I’m wide awake in my kitchen
It’s dark and I’m lonely
Oh, if I could only get some sleep
Creeky noises make my skin creep
I need to get some sleep
I can’t get no sleep….
~Faithless~

Tired of staring at the ceiling for endless hours night after night? Frustrated because others can sleep without any problem? You’re definitely not alone as more and more people suffer from sleep disorders. Insomnia is caused most of the times by unhealthy habits which affect people’s ability to sleep. So this is why a few changes in your schedule should be enough to sleep again and to be more healthy and productive.
- Create a sleep schedule in order to wake up at about the same hour everyday. Waking up one day at 6 AM and the second day at 12 AM will do nothing but to affect you in a negative way. If your work schedule is flexible choose an hour to wake up and this will also allow you to do other things around the house or just to spend more time doing something pleasant.
- Don’t stay in bed more than you used to before having insomnia! This way your body will not be tired and it will be more and more difficult to fall asleep. Choose an activity which is not too challenging instead such as walking, or going out with your friends. (more…)

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People, when things go wrong
As they sometimes will
And the road you travel
It stays all uphill
Let’s work together
~Canned heat~

Spending six or seven hours five days a week in a group of 20 or even more people can prove to be a little tricky sometimes as conflicts become something regular. Especially as we grow up, they tend to become more complex and relations can be easily influenced in a negative way. Of course, sometimes you feel that you can’t take it any more. It’s normal, but remember that by having the right attitude from the beginning, you will find the hours you spend with the others pleasant and even relaxing.
1. When you are new in a group the best thing you can do is to meet the others, begin a conversation and introduce yourself. Still, try not to exaggerate and try to spend the first days noticing what the others like end dislike before getting too personal. Try to learn something about them before offending anyone by mistake. Try to keep the conversation neutral!
2. Everyone has their own role in a group. One can be the clown, another one the hard-worker and so on. Try to be as balanced as possible and to create an image of yourself. You mustn’t expose very much, but try not to create a fake image of yourself; it won’t work. If you are not the party starter don’t try to act like one, it’s ok. This is who you are and you should not try to change it or lie about it.
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Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin’ all of the time
~The Mamas and the Papas~

We all hate Mondays, that’s a fact. Just thinking about this day can cause head aches to any student or to anyone having a job. Maybe this is why this day is the least productive of the whole week. So how about a little change of attitude in order to be more successful?

1. Remember that it’s all in your mind and the way you see this situation affects all your behavior. So don’t spend your Sunday thinking about the fact that you will start work again, that you’ll have classes and that it will be hard to do everything! Be positive and optimistic about it as there is nothing particularly scary about a Monday.

2. Get yourself a head start - knowing that the second part of any Friday isn’t too productive you could use it to make a plan for the following week so that your Monday morning will be less agitated. Then, by cleaning your desk and arranging your papers you will find your Monday start a lot easier and you will improve your work. (more…)

A guest post by Shilpan Patel, from success soul

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a month — get married. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.
- Chinese Proverb

While driving on the highway, I stumbled upon a billboard that read, “Be happy now”. I, for a moment, felt jolt of happiness in my body. It was inexplicable but the feeling was real.
I pondered along the way about happiness and its sources. Where it comes from? I started feeling nostalgic. My mind started wandering into the past in an intense search for the traces of happiness. It was exhilarating thought to find the roots of happiness that lie nowhere but in my own thoughts and the ability to react to different circumstances.
I have a habit of writing a journal. The journal tracks my life. It tracks my setbacks, it tracks my success and it certainly tracks my happy days. I went through the journal to capture the lessons of happiness that I can share with you.

Lesson # 1: Make someone happy:
A successful surgeon practices surgery daily; a successful lawyer practices law daily. To become happy, you need to make someone happy. Engage in random acts of kindness. Try to serve others with your time and money. Making someone happy makes you selfless. I have always felt happy when I do not expect any return for the service I rendered. It always makes my day fulfilling.

Lesson # 2: Become debt free:
Debt is an imprisonment to our happiness. It shackles our ability to think and pursue true happiness. Imagine if you are living by paycheck to paycheck, it is hard to have anytime for things that bring happiness when you have to work to make money to pay debt without any relief. You can cut out fat from your spending to work towards paying off your debt. If you start living life of simplicity, you will accentuate your freedom from the debt-ridden life.

Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.
- Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) American writer.

Lesson # 3: Choose to be positive:
Our ability to choose our thoughts allows us to think positively. If we learn how to replace self-limiting thoughts with affirmations, we develop habit of positive thinking. For instance, replace self-limiting thought of - “I do not have enough time to enjoy time with my family.” with “I have plenty of time to spend time with my family”.

