10 tips to get more things done in a day...

Dear...

Successful people are getting more things done in a day than most other people...
Here are 10 tips to not only do more but also do things better and smarter.

1. Start the day with a full thank of energy
This means make sure that you'll get enough sleep, eat and drink well before the day starts.
Try to get regular sleep at regular hours. Take time for your morning ritual, shower, getting dressed, breakfast. If you start your day in a hurry, you might feel hurried the rest of the day. Get up an hour earlier and you will get more done. Start the day with an hour for yourself (exercise, meditate) and your day starts of flying.
2. Make a daily to do list
Make list of the things you want (and can) achieve during the day. They can be ambitious but need to be achievable as well. Break big tasks down in smaller ones. E.g. your overall goal might be getting fitter, but that's not a daily task, so its better to say today I'll 3K run.
3. Kiss the frog
Do the tasks you have to do but least like to do first. By doing this the rest of the day will be more productive. Turn it around and you will drag everything you have to do that day.
4. Don't multitask
It's absolutely true, most people cannot multitask. Instead of thinking that you are one of the view who can, it is better to organize your work in such way that you work from task to task. You will achieve more and with higher quality.
5. Be smart with your email
Doing email can be a black hole. Set specific times apart to do your email. Try to look at an email only once (answer, convert to task, archive or discard). Keep a zero email discipline... no emails left at the end of the day. Have good email habits: don't answer when you are on the cc list; limit the emails you send out yourself and be careful who you put on your to and cc list.
6. Shut down Social Media
Limit and set specific time aside for social media, this will increase you productivity enormously. Turn off the push notifications on your phone and close social media completely on your lap top for most part of the day. Define specific moments, when you will look at social media... no more than 3 during your work day.
7. Eat well
Never deplete your energy completely. With good nutrition you can make sure that you refill your energy reserve constantly. So eat smart and regularly.
8. Exercise a lot 
Especially if you have desk work, exercise multiple times during the day. Start your day with some stretching or yoga, take walks during your breaks and have a good work-out once a day or at least multiple times per week. It's not only healthy for your body and mind but it will increase your daily productivity.
9. Capture you ideas
Capture your ideas on a list or in a notebook. Write them down when have one. Note them, but look at them at them when you have time for it. It keeps your creative juice flowing but overtime you will see that among your great ideas many of them will help you to get more done during a day.
10. Look at the big picture
If you are motivated you will get more things done. Make sure that once a day you remind yourself why you do the things you are doing. Meditate over it, pray, write ... whatever suits you best, but set at least 30 minutes a day aside to be grateful for what you have and to understand where you are heading and what your goal is in life.

Jeandorff@googlemail.com
http://facebook.com/jean.dorff
http://www.pinterest.com/jeandorff/inspiration/

"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~ JD

Santa and his older colleague

Dear...

Today is December 6. I was born in the Netherlands and December 6 is a special holiday for it is St. Nicholas day. St. Nicholas from Myra was a Catholic bishop who lived in the 4th century AD in a province of Byzantine Empire Anatolia, now in Turkey.  He was famous for his generosity especially to the poor. In European countries like Belgium and Germany, but especially the Netherlands, St. Nicholas was depicted as a person with a long white beard and wearing a red cape of traditional Catholic Bishop clothes.

All the kids are led to believe that St. Nicholas still lives in Spain and that once a year he and his aides come over the Netherlands in a steam boat to celebrate his birthday on December 6. The kids present on the night before his birthday.  It is the children's belief that St Nicholas rides with his white horse over the roofs of each family's house and that he delivers presents by having his aides climb through the chimney. St Nicholas keeps a book with records of the children's behavior and all the kids believe that you only get presents if you behaved well.

Since most of you are not Dutch and might not have heard of St. Nicholas, you probably think this story looks incredibly similar with the story of Santa Claus. Even the name looks the same. Well, that is because the legend of Santa Claus is derived from St. Nicholas. He became Santa Claus in the 16th century due to the reformation, where reformers like Luther wanted to ban the belief in the 'holy' people of the Catholic church (St. Nicholas was considered 'holy' by the Catholics).

St. Nicholas day is still celebrated and many children in the Netherlands received presents today and yesterday. Now Santa is not really a Dutch thing, so he won't bring presents on the 25th, although I guess my kids are lucky since they grew up in the Netherlands and in the US, so both Santa and his older colleague, St. Nicholas both pay them a visit each year.

jeandorff@googlemail.com
facebook.com/jean.dorff
http://www.pinterest.com/jeandorff/inspiration/

"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~JD

Yes and No two so simple words...

