remember Pavlov’s dog. Any pet owner knows that animals easily fall into routines and patterns of behavior. Just as your dog or cat recognizes the sound of the cabinet door opening that holds their food and rushes to you in eager anticipation, Pavlov noticed that a dog, used to hearing a bell prior to being fed would start to salivate just at the sound of the bell alone. This is called “classical conditioning.” When I was young, my father would play Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Goin’ On every Sunday while we were cleaning the house. To this day, when I hear those familiar songs I get a compulsion to start dusting. You probably have noticed some songs always make you think of summer. Some scents always remind you of your Aunt Millie. It’s the same principle.

Make this conditioning work in your favor by creating an environment that energizes you when you have to buckle down and tackle a project that is going to take some effort to achieve. Involve all your senses and think in terms of creating a ritual. Writers do this all the time, using specific writing instruments, sitting in a certain place, arranging the desk a particular way and maybe drinking a specific beverage when they sit down to write. With the cues set in place consistently, the mind begins to associate the setting with the activity and slides with increasing ease into a productive mode. The key is consistency combined with inherent appeal of the environmental associations. The more pleasant the setting, the more likely you will even start to look forward to the activity. Think about the sounds, scents and feel of your environment. Use the same attention to invite yourself to show up to a task that you would use if you were preparing to greet the love of your life. How delicious can you make the experience for yourself? Isn’t thinking about creating a delicious experience far more appealing than thinking about how to become more disciplined?

Think in terms of shifting energy. This is probably the most overlooked and most powerful technique you can use. Cleaning a closet is nearly a silver bullet when it comes to jump starting one’s productivity. The thought of cleaning a garage, doing your taxes or organizing your office may be overwhelming. Don’t worry about that. Simply focus on one place in the environment where you notice the energy is stagnant and shift it. Have an article of clothing in your closet that looked good in the store but that you hate wearing because it’s somehow wrong in a way you can’t quite identify? Why is it still in your closet? How about the refrigerator? Have some old condiments or a hunk of old cheese that you haven’t tossed out yet but that make you feel like “there is nothing good to eat in the house” every time you open the door? Just clear out a bit of dead energy. Same with that old stack of unread magazines and junk mail. You are not obligated to go back and read anything that has been sitting around untouched for a year or two before you toss it out or pass it on. I recently lost a five year history of e-mails for my business before switching to a more reliable webhost. Problems created? None. Very minor inconveniences for about 48 hours. Minor. And this was my livelihood. You have a lot of latitude here.

What does tossing out an old blouse and some stale Gouda have to do with getting your office clean and your taxes done? Nothing and everything. When your environment is draining you because of all those little pockets of dead and stagnant energy it will be nearly impossible to build the momentum you will need to approach tasks you dread. Have you ever gone to check the fridge while procrastinating on setting yourself to a task only to have the thought “there’s nothing good in here” come to mind? The fridge checking and the thought did nothing to add to your productive momentum. It’s okay to start doing work in an area unrelated to your goal. Energy is energy and once you are able to build it you can start to direct it.

Think thematically and integrate. Integration is far more powerful than discipline. Consider what is important to you in your life and what you value most. What does having a clean office really represent to you? What would it mean to have all your bills and paperwork filed? What would be significant for you in committing to getting out your canvas and paints? Rather than thinking of the activities and the outward signs of productivity try to identify the themes that underlie them.

Consider your personal definition of success. For example, several of the business owners I work with are able to name a financial goal that represents this. A common benchmark is making a six-figure income. It never fails when I ask someone what would change in their lives if they were making that wage that they confess much of what they are tolerating in themselves and in their environment would no longer be acceptable. One woman said, “I wouldn’t slouch and my desk would be clean.” What does slouching have to do with one’s checkbook? For her, there was a whole image of success that she became aware she was not embodying. While she may have had work to do before the money would start to come in, her posture and the self-respect coming with improving it was something she could work on immediately.

You don’t have to have a dollar figure attached to success, of course, but play with the concept however you wish to define it. I guarantee using your personal image of success as a litmus test for your current decisions will help you spot numerous subtle and powerful ways to bring your energies in alignment with your desired goal achievement. From the television shows you watch, to the food you eat, to the people you spend time with and the things you read, simply asking yourself, “Would I agree to this if I were successful? Is this consistent with where I want to be heading in my life?” will help you weave together all these seemingly tangential choices into an integrated lifestyle pattern which give you more energy and momentum.

