Less Restlessness: Mindfulness and Lateral Timesaving

Food is expensive, and contributes to your overall health. Preparing good fresh food can not only give you more energy, but save you time. Try these tips, and look at the reader tips at the bottom of the post.

Start by looking in your own pantry:

1. List the sauces you already have, list the ingredients to finish these off this week. They wont expire, and you already have some of your weeks meals planned, and shopping list done.

2. Tape your own seal on lids, so that in 2 months time, anything that hasn’t had the tape removed can be thrown. Use bright tape.

3. Keep a record of food that keeps going off, don’t buy more. You might find there are things you never use, but keep buying.

4. Add used by dates to home made frozen food. Keep the freezer full of leftovers, it’s more energy efficient.

5. Throw out things you never going to use. I threw out the mint sauce. After I do step 2, 3, and 4, I’m sure there will be plenty more.

Try defrosting the freezer at the same time as doing this, to double up on jobs.

In the comments section, please feel free to contribute any ideas you might have to declutter the kitchen to keep food fresher.

If your like me, you’ve found syncing your phone and computer to be:

• Time consuming

• Painful

• Windows-only software

• Need to buy a different cord for each phone, which costs money

• Need to install different software for each phone, which aren’t compatible with each other

This trick works for any phone that uses a SIM card, allows you to transfer your numbers to a new handset, you don’t have to buy a phone to computer cord (which will save $20), and best of all it is free.

Just follow these simple instructions.

1. Start by asking your mobile provider for a replacement SIM card. You will probably need to go to your own mobile providers shop, since some handsets are locked to only work with your own provider.

2. On your phone, go to your contacts section, and check whether your contacts are saved to your SIM card, or phone. On a Nokia, this is in the Menu>contacts>settings>Memory in Use section. Make sure that it isn’t setup to be both SIM and Phone.

3. Find the section labelled ‘copy’. On some phones, this is in the contacts>settings sections. On other phones, you have to scroll through your contacts, click on a contact, click options, and scroll down until you find ‘copy’ .

4. Click copy all. If your contacts are stored on your SIM memory, you want to copy all of your contacts over to your phone. If they are stored in the SIM, you want a second copy on your phone. Make sure you copy, don’t move or delete.

5. Insert the replacement SIM card you collected from your phone provider, and copy all of the contacts onto it by repeating step 4.

6. Put your original SIM back into the phone, and like magic, if you ever loose your phone, you can repeat step 4 with the new phone in reverse by copying all of the contacts onto the new handset.

Troubleshooting:

Make sure you don’t have two copies of all of your contacts on your phone after all of this. This will cause your phone to not show the phone number. You may need to change the memory that you use to only read the SIM card, or Phone memory. Follow the instructions at step 4.

If your mobile reads: SIM not recognised, try pulling the SIM out and replacing it again. Secondly, check that you’ve got the SIM card from the same company. If not, call your phone provider and ask them to unlock your phone to allow other SIMs. Sometimes companies will charge for this service.

In case you loose your phone, or if you find this helpful, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, so that you can find these instructions when the time is right.

If your looking to backup your phone, and already have a cable, try using plaxo.com to duplicate it accross computers.

Have you ever searched around for an assistant in a department store, only to be ignored in favour of a suit, or an attractive sort? Ever wanted to do something about it? Try the Lingerie Section Principle.

This only really works for men, all you do is walk straight into the lingerie section. You will be immediately greeted by at least one sales assistant, thinking that your lost, and willing to direct you to the correct section.

This works because of the fact that there are always more assistants in the lingerie section. And this is quite simply because the less material there is in an item of clothing, the more expensive it is. Lingerie is the most expensive, since it contains the absolute minimum cloth for maximum exposure, or maximum embarrassment factor in case of accidental exposure, normally followed by a cute laugh guaranteed to make the most of the situation

It helps if you have a bit of an awkward look on your face, the kind you would have if you’d never seen anybody in Lingerie before, or if you were about to give the shop assistant your own measurements, because you find women’s underwear a little more comfortable.

If by any chance you get ignored, start moving slowly towards the change-rooms. This will be sure to get their attention.

Now comes phase two. Your intention isn’t simply to be redirected, it is to get your own personal shop assistant in another section of the store. You might try and take a lingerie section worker with you to the shirt section, only to find that the shirt is cut just a little too tight and high, with just a little chest hair poking out the top. Not your desired result. So your aim is to be passed on to a co-worker from the shirt section.

Try to mutter a phrase to maximise awkwardness in order to get passed along as quickly as possible. The likes of ‘I was looking for a shirt, but for some reason got distracted by the pretty colours over here’ should do it. Also ‘I was going to buy lingerie for my girlfriend, but realised that I don’t have one, maybe I should buy a nice shirt instead so I can get one’ will do nicely. For the clincher, try: ‘It’s my mum’s birthday, I wanted to buy her something nice’.

The added bonus to these sentences is that the lingerie attendant will definitely want to pass you onto someone else as quickly as possible. Hopefully their co-worker will notice their urgency, and misinterpret this as you being a VIP customer.

If you like this post as part of getting things done quicker, please consider add it to your favourite social network, it would be appreciated.