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How to Train Your Brain to Stay Focused

How to Train Your Brain to Stay Focused
As an entrepreneur, you have a lot on your plate. Staying focused can be tough with a constant stream of employees, clients, emails, and phone calls demanding your attention. Amid the noise, understanding your brain’s limitations and working around them can improve your focus and increase your productivity. Our brains are finely attuned to distraction, so today's digital environment makes it especially hard to focus. "Distractions signal that something has changed," says David Rock, co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your Brain at Work (HarperCollins, 2009). Related: 8 Tips for Finding Focus and Nixing Distractions While multitasking is an important skill, it also has a downside. To make matters worse, distraction feels great. Related: The Truth About Multitasking: How Your Brain Processes Information Ultimately, the goal is not constant focus, but a short period of distraction-free time every day. Try these three tips to help you become more focused and productive:

5 Ways To Innovate By Cross-Pollinating Ideas Editors’ note: The following is an adapted excerpt of InGenius (Harper One) by Tina Seelig. What happens when you cross a checkerboard with a midnight snack? You get edible checkers, sold with the motto "beat ’em and eat ’em." These are just a few of the wonderfully fanciful ideas in John Cassidy and Brendan Boyle’s The Klutz Book of Inventions. This is similar to the philosophy behind the Japanese art of chindōgu, which involves coming up with "unuseless" inventions. 1. Being able to connect and combine nonobvious ideas and objects is essential for innovation and a key part of the creative-thinking process. Alan Murray, head of the School of Design at the Edinburgh College of Art, gave his former graduate students at the Technical University of Eindhoven a surprising assignment to help them hone these skills. 2. On a different scale, this type of cross-pollination takes place in our communities as ideas are randomly rearranged from cross-cultural sources. 3. 4. 5.

10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Testing a Business Idea You've got a business idea you're jazzed about, but aren't sure if it's feasible. What you need to do is test the concept to see how it stands up to a series of rigorous questions. "You are always testing," says Andre Marquis, Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "What you start with is rarely what you end up with." Where to begin? 1. 2. 3. 4. Related: How to Sharpen Your Decision-Making Skills 5. 6. 7. Related: 9 Proven Sales Tips for Introverts 8. 9. 10.

How To Stay Productive After Work I've had to come to terms with this. I have ideas for things that would be cool, but I'm usually too tired in the evening. After getting everyone fed, I just want to sit on the couch and watch YouTube. My husband has been great, nudging me towards not beating myself up over needing to relax. This article is probably for the single people on this site with no kids (93% of readers). Also, why YouTube? I am seriously addicted to Let's Plays of various RPGs, especially ones that I played when I was a kid, but only vaguely remember now. I could play them, true, but then I'd be up until 4am.

10 passos para ganhar a vida fazendo o que gosta Tem muita gente que adora o que faz e é apaixonado pela própria carreira, mas também tem muita gente que está preso a um emprego que não gosta ou pelo menos que não os motiva. Trabalhar fazendo o que você adora é bom para você e para seu empregador, sem dúvida. Mas como transformar o sonho em realidade? Veja estas 10 dicas para transformar sua paixão em carreira: 1 – Busca espiritual Para ganhar a vida fazendo o que gosta, é preciso primeiro gastar um tempo pensando sobre o que te traz prazer. Para isto, pense no assunto e descubra quais são as coisas que você gosta de fazer, incluindo o máximo de detalhes e informações específicas que for possível, sem categorizar em uma carreira ou indústria específica. Somente depois de ter uma lista do que você gosta de fazer, você deve pensar nas carreiras que se encaixam nesta lista. 2 – Separe um tempo para fazer acontecer Agende um tempo para elaborar o plano que vai te levar lá, e escreva esse plano, mesmo que ele seja detalhado em pequenos passos.

21 Chrome Web apps for serious work | Applications The Chrome browser is rapidly gaining fans and developers are responding by creating apps that will help keep you productive in Google's browser. Add these 21 apps to a Chromebook, and you'll have great tools for working anywhere. Some of these apps, like Citrix Receiver, will run only on a Chromebook. Most, however, will run in the Chrome browser on any OS, and some are just links to a Web page. Google Chromebooks, by the way, keep gaining features that make them more appealing as thin clients in a business setting. The latest update to the Chrome OS brought VPN and secure Wi-Fi support (802.1X), in addition to speed boosts.

Um método incomum para superar a fome e emagrecer Uma nova pesquisa da Universidade de Waseda, no Japão, revelou que gastar apenas alguns minutos pulando corda pode ser a maneira perfeita de reduzir o apetite e perder peso. Essa atividade é melhor que outras, como ciclismo, para afastar a fome e reduzir a ingestão de calorias. Embora seja popular entre pugilistas e conhecida por ser uma excelente forma de exercício aeróbico, acredita-se ser a primeira vez que cientistas demonstram o poderoso efeito que pular corda tem sobre a fome. 7 exercícios que detonam a gordura para praticar em casa (ou nas redondezas) O estudo Os pesquisadores recrutaram 15 homens em seus vinte e poucos anos e pediram que eles jejuassem por 12 horas antes de participar de uma experiência para ver que tipo de exercício funcionava melhor. Os homens então passaram por três testes separados. Mais tarde, repetiram o exercício, desta vez usando uma bicicleta estática.

Inventer avec Office Inventer avec Office Si Thomas Edison, les frères Wright, l'équipe d'Apollo 11 ou Thomas Jefferson avaient utilisé les produits Office pour respectivement inventer l'ampoule, voler, aller sur la lune ou écrire la déclaration d'indépendance, voici ce que ça aurait donné. On y croit ! [Source et photo] Vous avez aimé cet article ? 50 Life Secrets and Tips | High Existence - Aurora Memorize something everyday.Not only will this leave your brain sharp and your memory functioning, you will also have a huge library of quotes to bust out at any moment. Poetry, sayings and philosophies are your best options.Constantly try to reduce your attachment to possessions.Those who are heavy-set with material desires will have a lot of trouble when their things are taken away from them or lost. Possessions do end up owning you, not the other way around. Read “Zen and the Art of Happiness” by Chris Prentiss.This book will give you the knowledge and instruction to be happy at all times regardless of the circumstances.

The Pen & Paper: the most underrated creativity and productivity tool I decided to write this entire article up using a pen and paper, with the intention of typing it up once I was done. I only got about four paragraphs in before my hand started to ache, and my paper was a mess of scrawls, crossed out sentences, quickly becoming more and more illegible as I went further down the page. The last time I wrote something of this length by hand was probably in university during an exam, and I can’t imagine how I did it then. But there is something to be said for the simplicity of the pen and paper. Whether it’s a mundane to-do list or the beginnings of a best-selling novel, using a pen and paper can be very satisfying, if not a little messy. I may not write up long one thousand word articles using a pen and paper, but there are many other situations where putting pen to paper is a more satisfying, more organised, and potentially a more creative experience. The Practicality of Pen and Paper Getting More Done I’ve tried a lot of different productivity methods.

10 Proven Strategies of High-Performance Teams [INFOGRAPHIC] Ronald Brown is a successful startup CEO with an extensive background in technology and consumer marketing. His new book, Anticipate. The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success is available via iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Who drives product innovation? The answer is small, entrepreneurial development teams — better known as "agile teams" in the high-tech industry. These types of teams are obviously essential for startups, but many large companies approach team-building in the same way, especially those that lead the industry in terms of product revenue. What are the essential elements — the genetic structure, if you will — of a high-performance team? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, francisblack

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