Reading and Reflection
This Week 7’s (12.14 – 12.31) Affirmation: Mindfulness – I will reach for mindfulness each day.
Date – 12.26.17
B-Book 44: Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
The key message in this book: Often we stop dead in our tracks just when we’re about to start achieving real success. Instead of just going for it, we can overthink our actions. Take the time you need to identify your enemies and allies along the path to your goal, and stay focused. Remember that challenges are just an opportunity to grow stronger; you can defeat resistance if you remain completely dedicated.
Actionable advice: Don’t let fear overcome you.
Fear kills passion. When you feel the urge to abandon your work, take a step back and try to quiet the chattering in your mind. Focus on the joy and satisfaction your work brings you, rather than on the fear of failure. Conquering this fear is a major step toward always working with passion
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: –
Stubbornness also helps you stay dedicated to your work, especially in difficult times. Steve Jobs
- Certain things help you move toward your goals, while others get in the way.
- Ambition and self-awareness are the real keys to achieving any goal, but they’re always under threat by a common enemy: resistance
- Resistance manifests in a number of ways. When you’re working on something meaningful that you have real passion for, but find yourself bogged down by self-criticism and doubt, that’s resistance setting in.
- Any activity that requires a lot of energy and time can draw resistance. Actually, the more important an activity is to you, the more you’ll have to fight the resistance that acts against it.
- Passion and dedication are strong allies, but they aren’t the only ones. Traits that we tend to perceive as negative – like ignorance and stubbornness – can be allies too,
- Stubbornness also helps you stay dedicated to your work, especially in difficult times – Steve Jobs
Excessive preparation, overthinking and working without a clear structure are all barriers to completing your goals
- Have you ever had a great idea, but failed to put it into practice because you spent so much time preparing for it
- Let’s look at some strategies for avoiding this counterproductive habit.
- Excessive preparation and overthinking prevent you from getting things done, so learn to resist them.
- It’s better to act first and reflect on it later, especially when you’re starting a new project. Start focusing on doing work, not thinking about it.
- So if you’re a writer, for example, action means putting words on the page, whilereflection means evaluating what you’ve written the next day. Don’t try to do these two things at the same time; instead, create productive schedules and structures for yourself.
Overcome creative blocks by confronting the enemies within you
- It’s normal to hit a block now and then when you’re working on something creative. Most of us lose confidence when this happens, but there are ways to overcome creative blocks
- When you hit a wall, stay calm and remember that it’s always possible to get past it. Recognize that there’s an enemy force that’s actively working against you and your dreams.
- This enemy isn’t hidden within your boss, your children or your spouse – it’s insideyou. It’s in your head and only you can defeat it, so don’t place blame on the outside world.
- But remember that just because this enemy is inside you, it doesn’t mean that it is you. You haven’t done anything wrong yourself; it’s just resistance trying to block your true creative self
- When resistance appears, it forces you to ask two questions of yourself; only one answer to each of these will allow you to go on with your personal pursuit.
- The first question is, how badly do you want this? If your answer is that you’re just in it for the money, fame or power, you simply won’t succeed. You must be completely committed to pushing yourself toward your goal, which is why the only answer to this question that will allow you to push on is “totally committed.”
- The second question is, why do you want this? It’s alright if you want something just for the fun or beauty of it, but your answer should include something along the lines of, “because I have no choice.”
- Only this kind of profound dedication and determination will push you to do what you really want
Finishing your work and overcoming fear and crashes make you stronger
- At some point in your career, you’re almost certainly going to face the Big Crash, a major obstacle you have to overcome. Perhaps your computer suddenly crashes and takes your unfinished novel with it, or maybe a major problem in your personal life pushes you off track
- Crashes can be extremely difficult and demanding, but they can be of benefit to you in the long run. A crash forces you to figure out what is and isn’t working in your project
- But resistance is often strongest when you’re about to finish a project and have to push through it
- The good news about overcoming struggles like this is that the more problems you overcome, the easier they’ll be to overcome in the future. Crashes ultimately help us become wiser and stronger
This Week 6’s (12.17 – 12.23) Affirmation: Rest: I will get 6-hours of Sleep each Night!
Date – 12.21.17
B-Book 43: Doing the Right Things Right by Laura Stack
The key message in this book: As an executive you are responsible for the environment in your company, and for the performance of your team. You are their leader, but you’ll find productivity only when you act like you’re a part of the team. That means establishing goals, being respectful and, perhaps most importantly, looking out for the team’s (and your own) well-being
Actionable advice: Don’t overthink it.
The next time you need to make an important decision and you’re torn between several options, don’t think too much. Simply compare the possible benefits and repercussions of every action, ask yourself what’s best for your team and business, listen to your gut – and act.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: –
Leaders must set the right kinds of goals and communicate them effectively to the team
- As a leader of a company you are like a captain of a ship. You must steer you company clear of icebergs and to do so you have to follow certain best practices:
- 1. Goals: Set clear goals and align team with overall company mission. Goals give focus and provide sense of purpose; purpose -> productivity.
- You have to make sure goals align properly. Properly alignment prevents time wasting on projects that don’t advance the company.
- 2. Communication: If you’re not clear and specific about what your team should be doing, there’s a good chance you’ll waste time and money on ineffective workers who are unsure about how they can be useful.
- 1. Goals: Set clear goals and align team with overall company mission. Goals give focus and provide sense of purpose; purpose -> productivity.
- Make sure everyone knows exactly how they’re contributing to the goal. And provide both written and verbal instructions to ensure there’s no misunderstanding
A leader must be willing to adapt along with the changing marketplace and act on their ideas
- Change: some people love it and some people hate it
- whatever your personal preference might be, as a leader, you need to be willing to adapt and change with the modern world if you hope to keep your company profitable.
- Inevitably, the companies that refuse change, and insist on playing by the same old rules, are doomed to fail.
- By embracing new ideas, you can also attract new clients and keep your company looking fresh, modern and relevant.
- And when it comes time to implement a change or execute a decision, a leader must do this with confidence.
- Results are what matter most in business, and there are no results without action. And action, of course, requires a plan.
- So, once you have a good and thoughtful plan – and a policy for what to do if it doesn’t work out – act on it! Even if it turns out to be a dud, it’ll probably prove better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.
To do excellent work, a team must have the tools they need and be properly motivated
- Another practice for successful leadership is to create an open work culture that allows your team to be as efficient as they can be.
- If you’re uncertain about how to properly motivate someone on the team, don’t be afraid to ask what kind of task he or she might find particularly challenging. Another tip that can increase efficiency is to reward team members who come up with ways to save time.
- Simplifying how your team can get things done and removing any obstacles that might be in the way is another important part of any leader’s job.
- A successful team is one that is able to perform at its best. It shouldn’t have to wrestle with outdated software, a slow internet connection or faulty computers and printers.
- Keep an eye out for unnecessary paperwork or redundant procedures that might be slowing things down. Sometimes, the way things are being done can create problems.
There are many ways to motivate your team, and it’s also important to establish mutual respect
- Motivation is what gets your team to be passionate about their work. It’s what will make them dedicated workers who can tackle the most difficult tasks
- When your team is motivated, you’ll find there’s nothing they can’t do, whether it’s handling endless requests from the fussiest of clients or being creative enough to launch an app that makes learning calculus fun.
- So it’s the leader’s job to motivate their team and get them to care about the work they do.
- There are many ways to motivate your team:
- It is important that each person understands his/her work is important
- Avoid micromanaging
- Celebrate accomplishments
- Earn your team’s respect. At the heart of a successful company is a feeling of mutual respect between the team and its leader.
- To establish this, you must first show them your respect, which you can do by regularly asking for their opinion and never dismissing their concerns.
- And to solidify their respect, always keep your promises and show solidarity by putting in just as much hard work as you ask of them.
To be efficient, prioritize your work, don’t overload on data and remember to take care of yourself
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- One of the most challenging aspects of a leader is finding time to manage your team without neglecting all the other work you have on your plate.
- This is where prioritizing comes in. To sort out your work and make sure you’re doing what really needs to be done, adopt a triage mentality and rank your tasks by how important and productive they really are
- There are also disruptive activities that can seriously hurt your productivity, such as checking your email every few minutes. Every time your focus shifts, you disrupt your workflow and waste time, because you then need to re-focus your attention back to the more important work.
- Another key practice is knowing when to cut off the amount of data you let in.
- Don’t forget to take care of yourself. With so much going on, it can be easy to forget to prioritize your own health. So remember to take breaks, have fun and get enough sleep.
Date – 12.19.17
B-Book 42: Learn Better by Elrich Boser
The key message in this book: By putting in the effort and focusing on learning, almost everyone can become an expert or master in almost any field. But to do this you’ll need to invest the time and use some tried-and-true strategies. Just remember these six steps: value, target, develop, extend, relate and rethink. With these methods, you’ll be well on your way to better learning.
Actionable advice: Space out your learing
The next time you’re studying for an important exam, make sure to split your learning into several sessions. You certainly know the frustration of spending an entire day studying only to find, just a few hours later, that you’ve already forgotten almost everything. To spare yourself this frustration and learn more efficiently, you need to break up your learning into small achievable goals and spread it out over time, instead of trying to learn everything in one sitting. Your brain needs breaks to store new information, so go ahead – take one!
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: –
Learning is easy. You just need the right tools and strategies
- Learning ability is not predicated on innate intelligence; you can drastically improve your learning by using a few learning strategies
- Some strategy include:
- Learning the mechanics of a particular action and execute it many times
- Self quizzing – repeatedly recalling and testing yourself on what you have been taught. Help new ideas stick in long term memory
- Use earplug to block out external noise
If you can find meaning in your study, your learning is going to get better, fast
- Learning can be made more effective by using the 6 steps of learning:
- Step 1: Value – If you can make the skills or knowledge you’re learning valuable and meaningful, you’ll be much more driven to take initiative and persevere. So if say you don’t like statistic, but you have to take it, find value by doing a bit of historic research or something to make it fun.
You’ll need to set small, specific goals to master a skill, but first you’ll want to be sure of the basics
- Newton discover gravity when an apple fell on his head, but we all can’t rely on happenstance – breakthroughs come from –
- Step 2: Setting Target – If you can make the skills or knowledge you’re learning valuable and meaningful, you’ll be much more driven to take initiative and persevere
- But there’s more to mastering a skill than breaking up your goals. You also need to build up some background knowledge before you begin. That’s because it’s difficult to really grasp a new subject or field before you’ve gotten a handle on the basics.
When it comes to learning, the importance of feedback can’t be overemphasized
- Being evaluated by an audience is a fantastic way to improve.
- Step 3: Develop -that is, to hone your skills by getting feedback. After all, when you’re learning, you often don’t know in what areas you need to improve. Someone else’s perspective is bound to help in the long run, even if it feels like it’s slowing you down at the time
- Another way to improve is to decrease error rate by monitoring and recording your mistakes.
