I have recently conducted something that I had programmed for a while – a pre 30’s MOT (Health Screening clinically speaking) – which consisted in 3 hours of various tests, including blood analysis, ultrasound scans, ECG, vision, body fat…

Happy to find I was free of any traces of cancer (you do always wonder under the pressure of the clinical environment if you are going to get the worse news) I was distressed to find out that my levels of sugar and bad cholesterol were higher than normal.

The levels of bad cholesterol were almost double the limit of what is considered normal, and the level of fasting glucose was borderline normal.  Technically I was on my way to pre-diabetes and to develop hard disease.

Obviously these conditions do take years to develop or lead into serious forms of disease, and the good news are that, at my stage and in general it is all reversible and I was recommended for now lifestyle and diet changes, together with also being made aware of the consequences of non-action. Any plaques of fat disappear throughout the months and years from your veins and arteries, given that you conduct the correct diet and lifestyle.

I have got a list from the doctor of food I must not eat, I’ve exercised more, increased omega 3 intake and I feel much better after 14 days and have lost 3kg.

How could this have happened to me?  Although I was aware I increased weight (more 8 kg than 1 year ago) around March last year, I run a marathon and completed various half marathons at around 1h.50m and I did feel relatively fit for my age.

Reality is, in modern society, we should overall be more fit that we all currently think we are, I have been having a poor diet for over 9 months, it has been a cold winter and I have exercised very little and working from home I am constantly nibbling – it a nutshell of conditioning factors.

Researching on the subject, I was impressed to find that 57 million of American were pre-diabetic, (and my levels of fasting glucose are not even within those levels) and that cardiovascular disease has become the number one killer in USA and in many European states.

Basically, the majority of us are leaning towards being part of those stats, and others since they lead to other complications.

Many of us are already suffering some mild symptoms, and remaining un-diagnosed (get checked from time to time) until things go wrong and older you are worse it gets to regain health.

Obesity is something that is becoming normal amongst modern 1^st world society, and we seem to be slowly forgetting that it actually indicates that we are at risk of various conditions and is a sign of potential decreased longevity.

Further researching on disease and longevity, it seems that most of human problems are self-inflicted by:

1) Diet

2) Life-style.

Now that I sort of raised a wake-up call, and do take it seriously otherwise, trust me, you won’t be happy when you get those results or even worse,  I will share information on some interesting discussions on the subject and in the common facts and habits of people that live until 100 and beyond. 

Firstly, I would like to share 4 TED videos, which you will find interesting to watch on your own time.

Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+

Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging

Dean Ornish says your genes are not your fate

Dean Ornish on healing

Secondly, I have summarized below several traits and facts about people that live longer, that I found on several other sources:

1.       Purpose

• Having a purpose, something to wake up for every morning.

2.       Involvement in society

• Being involved and having a respectful place in society.

This does not mean really to be a famous person; you can be someone respectful within your village or family.

3.       Family, friends and care

• Love.
• Sex.
• Having children and grandchildren
• Having pets.

4.       Living area

• Live close to green areas.
• Leave in mild climate (i.e. 20 degrees Celsious)

5.       Physical/Mental activity and rest

• Moderate sport.

Most 100 year olds don’t do sport, but remain active by walking a lot, go up and down stairs constantly,  beat the dough for a bread of cake manually and so on – basically they burn calories in another ways and in activities they feel happy conducting.

• Continuous learning and mental activity.
• Being well rested.

6.       Humour, positive outlook towards life and others

• Being positive, humorous and having a great outlook towards life is a common fact.

7.       Diet

• Eat small portions (eat just enough basically)
• Keep hydrated.
• Avoid alcohol and drugs.
• Low consumption of fat, meat, salt, sugar and refined flour.
• Plenty of complex carbs, nuts vegetables and antioxidants.

(Not a long list and pretty simply rules - what’s wrong with most of us???)

8.       Stress

• Avoid stress.
• Avoid bad emotional states.
• Avoid depression.

9.       Other

• Do not smoke (we all know this)
• Good teeth.

