Category: Other people’s products

Have you come across The Pomodoro Technique [unsolicited plug]?

It’s a method of dividing up your work time, to ensure that you work in a concentrated manner in short bursts. Basically, you set a timer for 25 minutes, a period the author calls a “pomodoro”. You then work until the timer rings, allowing nothing to interrupt you. After a short break, you start the next pomodoro. Rinse and repeat.

The name apparently derives from the tomato-shaped timer that he bought to measure his work periods. A tomato is “pomodoro” in Italian.

Now, if I were creating such a system, and I wanted to name it after something associated with tomatoes, I would call it “The Caprese Technique”. For those who don’t know, Insalata Caprese is an Italian salad consisting of alternating slices of tomato and fresh mozzarella cheese. Add an Italian dressing and a couple of basil leaves, and you have a great antipasto. The tomatoes would be the work periods and the cheese the breaks, giving a more pictorially accurate image.

However, the method I first developed over 35 years ago, while studying at university, would go under the name of “The Coffee Technique”. I would have called it “The Java Technique”, but the name has been preempted by the computer language. “The Columbian Technique” makes it sound like something connected to a drugs cartel. Anyway, I make myself a large milk coffee. I then sit down and study or work, sipping the coffee as I work. Once the coffee is cold, I finish it, usually about the last quarter cup in one go, then go and make another one. The break is at least five minutes long, what with boiling the water, and so on. Then I head back to carry on.

The time structure is more organic. For me, this has two distinct advantages:

1. I vary the length of the work time by the speed at which I drink the coffee. If it is an easy task, I tend to drink the coffee faster. With hard work and intense concentration, the coffee is consumed more slowly.
2. Have you ever been “in the zone” or “in the flow”, where the task becomes so easy, and you are so engrossed, that you don’t notice time passing? If you have, the last thing you want is some damned timer ringing in your ear and interrupting you!

Using coffee has an added advantage: caffeine is known to be an aid to concentration.

If you have your own way of structuring your time, why not let the rest of us know.

Category: Home > General Posts
Previous: OBEs
Next: I’ve moved!

I hadn’t planned on making a post today, but the Universe intended otherwise.

Last night I downloaded a book called The Go-Giver, which is available in hardback, paperback, audio book and Kindle forms. It was recommended by John Thornhill, whose courses One Month Mentor and Marketing Masterclass I am taking. I started reading it this morning after getting up, missing my breakfast, unable to put it down. When I finished it, I had tears in my eyes, as I did while reading it!

It’s about a young man whose direction in life is changed 180°, because he meets a man who … Well, I won’t spoil your enjoyment by saying any more about the story.

It’s strange, but some of the ideas are ones I have been working with for years, and others, while not new, had implications I had never considered.

I can thoroughly recommend the book to any- and everyone.

This is a completely unsolicited plug, being based on my own enthusiasm for the book.

Category: Home > General Posts
Previous: Looking for Help
Next: It’s a Magical World!

When considering our relationship with eternity, we still have to ask the most important question: are we immortal?

We know that physical immortality is, at the moment, a pipe-dream. The individual particles, atoms, etc. of the body do survive, since matter, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form. Did you know that, every time you inhale, you are breathing around one million atoms of air that Julius Caesar breathed?

What about mental immortality? Does some part of us, our memories and personality, survive after the death of the body? Since they are energy forms, they must survive, as energy cannot be destroyed. Does this mean that we are immortal?

How does this immortality relate to eternity? Taking into account yesterday’s post about time and eternity, plus the question of our mortality, I find that the following ideas about immortality can be formulated:

1. There is no immortality
   If there is no immortality, the question of our relationship to eternity becomes moot, and the discussion ends here.
2. We are immortal and eternity is endless time V1 – one life
   We live one life, and then exist in an endless eternity forever more. This version contains both the Heaven and Hell of the Christian religion.
3. We are immortal and eternity is endless time V2 – serial lives
   We live more than one life, switching between time and eternity. This is the basis of reincarnation, believed in by many Eastern religions.
4. We are immortal and eternity is endless time V3 – parallel lives
   This interesting variation I first came across in a product by Burt Goldman, the American Monk, called Quantum Jumping. The theory is that there are multiple versions of us, each in a parallel universe. Each lives a different life, depending on decisions made on the way. The question is, do we share a common soul, or does each have an individual one?
5. We are immortal and eternity is timeless V1 – one life
   We come out of eternity and live one life, then return to eternity. My question is: what’s the point?
6. We are immortal and eternity is timeless V2 – simultaneous lives
   Here, we live different lives at different times, but from the point of view of timeless eternity, they are all happening at the same time. Instead of reincarnation, we could call this multi-incarnation, to coin a phrase.
7. We are immortal and eternity is timeless V3 – parallel simultaneous lives
   In this case, we lead multiple lives at different times, each having a collection of parallel lives in parallel universes. All these multiple parallel lives would be happening at the same time, from the point of view of timeless eternity.

It all depends on the reason behind the need for multiple lives, if such exist.

Category: Home > General Posts
Previous: Defining yourself
Next: Time and Eternity