How to start your day at 5:00 AM I have been an early-riser for over a year now. Monday through Friday I wake up at 5:00 AM without hitting the snooze button even once. I never take naps and rarely feel tired throughout the day. Many people simply “can’t” get up early because they are stuck in a routine. Relocate your alarm clock.Having an alarm clock too close to your bed is the number one reason people simply cannot get up in the morning. Scrap the snooze.The snooze feature on all modern alarm clocks serves absolutely no constructive purpose. Change up your buzzerIf you use the same buzzer day in and day out, you begin to develop a tolerance to the sound. Make a puzzleIf you absolutely cannot wake up without repetitive snoozing, try making a puzzle for yourself. Get into a routineGetting up at 5:00 AM is much easier if you are doing it Monday through Friday rather than sporadically during the week. Have a reasonMake sure you have a specific reason to get up in the morning.
How to feel better now What makes you happy? I find directly pursuing happiness is difficult to do. Many times the things we think will make us happy fail to do so. Instead I like to focus on growth and developing a strong life philosophy that can guide you through tough times and help you enjoy successes. But what about feeling good right now? Hack One: Goals Nothing creates a bigger jolt of enthusiasm than a new inspiring vision of the future. Hack Two: Chores Procrastination sucks. Hack Three: Laugh Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Hack Four: Aid Help someone who needs it. Hack Five: Socialize One of the leading evolutionary theories for explaining the size of the human brain is our complex social structure. Hack Six: Inspiration Find something to get you inspired, even if just for a short time. Hack Seven: Exercise Exercise releases various chemicals into your brain which leave you feeling good. Hack Eight: Posture Change the way you hold your body to reflect someone who is happier. Hack Nine: Music
5 Essential Traits for Community Managers Stuart Foster is a marketing consultant in the Boston area. He specializes in brand management, social media, and blog outreach. He authors a blog at Thelostjacket.com. Community manager is the new it position in social media. To establish hardcore communities of evangelists around your brand, you need to have one. However, what makes up a successful community manager? Some basic tenets and rules apply regardless of the company. 1. This is absolutely essential and cannot be faked with any amount of money, time and effort. Muhammad Saleem, community manager for Tip'd, recommends that you "Be incredibly patient and approachable and never lose your cool, ever. Muhammad is able to put the community's needs ahead of his own and maintain a calm and cool visage. 2. It's great to push content and provide awesome information about your company to your community, but you need to provide more. 3. This is essential. This requires a time commitment. 4. 5. More branding resources from Mashable:
How to be a friend of yourself Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.Eleanor Roosevelt We often focus on building relationships with others that we forget the essential first step: being friends of ourselves. That is the crucial first step if we are to have good relationships with others. How can we have good relationships with others if we don’t even have good relationship with ourselves? The problem might be worse than we expect. Maybe we don’t like ourselves without realizing it. Your pastMaybe you have made mistakes in the past which you feel bad about. Is there anything that resonate with you? Fortunately, there are always things you can do to fix the situation. 1. You may have made those mistakes in the past, but is there anything you can do about them? 2. There are some things you cannot change, such as your background and your past. 3. Instead of focusing on your weaknesses, focus on your strengths. 4. 5. You are unique. 6.
The Gentle Art of Saying No It’s a simple fact that you can never be productive if you take on too many commitments — you simply spread yourself too thin and will not be able to get anything done, at least not well or on time. But requests for your time are coming in all the time — through phone, email, IM or in person. To stay productive, and minimize stress, you have to learn the Gentle Art of Saying No — an art that many people have problems with. What’s so hard about saying no? But it doesn’t have to be difficult or hard on your relationship. Value your time. What are your ways of saying “no”?