This one I find a bit arguable and most probably related to the fact that if someone looks well after his/her teeth also looks well after his/her diet and health in general. Bear in mind that it seems that also many infections get in our bodies via bad teeth.

• Breathe correctly.

I would like to add one myself, which would be probably one common fact for the 100 year olds in 50 years – do health screenings regularly. Play smart and prevent – if a problem is find at an early stage it is much easier to correct.

Long, healthy, happy and fulfilling are my wishes to you dear readers.

David

If you usually save money you will put it into a bank account and the bank will pay you interest. Banks will then pretty much do whatever they like with it and the credit they can generate from it. Some of it they lend to people who need to borrow.

Some of it they give to their shareholders. As we all know banks make lots of money from all this, a fraction of which they give back to their customers.

What’s good about a Personal Loan? If all the junk mail and newspaper ads from the big banks are to be believed, a Personal Loan is a great product that everyone should
have!

In reality, the best thing is usually receiving the money, and buying your big holiday ticket, highly desired car or piece of technology and even paying off those debts… it’s rarely the loan itself, but that is
about to change, thanks to Zopa.

Zopa is an abbreviation of “Zone of potential agreement”, but is essentially an online marketplace where borrowers and lenders are brought together with a view to satisfying each others financial requirements.

For lenders it depends on purpose of the lending as social lenders are gaining the satisfaction of helping community so presumably not to concerned with return while those trying to achieve a better return than the banks can offer should be able to achieve 6.5% plus by being selective into which markets they offer their money. 

All in all i see it as a win-win situation for both lenders and borrowers with borrowers getting a particularly good rate.
Zopa was launched in March 2005 by the team who set up Egg banking and is backed by the same firm who backed ebay and betfair. 

Zopa has been referred in various ocassions to as Zopa bank, but it is definately not a bank but does offer Zopa personal loans at competitive rates. 

What are people saying about Zopa finance, press information and real customer Zopa experiences can be viewed here – Zopa experiences and press. 

1.     Zopa Loans Review: What are the advantages of Zopa? 

In this current economic climate, the advantages of using Zopa have increased considerably. 

The banks have been removed from the process, so there are no fat cat director’s expenses to pay for, and bearing in mind the mess they have got themselves into recently, they probably wouldn’t lend you any money anyway. 

Many savers are not comfortable in letting banks have their hard earned money, earning a pittance of an interest rate not knowing which bank will be the next to collapse. 

Zopa early repayment charges? – there are no early repayment charges on a Zopa loan. 

2. Zopa lender advantages 

The most obvious advantage for any Zopa UK lender is the comparatively high rate of interest earned on your Zopa investment. 

Although the average Zopa rates have fallen slightly recently from 9.1% to 8.8%, this is still much higher than any return you would achieve with a bank or building society. 

From your average or default Zopa rates you must also take into account the Zopa social lending fee of 1% on money lent out, and also the potential for a bad debt provision. 

Loans are divided into Zopa risk categories such as A* ,A, B and C and each of these have an estimated bad debt rating. A* are the best risks with least chance of default, and C have an increased rate of default. In fairness, Zopa calculates your estimated returns taking some very prudent default rates for each category into account. On last review the actual level of default across the whole account was only 0.22% which is exceptional, and demonstrates that the Zopa underwriters are doing a great job. 

3. Zopa loan advantages 

Again, on a similar note to that mentioned above it is the potential Zopa rate of borrowing that can be most advantageous. There is also more flexibility with a Zopa loan than with a bank, as you can pay your debt off early without any Zopa early repayment additional fees, and set the payment date of your choice. 

In a time where banks and building societies and especially credit card companies are increasing their loan rates (despite the lowest BOE base rate in over 300 years!) Zopa is proving an exceptionally attractive alternative. A* borrowers can obtain rates of less than 7% (depends on the funding market at the time) and even B and C borrowers can slash the rates they are being asked to pay by some credit card companies. As an example, I have lent money at what I thought was a cracking rate of 15% to a borrower, who was in turn delighted with such a rate as they were currently paying an (unnamed Co) 39.9% interest! Yes that’s 39.9% interest. 

