The most important thing we keep throwing away (and how to get it back)

The most important thing we keep throwing away (and how to get it back)The most important thing we keep throwing away (and how to get it back)Im grounded today, like a jet ready for takeoff, but out of fuel. The worst part is, I have only myself to blame.Last Sunday, after a week away from the gym, I decided to dive in and hit the weights. I spent 45 minutes pumping and straining and then cooled down on the treadmill for a 30 minute, incline run.Artwork by John P. WeissProud of myself, I came home, showered, made some coffee, and settled into a good book.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreAn injection ofToradolThe next morning, a dull headache slowly enveloped my skull. As the day progressed, so did the pain. A few Advil mid-day blunted the intensity, but it came back full force at bedtime.I crawled out of bed, took more Advil and wrapped an icepack around my neck. I slumped onto t he couch, focused on my breathing, and eventually slipped into a fitful sleep.The headache stayed with me, at varying intensities, all week, until I finally visited the doctor. After an injection of Toradal, a prescription, a massage referral, and stretching suggestions, I was sent home to ice my neck and back.My productivity and creative output suffered all week because I overdid it at the gym and failed to stretch.The wasted time got me thinking about how we spend time. Subtract roughly eight hurs of sleep, and each of us has 16 hurs a day. Some people seem to accomplish amazing stuff in those 16 hours. Others, not so much.Busy has become the newfineIt seemswe all get wrapped up in lifes minutia, like gum in our hair.Our crazy schedules, commitments, and appointments monopolize much of our time.Add to that the unforced errors, like forgetting to stretch before a workout, and soon we feel totally time-starved.Whats worse, a lot of people confuse busyness with effectiveness. They vi ew a hectic schedule and rush-rush lifestyle as a sign of success and status.Theres a video by social entrepreneurJeff Shinabargerthat captures perfectly todays glorification of busy (watch it below). In fact, Shinabarger points out that busy has become the new fine.In other words, when we used to ask people how they were, theyd say, Fine. Now, people say, Busy Im really busy.At some point toward the end of my law enforcement career, I started to figure out the value of slowing down. I paid more attention to my calendar and commitments.I couldnt predict every time waster, but I employed strategies (laid out below) that bought me some peace and sanity. I learned the value of slowing down, in bestellung to get more out of life.Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman, stoic philosopher who shared some wisdom about slowing down and living better.It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by deaths final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it Life is long if you know how to useit.Seneca also shared the following observation.Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things?- ?eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies?- ?since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living there is nothing that is harder tolearn.Five ways tosimplifyWe all have different lives and professions but fall into similar traps in how we manage our time. To that end, here are five ways to simplify your life and get more out of it. None of these suggestions are earth-shattering revelations, but they are often overlooked and/or neglected.SleepGetting enough sleep pays huge dividends on your overall health and mental focus. Its easier to think when weve had enough sleep, and that means we can problem solve better.The sleep-deprived end up taking longer on tasks, which only cheats them from pursuing more enjoyable things.Digital vacationSocial media has its charms and its curses. Facebook, Instagram, and all the other digital rabbit holes can suck serious time out of your day. If youre wondering why you dont have six pack abs, or never wrote that novel, take a look at your social media use. Same goes for TV and smartphone use.More and more people are reevaluating their use of social media, television, and smartphones. Theyre removing apps, quitting social media, and rediscovering the gifts of face to face conversation, outdoor exercise, and passions like sports and the creative arts.Try taking a digital vacation, and replace all that online time doing family stuff, exercise, and neglected passions. Youll be surprised how much happier you might feel.MindfulnessLearning how to breath deeply and un-cluttering your mind will help you become more mindful and at peace.So much of our thoughts dwell on the past or what might happen in the future, at the expense of enjoying the present.Ever notice how we miss out on savoring experiences because were so busy documenting them with our smartphones?What on earth are we going to do with all those digital images and videos? How often do we ever really review all those images? Sure, some