Finally: it's time to mention yoga

I've resisted this long, but it's time to share. For the last 14 years I've been practising yoga and I qualified to teach BKS Iyengar's method in 2003. It's not all soft and fluffy; passing the assessments was probably the hardest work I've done. Four years of practise before you're allowed on the training course, and at least two years to get through. The Iyengar approach is rigorous, and uses equipment to help all students do the extensions correctly, but all yoga is yoga. If you are going to do downward facing dog, it's the same in every class you do; it's just that some methods hold the postures for less time and aren't so fussy about whether or not you try your hardest to get it absolutely right. Some go straight from posture to another in a more flowing style. In Iyengar's method, teachers are expected to help students to correct mistakes. Once they're good, then they can flow.

Around the globe some yoga teachers do something a little bit different and name it after themselves, trademark it and see if they can earn a stack of cash. That's not particularly yogic, not according to Patanjali who wrote down the rules over 2000 years ago. (BKS Iyengar says he does Patanjali's hatha yoga, it's just that it's simpler to call it Iyengar so students know what to expect.)

What's yoga anyway? Bouncing about in lycra showing how bendy you are? The definition I like best is that yoga is the quietening of the mind to achieve stillness. Showing your muscles and standing on your head in public isn't yoga, it's just showing off. But if you do go to a class with a decent teacher, concentrate hard on doing your best and what each part of your body is up to (ignoring the others in the room) you'll come out feeling brilliant, with a calm head and a spring in your step.

That's why I'm recommending that you give it a try. It'll help you to think clearly, put things in perspective and keep your body parts functioning smoothly. Since I've practised yoga I've been able to concentrate better while I'm working and I've got rid of the lower back pain I always had from sitting at a desk. (Except the time Nick dreamed he was playing football and kneed me in the lumbar spine.) I've a long way to go before I quieten my mind enough to achieve stillness, but it happens more often than it used to, which was never.

Go here to find yourself a local class: www.iyengar.org.uk. If you're in Ealing, get in touch.

Duty, deadines, determination and discipline

Deadlines. We deal with them all the time. They approach steadily, never by themselves, and we have to hit them before they crash and get us into trouble. I like to imagine them as like the little green aliens in Space Invaders games. The longer you leave them they faster they approach and the more they proliferate. When you've got someone chasing you, or a meeting report with a date and your initial written beside it, you know what you're dealing with. They want it by Friday, you aim to get it there on Thursday night (or if it's me, more likely Saturday morning because unless I'm given strict guidelines, 4a.m. still counts as Friday night).

What about the projects that don't have set deadlines, the ones you can put off for almost ever? How do you make sure that they ever get finished? At the risk of beginning to sound like a Victorian moralist, last time I wrote about duty and now I'm thinking about discipline.

Now I'm cutting myself loose from my biggest client to do my duty, I'm going to have to set my own goals, impose my own some deadlines then make sure that I want to hit them. We can use time management techniques to sort out which ones to do first, or to delegate or ditch entirely. We can get ourselves into good habits. We all have some of those: I wouldn't dream of going out without brushing my teeth or locking the door; I always recycle everything the council take; I even bring my plastic back from my holidays.

But to make things happen, you really have to want to make them happen. Without the determination, it all fades away. Finishing off books, for example, everything that you have on your "wouldn't it be nice..." list. How do we set and stick to our own deadlines when no-one is chasing us, or won't pay us if it doesn't get finished? Now that all my big projects are going to be like that for a year at least, can I be relied on to chase myself up? What's my incentive to keep shooting down the aliens?

It's not so much about the small stuff with me; I procrastinate on a grand scale. I take on to much big stuff, then stretch myself beyond any reasonable limit, filling my screen up with thumping aliens and buzzing about like a bluebottle trying to knock them all out before they invade. (And if you don't know what it's like to play Space Invaders, go here www.freespaceinvaders.org. Or even if you do.) In the early 1980s, I did get quite good at Space Invaders, up to 14 screens. You do it by keeping a cool head and a sense of perspective and by wasting loads of time getting good at it. Probably a bad example of discipline.

It's a question of deciding what's important. Then getting on with it. I've got my list (see earlier topics) and I'll make myself a future mood board. (Of which more soon.) From May to July I've got to spend time clearing out old projects that I really will never finish, so that they don't weigh me down with guilt.

