You are a slave to your cell-phone. Your mobile is IN CONTROL of you.
In the war of man against machine, man is LOSING.
Your phone does a lot more than just ring when somebody wants to talk to you, right? It beeps when you get a message, it hums when somebody tweets you, it buzzes when you get an email, it gives you a back rub when your tired and fixes you a bloody mary when you’ve got a sore head.
STOP! TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE.
Before switching your phone off, this is your weekend:
- Get up, beautiful day, decide to go to the park, but first check your emails in bed. BAD IDEA. Long, dirty missive from your boss about your Monday morning deadline.
- Decide you’ll spend the whole day working to appease your employer, who is on the golf course not thinking about you even for a minute.
- Can’t get any work done because your husband calls you every two minutes to help with his supermarket buying decisions.
- Evening comes quickly. Treat yourself to a film and a bottle of wine, and just as you sit down your mother calls “for a chat” and you’re still on the phone half an hour later. Your pizza’s gone cold and your Chablis has gotten warm.
- You get another email from your boss. Can’t sleep for worry.
After switching your phone off, this is your weekend:
- Wake up Saturday, beautiful day, eat breakfast, go to the park, meet friends for lunch, play six rounds of mini-golf and finish it off with lobster and stout.
- Sunday, repeat.
- Monday, get into the office, deal with emails. Deadline wasn’t really a deadline.
“BUT”, I hear you cry. “BUT if I want to enjoy my weekend, I need my friends to be able to get in touch with me, right?”
WRONG
Remember ten years ago, before anybody had a mobile phone? Remember how you used to have fun, and meet friends for lunch, and get stuff done? Well:
IT’S STILL POSSIBLE.
If anything, we were more organized and more efficient when last minute changes of plan and calls for information weren’t possible.
DESTRESS – TURN YOUR PHONE OFF THIS WEEKEND.
Dude, it’s NOT ABOUT THE MONEY.
Yeah, well, shit. There you are with your Ferrari and your business partnership and your sixty-five employees and your coke habit and your dangerously clogged arteries and five kids you know about.
You’ve been married to your first wife twice, your second wife left you and the third is an alcoholic. Your house is SPOTLESS because you employ three people to come and clean up after you. The swimming pool doesn’t get used much, but the gym looks REALLY COOL, even if it’s not very functional.
You did some AWESOME deals last year. You brought in more new business than anybody else in the firm. You’re looking at a VERY high six-figure bonus this year. The hours are long, and you’ve got a permanent ache in your left shoulder. Your piles are particularly aggravating, but it’s a small sacrifice for that HUGE PAYCHECK.
Another three years, you reckon? Another three years, five at the most, before you can start to take it easy. By that time, you’ll have banked a few mill and the company will be running itself. You can get childcare for your toddlers. They need their mum more than their dad, anyway.
Then, once you’ve sold out, you can fuck off to the Caribbean and have your first gin and tonic at eleven in the morning.
That’s the life. Just another five years, ten at the most. Then you’ll be free.
For God’s sake man, GET SOME SLEEP!
What are you doing collapsed on the sofa, biscuit crumbs in your lap, semi-consciously channel-surfing in the hope that you don’t “miss anything”?
Your wife nudges you and says “stop snoring” and you respond “I’m not asleep!”
What are you? Six? You want to stay up late because it’s cool?
RUBBISH! GET YOUR REST!
The benefits of sleep:
- The ability to safely operate heavy machinery, such as tractors, industrial printing presses and wind-turbines
- Clear-headed decision-making, protecting you from the cunning whiles of timeshare salesmen, insurance agents and boiler-room penny-stock vendors.
- Glowing skin that will get you noticed by talent-scouts and soon have you on the front-page of glossy magazines
- The only opportunity you’ll ever get to legitimately cheat on your wife with Eva Longoria, albeit in a dream
So, it’s late, your tired. Here are your choices:
- Stay where you are, watch a series of semi-clad women pretend to talk to you on the phone whilst performing surprisingly repetitive stand-up, sit-down, take off shirt actions, then switch to watch a bearded man subtitled by a sign-language interpreter instruct you on the atomic make-up of a rock, before catching the tail-end of an eastern European film set in an industrial estate.
- Go to bed.
Option 1 = waking up at three o’clock in the morning with a stiff neck, dribble all over your chin, fully clothed and wide awake. You crawl to bed, neglect your personal hygiene and wake up three hours later in the middle of a sleep cycle. You suck.
Option 2 = THE WIN! You wake up early like an eager bunny and grasp the day by the bollocks.
GO TO BED = YOU WON’T MISS A THING = WORLD DOMINATION
Update: Click here for Getting Rid Of Stuff 101
Unclutter.
It’s Friday, which means that you can probably find one hour tomorrow to follow these steps:
- Get a big bag.
- Open your wardrobe. Pick out one item of clothing that you haven’t worn for twelve months. Put it in the bag.
- Go to kitchen. Identify something – an apple-corer, a juice-maker, one of your six corkscrews, a chipped plate, a teapot, a pie-dish. If you haven’t used it in twelve months, put it in the bag. Just one thing.
- Do the same with your shoes.
- Do the same with your books, only this pick a book you just know you’re not going to read, or have read and it was rubbish.
- One other thing – look under the stairs, look in the utility cupboard. Do you have a “junk room”? Look there.
You now have five things in the bag. An accumulation of stuff you don’t need that is taking up space in your house.
Dust collectors.
Now, repeat steps 2 to 6, and get that bag out of the house. Do whatever you want – dump it on a friend, throw it away, give it to charity.
DON’T put it in your car to “deal with later”. GET BAG OUT OF HOUSE.
BANG!
You now own less. You’re getting the upper hand on your possessions.
You rock. Get a grip this weekend.
