Brad Feld: On Not Mourning Your Failures & Overcoming Burn-Out. As venture capitalists go, Brad Feld doesn’t play the part.
With shaggy hair and the occasional f-bomb, he’s known for his openness and generosity. His blog and numerous books are required reading for any entrepreneur living through the roller coaster of building a business. Currently, as a VC partner at Foundry Group, he’s helped numerous companies like Fitbit and MakerBot come to life; as well as cofounding the startup accelerator, TechStars. We recently caught up with Brad to discover how he fights burnout, coaches young entrepreneurs, handles failure, and still ships on time. As a co-founder of TechStars and from your work with young entrepreneurs – what do they struggle with the most?
The most challenging thing for a young entrepreneur is to think long-term. FYI: Does Thinking Too Hard Wear You Out? The brain makes up about 1⁄50 of our body weight but consumes about one fifth of the oxygen we breathe.
It's natural to assume that overtaxing the cerebrum would leave one feeling lethargic, but that's not quite true. The brain uses most of its energy just to maintain its baseline state; one tenth of our energy at rest goes to pumping sodium and potassium ions across brain-cell membranes, a simple process that keeps each neuron charged and ready. Specific mental activity, whether chatting with a friend or doing a crossword, does not suck up much extra energy. That said, studies show that people do slow down after performing taxing mental tasks. One experiment, conducted by Samuele Marcora of the University of Kent, split subjects into two groups. The 3 Mental Barriers to Effective Time Management.
If everyone agrees that excellent time management is one of the most desirable personal skills, why is it that so few people can be described as ‘‘well organized or efficient’’?
I have found that many people have mental barriers and hold ideas about time management that aren’t true. But if you believe something to be true, it becomes true for you. Your beliefs cause you to see yourself and the world, and your relationship to time management, in a particular way. If you have negative beliefs in any area, these beliefs will affect your thinking and actions, and will eventually become your reality.
You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are. The Big Power of Small Ideas. This is the first post in a series about the power of small ideas.
In this article we’ll talk about why it’s important to realize that small ideas can have as much or more impact than big ideas. In the second, we looked into how to re-envision your projects as a series of complete, smaller ideas making them easier to launch and manage. Next, we discussed 2 ways to stay aware of our projects’ progress and keep them on track.
List-Making_eBook_v1. Software. How To Manage Big Data With Pivot Tables. Quick and Easy Ways to Quiet Your Mind - Matthew E. May. By Matthew E.
May | 8:00 AM December 24, 2012 Neuroscience tells us that, to be more productive and creative, we need to give our brains a break. It’s the quiet mind that produces the best insights. But it’s a challenge to take that sort of time off in the midst of a busy day. Here are three specific, quick and easy ways to build purposeful break time into your day. Quick meditationNew research from the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging suggests that people who meditate show more gray matter in certain regions of the brain, show stronger connections between brain regions and show less age-related brain atrophy.
PulsingPsychologist K. 33 Things to Ask Before Hitting Publish. Eliminate Excuses and Stay Focused. » Clearing Your Life for a New Year. Post written by Leo Babauta. Every January, people rush out and get a gym membership, set a list of goals or resolutions, and get ready to take on a new year of frenetic activity. Unfortunately, we don’t often clear space to make room for all this new stuff. The 8 Habits of Highly Productive People. By Celes on Dec 2, 2010 | ShareThis Email This Post What do you define as a “productive” person?
Is it the ability to robotically churn out work, hour after hour? Is it the amount of discipline one has? Is it the speed at which one works? Before we can discuss what makes a productive person, we should first define what productivity is. For example, let’s say Peter types very fast and can reply 1000 emails a day. The past few months have been my most productive months for the year.
At the same time, I’ve also been managing other work, such as 1-1 coaching with clients (I’m handling about 5-6 clients on average at each time), administrative aspects of the business, writing Personal Excellence articles/guest posts, maintaining the site, etc. A few days ago I finished designing my lineup of workshops next year, and earlier this week I conceptualized the idea for a new book.