Do It Yourself - Breathing Space Blog

The Wall Street Journal offered a nice feature on website that help you take care of tasks on your own:

Instructions, Parts

• Howstuffworks.com has step-by-step instructions and diagrams.
• YouTube.com has instructional videos submitted by users.
• Homerepair.about.com offers maintenance tips to avoid future repairs.
• Manualsonline.com has 1000's of owner's manuals available for download.
  

• Searspartsdirect.com sells approved replacement parts for 1000's of models and brands.
• Partselect.com sells parts and has troubleshooting tips.

Paper Reduction as an Art Form - Breathing Space Blog

Brett Weston was an artist with vision.

While most artists consider the destruction of their work a tragedy, as reported in Time magazine, photographer Brett Weston always considered it a necessity. Best known for haunting semi-abstract nature studies in the tradition of his famous father Edward, Weston vowed for years to destroy his negatives so that others could not make new prints from them after his death.

On his 80th birthday, Weston kept his vow. Surrounded by friends and family, he tossed hundreds of negatives into the living-room fireplace of his home in Carmel, California. Art historians and photography curators were horrified. The Center for Creative Photography, a photographic archive in Tucson, even sent a representative to Weston’s home in an unsuccessful effort to persuade him to change his mind. Weston insisted that he was merely limiting his legacy to work fashioned by his own hand. “Nobody can print it the way I do,” Weston explained. “It wouldn’t be my work.”

Don't Text While Driving - Breathing Space Blog

A sad story, but all too true: texting while driving is a death wish.

Distraction and Under-Perfomance - Breathing Space Blog

From a USA Today article: "As social media's become nearly inescapable on college campuses, a pair of recently published studies supports what many professors already have concluded: Students using Facebook or text messaging during a lecture tend to do worse when quizzed later."

Fewer Choices - Breathing Space Blog

How do we each whittle down the number of choices we face? 

If you have too few choices in life, if you’re socially or economically disadvantaged, at any given time you tend to feel stressed and anxious. You don't have a lot of control.

If you have too many choices, too many places to go, too many people to meet, and it's like this all the time, paradoxically, you also feel stressed and anxious. You get to the point where too many choices leads to a condition that Alvin Toffler called "future shock." So, in a work setting:

* In any given field, if you have 12 trade magazines, you want to immediately narrow down the field to maybe 2 to 4 and form a smaller subscriptions list. It's possible for you to not only stay on top, but to also feel more comfortable.

* Who are the best and brightest in your industry or your company? What are they reading? What have they selected and why? That's usually a pretty good indicator that those publications are highly viable information sources.

* When the number of choices starts to climb, your quest is to narrow the field to a manageable few.

Leaving a Voice Mail Messages - Breathing Space Blog

Many times you'll need to leave a voice mail message for someone. During the boring "instructions on leaving a message," think about what you want to say. If it helps, write down three or four key words on a scrap of paper so that once you actually deliver your message, you can come right to the point.

Speak slowly but leave a succinct message of about 25 to 45 seconds. This might not seem like a lot of time, but actually allows for three to six sentences. There is no need to race, particularly when leaving your phone number. Say it slowly and carefully, as if you were writing it yourself. That's the Breathing Space way to leave a message.

Overcome Procrastination - Breathing Space Blog

Here are eight tips on overcoming procrastination in the new year, derived from my internationally acclaimed book, The 60 Second Self-Starter, published by Adams Media:

1. Realize that wanting to start on a task is different than deciding to.

2. Relate the underlying meaning of your task to something larger.

3. Don't wait until you're "in the mood." True professionals never do.

4. Recognize that unpleasant tasks are not likely to get more pleasant as time passes.

5. Expect some level of breakdown or backsliding. Progress is not always even; two steps forward and one step back is more often the rule than the exception.

6. Choose someone who can serve as a trailblazer and help you get started.

7. Have somebody waiting for your work.

8. Be forthright with yourself and acknowledge when you're procrastinating, and you'll be that much closer to taking action.