Evitar hacer cosas inútiles

So how do we combat this urge? I suggest not doing just one thing, but many. Attack the enemy from all sides, and soon the enemy will collapse. Here are some great strategies for beating the urge to do the useless:

1. Know what’s important. If your task list is just a list of everything you need to do, you haven’t distinguished between the high-impact tasks and the busy-work. Mark down your top three priorities for the day. Everything else should be secondary.
2. Make it prominent. Either on your computer or on your wall or right smack in the middle of your desk, have some kind of prominent reminder of what you’re supposed to be doing today
3. Single-task. I wrote recently about the power of single-tasking, and that’s important here, because if you multi-task, you tend to switch between what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t — the important vs. the useless tasks.
4. Identify your time-wasters. What are the things that you do most often? For some, it’s email, for others, it’s the phone, for others, it’s a certain website or three. If you aren’t sure, track it for a couple days. Know your time-wasters and you can beat them.
5. Log them. Sometimes just the act of keeping track of something for a week or two will make you more conscious of things. You could use a service such as pageaddict, or just use paper and pen.
6. Change your habits. If your biggest time-waster is email (for example), make a conscious, dedicated effort to change that specific habit, from checking email every 5 minutes to checking it at two or three designated times of day (for example). (Read more tips on changing habits: the no-fail method, 5 things you need to know, 13 things to avoid.)
7. Be accountable. Tell people you’re going to change. Be accountable to them so they can see how many times you succeeded and failed. Daily email updates to your friends is a good method, as is using an online forum, or posting a big tally sheet in your office where everyone can see it. The positive public pressure will help.
8. Have good reasons to save time. Why do you want to kill your time-wasters? If you don’t have a good reason, it won’t matter much. But if you want to finish work early in order to spend time with your family, or you want to make time for exercise or relaxation or reading or whatever, or you really want to achieve a certain goal or complete a big project … these reasons will motivate you to change. Remember your motivation at all times.
9. Reward yourself. Each time you resist the urge, give yourself a reward. It could be a treat, or points that earn bigger rewards, or something relaxing.
10. Unplug. If your biggest time-wasters are online (or email), consider disconnecting for certain key periods of the day. I get my best writing done when I disconnect from the Internet, for example.
11. Know your key times. When do you have the most energy and get the most work done? Identify those times of the day and make them your “distraction-free” times. Only allow yourself to do the important tasks in those times.
12. Get rid of distractions. Turn off the phones, plug in your headphones (to block out sound), put up a “do not disturb” sign, turn off your email notifiers, maybe put your email in vacation mode. Get rid of visual clutter around you as well.
13. Go cold turkey. Sometimes, if an addiction is really strong, you just have to cut it out completely and weather the tough times. If your addiction is email, for example, don’t do email for several days. It’ll be very hard. Pretend you’re on vacation. Then, when you return to email, set certain times and start with new habits.
14. Block them. Technology is great, and you can use technology to beat technology time-wasters. Stealth Kiwi and LeechBlock are two good ones, among many others.
15. Batch them. Keep a list of things you need to do that aren’t on your list of three priorities. Then do them all at once, when you have some extra time. That’ll keep you from doing things throughout the day.
16. Schedule them. Designate certain times of day to do your batch processing of email, phone calls, meetings, whatever. Then, when you’re not at the scheduled time for those things, you know you’re not supposed to be doing them.
17. Always rethink. Periodically examine the way you do things, and think about whether there’s a better way. That doesn’t mean you need to change things all the time, but sometimes we keep doing something a certain way just because that’s what we’re used to doing. Instead, see if there are things you can eliminate, streamline, do more effectively.
18. Change your location. If the above strategies don’t work, sometimes it’s good to get away and try a new location. Take a laptop to a coffee shop, work out of a library, work at home (if you don’t already), or otherwise find some quiet spot where you can work without distractions, and perhaps without an Internet connection if you don’t need it.
19. Focus on results. What do you want to achieve today? Have that achievement be the focus of your entire day. Try to complete that project or major task or goal … and at the end of the day, be sure to assess whether you were successful or not.
20. Celebrate! If you were able to complete your goal for the day, be sure to bask in the glory of your victory. That good feeling of accomplishment will help motivate you to keep doing that — it’s a satisfaction that is rewarding in itself, but you need to put special focus on it at the end of each day. Do that, and you won’t want to fail at your goal the next day.

