INPUT ARTICLE: Article: You need to do this each day of the week regardless of the state of dryness of your hands. This will not only lead to softer skin, but better health overall thanks to the elimination of germs. But you need to wash gently. Use warm water. Hot water damages the skins natural oils, especially near the surface. If your hands are already very dry, try just scrubbing the palms. Use moisturizing soaps or soap-less cleansers. Avoid soaps with fragrances. You should rub a moisturizing cream on your hands after washing them. This should become a part of your daily routine, though also done at any time your hands become dry and/or itchy. Monitor what kind of moisturizers you are using. Avoid water based products, and look to oil-based moisturizers. Ointments and creams tend to be better for this while lotions are the most water-based. These oil-based products will help soften your hands faster--within the week time period--as they will help trap-in moisture better than lotions and water-based products. Expensive does not necessarily equate to good in this case. Look for products like petroleum jelly (petrolatum), mineral oil, and lanolin. Moisturizers with glycerin, dimethicone, and hyaluronic acid also can help skin retain moisture. Products with lactic acid and urea also may work. Petroleum jelly is one inexpensive moisturizer you can use. Cocoa butter and honey is a home-made moisturizer you can create. Petroleum jelly or any product that requires time to stay on your hands will also require you to have pairs of cotton gloves handy to wear in the meantime. If you do this overnight, you can take advantage of the inactivity to eliminate inconvenience while the product does its work. Overnight treatments will help soften your hands within the week, and should be maintained as a general treatment going forward. This is the act of removing dead skin from your body. You can scrub your hands using products or a number of home-based items. You should limit this to a couple of times during the week period, three at most. If you're looking for home based items, there are several that combine readily available items into solutions that will soften the skin of your hands. These include, but are not limited to: sea salt and olive oil; lemon and glycerin; baby oil and sugar; oats and lemon; milk, honey, and lemon juice; honey, curd, and tomato juice; turmeric and lemon. Do this several times during the week, two or three times, but not necessarily during every hand-wash. You can get this done during spa treatments as well. Do not over-exfoliate. Exfoliating too often can damage the surface and/or blood vessels in the skin. Look for signs of dryness, patchiness, dehydration, and/or increased sensitvity--they may indicate you are exfoliating too often. It is important for the health of your hands' skin to maintain this routine beyond just a week. But doing this for several days will at least improve your hands' skin condition in the short-term. If cost is an issue, consider the home-made version of both the moisturizer and exfoliate product. Remember you do not need to exfoliate for every single hand-wash. It is best to take advantage of bedtime to use long-term products, ones that need to stay on your hands for several hours, and wear cotton gloves over your hands while you sleep. Wear gloves over your hands while these long-term products are applied even if you are not asleep.

SUMMARY: Wash your hands carefully. Moisturize your hands after every wash. Use overnight products to speed up the process. Use an exfoliating cleanser. Repeat the above steps on a daily basis.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: If you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and unfocused, making a list is the easiest and quickest way to simplify and help you plan an attack. To learn what you need to focus on now and how to put everything else in the background, make a list of the things that are pressing on your mind. Short-term tasks should be things that are urgent. What needs to be done today, or by the end of the week? You decide the time frame, but try to keep it as urgent as possible. Long term goals are also important, but only if you translate them into a list of specific short-term things that you can do. If "Become a doctor" is on your list of long-term goals, and is stressing you out, it's not something that you're going to be able to make happen before lunch. But you can start researching med schools. How you choose to assign importance to the tasks and prioritize them will depend on you and on your list, but there are several ways of going about it and making your job easier. Don't spend too much time tweaking the list, go with your gut instinct and get things in order so you can get started. One way is the A, B, C method, which breaks down tasks by: A: Must-do, very important tasks that must be done today. Example: Finish the report today by the 4:30 deadline. B: A task that may not be immediate, but will become an "A" priority eventually. Example: Get all tax documents together in order to file by next month. C: Tasks of least importance, although needs to be done. Example: Shred duplicate file. Organize according to importance. Identify the most important tasks on your list and put them at the top, ranking them according to how critical the task is to you. So, if you've got to write a term paper today, put away your laundry, and return a RedBox DVD, the tasks should probably be in that order. Organize according to difficulty. For some people, putting the most difficult tasks up front and getting them out of the way is the best way to approach a to-do list, while others prefer to start small and progressively get bigger. It might be easier to focus more on reading a chapter for your history class if you get your math homework out of the way first. Next to each item, it can be helpful to draw up a brief estimate of how much time it'll take you to actually complete it. Again, don't spend a lot of time calculating, or stressing over this detail. You don't even need an actual number, just break each item into a category called "Quick" or "Slow" so you'll know when to assign each task. If you know you won't be able to complete all your history research in the ten minutes you have to get something started, you can put it in the back of your mind and do something else instead with your time. Start the laundry, or write up a thank-you note to someone you've been meaning to get in touch with. That's using your time wisely. After giving some consideration to time and the importance of the tasks, you'll have to put something at the top of the list. Decide what it is that demands your attention right now at this instant and put it there. It might be the most important thing on the list, or the most timely, but whatever it is, it's something that you're going to do and work on until it's finished, or finished-enough for your purposes. Be confident and secure in knowing that you've made a to-do list and you can put it away and ignore it for a while. Once you know what task you're going to complete right now, having the list looming over you will just be distracting and will keep you scattered. Put the list away, in a drawer, or somewhere else you won't be able to see it. Nothing else matters right now but the thing on the top of your list. Desktop stickies are great little reminder tools for a lot of people on their laptops, but consider hiding them when you've really got to focus on something. Don't be stressing about the party you've got to get organized for later if you're writing a term paper. Put the list out of your mind by putting it out of sight. Make a list of things that will not happen right now. Although counter-inuitive, removing tasks from your mental list helps you free yourself to do the things that you really need to do. For example: You will have to work late. Therefore, you cannot make dinner tonight. Your cross country meet conflicts with the yearbook meeting. You can't do both.

SUMMARY:
Write down everything you need to do. Order the list. Estimate how much time you'll need to accomplish each task. Pick the first thing you need to do. Put the list away. Make a "To-Don't" List.