Remember You’ll Always Regret What You Didn’t Do

Remember you’ll always regret what you didn’t do rather than what you did.

When you’re nearing the summit of this turbulent climb through life, will you reach the top with wild enthusiasm or will you be hobbling with the aching knees of regret? You’ve climbed through storms, passed over green patches and had help from friends, and now it’s almost over. Your whole life has been leading you to this moment and one thing is certain: this final ascent we all have to do alone.

What thoughts will flash through your mind? You will be faced with tough questions such as: Did I do enough, love enough, was I happy?

You might leave these questions simmering on the back burner, thinking tomorrow will be a good day to contemplate the answers, but remember—tomorrow might not come!

So here’s what you can do today. Let’s call this an insurance policy for tomorrow’s happiness.

If You Don’t Do These Now, You’ll Regret 10 Years Later

Featured photo credit: mikebairdvia Flickr

Brian is a Lifehacker who covers all sorts of tips for life. He is also fascinated with new technology. Contact him at brian@lifehack.org

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Remember How Short Life is

We’re so busy with our day-to-day lives that it’s easy to forget just how short life is. That’s why Here Is Today is such a great tool for those who need to take a step back to remember that what you’re doing today very well won’t matter a year from now and almost certainly won’t matter in a century from now.

all you need to do is eliminate four bad time management habits and stop wasting time today: 4 Critical Ways You Can Stop Wasting Time Today

The simple website starts by showing you the date as a small yellow square, but click again and you’ll see how short the day is compared to the whole month. Click again and see the day within the span of a year. Keep clicking and you’ll eventually see the length of today in relation to the whole millennium, this epoch, this eon, the history of earth, the history of reptiles and, eventually, the history of the universe.

While you could take this as a negative reminder that nothing you do will ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things, it’s much better to realize how much freedom that gives you. Bunnies don’t live their lives worrying about how their actions will affect the universe on a grand scale, they hop and frolic through life.

That’s the way you should take the revelations from this site -use the information to remind you to live life to its fullest and enjoy yourself because when you look at how short life is, the most important thing you can do is to live a good life.

Original Source – Hereistoday

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How to Remember People’s Names

Have you ever met someone and within seconds completely forgotten their name?

(Haven’t we all.)

Remembering people’s names is crucial if you want to build strong relationships in life. And we all know strong relationships are one of the most important factors for a productive and successful life.

So why is it so difficult to remember someone’s name?

And what can we do to make sure we’re not left in an awkward situation where we utter those fatal words: “sorry – what was your name again?”

One of the key reasons we forget names is that we don’t ‘focus’ our attention on them. As soon as we’re introduced to someone new, our thoughts are racing ahead to think of ‘what to say next’ and we pay no attention to the name we’ve just been told.

Not only is it embarrassing when this happens, it can also severely damage new relationships.

Because the truth is, you will offend people when you forget their name. You’ll make them feel like they’re not that important and that essentially you don’t really respect them enough to go to the trouble of remembering their name.

On the flip side, one of the quickest and easiest ways to build rapport and demonstrate your respect for someone – is to use their name when you’re speaking to them. You may have noticed that successful people who carry a lot of authority in their jobs often use peoples names when they’re speaking. They do this to be more persuasive and build relationships at the subconscious level.

So remembering people’s names really is worth it!

There are a few things you can do to help you with this.

