Serve

While thinking my post two days ago, I believe that we need to daily fight or peel off the natural man or our selfish selves. One way we can do this is by daily service. I've both experienced and heard from others that service can be inconvenient. I've thought a lot about what could help me to serve more. Do I need to leave earlier for activities so that stopping by the side of the road and helping someone is not inconvenient? Or perhaps as we serve daily, the feelings of inconvenience would not get in the way of our doing the service. I'm not sure, but it bears testing.

Inmates

I've taken the opportunity to write to inmates. It's a interesting practice to write a letter to an incarcerated person. What do you say? What do you write about? I asked one ex-con about what they would be interesting in hearing in a letter and he mentioned something quite interesting: the day to day. I thought, why would that be interesting? But as he continued, I understood that the little details of someone's life has a refreshing effect on those regularly confined to a small space. And so I took up my pen (or keyboard in this case) and wrote about the mundane. I wasn't sure if the incarcerated would write back. He did! And his kind response has encouraged me to write again. The practice has also helped me appreciate my day to day life, as "boring" as it may be.

Overbudgeting

There is a great principle of productivity that I like to call overbudgeting your time. The benefit is that you get everything you budgeted done and a little more. Here's how it works: you write down the beginning time of your budget (800 which means 8 am) and write down the task or acitivity that is happening then; then write down the ending time, after adding triple the time to it (i.e. so if your activity is 5 minutes long, write 15 minutes); write this out for all of your activities; profit; do your best to finish the tasks/activities before the ending time in your budget; decide whether you want to use your new-found extra time to do another small task/activity or start the next one early. The wonderful thing about this system is you get done what is on your list and a little bit more. It's fulfilling. *Note: this works best for smaller and shorter tasks/activities. The bigger or more complex the task, the harder it will be to estimate it in the first place and enlarge the time budgeted in the second. Happy budgeting!

Natural

We all want to improve, or at least I assume that all people have times when they strongly want to be different than they are: to be better, to be stronger, to be kinder, to be smarter. We also have our selfish side, the lazy part of us. This could be termed the "natural man". How does one overcome the natural man/woman? Some spiritual traditions suggest that this cannot be done without some higher power to assist us. I am one that believes this. Whatever your spiritual inclinations, every effort we make at being less selfish and more selfless is a victory and is worth such effort. The noble person we want to be is calling. Will we answer the call? The destiny awaiting us is great....

Help them

There are many people who are looking for any shred of evidence concerning their ancestors or relatives. For example, a person's family book may talk about his/her ancestors getting married in Ireland, but there are no records confirming that information. One way that you can give to others today is to index family history records. When you index records, you are providing a way for people to find the sources/records that verify others' ancestors' lives. And a bonus to the joy that comes from giving is that you come upon interesting names and stories.

Fasting

Fasting in the religious sense, at least according to my faith tradition, is to go without food and water for 24 hours (or two meals) and pray much and give an offering unto the Lord for the poor. There are so many benefits to fasting including greater self-control, greater selflessness, more-fervent prayers, greater appreciation of what I have, and greater faith. Many religions do a fast. Even non-religious people will sometimes abstain from food and water or certain foods for a certain amount of time. Is this the missing link that can help more people improve their lives?

The Wretched Stone

Have you ever read "The Wretched Stone" by Chris Van Allsburg? It is a wonderful book. It's taught me the dangers of watching TV all the time. I think I need to do a TV fast, like I did a YouTube fast for a whole month. The hard part is, do I turn my family away when they want me to watch something with them? Maybe it's just TV and not movies. I don't know. I'm going to do be fasting from TV on our family trip. Perhaps I should try one week, and then later try two weeks, and then try a month. We'll see

The Lonely

There are many lonely people out there. I feel like, out of most of the world's afflictions, loneliness must be one of the hardest. This is a theory based on 30+ year of living. Loneliness is like walking thru a desert. It's draining. Every moment feels like a dreadful eternity. Here's the challenge for today: contact someone you haven't contacted in a while and say hi. That way there will be one/two less lonely people.