You can improve your learning by immersing yourself in your field and making things visual
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- You might think that renowned writers, artists or scientists were born to succeed in their respective fields. But, in reality, geniuses are forged in the crucible of continuous learning.
- Step 4: Continuous Learning – you’ve got to extend the knowledge you already possess, if you aspire to reach the highest echelons; you’ll have to constantly improve your understanding of a given topic you want to be expert in.
- A further technique you can use for deepening your skills and knowledge is to visualize images with your mind’s eye. The famous rooms in a castle technique can be employed here. You can also use humor or anything that mark the emotion – scariness.
- Through the simple act of visualizing, you too can benefit and learn the concepts and facts you need in your chosen field.
- You might think that renowned writers, artists or scientists were born to succeed in their respective fields. But, in reality, geniuses are forged in the crucible of continuous learning.
Understanding relationships between concepts and practicing different approaches to a skill makes for better learning
- It’s said that the best way to master a new skill is to practice it over and over again. But the problem is that practice alone isn’t actually all that efficient.
- Step 5: Relate – you’ve got to relate; you have to develop an understanding of the relationship between concepts.
- Example of Psychologist Charles Judd and the experiment throwing darts at underwater target. Those with understanding of refraction could improve but those without simple had no idea. It didn’t matter how much practice, they lact the conceptual understanding.
We can eliminate overconfidence by reviewing our knowledge
- Have you ever refuse to ask for help with directions, choosing rather to drive around in circles because you believe you know how to get somewhere
- Step 6: Rethink – review your knowledge – to rethink – and thus prevent exactly this sort of mistake.
- Overconfidence leads to mistakes on a fairly regular basis. People usually overestimate their past performance and familiarity: they think they’ve learned more than they really have, and so expect to perform well in the future. Custer had this problem
- Reviewing your knowledge and understanding helps you to deal with overconfidence.
Date – 12.16.17
B-Book 41: Living the 80/20 Way by Richard Koch
The key message in this book: The 80/20 principle says that 80 percent of what we want is generated by 20 percent of what we actually do. In other words, if you figure out what you want and focus on what makes you happy, you’ll be able to create more with less.
Actionable advice: Make a list of things that actually matter to you and then focus your energy on them.
Doing so will prioritize your happiness and fulfillment. And it has an added benefit: When you focus on yourself and what you really want, you stop wasting as much energy worrying about what other people think of you.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: –
Working all day, every day makes you less productive. To achieve more, you need to do less.
- The story of how computers evolved matches a wider trend in human activity: doing more with less. And in fact, the history of agriculture followed a similar path
- Over 300 years ago, close to 98 percent of the labor force harvested food. Due to technological advances, today in developed countries only 2 to 3 percent of the working population is involved with agriculture. And yet we grow and harvest more food than ever!
- This is the driving force behind the 80/20 principle: the best 20 percent of our efforts produce 80 percent of the results. And by applying this principle everywhere, we can transform our lives.
- We tend to believe that if we spend as much time as possible working, we’ll be the most productive. Yet if you apply the 80/20 principle, you would realize that the best way to achieve more is to work less!
- If you have a project to do within a week and you give yourself the full time, you tend to procrastinate, if instead you say to want to complete it in under the 80/20 rule – 1 day, you will work more diligently to get it done and move on to other things.
To follow the 80/20 principle, set a destination, chart a route to get there, and then go for it!
- So first, pick a destination: Where do you want the 80/20 principle to take you?
- Reflect upon your dreams, goals and objectives. Ask yourself, “What’s the best 20 percent of my life on which I’d like to focus?
- Once you’ve selected a destination, you’ll need to find the best route, or how to get there.
- Take time to figure out how to concentrate on these areas with least effort, but best results. Remember, there’s never just one path: think outside the box!
Focus your attention on your happiness islands: what is it that gives you the most pleasure?
- Most of us live in awe of time, feeling like we don’t have enough time to do the things we want. The 80/20 principle can take care of this.
- If you dedicate yourself to working harder for a shorter period of time, you’ll find your work improved and your free time expanded.
- To do this you have to find your happiness Islands (times you feel most creative and happiest) – these will help you to improve productivity.
- So ultimately, when you let go of your notions about the scarcity of time and start working intelligently, you can achieve miracles
Use the 80/20 principle to invest in the long term to earn big, or save incrementally to reach a goal
- As you may know, 20 percent of Americans own over 80 percent of the entire country’s wealth
- Many following the same 80/20 logic to earn their fortunes, in that they realized you can use a small amount of money to produce unbelievable returns.
- They relied on the effect of compounding (when profits are put to the task of generating more profit) to grow relatively tiny amounts of money into large fortunes.
Instead of trying to please everyone, concentrate on the relationships that matter the most
- In the modern world, relationships matter. But many of us overextend ourselves. In our desire to build strong relationships with everyone, we end up pleasing no one.
- Since 80 percent of our relationship satisfaction stems from just 20 percent of our actual relationships, to lead a happy life, we need to concentrate on the few relationships that actually matter, such as the ones we have with our romantic partners.
- But to have a strong relationship that supports your happiness rather than undermining it, it’s important to ensure that you and your partner agree on a few basic values.
- Some 50 percent of marriages end in divorce! The best way to avoid this fate is to choose your partner wisely. If you don’t agree on the basics from the outset, it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into the relationship later on.
Things will not make you happy. Stress certainly won’t, either. Simplicity is the key
- When it comes to living a good life, simplicity is key
- The basic components of a good life, put forward by the Epicureans are, food, shelter, clothes, friends, freedom and thought.
- If you want to follow a similar path, cut out everything in your life that doesn’t make you happy.
This Week 5’s (12.10 – 12.16) Affirmation: Rest: I will get 6-hours of Sleep each Night!
Date – 12.13.17
B-Book 40: Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein
The key message in this book: Both Buddhism and psychoanalysis can shed light on the ways human beings suffer. A major focus of both traditions is an attachment to the idea that a “self” exists, which, in many cases, is the root cause of mental illness. By practicing Buddhism, you can can find freedom from suffering and a sense of calm in your mind.
Actionable advice: Allow yourself to feel pain
The next time you feel sad, don’t try to push the feeling away or deny it. Instead, realize that such emotions are a natural part of being human. During such painful moments, you have access to your innermost truth and are able to see how you are clutching to the illusion of self, causing yourself to suffer in the process.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: Buddhist Wheel of Life – Snake, Rooster , Hog – desire anger, delusion, 3 poison, freud, eros and thanatos, delusion black house , perceive self naturally – wrong, concept of no self, ego observe self, baby recognize self from mother, inflated and deflated sense of self, child force to act out of authentic nature, can’t scream when want to, true thoughts and feeling suppress – narcc and depression results, buddhist can help to detach from self, through meditation and compassion, med experience thought and feeling, bird’s eye view, med fellls the sensa and without attachment, compassion – put needs of other before your own, unmask truth, metaphor of the Hungry Ghosts, hunger, desire, delusion, in west, loneliness leads to craving attachment, east child smothered by large family, bud notice emotion without judging them, toy provide transition for kids, mindful is about force self to stay in body without thing about future and past, stay int he moment, brush teeth focus on taste and feel, mind and body single entity, mindful through breathing, focus on breath – stay present,
Buddhism and psychoanalysis have a shared emphasis on common feelings
- The Buddhist Wheel of life places desire, anger and delusion right at its center, represented by a green snake, a red rooster and a black hog, respectively, all of whom are biting each other’s tails.
- The three animals, and the feelings they represent, are at the center of this wheel because together, desire, anger and delusion all prevent us from understanding our true selves. They are known as the 3 poisons and are root of all suffering
- Freud’s psychoanalysis, Eros and Thanatos represent the same concepts as the snake and rooster in Buddhism. Freud said that while Eros and Thanatos are innate to all humans, we repress them; and that repression was the source of suffering
We delude ourselves into believing such a thing as “the self” exists
- In Buddhism, delusion (represented by the black hog) is said to prevent us from perceiving ourselves accurately. In psychoanalysis, it is the underlying cause of a variety of behavioral disorders, such as dissociative and split personality disorders
- A misunderstanding of the self is central to both Buddhism and psychoanalysis. But in Buddhism, the true nature of the self is a difficult concept to comprehend. It depend on understanding the concept of no-self. You can come it through meditation where you use the ego (separate from self) to objectively observe self, thereby attaining enlightenment.
- The psychoanalytic perspective points out that baby comes to realize his separateness from its mother and needs to reconcile this difference; if it has problems doing this, it can result in a false conception of self.
Many common, yet painful psychological disorders are caused by an inflated or deflated sense of self
- As children, we’re often expected to behave as our parents desire, which often implies acting against our authentic nature.
- Because of this tension between one’s true nature and social self, a person’s sense of self can become entirely warped; example: we have to be quiet when we want to scream
- In this way, we learn that being accepted means appearing to be someone we’re not – someone who is better, smarter, stronger or more confident. In the process, we suppress our true thoughts and feelings.
- The result can be deep-seated psychological trauma due to years of inflating and deflating our sense of self.
- Narcissism and Depression are possible symptoms of this trauma
Buddhism can offer relief from mental illness by freeing you from the self
- Buddhist practice can enable you to transcend your attachment to the self.
- Buddhist scholar Herbert Guenther explains that emptiness can help you free yourself from attachment, but clinging to emptiness as a goal is damaging. But regardless of whether reality is a void or you truly exist, Buddhism offers a life path that’s free of attachment to such ideas.
- This is accomplished through meditation and compassion. The first technique is designed to quiet your mind and enable clear thinking. When in a meditative state, you can experience your thoughts and the sensations of your body without feeling attached to them. In other words, meditation offers you a bird’s eye view of your experience.
- This is accomplished through meditation and compassion. The first technique quiets the mind and enables clear thinking. In a meditative state, you can experience thoughts and the sensations of your body without feeling attached to them. Meditation offers you a bird’s eye view of your experience.
- By practicing meditation for long enough, you can come to understand how the self is truly empty by nature.
- When you behave with compassion (a central facet of Buddhism – Dalai Lama), you instinctively put the needs of others before your own. That necessarily means keeping your ego from taking over and avoiding narcissistic behavior.
- So, while psychoanalysis works to root out the true self, Buddhism is primarily concerned with unearthing the delusion that such a thing exists. Its end goal is the unmasking of this truth and the understanding that the true nature of the self is simply emptiness
Westerners feel an unstoppable hunger, while Easterners struggle with humility
- The metaphors of the Hungry Ghosts is also used to illustrate Buddhist Wheel of Life. Ghosts have big stomach and pinhole mouths; never satisfied.