Ejercicios físicos minimalistas

Two common barriers for people who want to exercise and get in shape are a lack of time and money needed for fitness.

Who has the time to go to the gym, or buy expensive equipment, or take long bike rides?

Well, if those are the things stopping you, you’re in luck.

It takes no equipment to get a great workout and get in shape, and with one or two pieces of simple equipment, you can turn that great workout into a fantastic one, you magnificent beast, you.

And with little or no equipment required for a fantastic workout, you can do it at home, or wherever you are. Even if you’re in solitary confinement.

It’s hard not to find time for this type of workout — you can do it while watching TV, for goodness sake!

The Pros and Cons of Bodyweight Exercises

Using just your bodyweight, you can do a large number of challenging exercises. I designed a workout that I do when I can’t make it to the gym, for example, and I can testify that it’s incredibly challenging (more on that below).

If you add just one or two pieces of equipment: a dumbbell, a kettlebell, a jump rope, a medicine ball, or a chinup bar, for example, you can increase the challenge even more.

Now, I’m not putting down lifting weights — I truly believe in lifting heavy weights when you can, but there are tremendous benefits from bodyweight exercises as well:

1. No gym fees or need to buy expensive equipment.
2. You can do the workout anywhere, anytime.
3. Most exercises involve many muscles working in coordination, resulting in great overall fitness and strength.
4. For people who are just starting with strength training, bodyweight is often more than enough to begin with. And it gives you a good foundation of strength you can build on later.

Bodyweight exercises aren’t the only thing you should ever do, however, for several reasons:

1. After awhile (a couple months perhaps), they aren’t all that challenging. You’ll need to continue to build your strength by adding weights. You can do that with some simple equipment (see below).
2. If you don’t have at least one or two pieces of equipment — a chinup bar or a resistance band perhaps — some muscles don’t get worked out as much as others. That’s not a problem over the short term, but over the long term you’ll want to make sure you get a balance.

I suggest starting with bodyweight exercises, and then slowly transitioning to a combination of bodyweight and weight training to get a good balance. And even if you’re doing a complete weight training program, you can always use bodyweight exercises anytime you can’t make it to the gym.

My Workout — Just a Sample

What follows is a little workout I’ve been doing recently when I can’t go to the gym — it’s just a collection of exercises that use compound muscles and joints to give me a total-body workout with nothing but my bodyweight and my chinup bar.

However, this is not the only workout you can do — not by a long shot. This is a sample, but you should look at the next section for a much wider variety of challenges.

How to do this workout: do a bit of a warmup — jumping jacks, jump rope, or just jogging in place for a few minutes will get your heart rate going. Then do the exercises in order, for 30 seconds to two minutes (depending on what kind of shape you’re in), with as little rest in between as possible. If you’re new to exercise, feel free to rest fully between exercises, but if you’re in decent shape, doing them one after another is a great workout. Like me, you’ll probably have to stop to catch your breath a few times — it’s a tough workout!

1. Pullups (palms facing away from you). Chinup bar required (here’s the one I use). (Video.)
2. Pushups. As many as you can (video). Do modified pushups if you can’t do full pushups, with your knees on the floor (video). If those are still too hard, do wall pushups, leaning against the wall or a chair.
3. Jump squats. Basically you squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor, then jump up as high as you can, and repeat. (Video.)
4. Bicycle crunches. I don’t normally recommend crunches, but these use a good combination of core muscles. (Video.)
5. Jumping lunges. (Video.)
6. Burpees. (Video.)
7. Hanging knee raises. Chinup bar required. (Video.)
8. Hindu pushups. (Video.)
9. Russian twists. (Video, but you don’t need to use the medicine ball as shown.)
10. Diamond pushups. (Video.)
11. Chinups (palms facing toward you). Chinup bar required. (Video.)

