The greening of my life – and results to date.

I have been periodically updating my readers on my personal experiences with a greener, more active, and yes – more productive life. “Productive” does not necessarily relate to work or business. A person is productive when he or she receives maximum value from life with minimum input. Minimum input does not refer to sloth; but to the fact that you don’t have to invest all your money, energy and personal resources to yield a happy, healthy, useful and purposeful life – even in your latter years.
This particular personal journey started several years ago when I discovered the power of plants, trees and nature in general, along with social relationships and lifestyle factors, to positively impact productivity, health and well-being.
Until then I didn’t realize that plants and trees act as vacuum cleaners removing toxins and pollution from the air or that friendships impacted longevity or that our minds could frequently cure diseases. The more I studied the importance of adequate sleep, exercise and the environment in which we work and live, the more changes I made to the way I work and live.
Living and working in the Toronto area limited those changes, but I originally reported on the impact of increasing sleep from 6 to 7 hours a night, walking regularly, moving my home office to the solarium where I was exposed to natural light, working at coffee shops, and my attempt at “growing” artificial plants on my balcony.
Basically the results were an increase in personal energy and productivity resulting in greater output (mainly in my writing) and a general feeling of well-being.
A year or so ago, when I actually moved to the country (Sussex, New Brunswick) and worked in my home office overlooking a small park, surrounded myself with the natural environment, took up fishing in trout streams, picking wild blueberries and cranberries in season – and joined several service organizations and volunteer groups, the impact of my original city changes outlined above became more evident. My blood pressure has dropped 10 points. (The doctor actually eliminated one blood pressure medication) The psoriasis that persisted on my ankles in spite of creams etc. vanished (at least for the past eight months) and the arthritis in my hands, although never serious, disappeared altogether.
Even if all of this could be simply due to the placebo factor (a phenomenon by which a condition improves simply because the person believes treatment has occurred), the result is unchanged. At 83, I feel more like 63. I’m happy, energetic, more productive enjoying more variety in my life – and as far as I can tell, I’m relatively stress free. (I understand from the literature that stress is an important factor in aging.)
For sure, I am more productive because the value I derive from life is increasing, while input (such as paying about one-third of the money for rent, spending less than one-third of the time in traffic, and spending far less energy writing and dreaming up things to write about, is decreasing.
I will continue to periodically write more about this little adventure of mine (and will include some of the research that seems to lend credibility to my claims) in future blog articles. Meanwhile, I will try to keep on the “time management” track as much as possible. But as I mentioned in my e-book, “An introduction to holistic time management,” published by Bookboon.com, the greatest time saver of all is to live a longer, healthier, happier, and more productive and fulfilling life.