Zopa charge an arrangement fee of £118.50 for every loan they create, (Zopa loans can be for between £1,000 and £15,000 – Zopa personal loans or Zopa business loans) this is added to the amount borrowed and you can chose either a 36 or 60 month period to pay this loan back. 

4. Is Zopa Safe? 

A very good question indeed, especially in these worrying times of apparent financial meltdown around the world. 

This question is mainly a concern of potential lenders, as borrows would only ever have the application fee as their maximum potential risk exposure. It was my biggest concern when I first investigated Zopa over 3 years ago, but the research I carried out provided me with the comfort I needed to make an educated decision to use Zopa lending as another form of diversifying my investment portfolio. It has so far been a very successful investment strategy! 

The two main questions to ask and risks to mitigate against are: 

1. Is my money safe with Zopa? 

Yes, when you pay money into your Zopa lending account it actually goes into a segregated RBS account. It is held there until the moment it gets lent out, when it is transferred to the borrower. As this money does not form part of Zopa’s assets, even in the unlikely event of Zopa going bust, your money would be completely safe. 

2. Is my money safe with Zopa borrowers? 

To protect your hard earned money, Zopa use all the safety measures a bank uses plus a few more. Everyone who wants to borrow is identity checked, credit checked and risk assessed. To diversify risk, your money is spread across a number of borrowers, e.g. £500 would be split between 50 people x £10 each. 

A collections agency chases any missed payments on your behalf and at Zopa’s expense not yours. Zopa provide you with a default rate estimate for each class of borrower so you can factor this in your expected returns. Although the current actual rates of bad debt are much lower than the estimates, you should expect some loans to default over the period of your investment. To date, I have been lucky as none of my 100+ borrowers has defaulted so far. And finally you are also protected against fraud.

This is in reality a very good question that most of us ask ourselves every period of time, if not every week or every day. Years, months and days go by so quickly… Being busy has become a constant in our lives this century – everyone is spinning inside that mouse wheel, doing one thing or the other.

 In truth, the crudest reality and the only thing that we know for sure about life, is that it is a countdown period towards death. As much as I am serving you this reality in a cold perspective, that’s my purpose. I want you to get you worrying and wary of your time and to think on how you can free some of it for yourself, in your daily schedule.

People often ask me how can I produce so much, and do so much activities in my life. In this line, I will share my perspective on what I find to be the 14  top tips/techniques to help you save time in your personal life and work.

One of the speakers in personal development that helped me most in this area of time management skills was Brian Tracy. Looking for articles on the web to base my discussion, one that I found which was pretty good was by another Dave - Dave Ward. 

Now that we are in context, let’s go straight to the point and explore various core facts and techniques.

 I will spread my opinions in two areas:

A)    Personal life

B)    Work life

PART A – PERSONAL LIFE

 1.  Sleep well

I believe one of the main factors to succeed and for you to deliver your best everyday is to simply have a great sleep. Sleep is with no doubt, which is directly related to a balanced life.

 We don’t need mouse lab experiments for this one, we all experience it at some stage of our life. If you don’t rest well, you don’t think clearly, you make mistakes, you are less productive, you are irritable and create worse relationships with people, you may be driving to work and have a crash,…, the odds for things to go wrong are highly increased.

Good sleep is a pure basis of success, if you never noticed it.

 I can’t totally agree in Dave Ward’s statement about going to bed early and on his message here.

It’s common sense that the best time to sleep is at night, and I would not really recommend synthetic sleeping aids, for obvious reasons.

Leaving critics aside on harmful comments, I think the most important is to get sure that the right factors exist to allow your sleep: 

• Calm place to sleep:  You need a place with no or very little noise, perhaps a room that is very dark even when the morning comes. 
• Partners: If you sleep with a partner you need to assess if that person is also a factor in that quality of sleep. If they represent a problem, you may want to get a bigger bed, try to get yourself in a different position or even sleep in a separate bed. I am not trying to get you relationship problems, if you sleep well, surely you will be a better husband/wife. 
• Quality of the bed: With no doubts, a good mattress is one of the best investments you will ever make. 
• Stimulants: Avoid coffee and stimulants. Good food will also be reflected in the quality of your rest. Remember – you are what you eat.