special moments deserve a photo, but not every waking hour. And what makes you think posting your chicken sandwich on Instagram will fascinate others?Turn off the devices, clear a smidgen of your schedule, and work on being present. When I was a police chief, I used to take my lunch in a local park. Id go somewhere quiet, enjoy my lunch, and listen to the birds and wind in the trees. The experience was a welcome refuge from my hectic schedule. It grounded and re-energized me.Nowadays, I take long walks with my dogs to clear my mind, enjoy the fresh air and be mindful of the peaceful moments.SolitudeIve written often about the power ofsolitudeand quiet time. Were all social creatures to varying degrees, but spending time with ourselves is important. Its how we reconnect with our inner being.I love my solitude but struggled with the need to be doing something important. It took me a while to change habits, and realize that quiet time is important, too.In the past, whenever I went to a coffee shop by myself, Id pull out my iPhone and sink into the Internet quicksand. Now I sip my latte and take in the sights, sounds, conversations, and life around me. Ive become a quiet observer, and notice so much more.I enjoy my friends and some social engagements, but solitude is what recharges my spirit and creative energy. Even if youre an extrovert who needs social interaction to energize, a degree of solitude will quiet your mind and offer some balance.Say noThere will always be people willing to spend your time for you if you let them. Learn to politely say no to commitments and obligations that make your life unnecessarily busy.Take the time to add me time into your calendar. Add cushions of time between appointments and meetings, if you can. Use that time to slow down. Maybe grab a cup of tea, or read in your car for half an hour.I used to fear disappointing people and often said yes to things. Then later, I regretted it and resented the commitment. I learned to gently thank people but tell them, No, Im sorry, but I cant commit to that. I appreciate the kind offer, but I need to focus on my work.Today is agiftOne of the most important things we have is time, and we have the power to manage how we spend a lot of it. Sometimes it takes discipline, but wise time management pays huge dividends.Yesterdays th e past, tomorrows the future, but today is a gift. Thats why its called the present.- BilKeaneWith some thought and effort, we can change our habits and make more time for family, exercise, our passions, and quiet reflection. Do this, and you can significantly change your life for the betterBefore yougoImJohn P. Weiss.I draw cartoons, paint landscapes, and write about life. Thanks for readingThis article first appeared on Medium.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

How to Handle Your First High-Stakes Job Interview

How to Handle Your First High-Stakes Job InterviewHow to Handle Your First High-Stakes Job InterviewMost of us have gotten through our entry-level job interviews. So when you finally get to a job youre really excited about with high stakes for your careerwhat if you freeze?Dont panic. Your first high stakes interview can be just as successful as interviews with less pressure. Here are four ways to prepare yourself. Center yourselfWhen youve got a lot riding on one interview, its easy to fall prey to nerves. The first thing you need to do is center yourself with specific mind relaxation techniques. Various forms of meditation and prayer can be effective ways to focus your energy and reach a peaceful place inside yourself. Start with guidance from your faith or try visualization and meditation, which can be honed with apps and videos online and on YouTube. Realistically evaluate the stakesBeing primed for a stressful event makes it easy to blow things out of proportion and pile even mo ra stress on your efforts. As you prepare for the high-stakes interview, remind yourself that what youre trying to achieve with this opportunity is one of many opportunities that will come to you in your life. Its not a one-and-done deal, no matter how the interview itself goes. Focus on hard factsRelying on facts can take the pressure off your performance. Use the job description to shape the backbone interview and the questions you prepare. Brainstorm stories that address each bullet point on the job descriptionand practice them so that youre focusing less on you in that moment and more on your experience and qualifications for the job you want.Spend some time alone before the interviewYour posture during a job interviewis very important, and so is your posture before an interview. If at all possible, try to arrange some alone time right before the interview, perhaps even in the bathroom of the interview location. Use this private time to work through body positions and postures t hat increase endorphins and put you in a confident and relaxed state of mind.A high-stakes interview is just an interview you really care about. Use that sense of investment to power your preparation, not your stress dreams.