Lesson # 4: Be transparent:
I constantly remind myself that to earn trust from friends and family, I have to remain transparent about my actions. I have to show honesty and sincerity in the pursuit of happiness to get support from my alter ego. I have to show her that I’m committed to her pursuit of happiness as much as I’m to mine. Develop transparency with the attitude of showing all your cards to others involved in your life. They will in turn show you their cards; together everyone wins.

Lesson # 5: Live a simple life:
The modern day life is an entangled web of complexity. We live with cell phones, laptops, and pagers. These devices are convenient and they definitely add flexibility to work anywhere in the world. However, we pay steep price for these conveniences. We clutter our minds with information overload. We tend to ignore our inner voice of simplicity to feel true happiness. We tend to ignore the pristine value of our time with family; we definitely ignore the pearls of joy in sharing our laughter with our children. I’m not advocating that we give up on our pursuit of the burning desire, I’m suggesting that we shall always be mindful about de-cluttering our physical as well as mental space to live for a happy, fulfilling life.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Preeminent leader of Indian nationalism.

Photo Courtesy of Smugmug

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control

~Pink Floyd - Another brick in the Wall~

These days I am kinda busy - you know, exams are close. I think everybody felt at least once that there are too many things to do and the time just isn’t enough, so one post about time management and good practices when studying should be useful.

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Create a good environment! If you can go to library and stay there it is very good - there you have the motivation and the atmosphere that helps you concentrate better. Of course, there are cases when you can’t use that space - for example if you have something to talk you can’t do it there. Your room can be a good solution too, but here you have more temptations (more…)

And the reason for my confession is that I learn my lesson
And I really think you ought to know the truth
Because I lied and I cheated and I lied a little more
But after I did it I don’t know what I did it for
I admit that I have been a little immature

~Black Eyed Peas - Don’t lie~

I try to be as sincere as I can and I strongly believe that sincerity is the key for solving most of humanity’s problems. If only Adam hadn’t lied to God … or for the ones less religious, if only politicians wouldn’t lie so much!

VIA

But there are too many complicated situations to tell only the truth. You have to be diplomat, not to hurt the people you love or to get that raise that will allow you to buy a new shiny car. So we arrive to dr. House’s “Everybody lies” (you really should watch that show). Yes, but what’s the measure? When to tell the truth and when it’s safe to tell a lie? Another of my strong beliefs is that equilibrium brings us one step closer to happiness. In this case, it’s all about balance between truth and lie.

But you can’t say there’s only truth; there are big lies, lies, little lies, joking, truth, the big truth. (more…)

Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want

~Spice Girls - Wannabe ~

Apart from tones of hours of work and a little bit of luck, one important ingredient in the success’ recipe is organization - fix your objectives, divide your project on steps and work hard. I’m the adept of planing stuff - how to spend my money, what to visit in holiday, how to get the job I want? I admit, I prefer to organize the most pleasant activities (but I’m working at that) and I’m working in the last minute for the assignments I don’t like, but if I want to change that I strongly believe that only a good schedule can save me.

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But what’s a good schedule, what are its characteristics? Many projects, interesting in idea, fail in the end because of the organization. Maybe you think that an enterprise’s strategy is completely different from the home management, but both are governed by the same rules - only the context is different.

And so I arrive at the first point in setting goals - evaluate your situation. In order to obtain something in future it’s very important to know exactly your position. What are your advantages and what are your disadvantages? What can you use? There are people you can count on? What kind of resources you have and how many? Be honest when you answer at all these questions, if you don’t evaluate right the context you have less chances in achieving your goals. This and knowing as accurate as you can what do you want are the main two qualities of purposes.

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So the next step after you know your situation is to question yourself about what do you really want? What’s really important for you and what you can give up to? Set your priorities! The science of economy considers that the needs of humanity are unlimited whereas the resources are limited. You know your resources, how will you spend them? What are you willing to renounce to in order to get what you want? Don’t forget to answer sincere to not be disappointed afterwards. Here is good to fix some limits too. Don’t renounce at all your free time for your job, don’t sacrifice all your economies for a trip, even if it’s around the world, don’t forget about your friends for a girl/boy you’ve just met!

Now you know what you want and what’s your situation. How should you get where you want? There is short term and long term and you have already an image of your long term. Divide your idea on steps. Fix an amount of time and money for each step. Leave yourself the possibility of error but try to do a realistic estimation. Work a lot if you want to make your dreams come true. Motivate yourself from once in a while - take short breaks (1-2 days) from your activity or relax a bit and admire your realizations. Your goals must be reachable. Everyone wants to fly but they don’t make a goal out of this simply because … it’s not possible. Concentrate on realistic purposes.

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Another think I should talk about is the schedule’s trap - if it’s written down it doesn’t mean it has to be that way. You have set your goals and you can reset them. Leave some space for innovation and for improvisation. Enjoy the moment and … good luck in living your dreams!

