August 18, 2021 - Reading time: 4 minutes

There are no impossible things, only inefficient people. That is, the sentiment that, given reason there are no possible tasks, rather people who make the possible harder than it needs to be. I heard the expression yesterday in a meeting and the phrase stayed with me, it got me thinking all night because it has a great application for life as a whole. There are many cases in which we have to fight every day to improve who we are, this begins from the moment when we get up, we start a fight against the inner slacker, those extra minutes that we tried to sleep through the snooze and then, forced to hurry, we try to do everything fast and often unavoidably wrong. The fight continues once we get to work, and we see that there are a lot of tasks to do, which we find impossible to finish, and when we start using the defeatist thinking that we will "do our best" without committing to doing anything completely.

Have you noticed how many ways we can make life more complicated for both ourselves and for those who live with us?

Perhaps our wife to whom has become accustomed to our bad character, our little ability to surprise her with some flowers, or a box of chocolates when we return from work, out lack of desire to help with the things around the home, or perhaps in our work, with our co-workers, to whom we send the hardest work, we treat them badly. Or perhaps it is the treatment to our parents, of whom we choose to forget everything they have done for us, and we hurt them with our unthinking treatment, we answer them harshly, we hurt them with our bad attitude.

Are we aware of our bad attitude? Is it impossible to change?

I don't think so.

In this life everything is possible, another issue is that it does not depend exclusively on us, but if we do not internalize it and we really believe it, we will not achieve anything, we will continue with the same way of being, of acting, of treating others, of working, thinking that it is impossible instead of committing to improving ourselves every day, and not to be the reflection of the inefficiency of the people who are in our environment, simply because everything easy is fashionable, everything that does not involve effort or commitment to success.

I know that it is easy to say: "yes, I'm going to try to change some things," but nothing is that simple, it takes more than good intentions.

You may be wondering how to start -- to begin changing from this moment forward? It's not easy, but we already have the first part outlined, the commitment, the real desire to want to do improve. The next thing is to think specifically of three or four points where we know we can change, not tomorrow but now: for example: get up from this week forward at a fixed time and not give into the temptation of the snooze button. Another way is to buy a small gift for someone you love and haven't shown it to in a long time, and give it to them fondly, they can be your parents, your grandparents, siblings, a friend. Maybe it is somebody who needs to talk. The gift can be simply listening to them, dedicating time to them (the easiest way to be generous is to buy something, but the fact of dedicating time to the person, listening to their problems , implies a greater effort and therefore greater satisfaction). Finally we can make the effort this week not to lie or exaggerate (which is in truth the same as a lie), if we analyze ourselves well, we will see that throughout the day one tends to say not one, but several lies.

How can you be certain you are on the right track? To know if we have done well or not is easy, at the end of the day we can focus only on these three topics: punctuality in the morning, generosity and the struggle to tell the truth. At the end of next week you will see how it was not impossible, that it is not a fight to live better life. Rather it flows naturally when you set simple goals and work toward them.

May 8, 2021 - Reading time: 6 minutes

Time isn't infinite, it isn't free. If that is true, how do we make the most of our time?

I hate to waste time. In fact I feel that it is a lesser sin. As you can imagine one of the topics that I am passionate about is making the most of that limited gift. When I end for the day, tired, not only from working, but from having been productive throughout the day, of having taken advantage of the time I was given for taking care of useful things, I smile. There was some hardship getting here and I still need to work out the best way to make the most of my time and be more productive at work and in life. Thankfully I was blessed to have a grandmother that thought that this was also an important skill in life, and after school when I spent the afternoon with her she would sit down and share her tricks with me through anecdotal stories.

The attentive grandchild could learn a lot from those afternoons at grandma's house.

We tend to treat time as an understood component of life rather than as a currency, if the latter was true most of us would be millionaires, because we don't know how to take care of it or take advantage of it, however if time was only money, we could lose it, but time is more valuable than money, time is life, and we don't know how much we have left.

A good start to take advantage of it is to be aware that we are not taking advantage of it fully and that we can sit down and think for a moment about the activities we can do better. Some examples may be the number of hours to sleep, on average it is 8, it would be ideal to respect those hours, no more, no less.