How to become an early riser By Leo Babauta I’ve found that waking early has been one of the best things I’ve done as I’ve changed my life recently, and I thought I’d share my tips. I just posted about my morning routine, and thought you might like to know how I get up at 4:30 a.m. For many years, I was a late riser. So, I set out to make waking up early a habit. Here are my tips for becoming an early riser: Don’t make drastic changes. Motivation If you want to make things happen the ability to motivate yourself and others is a crucial skill. At work, home, and everywhere in between, people use motivation to get results. Motivation requires a delicate balance of communication, structure, and incentives. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. Master these key points and you’ll increase motivation with a bit of hard work. Ever wondered exactly how self confident you actually are? Related Articles: How To Be Happy At Work:Employee Motivation How To Increase Your Will Power
Interview with Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek (1) If you heard of a new book called The 4-Hour Workweek, you know who is Timothy Ferriss. Tim speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003. Recently his book caught my attention. The title itself is very attractive to me who work at least 40 hours per week (if not more). In Part 1 I ask Tim about some general questions, including his view on productivity and 20/80 rules. Q: Tim, you have done a lot in your life – you are a kickboxing champion, a world record holder in tango, as well as running a multinational firm. TTT: There are a few fun ones that stand out, like finally training in kendo in Japan, where I killed myself last September and fulfilled a life-long dream, but I’m definitely most “proud” of conquering two fears. Second, writing this book required me to conquer serious inner demons. TTT: There are a few reasons.
The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures « OkTrends 3.6 Beta 2 Hello, old friends. I am back from dark months of data mining, here now to present my ores. To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things: Facial Attitude. In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong. One of the first things we noticed when diving into our pool of photos is that men and women have very different approaches to the camera. Women smile about 50% more than men do and make that flirty-face four times as often. Now, you’re always told to look happy and make eye contact in social situations, but at least for your online dating photo, that’s just not optimal advice. Notice that, however, that flirting away from the camera is the single worst attitude a woman can take. Men’s photos are most effective when they look away from the camera and don’t smile: Weird. The Cleavage Shot
How to understand people My headline might sound overreaching. Clearly a rule can’t define something as complex as human behavior. But despite this, I’ve found most people tend to make the same mistakes. These mistakes are frequent enough that they create conflicts later. People Skills is About Being Nice, Friendly and Interesting, Duh! Most the books I’ve read on dealing with people either make two claims: Incredibly obvious stuff that most sensible people understand; even if they haven’t always mastered it. Between these two I’ve found there seems to be a gap of information that is can be applied generally, but isn’t always obvious. The Seven Here are the seven rules I’m talking about: Rule One: Never blame malice for what can easily be explained by conceit. People don’t care about you. In this example, 60% of thoughts are self-directed. Only 10% in this model is time spent in empathy. Within that 10%, most people then divide attention between hundreds of other people they know. What does this mean?
A 3-Step Cure for Digital Packrats, and How to Know If You’re On Post written by Leo Babauta. I have a confession to make: until recently, I was a digital packrat. While my outer life has become fairly simple, as I declutter my home and workspace, and my paper files have also become pretty simple, my digital life was a mess. I had all kinds of files on my hard drive, just because I thought I might need them. Trouble is, there are costs to such packrattery. How do I know? How to Know If You’re a Digital Packrat The main way to know: 1) you feel that you should keep a lot of files “just in case”; 2) it takes you too long to find stuff; 3) your digital life is becoming complicated, with multiple email accounts, drives, storage mediums and either a mess of files or a mess of folders. But here are a few symptoms: Do you have 20 or more folders and sub-folders in your documents folder on your hard drive? If you answered “yes” to more than one of these questions, more than likely, you’re a digital packrat. Go through a massive purge.
How to keep your life organized By Leo Babauta It’s a rare person among us who doesn’t feel the need to get more organized. I consider myself fairly organized, for example, but there are times when I get a little lax about my organizational rules, and there’s always room for improvement. And if you’re already organized (read: you’re an organizational freak), chances are, you like to read about others’ organizational systems. As such, there should be something for everyone on this list. A couple of weeks ago, I asked all of you for your best organizational tips and tools. I must emphasize: these are not my tips, but yours, and when you see the word “I” it refers to the reader writing the tip, not me. 3 Most Important Tasks.