Benefits of public transport - Take action for a better environment

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Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the world unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. So today, I'll write about the most obvious benefit of using public transport: It helps to make a better environment.

I always hear people say "It won't make any difference to the world if I take the bus or go by car". Well, that's probably true. But have you ever considered that saving the environment doesn't necessarily mean you have to save the planet? What about the environment around you? Your city? Your street?

Nobody wants to live in a street with a lot of traffic. We moan about all the noise and exhaust they cause. We moan about the pollution that makes us sick. We moan about how dangerous it is to leave the house. We moan about traffic jams.

But still, we drive by car.

What if you'd take the bus whenever possible? That would be the first step to make your city a better place to live. A first step to leave your children a better world. So using public transport might not save the planet. But it will make your environment a better place to live.

Benefits of public transport - Run errands on your way home

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This post is part of a series of posts about the benefits of public transport.

When I talk to other people about using public transport, I often hear one argument that seems to be a killer-argument against taking the bus: They need their car to run errands.
At first sight this really looks like a strong argument. But if you take a closer look, you'll find that you don't really need your car most of the time. If you need to buy big items, a car might be necessary, but most things you buy won't be that big. The milk for tomorrow's breakfast will easily fit in your bag and go with you on the bus. But there are other arguments...

My shop can't be reached by bus.

So what? Your favourite shop can be reached by car, but you won't get there with the bus? Maybe that's because you chose it because you alway go there by car? Don't you think there are other shops that will sell you your milk? Try to take the bus to work, take a look out of the window and count the shops you can reach this way.

But my shop is much cheaper!

Even if you found a shop that sells everything much cheaper, driving there by car isn't free. On the other hand, you can easily leave the bus to go wherever you need to go and take the next bus home.

But this will take so much time! I prefer to have one "big-shopping-day" per week!

Granted, your commute will take longer if you go shopping every day compared to doing it just once a week. I used to drive to a big shopping center every saturday. I thought that I saved money by buying there, but one day I realized how stupid this was. It took me half an hour to get there and half an hour to go back. There were lots of people there and my shopping took quite some time.

Today, I visit the shop on my way home with the bus everytime I need something. This takes a couple of minutes every day. This is no time compared to my hour long journey to the shopping center. As a bonus, there is no need to go shopping on the weekend, so I've got more free time. And I always have fresh fruits at home.

Benefits of public transport - Make friends

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This post is part of a series of posts about the benefits of public transport.

Have you ever wanted to know more people and find new friends? Well, there's an easy way: take the bus.

Granted, you don't want to talk to everybody you see there, but you'll meet some interesting people after a short time. And it's actually quite easy to start a conversation. You take the same bus like them every day, and if the bus is late again or it suddenly starts to rain you've got a common problem. That's a good chance to start a conversation...

On the other hand, you could also take your car. But I bet it's much more harder to start a conversation with nobody around...

Benefits of public transport - Become more patient

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This post is part of a series of posts about the benefits of public transport.

Granted, the first weeks of taking the bus can get a little bit hard. You miss the bus and have to wait for the next one. Your bus is late, and you have to wait longer than expected. Such things always made me angry, and on some days I thought about giving up on public transport and use my car again. But I decided to go on, and today I'm glad I did.

Missing the bus is annoying. But after some time I recognized I couldn't do anything about it. So why waste any energy on being angry? I now try to make the best of this time. There are so much things I can do on my commute, missing the bus simply gets me some extra time. I'll be at the office soon enough, working for hours - some minutes of waiting won't make much of a difference. In fact, there are days when I'm glad when it takes a little bit longer. That's when I got a really thrilling book from the library...

Not only did I become more patient on my commute, I'm now more patient in any situation. I've been pretty impatient some years ago, but my daily commute with the bus showed me that getting nervous about a lost minute won't change anything. And it definitely won't get any better when I get angry...

Benefits of public transport - More time

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This post is part of a series of posts about the benefits of public transport.

We have already learned that using public transport can make your life more stress-free. As soon as you enter the bus, you no longer need to care about traffic and all the stress it adds to your life.