What does energy, momentum and integration give you? Freedom. Freedom to say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Firm boundaries make one a better gatekeeper so energy drains don’t get a chance to accumulate allowing you more freedom to devote yourself to what you most want to create. Establishing a solid foundation of self-respect and integrated healthy habits which demonstrate that self-respect will give you more energy. Having clear standards for where you are willing to let your energy be spent only strengthens the foundation creating a self-sustaining cycle in which your activities actively support your path to success.

Ergonomics of life

I was speaking with my wife, who is an extremely organised person both mentally and in her physical location. I asked her a few questions about being efficient and well organised and what she does to do it. She advised she does it naturally and hasn’t really thought about it. So, I studied her for a bit.

At home she lumps all her tasks into one area. For example if she is in the kitchen doing dishes or something, she will do something else that has to be done in the kitchen like cleaning the cupboards, or clearing out the drawers. Now when I do these tasks I usually dart from one room to another and am running about like a headless chicken until it’s all done. I like to create a bit stress in my tasks to motivate me to get it done. My wife likes to live ergonomically and is stress free and relaxed when doing household work.

I started noticing other people at work and even myself naturally living life ergonomically. When I am visiting clients I visit all the ones who live in one area before moving onto a group who live in another area. My day is planned ergonomically and I didn’t realise it.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics: The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort

We can apply the principles of ergonomics in our daily lives to improve our productivity and save some time during the day and the week.

5 tips to live by ergonomic principles

1. Lump all tasks that are similar and do them until they are finished. For example if you have to write notes up at work every morning, you could try checking your e-mails at the same time, and then making all the return phone calls you have to make.
2. Lump all tasks together by area. For example if you are cleaning the dishes and know that later you have to clean the cupboards, or dry the dishes then do it all until the task have finished. This way you don’t lose focus by leaving the kitchen and getting distracted by something else.
3. Make all your phone calls at the one time. I constantly forget to call my family and friends. And feel guilty when they call me first every time. Make sure you call them first and call them one after the other in the middle of the week.
4. Only check your e-mails twice per day. In the past I have tended to check my e-mails as soon as they came in. You can get caught up so much with e-mails and become easily distracted by their content.
5. Get the money you need for the week at the beginning of each week. We tend to get money out of the cash machine whenever we need it. For example we need some bread and other shopping so we go to the cash machine and get some money. The next day we need money for the kid’s school meals, so we go to the cash machine. The next day we need to pay the milk man, so we go to the cash machine, you get the picture. We could save a whole lot of time by estimating how much we will need for the beginning of the week and take it all out at once. We usually spend about £120 per week, so we take out £120 on a Sunday night which should do us for the week. We have saved so many miles travelling doing this and so much time. You might not think a five minute journey up to the cash machine will add up to a lot of time. However when you think its 5 minutes there, 5 minutes back, time spent waiting in queues, time spent talking; time spent asking everybody if they would like anything from the shop etc. Each trip can amount to 30 minutes, that’s a possible 3.5 hours per week.

A hundred ways

Do you have some tips for living life ergonomically if not why don’t you share them here.

Without Vision You Are Flying Blind

This is a guest post from Lodewijk van den Broek, author of How to be an original. If you enjoy this post, check out his site.

Vision without action is a daydream
Action without vision is a nightmare
– Japanese proverb

Having lost sight of our objectives
we redoubled our efforts
– Old adage

Having a vision of the future is absolutely necessary if you want work actively towards something that we want to achieve. Having a vision of a desired future state serves a couple of purposes:

• It provides the “first” creation
Everything is created twice, first in the mind, then in reality (see Covey’s habit 2; Begin with the end in mind)

• It invokes subconscious processes that assist in the recognition of helpful opportunities
Your mind is filtering the enormous input from your sensory system all the time. We influence these filters by creating a vision.

• It puts a marker in your personal timeline somewhere in the future (you can decide when)
By visualizing a future state where you have achieved your objective, is a process that helps you in firming your belief in your success.

• It helps you recognize the fact that you have reached what you aimed for
We often get so occupied in the activity, that we overshoot our initial objective. And often we continue after that, recognizing when you have reached your objective is essential.

The Japanese already had the insight that vision is important, but with the absence of action… Well, keep on dreaming buddy! Although they do value a dreamer higher than someone from the other end of the spectrum.

