Sunday 30 June 2013
Saturday 29 June 2013
Friday 28 June 2013
Thursday 27 June 2013
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Give Yourself Enough Room to Play (And Fail)
Award-winning writer and comedian Ricky Gervais writes on his blog:
I don’t mean don’t become an adult with responsibility and the weight of the world on your shoulders. I simply mean if you’re writing or directing give yourself enough time to play. Play the fool. Goad. Shock. Laugh. Trip over something that isn’t there. Try something. And never be afraid to fail. That failure is useful too. It’s just another building block.
Essentially, Gervais makes two points on stimulating creativity: give yourself enough room to play (e.g., do something purely for fun’s sake), and engage in something with a high probability of rejection or failure.
Don’t take yourself too seriously! Once you’re done that work, recharge your juices by playing. Build something goofy. Draw something with your non-dominant hand. Record yourself playing the 20th Century Fox music on an unfamiliar instrument. That sort of thing.
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Tuesday 25 June 2013
Monday 24 June 2013
Sunday 23 June 2013
Saturday 22 June 2013
Friday 21 June 2013
Thursday 20 June 2013
Beware of Group-Think
There’s a reason you were hired and are part of your team. You bring your own unique insights to the table. But research shows us that even the best of us are susceptible to creativity-crushing group-think. OPEN Forum reveals a study in which a group of 12 people were ask to determine which of the lines on the right (bel0w) were the same length as the one on the left. The results are fascinating:
While the answer is obviously C, his studies showed that people who would otherwise be certain of their convictions could be “manipulated” into questioning their beliefs. This was not done through coercion, peer pressure or even incentives. Nine experiment participants were shown the above image and were asked to call out which line on the right was the same length as the one on the left. This was done 12 times. Only one of the nine participants was actually being tested. The other eight were “plants” and were told to purposefully call out incorrect answers.
Read more about the study at OPEN Forum, this month’s sponsor of Workbook.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/NVSauWm8B48/beware-of-group-think
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Tuesday 18 June 2013
Monday 17 June 2013
Sunday 16 June 2013
Saturday 15 June 2013
Friday 14 June 2013
Ambition, Relationships, and the Pursuit of Well-Being
Ambition is arguably a very important component of doing well in our work. It helps us take on new challenges, grow our skills, and advance in our careers. However, it’s possible that ambition comes at a cost of our relationships. Long hours can keep us away from our families, competition among colleagues can fray friendships, and a focus on achieving the next “step” at the expense of all else can be borne from ambition and negatively impact our well-being.
Allow work to be a vehicle for well-being, not an obstacle to overcome on the path to well-being.
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Thursday 13 June 2013
Wednesday 12 June 2013
Use a Deadline Buffer to Avoid Stress
Big projects with important deadlines have a greater impact on your day-to-day work than just the day they’re due. Newport offers a simple and elegant solution to make sure you aren’t hit with a tsunami of work when multiple major projects come due at the same time.
In your calendar software (or paper calendar) create an all-day event that exists for the week prior to the final due date for a project. By doing this you will have a better sense of when “crunch time” for that project will be and you can avoid scheduling meetings or making other commitments during that time. If you don’t do this, you may be unwittingly signing yourself up for a hellacious work load that could’ve been avoided.
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On Decision Making
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Tuesday 11 June 2013
Monday 10 June 2013
Losing Motivation? Keep Your Mouth Shut.
If you’re losing motivation to do something, you may be talking about your plans and goals too much to other people. While keeping people posted on your work never hurts, it could sabotage your own motivation.
Entrepreneur and programmer Derek Sivers recommends keeping your mouth shut when it comes about your future plans and goals:
Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.
In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality”, even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.
Instead of talking about it, just start making moves. Keep your progress and momentum to yourself. Don’t announce it, don’t share it in a status on Facebook, and don’t Tweet about it.
Don’t give your ego the satisfaction of attention until you actually complete your product or goal.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/BhT7TACy5KI/losing-motivation-keep-your-mouth-shut
Sunday 9 June 2013
Saturday 8 June 2013
Friday 7 June 2013
Thursday 6 June 2013
Be The Dumbest Person In The Room
You hustled hard to get here, and now you’ve finally made it. Your teammates all adore you. Your peers all look up to you. You are your team’s Kobe Bryant; you are the all-star. Sounds like good living, right?
Would you believe it if someone told you that you were on the wrong team?
There’s this well-spread piece of wisdom which suggests that, “You should be the dumbest person in the room.” However, this can be an extremely uncomfortable environment to explore. Wouldn’t people think you’re a liability? Or would others people perceive you to be less intelligent?
Noah Callahan-Bever, editor-in-chief of Complex Magazine, thinks the opposite is usually true:
If you surround yourself with the smartest people you can find, people will think you’re a lot smarter than you are. Only insecure people think this works the other way.”
When given a choice, surround yourself with people smarter than you. Not only will you learn at an accelerated rate and be more energized by the knowledge gap, you’ll also appear smarter.
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Wednesday 5 June 2013
Tuesday 4 June 2013
Does Being Present in the Moment Increase Your Luck Factor?
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “continuous partial attention,” it was coined by Linda Stone, a former senior exec at Apple and Microsoft. Stone now focuses much of her time on thinking about focus, attention, and “conscious computing” — the notion of getting back into our physical bodies while using technology.
The Atlantic has a great interview with Stone in their June issue, where she talks about the benefits of truly be present in the moment, rather than lost in what’s happening on our phones. Here’s Stone:
When we learn how to play a sport or an instrument; how to dance or sing; or even how to fly a plane, we learn how to breathe and how to sit or stand in a way that supports a state of relaxed presence. My hunch is that when you’re flying, you’re aware of everything around you, and yet you’re also relaxed. When you’re water-skiing, you’re paying attention, and if you’re too tense, you’ll fall. All of these activities help us cultivate our capacity for relaxed presence.
…
In this state of relaxed presence, our minds and bodies are in the same place at the same time and we have a more open relationship with the world around us.
Another bonus comes with this state of relaxed presence. It’s where we rendezvous with luck. A U.K. psychologist ran experiments in which he divided self-described lucky and unlucky people into different groups and had each group execute the same task. In one experiment, subjects were told to go to a café, order coffee, return and report on their experience.
The self-described lucky person found money on the ground on the way into the café, had a pleasant conversation with the person they sat next to at the counter, and left with a connection and potential business deal. The self-described unlucky person missed the money – it was left in the same place for all experimental subjects to find, ordered coffee, didn’t speak to a soul, and left the café. One of these subjects was focused in a more stressed way on the task at hand. The other was in a state of relaxed presence, executing the assignment.
We all have a capacity for relaxed presence, empathy, and luck. We stress about being distracted, needing to focus, and needing to disconnect. What if, instead, we cultivated our capacity for relaxed presence and actually, really connected, to each moment and to each other?
Stone also writes about how to be present in a technology-driven world in our new 99U book, Manage Your Day-to-Day . Learn more about the book and our contributors here.
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