- Symbolically, their hunger can be seen as a combination of anger, desire and attachment, a type of suffering much more common in the West than the East
- Western society driven by capitalism sees mother not really connecting with children as they oftentimes have to return to work soon after birth. The child grows up with a feeling of loneliness and abandonment and as a result craves attachment.
- In the East on the other hand, families are usually large and the individualism is sacrificed for the good of group. This results in a feeling of being smothered by society and responds by developing a inflated sense of self-regard. They see themselves as better than others – humility needed.
Buddhism can help you live with your emotions
- Buddhists notice their emotions and feelings without judging them, and psychoanalysis can weigh in on this as well
- Freud: Humans babies are happy since mothers, without judgement, take care of them. Growing up toys provide a transition that mothers did in our imagination – helps us to cope emotionally
- Buddhism teaches that by the Buddhist practice of bare attention to your emotion (observing your emotion non-judgmentally) you can learn to deal with and live with them. Looking at emotions from a meditative standpoint, you will be better able to live with them. Example of Sid and his girlfriend
Practice mindfulness to feel grounded in the present and overcome suffering
- Mindfulness is about training yourself to exist in the present moment by focusing your attention on your body and breath, rather than the thoughts that constantly threaten to pull you into the depths of your own head.
- Mindfulness is a great tool to stop excessive worrying about the future or to avoid replaying painful experiences in your mind.
- The key is to feel grounded by remaining in your body. The Buddha found that humans feel alienated when our minds and bodies are in conflict, which is why it’s so important to stay in the moment
- For example, when brushing your teeth in the morning, you could let your mind focus on the sensation of the brush and the flavor of the toothpaste, rather than racing ahead to all the things you have to do at work that day.
- By doing so, your mind and body will function as a single entity, which will make things feel more real and less alien.
- You can also practice mindfulness through your breathing. In fact, most meditative practices, regardless of the tradition they come from, involve the breath in one way or another. A focus on breathing is an excellent way to stay present.
- Mindfulness is the first step to moving beyond the emptiness and suffering of living with a false self in mind. Staying focused on the present will put you in touch with your senses and reveal what is real in the current moment
Date – 12.11.17
B-Book 39: 10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks Beale
The key message in this book: For most of us, reading training ends in elementary school, which means our adult reading habits are seriously outdated. If you want to get the most out of reading, you’ll need to re-learn how to prioritize, preview and speed up your reading in order to keep up with the fast-paced world.
Actionable advice: Take a break every 20 minutes
Research shows that, while reading, people can only concentrate effectively for about 20 minutes at a time, so don’t overdo it. Give yourself a five-minute break every 20 to 30 minutes so your brain and eyes can rest. And don’t read for more than an hour before taking your break!
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: You don’t have to remember everything you read, write down important things, don’t daydream when you read, don’t regress when you read, don’t subvocalize, don’t speak what you are reading it slows you down, have a purpose for what you are reading, ask yourself why you are reading this, why do you need it, preview all nonfiction material, read a few introductory paragraphs, read subheadings, read first sentence of each paragraph, focus on keywords, – longer than 3 letters, focus on thought groups, will require using peripheral vision, develop it by practice – quickly look at a group of words – look away and try to remember them, read between the lines – just look at the top of letter, force you not to look at the words and getting stuck admiring the words, use indenting method, draw a line half inch from the start of the sentence and half inch from the end, your peripheral will pick up what’s on the sides, use finger to guide you eyes down the page (much like your eyes watching a fly), put your finger to the left or right or in middle if the paragraph is narrow – like in a newspaper,cover already read material to prevent regression,
People put too much pressure on themselves when they read
- You don’t actually have to read everything in a book or newspaper to understand
- You don’t have to remember everything you read to get something from the material.
- Try writing down the crucial information (electronically or on paper)
Becoming a more efficient reader is as easy as kicking a few bad habits
- If you do something enough times, you form a habit around it, and the same goes for reading.
- A common bad reading habit is passive daydreaming. While we read, we’re thinking about a million other topics, none of which are related to what we’re actually reading
- Turn this inefficient noodling into active mind wandering – a type of thinking that connects the information we’re reading to our own experience.
- Another inefficient habit is regression, that is, rereading what you’ve just read. To avoid regression, try covering the text you’ve just read
- Finally, lots of people subvocalize as they read, mouthing along to the words they read or mentally whispering the text. Normally, the brain can process up to 400 words per minute, but when we read at “talking speed,” we only read about 150 words per minute.
You can reading faster by taking shortcuts
- First, have a clear purpose in mind and a sense of responsibility for what you read. This will help both with organization and concentration
- Choose what to read and what to skip over by asking yourself:
- “Why am I reading this?” Throw away old stuff if they are no longer timely.
- “Why do I need this information?” It can be for a test, a meeting or even to help your child in school. If your kid’s getting good grade don’t waste your time.
- So, before reading any material, ask yourself these two critical questions; if you can’t find a good answer, don’t read it.
- Choose what to read and what to skip over by asking yourself:
- Second, pre-view all nonfiction material before actually starting to read in order to get an idea of what it’s about, as well as which parts will be relevant and interesting to you
- Begin by reading first the first few introductory paragraphs to get an idea of where the intro is heading.
- Next, read the subheadings, titles and subtitles that are usually larger and bolded.
- Finally, read the first sentence of each paragraph in order to get a better idea of what each section is about.
- Pre-viewing alone will give you a big portion – 40 percent, in fact – of the material’s key information.
- Third and final step is learning actual speed-reading techniques
To speed up your reading, try only reading the keywords
- The first technique involves focusing only on important words and skipping over the rest. Finding keywords, which are the more important words in a sentence. Typically, they are longer than three letters and carry meaning.
- Another strategy is to stop your eyes on thought groups instead of separate words. Imagine phrases as being separated by slashes: By looking for / thought groups, / you force your eyes/to move forward faster / while maintaining / good comprehension
- Comprehending the whole phrase at each stop will require you to use your peripheral vision. You can train your peripheral vision in a number of ways, such as by quickly glancing at phrases and trying to repeat them. Or, if you’re in a traffic jam, you can quickly glance at the license plate of the car in front of you and try repeating it aloud
- Don’t be surprised if your eyes feel strained as you practice these strategies, they’re just getting used to a new rhythm. The more you exercise your eye muscles, the better
Other techniques you should try are “reading between the lines” and “indenting.”
- One way to overcome the habit of subvocalizing is to focus on the white space just above each line. This way, you can still see the top half of the letters and can thus easily understand them without becoming fixated on the words themselves
- The idea here is to move through the words without getting stuck on any. You can do this more effectively if you aren’t looking directly at the words themselves
- Another strategy called the indenting method involves using your peripheral vision. Instead of placing your eyes at the beginning of each line, try aiming them half an inch inside the left margin, and then stop reading half an inch before the right margin.
- By not focusing on all the words, you reduce the number of potential starts and stops that occur while glancing over the lines. If your eyes are stopping seven or eight times per line and you can cut it down by only one stop, your overall speed can increase by more than ten percent!
- To help you get used to starting a line after it actually begins on the page, draw vertical lines about half an inch inside both margins. This way, you know exactly where to start and stop your eye movement.
- Re-learning a skill that you already have can feel frustrating. Just stick with it! It’s natural sometimes to get worse before you get better, and the rewards are definitely worth the frustration.
Use your hand or a pen to lead your eyes and create fast reading habits
- Eyes naturally follow movement. For example, when there’s a fly in the room, your eyes notice it immediately.
- Pointing and moving your fingers can be used to guide your eyes more quickly through a text. Simply place your finger to the left or to the right of a line, and as you read across the line, move your finger slowly yet steadily down toward the bottom of the page.
- When reading narrow columns like the kinds found in newspapers, you can place your index finger in the center of a paragraph just under the line you’re reading. Move it either straight down or in the shape of a snake as you read across a line in order to guide your eyes
- Next, cover the text you’ve already read in order to avoid regression. One way to do this is by using the business card method; another requires only using your hand. Make a fist with your left hand, and sticking your thumb out to the side. Then, just place your hand horizontally or vertically over the text you have just read
- These methods might be uncomfortable or even embarrassing, but they also help you develop fast reading habits. Just like training wheels, you can let them go once you no longer need them.
This Week 4’s (12.3 – 12.10) Affirmation: Rest: I will get 6-hours of Sleep each Night!
Date – 12.5-6.17
B-Book 38: The 5 Invitations by Frank Ostaseski
My Thoughts so far: I started this book a few days ago after reading a wonderful book by Haruki Murakami (1Q84). I came across Frank during a talk he had with Sam Harris, another excellent writer and all around great and smart person.
I have gone quite a bit into this book, but was struck by the instructive force this book is and ways in which it is essentially a template around which one to start to think critically about here is a summary I lifted from Google Books:
The key message in this book: ‘The Five Invitations’, an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present awareness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. In his thirty-plus years as a companion to the dying, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. A renowned teacher of compassionate care-giving, Ostaseski has distilled the lessons gleaned over the course of his career into a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us about how to forge rich and meaningful lives.
Click to read moreNotes:
- Pain + resistance = suffering
- Pain + acceptance = peace
- There is no letting go without letting in
- We confuse love with attachment. Attachment distorts our – with impermanence
- I love there is no separation. Love breeds love
- Grief is a slow deep process of the soul
- Loss last a lifetime
- When we suffer a loss, we reach for models to fix; there are no shortcuts
- Time alone does not heal. Time with loving attention heals
- Grieving the loss of someone we love is like been thrown in a raging river of powerful and conflicting emotions that pulls us down beneath the surface of our lives into the dark waters where we cannot breathe. Frantically we try to escape the whirlpool of this inner journey – surrendering we feel ourselves carried forward by gentle currents to a new destination. Emerging from the water we step ashore with refreshed eyes – we enter the world in a new way.
- Bring your whole self to the experience
The journey through grief is the path to wholeness
- In grief, we access parts of ourselves tha twere somehow unavailable to us in the past. With awareness, the journey through grief becomes a path to wholeness. Grief can lead us to a profound understand that reaches beyond our individual losses. Every time we experience a loss we have a chance to experience life at a greater depth. It opens us up to the most essential truths of our lives: the inevitability of impermanence, the causes of suffering, and illusion of separateness. We begin to appreciate that we are more than the grief. We are what the grief is moving through.
- In the end, we may still fear death, but we don’t fear living nearly as much. In surrendering to our grief, we have learned to give ourselves to life.
- In allowing ourselves to experience grief we allow ourselves to start living
Compassion is not something we possess but something we access.
Breathing – can you rest your mind in the gap?