Focus & listen intently. The first is to mentally make a decision to remember the name before you hear it. This focuses your brain and directs it to store the name in your long-term memory. You can imagine that this person is very powerful and important and that it’s in your interest to remember their name! By making an effort to focus, you will also naturally lean in and listen more intently when they say their name.Repeat the name. The second is to repeat the name back to the person you have just met. You can take this a step further by asking them to spell their name or asking them the origin of their name. This extends the conversation and provides more mental ‘triggers’ for you to recall the name at a later stage. It also builds rapport because you are showing an interest in their name. Remember to only ask these questions if it makes sense to do so (i.e. the name is unusual). People may question your intelligence if you ask them how to spell common names like ‘Dave’ or ‘Sarah’!Associate the Name. The third is to associate their name with something familiar. For example you could associate them with someone else you already know who has the same name.Rhyme the name. The fourth is to rhyme their name with another word. The more absurd the rhyming word – the better. Our brains love absurdity and finds it very easy to remember absurd things over dull things. I once had a client called Anshika – which I’m sure you’ll agree is an unusual name. How did I remember it? I rhymed it with ‘chicken tikka’ – this sounds silly but guess what? I never forgot her name! You can play around with adding an image to your rhyme too, to increase your chances of remembering it! I’m sure you can imagine how I may have pictured my client Anshika! :)Note Facial Features. The fifth is to note any distinguishable facial features. What is different or unusual about this person? For example someone may have unusually curly hair and you may remember them as ‘curly sue’. By associating their name with the characteristic the next time you meet them, you’re memory will be triggered by the feature (in this case curly hair) which will in turn trigger the name! (curly sue).

As you can see, there are many ways to increase your memory when it comes to remembering people’s names. And in my experience it really is worth it to make the effort, especially if it means you escape that dreaded phrase: “Sorry what was your name again?”

Why not try using one of these tips next time you’re introduced to someone? Who knows – it could be the start of a really important relationship in your life?

(Photo credit: Close Up of Man with Name Tag via Shutterstock)

Zoë B is a strategist, coach & the author of the Simple Life Strategies blog. Through her coaching programs and blog, Zoë helps others to learn the strategies that exceptional people use to overcome things like stress, indecision, worries, boredom, procrastination & fear so that they can perform at their own personal best. Connect with Zoë B on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The 3 Best iPhone Apps to Help You Remember

Despite text messages, email and a constant stream of notifications, it’s still easy to forget things. We can all use a little help staying on track and bringing a little life back into our days. Any app that can help me do that is a friend to me. I’m a tech junkie, that’s no earth shattering news and I’m always looking for that next wonderful piece of technology that’s going to revolutionize my life.

Sadly, no tool can fit that bill, but there are some that really do help manage the load. I’ve discovered many very useful apps in my quest for better life management. Here are a few of the best iPhone apps to help your remember and  that I have personally found very helpful.

Alarmed is an all-in-one time app for iPhone/iPad that is packed with useful features; a pop-up reminder, timers, wakeup alarms and sleep timers.

The Reminders tab lets you easily create reminders, with incredible configurability; many repeat options, custom sounds, pre-alarms, notes, Nag-me and snooze. My favorite feature allows for DayMinders, reminders that repeat throughout the day at select intervals of either 1 minute or 1 hour. I use this feature to remind myself to take a break, drink water, and re-focus on what I’m doing.

Alarmed provides a Timer feature that lets you create timers up to 99 hours. You can also have the timer count up to track how much time you have spent on a specific activity. I use Alarmed to help me remember when to check the laundry, what’s cooking in the stove, how long I have spent on email, and how long my youngest has been playing Xbox.

Alarmed also has a built in Alarm Clock with Wake-Up Alarms and Sleep Timers. You can go to sleep listening to your favorite music, and wakeup to a different sound. The fade out and fade in feature and wake-up messages are icing on the cake. It’s free in the iTunes store.

Whenever I find the need to remember something, I can just open up TellMeLater, type in a reminder and schedule it to remind me at the time I need to be reminded. When that time arrives, I can get an email, a direct message on Twitter, or phone notification.

You can enter in single reminders or recurring reminders by the day, week, or month. Where TellMeLater shines is in its simplicity and ease of use. It’s a great little app for all those times you want to remember something later. $.99 in the iTunes store.

Want to be reminded of what’s important in life? Timeless Reminders allows you capture your most inspiring photos, videos, music, audio, and text to create personally meaningful reminders that inspire you to take healthy and productive action in your life.