This brings us straight to another benefit of public transport: You've got more time for yourself. This may sound a little bit strange because we all tend to think that we have got to get to work as fast as possible. But have you ever asked yourself why you need to get there so fast? Because the time you spend in your car is - for the most part - lost time. You have to concentrate on the traffic. The only thing you can do is listen to the radio, unless you're one of those careless people who think it's safe to read the newspaper and make a phonecall while driving a car.

When you're using public transport, you can do a lot more things...

• You can read a book or a newspaper - didn't you always want to read more?
• You can plan your day, with the pen you always carry with you.
• You can listen to music, audiobooks or podcasts (even video!)
• You can play games on a portable gaming console
• You can make phonecalls without risking your life
• You can talk with other people
  
• You can take a nap on your way home after a hard day at the office. Try that in your car..

So, why not use your time more productive? You'd be reading the newspaper anyway, why not combine it with your commute?

Benefits of public transport - Less stress

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This post is part of a series of posts about the benefits of public transport.

At first sight using any kind of public transport doesn't look very stress-free. You have to take care of the schedule and you have to make sure you don't miss your bus. On the other hand, your car is waiting for you and ready whenever you want to go.

I used to think the same. But then I tried to take the bus and after some years of using public transport I no longer think of my car as a stress-free way to get to the office. Let's take a closer look at how you use your car...

• You go to the garage, sit in your car and drive away, right? What about all the things you need to do for this? Your car doesn't go to the gas station by itself. You have to take care of this. Everything we need to take care of adds a certain level of stress to our lives.
• You then drive to your office. If your drive is a pleasant one, you're quite a lucky guy. For the rest of us, there are traffic jams, annoying red lights and most annoying: other drivers. If those other drivers would take the bus, driving to work would be so much nicer. If they weren't driving like crazy idiots, the way to work wouldn't take that much time. I wonder if they think the same about me.
• You finally reach your destination. You can now start your turns around the block to find a free parking lot. Have you ever thought about how much time you spend parking your car in a year?

On the other hand you could take the bus...

• Your day starts a little bit stressful on the first days. After a few days you no longer think about the bus schedule, you simply know when you have to go to reach the bus without any stress.
• That's it. Now you've time for yourself. The bus driver takes care of all the other crazy idiots on the street and you don't have to find a parking lot.
  

Of course this only works if your home and your office are near public transport. But if you live in a city, chances for this aren't that bad. Maybe you should take a closer look at your local public transport system and start with a stressless commute tomorrow? If you do, try for a longer time. The first days when everything is new to you might not be as stress-free as you want, but this will get better every day...

The benefits of public transport

I'll try to post a series of articles about the benefits of public transport, starting today. Everybody knows that using public transport is a good way to help the environment. But the most important thing for most people is: "How could this be good for me?"

I'll point out some of the benefits I get of using public transport. I started to take the bus some years ago. It took me nearly double the time it takes by car, and yet I'm still taking the bus. It can't be that bad after all. I still have a car, and I don't go everywhere with public transport. It's not that it's strictly necessary, it's just convenient. But I try to take the bus as often as possible.

I hope that I can show you that public transport can be good for you...

Just a few steps to a more healthy life...

Living more healthy doesn't mean you have to completely change your life overnight and leave all of your unhealthy habits behind you. In fact, in the long run it works much better to change things one by one. You could change everything at once, but after some time your bad habits will come back. You feel bad when you realize it, but this doesn't give lots of motivation to change your life again.

By changing small things you can form new habits, and get used to a healthy lifestyle. You get to know the benefits of every single step you take. When you know about the benefits, you won't stop that easy because you know what you'll lose. If you change lots of things at the same time, you don't know what you loose if you took away one thing. You just know what you lose when you give up everything. You won't miss one thing that much...

So today, we start with one small step towards a healthy lifestyle. In fact, it's more than one step: Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

It's much more comfortable to take the elevator, I know. The first days might be hard, but after a short time you'll recognize it's getting easier every day. After some weeks you'll ask yourself why you took the elevator in the first place. No matter where you want to go, it always seems to wait for you on the wrong floor. If you take a look at your watch, you'll recognize that most of the time you're faster when you take the stairs. You don't have to wait for them. They're already there. Not only is it more healthy - it's also faster.