When fear speaks courage is the heart’s answer
Date – 12.4.17
B-Book 37: Start Where You Are by Pema Chödrön
The key message in this book: You won’t live a meaningful and joyful life by avoiding your weaknesses, ignoring your demons and creating barriers to pain and sorrow. A full life is one that accepts all emotions and takes the bad with the good. It’s all part of being alive. Meditation can help you live with life’s pain and suffering, and by doing so, you’ll become a more powerful and compassionate person.
Actionable advice: Don’t cling to happy memories, pass them on.
The next time a happy memory comes to mind, instead of lingering in it and living in the past, take a deep breath and pass that happiness on to someone who needs it more than you do. Perhaps even your worst enemy.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: Meditation – living in the present, don’t avoid the present, focus on the now, two step – focus on breathing, you can drift but come back to breathing, meditation can let you see better parts of life, it gives you the chance to choose, meditation helps you to reach the state of emptiness, emptiness helps you to control anger, we chose to be angry, emptiness can help you to deal with death, embrace it, accept pain and sorrow, buddhism is about celebrating highs and low, let yourself feel the pain, you need the experience of bad and good to grow, don’t run away from suffering, be comfortable with your full self, be accepting of your weaknesses it makes you stronger, don’t repress your feeling, be familiar with anger and sadness, be close to your demons, we all have our narrative, but let go of them, they are not you, they can limit you, there is nothing to be embarrass about, be brave to let go of any limitations, leave your storylines behind, make meditation a daily part of your life, don’t separate yourself between you and other, it will cause more pain, breath in and out , by breathing you are opening your heart and sharing your goodness.
Meditation can help bring peace of mind by keeping you focused on the present.
- Meditation is all about celebrating and living in the present moment – the now
- All we ever have is the present moment, we do a pretty good job, however, of avoiding it. We get bogged down in regrets about the past or worries about the future. The more we focus our mind on the now and keep it off those hypothetical worries and regrets, the more content you will be.
- There are two steps to practicing shamatha-vipashyana meditation, and the first is to focus on your breathing.
- This simple practice will help you live in the now. And since this is your only reality, it should be the center of your awareness.
- While doing this, keep your mind from wandering to your worries and regrets.
- Everyone’s mind wanders to happy or sad thoughts. You may drift off to contemplating your to-do list or an annoying event from yesterday, but all you need to do is recognize this as normal thinking and bring your attention gently back to your breath. Don’t punish yourself or try too hard to prevent these thoughts; return attention to breathing
Maintain a joyful mind by not taking life so seriously and by looking for ways to shake things up
- It’s fair to say that most of us make a big deal out of our lives and often feel it’ll be the end of the world if we don’t do this or that. Just imagine how less stressful life could be without these added pressures. Happily, meditation can help you get there.
- Meditation will help you to see each day in a positive light and every moment as an opportunity to live in the now.
- It also enables you to proactively choose to be joyful. Life is just a collection of little moments, and you can choose how you meet these moments: with a heavy burden on your shoulders or with joy in your heart.
Free yourself from judgments by embracing emptiness
- The ultimate spiritual goal of Buddhism is called nirvana, which is often translated as “emptiness”.
- Reaching the state of emptiness, means we’re free of judgments and labels like good, bad, happy or sad. These disappear once we realize the ultimate goal is emptiness.
- Recognizing the freedom in emptiness can also help you control anger – Zen story of man disturbed by approaching empty boat. He shouts of nothing.
- We make up our own reasons to be angry, and we constantly put obstacles in our own path. Most of what happens isn’t intrinsically good or bad; it is us who ascribe these unnecessary labels.
- Embracing emptiness can also be helpful in times of death.
- Two individuals Jack and Jill both died slowly but in very different ways.
- Jill had a deep fear of the emptiness, so she fought against it desperately, spending each day crying and frightened. Her ego refused to accept emptiness.
- Jack, on the other hand, embraced the emptiness and became increasingly cheerful as his body and mind slowly faded away. Since he knew the fundamental nature of reality is emptiness, he was not resistant to it and passed away happily.
Build strength and compassion by accepting pain and sorrow
- Many who come to Buddhism for the first time think they should embrace emptiness by closing off their minds or by ignoring pain.
- But such techniques are little more than tricks that can be achieved with a bit of meditation practice; it’s a big mistake to think that they are the whole point.
- Buddhism is about celebrating both the highs and lows of life. This happens by acknowledging and feeling both positive and negative emotions but also learning not to grow attached to them or to try to avoid them.
- Let yourself feel the pain. If you don’t allow yourself to experience the bad with the good, you’ll never grow and learn how to deal with these inevitable emotions. So if you hope to be resilient and wise, the only way is to experience it all
- Those who care the most are those who have felt suffering up-close. And those who run away from suffering will inevitably end up becoming less compassionate
Strength comes from embracing your weaknesses and demons
- Some self-help books tell you to start each morning by looking in the mirror and saying things like “Today I’m going to be a better person.” Don’t do this.
- Instead, learn to be comfortable with yourself and become familiar with your strengths and weaknesses;
- Having a deep understanding of your weaknesses will make you stronger
- According to Buddhism, there are three weaknesses called the three poisons: they are craving, aversion and ignorance. They reveal themselves when we cling to things we like, run away from things we hate and ignore everything else. They’re at the root of our worst behaviors – jealousy, ignorance, hatred, apathy, violence and addiction
- But you shouldn’t repress these feelings. Instead, allow them to arise and use them to better understand yourself. Be familiar with what makes you angry or sad and where these emotions come from so that you can accept yourself for who you are. The only way to do this is by getting close to your demons. Once you stop avoiding them, they will soon go away.
Strength also comes from breaking free of your fixed narrative and not being afraid of looking foolish
- We all have our story that explain who we are, our desires and longings. But what if we just let go of them. It would free us up to be whatever in the present moment. This would be freeing because we would no longer worry about looking foolish or being embarrassed by some expectation created by some narrative we have of ourselves.
- Story of Juan’s retreat and listening to the out of key Buddhist master. It showed how brave the out of key master was for singing so terribly without any problem. It awoke deep emotion in Juan to see such braveness. The master had no such limitation on him and it showed Juan he did have to either.
- Storylines are also a way for us to lie to ourselves, even when it comes to meditation.
- When you start meditating, you might feel the need to tell others how much you’re benefiting from it, even if you’re not
Buddhism can make you strong enough to help others, even your enemies
- By making meditation part of your daily life, you’ll be moving toward a clear-mindedness and a greater awareness of those around you. Remember, being present means coming to terms with suffering, especially that of those who need help
- But it’s best to stop thinking in the strict terms of helper and helpee.
- If you see yourself as a saintly helper trying to care for others, and the people in need as being somehow below you, you’re effectively erecting barriers between yourself and others. This added separation will only cause more pain
- With tonglen breathing, you breathe in the undesirable – pain and suffering – and breathe out the desirable – strength and happiness
- If it sounds strange, it’s probably due to the Western idea of only letting in good things and rejecting anything unpleasant. But this is an important part of Buddhist meditation, and by practicing it, you are sharing your goodness and happiness with the world while letting go of your selfish desires.
- In a more advanced practice, you can also breathe in the pain of those you hate and send them your positive thoughts as you breathe out. With this practice, you’re also opening your heart so you see things from their perspective, understanding their demons and how they may have suffered in the past.
This Week 3’s (11.25 – 12.2) Affirmation: Rest: I will get 7-hours of Sleep each Night!
Date – 12.1.17
B-Book 36: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
The key message in this book: Zen meditation isn’t about achieving something – not even happiness. Rather, it’s simply bringing awareness to your breath and gradually learning to be fully present for every daily activity without any distractions.
Actionable advice: Let go of your notions of good and bad.
People tend to believe that there are good things and bad things, but this conception is very limiting. Whether something is good or bad isn’t relevant. What is relevant is being able to do an activity without passing a value judgment on it. This is the simple pursuit of peace.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: The lotus posture is an important position, life and death does not exist,the essence of Zen dissolves time and space, following the air between the world and you, end of duality, no there, the breath is the only thing, time and space does not exist, idea of time breakdown, we just have this moment, most don’t even notice the beating of their heart, no boundaries, no duality, the movement of the breath is all that there is, idea of our self , time and space do not exist, it is better to observe than to control, step back and observe, don’t try to control other behaviors, intervene only when danger to self and others, let your thought come and go – go back to breathing, practice adversity in meditation is similar to adversity in life intensity of the struggle waves diminishes over time, allow things to pass through you, excellence is not the aim, perseverance is what Zen is all about, Zen is about bring quietness to your mind, Zen is not about achieving things, only the act of meditation is important, quieting the mind, zen is a practice of pure activity, don’t attach thought to it, be absorbed totally by what you’re doing at the moment, only our action is important in the moment – now.
Click to read moreThe Zen meditation posture is a practice unto itself but also has a deeper symbolic meaning
- The posture Zen practitioners adopt when meditating promotes spirituality in and of itself.
- Taking a certain posture actually constitutes the entire practice, the sole aim of the practice is to sit in this position
- The lotus meditation posture also has a symbolic meaning that relates to the relationship between life and death.
- This concept of nonduality is essential as it applies to every aspect of the Zen worldview. Therefore, “life” and “death” don’t exist. Rather, life ends while remaining eternal. You die, yet you do not die. The body and mind dissolve but remain.
- Such seeming contradictions are unified by a single, harmonious idea, which is the essence of Zen.
The Zen practice of breathing makes us aware of our true nature while dissolving time and space
- Most people don’t notice their hearts beating, yet it’s tremendously beneficial to observe such basic life processes. That’s where Zen breathing cultivates an awareness of our true nature.
- It involves following the air as it is inhaled into our bodies and then exhaled back into the world. By noticing this process, we see that the world is one unified whole, free of boundaries.
- This practice teaches us to let go of duality and the idea that there is an “I” and an “other.” In Zen, all that exists is the movement of the breath, which comprises our Buddha or true nature
- Zen breathing goes further, dissolving the feeling of time and space. After all, when the world disappears, along with ego – the ideas and memories we hold of ourselves – time and space cease to exist. There’s no longer a specific hour on a clock, and there’s no specific room in which we’re sitting.
- While we might believe there is a specific errand we must do this afternoon, the very idea of “this afternoon” is merely an arbitrary concept. In fact, we will run this errand after doing or not doing some other things that simply happen one after the other. In this way, just like our breath, the minutes slip by without any differentiation between them.
In life as well as meditation, it’s better to observe than to control
- Most people experience their best ideas when relaxed into a state of flow
- Instead of attempting to micromanage the world, step back and observe what happens without your interference
- We might try to control other people, forcing them to do what we want, but attempts fail practically every time – all while wasting a great deal of effort
- Instead of attempting to guide their behavior to where you’d like it to be, simply watch and intervene only when they are a threat to themselves or others
- In life, as in meditation, control holds us back. Oftentimes, when we meditate, we attempt to control our thoughts and prevent them from existing – doesn’t work.