  2. Cut down in surplus hobbies

Here’s a tricky one. You want to free your time so that you get more leisure periods – all those spare moments to expend on your hobbies, but you don’t want also to be stuck watching TV, big brother, reality shows, buffy the vampire slayer,…, there is so much ‘junk’ for the ignorant masses nowadays…

In this case I believe Dave Ward addresses well the problem, although this is something I don’t currently experience – I hardly watch commercial TV and have control over the information that is fed into my brain.

Looking deeper into this, also unnecessary web-browsing, videogames, magazines, and so on, can often become a problem and be addictive. How to tackle this? Without briefing you in detail about self-awareness techniques and Zen meditation, you need to see this traits arising and learn on how to build self-discipline, stop them and be balanced.

If you feel you do too much of a X hobbie, you know there is something there for you to cut down and you want to invest your time elsewhere. Be your own Budha! Spend your time in quality and meaningnful experiences.

 3.  Maximize the use of your time on any tasks and batch activities by type

I feel forced to comment on Dave Ward’s comment about lunch – if you have 1 hour to lunch, maybe think about it as lunch, rest and disconnect time and batch in that hour whatever you can do.

Lye in the grass, call a friend, play Nintendo DS, meet a friend. It is very important to try to batch similar tasks together for productivity and well-functioning.

PART B – WORK LIFE 

4. Commuting and transition time

Be efficient on your commuting time. Try to cut down as much as you can. If it takes you long to get to work, recycle that time and bring a laptop, work on some emails or tasks. If driving takes you longer than public transport, use public transport where if you manage to sit can be working on other personal or work items. If you cannot sit down use that time to read audio books and learn something.

 Treat every transition time as an opportunity to do something productive, sooner you start realizing this more productive you are and able to generate free time and achieve more with your life.

 5.     Work from home

If you have the choice, try to work from home a few days a week. More and more this option is being made available to workers in capitals. I found  this recent article which provides a good overview of the 4.6 million hours that can be recycled just in UK by allowing employees to work from home. The adjustment can be difficult at start but soon you realize that apart from staff being able to produce more, they also gain all that extra time and energy that is spent getting ready and travelling to work, in work activities and deliverables.

 6.     Emails

Any office worker understands how much time he spends dealing with mails, therefore being one of our major daily tasks, this is with no doubt something else to focus on. 

My views, and thinking about my daily activity, is that we should check email every 2 hours. You should obviously adjust this practice to the context of your jobs, since for some positions it could be difficult to achieve, but let’s not forget that telephone is also available and is should be used for urgent maters. 

Checking your email only a few times a day, will also help you be more efficient, as you don’t spend all that time and mental power of switching from one task to read an email that just arrived, then getting back to the task, thinking on the background on how to respond or handle a query (especially for those difficult ones). Also there is certain percentage of emails that get auto by the own clients who have originally escalated them. 

• Spam – kill it from start. 
• Set email rules, so you don’t have to those frequent unnecessary emails, or so that you can focus on reading them at a dedicated slot during your week.
•  Cultivate a low information diet and focus on what’s important in your competencies.

 7.     Think on paper, plan and prioritize

think and plan

Plan on paper and have a to-do list always ready- that helps you being focused and avoids procrastination. I usually start my day by spending 5-15 minutes planning, ‘re-contextualizing’ and looking at all my weekly/daily tasks and prioritizing by importance – that keeps me focused and productive.

 I always start with the difficult tasks first, or the ones that require my brain at his best. I get two main things out of this:

• hard/important tasks get done faster;
• and feeling of achievement within the day;

In the afternoons I spend more time in all those tasks that require less brain power, or all the little ‘bits and bops’, that would have easily distracted from my main morning priorities. 