Create Your Own Awesome Workout

Now that you’ve seen my sample workout, you can create your own by picking whatever exercises tickle your fancy. Just choose 5-12 exercises and do them all, either with or without resting. Once that gets easy, do a second circuit.

A few suggestions:

1. Choose a variety of exercises that work out all the parts of your body. Don’t do all variations of pushups, for example. You should be doing some pulling exercises (like pullups), some lower-body exercises, like lunges and squats, and others that work out all of your body, like burpees.
2. If you want a real challenge, mix cardio exercises (see below) with the strength exercises.
3. If you have some of the equipment listed below, definitely use them. Or buy one or two pieces of equipment … but there’s no need to rush out and buy a whole bunch of things. You can get a great workout without equipment, at least for awhile.
4. If you’re just starting out, take it easy and gradually build up. Don’t get discouraged, and don’t overdo it!
5. As you get stronger, gradually add weights. Dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, and medicine balls are some good ways to do that. It’ll take a couple months of bodyweight exercises, though, before you really need to move to weights.

Basic bodyweight exercises

There are many, many variations of bodyweight exercises, but here are some of the more common ones:

• Pushups (there are many variations — Hindu pushups (video), dive bombers, diamond pushups (video) and others)
• Burpees (video)
• Squats (video) (variations: jump squats (video), Hindu squats (video))
• Lunges (video) (variation: jumping lunges, side lunges)
• Chair dips (video)
• Planks (video) (variation: side plank)
• Crunches – my favorite: bicycle crunches (video)
• Bear crawl – crawl quickly on hands and feet (video)
• Lateral barrier jump – jump sideways, over an obstacle (video)
• Isometrics
• Plyometrics

Exercises requiring minimal equipment

You don’t need to buy all of this equipment, but if you have any, these are great. Or buy one or two pieces in order to add an extra challenge to your workout:

• Pullup bar: Chinups, pullups, hanging knee raises (here’s the one I use)
• Resistance band
• Medicine ball
• Kettlebell (video)
• Dumbbells
• Tractor tires — there are lots of exercises where you flip tires, jump through them, etc.

Cardio exercises

• Jumping jacks
• Jump rope – requires jump rope, of course, but it’s a great workout (video)
• Side shuffles
• Touchdowns
• Run 800 meters (or a mile)
• Interval running
• Rowing (requires a rowing machine)
• Other cardio exercise machine if you have it

Do you have a favorite minimalist workout routine? Let us know in the comments.

¿Cómo ser productivo trabajando en casa?

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/05/23/twenty-ways-to-stay-productive-when-working-at-home/

These apply whether you are working a paid job, freelancing, running a home business or you simply want to make headway on a personal project.