- Instead, you should wisely allow thoughts to come and go, observing them as they do so. The only proper effort here is to return the mind and concentration to your breathing.
The adversity you encounter in meditation feeds your practice
- While meditating, it’s not uncommon for people to grow tired, emotional and discouraged. But actually, all of these responses are good; encountering adversity in meditation helps you grow.
- Every struggle you face on the way to mastering your body are merely thoughts in your mind. Like waves in the sea, they arise and recede over and over. Every time you overcome such a wave, it feeds your practice and, over time, the intensity of the waves diminishes. By using this adversity to nourish your practice, you can make progress quite quickly.
- This means simply concentrating (passive – non-resistance) on your breath rather than on attempting (active – struggle) to calm your mind.
- Prepare yourself to continue focusing on your breath forever, without the expectation of sudden relief. As time passes, you will find your effort becoming more precise and less strained
In Zen practice, excellence is not the aim, and the worst students are often the best
- In Zen, excellence is not the goal, but rather patient perseverance.
- The intention of Zen is simply to practice without worrying about how difficult or effortless that practice is
- in Zen, the worst students are often the best. Since these students must overcome much greater adversity, they often undergo intensive practice, cultivating skilled, disciplined minds.
Practicing Zen isn’t about excitement or achievement
- Practicing Zen isn’t about excitement. It’s about bringing focus to our daily routines and the actions we normally perform on autopilot, like eating, cleaning, working and talking.
- Zen endeavors to maintain a feeling of quiet and happiness in the mind, rather than one of excitement and stimulation.
- The practice of Zen isn’t geared toward reaching a result. This is hard for us to grasp. When we engage in an action, the goal is to achieve something else, like fame, recognition or money. But for Zen, the intention is to do things without seeking any extra achievement.
- Only the act of meditation is important.
Zen entails discovering pure activity, which is, at its core, an act of giving
- Have you ever taken a long walk to relax, only to find that you were lost in anxious thoughts the whole time?
- It’s just one example of how frustrating it can be when thinking prevents you from living. Zen is a great tool for overcoming this dilemma. That’s because Zen is a practice of pure activity
- The goal of Zen is to purely engage in an activity without attaching thoughts to it.
- Each time you worry about what other people might think of you or your work, or whether the task you’re undertaking will be successful, you drift away from the purity of what you’re actually doing.
- the aim of Zen is to be entirely absorbed by the thing you’re doing in the moment. As you complete this activity, and begin the next, not even a trace of the previous undertaking should remain in your mind
- Zen acknowledges that true activity is a gesture of giving.
- We are not separate from the divine, and whatever we believe ourselves to create is actually the product of a larger divine consciousness. By realizing this, we can come to understand how little it matters that our creations are recognized, applauded, or even have material value.
- When we engage in an activity without such preoccupations, all our activity becomes an act of generosity. It’s just another of the many benefits of Zen. However, there’s a catch: if you engage in this practice to achieve such a sense of generosity or any of the other things Zen can offer, the practice won’t work.
- Therein lies the mystery of Zen; it eludes simplicity and cannot be encapsulated into a simple statement of right or wrong
Date – 11.29.17
B-Book 35: Mindset by Carol Dweck
The key message in this book: People with a fixed mindset obstruct their own development through their belief in innate talent and their fear of failure. On the contrary, people with a growth mindset work hard and train hard to ultimately realize their potential to the fullest. By confronting our own attitudes and ideas, we can develop a growth mindset.
The questions this book answered:
How do people differ in their mindset?
-
- Our mindset shapes whether we believe we can learn and change and grow – or not.
- An individual’s abilities are set in stone in the fixed mindset.
- Growth and development are possible in the growth mindset.
What impact does our mindset have on our behavior?
- People with a fixed mindset seek approval; those with a growth mindset seek development.
- The fixed mindset sees failures as disasters; the growth mindset sees them as opportunities.
- People with a fixed mindset avoid difficulties; those with a growth mindset relish them.
Can we change our mindset?
- Our mindset is often strongly influenced by the role models we had as children.
- Anyone can adopt a growth mindset and make the impossible possible.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: Fixed mindset is not the way to be, the growth mindset is the way to be, growth mindset see problems as challenges to be dealt with, seek approval, gm grades don’t define them, practice , makes perfect, put energy into better themselves, don’t look for approval for others, Iacocca vs Gestner approach – fixed vs growth, focus on shared development, FM – you can’t learn from failure – Sergio Garcia, make excuse or don’t analyze weakness, they are finished product, Jordan had GM, he pressed to improve himself, gifted people should try just as hard, mindset devel begin at birth, parents and teacher have a outsize effect on children mindset, bad teachers think ability is predetermined, the brain can be trained, fixed mindset is comforting, so it is hard to get rid of.
An individual’s abilities are set in stone in the fixed mindset
- People with a fixed mindset believe a person is, by nature, either intelligent and talented or stupid and incompetent, and will stay that way.
- People with a fixed mindset think that employees who are not perfect from day one never will be, so it’s best to let them go quickly.
- People with a fixed mindset believe they can only do things they show a natural aptitude for – that practice certainly does not make perfect.
- Since they are quick to judge themselves and other people as being good or bad at something, they assume others are judging them all the time, too; they tend to feel the need to show how talented and smart they are every chance they get
- They believe their entire personality is at stake: one slip-up could be enough to brand them as incompetent fools for life. They constantly seek approval from others to protect their egos and confirm that they really are as great as they think they are
Growth and development are possible in the growth mindset
- When children with a growth mindset are given a difficult math problem to solve at school, they jump to the challenge and want to do more problems just like it at home. They recognize that the more problems they solve, the more they learn
- The sky’s the limit when it comes to life’s possibilities for children with a growth mindset
- Sure, their grades reflect their status at one moment in time, but these kids believe they can learn more with hard work, dedication and perseverance.
- Whether music or sports, writing or drawing, they practice relentlessly and are quite aware that it is only through practice- failure – that they can improve their skills.
- In their relationships, they encourage their partners to continue learning and working on themselves.
- People with a growth mindset welcome problems and see them as challenges, not insurmountable obstacles. They willingly put their energy into bettering themselves and the world around them.
People with a fixed mindset seek approval; those with a growth mindset seek development
- Lee Iacocca’s good instincts paid dividends early in turning around Chrysler, but he started resting on his laurels, looking for approval from other, building his image.
- Iacocca exhibits a fixed mindset. He classified everything as either “good” or “bad,” and felt others scrutinizing him, labeling him as a winner or a loser. And because he wanted to be a winner, he tried to appear as intelligent and talented as possible instead of finding ways to improve the company.
- Lou Gestner came into IBM to find the fixed mindset. Everyone was trying to do what was best for themselves; thus, the company was not meeting customer needs.
- To change that, Gerstner broke down the company’s hierarchies and emphasized teamwork, rewarding employees who supported their co-workers. He opened up communication pathways to include himself, so he as accessible to everyone.
- Gerstner’s growth mindset enabled him to create a new work environment based on teamwork and development. The focus moved away from individuals’ success and towards shared development. Based on this concept, he was able to bring about lasting success at IBM.
The fixed mindset sees failures as disasters; the growth mindset sees them as opportunities
- People with a fixed mindset do not believe they can learn from their mistakes. They see a single failure as evidence that they will be losers forever: one defeat negates and devalues all past successes – Sergio Garcia on a bad streak would fire his caddies and blame even his shoes
- In order to preserve whatever little self-confidence they have, people with a fixed mindset make excuses, cheat, or lose interest and look the other way. They do not seek help or analyze their weaknesses, and they certainly do not try to get better by practicing. They see themselves as a finished product – not a continual process.
- Unlike Garcia, Michael Jordan had a growth mindset. Rather than finding fault in his teammates or the court’s floor, he looked for ways to improve his own skills and game. He fluffed many game winning shots, but instead of excuses, he practiced and ended up a winner.
- The solution is incredibly tiny goals. The main threats to willpower are – effort, perceived difficulty and fatigue.
People with a fixed mindset avoid difficulties; those with a growth mindset relish them
- When people with a fixed mindset are faced with a difficult situation, all they can see are risks, because the more time and energy they invest in something, the fewer excuses they have if they fail. They believe in the enormous power of natural talent: gifted people should not need to try so hard.
- This way of thinking makes it impossible for people with a fixed mindset to better themselves without questioning their own talent – and so they avoid difficult situations. They do not want to potentially make a fool of themselves. The violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg exhibited this behavior.
- Christopher Reeve did not have this mindset. Totally paralyzed he underwent a strenuous exercise program and define the odds by moving his upper body again
Our mindset is often strongly influenced by the role models we had as children
- Mindset development begins at birth. Babies come into the world with a growth mindset: they want to learn and grow as much as possible each day
- The adults in a child’s environment – usually his or her parents – play a huge role in determining whether the child maintains this desire to grow or eventually adopts a fixed mindset. Simply put, parents set a mindset example for their children.
- Parents with a growth mindset encourage their children and urge them to continue learning, whereas those with a fixed mindset are always judging their children, telling them what is right or wrong, good or bad.
- Teachers are also very important role models and influence children’s mindsets.
- There are many teachers who believe that a student’s performance is unchangeable – that good students will continue to do well and weaker students will always get Cs or Ds. Weaker students will develop a fixed mindset as a result. I personally experienced this in highschool and my with my son in elementary.
- Our mindset is not entirely predetermined. It can change as early as childhood when we adopt the mindsets of our role models.
Anyone can adopt a growth mindset and make the impossible possible
- Nobody has to be a victim of her surroundings when developing her own mindset. The brain can be trained like any other muscle: if we want a growth mindset, we can teach ourselves to think that way one step at a time
- It is important to understand that a fixed mindset is not easy to kick. It has likely become an emotional crutch over the years: it protects us from failure, creates recognition in the eyes of our parents and partners, and boosts our self-confidence. It comforts us time and again, so getting rid of it can be extremely discomforting.
Date – 11.27.17
B-Book 34: Mini Habits by Stephen Guise
The key message in this book: Instead of trying to motivate yourself to achieve daunting goals, take things one step at a time. By building up a routine of positive mini habits, you’ll give yourself the chance to enjoy small successes every day, while making real progress toward your true aspirations.
Actionable ideas from the book: Get inspired!
Want to create your own mini habits but feeling stuck for ideas? Why not check out minihabits.com for some inspiration. Once you’ve selected two or three habits, don’t let yourself forget about them – stick a reminder on the fridge or above your bed. Then, perform those habits for a week and watch as you become more energized!
Click to read moreMost of our lives are governed by our habits
- Ever had the autopilot feeling – showering, brushing teeth? – mind blank. These are tasks that have become habits, we do them automatically; 45% of our behavior are habits.