Your complete guide to mastering your early retirement

Your complete guide to mastering your early retirementYour complete guide to mastering your early retirementIm waking up every damn morning with a smile on my face with the following 18-or-so hours ahead of me to do with as I please. The other 6 hours or so Im sleeping. Ive found I dont need a ton of sleep.I have no bosses to impress, no time cards to punch and no stupid deadlines or endless meetings just for the sake of team unity. Inearly retirement, you truly are the master of your domain.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moraBut, it wont always be quite as easy for everyone, and it all starts with a very simple and unifying themeYou need to do something in early retirement thats your purposeI can talk about purpose until Im blue in the face because, well, it really is that important. Not that I relish the thought of losing enough oxygen for my face to get blue, but you get the ide a.Purpose iskinda important.Its important because having the entire day ahead of you with nothing on the schedule comes with ita whole other set of potential aufgabes. When the buck stops with you,shit gets real.Do you want shit to get real? I mean,thatreal? Do you want the responsibility of owning your entire day without the structure that a full-time job often provides?Its similar to being your own boss or working for yourself. It sounds good in theory, but you also need to own it. You need to be a special kind of person to manage yourself.Its not as easy as it sounds.To successfully manage your own time in early retirement,you need to know yourselfwell. You need to know what makes you happy and what doesnt. You need to balance your fun with your work and know how much time to devote to each individual thing.If you think thats easy, then you might be in for a world of hurt.On the flip side, you cant over-schedule yourself after quitting your jobI have absinken terribly close to th is point in early retirement. Im so motivated to try new things and get involved that, quite frankly, I have a tough time saying no. Im always looking for mora.And, thats not always a good thing.For instance, I have this huge blog that Im maintaining. My wife and I also run a growing YouTube channel atA Streamin Life. What else?I startedanother blogaboutdigital marketingI do consulting work at Rockstar FinanceI write for bloggers/websites on specific projectsIm involved in several blog projectsAnd, my wife and I travel the country for a livingAll this stuff takes time, and Id be lying if I said that time never gets away from me. Even after retiring early, I sometimes feel that there arent enough hours in the day, andthats my own fault.I just like being involved with things. Things that keep me focused and energized. Ultimately, a strongly believe thats good. It is.But, the trick is toproperly manage your timeso you dont feel like you have a job again. After all, Iretired earlyin lar ge parte to recapture my time, and the last thing that I want to do is sign myself up for enough projects that I feel like I dont have enough time to justrelax and enjoy life.Managing your time is crucial.Youll fail without time-managementForget the money component of early retirement for a minute. Of course, we all know that we need money before quitting our jobs. Thats the most obviously and clear-cut aspect of FIRE.What isnt so clear-cut is, well, us. You and me.Life is an organic entity. We arent using a bunch of repeatable mathematical equations to rule our time like we might use to come up withhow much money well need before calling it quits.If you cant manage your time, you wont be happy in early retirement. It really is that simple. You cant quit your work structure if you cant replicate that with abetter structure.Its a structure thatyoudesign and impose uponyourself. This is the hard part.And, I cannot teach you how to do this, but I can give you the basic outline of what a solid structure looks like.What times of the daydo you feel most productive?Are you anearly morning person or a late riser?Are your hobbieseasy enough to pursueon a daily basis?Do you have aone year, two years and five-year goals?Adirectionis critical, and understanding how you work the best is how to set yourself up on the path to head that way.For example,I know that I do mybest work in the morning hours. Therefore, I focus on the most critical aspects of my life in the morning. Everything else takes second priority. The morning is my time to focus.When I can properly focus, I can get my work done on my side projects. I feel productive and motivated to repeat that process the next day and Im actively strutting in the direction that I need to go.The mora that you understand about yourself, the better equipped youll be tocustomize your lifein a way that makes sense.Stop worrying about the damn risksFirst, let me preface this discussion with a very simple statementAnything can happ en in early retirement. You might fall down a flight of stairs the day after you call it quits, break your leg and undergo a series of painful and expensive surgeries.Or, you might get into a car accident. Or a train wreck. Or contract a disease. Or*fill in the blank*. The point is that yes, things happen. Markets crash. People over-spend.Theres