1. Build a Work Ethic – Workplaces enforce discipline. Without a system of rules and supervisors breathing down your neck, you might find it hard to stick to your schedule. Make a mental note of your productivity and work ethic and set goals to improve it. If you only got 4 hours worth of work done yesterday, aim for 4.5 today.
2. Don’t Overestimate Your Productivity – This is one of the lies people commit when they start working at home. You have eight hours to work, so you assume you will get eight hours of work done. Becoming really productive is possible, but it requires building a work-ethic. Start small and build up.
3. Don’t Count the Low-Value Tasks – Determine what is most important and count that first. I’ve heard from home entrepreneurs that they work 10-12 hour days. But then I manage to see them making forum posts and lengthy e-mails. It makes you wonder what they consider work. Only count time from your extremely important and difficult tasks. Spending one hour writing a blog article or finishing several pages of my book is worth a dozen hours of answering e-mails.
4. Cut Out Distractions – Put yourself in a vacuum. Shut down every distraction possible. I always keep my door shut and locked if possible and I don’t use the internet unless I need to research a quote or image. Twitter, chat, e-mail and RSS are also definite no’s. I can understand the appeal, but you can get work done twice as fast without multitasking which will save you a few minutes to use those programs later.
5. Start Early – Waking up early and start working right in the morning is a good idea. This doesn’t give you a chance to procrastinate. Plus it feels great to know you’ve finished eight hours of work at 2:00 or 3:00.
6. Know Thy Energy – Know when you are feeling drained and tired. My rule is simple. When I notice that my energy is slumped and I’m barely keeping my lids open I go for another ten minutes (sometimes lethargy is just a creativity block). If that doesn’t fix it, I take a short 5-10 minute break. Finally if that doesn’t work a longer breather might be necessary.
7. Learn to Say No – When you are working at home and have flexibility, this is the perfect opportunity for friends, family and associates to rip time away from you. Sometimes they will guilt you into doing things because, “they [unlike you] HAVE to work.” Be firm and don’t give them an inch. Don’t let people disrespect your time and learn to say, “No,” without an explanation.
8. Set Daily Goals – I don’t schedule tasks that don’t need to be. But I do write down exactly what I want to have accomplished by the end of the day tomorrow. Setting daily goals keeps you from feeling you need to do everything by splitting your workload into a manageable chunk.
9. Use Parkinsons Law – Parkinsons Law basically states that a task will expand to the time you give it. Crunch your workload by giving yourself only a few minutes to finish tasks where completion is more important than perfection.
10. Learn to Churn – What happens when you get writers/programmers/designers block? Learn to churn out content. This means that once you run out of ideas, you tell yourself that your goal is volume not quality. Tell yourself that you will redo it later if it is too horrible. The truth is, usually the quality is decent and you get back to normal after a few minutes of churning.
11. Create a Professional Space – Your environment should make you feel like working. If it doesn’t, it’s time to redecorate. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but if working at home only makes you feel like playing computer games, you need a change of scenery.
12. Set Work Hours – Don’t confuse work with life. Set your working hours to maximize your productivity when working and to keep work where it belongs. I have frequently set vague limits on my work time which only served to make me an unproductive workaholic.
13. What’s Your MIT? – Always know what your Most Important Task is. Leo at ZenHabits recommends putting your MIT first so you won’t procrastinate. Even if the rest of the day is unproductive, your day was still valuable if you get that task done.
14. Have a Social Life – Working from home often eliminates a lot of your social life. Join groups and activities like Toastmasters to meet people more easily and reclaim a social network that may have been entirely located in the office. Without people, your energy is shot. I’ve managed to work through some bouts of isolation, but I don’t consider it the ideal.
15. Vary Your Tasks – If you went to the gym, could you just do pushups for an hour straight? Probably not. So if you are a writer or programmer, is your ideal method to write or code for ten hours straight? I like to split up different tasks throughout the day so I can use different mental “muscles.” This keeps me fresh and productive without the need for long breaks.
16. Boredom before Quitting – When I don’t like any of the ideas I’ve saved up in my notepad to write about I frequently go through a period of doing nothing for five or ten minutes until I get a new idea. If this happens to you, resist the temptation to go online or do something else. Even if you could postpone your work hours, stick it through another ten or fifteen minutes.
17. Get Outside Perspectives – When you are isolated, you can often get stuck in one perspective that makes it hard to solve problems. Build up a network (particularly online) of people you can contact when you hit a road-block. I know several people that I can bounce ideas off when my own solutions come short.
18. Give Yourself Overtime – If you are really involved in a project, working an extra hour to finish a section before wrapping up for the day is fine. Compensate yourself the next day with a reduced workload so you don’t start letting your workday expand to fill all your waking moments.
19. The Extra 15 – When you get stuck or feel a strong urge to quit, just commit to do an extra fifteen minutes of work. Usually this is enough to carry you out of the slump and move forward. If it isn’t then you probably need a break.
20. Utilize Your Flexibility – Take advantage of your extra flexibility. This can mean making adjustments in your work schedule to take on new opportunities or fitting work around your life. When good opportunities come up, take them and commit to compensate later. This requires a bit more discipline, but it is one of the best advantages of working from home.

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