by Tom Evans | Dec 21, 2017 | Timing
The Earth travels over a half billion miles each year as it orbits around the Sun.
So today, on the Winter Solstice, you can think of as being the end of one orbit and the start of the next. It’s a good time to reflect on this orbit’s highlights and what’s coming up on the next spin around our home star.
Here’s what’s been happening since this blog I wrote at the Summer Solstice :
The journey so far:
- Published the first illustrated Just for Today book with the most delightful and talented co-creator from Norway, Siri Stiklestad Opli
- Created a 10 day meditation course for Insight Timer called The Art of Timefulness – due out Q1 2018
- Passed an audition to become a Vistage speaker
- Delivered two 30 minute keynote sessions as a paid speaker
- Helped two first time authors, Penny Waite and Siobhán Mullan, publish their books
- Wrote 35k words of my new novel – 15k to go by end of December!
What’s already planned for the next 1/4 billion miles:
- Write another batch of Just for Today’s – with some differences!
- Get at least four more authors out in print, ebook and audiobook
- Rationalise and stream my products into three tiers – free, economical, premium
- Start the Awakening process for some more Like Minds
- Deliver the first of many Vistage presentations
- Publish my novel to celebrate my 60th year
- Lead the meditations at the Guildford Wellness event at GLive
p.s. If you want to know how to produce this volume of creative output, take the Mindfulness-based Time Management self-study course
by Tom Evans | Jan 26, 2015 | Timing
In the UK at least, as the 31st of January looms quite a few hearts pounding as personal tax returns have to be submitted. It’s thought that nearly 10 million people in the UK must submit a self-assessment return each year. Filing a return late and you’ll get an immediate £100 fine.
Just imagine though if you could learn to get more done in less time and that you could generate enough hours in the day.
Well bizarre as it may seem, our left and right brains experience time in different ways. It’s an urban myth that the left brain is logical and the right is creative. The picture that is now emerging is that our left brains sit inside space and time and our right brains experience everywhere and ‘everywhen’ else.
If you have to make the numbers add up by the end of the week, take a few minutes out just now to take your left and right brains on a workout. Follow these simple numerical exercises and, at the end of this Timeful Task, you will have both sides of the brain working in harmony.
Your relationship with numbers will change slightly, especially with the number 9. You will also find your experience of the passage of time will subtly alter and remember of course that it’s the thought that ‘counts’.
This short video is a sample from over 6 hours of mind opening multimedia resources in the Living Timefully self study program.
To find out more about how we can change our perception of the passage of time and how we can create as much time as we need, start Living Timefully
p.s. the best time to start Living Timefully is yesterday, the second best time is today
by Tom Evans | Jan 19, 2015 | Illuminating
It’s theorised that the so-called “Blue Monday” is the most depressing day of the year. It was originally part of a marketing campaign by Sky Travel to get people to buy a holiday, so has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It even has a dubious formula that factors in the arrival of a credit card bill post the Christmas spend.
For more read here …
Whether it’s science, pseudoscience or just a marketing gimmick, Mondays can tend to be a bit depressing as people slog back into work. So for Blue Monday, and any Monday, here’s seven antidotes to turn that ‘formula’ on it’s head.
Antidote 1: Cut yourself some slack
Put off something you think has to be done today until tomorrow, or next week. You might find a better way to do it or that it didn’t even need to be done at all.
Antidote 2: Perform a random act of kindness
Do something random that takes you no more than a minute but that really makes someone’s day, or week. Watch how random acts of kindness come back doubled, and from another source, when you’re least expecting them.
Antidote 3: Make someone smile
Smile at a stranger or let someone out in traffic. Or send send someone something online to make them laugh.
Antidote 4: Forgive someone
Let the anger go concerning someone who crossed you. The older the grudge, the better it is to let go of. You can even forgive yourself for something you regretted doing too.
Antidote 5: Give yourself a treat
Spoil yourself and buy something to cheer yourself up. Or just get away from your desk and go for a walk at lunchtime
Antidote 6: Get back in touch with an old friend
Re-make that connection with someone you’ve been meaning to call for ages. You might even inspire them to do the same to someone else. What goes around comes around.
Antidote 7: Give yourself some of Me Time
Listen to my Be Calm meditation for just 10 minutes and let the blues fall away
by Tom Evans | Nov 10, 2014 | Timing
It said that every time we switch away from a task, it takes around five minutes to tune fully back into what we were working on. This means if we get just 12 interruptions a day, we lose around an hour in productivity.
Obviously, we can relatively easily remove self-inflicted diversions by switching off email, cell phones and social media. There’s an added bonus to be gained here. When we read less emails and interact less on social media, we create less noise in other peoples’ worlds and in turn they create less in ours.
I am currently having a self-imposed week of reduced social media involvement and I am amazed at how much more time I have to get more done. I also feel less anxious about checking in to see who’s talking about what – and me! I am just checking emails three times a day and only replying to everything in one session. It took a while to wean myself away from constantly checking in but now I am on the ‘other side’, it is strangely calming.
Even if you manage to tame the inner desire to divert your attention from the task at hand, external influences can darken your door just when you are fully engrossed and immersed in the creative zone. This is especially true in open plan office environments where conversations and other peoples’ phone calls can so easily disrupt our concentration.
Quite possibly, the worst type of interruption is that gentle knock on the door and a voice saying, “Have you got a minute?”
We never say, “If I had a spare minute, I would have sought you out and offered it to you.”
Instead we acquiesce and invariably that single requested minute morphs into several.
To prevent this kind of unrequited attention sapper, we can set up an interruption barrier. Like all strong defenses, it is best if it has several layers to stop the most ardent of penetrators.