Action without vision.
This sounds stupid right? Yet it’s all around us. Worse still, often it is even encouraged and rewarded. When there’s an enormous amount of work to be done on something, the “visionaries” will start by thinking and imagining what the desired end-result should be. The “actionables” pull up their sleeves and start to work on the obvious first tasks at hand. And in the meantime they start to look disgruntled towards the visionaries, them lazy bums!

In the UK there’s a nice series on television that shows this at work, it’s called Property Ladder. In this show amateurs (or wannabe professionals) are followed during the development of a property. You can really see the difference between the two kinds of people. The actionables start off as real Tasmanian devils as soon as they get the keys. Halfway through the work however they find out that the budget and the time is not going to last by far. The visionaries on the other hand define an objective (usually to sell the property with a profit), and work towards that goal. Both have setbacks and trouble, both have to deal with unreliable contractors and so on. But the way they deal with it makes all the difference.

Losing the connection
Even when we have a clear vision, we sometimes get so caught up in our work, that we lose sight of our objectives, or our vision. We are so busy doing the work, that we don’t spend time to focus on our objectives, and gradually they fade towards the back of your mind. You do feel that you’re not getting there, but it’s just too busy to not keep on working.
And we tell ourselves: Maybe if I just try harder… If I try harder I should get there someday, right?

If we lose sight of our objective, we will never get “there” as a result of our deliberate intention. And if you double your efforts, you’ll only NOT get “there” twice as fast. So besides having a vision, we also have to make sure we keep the connection to our vision.

Keeping in touch with our objectives
It is in our human nature to lose the connection with our objectives. It is because of our conscious mind that we are able to imagine, and that we can exercise our power of choice. But as far as our brain concerns, the subconscious still governs more than 90% of our activities. It’s because of this that we need to consciously decide to plan moments to reconnect to our vision and our objectives. We need to check if we’re still on the right track, and make adjustments if necessary.

So every now and then, take some time to review your vision and your objectives. Visualize them again, this will help you recognize if you are on the right track, and at the same time firm your inner creation and your belief in success. But don’t linger in this state too long, listen to Will Rogers:

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there!
– Will Rogers

Lodewijk is author of How to be an original, a blog about personal development, goal-setting, productivity, and authenticity. Check his site, or subscribe to his RSS-feed, if you want to join him on his quest for authentic greatness.

Micronaps – Increasing your productivity

I have been practicing micronapping for a while now but didn’t really
think it was unusual until a colleague mentioned it to me. I work a lot
between all the jobs and voluntary work I have and get about 5 hours sleep. I
am tired a lot so often take a micronap to refresh me.

What is a micronap?

You may have already experienced a micronap without realising it. It’s
those moments when you doze off for a few moments, 2-5 minutes, and wake up
with a start. It has happened to me in meetings, and I have woken up
with a start thinking ‘Christ!I hope nobody noticed me’, meanwhile
somebody has posted a picture of me drooling, on the company intranet. You
know the moments I mean.

Micronapping is a scheduled event and everybody can do it no matter what their
schedule is.

How to micronap

When you feel you need a micronap just schedule 5 minutes away from everyone,
I usually go home for lunch so I micronap there, however when I can’t
go home I use the toilet to take a micronap.

Sit on the toilet, lean back and just close your eyes safe in the knowledge
that if you fall asleep nobody will see you. The beauty of micronapping
is that your mind is still alert to the fact that you have only got 5 minutes
so it won’t fall fully asleep. You will be drifting between consciousness
and unconsciousness (which is what sleep is).

It may sound as if this wouldn’t help but it really does. What
is happening is that your brain is sinking to an alpha state, which is sleep
cycle where your brain is operating at 7-14 cycles per second, and coming back
to your waking beta state, which operates at 14-13 cycles per second. Read
more about the sleeping
states here

Alpha states are the states which meditators and people who are relaxed fall
into. It is the state in which creativity occurs and is the state in
which we typically daydream. It has a realxing effect on the brain and
slows it down to rest.

Benefits of micronapping

1. I have found micronapping good for sleep deprived headaches, if I’ve
   not had enough sleep I get a slight headache and micronapping is great for
   this.
2. I have found I am more alert after a micronap
3. You can take as many as you need without really being missed, I usually
   take about 2 per day.
4. Micronapping allows me to get by on about 5 hours of sleeep without feeling
   any detrimental effects.
5. It can be done almost anywhere, in the car, in the toilet, in the house,
   any room that you will not be disturbed for 5 minutes or so.

More information

polynaplife.blogspot.com/

my.opera.com/offspring/blog/

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