Monday, May 9, 2011

How To Free Time For Fitness, Ten Minutes At A Time.

Ten minutes of exercise makes a big difference. Your heart rate increases, you generate endorphins and give your system a boost. In fact, the Center for Disease Control in the US states that 10 minutes a day is really enough to reap all of the benefits of longer periods of exercise, so it can be the minimum length of each exercise session. How do you find that extra ten minutes throughout your day?

Free Time For Fitness When You Wake Up

Exercising early in the morning wakes you up and prepares you for the day ahead. The endorphins released by exercise enable you to deal with stress and handle anything that your day throws at you. Examples of exercises you could do in the morning include going for a jog, weight lifting or doing pushups and situps. All you need to do is to wake up 15 minutes earlier in the morning, and get the benefits of your 10 minute exercise session for the rest of the day.

Free Time For Fitness After Breakfast, On Your Way To Work

You should generally wait at least 30 minutes after eating, before you exercise. This allows you to get the benefits of increased energy release, but avoid the stomach pains and other issues that can accompany exercising on a full stomach. If you're already on the way to work, you could try walking very briskly to your office. During the summer and spring, you can take a slightly longer route to work, and get the fresh air as well as a medium intensity work out by walking at a fast pace.

Free Time For Fitness During Your Working Day
It can be difficult to free time during the day, for exercise. And the question for many people is really about how to exercise, in an office environment. The key is again, to realise that even 10-20 minutes of exercise will have a great impact if repeated on a daily basis. So you could make sure to set aside that time by managing the time leaks in your schedule.

Is a meeting really essential? Have you provided as much information as needed in the emails that you send, so that no follow ups are required? Have you set up processes for people in your team to handle tasks, so that they know what is expected of them and you don't have to micro-manage things? All of these are areas in which you can free up time.

If you can, try to get out of the office for a ten minute walk
with the time you've saved up. Get some fresh air. Enjoy being out for a while.

Free Time For Fitness In The Evening

After an exhausting day in the office, most of us just want to relax and enjoy the evening. We tend to catch up with family and friends, watch TV, read magazines and books etc. Even then, ten minutes of exercise counts.

We need around 2 and a half hours of exercise a week, so this 'free time' is really critical to achieving a healthy lifestyle. But in reality, it's often not free time - as we're busy doing something else. This is why doing exercise often seems like something that has to be worked on, because it's not automatic to us. But how can this be changed?

If you look at the leisure pursuits that take up the most time, the Internet may well be somewhere on that list. It's very easy to spend much longer than you need to, with sites like Facebook, news sites, or any type of social media and games. Freeing time for fitness can be achieved using an application such as I Free Time For Fitness, which is designed to help you block out distractions such as Facebook, or email and games, so that you can get that vital ten minutes or more, for exercise.

Summary: Freeing 10 Minutes For Exercise Is All It Takes

10 minutes is all it takes to start making a difference to your fitness. There are lots of ways to free up time for exercise during the morning, afternoon and evening, even on the busiest days. Doing so boosts your ability to handle the high stress of modern life, as well as improving your health, wellbeing and your expectations of a rich and fulfilling life.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Finding Time For Exercise Just Got Easier, with I Free Time For Fitness

Adults need at least 2 and a half hours a week of moderate intensity aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week, according the Center for Disease Control. Pushing a lawn mower in your garden, to taking a dance class, to cycling to the store – all of these count as aerobic activity. As long as you're doing them at a moderate or vigorous intensity for at least 10 minutes at a time.

With the intensive muscle-strengthening actives, these include lifting weights, resistance work, and any other type of heavy lifting or push ups and lift ups.

Busy lifestyles put pressure on us to perform multiple roles in the workplace and in the home, with barely enough time to fit exercise in the schedule. Statistics show that at least 40% of us do not exercise on a regular basis. If you’ve ever had difficulty finding the time to exercise, then there could be options to free up some time.

