5 Ways to Instantly Become More Productive Believe it or not, productivity can be learned, grasshopper. Yeah, I didn’t believe it either..until I transformed myself into a productivity ninja. Today, I’m going to teach you to maximize your time at your computer, dominate your email in-box, and spend less time on unimportant tasks to focus on what really matters. Once you have freed up your time, you’ll be surprised how you’re able to hang out with friends and family, pick up new skills, spend more time exercising, or cook healthy meals. Like Neo learning Kung Fu, today I shall teach you the skill of productivity. My story I am the world’s best procrastinator. For the past three years: I used to think I was justified in my horribly unproductive, time-consuming behavior because I was running a business. I finally came to the harsh realization that I was lying to myself. So I dumped ALL of my effort into building the habit of productivity. Just two months later, my life is drastically different: I actually feel in control of my life now.
Through a Blue Lens by Veronica Alice Mannix From the playlist : Manifesto for Interventionist Media - because Art is a Hammer Manifesto Point # 6: Work through the ethics, privacy and consent process with your partners before you begin, and adapt your project accordingly. Sometimes it means changing your whole approach – or even dropping it. — Katerina Cizek
How to Use Your Subconscious to Change Your Life “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best. Using subconscious requests will… Improve your motivation.Help you become happier.Increase your emotional intelligence. You’ll see improvement in less than a month. My last request was… “Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.” Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work. My latest request is… “Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.” I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. Mindset My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue. The 3 step request only takes five minutes:
How to Hack Your Education, Learn Faster, And Skip College This is a guest post by author of Hacking Your Education, founder of UnCollege, and entrepreneur Dale Stephens. What’s happened to your self-improvement list since the start of a new year has come and gone? Maybe your bullet points include joining a local gym, swearing off simple carbs, and purchasing a copy of Anna Karenina. Whatever it might be, your list probably also includes learning something new, like speaking Spanish, coding websites, or deciphering American politics. But how many of us resolve to learn how to learn? To improve our efficiency and retention? Reliving the agony of sitting through long lectures and slogging through dense textbooks seems masochistic and perhaps futile, because really, how many of us remember trigonometric functions or the Magna Carta? What most people don’t realize is that learning itself is a dynamic process that we can improve and whip into shape, just like our physical fitness. The brain works in a very simple way. Synthesizing Information
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson -... - StumbleUpon Learn more about the science of success with Heidi Grant Halvorson’s HBR Single, based on this blog post. Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. 1. To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. 3. Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. 7. To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do. 8. 9.
Best, Worst Learning Tips: Flash Cards Are Good, Highlighting Is Bad In a world as fast-changing and full of information as our own, every one of us — from schoolchildren to college students to working adults — needs to know how to learn well. Yet evidence suggests that most of us don’t use the learning techniques that science has proved most effective. Worse, research finds that learning strategies we do commonly employ, like rereading and highlighting, are among the least effective. (MORE: How to Use Technology to Make You Smarter) The scientific literature evaluating these techniques stretches back decades and across thousands of articles. The WorstHighlighting and underlining led the authors’ list of ineffective learning strategies. The BestIn contrast to familiar practices like highlighting and rereading, the learning strategies with the most evidence to support them aren’t well known outside the psych lab. (MORE: ‘Implicit Learning’: How to Remember More Without Trying)
30 Challenges for 30 Days Did you know that it takes 30 days to form a new habit? The first few days are similar as to how you would imagine the birth of a new river. Full of enthusiasm it gushes forth, only to be met by strong obstacles. The path is not clear yet, and your surroundings don’t agree. Old habits urge you to stay the same. So, take a moment to reflect on the question ‘Who do I want to be in 5 years?’ Check out this short TED talk first to get inspired: Now pick one or more challenges and stick with them! However, be cautioned, picking too many challenges at the same time can easily result in a failure of all of them. #1 Write a I-Like-This-About-You note/text/email each day for someone (Easy) This is the perfect way to let someone else know you care. #2 Talk to one stranger each day (Hard) This is a great one to cure approaching anxiety. #3 Take one picture each day (Hard) This one gets harder nearing the end of the challenge because at one point you will run out of the easy shots. We recommend:
How to Write Six Important Papers a Year without Breaking a Sweat: The Deep Immersion Approach to Deep Work March 24th, 2013 · 50 comments The Productive Professor I’m fascinated by people who produce a large volume of valuable output. Motivated by this interest, I recently setup a conversation with a hot shot young professor who rose quickly in his field. I asked him about his work habits. Though his answer was detailed — he had obviously put great thought into these issues — there was one strategy that caught my attention: he confines his deep work to long, uninterrupted bursts. On small time scales, this means each day is either completely dedicated to a single deep work task, or is left open to deal with all the e-mail and meetings and revisions that also define academic life. If he’s going to write a paper, for example, he puts aside two days, and does nothing else, emerging from his immersion with a completed first draft. If he’s going to instead deal with requests and logistics, he’ll spend the whole day doing so. On longer time scales, his schedule echoes this immersion strategy.
The Four Habits that Form Habits By Leo Babauta My daughter wants to work out more, but she has a hard time forming the habit (many of you might be familiar with this problem). From having to get dressed to go to the gym, to actually going to the gym, to the thought of a hard workout … our minds tend to put off the habit. The solution is exceedingly simple: just do 3 pushups. Or tell yourself you have to walk/jog for just one minute. Make it so easy you can’t say no. Of course, most people will think that’s too easy, and tell themselves they have to do more than that. Learn the fundamentals of habits before you try to do the advanced skills. Today we’re going to go over the fundamentals of habit — four key habits to form habits. Habit 1: Start Exceedingly Small Another common habit that too few people actually do is flossing daily. Of course, that seems so ridiculous most people laugh. That’s the point. If you can do two weeks of 1-2 minutes of exercise, you have a strong foundation for a habit. One glass of water a day.