You really should give this a try, unless you live or work on the 42nd floor. That would definitely be a healthy thing, but I doubt you'll be faster than the elevator ;)

Always carry a pen with you

Our brain is a strange thing. It reminds us that we should buy fruits while we are waiting for the bus, but it can't tell us if there's any milk left in the fridge while we are shopping. You have the best ideas at the strangest places, and when you are home again you can't remember any of it. You know you had a good idea, but no matter how hard you try - you can't remember.

There's a simple way out of this dilemma. Capture any idea as soon as it hits you. But how to capture ideas in any situation?

I've tried all kinds of tools to solve this problem. I tried PDAs and smartphones. But in the end, the best tool of all is good old paper and a pen. Even better is the advanced version of pen and paper: The Hipster PDA. Most of you will already know it, but for those who don't: It's basically a pile of index cards used as an organizer. It's a simple but brilliant idea.

Even those modern web applications for making lists, drawings or other documents online can't beat paper. It has lots of advantages over the other so-called advanced tools:

It's instant
No need to boot it up and launch the right application. Just grab it and start writing.

It's flexible
You can do everything you want. Need to write text? Write. Need some drawing? Draw. Need to make a table? Make a table.
You don't have to search for the right application to make a drawing. You could make it everywhere, right there between the text and the table.

It's cheap
Paper and a pen don't cost you hundreds of dollars. Well, you could pay hundreds of dollars for the pen alone - but you don't need to spend that much. For the price of a PDA you can write a lot of ideas on a lot of paper...

It's durable
Drop it on the floor, bend it, throw it threw the room to let off steam. Try that with your smartphone...

It doesn't run out of batteries
Image you want to write down the greatest idea you ever had, and you forgot to recharge your PDA...

The only thing that doesn't work that well for me on paper is my calendar. I don't want to change my calendar everytime a meeting gets rescheduled. I want it to sync with my smartphone automatically. But for everything else nothing can beat my Hipster PDA. If you haven't already, you should give this a try...

A walk a day

I've stopped counting how many times I tried to start running regularly. Everytime I realize I should do more for my health I start again. But it just takes a few weeks until I don't run as often as I want to, and after another week I've stopped completely. Again.

It's not that I don't like to run. I really enjoy it. During my runs, it seems like the rest of the world is standing still. There are no problems, no deadlines - just me and my iPod. Afterwards, I feel like I've got more energy than before.

So, why in the world would I stop running, if it makes me feel so good? Deep inside of me, I'm quite a lazy guy. For a while, the lazy guy in me is so amazed about my motivation in running that he has no idea what he could do about it. But after a few weeks he's coming back with all kinds of excuses...

• The weather is too bad...
  
• I don't feel very well, running is probably not that good...
• I had to work longer, I should get some rest before going to bed...
• I've been running for a while now, a day more or less won't make a difference...
• I'm so hungry, I should eat something...
• I shouldn't go running so shortly after eating something...

These seem to be the same excuses everytime, but unfortunately they work. Everytime.

Some time ago I started an experiment that seems to work very well. My goal is no longer to go running at least 3 times a week. My goal is now to make a walk for at least 30 minutes every day. It doesn't matter where I am. I could go for a walk in my neighborhood, the city, a forest, everywhere else in the world. All of the above excuses won't work against a short walk. There's no reason why I shouldn't go for a walk after eating something. 30 minutes aren't that much, but 30 minutes of walking every day are surely more healthy than some days of running followed by 3 months of couch-potato life.

I only allow myself one exception to my "A walk a day challenge": If I feel like running, I replace my walk with that. It's amazing how often I feel like running if there are no "I really should go running" thoughts in my head.

If you have similar problems with running regularly, you should give the "A walk a day challenge" a try...

Don't buy things you can borrow

We all tend to fill up our homes with all kinds of more-or-less useful things. Books, DVDs, CDs, magazines - all the things we enjoy. But not only are they filling up our shelves and adding visual clutter to our rooms, they also reduce visual clutter in our purse. I don't know about you, but my purse is the only place I enjoy seeing cluttered. As long as the clutter is caused by banknotes.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to reduce the clutter in your home, save money and still have all the things you enjoy? Fortunately, there is a simple way.

• Head over to your bookshelf and count all the books in there.
• Start again, this time counting all the books you've read more than once.
  