- We’re especially prone to falling into habitual behaviors when we’re stressed – tired, overwhelmed or under pressure
- Why does stress affect us in this way? Well, stress is often the result of being unable to make certain decisions
- With habits we don’t have to make decisions. They are pre-programmed into our daily life. When stressed and incapable of making a decision, we resort to our habits.
- Bad habits can be changed – habits are nothing more than neural pathways in the brain. They get thicker the more they’re used, and deteriorate when neglected. You create your own habits simply by repeating activities until they get easier and easier.
- If you want to start getting up earlier in the morning, the first few weeks will be a struggle because those neural pathways are still weak. But soon enough, your brain will strengthen the connection between waking up and getting straight out of bed, while the habit of rolling over and going back to sleep becomes weaker and weaker.
Our brains feature a powerful habit-forming system
- If you had to make and informed decision about everything, can you imagine grocery shopping – it would take forever.
- The section of our brain (basal ganglia – BG) is responsible for repetitive programming. Consider selecting a flavor at a fancy Gelato shop – we often just choose vanilla
- Why? The repetitive program kicks in and we go for it. That neural pathway is strongest.
- Another reason we go straight to email or facebook when we turn on our computer or phone is based on the same concept
- The basal ganglia is often so strong, it overpowers the prefrontal cortex: section responsible for conscious, reasonable decision making: . Unlike the BG, this part of our brain takes long-term consequences of actions, as well as abstract concepts like morality, into account.
- But the prefrontal cortex has one major flaw: it gets tired fast.
- So while you might reason against the bowl of icecream all day, eventually the PFC throws in the towel and BG steps in the breach – icecream.good.icecream.
Willpower, not motivation, is the best tool for creating good habits
- Motivation is, of course, a good thing – but we are usually most motivated to do the things we really like
- Motivation has its pitfalls, especially because it fluctuates according to how we feel. On a morning when you feel wonderful, it’s easy to do a set of 20 push-ups before breakfast – but it’s not so easy when you’ve got a hangover!
- Additionally, motivation actually decreases the more we do something because it gets boring. I see that with my workout.
- Motivation frankly isn’t enough to help you build up positive habits. Luckily, there’s another tool that is far better suited to help us create change in our lives. Instead of weakening with repetition, this tool can only get stronger – Willpower!
- Every time you create a new positive habit, such as meditating each day, you flex your own willpower muscle. You can use this muscle for other activities too.
- Willpower, unlike motivation, is dependable. You can build it up, and once you do, you can rely on it.
Mini habits are the most efficient investment for your limited willpower
- Don’t try to eat the whole elephant in one bite – just take small “mini” bites; because if you do, your willpower will buckle and you will fail.
- The solution is incredibly tiny goals. The main threats to willpower are – effort, perceived difficulty and fatigue.
- Picking an easy goal eliminates the perception of difficulty and will unlikely fatigue – this is the comprehensive cure for a weak will power.
- Mini habits gets you moving – you will need less willpower over time (Newton’s Law) – The greatest hurdles is going from inertia to mobility,
- With a mini habit that helps you start small, you can be sure to start smoothly. In fact, you might even find out that you can achieve more than you set out to do!
- Example: you might decide to do five push-ups, even though you only set a goal of doing one.
Mini habits have a whole host of additional benefits
- By doing things that you were never brave enough to do before, you can see how mini habits boost your self-esteem.
- Mini habits provide you with the unique opportunity to experience success – rather than failure – several times a day. When you set goals that you can easily fulfill, you’ll feel great, no matter how minor your achievements were.
- Don’t aim to become a famous pop star tomorrow; instead, just practice the piano for five minutes each day – I will take this to heart for my guitar lessons.
- Mini habits are also great at making you feel like you’re in control; We like to make our own decisions, which is what makes us happiest.
Plan and develop your mini habits carefully
- First, choose your habits wisely. You can start with a list of habits that you’d like to have at some point in your life.
- Next, ask yourself why are these habits appealing; this is to ensure that you’ve got the right motivations; habits should only be informed by what you really want to achieve
- With a list of motivated habits established, it’s time to create mini habits to match. If you want to learn
- If your mini habit is so small that it sounds silly to you, that’s great! That’s exactly how they should be.
- Mini habits shouldn’t be daunting at all. They should be so small that you can incorporate several of them into your daily routine, starting out with two or three per day. After you’ve determined your mini habits, define and write down your habit cues.
- Habit cues are signals that remind you it’s time to perform your mini habit. Say you want to do a yoga pose before breakfast; the time of day, or the fact that you’re getting hungry, could be your cues to engage with your mini habit.
Monitor your progress and don’t forget to reward yourself
- Mini habits are easy to achieve, so you shouldn’t just aim for a 95 percent completion rate – go straight for 100 percent. The simplest way you can avoid skipping or switching your mini habit is by recording what you do, so be sure to write everything down.
- All thoughts have a stronger presence in your mind when you write them down.
- Whichever method you choose, it should be something you look at every day. This way, you can keep reminding yourself to complete your habits, maintain your progress and even build up more positive habits along the way.
- If you manage to exceed your goals, pat yourself on the back, but remember to see that as a bonus, and not a signal to push yourself harder.
- But what if writing just 50 words feels boring? Well, that’s good! This signals that your mini habit is a bona fide habit. It’s something you do automatically, without any resistance to complete it. This is something to celebrate, so reward yourself
- Remember, it’s not just the goal that your habits lead to that’s important. Developing a daily routine that is full of helpful rituals is something you can be proud of too
This Week 2’s (11.19 – 11.25) Affirmation: Manage Energy, Minimize Distraction, Focus on Priorities!
Date – 11.25.17
B-Book 33: Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
The key message in this book: By using radical candor, you can become the best possible boss. Radical candor helps you listen and express genuine care for your employees. It also allows you to directly challenge your staff members in a constructive way to which they’ll be receptive. This makes leadership a collaborative and personal process that brings out the best in everyone.
Actionable advice: Have a growth plan for your employees.
Don’t just think of your staff as people who are only there to do what you assign them to do. Think of them as individuals on a career path and work with them to develop a plan that keeps that career on track.
Click to read moreRadical candor develops strong and beneficial relationships between managers and employees
- At the heart of radical candor are two principles: a manager should personally care about their employees and challenge them in their work
- The first step is to become more than just a coworker by establishing personal relationships that prove you genuinely care. This means opening up, sharing and talking about more than just business. Contrary to what some may think, a good working relationship is a highly personal one.
- A good manager must also be willing to challenge their employees when they’re not meeting expectations.
- This can be difficult for managers. Being candid and direct doesn’t always feel like friendly and caring behavior. But as we’ll explore further, challenging your staff to be their best is indeed the hallmark of a boss who truly cares.
- By being honest and direct with your employees, you’ll find that new lines of communication readily open up. Staff will be quick and willing to accept your feedback, and they’ll feel free to offer feedback regarding your work as team leader
- When you’re radically candid with your staff, they’ll become radically candid among themselves, making a healthy, productive and efficient work environment.
Radical candor is a delicate balance between being direct and honest while not offending
- Even when your intentions are positive, there’s a delicate skill to providing guidance and criticism while coming across as helpful, rather than mean. And this is exactly what radical candor can achieve
- Example of feedback after speech – shows us how radical candor gets results by being open, honest and direct.
- Boss didn’t let the overall success of the presentation discourage her from pointing out how it could have been even better. And she didn’t wait to provide feedback, either, which allowed Scott to immediately improve her performance
- Boss was honest and direct about both the positive and negative aspects of the work, and didn’t sugar coat anything. This ensured that the point was received and wasn’t mistaken for a personal attack.
Radical candor avoids the pitfalls of overly aggressive, lazy and fearful management
- Being honest and direct does not give you the right to be obnoxiously aggressive.
- Radical candor is about expressing care for your staff, as well as being open and direct. When a boss humiliates an employee with their criticism, they create enemies, destroy morale and cause people to quit their job
- If you have to choose between being an unpopular asshole who tells it like it is or being a friendly boss who can’t be critical of your staff, choose being unpopular. In the long run, it will be better for business and everyone involved if you are clear and honest. Radical candor is the best however.
- As boss, avoid – manipulative insincerity (telling her, the presentation was good went it was terrible) and ruinous empathy (don’t say anything because you don’t want to hurt her feeling after a bad presentation). This is about not caring or challenging your employees to help themselves grow. It usually stems from being a lazy manager.
- When a boss refuses to be critical of an employee whose performance is deteriorating, that employee will only grow more incompetent until the manager is forced to fire them. Being honest is always in their best interest.
Bosses shouldn’t manufacture a false meaning for a job; they should provide professional development
- In reality, some jobs are tedious, and it isn’t the manager’s role to make them appear otherwise.
- Being radically candid means that you’re honest and don’t sugarcoat things to motivate your employees.
- There’s no need to feel you must solve your employees’ existential dilemmas.
- Superstar employees need to be challenged and permitted to grow quickly so they can move up the corporate ladder and reach their full potential
- Rockstar employees offer a steadier presence, and they will be great as long as they’re given the stability and time to excel at the job they’re given.
Firing someone is a troubling experience, so be sure to take every consideration before it happens
- Any manager will tell you that firing people is one of the hardest parts of the job
- Not only are you taking away a source of money, but families can lose health insurance, and the whole incident can cause all sorts of marital strife.
- You need to consider three main points before a firing takes place
- First of all, every effort should be made to help the employee improve their performance – use radical candor – be direct and honest
- Second, consider effect the employee has on the team. If the person is an annoying/demoralizing presence, then it makes sense to let them go
- Third, consider outside opinion. If you have any doubts, it’s good to bring in an impartial third party and get their opinion on the matter.
- No one wants to be involved in a firing, but there’s also a good chance that the departing employee needs to find a job that better suits his skills.
Managers shouldn’t tell people what to do; instead, they should practice collaborative leadership
- The right way to see leadership – your team is a great opportunity to collaborate with talented individuals.
- Nevertheless, many managers mistakenly believe their job is to tell people what to do, which will only lead to problems since leaders make mistakes.
- Practice calaborative leadership:
- The first step is to really listen to what the people in your team have to say. When you do this, your team will feel safe to speak their minds and have the kind of discussions that lead to brilliant ideas
- The second step is to give your team the time and space to develop their ideas. Otherwise, they can end up being shot down before they ever have a chance to be clearly understood.
- The third step is to allow for healthy debate so that the best ideas are presented and agreed upon.
- The final step is for you, the manager, to persuade other company executives that your team’s idea is worth pushing forward. Then it’s up to you to execute the idea and make sure everyone gains valuable insight from the results.
Depending on your personality, you can listen quietly or loudly
- The first thing you should know is there are two ways of listening, and you should practice the one that suits your personality.