no doubt that quitting your full-timesource of incomein your 30s, and expecting to live not 20, 30, or even 40 more yearstry, 60 or 70, without a dedicated income for more than half of your life, is a risk.But for most of us, its a calculated risk. But, heres an important question that we need to ask ourselves.What about the risks of staying at our jobs? especially stressful ones. AsABC reports A growing body of research stands testament to this fact lack of sleep has been shown to tax the hearts of the stressed executive and the stressed day worker alike.Layoffs, the report continues, can take their psychic and physiologic toll in the execu tive suite and on the production line the burden on those left behind, who work more overtime to shoulder a heavier workload, can be life-shortening and living in fear of losing a job, or staying put in a hostile workplace, also boosts the risk of an earlier cardiac death.I hate the risk ofnot retiring earlymore than the opposite. To work the vast majority of our life and then retire during the portion of our life where weremore likely to get sickis a dreadful thought. To develop cancer. Suffer from mobility-inhibiting aches and pains. Its painful to even think about.Consider this graph fromCancer.gov.The wide majority who develop cancer are above the age of 50.The highest incidents of cancer occur between 65 and 74 which, coincidently, happens to coincide closely with the age that we can draw social security without penalty 62.Does anyone else see a problem with this?Risks run in both directions, ladies and gentlemen. Were wise not to hone in on the risks OF early retirement and ig nore the risks of NOT taking your life (and your time) into your own hands.To me, itsway more risky to retire during the period when were most likely to develop a health problemthan it is much earlier in life.At what point do we begin to consider the risks of NOT retiring early and weigh those against the risks of quitting the rat race early?Risk is a two-way street, my friends.Every once in a while, do something insaneIvewritten about this one before Comfort zones crush our ability to improve our lives. They keep us wrapped up in a cocoon of mush, complacent and completely relaxed. Reflection and bettering our lives is often the furthest thing from our minds when were in these zones.Instead of going to the gym to begin that new fitness program, we give ourselves an excuse to stay home. Rather than dropping by the neighborhood pot luck to meet the neighbors and network, we catch the latest episode of insert popular TV sitcom here because I honestly have no idea.It is natural to want comfort. And occasionally, theres nothing wrong with a little time in our comfort zones. But spending too much time in this zone is detrimental to our progress. Get out of it.Remember that time that we gave a speech about financial independence in front of hundreds of people? I do, because that was just a couple of months ago at the RV Entrepreneur Summit.Okay, while I wouldnt consider that insane, it definitely got us out of our comfort zones. We were nervous as hell before going up there, but once we got up on stage, everything fell right into place.Confidence is a convenient virtueI am, like, super duper confident. Confident to a fault.I firmly believe that what we are doing is the absolute right thing, and weve made our decision. We are jumping in head first and not looking back. I quit a high paying and relatively low-stress job in theInformation Technology industryfor a life of freedom.And Im damn proud of what were doing.Confidence is very different than arrogance. I dont be lieve that Im always right. I believe that I make the very best decisions that I can base on the information I have at the time. If Im wrong, then Im wrong. Big deal.We fix it and move on.Life sucks when we spend it second-guessing ourselves. So, I dont. I believe that things will work out. I know that we are flexible and will roll with the punches.Im not worried about health care (gasp). I dont care who ourpresidentis. I refuse to let external factors that I cannot control dictate my life. The only thing that I can control is me. My life. My reactions. My motivations.Confidence is key to keeping a sound mind and determined future. The more confident you are, the better prepared youll be to make early retirement work. Why?Because early retirement, just like life, is a mind game. If youwin the battle inside your head, youll win the battle outside of it as well.What does financial independence and early retirement actually mean to you?For me, financial independence is simple it means that you are not beholden to a job to provide for your livelihood.Instead, your wealth acquired through a high level of income or aggressive savings plan, supports your lifestyle. While you may still work, you dont need to. You work because you enjoy it.To my wife, financial independence is a choice. It refers to the ability to choose the life that we all desire and live it as the person that we all choose to be.Whatever it means to you, make sure that you understand it. This is your guiding principle thatll help ensure youre on the straight and narrow.This article originally appeared on ThinkSaveRetire.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people