Okay, I use a thousand social networks all the time for no real particular reason.  But Twitter is one I use regularly even though my friend base happens to be quite small at the moment… I’m okay with that.  Anyway, to put it simply Twitter as my main network creates a streamlined work process.  I only have one thing to update regularly.  You could argue that getting rid of all of them would be best, however I know my presence on the web will always exist, why not 0wn 1t?

Anyway…

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the video HERE is by far the best explanation I can find.

Okay, once again, how is this simplifying?

Well, simplifying can also be seen as gaining control of yourself.  If you’re all over the place, how can you focus on the single task at hand?  Well, Twitter is very… VERY simple and updates everyone I care about!  Why not?

Okay, it’s not that drastic, many of the posts this week have been a little on the easy side.  But stay tuned, up ahead comes the real nasty tasks!

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, Feel Free!

I had read an article a while ago referring to new research in the causes of ADD and ADHD  For the uninitiated, these disorders express an attention deficiency in the person diagnosed with it.  The research pro-ports the origins of ADD and ADHD can be seen as a backlash from our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors.  The theory discusses possible hyper-focus heavily regarded in championing hunting techniques of ancient cultures.  While this may be completely science fiction in actual connection, the vast difference of extremes suggests wonderful allegory.  I would personally put out there the possibility of sociological tendencies towards attention deficit.  I mean, I’m all over the place when it comes to blogging, reading, writing, and the like.  The information overload can get to be too much very quickly.

I propose setting aside an hour every day to meditative techniques.

Isn’t that a long time?

It feels as though I’ve been adding more to my life than taking away with this simplification blog, so how exactly could it help to add more to my schedule?  Well, I don’t believe this is really adding.  At least in my life, there are many times where i blank out from over-work.  I’ll spend half an hour to two hours just mindlessly watching youtube videos, movies, sitting doing nothing.  If I were to spend that time instead actively attempting to hone my focus.

So… How?

The span of knowledge on ‘HOWTO meditate’ is ludicrously large for me to attempt to paraphrase here.  If you’d like a full explanation, after google searches, I found this.  It seems quite useful.  I plan to make a cycle of meditations, focusing on one style each week until I complete the style.

This week

The first week of meditations will be like the following:  Sit in silence in a comfortable position for thirty minutes in the morning, and in the evening.  Inside, I know my brain will protest.  In attempt to subside this, I’ll be focusing on awareness of myself and every part of me - its connection to the rest of existence.  I’ll obviously report back with my findings!

I have an account at Wells Fargo, Home State Bank, and Paypal - a loan through AES, credit cards through Chase, Wells Fargo, and Paypal as well as student loans from Sallie Mae and New Mexico Student Loans.  The amount of debt I have may be inconsequentially high (as with any debt)… but I think it’s more of a distress to have so many accounts.  I mean, do I really need three checking accounts, three credit cards, and three loans? (albeit entertaining group of threes, I don’t believe its necessary).

Starting today, I’m consolidating my finances, working on fiscal responsibility, and streamlining my financial future.

Budgets and The Like

For me, budgets are very difficult to stick to.  Its also difficult checking multiple websites for my finances.  So really quick, here’s the software I use like a checkbook.  Its simple, free, open source, and wonderful!  I love this program, plus it’s cross-platform so I could use it on my mac, a PC, or Linux.

Loans, Credit Cards, and Consolidation

This is simple, I’m consolidating everything together into a single loan.  Today I’m searching through different companies, and the best way to do this.  It looks as though a local bank-backed solution may be best.  I would always recommend this for the customer service!  So New Mexico Student Loans it may be.  I’ll check back with updates at the end of the week!

Savings(es) and Checkings(es)

As of right now, I have a Home State Bank account (for my hometown, if I need to exchange money with any of my family members), a Paypal account (for internet reasons), and a Wells Fargo account (for depositing while I’m in Santa Fe).  This list may seem ultra-long, but each has its own simple task.  Here, sadly, I can’t think of any special way to simplify other than to keep a solid understanding of each purpose… On top of that, I’ll actually be adding another account.  This time, I’ll have a savings account through ING Direct.  I’m doing this for a simple purpose:

As I’ve been suggested, adding 50 dollars to a savings account every paycheck (effectively ‘paying yourself’ before bills), I’ll grow a wonderful account… slowly… but it’ll still grow!

Why ING Direct?  mainly because of this post at Get Rich Slowly, as well as a few others on the site.  From here, my finances will be simple through use of Buddi (my finance software of choice!).  Now its time to pay off that debt and turn it into investments and savings!

If you have any other special Savings and Checking suggestions, feel free to comment. I’d love to hear!

Being human requires outlets, ways of expressing emotion have been explored from the beginning.  Without getting too far into ‘feelings’ I do believe providing outlets for these emotions can be very effective.  I don’t mean holding down a thought or feeling, more providing internal dialogue.  Such as an artist, who expresses this through ‘art’.

SO, I have a cliche’ moleskin notebook.  This fits in any bag and provides a quick little place to write anything from random thoughts to award winning dissertations… well maybe.

So, add a moleskin notebook to my imaginary bag.

If you want to buy one of these, I suggest buying an engraved one here.  I like these because I plan to have very few items, and every piece that expresses itself means so much more.

What?

Yeah, it sounds a little crazy, but hear me out.  If you only carry a few objects with you wherever you go in life, all of these objects express who you are.  I’m attempting to spend time collecting these small objects in a way that expresses me.  So instead of collecting and hording random assorted things, it becomes an expression of you.

A difficult thought I’ve had recently: Can it be possible to get things done without scheduling free time?  I mean, this feels a little counter-intuitive.  I guess you could just set up a schedule to include everything but free time.  This inevitably creates sections of free time in your schedule though.  It seems a little inevitable if you’re scheduling anything at all.  Then there’s the issue of over-scheduling.  Where can there be a middle ground?  Well, something I once heard called zero planning.

Zero Planning: An attempt to schedule blocks of ‘required’ ‘flexible’ and ‘very flexible’ within a calendar.

Sunbird!

For my calendar, I use Sunbird, an open source program that allows for the ability to create multiple calendars.  In here there are multiple calendars grouped by shared tasks.  For instance I have a ‘Screen’ calendar for my day job, an ‘0wn1t’ calendar for this blog, ‘Personal Projects’ calendar for projects and so on.

ZeroPlanned…

In order to create ‘required’ ‘flexible’ and ‘very flexible’ I used a color scheme and attached these separate calendars to colors within their respective scheme.  the ‘Screen’ and ‘Personal’ calendars being the most important and set-in-stone, deserved greyscaled schemes, the ‘0wn1t’ and ‘Education’ calendars are shades of green for their flexibility, and ‘Personal Projects’ fits into a blue, very flexible standpoint.

But what about free time?

The free time I griped about earlier represents much more easily in a ‘zero planned’ calendar.  Any gap between times counts as free time, and any blue area has a high possibility of being free time, and green areas become free time every once in a while.

Basically anywhere there’s color or whitespace, free time exists!