Reducing Stress One Breath At A Time: 4 Tricks For A Less Stressful Day

January 27th, 2013

People who claim to have found the secret to a stress-free life, please contact me ASAP. I would love to know your secret— as long as drugs are off the table!

For the rest of us who struggle daily with heaps of responsibilities and are pitilessly slapped by technological entrapment, I have found that these four tricks do help me release some of the bottled-up stress. Try them, but don’t stress over them not working immediately. Give it time, and relax!

Take a bubble bath

Your kids might be starving—despite just having finished their dinners— your hubbie is asking for nowhere-to-be found items, and you’re trying to finish that phone call. Sound familiar? Instead of sinking further down into despair, proudly and assertively walk out of the room and into your bathroom.

Hot baths are the most enjoyable way you can fight stress. If bubbles and heavenly fragrances are included, all the better! Your body surrenders to the joy of relaxation and you cannot help but feel calmer as you de-stress and enjoy the warmth and perfume. The setback is that it will only last for as long as the water is hot, but it is definitely a great stress-reliever.

Get better at what you do

No, I’m not kidding you. Most of our stress springs from our inability to complete a task, or our mediocre performance at it. For instance, if you need to write an essay for school, or a report for work, and your reading pace is slow or average, you’ll find that the time stress added to the project stress makes the task harder than it needs to be. But if you’re a speed reader, and you know how to read whole chapters in minutes, and entire books in only a couple of hours, then instantly your stress level will decrease, and you’ll have more valuable time to focus on your writing.

If you’re not currently a speed reader, what needs improvement? Do you need improved speed reading skills, or to get better at your grammar, or a better vocabulary? Identify the skills that could use some refining, and work on the things you can improve, see how your reading speed will lead to becoming more efficient at work – and how your stress level will lower substantially.

Laugh

When you’re at the office and your workload just keeps getting bigger and bigger, stress seems inevitable. But think again. You’ll be 200% more productive if you can take a minute to relax and then get back to work with a stress-free mind, right? So take a quick break and call up something funny to watch – maybe the one your friend forwarded to you that you haven’t had a chance to view. Whether it’s a cute cat video, a make-you-wince fail video, or a funny prank, there must be one video that you always watch to feel better.

Beware of getting too absorbed and forgetting all about the world— yes, it happens to the best of us! Pinning humorous memes for two hours straight when you should be doing reports and preparing presentations is not what we have in mind. Just remember that laughter is a natural stress-killer, so don’t forget to make it part of your life.

Don’t forget to breathe

When stress is too overwhelming to even handle, just go outside. The concrete cities we’ve built somehow magnetize stress. Go to places where your eyes don’t meet skyscrapers but are able to see far ahead.

Open spaces give us a sense of freedom and control, something our packed office spaces don’t; they tend to suffocate us and make us panic. Go out and just breathe. Be conscious of how air fills up your lungs and then slowly eases out. This will release most of your stress and allow you to get back to whatever it was that you were doing with a different approach.

Posted in Speed Reading, Uncategorized

Be Ultra-Productive By Reading and Typing Very Fast

January 20th, 2013

If you could spend an entire day being utterly productive that would be a huge accomplishment. But for most people who go to school or to the office day in and day out, just because they’ve put in their 8 hours doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been productive. True, they may have crossed off a set of items on their to-do list, but being busy does not equate to being productive.

In fact, sometimes a person can be stuck doing the same task the entire day, going practically nowhere. To help avoid that particular scenario, here are some tips that could help you become a little bit more productive in each of your tasks, without having to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. If you can be productive, you’ll avoid being constantly buried in work.

1. Make A Flexible To-Do List

The operative term here is “flexible”. When people hear the term “to-do list” they automatically think it has to be all very rigid and structured. That shouldn’t be the case; rather, the list must be flexible enough so that you can move the items around throughout the day, depending on their urgency.

A list is is helpful because it keeps you on your toes with the knowledge of what needs to be done and how long that will take. This keeps you alert to your schedule with each new task you begin. Of course, organization is still key here, but the point is also to keep you from getting stuck in just one task the entire day.

2. Learn To Touch Type And Increase Your Typing Speed

Since you probably spend most of your time on the computer at work (and maybe at home as well), you’re probably at least familiar enough with your keyboard that you don’t have to look at the keys constantly. Being able to touch type without ever looking at the keyboard will speed up any computer-related task. What most people who can’t touch type don’t realize is that the constant act of looking down to check for the right keys, or pausing to review what they have just typed, eats up a lot of time. Touch typing gives you that time back to use in a more productive fashion.

By learning how to touch type and then working on faster typing skills, anyone can easily cut back their typing time by half, and possibly even the time it takes to complete any given task, just because they are more efficient typists. Tutorial programs are easily accessible nowadays that making learning to touch type a simple process, like eReflect’s Ultimate Typing Software.

