Streamlining Maintenance Activities for Success

I spent much of today cooking, so I won't have to cook much next week. It will simplify my life, allowing more time for things I value during the week. Therefore, I declare today a giant success!

In only a couple of hours, I roasted a 10 pound turkey (from my freezer, bought on special last Thanksgiving), made a huge carrot and raisin salad, cut up celery and cucumber for noshing, and made some of my yummy date treats for healthy desserts and snacks.

To go with tender hot turkey tonight, I roasted slices of sweet potato with paprika, and asparagus with coarse black pepper. The turkey carcass has simmered for a couple of hours, is chilling in my garage since refrigerator space was limited, and tomorrow will be transformed into soup, mostly to be frozen for upcoming weeks.

How can you streamline some of your household tasks such as cooking, shopping or cleaning, so you will be more organized and have more time for study, creative expression and play?

Creative Study Tips

Today I met with a few students to figure out ways they could improve study skills. Here are some of the suggestions I made. These tips are specific to unique learning needs and go beyond the standard approach of read, take notes, recite and review. They are creative ways to make life as student more successful and less stressful! If you need to spiff up your approach to study, experiment with any strategies here that appeal to you.

For the Hands-On Learner
For the person who considers herself a very "hands-on" learner and has a hard time with abstract concepts, I said find an example of the idea and then imagine it very vividly. Make it as real in your imagination as if you were experiencing it in your life. For instance, if you are learning about ADHD, imagine what it would be like to have your mind racing in high gear all the time, to feel fidgety, to keep switching from one task to another, to do many things at once, and to feel irritable and edgy because no one understands why you can't sit still. See if you can imagine yourself in the skin of someone with all the symptoms you are reading about. Think of people you know who might have a diagnosis of ADHD and reflect on how their behavior fits with what you are reading. Does this match with what you imagined?

For the Sleep-Deprived
One student works a night shift and doesn't get enough good sleep, so tends to drift off every time she sits to read the textbook. I suggested she stand up to read her text. Put a box on a counter to lift the text to a convenient reading height, and make notes in a notebook or on index cards. Read for ten minutes, take a break and do a simple chore or just stretch and move for a minute or two. Then read and take notes for ten more minutes. Take a longer break when needed, but keep coming back to the text for more short reading sessions.

Zoning in on Key Words
One student had overwhelmed herself trying to memorize the entire definition of each new term highlighted in the text. I told her to figure out the key words in the definition and only highlight or take notes on those. In addition, write down a brief example that illustrates the idea, in her notebook or on flash cards.

Looking up Unknown Words
A number of students were skipping over words they didn't really understand, trying to make sense of the text in a general way. I strongly suggested using a dictionary to clarify. It will take more time at first, but they will quickly enrich their vocabularies and find studying gets easier. Not to mention, they will actually understand what they are studying!

Supplementing the Text
Another student wanted more interactive learning tools but didn't want to spring for the fee for materials available with our textbook. For him, searching on-line for a video related to his interesting or puzzling topic could be useful. For instance, curious about biological clocks and circadian rhythms, he could Google "video circadian rhythms," or "psychology video biological clocks."

Hope these tips are helpful. Good luck with your classes!

A Student Learns to Love Herself

Ha! Here is another end-of-the-semester entry!

I am always blown away by my students and their personal learning and growth. My Intro to Psychology classes cover a lot of facts and theories, but I offer multiple opportunities to apply the material to students' own lives.

This semester, I'm especially captured by one young lady who saw herself as painfully shy and having extremely low self-esteem and self-confidence. For her life-changing experiment, she chose to tackle these large issues. At my suggestion, she went for some powerful positive self-talk statements (affirmations) which she repeated three times a day. She also looked in her own eyes in the mirror daily, telling herself, "I love you." My suggestion was that she aim for 33-35 days in a row of the mirror strategy, and if she missed a day to start over. She also simply kept track of how many times she spoke to strangers each day, and she wrote short journal entries about her experiences in the evening.

Her paper, analyzing her experiment, was brimming with enthusiasm over her skyrocketing self-esteem and confidence. Instead of choosing one or two positive statements from the "brainstorming" list I provided, she memorized the list of a dozen or so short statements and used them all. As I recall, her list ended with, "My life is a creative adventure of self-discovery."

Since she is an artist, this dovetailed with her personal goals.

She said, "I learned to love myself! I love myself!" From self-ratings of zero on esteem and confidence in her pre-treatment week, she soared to eights, nines and tens by the post-treatment week. She discovered she could give herself the love and nurturing that she had been longing for, and when she did, the esteem and confidence naturally lifted. She plans to continue these strategies to maintain her exciting progress as she prepares for the shift to a four year college in the fall.

I don't keep student papers, so can't quote her exactly, but I was smiling all over and had tear-filled eyes as I completed marking her paper.

What Tickles Me Today

Wanting to do something and sitting down to do it are two different things . . . especially when it comes to my updating this blog! My teaching semester is winding down. I am not quite "in my body" because of a minor car accident today -- sliding on the ice! -- and couldn't think of anything upbeat to write about. Here we go . . . I'm grateful to the telephone pole that stopped me from sliding right out into traffic on Telegraph Road!