8.     Plan your day considering your energy levels/mood for certain tasks

We are human, sometimes we are tired, other times we are full of energy, somedays we want to do one activity, others we prefer to be doing something else.

This goes inline with the previous point and also does varies from person to person. It is important to understand the times of the day you have more energy, or when you are more efficient at X task. There are also days, you prefer not to have client calls and others you are in a very exciting and ‘talking mood’.  It is no point to do difficult tasks if you don’t feel you have the energy or the right mood for the activities (unless they are crucial).  

 9.     Take every opportunity to maximize your time 

This is one you can only answer yourself. Get used to meditate on how you can maximize your time and productivity.

To give you a personal example, I don’t currently spend much time reading books. I feel it is a waste of time. Instead I listen to audio books, they are today widely available, they develop greatly your auditory skills, and I learn far much faster. I do listen to audio books mostly when I am running at the gym, doing house tyding, taking the dog for a walk,…, so I continuously investing on that time when my brain is in ‘stand by’ mode.

At work, I usually start one hour earlier. That extra one or two hours you are not interrupted, fresh and focused becomes excellent for productivity – you will produce the equivalent to 2 or more hours… In addition, if you have to commute to work and can manage to start/leave work early, that will also represent  that you will often be able to drive home faster, or get home faster via public transport.

10.  Develop a sense of urgency

Have the urge to produce deliverables fast.

It’s a practice we can implement straight away, and we will find that in a very few weeks we will see results if we get used to perform faster. When you develop the sense of urgency you will quickly be ahead of the masses and stand out at work. The downfall is that in my case, I see more work and responsibility coming my way, but it is ultimately up to you regulate if the situation becomes not beneficial for you at work.

 11.  Break large tasks into subtasks

When you have a major task, break it in pieces and understand the difficulty of each so that you can understand and plan when it is the most efficient time to deal with them.

This also helps to work on that motivation and self-esteem level from achieving steady progress.

12.  Once you start a task, don’t stop and motivate yourself into action and be positive

Long subtitle, hey? I think these all marry very well together. Be positive, action and deliverable driven –  life and work is all about achievement and output. When you start a task, simply get used to finish it and bear in mind the final deliverable. The masses usually run out of steam and procrastinate on tasks, and the successful people don’t.

 13.  Work in batch mode

This goes also inline with some of the points above.

Develop blocks of time (e.g. 90-200 minutes) where you can work on a task or group of tasks uninterrupted.

As an example, I tend to plan all my client and training calls in one morning/afternoon, so calls don’t go beyond schedule (since I have to start other call at X time), and I only spend my time and energy on a task, and get on the right frame of mind for it since I create the expectation/slot for it before hand.

On the other hand, when I have to work on creating a document, I try to avoid being interrupted, away from the telephone, and focused on the analysis and editing.

It’s no point to start a document, if you don’t feel the energy there – the work you will be doing in those 3 or 4 hours, can be achieved in only 1 hour when the right energy or mood for X activity is there. When we analyse the ROTI (return on time invested) these sort of conclusions become very transparent.

 14.  Control interruptions

This is also related to the previous topic.Think about:

• Setting time limits in calls/meetings;
• Develop techniques to minimize interruptions. You can for instance establish a protocol at the start of a meeting (establish a time constraint, when questions must be raised, etc), develop skills on dominating/controlling presentations;
• Control telephone calls. You can even establish that you are only available at X times, if telephone is a time waster for you;

Ok, this has already been a pretty long post, so I will let you digest.

It’s also important that you don’t get lost and too analytical in the process (I used to do it often) and remember that perfection is utopia and that the purpose of time management, in my humble view, is to increase your quality of life.

Acceleration at many levels can be a consequence, with its own benefits and downfalls, but that’s a total different subject and something to talk about in other post(s).

David

Following on the creation of my first post, I want to share my research on the topic, which will be extremely useful to any new bloggers out there.