Another interesting resource is to list outstanding issues: daily, medium and long-term, and prioritize each issue. Productive people don't just have lists of unfinished business, they stick to the lists. Managing meetings is also very useful, arranging them and meeting the start and end times so that they do not extend indefinitely. It is also very important to identify those activities that waste time, learning to avoid distractions. Use the 80/20 rule: 80% of our achievements come from only 20% of our efforts. The task is to find out what is contained in that 20% of productivity, and dedicate yourself to those activities.

Of course even if we set out to reach a 100% we will never be able to hit that number, not always.

Still, we can try.

Adjust the schedule according to our energy levels. If we are one of the people who have the most energy early in the morning, for example, we can plan the most important activities at that time. One of the main drivers is performing several different tasks the same time is how much energy we have. For example, I have the mania of checking my phone and email every 5 minutes, but I don't because it distracts and subtracts concentration from other tasks. Realistic deadlines should be set, not committed to meeting when we know we will have difficulty doing so. We can address these potentials stumbling stones with a quick checklist. Then assign the proper expectations to the different aspects so that we are not unrealistic when set time aside to complete them.

• Identify the problem.
• Gather relevant facts and data.
• Collect general knowledge.
• Look for possible combinations.
• Sleep on it.
• Use lists of pending issues.
• Get feedback.
• Ask others for help.
• Give new ideas a chance.

Finally, I find it important to keep my life organized. Organization is easy to add to your life and you will save time even with a little bit of it. My grandmother recommend the following:

1. Always carry with you a small list of to-do issues:
   In addition to the tasks to be done, write your thoughts and ideas there – so you won't waste time trying to remember things when you need them.
2. Create a file system: that allows you to get what you need in seconds.
   A good file system is the most important aspect of time management and organization.
3. Don't pile up trash: check your papers periodically, archive what you need, and throw away what's no longer good for you.
4. Keep your desk clean: a messy desk is a big productivity impediment.
5. Keep priority lists: update them over time.
6. Learn to say no: you can't do it all.
   You mustn't feel guilty for saying no. Be polite, but be clear with things you're not willing to spend time doing.

If there is a situation that becomes increasingly common for many people it is the burden life chores, the day to day tasks that become - well - a chore. Many believe that it is irreversible and that you cannot live any other way. I heard one person say that they are overwhelmed, that they felt like a disease the basis of which is the lack of priorities and rigidity in what we have to do.

When someone says they don't have time to dedicate to the spouse, children, or do something for others, are they properly setting their priorities? The truth is that if we have a lot of things to do, we can only attend to a limited number of them, usually whatever we have in our heads takes first place. It is therefore a matter of order, we can do what we consider most important.

One proposal to combat the burden is to pretend every day that they are tokens, then decide what we have to put first, the important things come first. One of the characteristics of those that become overwhelmed is the routine. We all have time to dedicate it to others, to tasks that help us live better. To prove it, think about it like this, pretend that the day only has 23 hours. Can you do the same in a 23 hour day that you could in a 24? If we are honest with ourselves the answer will be yes. The hours aren't the problem, the real culprit is that we have plenty of mediocrity in our planning.

April 28, 2021 - Reading time: 3 minutes

What are your personal goals? Business? Adventure? How Will you achieve it?

Starting a business without having calculated the risks, would be quite irrational and daring like trying to organize a hike on a mountain without having first consulted a map that tells us the safest trails.

When we go out on the road it is usually normal to know where we are going and consult a map to know how to get there. Life is an adventure, a journey that has a beginning and an end, like any travel we take in-between those two points. It can be a recklessness venture to live without knowing where one wants to go, so that we undertake the journey, not knowing where we will go. Life is something more serious than a road trip or a business or a mountain tour. But how many people have been thought to live the they want, how are they going to get it if they don't know the way there?

Our lives are left on many occasions at the mercy of events, appetites, interests. This is a bad way to be happy. To be happy it is essential to have a personal life project, to know where you want to go and where to go once you get their. We have to do it flexibly but be aware that small deviations in time can keep us away from the goal. I think it's worth taking the time to make a personal life project.

But how do you do it?

Where do we start?