- On the one hand, there is quiet listening, which suits leaders who prefer to let others do the talking. Stay quiet until they are finish.
- Loud listening, on the other hand, is good for leaders with a more confrontational personality. You have to encourage challenging your idea
- Listening to your employees is key to promoting an effective and creative team.
To support your employees, have honest discussions that reveal their true motivations
- Managers should support the dreams of their staff and help them approach those dreams in a realistic fashion.
- To do this, you must first talk (and listen) to your employees so that you understand their aspirations, and they know that you are personally invested in helping them get on the right path
- To understand your employees’ dreams and identify important motivators (Spirulina farming), use one of three kinds of conversations.
- The first is the life story conversation where the employee tells you everything leading up to the present day, and you try to find their motivating factors.
- The second is the dream job conversation, where they describe their biggest career desire
- The third is the 18-month plan conversation, where they look into the immediate future, and you identify everything that can be done to keep them on the right track
- By following these guidelines, it won’t be long before you have a team of highly motivated individuals working together and achieving great things
Date – 11.23.17
B-Book 32: Eat, Move, Sleep by Tom Rath
The key message in this book: Staying healthy isn’t just one decision; it’s dozens of little decisions every day. You don’t have to reinvent yourself to get in shape and increase your chances of living a long and healthy life. Start by eating a lot of protein, avoiding excess sugar or carbohydrates, limiting stretches of inactivity and taking the stairs instead of the elevator whenever you can. Finally, get enough sleep and make sure it’s the right kind of sleep. A lot of little changes taken together can make a big difference.
Actionable advice: Eat fruits and vegetables with dark and vibrant colors.
There’s no shortcut for knowing the healthiest foods, but going for dark, vibrant fruits and vegetables is a good rule of thumb. Eat anything green, like broccoli, spinach, kale or cucumbers. Red and blue fruits like apples, strawberries and raspberries are also highly nutritious.
Click to read moreSmall lifestyle changes can have a big impact and increase your chance of living a longer life
- A lot of people don’t start taking care of themselves until their doctor utters some fateful words, likely along the lines of “You’re out of shape,” or “You’d better start shaping up if you want to make it to your retirement.”
- Living a healthy lifestyle isn’t easy. It can be hard to say no to a can of soda or a larger portion of fries, but resisting these temptations will bring you great benefits. The sooner you start treating your body right, the better your chances of living a long and healthy life.
- 90 percent of the population could live to be 90 years of age or older simply by making some important lifestyle choices.
- Even if you have a genetic tendency to be obese, for example, exercise can reduce that predisposition by up to 40 percent.
Pay attention to every bite you take: eat more proteins and less empty carb
- You have to think a lot more deeply about your food if you really want to be healthy.
- There’s one question you should ask yourself before you take a bite of anything: Is this a net gain or a net loss in terms of nutritional value?
- People go on diets assuming they’ll reach a specific end point. For example, they might hope to lose ten pounds by avoiding carbohydrates for two months. Diets are thus short-term; they’re not enough for you to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
- Also, the quality of what you eat is more important than the quantity. Don’t just rely on counting calories – there’s a lot more to food than that.
- Processed meat should be last on your list of proteins.
- Some foods should always be avoided, like potato chips, which have over 20 grams of carbohydrate for each gram of protein!
Limiting the time when you’re inactive is even more important than exercise
- When it comes to staying active, going to the gym every two days isn’t enough; you have to limit your inactivity, too.
- Reducing your chronic inactivity is even more important than doing short exercise sessions.
- In fact, a 240,000-person study by the NIHealth found that adults who spend the most time seated have a 50 percent higher mortality rate; even exercising 7 hours a week wasn’t enough to reduce this.
- If you sit for more than six hours a day, your risk of death increases at a rate similar to the risk of smoking or being overexposed to sunlight. Your good cholesterol drops by 20 percent after just two hours of sitting – and you’ll start burning calories at a rate of only one per minute!
- So try to be active in your daily routine by adjusting your habits. It’s more effective than irregular exercise and it’s easier too!
- People who watch over four hours of television per day are more than twice as likely to suffer a major cardiac event.
Getting enough sleep is a crucial part of staying healthy and productiv
- Few people get a proper amount of sleep these days. Sure, we’re all busy – but sleep is one thing you should never neglect.
- Studies have shown that losing just 90 minutes of sleep decreases your alertness by one-third.
- Think of it this way: who would you rather have fly your plane – a well-rested pilot or a pilot who stayed up all night studying landing techniques?
- Top performers get an average of eight hours and 36 minutes of sleep each night
- The average American sleeps only six hours and 51 minutes on weeknights. Sleep is a vital part of reaching your goals, so don’t write it off as a sign of laziness.
Sugar is a serious health hazard and should be treated like a controlled substance
- Cigarettes and sugar are more similar than you think in terms of the harm they can cause the human body.
- The average person consumes their own weight or more in sugar every year. Added sugar in processed foods is always unnecessary – healthy foods like fruits and vegetables already contain enough natural sugar as they are.
- Added sugar is only there to give your food extra flavor; it doesn’t have any nutritional value and it’s dangerous to our health. One Harvard University study found that sugary drinks contribute to 180,000 deaths every year!
- Your brain gets excited and releases dopamine when you eat sugar, in the same way that it does if you smoke a cigarette. And like cigarettes, the more sugar you eat, the more of it you crave
Quality is just as important as quantity when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep
- Sleep is an instinctive act and we all do it, but it’s still something you can improve.
- Since it’s such a fundamental part of your health, it’s important to sleep efficiently. Efficient sleep is the time when you’re really sleeping, and not just tossing and turning in bed.
Date – 11.21.17
B-Book 31: The Memory Palace by Lewis Smile
The key message in this book: Our brain has an enormous capacity for memory and it goes largely unused. By utilizing spatial memory and building a memory palace we can unlock this potential. This technique can make a memory champion out of anyone: in just 15 minutes you can retain more information than most people can memorize in an hour.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: Your memory is a muscle; it can be trained, connect things and images to a physical space, use your spatial memory remember facts, we use our spatial memory every day, you can train it, we are fighting against evolution when we don’t use it, we can connect factual info to name and place, create mental picture of a physical space – we call it a memory palace – it can be you house, turn memory palace into a short and silly story, start with something jarring, ex. of Obama, the Magna Cart
Click to read moreYour memory is like a muscle: you can strengthen it through training
- Think of your memory as a hidden muscle. Like other muscles, it can deteriorate if neglected. Perhaps you think that only the smartest and brightest have the ability to retain knowledge and recall facts. But the truth of the matter is that the potential muscle power of memory is strong in all of us.
- So what kind of training can you do to drastically improve your memory?
- The most effective tool for remembering information like names and dates is to connect them to an image or place. This technique takes advantage of our spatial memory, and the crazier the image the better it works.
Your spatial memory is old and powerful – use it to remember virtually anything
- Do you ever wonder why it is you can remember every street and corner shop of your hometown but seem to forget the details of your shopping list the moment you put down the pen? The answer lies in your spatial memory
- You use your spatial memory every day to remember important places and find your way home from work. Without it we’d be lost, constantly forgetting where we are and how to get to our destination.
- It was more important to remember where to run to safety than to remember, for example, long lists of names.
- This means nowadays we’re actually fighting our evolution when we try to remember those long lists of names and numbers
- By training your spatial memory to meet the demands of the modern world you’ll find that you can in fact connect factual information to familiar physical places. And with some regular exercise you’ll be able to hold onto those names and numbers forever.
Use a mental image of a familiar place to improve your memory
- One way to expand your memory is to create a mental picture of a physical space that will act as a structure for your memories. Let’s call this space a memory palace
- You can use your imagination to turn your own house into your personal memory palace, or maybe the familiar path from the bakery to work. As long as you are very familiar with it and can clearly visualize it, your memory palace will work
- Now, to turn your memory palace into a memory powerhouse we just need to add a story, and the crazier the story, the more memorable the images and information will be
- As you move through your memory palace, each room should contain a short and silly story that will connect the information you want to remember to the room in question.
- Start with something jarring – President Obama waking you up and telling the Magna Carta was established in England in 1215
- It’s best to take a moment and imagine this image as vividly as possible. For the memory palace to really work, you have to use your imagination and see things in your mind’s eye.
Use your memory palace to remember Shakespeare’s most important play
- The use of vivid imagery to remember Shakespare’s plays.
Date – 11.19.17
B-Book 30: The 5 Choices by Kory Kogon, Adam Merrill and Leena Rinne
The key message in this book: As long as you’re willing to change, you can become more productive. It’s not about working longer or harder, but rather about working better and concentrating on what’s important. And also, it’s a matter of taking care of your body and mind, so you have the energy to be productive.
Actionable advice: If you’re feeling overwhelmed by email, take an hour to organize your inbox.
Archive the older messages and sort the rest. Then set up some automatic filters to handle the sorting for you in the future. That way, you won’t become overwhelmed again.Make sure you exercise and eat well, even when you’re busy.
It’s tempting to let your exercise routine slide when you’ve got a lot going on. But that oversight will backfire. Extraordinarily productive people take care of themselves and create time for daily wellness.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: Organize your tasks each week, use the pause-clarify-decide method, set achievable goals to stay on trock, big rock-small rock analogy, design a plan you can stick with, MTL is a must have, streamline your work so you don’t waste time, manage your energy, eat and sleep, do rewarding work, (charity), move your body – get physical and maintain connection with people
To be truly productive, focus on important but non-urgent tasks
- To avoid distraction, organize your tasks using a time matrix, a productivity tool consisting of four quadrants, each accounting for a different portion of your time.
- Q1 includes important, urgent work – Emergencies and last minute requests
- Q2 consists of time spent working on important tasks that aren’t urgent <== Focus here
- Q3 time is for work that’s urgent but not important – checking email
- Q4 time you waste doing pointless shit
- We do our best work in Q2. It’s where we can focus and think, instead of simply reacting to whatever comes our way.
- To stay in Q2 use the Pause-Clarify-Decide method to determine rationally whether the task is important. Don’t open every email
Be productive and complete important work by defining roles and setting achievable goals
- We should spend most of our time focusing on important work. But what is important work, exactly?
- This depend on what your focus is on a particular day – define goals for each role title and then set out a statement that you can use specific tasks to achieve.
- Role: Professional Web Developer | Role Statement: I will strive to be an excellent WebDev by building 2 service applications by Fall 2018
- Set achievable goals to stay on track and timeline to check progress
Create a schedule to complete important work in the upcoming week
- Big rock – small rock analogy; clearing the big rock is fastest, but uses up lots of energy, going the small rock route takes longer.
- The way to optimize is to start by designing a plan you can stick with – Master Task List – track important tasks for the week ahead
- Put the big rocks – the top 3 things you want to achieve each week say and then fill in the gravel with less important (priority things)
- MTL also allow you to get stuff out of your head and on paper/coputer
- Also set aside time to plan too – each week and each day.