Another days is born, and so as thousands of domains, websites and blogs. The WWW is indeed a phenomenon like no other . In search for exact answers, I found this site that apart from many other information, shows you that over 130.000 new domains were registered today. This figure is far beyond what many of us expected.

A major portion of this domains will surely have some blogging element, so I this post is aimed to help all the first timers and community.

So, you finally create your blogging site and it is now time to write your first page. And you just thought one of the hardest parts was over…  The reality is, any beginner will be indecisive in what to blog for first time.

Should I write on the best idea I’ve ever had? On my caving experience last weekend? On a great personal development book I finished recently? The ideas are endless when you bring your mind into the job…

I decided to read on the experiences from other people and about what is advised out there. And, settling on the practical and analytical character that I want to establish on the contents of this site, my first blog is actually about my research and summary on the best top tips to write your first blog entry and general successful blogging.

With a simple Google search, you can see that there are endless articles about this subject out there, since this is a situation that thousands of first time bloggers encounter. I think a very good starting point for any blogger is to read what is blogging about. We all want to blog but it greatly helps to get in context with it.

Below I will keep things very clear and simple for you by summarizing the key findings of my research, in 3 basic items:

1.Introduce yourself and your blog

The more information your provide about yourself  and your blog, the easier it will be for me as a reader to trust you

1.1.Explain why you blog

Explain clearly why you are blogging, and what you hope to accomplish. Think about this as a mission statement, This will greatly benefit you, as you can go refer back to it constantly and keep focus on your blog.

2. Set expectations

2.1. Define what you will be blogging about

Explain to your users what to expect from your blog, including an overview of the various topics that you will be discussing on your next proposed  articles. This will generate both engagement and natural selection on your public.

There are a few questions that can easily help you elaborate on this like:

 ”Why would someone come to this blog?” “What would they be looking for?”  ”Why this blog is different?”

3. Explain readers how to use your site

Since blogging has become nowadays a collaborative writing means, it is very important that you make as easy as possible for readers to contribute.

Explain to them how to get involved, how to leave comments.

You will typically show your readers how to:

• Subscribe to your blog (e.g. RSS, Twitter)
• How to contact you (e.g. email)
• How to navigate
• How I can they leave feedback

Also be sure you establish the protocol and policy for participation.

Other tips that I found along the way that can be applied here are:

A) Use Enthusiastic tone

B) Don’t write long posts – summarize

C) Sign off messages like a person, as if an email and not like machine.

We will be exploring other successful blogging tips as I go along in the expertise process.

Good luck with your blogging.

David

I am David the Editor, and to introduce myself a bit I am currently an IT consultant for living with a taste for new experiences. Who knows me well, knows I am a bit of an adventurous character…

Going straight to the point, this blog apart from being a WEB.02 experiment, and a weblog for the professional and personal development side of my life, it is aimed to both help and learn from the WWW community about the various key topics I/we will be writing/commenting on.

Although, in earlier stages of my life I was proficient in literature and creative writing I have somehow evolved to become very analytical, organized and critic. So what to expect from this blog?

We will hopefully on a weekly basis be discussing research and findings on various topics:

• Business and industries;
• Efficiency on tasks;
• E-Marketing and sales;
• Entrepreneurship;
• Fitness;
• Personal development;
• Project Management;
• Science;
• Technology and Innovation;

What makes this blog special?

My main objective is to analyze and refine interesting and success topics ideas from different sources and summarize/present them in practical terms.  Apart from helping everyone grow personally and be successful and be ahead of the masses, having this goal in mind will not only help you, but myself  in getting motivated to reach out for more knowledge and expertise.

I encourage anyone to contribute, comment and debate the main ideas of this blog to help reaching more refined and helpful information for all.

I have a feeling that most of the readers will be ‘well-grow’ individuals so I will not spend much time telling you how to use the site:

Subscribe to RSS - click that icon which pops up at the right top corner;

Edit - create an user account or simply comment;

Contact me – Use Twitter;

And yeah , the usual policy – no offensive/not polite comments.

Happy blogging!!!

David