I am Always Late

A great deal of modern people suffer from chronic lateness, and the impact of this bad habit on those around them is sometimes really huge. There is a great deal of reasons for being always late, including poor time management skills, procrastination, laziness, a lack of motivation, increased egoism, and many more. At that, many of us suffer from such a problem as inability to find things, thus spending too much time for searching out and, as a consequence, being late. Is in common for you to spend a half of an hour every morning to look for your keys, bag, papers, hat, or gloves? Do your endless searches cause you being late all the time? Do you want to know what can you do in order to make your daily searches more effective and less time consuming? Go on reading.

A group of scientists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, led by Grayden Solman, carried out a series of experiments by using a specially designed computer software. The participants were offered to look for a definite shape among the pile of shapes, and find it as soon as possible. While searching process was on, special device was monitoring the brain activity of the participants, and it became apparent that in 10-20 per cent of situations the participants were simply missing the object they were supposed to find. It seemed like for some certain time, the participants were forgetting about the target. What could cause that?

The scientists tried to figure out what’s going on by using several strategies. They tried to increase the memory load of the participants and started offering them a certain memory work prior to starting the search exercise. However, this did not cause any effect on the search test results. The same happened when the search experiments were interrupted with various factors in order to kill concentration on the participants.

Finally, the specialists used a very interesting analysis: they analyzed mouse movements of the participants during their search exercise, and it turned out that  when the object is found and missed, mouse movements considerably slow down. Therefore, a theory was proposed that the brain part that is dealing with movement, run very fast and visual system can not keep up with its activities. Therefore, if you are commonly looking for something and are short of time, it is recommended to use slower movements in order to give your visual system some time for working properly. This will help you find things faster and avoid chronic lateness. Also, slowed down movements of the mouse suggested that the participants’ brain was actually aware about missing the target, so the brain tries to slow down the movements and make visual system work better.

In our times of economic and financial crisis, social and environmental changes, growing number of serious diseases and infections, a lack of positive emotions and hopes for future, and even`end-of-world’ threat, how many of us can say that they really feel happy? And how many happy people can we see around us? People are busy and focused on solving numerous problems and managing stresses, so they have no time even to think about happiness. Want to feel happy? Check out the list of the ideas below.

1. You can not feel happy unless you believe that you are happy. Being aware about your happiness and treasuring your happiness is the only way to maximize your feeling happy and take the most of this life!

2. Making others happy is the most effective way to be happy. It is a very common stress and depression management technique, which works perfectly well and always helps people feel good and happier. Making someone happier, making someone’s dream come true, making someone be more successful or self-confident can make a serious difference in your life as well, and you’ll feel happier!

3. Do not be afraid of looking too stupid or annoying because of being too happy. Some would suppose that happy people look too foolish and annoying, when sad and pessimistic people look more serious and smart. However, in real, happy people look much warmer and more friendly, more open and self-confident, less boring and selfish.

4. Happy people can share their happiness and make others happy as well. Think of that: if you can not make other people happy, are you really a happy person? I guess the answer is “rather not”.

5. You can start living a happy life on the foundation of your own nature. Listening to yourself, trying changing yourself for better, feeling happy with own individual growth, progress and success, feeling like being at the right place in this life and in this world – those are very important factors for feeling happy.

6. All you need to feel happier is to think of feeling good and right. Giving up thinking about endless problems, ailments, troubles, stressful conditions and pessimistic ideas, and learning to think of feeling good, safe, not troubled and healthy, will substantially improve your mood and make you feel heppy!

7. Being happy does not mean that everything is perfect. Being happy means having reasons to be happy, seeing beyond imperfections and problems in your life, enjoying being who you are, appreciating and taking pleasure from every moment of your life,

8. Trying to be happy is not selfish or self-absorbed. Some may believe that in the world full of diseases, poorness, suffering and tears, it is too selfish or callous, trying to be happy. There is also a public perception that happy people are not interested in the outer world and get focused on only their happy life. The truth is, happy people are much more open for helping others and sharing their positive emotions with those around them.

9. Start being happier right now!

We already know that inability to manage our time properly and being unaware of the most effective time management techniques can cause being always late and making other people disappointed with this bad habit. Sometimes we fail to do the things in the most effective way and we tend to lose our time for doing something that can be done much faster. In the worst situation, we’re spending our time and efforts on trying to get everything done as fast as possible and fail to figure out what can be the best way to get everything accomplished on time.

Below, check out the list of 5 most common ways we usually spend our time in not too very effective way, that leads to stresses, inability to succeed and achieve, lower self-esteem, and…being always late.

1. You avoid asking for help. Most of us do not like asking for help of other people in order to feel being in total control of what we are doing. If you feel that you can do everything yourself, it may have an impression that you can avoid stresses and be more powerful. However, asking for help of other people can help you not only complete your job faster, but also receive better quality results, because other people can be more experts in something. For example, asking a stranger about a place you are looking for in an unknown area can help you save hours from searching the place you need.

2. You look for ways to do a job with less efforts. Sometimes we do not feel like giving out 100 per cent  of efforts for doing some task or a job, so we start spending our time for looking for ways to procrastinate, to avoid doing the job, or doing it half-heartedly and without any enthusiasm. At the same time, it is usually possible to mobilize all the efforts and do the job in no time, but we do not see that and spend days to procrastinate. Keep this idea in mind when planning your daily tasks and thinking over your time management abilities.

3. You are convinced that this is not your job. The above mentioned idea can be applied to this situation as well. Sometimes we think that this is not our job to do what we are supposed to do, and we’re spending days for thinking over who to delegate it to, or how to avoid doing it. Do not waste your time and be sure that sometimes even unrelated jobs can be yours to handle.

4. You spend so much time for useless emotions and talks. Getting involved in useless dramatizations or explanations always takes a lot of time, and an ability to organize your work with minimum talks, emotions, delays, or preparations, will help you save a lot of priceless time.

5. You do not take time to rest. It is a common notion that a good office worker must always be busy. That is why most of office workers quickly master the technoque of “looking busy”. That is why social networking or surfing the Internet are the most common activities in the offices which are not overloaded with work. However, remember that we all need breaks in order to maximize our efficiency and productivity. That is why taking 5-10 minutes of break every 2-3 hours is absolutely useful and normal, and such kind of short breaks will help you in improving your time management skills, will assist you in avoiding wasting your time and become a good tool to achieve more success.