As a busy mom with three active kids, I am constantly in a struggle to manage my time better, get more things done in the day and try to keep up with everything from kids’ homework to household chores to extracurricular activities. I’m a big procrastinator, especially when it comes to housework, and now that spring is here and our schedule is becoming more and more hectic I am starting to feel the anxiety of having to juggle everything at once. I know with my procrastination I won’t be able to keep up with all of the never-ending household chores and the result will be more anxiety and constant guilt. I recently came across a fantastic website calls The Great Courses Plus – online learning courses where you can learn anything you want – history, languages, art, just to name a few. Under the Science category I found an incredible course called Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You and after watching several lectures, I am here to say: you can change your life just by watching something online.
Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You is a 24-lecture course on controlling bad habits and boosting your well-being, with each lecture being about 30 minutes long. It is given by Professor Peter M. Vishton, PhD, a Cornell University graduate who is now Associate Professor of Psychology at The College of William and Mary.
I watched the first two lectures: Take Control of Your Automatic Brain and Beat Procrastination by Doing Nothing. The first lecture was an introduction to the course and provided insight about achieving your goals in a way that may sound counter-intuitive, but Dr. Vishton provides a scientific explanation for why it will work.
In the second lecture, Dr. Vishton gives three tips on how to overcome procrastination. Again, the tips seem counter-intuitive, but Dr. Vishton gives such a compelling scientific explanation that I couldn’t help but try them out. One of the tips is to break up a project into small tasks that take about 20 minutes each to complete. I have known about this trick but I never really understood why. It turns out that our brains are wired to give us pleasure not when we work towards a goal, but only when we achieve a goal. This is why whenever we complete a small task our brains can give us a sense of satisfaction and the more tasks we complete towards our goals, the better we will feel, even if we don’t end up completing the project. I tried this with piles of laundry and it worked! It’s amazing how once there’s a scientific reason to doing something I’m more inclined to doing it!
The Great Courses Plus is a boon of information – you can learn about specific countries in the travel section and plan your next trip; under Hobby & Leisure you can learn tricks on how to solve Sudoku puzzles; you can also learn money management skills, the history of music and a million other things. It’s all just a click away.
- The Great Courses Plus is offering a FREE trial month. After the first month payment is $19.99 each month. Plans start as low as $14.99/month.
- There are 8,000 lectures to choose from.
- Some of the partners are National Geographic, The Culinary Institute of America and the Smithsonian so don’t be surprised if your teachers are top-notch chefs, famous photographer and world-renowned scientists, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson. In fact, many of the lecturers are award-winning Ivy-league professors.
- There are no homework or tests and you can watch on your own time as many courses as you want. You can watch any lectures, in any order you please and skip anything you want.
- Each course also has a guidebook that you can read before or after the course to either introduce yourself to the material or to reinforce what you’ve just learned.
- You can stream Great Courses Plus to watch on your TV, tablet, smartphone, laptop or PC.
Visit The Great Courses Plus to learn more. Be sure to sign up for your FREE one-month trial to experience the courses yourself.
———————————————————————————————————————————————–
Senior Reviewer Maytal Wichman has also written for The Huffington Post. She has been living in New York City for fourteen years and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature as well as a Law Degree, but blogging is her true passion. Maytal is a stay-at-home mom to three kids (ages 10, 8 and 4) and loves finding great products that make her family’s life easier. Improve Your Life and Broaden Your Horizons With the Click of a Button
Leave a Reply