On average we’re spending over 10 hours a week online during leisure times, according to Nielsen. Whilst much of this time is spent communicating with loved ones, and doing vital shopping, banking and other activities that are nowadays done online to save money, there is room to ask yourself whether you really need that additional ten minutes reading the news, or on Facebook, or on any of your favourite sites.

A recent survey of students in the UK found that 43% of them felt they were spending too much time online, to the detriment of their studies. There is research showing that across different generations, we have become addicted to information. The Internet feeds this habit, but at what cost? If you’re not exercising as much as you could, then could there be room to cut internet time?

A new application called I Free Time for Fitness has been developed to enable PC users to block any type of distraction, including websites, games and email. The net effect is to improve focus whilst on the computer, so that time is freed for other activities including exercise. As the CDC points out, even ten minutes of vigorous exercise helps, so with I Free Time for Fitness, every minute counts.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Online Distractions And Family Life: Solutions To Common Problems

Online Distractions and Social Networking

Time spent online increasingly means time spent on social networks. The Pew Internet Research organisation estimates that 73% of internet-connected American teenagers use social networking websites. Given that the average time spent on the most popular social networking website, Facebook, is an hour a day, this implies that young people have altered home activities to make use of social networks.

Online Distractions Impair Academic Achievement

As a Rutgers University study shows, heavy internet use is correlated with impaired academic achievement. According to the Pew Internet Research paper, 39% of 14-17 year olds say they go online several times a day. It’s likely that a significant proportion of teenagers are therefore suffering from reduced academic performance due to online distractions.

Young People Distracted by Internet Use

A comprehensive report of internet usage by young Britons in the 9-19 year old age range by the London School of Economics (UK Children Go Online) found that 74% of children in the UK have internet access at home. It also found that a fifth of all children have internet access in their bedrooms. Research cited in the Guardian shows that the most time is spent on sites such as YouTube, Bebo and MySpace.

There are concerns about safety on these sites, and the information available to parents is limited by multiple computer ownership in the home.

"My mum will ask sometimes 'Is it safe?' but she doesn't really know," a 16-year-old girl told the Institute for Public Policy Research.

A 14-year-old boy added that even parental controls that are put on internet access at school can be circumvented by youngsters, who often know more about IT systems than their teachers. "We have restrictions at school but we can just get an administrator's account and take them off."

Due to gaps in the technological awareness, parents are finding it increasingly difficult to monitor the impact of technology on children’s academic work. As a Guardian report states, "They are a generation abandoning print and paper, and the whole integration of technology and the way they glide from one to the other is seamless. They will be surfing the net, talking to a friend and downloading a track simultaneously.”

With the plethora of electronic distractions available to young people today, it’s likely that there has been an adverse impact on young people. Indeed, a study by Rutgers University finds that some college students’ academic performance might be impaired by heavier use of the Internet.

Time Spent Online

According to the Institute of Public Policy, British children in internet-connected homes are spending more than 20 hours a week online. In the US, the average 8-18 year old in a ‘wired’ home spends more than six hours a day using media, including the internet.

What Can Parents Do About Computer Usage for Older Teens?

1. Read up on internet safety issues and discuss these with your child.

2. Address the underlying problem. Excessive internet usage can be a form of escapism for children. Try to find out what the issue is.

3. Move the computer to an open area. This will increase your ability to monitor the amount of time spent on the internet, and will discourage excessive time spent online.

4. Use software solutions that focus on time management for study. I Free Time For Study is a program that enables teenagers to limit time spent online.

5. Set a time limit on internet usage. This can be achieved using a program like I Free Time For Study.

Some parents may wish for stricter controls such as programs like CyberSitter and Net Nanny. However, these cannot be 100% relied upon, as they can be disabled, especially by technologically savvy children.

Further Information

1. Internet Safety - Thinkuknow http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

2. Study Skills Resources http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/tips-and-tools/study-help

3. I Free Time For Study http://www.ifreetimeforstudy.com

4. HomeworkFocus http://www.homeworkfocus.com

5. WikiHow article http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Your-Child%27s-Computer-Addiction

6. Internet Safety http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Yourchildshealthandsafety/Internetsafety/index.htm