How to help avoid stress

2011-07-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is not a magic pill that will make stress go away, but there ARE some simple things that will help with stress and managing your precious time and resources. One of them is learning to prioritize, but that will wait until another post. Today we'll talk about Must, Want and Should.

A lot of people wake up in the morning and feel that they have a million things that they must do today and this can make you feel overwhelmed and paralyzed.

My advice is to list all these things and then categorize them this way:

Things I absolutely MUST do, or BAD THINGS will happen.
Things I WANT to do, because they're fun and will make me feel good.
Things I feel I SHOULD do, because I think that it is expected or "normal" or whatever.

Be really tough about the first category. Only things that are ABSOLUTELY necessary should go in here.

Be honest with the second category. Put in things that will GIVE you energy, not drain you. This is for YOU.

You will probably find that the last category becomes by far the largest.
Delete it.

I mean it. Delete it.

These are the things that are not actually important and deleting them will liberate you. Some of them may come back on tomorrow's MUST or even WANT list, but many of them will not.

Trying this for a week will help you tremendously in discovering what is actually important enough to make claim on your precious personal resources.

Why UnExtreme?

2011-07-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, Pat Parelli recommends that one be an "Extreme middle of the road-ist", and that's basically what I'll try to be here.

This blog will comment on culture, politics and people all over the world, but also in the tiny part of it that I happen to be in at the time, so watch out, World! I'll comment the H... out of you if you don't behave.

I'll call 'em as I see 'em, and I won't pull any punches if I feel that they're warranted, but I'm fairly moderate by most standards, so any harangues on my part will be kept to a minimum. I think. Probably. And the bastards have it coming anyways.

Anyway, welcome to the show. I'll do my darn'dest to keep it interesting.