Notice the difference? As much as we enjoy our books, we only read most of them just once. This might not be true for a reference book, but I don't know many people that read "Lord of the rings" twice.

I bet you get a similar result if you start counting your DVDs.

You don't have to buy all this stuff. You can borrow most books in a public library. While they might not have the latest and greatest "Harry Potter", they surely have lots of other books that you'd enjoy reading. If you don't believe me, make a list of your 10 most wanted books in your shelf. Head over to a public library and ask if they have this books. I guess it's a save bet they have other interesting books when they have some (if not all) books on your list.

You can borrow DVDs in your local video store or use services like Netflix. Think about how often you could borrow a DVD for the price of a new DVD, which will just be collecting dust in your shelf...

How much have you spent on books and DVDs the last year? Would you say that was a good investment?

Everything you need to know about deadlines

lifehack.org has a great article about deadlines, "22 Tips for effective deadlines". It's a very interesting read. I especially like the first one in the list:

1. Use Parkinson’s Law - Parkinson’s Law states that tasks expand to fill the time given to them. By setting a strict deadline in advance you can cut off this expansion and focus on what is most important.

I guess that's the most important law in life. Well the most important one after Murphy's Law...

Cleanup your home: Don't organize trash

Not long ago, my home was a big mess. Every room was full of stuff that hasn't found a new home since I moved in here. That was around 2 years ago, just to give you an idea of how lazy and unorganized I've been. Now, my home is clean and clutter-free. Well, not as clutter-free as I want it to be, but it's getting better and better. How did I get there?

The most important thing was that I realized that organizing alone is not enough. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for lots of things. Unfortunately my cabinets have a size limit, so there were often other things that lost their place. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for... and so on.

I picked up all kinds of boxes and folders, but no matter how hard I tried - the clutter got more and more. One day, when I was re-organizing one of my cabinets once again I took a closer look at the stuff I was constantly moving around my home. It turned out that I haven't needed most of the stuff in my cabinet for a couple of years!

So I went through all my cabinets and dumped everything that wasn't worth keeping. Within some hours I had enough space in my cabinet to find a new home for every single thing I found lying around.

The next time you are looking for the right place for something you should probably ask yourself one simple question: "Is it really worth keeping?"

Mastering email: Empty your inbox

Does your inbox contain zero unread messages and yet you feel like you need to check some of your mails because you're sure there's still some action required on some of them? Wasn't there a request for a reply and you thought "I'll reply later"? You don't know exactly who wanted a reply for what, and so you start to read all your mails of the last days again...

That was a problem for me for a long time. It was even more complicated because I filtered all mails and ordered them in around 20 different folders. Where to start looking? Spotlight really saved my life :)

And then, I saw Merlin Mann's video on how to empty your inbox, Inbox Zero (direct link to video). Immediately after the video, I started to reorganize my mail. Reorganizing isn't exactly the right word, it's more like "un-organizing". It turned out that all my fancy folders sorted my mails, but didn't really help me to handle email efficiently.

Now, I've got a very minimal setup, compared to my inbox before Inbox Zero. Every time I check my mail the inbox gets emptied, no matter how many mails I've got. Mails that need some processing later on or are otherwise worth keeping, are moved into one big "Archive" folder. All actions that need to be done with those mails get an entry on my todo list. Mails that don't need any action, and don't contain anything useful for the future are deleted right away.

Sent mails that I might need in the future, are sent bcc to myself, and automatically moved into the archive. I regularly empty my "Sent Items" folder. No need to keep every single mail you've ever sent...

Email is no longer one big mess, but got a great productive tool I enjoy using. If you find yourself searching your inbox all over again, you should definitely have a look at this video. If you don't have that much bandwidth, there's also an audio version.

Cleaning up - Burst mode

Have you ever started to clean up your home and got stuck right after picking up the first item? It's often hard to decide what to do with the stuff that's spread around. Every item seems to bring up the same questions:

• Is this worth keeping, or should I dump it right away?
• Where should I put it?
• Do I really need to do more cleaning?

You pick up the first item and get insecure. You think about what to do with it, what happens if you make the wrong decision. Your mind thinks about all possibilities and starts to drift away. After a while, you find yourself doing something else and feeling bad about all the mess around you.

