New Tools for the New Year: Lifestyle

December 29 by Mike Vardy | 

With the new year fast approaching, there’s no better time than to tweak what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. So far in our New Tools for the New Year series, we have explored some new tools for the new year that can help you level up your communication and management skills, and have looked at technology for you to dive into as well. Today we’re going to broaden out the scope and talk about an awfully big category: Lifestyle.
The thing about this category is that it doesn’t just have an impact on your life outside of work; it impacts your style of life – that includes your work and your life outside of work. In a time where we seem to dive deeper into work and less into life outside of it (as the two seem to be coming more and more intertwined), these tools are meant to connect you with your overall “lifestyle”. That includes health, wellness, food, leisure time and how to live outside of the zone we call “work” when it is called for.

Time

Time is one of – if not the – most valuable resources we all have. No one has more of it in a day than anyone else. It’s how we spend it that can be the difference-maker in our lives. Lifehacks can help you really make the most of your time – but they can also serve to steal it if you’re not careful.
It’s important to manage your time in a way that allows you to be both efficient and effective in all areas of your life. That may mean using a tool like RescueTime to monitor your computer habits or lessening the amount of information you absorb on a daily basis through curation so that you can keep up with the times without losing any of the time you’ve got.
Time is most certainly a tool; and you get new time every time a new day dawns, let alone every time a new year begins. Spend it and invest it wisely and you’ll find that you’ll have an improved lifestyle as a result.

Energy

Without this, you’re not going to be able to live much of a life. Things like eating right and implementing a fitness routine are crucial in setting yourself up for a tremendous lifestyle. The best – and worst – part of the quest for energy is the choices we’re faced with along the way.
There are numerous diet and fitness plans out there, such as adopting the Paleo Diet and through resources like NerdFitness. Spending time looking into them is part of the equation, but it’s one of the most important parts. Think about adopting these routines as being similar to the making of a movie.
When making a movie, most of the time is spent preparing the movie and after the movie has been shot. Pre-productiion and post-production take up the most time, while shooting the film takes up the least (in general). The same goes with these healthy lifestyle routines. Figuring out which ones to go with involves research and sticking with them through the long haul takes up even more time. Yet starting them is easy, especially at the start of a new year.
In order to live a better life on all fronts, you need energy. What routines you use to help you get that energy is up to you. Just don’t use up all of your time figuring that out. Spend more time gaining the energy as a result of the routines, not spending it while searching for them.

Journaling

Journaling is one of the best ways to capture your thoughts and connect you with the life you want to live. By creating a record of the thoughts, events and moments that happen in your life – at work and outside of it (such as moments directly related to the areas mentioned above) – you can better reflect on the life you’re living. In a world where everything is moving faster and faster, taking the time to journal slows it down enough for you to reflect and connect with the person you are and also helps you direct your energy into the person you want to be.
It doesn’t matter whether you use a paper-based journal or a journaling application such as Day One, LifeJournal or even the cross-platform app Evernote (as Brett Kelly does in chronicling his life); it’s the act of writing it out that will give you something to look back on and see how you’ve crafted the life you’re leading and how to shape the one you want to be leading.

Conclusion

The beginning of a year is a time where we look at the type of lifestyle we’ve been leading and decide to make changes to improve it. These tools don’t just help you do that right away, but they’ll help you keep doing it for years to come.
(Photo credit: Carefree Outstretched Arms via Shutterstock)




Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". You can follow him on Twitter, listen to him regularly on his podcast, ProductiVardy, and read more from him at MikeVardy.com and at Vardy.me.

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