There are three commonly agreed upon avenues for which we commonly focus: love, work and culture. Happiness is very close to the order in priorities, if it does not exist it ends up falling into place once the goals are being meet. Love deals with our relationships with ourselves and with others. We have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else. When we speak of "with others" there is also an order that plays a role, the first place must be occupied by the closest relationships: the family. The priorities for which we place on the satisfaction we achieve from work, that is work done professionally and in the best possible way, with effort.

Culture also occupies an important place, one of which we have worked toward building since the antique -- and I do not mean culture as consumption -- rather as a forming and enriching ourselves at a personal level. I won't be able to fulfill the culture aspect of my life the reading of the latest best seller, or by seeing the next big blockbuster released this summer. Culture does not have a time limit and does not depend on our success at work, it has much more to do with personal enrichment, learning and striving to have virtues such as perseverance, the use of time, justice, and social competences such as bargaining power, conflict management, among others.

Do you need a map? Make a plan. See where it fits and your life project should fit into one of these three areas and in this order: love, work and culture. When the order is disrupted we run the risk of negatively disrupting the happiness which we are attempting to achieve. Perhaps the best example is the unhappiness that many of us feel when we place work first and allow it to to take the biggest place in our lives.

December 29, 2020 - Reading time: 4 minutes

Welcome 2021! How quickly you've come this year.

A new year lays ahead, and as my father's oft grumbled phrase of the week (leading up to the 31st), "New Year, new fight", which I once thought meant that it is a good time to reflect on all that we have not yet been able to get done, everything we have to improve, and that requires an internal struggle to be able to change and correct.

This is a goal, a mission that we plan each year. Those New Years resolutions which most everyone makes, either officially or unofficially give us something to work toward.

A mission defines what you do and the reason that you do it in the long run. In our case the long term can be none other than life (a life's work), so our mission is work the smartest way one can. My goals, that is, what I need to do to accomplish my list are based on four points basic points:

1. Improving my relationship with my faith
2. Being an excellent fiancée
3. Being an excellent employee
4. Be an excellent friend, daughter and sister

At first it looks like the list is arbitrary, disconnected and small, but it is quite encompassing if you look at where my values lie.

Taking into account these four simple objectives I have defined one-off activities to improve in each of them, as well as giving them a date to meet them and above all a monthly review or control to ensure that I have really complied with the established criteria, since good intentions die when they are not nurtured and observed.

For example, in the case of being an excellent employee, I set out to cultivate values such as perseverance, prudence, ethics in business, punctuality, finishing everything well, etc. And for this a concrete action plan that is based on knowing these virtues is required.

In the case of my relationship with my boyfriend, who will help me identify what I am doing wrong, as is the communication with him, are you happy to be with me? I can make a list of topics where I must improve, for example, share more of the work at home, not arrive home stressed, or bring work problems in to the house, etc.

These are the most important aspects of my life at this time. And as my grandmother would say: "How brief is the length of our passage through the earth!" These words have made me reflect as a reproach in the face of a lack of dedication, of desire, that I have many times in the past, they have given me pause to improve on things that I know that I am doing wrong, but at the same time they are a constant invitation to change, and that better than the beginning of a new year to do so.

Here the important thing is to realize that you can improve, where to improve, and most importantly how to improve. Not only must we have the desire to initiate this change, because if so after a week we forgot everything, we must act. The secret is to do it just like at work, put the same emphasis and even greater, because this is much more important (this is our personal life). Let's think about our lives. Why don't we sometimes find those minutes, to end the work that concerns us? Why do we neglect family obligations, why do we lack serenity and calm, to fulfill day-to-day duties, and entertain ourselves without any hurry to go after personal whims?

I read in an article that if we renew our goals that it allows us to concentrate and give us a goal. Physical lacking, was one of the factors that led people to ignore their resolutions. How can we fix that? Add one more thing to our ever growing list. Exercise daily, for our bodies must be fit for our mind to work well. Then make sure you put your heart into reaching those goals. Sometimes happiness is not always in doing what you want, but in wanting what you do. And finally read or watch movies that inspire you.

Thank you for spending some of your time here to read my plans for the coming year, I promise to be more rigorous and improve a lot in the next year.