On Vipassana 10-day meditation retreats, there is a simple instruction given at the start of each (grueling) meditation period: "start again." It's a great instruction--so simple, so easy to forget.

My Macbook recently crashed and took 9 painful days to get fixed (hard drive failure, Apple store had to ship in a new one!). I live a busy, complex life, so 9 days was an eternity. Luckily I had an old PC laptop to use in the meantime, but I was still not happy being away from my system.

During that time, I felt like a complete mess and a productivity failure. My email inbox slowly crawled up from 0 to 29 anxiety producing messages that all needed some action. My paper inbox grew so big it spilled out to the rest of my desk.

I got my Mac back this week. I dreaded going through the piles, but slowly and steadily got momentum back. As the anxiety began to lift, it got easier and easier, and I remembered that I am actually good at this stuff! :) I made some more distinctions about how I'm using iGTD as I noticed there were lists I haven't used in months, and that I should more ruthless about putting things in Someday/Maybe instead of Next Actions.

My experience is not unusual. Many people drop their productivity systems when they hit major life chaos, and never pick them back up again.

The key to productivity mastery is being willing to "start again," even when you feel like a "failure."

This isn't personal productivity related, but talk about productive!

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html?series=37

This blog entry was brought to you by Blog Action Day. I wrote this post a bit outrageously because in my experience many people need a boost to get started taking intelligent action on things that are important to them.

Have you become obsessed with how your impact as a consumer affects the Earth? Or have you decided to not even bother because you don't want to think about recycling every can, every scrap of paper, or walking to work (which would be completely impractical for many of us)? There's a middle way, and it's based on real data and setting priorities.

Paper or plastic? Regular or organic? I'm amazed these debates even occur any more, because since the publication of The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices in 1999, many of these questions have been answered--or thrown out as irrelevant--by a cold, hard look at the facts.

This book changed my life. I was worried sick about my impact on the world. This book set me straight, by focusing on high-leverage areas where my choices (and yours!) make a HUGE difference, and letting go of the guilt around things that turn out to barely make any impact whatsoever.

The top 4 life-changing things I took from this book are the following:

1. Eat less red meat. Yup, that's right--red meat in particular uses HUGE amounts of water and land, because most cows slaughtered for burgers are fed grain (or other ground-up cows, but that's another story). Luckily red meat in excess also has a tendency to lead to death, so there's more than one good reason to eat less of it. :) Even chicken uses far less water to "produce." Of course veggies and fruits are best for minimal water consumption in the "production" process, but hey, that's a lot to ask of most hamburger eating, protein-obsessed Americans, and the benefits start to become marginal. I was a vegetarian or vegan for many years until health problems lead me to an herbalist that strongly recommended occasionally eating some red meat in the form of Buffalo. In the past I would have sacrificed my health and chosen not to eat any  red meat ever, but now with this real data, I've decided to eat it once a week or so, and I can do so with a clean conscience, acknowledging that it's within the "limits of tolerance" and a "fact-based decision."

2. Seriously reconsider buying a second (or third) car. Cars have a HUGE impact on our environment in many ways--energy use, pollution, and the amount of pavement being some of them. I'm lucky to live in a town where I can ride my bike to work, and borrow a car when I need one. If you don't, seriously consider carpooling, using public transportation, or just driving your kids places instead of buying another car. Plus biking is free exercise, and designing your life so that you live close enough to work can free up tons of time, as your commute decreases in length.

3. Choose a smaller home with highly efficient appliances. A HUGELY disproportionate amount of our environmental impact as consumers comes from our energy use from our homes, most of which comes from electricity generated from coal, oil, and nuclear fission. I'm not talking about compact florescent light bulbs here either, but energy efficient washers and dryers and dishwashers, on-demand hot water heaters, etc. Look for the Energy Star and buy the best rated stuff. Luckily efficient appliances tend to pay for themselves over time in the monthly energy savings. Also living in a smaller home is easier to heat, and you'll have less room to acquire useless crap that keeps you from facing your inner emptiness, which means you'll become more spiritually developed and if you invest the cash, more wealthy too. What a deal! :)

4. After doing the above, relax! It's hard for Americans to believe, but you personally are neither solely responsible for nor powerful enough to stop global warming and other environmental problems. And if worrying would help, I'd do more of it! Only effective action helps, and you can make the big lifestyle choices listed in 1-3 above, but after that, recycling, taking cloth bags to the grocery store, and other drops in the bucket may feel good but do pretty much next to nothing to help address our environmental problems. Much better would be to encourage even one person to make even one of the changes above, as the real environmental impact of such a choice would dramatically dwarf the effect of recycling for a lifetime. Yes, I still recycle, but mostly because it is a practice of mindfulness, and because it would be really bad for social interactions if I didn't.

You don't have to become an extremist to make a significant difference in the effect of your consumer choices on the environment. You do need to make 3 or 4 significant changes in your life--small steps like recycling Pepsi cans simply won't cut it.

Here are 4 things to let go of and never worry about again:

1. Recycling. Ok, it's a relatively good thing to keep trash out of landfills, but most people use recycling as a means to feel like they are making a difference. RECYCLING DOES NOT MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Or more specifically, it won't make a significant difference until everyone in the US is doing the 4 things listed above. Until that point, encourage others to eat less red meat, reconsider buying an additional car, and buying smaller homes with much more efficient appliances, and stop being the recycling police, ok?

2. Paper or plastic (or cloth). What you choose at the grocery store to carry your food home does not make a significant difference. It doesn't matter. Let the guilt go! Getting your groceries delivered could make a difference (fewer total cars on the road because you are biking to work), as could biking to the grocery store (which is not feasible for most people). And once again, buying less red meat at the grocery store trumps pretty much all of this.

3. Showering. Skipping showers and being a dirty hippie does not help the environment except marginally (unless you are living in a desert or drought area, in which case it might). Don't go insane and take 2 hour long showers every day, but much more important is to make systematic changes like installing an on-demand hot water heater (most hot water heaters keep a 90 gallon tank of water at near boiling temperatures all day long just in case you need a drop!), and installing low-flow shower-heads and toilets, and highly efficient dishwashers and clothes washers. Yup, the answer again comes down to systematic, high-leverage solutions that often cost money up front. And once again, a single steak uses 1,000 or more gallons of water, so eat less red meat!

4. Never driving. It would be great if we all lived in towns with beautiful downtown walking malls like Boulder, Colorado. But most people in the US at least are addicted to their cars due to terrible city planning. The recommendation is to reconsider buying a second or third car for your family, because that is a uber-high-leverage way to reduce your impact. Cars are not evil, just wasteful. And yes, buy a hybrid or some other efficient vehicle instead of a ego-inflated SUV (unless you are one of the small percentage of people who "need" an SUV). And yes buy a terrapass or other carbon offset for your car (it's only like $20 for the year, OK?). But you don't need to bike everywhere like me in order to be environmentally pure and a good person. Perfectionism can block effective action, so go easy on yourself, but also take action in high-leverage ways.

There's my inflated opinion. Now go make some changes right now! The fate of the world might literally depend on it.

I just found out that January of 2008 is the 5 year anniversary of the National Do Not Call Registry.

Listings are only good for 30 days, and if you don't re-register early, it takes 31 days for your listing to be fully sent through the system, which means a month of annoyance from all the telemarketers you haven't had to hear from in 5 years.

Do yourself a favor and re-register all your phone numbers early.