Experiment

I'm going to try an experiment. I think we assume that when someone asks us about our day or what's new that they want a novel-length explanation. Perhaps I'm alone in this. Perhaps I don't assume this in my mind, but in my behavior I do this. I plan to give little information, so that a person who is just polite can get off easy. A person who really cares can ask follow up questions. This may help in strengthening friendships and helping people to want to be around me instead of just serving me by being around me.

Having Friends

The best way to have friends is to be a friend. It's sad to see people who want to be heard and don't get heard as often because they "talk the ears off" of those they come in contact with. To be a friend we must listen. We must be interested in others' lives (which may take some faking at first until we really become interested). Genuine friendship is possible if both sides give. So be the one to give first. 

Taming the Subscriptions

Unroll.me . It's pretty good. I like how it creates a daily digest of my subscriptions. I have historically just sent the subscriptions into a folder and never looked at them, but now I can look in one email and see all of them there. For multipliers who don't want to look thru many emails but still want to look over your email subscriptions, this may help.

Family History Guru

My wife is a family history guru, and she gave me a bit of advice in searching for records/sources for one's ancestors. She told me to assume the record is there. This sounds like a simple principle, but it is a principle of power in family history research. In some cases, there are no records for a certain place for a date range. But in my case, in the US and England, the records are often there; I just have to think of creative ways to find it. So, try searching for another person in the family that is probably in the record you are searching for. Or perhaps, look over the records for the city and not thru an index. It's worth trying.

You Can Game-ify That?

I found a great site that helps me process my emails quickly. It's call the email game. I wish I were an affiliate and they would pay me for funneling traffic to their site, but I'm just a raving fan. Here's the link (http://emailga.me). It sets a countdown timer for each email and you get points to processing each email quickly. It really helps me get my inbox down to fewer from insane amounts of emails. Tell me what you think.

Honest Hacking

I've read many life hacks and even watched a show about life hacks. I love the life hacking movement and what it's done for me. The issue I have is with the hacking that involves dishonesty or manipulation. I'm not interested in lying to someone to get a deal or putting someone in jeopardy of their job because I hacked the system and made them give me something they shouldn't have. Is there a distinction between honest life hacks and the dishonest ones? Perhaps I should create a site for the honest ones.....

Automation

Many things in our lives can be automated. For instance, I have to log my time every day at work. I run a script and it automatically opens up the proper websites and I have another script that takes my log notes for the day and logs them on the server for my boss to see. It took a few hours to write all the scripts, but it saves me minutes and frustration every weekday. There are things we can do that will save us time and effort (many of the examples online are automatic bill pay, but there are so many other things). What do you want to automate?

The You Tube

Youtube. My nemesis. I have wasted so much time with thee. What gives? How do I get sucked in? In the month of June, I went on a month-long Youtube fast. It was hard. I felt some withdrawal. This is nothing like what drug withdrawals must be like, mind you (I've just heard horror stories). It was good, though. I did have more time to launch latterdaydates.com and also fillthemup.org and work on another site. What can you accomplish if you gave up your time-sucking behavior for a month?

Minimum number

I wonder if it would be helpful to have a minimum number of words in my small and simple posts and whether a maximum number would also be helpful. I don't want to write novellas, but I also want it to be worth your while to stop in and join me. Hmmm....any anti-trolls out there have any ideas?

Ops

Do you realize how many opportunities we have? We have more as a human race than ever before. Many have the internet. Many have better access to water, food, clothes, and shelter. Many can get education. Many support their families from their internet businesses. There are so many opportunities to serve. In some of the circles I travel, there is a sense of doom and gloom, but I say, this is a glorious time to be alive! Could our ancestors have fathomed our time? I think some did, with God's help. But, this is more amazing that I even imagined.

The Secret to Happiness

One of my friends quoted a man who said that he found the secret to happiness: service. He spends half of his time serving. That is a laudable goal. Worth reaching for. I know I feel a lot better when I am serving others, even if it's a dirty job. I was rocking a child to sleep and he was arching his back and coughing and carrying on. It was hard, but worth the effort of serving my neighbors by tending their kids so the parents could get a night alone together.

