I like the Will-do list: http://litemind.com/will-do-lists/

Schedule time to play. 

Items like "For the next 3/4/8/72 hours (or whatever) the world can take care of itself without my attention.  I think I'll go for a walk and see where it takes me, " are hugely important for your spiritual (or, in secular language, "mental") health.

It sounds like you've learned how to press yourself to high levels of "achievement" and you're now faced with a question of balance: you're not happy to be so strictly self-managed 100% of your waking time.  Maybe you can turn those tools on themselves: carve out pockets of time with no plans or expectations, a bit of wild time.

The trick is to realize that personal projects are for you.  They are not something you have to do and they aren't something that will destroy your life if they get dropped.

If you don't feel like doing something, don't do it!

Now, having said that, I've found that if I do 2 tasks at once, neither of those tasks seem like a chore or waste of time.  Doing things while watching TV, for instance.

Oh yes, it's the temporal equivalent of nickel and dime-ing yourself to death.

I do two things: 1) I make a short (2-10 items, including phone calls) daily list of things to do and limit myself to those things. 2) I also give myself semi-scheduled chunks of finite time (until lunch, bottom of the pile, an hour after dinner, etc) as the spirit moves me, to clear a pile of paper, do a lot of short duration things, or work on a defined piece of a larger project.

This keeps me from letting that kind of stuff fill all my available free time, which it certainly will if you let it because, as you say, there is no end to it. As a bonus, a whole lot of stuff just falls by the wayside because it really wasn't very important anyway.

bodhisamaya wrote:

No biggie.  You have 499,928,938,384,948 future lives to accomplish what ever goals you have.

How does that work

bodhisamaya wrote:

liosama wrote:

No biggie.  You have 499,928,938,384,948 future lives to accomplish what ever goals you have.

How does that work

notice the Buddhist name. Now, we can probably assume he is talking from Buddhist theology.

bodhisamaya wrote:

bizarrojosh wrote:

Now, we can probably assume he is talking from Buddhist theology.

Who's Theo?

I have no idea which you personally adhere to, but it seems like some Mahayanists don't really put as much emphasis on the myriad lives of the atman while the Theravadans do? Maybe Tibetian is more accurate? I don't really know too much about it so I can't really say much more than that.

I'm マイペース, so I do not suffer from this problem. Even if you don't worry about time or rush, everything will 何とかなる.

Despite that, everyone who doesn't know me intimately thinks I'm ちゃんとやってる... Maybe I'm just efficient?

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 February 10, 5:08 am)

mezbup wrote:

Make a Do-Not-Do-Ever-Again-List. Put enough stuff on that and you'll have a lot more time free.

This!

My general criteria is that if I'm doing something for more than an hour a day (like chatting, watching TV, reading the news etc.) then it's probably a time sink. Then you either have to learn to do it less (which can be hard or impossible) or not to do it at all, ever.

TV, radio, social news sites all are on my Do-Not-Do-Ever-Again-List because I can't seem to limit myself to under an hour a day.

Funny enough, the only exception is Japanese (~2-3 hours a day)

liosama wrote:

I meant how did he pull such a figure.

I have a hidden wisdom place just above my meditation cushion that I pull numbers like that out of...

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2010 February 11, 3:21 am)

A lot of these suggestions sounds like more rat race to me

What I had in mind was this sense that "self improvement" is often "money race" disguised into something else. After all time is money right? So if you manage your time, in the end it's still a money race. And a money race leads nowhere. It doesn't lead to happyness or tranquility. I think there was a study out there some guy interviewed the richest men in the world, all of them said their new lifestyle didn't bring more peace or tranquility. Of course it didn't make them worse, but it was just different. They traded one kind of stress for another.

So my post was just a mood moment where I was sick of filing all these "to do" things.

When you write software, it never ends. There is always room for "better".

I always have had this feeling that much of the time I spend on a computer is a distraction. I just can't really point the finger at the thing I'm running away from

Lately I realised I kept judging a friend of mine who spends nearly all his free time, and evenings playing games. He doesn't seem to ever "wake up" from this. And I figured I'm just as addicted as he is, only doing something slightly more creative or useful with my time, yet in a sense it's still a distraction. Funny thing is we're both running away from something. Everyone is running away from that something, with TV, "self improvement", sex, food, drugs, whatever. I read a book lately that spoke about this on even a greater scope: basically it was saying the whole of humanity in the past century has been running a mad race with science to define everything out there. All the while we have completely turned away from the inside, that is our consciousness. We're all restless, improve this, improve that...

I honestly don't feel negative about it, it's just a sense of something I've never really put to rest. I don't buy into all this, there's something else. Someday I swear I'll figure it out


@wildweathel: very thoughtful comment.. perhaps part of the pressure I feel sometimes comes from days when I still valued myself based on my skills and other's appreciation. Maybe I am still too demanding with myself sometimes.

ファブリス wrote:

I read a book lately that spoke about this on even a greater scope: basically it was saying the whole of humanity in the past century has been running a mad race with science to define everything out there. All the while we have completely turned away from the inside, that is our consciousness. We're all restless, improve this, improve that...

Yo, mind giving me the title of the book? I'd like to read it. Since I wholeheartedly disagree. Humans have been trying to define things from antiquity, which I believe is the crux of our consciousness.

But, I do agree with you in some sense. There's a book I saw (but haven't got the chance to find on pdf free) it's called "In Praise of slow"

author wrote:

Across the western world more and more people are slowing down. Slower is better: better work, better productivity, better exercise, better sex, better food.

Don't hurry, be happy. Almost everyone complains about the hectic pace of their lives. These days, our culture teaches that faster is better. But in the race to keep up, everything suffers - our work, diet and health, our relationships and sex lives.
Carl Honore uncovers a movement that challenges the cult of speed. In this entertaining and hands-on investigation, he takes us on a tour of the emerging Slow movement: from a Tantric sex workshop in London to a meditation room for Tokyo executives, from a SuperSlow exercise studio in New York, to Italy, home of the Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Sex movements.

http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.a … tid=516173

"Slow Sex movements."

lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCIOS7WP8GQ

ah the memories