Health and fitness, relationships, events, creativity, goals, fun, mindfulness, and anything else you can think of. Timeless Reminders can help you remember them all with one time or recurring reminders. From simple reminders to take your medicine or call your mother, to weight loss inspiration, remembering to breathe.

While this app is more time-consuming to set up, it makes up for that by being highly motivational and the beautiful interface doesn’t hurt. It’s free in the iTunes store.

While I don’t use all of these reminders at once, I have used them all at different times, depending on my needs. One is simple, one is multi-faceted, and the other is highly motivational. Moreover, there is a wide variety of other apps that work in a similar way. The most important thing is to choose which approach best works for you, so you will actually use it.

(Photo credit: Red Tape Ribbon via Shutterstock)

Royale Scuderi is a freelance writer, blog editor, social media manager, business owner, and consultant who excels at gathering, communicating and sharing information to encourage both professional and personal growth. She is also a Life Success expert who specializes in improving productivity, balance, health, and well-being, as well as work and life success. Her lively and informative tips can be found on Productive Life Concepts. She is also a military wife and mother of four - I share random musings on life as well as thoughts on the challenges of military life on Guard Wife.

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10 Apps That Help You Stay on Time and Remember Things

By being a knowledge worker, you are bombarded with due dates, things to remember, special events coming up, and projects that you need to spend time on to complete. Even the best of the best productivity gurus out there struggle with keeping track of time and dates.

If you are one of these people that struggle, here are 10 apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android that can help you stay on time and make sure that you don’t forget a due date again.

Due for iOS is my go to reminder/timing app. You can setup reminders for specific times that repeat, multiple timers that can run at the same time, and also access to a handy Logbook where all of your checked-off reminders are stored.

Due also has a bunch of settings allowing you to customize your alarms and sounds as well as the ability to backup and sync your reminder/timer data.

Repeat Timer is a simple and beautiful timer app that only supports three different timers. The timers can have a set interval so you can practice your Pomodoro technique with ease. You can also setup how many times you want the timer to repeat with its interval.

Repeat Timer has some great sounds to it as well as an awesome design, look, and feel. If you want a simple way to stay on time with your iPhone, this is the app.

Alarmed reminds me a lot of Due but with some extra functionality like wake-up and sleep timers (which you can even assign playlists to for the duration of your sleepy time). The app is quite impressive, but can feel like setting overload, especially if you are looking for just a simple way to stay on time.

But, if you are looking for an app that does alarms, repeats, and alarms all in one, Alarmed is a good bet.

More of a reminder application than timer, COL Reminder for Android allows the user to setup multiple reminders with notes, due dates and times, repeats, as well as a priority system. There are also a bunch of settings for customizing now the alarm sounds and notifications react to reminders, ability to change the minutes you can choose from in the dropdown list, etc.

One of the coolest features is a built in parking timer that you can set to be placed in your notification bar when you activate it.

Timer is a simple way to run multiple countdown timers at the same time. The timers can wake your phone from sleep when finished, you can pause/continue them, and many of them can be saved and used later.

My favorite part of Timer is the way that you use a “knob” to set the timers, kind of like using an iPod click-wheel.

RemindMe is a very simple timer/reminder application for setting quick reminders. Basically, you create a new reminder, set the countdown timer or specific time of day you wanted reminded, put in a brief description, and set the reminder.

Pretty much the simplest of simple when it comes to timers on OS X, nice timer is a great choice if you are just needing a countdown timer or stopwatch. It’s small, elegant, and gets the job done on your Mac.

Nag is mostly interesting because of it’s interface that allows you to easily adjust your alarm by pressing buttons that add or subtract hours, minutes, and seconds to your reminder. You can also set a bit of text for the reminder and be “nagged” by the app until you click the stop button.

Although it may not be the prettiest of apps, TimeLeft is a super powerful way to drag due times and remind you of when things are happening. With TimeLeft you can set reminders with complex rules, set countdown timers, use a stopwatch, or even replce the Windows system clock with the TimeLeft clock.

