I’ve done many diets in my life and each time I gave up keeping it going for various reasons.
One does stand out though and that’s the cabbage soup diet. It is meant to cleanse your body of all the bad foods you’ve had and should only be done for one week since it is not a diet for life. I can say it really worked. My mum and I did it (I think 10 years ago) She lost about 3 kg in that week and looked no different in her appearance. I, on the other hand lost nothing, yet I looked great.
In a nut shell the diet consists of having a certain recipe for cabbage soup which you can eat as much as you want the entire week, and every day you eat something else (can’t remember the list though..)

How about you?

Thanks for replying. I totally agree that life is more demanding now, and especially more so than what it might have been for our parents. I believe technology has enabled better information flow. As a consequence, these days we just have more stuff/junk to deal with.

I can only advice you of the importance of keeping things real. Focus on the things that matter. Weed out the stuff that don’t.

If you are struggling with the demands of your life, look to ways you can simplify it. I don’t know the specifics of your life but I’m sure there are a bunch of stuff you feel you “have” to do, but in reality don’t. One way to decide for sure is to simply stop doing it for awhile and see if you miss it. If you don’t, then you probably don’t need it in your life.

On the other hand, I’d be interested to see what this social network is all about. I’m curious because my wife and I just had a baby girl and we need all the help we can get.

Do you have a link?

dave

Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. Like you I also now have a stop clock which sits on my desk. It rings every 30 mins which serves as a good reminder of the passing of time.

Sometimes I can get enraptured in my work that I don’t notice I’ve overshot on a Time box. Now with this clock, I’m more aware of time and it keeps me focused on what I’m doing and how much time I have left.

I wasn’t aware of Google adopting a similar technique – but it makes a lot of sense!

cheers,

dave

Thanks for your reply and also for your suggestions.

I think some of these problems and anxieties stem from being a parent of a toddler and managing the challenges during the terrible twos stage in a hectic lifestyle. This mother’s network/people gives support & advice on everything under the sun and how to deal with things.

I think lifestyle overall for many has become very stressful and unfortunately there are only 24 hours in a day. Our todolist seems to be just growing and growing and now out-of-control. We’ve tried to optimize things and make the daily routine almost mechanical but there is so much pressure and demands from work, children, spouse, home etc and trying to provide the best. There is only so much a person can do. American work culture (well at least in technology industry that I’m in) is forcing people to produce more. My husband is already is workaholic and I cannot work more than 8 hours and yet manage all the other things. Achieving a work-life balance seems to be increasingly difficult for families. These are some of the reasons for various distractions through the day.

Thanks,
Jo

I tried splitting the day into time segments before, but with little success until I added in the countdown. Maybe its just because im a competitive person – but as well as keeping me on track through the day it also gives me a productivity boost as I compete against the clock, egging me on to get what would take an hour without the clock into a 30 minute period.

There was also a recent article on how Google runs meetings that described the same thing. I think it was in BuisnessWeek if you week if you want to take a read.