9 Ways to be more Productive

Yesterday I had a pretty embarrassing moment of consumer-culture thinking. My neighbor is getting a lot of yard work done and workers were tearing out the old brick on his walkway. I asked the workers what they were planning to do with the old brick, and they said they were going to throw it out.

Naturally, I couldn't see all those tons of brick going to waste while our back patio is rotting to pieces, so with their permission, I started to haul it away. I had on my leather work gloves which haven't been used in years and was bent over throwing the dirty bricks into a wheelbarrow. The smell of the dirt, gloves, and barrow suddenly reminded me of something. I thought to myself, "Wow, this smells just like a home and garden store."

My next thought was, "Man, have I gotten soft."

And later on, after all the bricks were moved, I noted to myself that I haven't been so sore since the last time I went to the gym--which was a long time ago. Too much of my life, I realized, is built around consumerism. If I'm going to lift weights at the gym, I may as well stay home and get some yard work done. Or build a playhouse, ride a bike, fix my fence. And, by God, a home and garden store ought to remind me of working in my home and garden and not the other way around!

I want to set some goals for myself that I can follow to make my life more productive and less driven by consumer culture. Following the idea of making small, measurable goals, I'm focusing on what I can do this week to set new standards for myself. Here's the list:

1. Eat Only at Home
This may be easy for a lot of people out there, but it has always been a pain for me. Through a series of financial ups and downs in my childhood, I have come to associate eating at home with stress and eating out with celebration. And when things get stressful for me now, I want to go out to eat to alleviate it. Being aware of this pattern is not enough to change it for me. So I will think day-to-day that I will have less guilt if I just eat at home.

2. Make food from Scratch
In the past, I've made the resolution to eat at home and then done something that I feel is just as bad--eat half-homemade foods. But so far this new year, I have made myself proud. I don't eat out of a box or out of a can (unless I'm using canned ingredients for something that's out of season). In fact, I haven't even bought a loaf of bread in almost three months. Instead I bake all of my bread from scratch. It tastes better and costs about 25 cents a loaf. And no, I don't have a bread machine. You don't need a bread machine to make bread at home. And you feel good about yourself when you can take something so basic, do it yourself, and have it be better. It goes from being empty filler to being something substantial.

3. Find a new way to get to work
Biking to work is an impossibility for some people. That is unfortunate. We actually bought our house with this in mind. Actually, we even moved to this town with this in mind. When I ride my bike to work, I don't stress about traffic, and though it takes a little longer, I arrive at work or at home feeling better. If you can't bike to work where you live, perhaps you can take a bus, a train, or walk.

4. Walk to the park with the kids
Where we live we're in walking distance of several parks with playgrounds. Taking a walk with the kids to one of these parks has the dual effect of getting exercise for me and wearing out the kids. It's amazing, but over half of Americans get no exercise every day. Absolutely none. When I was younger, I never would have thought of walking as exercise, but now, sure, it's more than I usually do.

5. Make a Garden
If you don't have one yet, make one now. We have a pretty big yard and get lots of rain. There's plenty of space to start growing our own food. I've never been all that fond of vegetables, but it's about time I changed my mind about that. I think that growing my own will make the whole process feel more rewarding, much like the bread making. If you don't live in a situation where you can have a garden, there is the possibility of a community garden.

6. Build Something
I don't know what I'm going to do with those bricks. I can make the new patio with it and save money, or I could see it as a gift and make a barbecue pit. Again, lifting weights is great for getting into shape, but wouldn't it be more interesting

7. Donate Stuff
It's that time again. Every so often it's a good idea to get rid of unplayed with toys and unworn clothes. My house has the tendency to fill with clutter and I just don't know how it does it. But I know the cure. Not too long ago, we sold 20 boxes of books to a used book store. It was nice to get rid of all the books we won't read again and know that they can move on to people who haven't read them.

8. Volunteer
There's a community beautification project this Saturday. Or, Habitat for Humanity is building about 15 miles away and still needs people. Next week, my wife can lead a workshop about self-esteem for preteen girls. There are tons of volunteer options out there and we don't take advantage nearly enough.

9. Make a Date with the Wife
My wife and I spend a lot of time together, but it is always family time. There's nothing wrong with that, but I do feel like it's important to nurture the one-on-one relationship. Maybe my sister will play with the girls while we go out. Or maybe we'll put the girls to bed on Friday and instate a no computer, no tv, no books night. We could play board games, work on a project together, or have *ahem* other kinds of fun. Anyway, we won't waste our night and we'll be taking time for each other.

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It's important to take time and make it useful. So much of our time gets wasted and we feel like it's taken from us. Focus your energy, focus your time, and the resulting productivity will resonate throughout your life.

10 Ways to Claim your Day

Note: Please check out Steve Olson's website to see the article that I penned about Education Vs. Schooling. Thanks again, Steve, for letting me guest-post.

Most mornings I teach an 8am class. Morning classes are my favorite; you haven't hit that afternoon lag, the coffee is fresh in your system, and you know that you're knocking one out right out of the gates. But I am constantly and consistently harried by students who droop and moan about how "early" it is.

But it doesn't just happen in the 8am classes. 9am, 10am, and even, I swear, half the time in any 11am classes I teach.

I'm sad for these students. They don't feel like they've made a decision to be there. They don't feel at all responsible for their presence--which goes to show how responsible they feel for the work we'll be doing. And I'm not a boring teacher, which I at least credit whith why they don't fall asleep.