Talking of which, if you're anywhere near W13, put 15th May in your diary. I'm having a car boot sale, except in my own front room and just for nice people. I'll be making coffee.

Discipline. Yes. Let's impose a little and bring myself back to the point. From May 2010 to April 2011, the year I've given myself to get things done, I need to get things done. There's definitely going to be some room for slacking about faffing and fiddling, because it's in the faffing and fiddling times that you have your best ideas, as long as you've been taking the time to observe, contemplate, consider and plan. And talking of plans, I've got one, but I'll keep it flexible, because all the best plans should adapt to fit the circumstances.

As stated in many other places on paper and in the ether, I plan to have a building where I can run writing workshops and yoga classes and where people can come for a good creative think, and a decent coffee. So let's see how we get along, shall we?

New Year New Wallchart

A couple of years ago I read a bunch of books about happiness, happinomics and the whole new science of being happy. It turns out that when happiness was written down as an aspiration for all Americans, it didn't mean owning as much stuff as you could jam into your large house, being richer than your neighbours and gloating over the less fortunate. It meant the general wellbeing of your fellow man (or person as it would be now, but probably wasn't then), because if those around you were content then you would be too.

In these books, there were several recipes for happiness in the modern world including meditation and yoga, learning that acquisition doesn't take away the desire to acquire, that you won't be content until you can learn to desire less stuff, and that almost everyone thinks that they need to earn about one third more than they do now in order to be content. (Consider...) One book reckoned that the best way to become happy was Prozac and its friends. That was a bit of a shocker. On the other hand, it does seem as if we have natural levels of happiness: if you're miserable and win the lottery, you're still miserable; if you're happy and lose the use of your legs, you're just as happy - once you adjust to it. But if you work on it, like anything else, you can get better at it.

One book, can't even remember which (sorry), recommended three things:

1. Friends: It turns out that having 18 is just about right (can include family members). There is no need to be a smarty pants like Patrick, husband of a good friend of mine, who started to argue about how you define a friend. He's a barrister so he loves a good picky argument. We know who our friends are. The ones who will help us and who we'll help if they need it. No doubt we'll have a sliding scale from best friends to good friends, old, new, close, distant, but still we ought to keep about 18 on the go. More than that and it becomes a burden to maintain.

2. Something to believe in. It doesn't have to be religion, but people who do believe in a greater good are generally happier. It can be karma, god(s), humanity, light against dark, anything that encourages us to be kind rather than cruel, something that gives us meaning, even if we know we're just a grain of sand that lasts for less than a second in the universe's grand scheme. (Especially if we know that.) Saying that you believe in your god, then behaving like a selfish prat doesn't work. You have to go out and spread a little light to get the benefits.

3. Have a list and tick things off when you finish them.

So this is where the new wallchart comes in. I've got a pack of magic whiteboard (www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk)and a set of Shachihata Artline 525T Whiteboard Marker pens from Toyko and I'm on a stairway to happiness.
Oh yes. I've stuck two slices of it on the wall next to my desk. It sticks with static and comes off whenever you like. One is marked up with the days of the week and times of day, a week to view diary. The other is a list of the strategic stuff; the tasks that might take a while but will get me close to where I want to be. When something pops into my head I put it on the wall (unless I'm not at my desk, in whihc case I can put it into my laptop and write it up later). It's not enough to use the laptop. It has to be on the wall. I have to see it and rub things off by hand.

Does it all work? I'll let you know. So far, I'm feeling pretty chipper about it all.

Shanks's Pony

I wonder if you've heard about the Nun Study, Dr. David A. Snowdon's research into aging. It's the most wonderful long-term observation into what might happen to us as we get older, carried out amongst a whole convent full of Catholic nuns in Minnesota. What's unusual about it is that all the nuns eat the same food and have accurate, comparable health records from a young age so researchers can rule out a lot of the variables that normally mess up your average health study.

One of the correlations (becasue it's tricky to say what's actually cause and effect) is that people who walk three miles a day stay healthy long into old age. Current research reckons that longevity is influenced up to 75% by behaviour and attitude, not genetics, by the way. Since I found that out, I've tried to grab the opportunity to walk rather than take a lazier way of getting around whenever I have the time. It's selfishness really: naturally I want to stay fit for as long as I can manage, but I also find that walking has instant benefits for creative thinking. (Yoga too, but that's another story.)