You can speed up your cleaning if you set clear rules. There are exactly two modes of "Burst mode cleaning":

• Dump it.
• File it.

Pick one mode. Then, in the spirit of picking concrete numbers, pick a number. I suggest something around 10.

Dump mode

Carefully look around your home. Pick up every item that screams "Dump me!" and dump it. If you're not sure about an item on first look, leave it. Don't think twice. Try to find the next item to dump. If you've reached your number of items sit back and relax. If you can. After getting so much done in so little time, you'll be motivated to do more. That's a good time to start with "File mode" :)

File mode

Same as "Dump Mode", but this time you file everything. If you're not sure if you really want to keep this thing, or if you're not sure where to put it, leave it. Don't waste too much time on one item. Maybe you have a clearer picture of what to do the next time you come across this item.

Next time you think you should clean up your home, just pick a number and start...

Picking concrete numbers instead of vague goals

Have you ever said to yourself "I'll try to eat more healthy"? "I'll try to get organized?" Don't.

"I'll try to eat more healthy" doesn't really say anything. What does "more healthy" mean?

• "I'll only eat vegetables and fruits instead of the sugar packed junk I'm used to"?
• "Ok, I'll eat an apple if I forgot to buy the junk food I'm used to"?
• What does "I'll try" mean anyway?

If you really want to reach your goal, you have to define the very first thing you have to change or do to make your goal a reality. Your first step to eating more healthy could be "I'll eat at least 3 kinds of fruit every single day". There are no excuses like "but I drank a diet-coke" when you took the junk food instead of the healthy fruits. At the end of the day, you can review if you've reached your goal. The next day you'll think twice before you grab the junk food.


Not only is it easy to review this goal. It's also easy to plan ahead to make this goal a reality. If you're in the store with "I'll try to eat more healty" all kinds of excuses might come up. Like "Yeah, I'd really like to make this healthy dinner, but unfortunately I don't know the recipe right now, so I don't know what to buy. Maybe tomorrow."

On the other hand "3 kinds of fruit every single day" is a clear thing. You have to buy 3 kinds of fruit. Today.

Using a Master/Slave Power Control to save energy

We all have lots of gadgets in our homes. We keep them in standby mode all day long, to save a few seconds once or twice a day. How many hours a day is your iPod dock really charging your little audio player? Where is your iPod most of the day? You have it with you, right? In the meantime your dock's power supply is wasting energy. The same goes for your TV, receiver, PC speakers, game console, your pc, printer, scanner, charging adapter for your mobile,...

Why are we wasting all this energy? First of all, it's very convenient to turn on everything with our handy remote controls. A lot of people already recognize this wastes a lot of energy in standby mode. But even then, most new devices don't even have a physical power switch. You can't turn them really off, you can only get them into standby mode. You have to pull the plug, which is kind of annoying.

The solution

Is there a way to get the conveniece of a remote control, without wasting too much energy? Fortunately, yes.

You can use a Master/Slave Power Control (like this) to control your devices. As long as your master isn't turned on (i.e. uses more power than a configured value) all your slave devices are turned off.

I use this in my living room. Every time I turn on my Receiver, I also need to turn on my subwoofer. Unfortunately my receiver doesn't come with a switched power outlet for an external subwoofer, like my old one did. So I use a Master/Slave Power Control with the receiver as master, and the subwoofer as a slave. Every time I turn on my receiver (via the remote) the subwoofer is automatically turned on. But that's not the only one...

• I don't use my TV without the receiver running, so there we have our second slave.
  
• I don't play with my Wii without turning on the TV :)
  
• My iPod get's charged in the dock, another slave. Charging while watching TV or listening to music is more than enough time.
  

All devices are turned off, and with one click on the remote everything comes to life...

Welcome

This is my first post to a blog ever. On this blog I'll try to post everything that comes to my mind which makes life somehow better.

There are two reasons for this:

• My brain is too small to remember everything, so I need a place to dump my ideas
  
• Maybe somebody else finds something useful in this.
  
• Maybe somebody else finds an even better way, leaves a comment and I can learn something...

OK, that were actually 3 reasons :)