Photo by Giorgio Tomassetti

He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
~Sting - Shape of My Heart~

Whether you believe in fate or that you totally make your life, you have to agree that what decisions you make decide who you are. It’s paradoxical in a way, but sometimes your decisions decide for you. There’s no magic recipe for making the right decisions or something like that; the huge (or not so huge) amount of things you have to take into consideration when making a decision has to be analyzed, and most of the time there’s no right decision, and usually two appear: one that’s more daring, and the other one that’s more conservative.

Photo by Eduardo Cavasotti

Making the right call every time is not possible; making the right call as most of the times as possible… that’s the point. Have you ever watched House MD ? If not, you really should. A significant part of the show is aimed at finding the right diagnosis of a certain patient, through more or less orthodox means. House (the main character) almost always takes chances; but the chances he takes are always (or almost always) less riskier than not taking a chance would be.

House MD. Photo by mabe85

These days you see a lot of people who haven’t become as good as they could have, simply because they were afraid to follow their dream. On the other hand, you see a lot of waitresses who wanted to be actresses. So where do you stand? Myself, I’m a believer in taking chances. But not crazy 1 in a million chances - I’m talking about calculated, logical risks where the positive outcome has realistic chances of happening. Taking a chance just for the sake of it… may make you feel good for a while, but it won’t last and the odds are you’ll regret it. If you really believe you can win based on logical arguments, then you should go for it. There are some things that could help you remove obstacles from achieving that:

Photo by AksZindagi

Still… the coin has two sides. For example, for every aspiring actor that actually got to the carreer he wanted, there’s 19 others that didn’t. Number don’t lie. Also, even when you’re sure you can achieve your goal, your senses could be deceived and the fall from a dream is really painful. Also, when in pursuit of a dream, breaking away from reality is quite possible, and it should be avoided… because most of the times it will only mean a harder fall.

Whenever you choose to take or not to take a risk, you define yourself, because you’re not making a singulary decision, but you’re going towards the same decision you’re always going to make in this sort of situation.This depends on your personality and your case, but you shouldn’t be influenced by something else other than that. Again, a calculated risk is definitely the way to go, at least that’s how it seems for me. What about you?

Photo by the other Martin Taylor

Say what u will
Say what u mean
No, you could never offend
Your dirty words come out clean

~Incubus~

Simplicity is something we all strive for in these busy times we live in. However, one of the biggest impediments most of us face, in life, is clutter. Clutter can manifest itself in a myriad of forms, but home clutter is definitely the most devastating for our individual productivity. Trust me, when you’ve got a pile of cloths, left over cereal and after party beer cans keeping you from entering a room you know you’ve got a problem.

Clutter can hold a lot of things back from you. First thing that comes to mind is the psychological factor; you’ll get far less things done, especially if the clutter is at your work desk. Then there’s the organizational factor; it’s really easy to get things lost when you’ve got piles of junk hanging around. Some people even raise the issue of clutter being damaging to our health. And of course let’s not forget the aesthetics factor. Indeed clutter is bad for you, but let’s take a quick look on a few tips and pointers you can apply to help declutter your household and life. c

1. Start a general household cleanse. Get all the members of your family together so that you can work faster and at the same time do a fun activity together. Ok it may not be fun, but at least you’ll be close to each other.

2. Start off small. Once you’ve get everybody together, make sure everybody starts cleaning at the same place, together. This helps keep things fast and organized. By decluttering your household one room at a time, you can not only spare a lot of time and by having all the members of the family in one place, you can all decide which items to keep or throw away from the clutter.

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Photo by br3nda

The internet has grown incredibly much in the past years especially because it appeals to people in a way that nothing else has appealed. There’s always something new to do, new people to meet, news to read, all sorts of stuff to do. But what do you do when you have work to do, and all these attractions (for others) become distractions (for you)? You have to know where to draw the line and when to say no. Otherwise you’ll just enter a vicious circle and tons of unfinished work will just clutter up.

Photo by Wesley Yendrys

The TV could be the biggest distraction; you’ll probably just end up checking the latest news or results, or watching some show. Listening to music is OK, but do it from your computer or mp3 player, music videos tend to distract your attention. Actually, for some (including me) listening to music is a productivity booster.

Photo by dontodd

Yeah sure your friends wanna chat with you and tell you the latest gossip, but it will totally screw up your work plan. Twitter can also become a pain.

Acknowledge the fact that you have to finish the job!

Otherwise you’re just going to find excuses for yourself and find other “better” things to do. Finish your job, even if it may seem that you’re on a really long and winding road.

The distractions are various, and vary from case to case, but these are the major ones which pretty much apply to everybody. The thing is that you have to understand that although it may seem like you’re just wasting a few minutes or even just seconds, these things gather up and disturb your own natural way of working.