In Thirds

There's a great TED talk I watched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bB_fVDlvhc) that suggested we should spend 1/3 of our time with people greater than us (1/3 of time with people at our level, and 1/3 of people that can learn from us). I wonder if that is why Christians are encouraged to read scripture and pray. It's good advice, though, for all people. We can learn much from those who have gone before.

That's a Lot of Kicks

There's a supposed quote from Bruce Lee that I haven't been able to find the reference for. Well, it's a good one, nonetheless: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." Here's where I got it. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/brucelee413509.html . I like the idea of focus that this quote inspires. And persistence. And the honing of a skill. I consider myself a jack of [many] trades and master of none. Perhaps I should start practicing one kick 10,000 times?

Real Charity

What is real charity? Is it giving someone money? Is it loving them as God loves them? Doesn't it take understanding them? Next time you get someone a gift, perhaps think about what they would really want rather than what you think is cool. I've done this before and it's a hard exercise. Does charity give a person what they really want? Perhaps.

Just Write

I read a great book called "How to Write a Lot". One of its suggestions (which was backed up by scientific research) is that people who write often report having more ideas than people that write only when they feel they have ideas. This is a "If you build it, they will come" approach and favors those who perservere and do often those things which are needed. It's also a leap of faith, in a way, since one decides to write, and then the ideas come--not the other way around.

By the Inch

My grandmother used to say, "By the yard it's hard, but by the inch it's a cinch". This is a great idea for life. I've found many things are more easily done in small bits. My master's thesis was done 200 words at a time. Learning chinese or spanish has been one day at a time. Perhaps patience is required for such small work.

Getting ahead

It's funny how getting ahead on your goals has a huge positive psychological impact. I love to over-budget my time (another website blog or tool-site idea) and then do the things quicker than what I budgeted. This works best with tasks that can be done in 20 minutes or less. These are easier to estimate. So, I'd budget 10 minutes for a 2 minute task and then use the extra time to do the next task or rest or plan or multiply my time (so Rory Vaden's talk on multipliers for more on that). I'm going to try putting my tasks on a calendar in the future (one a week) and then get them done way in advance of their calendar time so that I feel like I'm ahead.

I Believe

I believe in God, that the people on this planet are his children, and that He is involved in our lives. I believe we all have a calling or mission in this life and some of our greatest life joys will come by fulfilling that calling. I think teaching is one of my callings in life. FYI, Sunday posts are about spiritual life or family history or service.

Great Site Idea

I thought of creating a blog or site talking about how to start a business with the time during your lunch breaks. I think it's a brilliant idea, since I loathe the idea of taking time away from my wife and kids to work on my side-businesses (i.e. side hustles). We'll all see how that goes. I've already launched latterdaydates.com and have 200+ people look at the site and no one sign up. I did this mostly during my lunch breaks and the domain cost me $12. That's it. Minimalist business.

1 Hour or 200 Words

When I was writing my master's thesis, I had a habit of writing for 1 hour or 200 words, whichever took less time. At one time, with my wife's old laptop, I was able to pound out pages and pages of writing, which helped me finish the project. Perhaps I'll start that up for this microblog so that y'all get more in each post.

Fall-back for Tracking

I was thinking that it is important to have a fall-back for our tracking technologies. There are some days that I want to unplug from my electronic devices and go analog (paper and pen). I think that any tracking and goal system should allow for non-digital solutions. What do you think?

Habitica

I found a cool site called habitica.com. I like the game aspect. I wonder if there is a streak-like functionality within it, like Duolingo has. Perhaps gamifying my task list will help me to get more done. Hmm...

Duolingo
I've been trying a site called Duolingo to assist my language learning. Just a little a day and I polished my Swedish and learned some Spanish. I really need to Benny-fy (i.e. use Benny Lewis's techniques to learn languages) my learning by speaking to others daily. Hmmm....That may be to come.

Welcome

Welcome to the small and simple blog. I'm fascinated by the big changes that can happen by doing small and simple thing (or forming small and simple habits) daily. You'll read of my journal and the huge implications of my small changes.