3. Develop A Working Routine That Works For You

Everyone has their own working habits. Find the one that suits you best, stick with it, and perfect it. Build a routine of your own, starting with minor things such as getting a cup of coffee before sitting down at your desk so that you won’t have to get up later. Every little savings in efficiency helps you accomplish more. Again, it’s that concept of organization which, even on a small scale, helps a person become ultra-productive.

Every single day is a new chance to make things right and increase your productivity and efficiency. It’s up to you whether to maximize that opportunity to your advantage.

Posted in Speed Reading

Most Popular Gadgets of 2012

January 14th, 2013

2012 has been a great year in terms of technological innovations and developments. From notebooks to tablets, smartphones and 3D technology, the future can easily be said to be already here and now.

Here are a select few of the items which most certainly caught the eye of gadget-aficionados all over, and which you might find useful, too.

Smart phones:

Every year, the lineup for smart phones just keep getting better. The displays get much brighter, the cameras more high-def. In fact, their capabilities just become more impressive, with a whole line of Blackberries and iPhones and Galaxy Notes coming out on the market, among others.

Internet connectivity, instant messaging, and of course instant connection to any contacts no matter where they may be in the world are all very enticing offers for the high-tech user.

Ebook readers:

It used to be that Kindle did enjoy a sort of monopoly in the ebook market. However, given its apparent success, more companies have been developing their own versions. This particular gadget has proven to come in very handy, especially for the mobile reader.

The models do come with Internet connection, thereby making it much easier for the user to just download ebook versions of whatever new novel they may be reading. Now, with so many more opportunities to read, there definitely is no time to waste, especially if your free time is already limited. That is why speed reading has also become a valuable asset, even more in today’s high-speed information-focused world.

Those who would like to improve this particular skill set can use speed reading tutorial software, such as eReflect’s 7 Speed Reading. There are plenty more out there, of course, but this one is an easy favorite, especially among critics. What’s more, the software comes with hundreds of free ebooks already installed.

Tablets:

There’s the iPad, the newer iPad Mini, Google Nexus, Blackberry Playbook, and so many more. The wave of the tablets has come, and it’s ensuring that people are going to be connected to the rest of the world more than ever. It’s connection at all times, guaranteed.

Of course, there are plenty more of these high-tech gadgets that have been flying off the shelves of retail and online stores lately. In the general scheme of things, though, these touchscreen devices are the ones that do have the most impact, and are proving to be the most popular.

Posted in Uncategorized

Is Kindle The Solution To Learning English Fast? An Examination

January 7th, 2013

It used to be that it was only in sci-fi films that we saw people strolling around the city with high-tech mobile libraries in their hands. But e-readers have been a reality for some years now and as technology has been moving forward faster and faster, it’s been hard to keep up with all the new resources. The educational world in particular has yet to fully explore the potential of these new devices for boosting reading and literacy in general.

A lot of ink has, or should I say keystrokes have, been spent on discussing how e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle can be effectively used for teaching English. Kindle’s essential advantage is the mind-blowing access it offers to thousands of books. No library check outs, no book swapping, just a few clicks and hundreds of formerly-bulky books can fit into the palm of your hand.

Education undergoing transformation

There are many promising benefits of using Kindle for teaching English, though the idea of each student having their own handheld library is a concept some people find hard to fully grasp. Knowledge and information have never before been so readily available, and that’s an exciting prospect and a wealth of potential.

Many educational experts argue that learning English can become a much easier and a more widely available option than ever before with this digital, at-your-fingertips library. If all students have equal access to the technology, when put to proper and efficient use in educational contexts, English language learners can only benefit from using e-readers.

Kindle usage benefits in education

Reading has always been recommended for sharpening and boosting language knowledge and with devices like Kindle, the process of learning English is becoming shorter and more enjoyable thanks to these mobile, digital libraries. The nature of e-readers also promotes speed reading, allowing those interested to absorb information much faster than is the case with standard paper-book reading.

When technology and education are combined the results are always surprisingly positive; reluctant readers suddenly become voracious readers, and for the rest of us bookworms, simply discovering the endless wealth of reading material is definitely a positive development – although it means we may never go to sleep again!

The potential is there, but careful research is needed

The potential of mobile learning hasn’t been fully explored. The ability to learn English faster thanks to gadgets like Kindle is one aspect that needs thorough research before implementing. The advantages of such an educational implementation touch upon many issues, including ecology and economy. In the future, it’s realistic to envision schools that are paper-free, entirely replacing books with e-readers.

But as with every innovative new technology there has to be a clear mission, a genuine motivation, and proper, expert guidance to fully unveil its potential for English language teaching. We’ve seen many incidents where technology has actually impeded productivity and learning and promoted instead mindless clicking through websites, wasting time – just look at the statistics on the average employee’s usage of social media during work hours. There’s also the issue of whether conventional paper book reading allows the reader to retain much more information than when reading the same copy on a screen, especially given the distractions of web page links.

Many aspects of this technological innovation need to be addressed before we seriously think of ways to promote English learning by taking advantage of Kindle’s educational potential, but it’s something that we need to keep in mind.

Posted in Vocabulary