Checking email, I discovered I now have eight active accounts! Plus Facebook and a couple of other networking sites I seldom use. This tickles me. For someone who with great trepidation purchased her first (very primitive) word processor from Montgomery Wards in 1987 or so, I'm now really involved with technology. So much change in 23 years! I also updated my cell phone, only because the dinosaur died, to a new Blackberry and I have hopes of learning to use more of its features and adding apps. Whoo-hoo! My younger readers may not appreciate this, but it is a big deal.



Something else that has changed in the past 23 years is me! In the last two weeks, I've had students guess my age at 25 years younger than reality, and I giggled all day. Today a kind young service station manager described me to an equally kind police sergeant as "an older lady," and convinced the busy officer to take my accident report, so I don't have to make a special trip to the local police station. It's all relative! I'm grateful to be seen as younger, and to be seen as older. Amazing.



Another ordinary moment of note: I got a Christmas card from a cousin, including a couple of journal notes, memoirs about his childhood and parents. I was astonished to learn that he spent his first seven years with a grandmother and only met his parents when his grandmother was too ill to care for him. I find myself warming with affection that this 60-plus gentleman would bother to share his recollections this way.



My students continue to amaze me. Each one gives me glimpses of a special life story. Many have dramatic stories unfolding even as they are striving to study and pass exams.



One student confided about being accused of a crime he swears he didn't commit. Another had major surgery but was back in class three weeks later. Several are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and struggle to concentrate, and with whether or not to use their prescriptions to help focus. One was unexpectedly served divorce papers a week before finals. In the last two years, students have confided about their dreadful war experiences (shooting and being shot or bombed), rape, history of sexual abuse, family suicides, family murders, fire that killed an entire family, and domestic violence. Others struggle with depression, bipolar disorder, general anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder, and social phobias such as extreme shyness and even schizophrenia. Some are veterans of recent wars, and some would protest any wars. At one college, my students are a marvelous mix of Arabic, African American, Chinese, Mexican-American, Phillipino, French, Canadian and Anglo-American. Many are young, including a few high-school students doing advanced placement classes, and some are middle-aged or entering retirement years. Very few could fit the stereotype of a typical 18-23 year old middle-class college student.



I am grateful to touch their lives for a few months, to share my perspective on life along with a broad overview of contemporary psychology. I am grateful that we laugh a lot in my classes, and that in spite of their personal challenges, the students keep coming back, always wanting to learn.



When I began consistent college teaching (in contrast to teaching professional working adults), I felt frustrated that today's students "can't read, can't write," and don't seem to learn the same way my contemporaries and I learned. Now, I've come to think that perhaps our changing world is creating a need for a new breed of learners. Maybe today's students don't really need to learn masses of information, and don't need to master the same old ideas. Instead, maybe they need to know how to find information, recognize when it is accurate and useful, and how to experiment and adapt within a world that keeps leapfrogging into unexpected futures.



I work daily to adjust to my own challenges, and I'm grateful to my students for teaching me a gazillion new ways to keep going in spite of the obstacles in life. I'm privileged to be a neutral compassionate observer of their process of forging new pathways to self-discovery and success.

That tickles me too.

Until next time . . .

Balancing Your Crazy-Busy Life

It's the end of another productive Saturday, weeding, cleaning out the garage, and supervising a couple of my teenage neighbors whom I hired to move garden bricks around. Sounds like a lot of work for a Saturday! What happened to rest and play on the weekend?

Always on Purpose
If you're like me, almost every moment these days is spent on purpose, doing what needs to be done. When I've finished one project, I barely have time to sigh with relief before I'm on to the next one!

How can we maintain our sanity with such demands on our time?

Three Keys for Balance
What works for me is to keep coming back to three things: make a plan, clean out and complete.

It doesn't matter in which order I approach these. I simply need to do them.

Make a Plan
Making a plan can be thoughtfully listing my top priorities in life -- my "big rocks" based on the story in Steven Covey's book, First Things First. Although I do this every year, and most items stay the same, a few items do change.

Making a plan can be entering and checking appointments and tasks in my calendar. Or it can be hastily scribbling my "to do" list for today. I am lost without my lists! If I don't make lists, I worry. The lists circulate endlessly in my head causing lots of fretful stress.

I seldom get to all the items I write down as action items for the day, but I usually manage to get the important ones handled. The rest get added to another list for another day.

Clean Out
Cleaning out means to keep reducing the clutter. Almost every day, I need to go through the mail and throw out as much as possible right away. Weekly, I go through my pile of magazines and pull our a few articles or recipes, file them and toss the rest. I keep my piles of papers for classes organized in files or throw them out promptly if I won't be likely to use them again.

It's not just the paper. I work in brief moments to get rid of clothing I no longer wear and household items we no longer use. When I spot a blouse with a stain or pants that don't fit, I carry it to a donation box in the garage. Once or twice a year, I send them on to benefit others.