Dear...

A few weeks ago I wrote something about saying NO and what a challenge it was for me in some situations. Especially to kids its difficult to say no, I have two children and when they look at me with those big shinny eyes, I know I fight a lost case... You wonder, do they have a special school where they teach them that stuff? Anyhow, since the reply "ask your mother" didn't work either, I had to learn how to say no to my kids too, even if I have to disappoint them once in a while. The fear to disappoint someone is probably the biggest reason why people are afraid to say no.

Obviously if you can't say no, you say YES, but it is unfortunately not a yes that you really mean. Because of this 'false' yes you might not only buy things that you don't need, but you might also end up making appointments or promises you didn't want to make. Because of this it's likely that you later make excuses to cancel earlier made commitments and the worst thing ... now you really did disappoint someone, the one thing that you tried to prevent by not saying NO.

Bottom line, people rather hear an honest NO than a false YES.

Paulo Coelho said it so well: "if you must say yes say it with an open heart, if you say no say it without fear".

jeandorff@googlemail.com
facebook.com/jean.dorff
http://www.pinterest.com/jeandorff/inspiration/




"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~JD

Can we ever see the whole picture...?

Dear...

If you look at a picture with a magnifying glass you will see that a picture is constructed out of many pixels. Each pixel is just a dot of color and may seem meaningless by itself but several pixels put together can create a shape and many more can create a picture. So even a little detail like a pixel is significant to create the whole.

Science is trying to find the smallest particle in the universe. After they found the cell, they found the atom and from the atom they went on to quarks. I'm not a scientist but the point is that we discover details in details. Scientist hope that by understanding the littlest particle we can solve big questions like how the universe came into existence.

Having an understanding of individual components is a good thing, but you cannot only analyze the details and look at the individual pixels. You also have to connect the dots, look at the whole picture and synthesize. But as science probably will never know if it truly found the 'smallest' detail, can we ever know if we truly look at the 'biggest' picture.

The described analogies are good learning and study principles. We should never assume that we know all the details and we should never assume that we fully comprehend the bigger picture. This will not only stimulate us to find out and research more, but it will also keep us humble and cause us to jump to conclusions too quickly.

One day I asked my martial artist master how much is there still left for me to learn? He answered me by saying: "...try to see knowledge as a big curtain. Your knowledge and skills make you able to lift that curtain up and allow you to see partly behind it. I as your master am able to lift the curtain up a little more and see a little more behind it, but the thing is we both don't know how big that curtain is."

jeandorff@googlemail.com
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http://www.pinterest.com/jeandorff/inspiration/

"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~ JD

From conscious movement to unconscious movement...

Dear...

Gary Zukav, a renown author says, "Every intention sets energy into motion whether you are conscious of it or not".

For this blog, please pay attention to the differences and relationships between conscious and unconscious movements versus controllable and uncontrollable movements.

There is a constant process of motions in our bodies such as breathing, bloodstream, lymph system etcetera. The majority of motions in our body are beyond most people's ability to control. Although we can bring these movements to a level of consciousness, most of us can only control them to some extent, if at all.

There is little or no reason to bring these uncontrollable motions to our consciousness, but there is rationale in bringing controllable movements from our consciousness to unconsciousness.
Learning to control a movement is a conscious process. After we master the movement, we can bring it into our unconsciousness. A simple example is harnessing one's typing skills. First we teach our fingers where each letter and character is located on the key board.  Once we master this step, our fingers can type with  the speed of our thoughts. Being conscious of every individual movement would only slow down the motions of our fingers. Ergo by bringing 'learned and therefore controlled movements' to our unconsciousness, we can speed up the execution of these individual movements tremendously, especially when performed in succession.

This principle is used a lot by dancers of all disciplines. A dancer constantly practices movements with a conscious mind, then allowing the movements to sink into their unconscious mind. The dancer can now execute endless and complex combinations of individual motions with remarkable speed.  There is however a big caveat here. The higher the quality the dancer practices these individual movements, the higher the caliber of the movements will be when performed in a large sequences.  These sequences are known as dancing.

jeandorff@googlemail.com
facebook.com/jean.dorff
http://www.pinterest.com/jeandorff/inspiration/

"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~ JD


One of the strategies that helps dancers successfully imprint movements in their mind and muscular system is called 'marking'.  In one of my later blogs I will write more about it. If you want to read about it already you can look up the following article http://pss.sagehub.com/content/24/9/1732