Layer 1 : Physical
The first layer can be physical. When we are working on a creative task that needs our undivided attention, we can either work from home or lock ourselves in an office labelled ’Do Not Disturb’.
Layer 2 : Cultural
The second layer is both cultural and temporal. In smart organisations with intelligent employees, the time and space of others is respected. Simply announce the time and space you like to be interrupt free. A good practice is to designate the first working hour of the morning or after lunch as the time you need your own space. If everybody adopts this practice, nobody is therefore free to interrupt anyone else.
Layer 3 : Mindful
The third layer is slightly esoteric, yet the most potentially the most powerful.
It is postulated, by Carl Jung and other, that all thought permeates through a collective field. So if a person pops into your mind, it is possible that they are thinking about you just at that instant.
The reverse is also true. While you are working on a creative task, if your attention wanders and you think of somebody or other, then they might just think, “Ooh, I wonder if so and so is not busy and might be able to help me on this.”
So it is possibly our thoughts of others that cause them to interrupt us.
Over the years, I have noticed that the phone never rings when I am writing a chapter of a book or a blog. Yet, just a few minutes after a finish, it does. I realised I must have been doing something to stop my thought forms from leaking out.
The clue is this. Every day before I write, I meditate for 10 to 30 minutes. When I start writing, I remain in the meditative state. This means my internal dialogue is silent so I am not radiating any thought forms. The only ’words’ passing through my head are those that are passing through my finger tips typing these words.
This is especially true right now.
To create as much time as you need and get more done, start Living Timefully
by Tom Evans | Jan 2, 2014 | Timing
How was 2013 for you? Did you get everything done you wanted to get done?
How would you like to get more done in 2014?
Well time isn’t as fixed as you might think :: when we change our mind, we change our time. Here’s seven simple ways to change your relationship with time.
One : Ending Procrastination
It is amazing how creative we can be at not getting on with the task in hand. When it comes to doing what we really should be doing, or what we would love to do, we invent excuses galore to not-do-it. In all cases, this sort of behaviour is a symptom of a deeper malaise. When we procrastinate creatively, we are masking and hiding an underlying fear. It might be a fear of failure or even a fear of success. It could be fear of the unknown or a fear of being ridiculed. Often, it has roots back to an earlier event where the wheels came off our bus.
Remove the fear and the creative spark gets redirected where it is needed.
Two : Getting in Sync
Our man-made calendar and the 9 to 5 working week, when combined with 24×7 electric lighting, has resulted in us losing connection with natural cycles. Morning people just can’t produce as well in the afternoons. Each month, the Moon orbits our planet and has a massive impact on the creative cycle. Spring-time is the perfect time to leap into action and autumn is the perfect time to harvest.
When we go with the temporal flow, we stop pushing time uphill.
Three : Kronos and Kairos
The Greeks knew this but only recently neuroscientists have re-discovered that we have two minds of time. For most people, the left brain sits inside space and time; simultaneously the right brain lives everywhere and ’everywhen’ else. Energise both hemispheres by going for a good walk, or cross crawling, or give them a task they work on together and time takes on an ethereal quality.
It is just like magic because all magic tricks are only magic until we know how the trick is done.
Four : It’s Madness not to Meditate
It is thought that every minute spent in the deep meditative state extends our longevity by an equal amount of time, or more. Not only that but our well-being and vitality improves so we lose less time being ill, or just under the weather and under-performing. What’s more, when we take 10-20 minutes of “me-time” out every day, we get it back in spades with the serendipities and chance encounters we experience by being more tuned in.
Perfect opportunities come in when we least expect them too – and always just-in-time.
Five : The Intention Field
Thoughts don’t become things, they are things. Every thought we have generates an intention field around it that sends ripples out through the collective mind that bounce back at us. Simply by engaging both hemispheres on a task, we send out a signal that we are busy. You will find the phone doesn’t ring when you are really zoned on a task in this manner.
The intention field gets generated automatically and requires no energy but a particular kind of breath – and we all have to breathe anyway.
Six : Whole Mind Thinking
Our consciousness is sited all over our body and only concentrated around major nerve ganglia. As we have billions of neurons in our brains, for most people upon awakening, our inner dialogue naturally shouts the loudest. As a result, we assume our head is where all the ‘action’ is when it comes to matters of consciousness and awareness. This has the tendency of masking signals from other important nerve centres, specifically those in our heart and our gut. From an evolutionary perspective, these mind centres are older and in some ways wiser. They also operate a few seconds ahead of our conscious awareness and they are always, always right.
When we get our head, heart and gut in alignment, we become unstoppable.
Seven : Letting Stuff Arrive
Rather than thinking we have to turn up, when you apply the six hacks above all together, all we have to do is to allow things to arrive. Life stops being a chore and we begin to enjoy a charmed existence.
Also what turns up is better than our wildest dreams and always perfectly timed.
The Earth travels over a half billion miles each year as it orbits around the Sun.
What’s already planned for the next 1/4 billion miles:
In the UK at least, as the 31st of January looms quite a few hearts pounding as personal tax returns have to be submitted. It’s thought that nearly 10 million people in the UK must submit a self-assessment return each year. Filing a return late and you’ll get an immediate £100 fine.
It’s theorised that the so-called “Blue Monday” is the most depressing day of the year. It was originally part of a marketing campaign by Sky Travel to get people to buy a holiday, so has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It even has a dubious formula that factors in the arrival of a credit card bill post the Christmas spend.
Antidote 3: Make someone smile
It said that every time we switch away from a task, it takes around five minutes to tune fully back into what we were working on. This means if we get just 12 interruptions a day, we lose around an hour in productivity.