Complete
Completing means to finish what I start. If I'm grading a pile of papers, I prefer to work diligently until I finish. If I can't finish in this session, I like to come back promptly and get it done. Folding clothes? Keep at it or keep coming back to it until they are all properly put away.

If I'm reading a book but don't really like it halfway through, instead of leaving it on my table, I turn to the last page, read that and "declare it done." I put it back on the shelf, return it to the library, or put it in my donation box. No more visible clutter, no more internal clutter of that incompletely read book pulling on my energy.

Squeezing in Time
You may be wondering how you can work these strategies into your own crazy-busy life.

Start small and do a little bit at a time.

Planning
If you don't already, try making a To Do list for the day while you are having your morning coffee. If you're groggy for an hour after waking, jot down that list the night before, so you have it ready to guide you the next morning. Cross items off, or highlight them as you complete them for a fun sense of accomplishment.

One student said simply getting a daily agenda book and writing in his classes, assignments, study times and times for friends and fun made him a better and much happier student.

Completing
Sometimes, you may want to set a timer to study one subject for 20 minutes. When the timer rings, that small study session is complete. Move around, blink, breathe, stretch, have some water. Set the timer for your next session. Complete that one. Dance to your favorite tune for three minutes. Set the timer for your next session and complete it. Make a cup of your favorite tea or cocoa.

Do you have a term paper looming? Twice, I wrote lengthy e-books by setting my wind-up snowman timer for 15-minute segments. Setting a task to write non-stop for fifteen on each sub-topic really gets the words pouring out. Editing is for later. Check it out to see if this technique will work for you. This would be useful only after you've located and understood all your research.

Do you get the idea? Completions don't have to be big hairy deals. You can make great progress with small chunks of activity, completing each one in turn.

Cleaning Out
Once you have your major priorities for the day planned or executed, you can handle the smaller tasks like cleaning out as opportunities arise. For instance, if you see a three inch stack of papers on your dining table, grab the top one and 1) decide what to do about it -- and immediately toss it, file it, or take action. If it needs an action step, 2) if it can be done in five minutes, go ahead and take the needed action, or 3) if it will take longer, schedule time in your calendar or put it on your task list to take the appropriate next steps. There, that is one thing you have handled for right now. You've just done all that can be done with that piece of paper in this moment. Repeat with the rest of the stack as time permits. Keep coming back to it.

This approach also works if you want to schedule a fifteen minute block of time for cleaning out.

For clothing and household items that go unused, ask yourself a few questions. Have I used this in the past year? Am I truly likely to use it this next year? If no to either of these, seriously consider letting it go. Do I use it only for a holiday once a year? (If so, keep it in a special place.) Is it broken, torn, worn, outdated, ill-fitting? Either fix it or get rid of it. There is little point in hanging onto something you cannot use and enjoy.

Hope these ideas are helpful. Have fun with them.

For Heavy Reading -- A Bookworm

Happy Easter.

This is just for fun and little creativity. Do you read sitting at a desk or table? Tired of holding pages down? Make a bookworm to do the work for you.

A scrap of denim or other sturdy fabric about 13 inches by 4 inches is all you need. Fold in half inside out, and stitch one end and the long side. Turn right side out. Fill with BBs. Leave about two inches unfilled so it remains flexible. Turn under the ends and sew up the last end. Lay the bookworm across your books and papers so you can read hands free while eating your cereal.

A plastic jar of BBs sells for about 7.99 in Meijer, and made three bookworms today. Give a couple away as gifts.

I just made one for my husband this afternoon so he would stop borrowing mine! I ended up with two extras, so we can have one in each room where we read.

Enjoy getting back in the class routine for the week ahead.

Success is Nice

Yes, success is very nice. When you succeed, when you accomplish what you set out to do, the feeling of pride and completion can warm you from the inside out like nothing else.

In order to succeed, most people find it helpful to be nice along the way. I don't mean namby-pamby, wimpy, sweet nice. I mean courteouos and kind to those you encounter. Whether it's in the parking lot, in a classroom, on the job, or with your family, old-fashion manners go a long way toward creating the aura of success that makes people respect and take you seriously.

Look at this way. Someone who is consistently successful can afford to take the time and thought to be courteous and kind. Act the part until it is second nature for you, and speed your journey to success.

My students will remember the short video on inattentional blindness that we watched in class. ( Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 to see it again.)

A big inference from that experience is that what you are looking for is what you will see.

Therefore, why not focus on the success already present in yourself? Begin now to seek out and pay attention to the successful person already lurking inside! Start to think, speak and act like a successful person.

One very simple way to do that is to reclaim the courtesies you were most likely taught as a kid.

This could be as simple as raising your hand to speak in a dynamic conversation in a college class. It could be putting cell phones away, out of sight and vibration sound, so as not to disturb your classmates and instructor when you are tempted to do a quick text response. It could be not smoking except in designated smoking areas on campus, and putting cigarette butts into a trash receptacle. Nothing heroic. Just acting like someone who can afford to be civilized because you are already a success!

I'll leave you with this thought from Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."