Since I quit my Sunday Life column I’ve been asked by many of you what tricks and techniques acquired along the way are still part of my life repertoire. As in, the things that actually worked and stuck. In all fairness, I’ve stuck to about 1/3 of the concepts I played with. Which is not a bad stat, really. I mean, there’s only so many techniques you can take on in a day! In a lifetime!

photo via trendhunter

Here are some of my favourites, which I reckon you might like to try…a new year on it’s way and all.

1. I go Pomodoro

Developed in the 90s by an Italian efficiency enthusiast, it’s recently experienced a surge of popularity. It’s stupidly simple. You pick a task and take one of those kitschly 90s red tomato kitchen timers and set it to 25 minutes. Next, churn through your task, ignoring distractions, not stopping to make tea or stare at the ceiling. Rest for 5 minutes and repeat the cycle three more times, after which you rest for a good half hour and grab lunch or read emails. The aim is to work to these 30-minute cycles daily, building up the self-discipline muscle. Read more here.

2. I use a virtual assistant

A VA is someone you hire online to help you with stuff you’re, quite frankly, over doing.

Join my 8-week I QUIT SUGAR reboot program kicking off January!

It’ll be easy + not-boring-at-all + it WILL work

I get a sense that a few of you are thinking they’d like clean up their insides after the year that was. And, of course, the indulgent I-can’t-cope-with-being-discplined-right-now-I’m-too-exhausted Christmas and New Year we’re about to give in to.

photo via Ellieblog

2011 was harrrrrd. And lots of stuff built up, don’t you think? We were also so very harsh on ourselves this year, frantically trying to cope and not really being mindful of how we were treating our bodies. So, we’re a little gunked up, addicted, heavy, stuck.

If this sounds like you, what do you reckon of this:

In January we’ll be kicking off a program for everyone keen to start the I Quit Sugar program as a New Year commitment. If you’ve been procrastinating about getting on board, now might be a good time.

This is how it will work:

* Simply buy the I Quit Sugar ebook for $15 here.

* Start any time in the first week or so of January. No stress. Once you’re ready.

* Each week I’ll answer your questions as they come up. Ask dumb ones. Smart ones. All cool.

* I’ll also be holding a webinar where you can fire off your wonderings at me. Anyone who’s already bought the book or started the program is free to join in, too.

Perhaps you’ve finished off at work? Perhaps you’ve done the shlepp back “home” to the parents and are a little bored? (Raining much in your neck?) Perhaps you’re dreading the mince pie/pudding/platters of lollies and Jatz onslaught and want to contribute a few edibles of your own…These might provided some inspiration. Jo and I have compiled a few All-Timers:

image via Scandi Foodie

pumpkin chia muffins

Oh, it’s just snacks, snacks and more snacks…whip up a batch of these for those “anyone want another Iced Vo Vo” moments. The full recipe is here.

This week in Sunday Life I anti-Christmas

Photo via twistedvintage.blogspot.com

Christmas is like cheap pizza – all cheesy, intoxicating promise, but somehow (so disappointingly!) winds up tasting like cardboard.

Actually, correction. Christmas is like cheap pizza to the violently lactose and gluten-intolerant – something everyone else seems to enjoy, while you get…tofu.

Why all the bah humbuggery? At the core of my festive deflation is the mass, crass, exhausting, relationship-compromising ritual of buying presents. Did you see that Black Friday footage from the US? The whole notion of massly, crassly buying up stuff for “loved ones” seems to send human nature to its most depraved base. And the fact that it’s such a far cry from the original premise of festive giving just deepens my malaise. As, I think, it does for so many.

Admittedly my family as a whole is particularly and notoriously awkward with the ritual of gift-giving. We always keep our receipts; invariably our Kris Kringle recipient feels guilty accepting anything isn’t wholly functional and necessary. Um, I just don’t think I’ll get maximum salad-making use out of the hand-carved bowl you paddled three days through shark-infested waters to some Solomon archipelago to purchase. I know, why don’t you just keep it?

Over the years, we’ve tried all kinds of consumerist-dodging approaches, but none have really hit the right tone. We’ve done Kris Kringle with an upper price limit of $20 (which pretty much gets you a Led Zeppelin CD from the discount bin). We went through a giving-a-goat-to-a-third-world-village phase. We spent lunch wondering whether said village ever got said goat, which was a bit of a cracker fizzler.  One year we all got a boxing bag from Mum and Dad. Not each. One to share between six. The next year it was one-sixth of a ping-pong table. The idea was to generate less “stuff”, a commons approach. Which would have been sound if we weren’t all adults living in different states.

So what’s the nourishing, satisfying, happy way to navigate one’s way through this? The thing is we humans actually do like giving. A bunch of studies show that one of the most effective way to get a happiness hit is to give away your money,

Three reasons why I’m sharing this.

1. My friend Johnny Abegg made the film, which won Best Food Film with The Chef’s Directory. Johnny is widely regarded as one of the best surfers in Byron. Just as an FYI. And he’s cosy with my friend Lizzy at Spell. Again, background.

2. The film is about Ben Shewry, chef/owner of Attica Restaurant in Melbourne, a joint that deserves every award it’s earned.

3. It’s a refreshing reminder that sometimes things can be simple and raw and real.

Enjoy…

If Ira says it, I believe it: it simply takes a lot of work to make good stuff.

If this topic comforts and gives you hope and fires you up because, “hey, it’s only hard work and anyone can do that”, then you might also like to know how long it took Bruce Springsteen to write Born to Run and Leonard Cohan to write Hallelujah.

Comforting for you today? Makes the process of “digging for your special thing” more enticing and doable?