For starters, on foot you have more time to notice what's happening around you. (You can choose not to; I have a friend who always strolls, deep in thought, staring at the pavement with his mind elsewhere.) If you like, you can observe people, buildings, clouds, spaces, faces, your neighbours' front gardens and your own reactions to them. When I'm stuck, really stuck, I love to go for a walk. Even just walking a slightly different route from usual can get you out of your rut. I've got six different direct routes to my tube station and I do like to vary them just for the fun of it; it's a Edwardian working man's suburb - lots of parallel streets.

Time is a bit of a nuisance - well, absence of time to be more accurate - but if I'm on my way to a meeting or a workshop that's going to need me to delve into my deepest thinking resources, then I like to allow time to get there on Shanks's pony. (Grandma's term for legs.) It really does clear your mind of rubbish and fill it with interesting things - if you allow it, and put a bit of effort it.

My great grandmother made the local papers when she walked three miles to a party aged 92 then refused a lift home and hoofed it all the way back again. I'm rather hoping to follow in her footsteps, so to speak. In the meantime, for a good spring clean of the mental cobwebs, I shall be walking whenever... Machines in gyms don't work by the way. That's not one of Dr. Snowdon's conculsions; that's just what I think. They might help your health, but they don't refill your inspiration tanks.

The kit: for a formal event: Paul Smith brogues. They take a few months to break in then they are like walking on clouds, leathers ones. Informal around town: I've not found a walking shoe to beat my Nike Shox. Muddy: Merrell. Fields: barefoot but watch for cowpats. I've done that. Heels, if you must: Cole Haan G-Series with Nike Air technology. People tell me that Crocs are comfortable, but I wouldn't be seen dead, darlings.

Use it up, wear it out

A few years back, I decided to give up buying things I didn't need for a year long project. I defined need pretty strictly; you can't just say to yourself, "Well I really need a pair of pair of red shoes," when the ones you already own will do. The problem was that I wasn't ready. I was still searching for things I wanted with which to torture myself and I fought the self-imposed restriction, like a dieter who craves biscuits. It's rather like when a new student turns up at a yoga class and says excitedly, "I've given up smoking." It's usually about three weeks before they lapse. If you think that giving up anything - chocolate, tobacco, alcohol or shopping, or even breaking up a relationship - is exciting, then your heart isn't in it. You think about it all the time; it still has its hooks in you and it will reel you back in.

I mention this because I've stopped shopping again but this time I didn't have a start date; I just noticed that it had happened. I found myself not wanting to buy stuff because I slowly realised that I own more things than I need already. I've enough books to read, as many notebooks as I need to write several books and take notes at all the meetings between now and the end of my career, 20 fountain pens and ink enough to fill them. I'm still drawn to lovely new things, but instead of allowing my acquisitive desires to envelop me I've started to remind myself of all the beautiful things I already own. When I want to give myself a present, I don't have to buy one; I can open the box I keep my stash of special things in. Yoga helps, by the way, although you have to have the right attitude to it; I've met people who just become yoga addicts instead. What I really want more of is floorspace so now I'm spending time selling things on eBay and giving them away on Freecycle.

And I mention that because this is where the 4160 Tuesday come in. When you realise you've collected enough writing paper to send thankyou letters to all your aunts, nieces, nephews and minor acquaintainces until all your 4160 Tuesdays are over, it's time for a rethink.

I've an idea that the constraints of using up what I already own will inspire me to creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. Let's be fair though; I do still have an awful lot of stuff; when I moved flats once, I sent through my list of belongings - musical instruments, boxes of books, fabric, yarn, sewing machines, yoga kit - and the removals company asked, "Is it a school?"

It's fair to say that I'm quite good at shopping; I give guided tours around London's most beautiful shops to visitors from overseas. But isn't it better to spend time creating than acquiring? Instead of opening my craft cupboard doors and wondering when I'm going to get the time to use up all the stuff inside, I'm going to take something out and make it into something else. (Yes, I have a craft cupboard.) Remember this, friends, aunts, nephews and minor acquaintances, when you get a pair of handknitted socks for Christmas.

(The picture: I uploaded it, changed my mind and tried to take it out again, but failed. I know it's not a masterpiece but it was my first attempt at wet-on-wet watercolour and as it does look a bit like a cyclamen and I did enjoy doing it, here it is.)