The app is fully skinnable, so you can try to make it match your cuttent Windows look and feel.

Countdown Timer is great way to track numerous countdowns and be reminded of certain events with music and notification messages. The interface is simple and easy to use, yet there are many powerful features like being able to wake your computer from sleep mode at a specific time or due date.

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Web App Review: Let’s Remember The Milk in 2011

Remember the Milk has been a staple to-do list web app for many years now and has been known to be one of the best and even most reliable. It’s known for a clean simple interface and sometimes forgotten about power under the hood. Remember The Milk (RTM from here on out) can also be used for GTD (you know, if you are into that sort of thing), yet flexible enough for any other productivity system you can throw at it.

But, even with such a excellent and stable track record, RTM has made some significant improvements in the past year with the most notable being their brand new iPad app.

At first glance RTM is a simple and very clean interface. If you are a white background, dark text kind of person, then RTM is the type of interface you will enjoy. Users are given an Inbox and Sent items list at first blush and adding todos to your inbox is extremely easy. Once tasks are created you can check the task and change the due date, the repeat of the task, a time estimate, tags, location of the task, or a URL. Completing the task is as simple as checking it and pushing the complete button.

You can also assign the task to a different list but it is somewhat counterintuitive. You first must create a new list by going to Settings and the Lists tab. This is a good place to create your contexts if you are a GTD type. Once you have some lists you can go back to your tasks by choosing the Tasks option. Adding a task to a list is done by checking the task and clicking on the More Actions dropdown and choosing the list to switch it to. Even after many years of using this workflow, I still feel that it is unintuitive and could be changed to allow for a drag and drop to tab type of interface.

The task settings “float” to the side of your lists and with the settings bar you can change an individual task’s settings or even check multiple tasks and group the settings together. Also, the note field is on the right where you can add multiple notes per task. You can also select tasks by choosing all of them, the ones that are due today, due tomorrow, overdue, or none at all. This is a nice way to mass edit settings or even complete or postpone a set of tasks.

Remember The Milk is truly a full-featured web and mobile application with versions for the web, iOS, Android, and even sync with Outlook. Let’s take a quick look at some of the many awesome features:

Full web, iOS, Android, and Outlook for Windows synchronization ($25 a year premium account needed for some pro features)iPad version with a truly unique interface and user experienceiOS and Android version take advantage of location based tasks and alert you based on your user settings“Unlimited” list and task creation (I haven’t fully tested this, but I have never had an issue with too many tasks or lists)“Smart Lists” allow you to save searches based on any criteria that a task may have allowing you to create customized views of your listsAwesome “smart add” feature which allows you to add a task straight to a list, add a due date, tag, or even location while you are typing it inOffline support with the deprecated Google GearsAdd tasks by Twitter or emailiCal service, RSS feeds for your lists, and the ability to create public lists for others to shareActive user community and developers that aren’t too shabby

Like I said, RTM is a full-featured and completely a mature web and mobile application. There are only a few gripes that I still have to this day, including no subtasks or linking of tasks into projects, no start dates to help hide repeating tasks, annoying logo that can’t be hidden at work without an add-in for your browser, and out of control tabs for your lists.

Besides those four things, I have to say that RTM is still one of the best web apps out there for helping you stay productive. The one thing that RTM has over many other task management apps on the web is its maturity and speed. The app is really darn fast while using Firefox or Chrome and hardly (if ever) crashes on me. Another thing is that sync is incredibly fast between multiple devices.

Also, with the new iPad app and its gorgeous new interface, RTM is definitely worth another look if you haven’t checked it out in a while. So, head on over to the RTM homepage and sign up for a free account or login to your old one if you haven’t been around for a while.

Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He studies MIS and Computer Science at Penn State Behrend. Chris is also interested in personal productivity and creativity and how to utilize technology to get more things done. Check out his tech writing at androinica.com where he writes about Android.

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