Know your own body.

I've been reminded in this last week why it is so important that you know your own body. It is so easy when you are busy with work and family, to ignore any signals that your body might be trying to send to alert you that there may be a problem. Unfortunately, you ignore these at your peril.

I have ankylosing spondilitis or AS for short. I was first diagnosed approximately 15 years ago when I started to suffer joint and lower back pain, and after eventually getting to a specialist and receiving a correct diagnosis, I was able to get on with life, and most people who know me would not be aware that I even have AS, unless they happens to catch me during one of my rare moments of inflammation.

Last weekend however, I could feel a strange stabbing pain in one eye, which became more prevalent when I stepped outside into the sunlight, or focused on something close by with my left eye. I looked at it closely in the mirror and it seemed similar compared to my right eye in appearance. I persisted with this for a couple of hours, but realised that it was getting worse, not better, so I went around to the local emergency centre in the small country town I was in at the time. I was quite certain I was getting the initial symptoms of iritis. The doctor on duty was not sure, but when I explained that I had experienced iritis once previously and also had AS, he decided it was better to be safe than sorry and gave me some steroid eye drops. Once my eye settled down a bit, I drove home, and saw my own doctor who confirmed the diagnosis.

So now I am sitting here with one fully dilated eye with 2 hourly eye drops. It's painful, but I'm on the road to recovery.

Know your body. If you want to be successful in life, and enjoy time with your family, it will be ever so more difficult if you let yourself fall into ill health through ignoring symptoms. Your health is the biggest asset and most powerful resource you have. It is really important that you listen to what it is trying to tell you, and look after it.

Later.

(Image courtesy of www.iritis.org.)

Mark Forster has been at it again - Autofocus

Those of you who have followed my previous postings before, know that I have been playing around with different task list systems. I basically use the principles of GTD, but the way I process my task list tends to follow Autofocus. It seems to work quite well for me, most of the time. I sometimes find I either end up doing too much backlog, or too much immediate/urgent type stuff, but I am sure I am not alone in trying to get the balance right.

Since late last year, Mark has introduced Autofocus, and then two revisions before coming to the current version, which is now AF4. Here is a link to the latest AF4 news, with a demo pdf "animation" which shows how the system works, and here are Mark's initial instructions. I think the notes for version 4 are not as obvious as his previous versions, but I also get the impression there is a clearer version to come, and the one posted at the moment is a quick draft to get the system out there.

I am going to move over to AF4 and then report back how it goes, because it might just fix my balancing problem between urgent and backlog/long term tasks.

If you want to give it a go, work your way through Mark's web site, but if you are completely new to AF, I suggest you read through the earlier versions too, so that you understand the background as to why it is reported to work. The forums are also very good reading, as you will come across many others who are using the system, the problems they have experienced and how they got around them. It might save you a fair bit of time and effort, but at the same time, like any productivity system, you do in the end need to make it work for your own specific situation, which will be different from anyone else's.

What is also impressive, is that Mark publishes this for free. Despite having written and successfully sold books in the past, he seems happy to put this out there for everyone's benefit at the moment, which is admirable to say the least.

Later.

Blocked by the Great Firewall?

Hi there,

I am sorry that I haven't posted of late. I've been travelling through China, and for whatever reason I could not, for love nor money, get onto Blogger and post. The conspiracy theorist inside of me assumes it was blocked by the Chinese firewall we hear about sometimes, but it could have been technical difficulties elsewhere. I will probably never know.

I did however enjoy my time in China very much just as I always have previously. It is an amazing country that is really going places. It is steeped deep in culture and history, yet also at the cutting edge of new development. If you haven't been there, you must go and experience this for yourself, for business or for pleasure.

In any event, I am typing this now on the way back home in an airport lounge, but I will be home soon, and will then get back to posting more regularly.

Cheers.