What I want to tell them is this: It's your day. No one snuck up and took it from you. You're spending it right now and it's never going to come back, and you will have never known that it was yours in the first place. Wake up, grow up, take responsibility, and take charge.

With that advice in mind, I'd like to detail some of the things that make me feel ownership over the days I spend. Sure, some days slip past with me feeling dragged along the whole time. This is especially easy to fall into when you have kids and even easier when you have a set routine. At any rate, here are some ways to claim your day, feel free to mix, match, and ignore as you see fit:

1. Wake up Early
I know this isn't a popular one. But if Benjamin Franklin knew the benefits of early to bed, early to rise a couple hundred years ago, why in the world do we still struggle with it? Why can't we learn that these aren't words made in folly? I tell my students that the day starts at 8am. You can't possibly expect to wake up after that and have any control over your circumstances; they day has begun without you and others are already making the decisions that are going to run the rest of the cycle. I love to wake up early--regardless of the time I go to bed--and feel ripped off when 8am rolls around and others are sharing my day with me. Plus, it's possible to get a little extra time for yourself--or for you and your wife.

2. Start the day Writing
Pull out a notebook, a computer, or the backs of bills and start writing. It doesn't matter what you write. If you have no idea what to write, make it bland. Make lists about what your expectations for the day are. Or what you hope to avoid. If something is bothering you from the days before, write about that. Writing doesn't just serve as a form of communication. Writing is a way that people who practice it can metabolize things. Let it all run out onto the page.

3. Exercise
I used to hate running. I mean, really, really hate it. That's why one day I chose to start doing it three times a week. I figured that if I could start my day facing down something that I was afraid of, that I hated, and get through it, the rest of the day would be cake. Plus, it's good for you and all of that. I had a book that coached you through running a 10k in 13 weeks. It was a step-by-step regimine; a mixture of running and walking that brought you from coach potato to runner. I did it, it was wonderful, and I stopped. Why did I stop? Beats me. But I've got to get back into it. I was happier, healthier, and rested better when I was a runner. And I felt like I had conquered something that had always held me back. Plus, the time to myself (rarely more than 45 minutes a morning) was great. Yoga is another thing that you can do in the comfort of your own home, often with even small kids immitating you (or, in my case, sitting on me during the hardest poses).

4. Read
We've talked about this before, but reading can be a great way to spend your day. I take a book with me wherever I go. To the store, to work, to the mall, everywhere. You never know when you will have to wait somewhere and you can sneak five or ten minutes of page time in. If you're stumped about what to read, check out recomendations here and here or at the Badass Bookstore.

5. Turn off your TV
Did you think I wouldn't mention it this time? The TV is the biggest time-suck in the world. You burn less calories than sleeping while watching TV. It's a tunnel from corporate marketing firms right into your living room.

6. Go for a Walk or Hike
We are creatures meant for walking. Yet we never do it. Walking does wonders for your legs and for me it really helps to clear my mind. Taking the time out of the week to drive out to a good hiking spot does wonders for my entire family.

7. Meditate
This is another activity that is hard to do with your kids around, but if you do it before they wake up or after they go to bed, it can really keep your day on track. There are tons of books and blogs written about the subject and the benefits seem indisputible. While there are lots of different ways to do it that may speak better to you than others, there really isn't a bad way to do it. Carving out time for this activity will lower the volume on negative parts of your life and raise it on the good.

8. Ride your Bike to Work
Riding my bike to work and back is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I know that many of us don't live close enough to our jobs to make this goal a reality. But when we bought our house, we had biking to work in the forefront of our minds. Our last home featured a 45 minute, heavily trafficked commute to my job and it was terrible. It added unwanted stress and really detracted from any peace I might find in a day. Biking to work actually decreases stress and by the time I'm in my office (clothes changed and all), I am more relaxed and ready for the day. When I get home with my totally nerdy bike helmet on, I've already shed the stresses of work through my pedals. Paul Dorn keeps a wonderful Bike Commute Tips blog that is really worth checking out.

9. Clean up at night
The hypocracy alarm just went off. Our house is as messy as any I've been to. Toys, laundry, dog chews all over the place. But if you can manage to get your house to a good, managable place, cleaning up at night will help you to wake up to a clean morning. Your day will start off on the right foot and you'll be able to concentrate on all those wonderful kids activities that serve to make the house messy again. Clean. Repeat.

10. Turn off the Internet
Again with that damn hypocracy alarm. Don't worry, I'm an English Professor and I see the irony in all of its levels when I suggest this. I'll go further and say that you shouldn't turn it off until you've had a chance to visit the Badass Dad Store and clicked on all of our sponsers over there on the right--->. But just because I'm a guy who wants to make a buck on the Internet doesn't mean I'm wrong with this advice. But I digress. Really and truly, the Internet can be the biggest time-suck of them all. Especially if you have Stumble installed on your browser (and most of the traffic to this site is from Stumble, so again, I get it). There's nothing inlcusive or promotional of family bonding about the Internet. It should really be kept to a minimum if you want to feel like the day was yours when you go to bed at night.

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There's nothing that's more of a shame than being dragged around by other forces all day. And there is nothing better than being engaged in your present life. So next time you find yourself complaining about how much there is to do today, or how early it is, or when will the kids just go to bed already, ask yourself this: how much of your life are you going to wish away?