1. Lack of Sleep. Duh, right? Well how come we don’t get enough sleep? It needs to be a priority and you need to muster up the proper motivation to make it happen. Now, not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep, but some do. How do you figure out how much you need? Experiment. Some good advice from Steve Pavlina is to wake at the same time each day, but go to sleep when you’re tired. Measure how much you need by how you feel the next day. Are you dragging with droopy eyelids all day? Then that’s not enough. If you feel mostly alert, then you’ve hit on the right amount for you.

2. Sugar. Avoid it. If you must eat sweets try to combine it with fiber which slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream. Most fruits naturally have both the sweetness and the fiber. The next time you have a candy bar or can of soda, watch for the subsequent energy dip that occurs within 30-60 minutes. Be prepared to nap because that’s what you will feel like doing.
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1 - Adopt - Adopting someone is one of the greatest things you can do. You’ll change your life and someone else’s. Adopt a baby, a child, or a teen. By being adopted they’ll always know that there is truly kind people in the world and they’ll pay it back to society.

2 - Just Be Nice - This is something EVERYONE can do, you don’t need any money or any talent. Hold the door for someone, smile, or say hello. You will change someone’s whole day, week, month, year, or maybe even life. Then they’ll be nicer to others, which will just continue the cycle and you won’t even realize that YOU changed THOUSANDS of lives.

3 - Donate - Donate blood, food, time, money, or whatever you can. Donate online, help entrepreneurs in developing countries on Kiva, lend to people on Prosper, or just play the simple game on FreeRice.

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1. Collect everything in one place.
Take out everything and put it in a pile. Empty the entire drawer, and pile it all on a counter or a table. Take everything out, down to the last paper clip.

2. Choose the essential.
Pick out only the few things you love and use and that are important to you. Just sort through the pile, picking out the really essential stuff. Be very selective. Put the important stuff you pick out into a separate, smaller pile. (more…)

Method #1: Quit While You’re Ahead

So you’ve had great flow working on a project. You sit back for a moment and think, “Hey, this is going great! I wish I always felt this engaged and sharp!”

Time to quit.

One maxim often repeated by writing teachers is to leave your last sentence unfinished at the end of the day so you have a logical place to continue next time. The same holds true for any creative work. (…) (more…)

1. It helps you learn from your mistakes.
If we don’t reflect on our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. And that’s not very smart. However, if we reflect on those mistakes, figure out what went wrong, see how we can prevent them in the future, we can use our mistakes to get better. Mistakes, then, are a valuable learning tool, instead of something to feel embarrassed or upset about. Reflection is an important way to do that.
2. It gives you great ideas.
Like I said, every single post idea that I have for Zen Habits (or other blogs I write for) comes from reflection. Basically, I reflect on things that I’m doing or that are going on in my life. If things aren’t going well, I learn stuff I can share with others. If I reflect on something that’s a success for me, I think about how I got that success, and share that too. I’ve had hundreds of great ideas this year from reflection. (more…)

1. Don’t set a lot of resolutions.
In fact, I don’t recommend setting more than one. If you set a lot of them, you lose focus on individual resolutions, making them hard to achieve. I would focus on tackling the one thing in your life that bothers you the most and focus on a resolution that helps to fix that problem.
2. A resolution is almost always part of a longer-term pattern you want to establish - figure out what that pattern is.
If you’ve decided to invest this year as part of your resolution, it’s part of a bigger pattern. Maybe you want to reach a greater state of financial stability right now. Maybe you want to bump up your savings for retirement. Maybe you’re just going to save for a new house. Whatever it is, your immediate resolution is just a strong first step towards that bigger goal. The same goes for a health-related resolution, a personality-related resolution, or so on - you’re hoping to cause a bigger change in your life. Understand what that change really is and keep that big picture in mind even as you make little steps. (more…)

10 questions will bring resonance to your choices and heart to your actions:

1. What is it to be completely fulfilled in life?
2. What values, qualities of being must be present for you to have a fulfilled life?
3. How would honoring those values impact your experience of work-life balance?
4. What are you committed to? (Not goals… goals are the doings that happen inside the field of commitments.)

This list has been severely abridged. To read the full list, view the original post at it’s source:
Two Methods to Maximize Creativity (Lifehack.org)

Additionally, the original post has 10 Signs Your Life Is Out Of Balance.