Streamline your decision-making process so you can focus on what really matters
- How do you streamline and optimize your decision making process:
- Link your calendar and contacts, with your tasking list so that you don’t spend a lot of mental energy moving things around.
- It is important that you have good flow between these separate parts.
The most effective productivity system is useless if you aren’t taking care of your body and mind
- the best way to look after yourself – and especially your brain – is through energy management
- Our brains only take up two percent of our body mass, but consumes 20 percent of our energy. We need to make sure you have enough energy to feed your brain!
- We need to eat properly and get enough rest – we need to manage our energy level
- Beyond the physical requirement of food and rest, we can refill our energy stores by:
- Doing rewarding work – like charity
- We have to get physical – we have to move
- We need to maintain strong social connection with people
This Week 1’s Affirmation: I will seek to gain strength in the quiet moments!
Date – 11.17.17
B-Book 29: Your Brain at Work by David Rock
The key message in this book: It is a common misconception that, if you aren’t delivering your best work, you should simply try harder. Often, however, the brain just needs more fuel and rewards to keep going. The reason for this is that your brain gets tired and distracted easily, and is strongly rewarded by status, certainty and control. So, for your brain to work optimally, it helps to eliminate day-to-day distractions, find out ways to have more choice and autonomy in your life, and, most importantly, train your ability to reflect on your thinking..
Actionable advice: Identify and eliminate distractions
Recognizing and then dismissing everyday distractions is important if you want to stay focused. So, next time you have to do work that requires active thinking, remember that your performance will benefit greatly with your mobile phone switched off and a closed email program. This way your brain won’t have to use its limited energy on thinking about the missed calls and all the accumulating unread mails. What’s more, if people learn that you only answer your mails during a limited time window, chances are they will send you only the most important mails.
Lower your expectations.
A good way to maintain a positive frame of mind is to actually lower your expectations just a tad. Next time you catch yourself getting overly thrilled by the thought of getting a promotion or any other kind of reward, try to push aside the urge to get too excited. This way it will be a pleasant surprise if you actually are rewarded, and won’t be as painful if you aren’t as lucky.
Click to read moreMy Stream of Consciousness from this book: Don’t burn the midnight oil,do one mental thing at a time, prioritizing drains the brain mental energy, turns task into routine – requires less energy, prevent distraction like computer and phone from taking over by vetoing, we need norepinephrine-dopamine balance to be focus and effective, insights are important, go for walk and meditate to use the unconscious, insight is depends on the unconscious mind, take break from conscious thinking, observe our own thinking – mindfulness, it forces you to think about your now, it forces you to come back to now, focus on where your are now – i.e feel the sensations of sitting in the chair, reappraisal – use humor to shift the perspective, regulate expectation – dopamine levels, getting a reward goes up, not it falls, pay attention to your expectation so you can control them, relatedness and – friends are important – oxytocin, frees up brains to plan and strategize, we can trick brain into status, winning argument or that you are better – dopamine and serotonin go up, cortisol drops, you can trick yourself into status, find a place that you better that other in, don’t try to change other person by feedback, they have to see it for themselves, get them into a conducive, reflective frame of mind. Do this by reducing anxiety and increasing any positive feelings and sense of autonomy they may have, you have to raise their status,
Your ability to think well is a limited resource, so conserve the resource at every opportunity
- We all know what it’s like to “burn the midnight oil.” The later we work into the night, the less we’re able to think clearly
- We use a massive amount of energy in all our daily interactions, this fatigues our ability to think clearly. This indicates that our capacity for active thought is limited
- Performing more than one conscious process simultaneously is more taxing; this results in quick performance decline – don’t do more than one mental tasks at a time
- We have to conserve the brain’s energy for only the most important tasks – not phone calls and emails.
- We must prioritize certain tasks above others. But be aware that prioritizing is itself a task that drains energy, so ensure you prioritize when your mind is alert and fresh.
- Another way to conserve energy is to turn tasks into routines, as these can be stored as patterns that won’t require you giving your full attention to a task.
Our attention is very easily distracted, but there are strategies for staying focused
- Whenever we’re distracted, our attention is diverted, and refocusing that attention takes time and effort
- We don’t just have to deal with external distractions, we also many internal distractions: the constant stream that surface into consciousness and impair our focus
– Every time we try to resist being distracted, we decrease our ability to do so. This is because self-control is a limited resource - How can we maintain our focus when we’re surrounded by potential distractions?
– You have to prevent those distractions from seizing our attention by develop the habit of “vetoing” those behaviors that distract us.
– This requires us to turn off all communication devices whenever we need to do any kind of active thinking.
Optimal mental performance requires just the right level of arousal of your brain
- For us to be alert, our brains require exactly the right level of norepinephrine,
– This chemical is triggered when we’re scared. Fear activates our alertness, and alertness is a crucial part of being focused - For our interest to be aroused, our brains need just the right amount of another chemical: dopamine.
– Dopamine is triggered whenever we experience something new or unexpected, which means it’s an important factor in our becoming interested in something. - For our brains to function at their peak, it’s crucial that the levels of norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain are just right: not too high, not too low
Insights make it possible to overcome mental blocks that limit you to the same small set of solutions
- Have you ever had to deal with a challenging problem that demanded a creative solution, but were simply unable to get past a certain point? You hit a wall
- Often, the only way to break through this wall is through insight – a perfect solution that seems to suddenly appear out of nowhere, and which recombines what we already know in a brand new way.
- We do not arrive at insights by logical reasoning, but rather we simply, and suddenly, find ourselves on the other side of the impasse.
- Insight depends on the unconscious mind, which frees us from the established logical thought processes that can obscure other possible solutions.
- Insight is more likely to arrive when you’re not using your conscious mind to solve a problem.
- Arriving at Insight and breaking mental impasse: Take break from conscious thinking about the problem – take a walk, meditate; give problem to the uncoscious
Mindfulness can help you focus by actually changing the structure of your brain
- Improving the way your mind works, and thus increasing your ability to focus, first requires that you’re able to observe your own thinking. This process is known as mindfulness, a concept that also refers to living in the present, having a real-time awareness of our experiences, and an acceptance of what is
- Those who practice mindfulness – have far more control over what they pay attention to.
– For instance, if you take a day off from a stressful job to spend a day at the beach with a good friend, mindfulness will help you to notice whenever your focus slips from the wonderful weather and beautiful scenery onto the pile of work you have to slog through the next day.
– Once you observe this tendency in your thinking, you’re then able to shift your attention back to the present moment and the great day you’re having - by practicing mindfulness regularly, you can actually alter the structure of your brain.
- Among the many ways to practice mindfulness is periodically focusing your attention on physical sensations and incoming stimuli – perhaps the feeling of the chair you’re sitting on – just for a ten seconds or so
- The more you practice, the better you’ll get at noticing your focus shifting from real-time awareness of your experience to the mind’s distracting chatter
- practicing mindfulness will increase the strength of those areas of your brain that handle mental control and attention switching.
- You just have to take the time to focus on your sensory experiences.o
Feelings of certainty and control are very rewarding to the brain, and you can activate these feelings yourself
- We’ve all experienced uncertainty and lack of control, and the deep emotional responses they trigger.
- The strong emotional response we experience when we lack control and autonomy actually stems from our appraisal of the situation.
- We can change our appraisals and, by doing so, transform our emotional responses
– This process of choosing to interpret a situation differently is called “reappraisal,” and there are many benefits to it.
– One kind of reappraisal is humor: it shifts the perspective and can transform one’s experience of a situation from gravely serious to funny and lighthearted. - So, by reappraising you can better manage the strong emotions generated by the lack of certainty and autonomy.It’s important, in the early stages of your hustle, to know exactly what sort of trajectory your business is on..
Regulating your expectations is key to a general feeling of happiness
- Why do unmet expectations make us feel so bad? – Dopamine
- If what transpires exceeds our expectations, our brain’s dopamine levels increase, generating our interest and desire
- expecting a reward, like a pay raise, but not getting it causes our dopamine levels to plunge, and this results in us feeling something very similar to pain.
- It follows, then, that to maintain a positive mental state we have to manage and regulate our expectations
- The most effective way to do this is to get into the habit of paying attention to your expectations. This will allow you to consciously adjust and lower them, so that you enable your expectations to be exceeded.
A feeling of relatedness to others and a sense of being treated fairly are primary rewards for the brain.
- We often don’t think our feelings of relatedness to others, and of fairness, are crucial to our physical survival, but, actually, they’re as important as food and water.
– For our brains, friends are as necessary to our wellbeing as food - When we feel connected to others, relating our thoughts and emotions with theirs, our brains release oxytocin, a neurochemical that produces a sense of pleasure.
- Studies have revealed that people are less responsive to stress if they have plenty of rewarding friendships. This lack of stress frees up the brain’s resources to deal with planning and thinking, and even reduces the chances of heart disease or stroke.
- A sense of fairness is very important to our wellbeing, as it can be even more rewarding to the brain than money.
We are wired to feel rewarded for increases in our status, and can trick our brains into status rewards
- If you’ve ever gotten a kick out of winning an argument, spent money on clothes from a designer fashion store, or even felt good about meeting someone worse off than yourself, you know that feeling an increase in status can trigger a sense of reward.
- This is because when we perceive an increase in our status, we get a positive emotional response: our dopamine and serotonin levels (chemicals essential to happiness) go up, and our cortisol levels (an indicator of stress) do down.
- But a sense of our increased status doesn’t just make us feel happier; it also improves our ability to think. That’s because the high levels of dopamine and serotonin increase the amount of neural connections we can make per hour, which means it takes less effort to process more information.
- How can you increase your status:
– Find a niche, any niche, where you can feel superior to other people – for instance, funnier, richer or more intelligent.
– You can even trick yourself into feeling superior. The benefit is you can increase your status without pissing other off.
– One way is to increase things that others don’t really see – he is good at math…keep practicing to get better.
Feedback rarely creates positive change in others; instead, try helping them arrive at their own insights
- Have you ever tried to change another person’s thinking? We often believe the best approach is to give that person lots of feedback, but giving feedback actually doesn’t help improve performance. Instead, real change can occur only when the other person sees his errors for herself.
- The reason that giving feedback is so ineffective is that is tends to make people extremely anxious.
- Instead, a better approach to facilitate change in people is to try to guide them towards their own insights regarding the problem
- To do this, you need to help people to get into a conducive, reflective frame of mind. This can be achieved by reducing any anxiety and increasing any positive feelings and sense of autonomy they may have
- Let’s just work together and see if we can find a way to rescue the situation.”
- By doing this, you raise the other person’s status because you’re implying that they are capable of good ideas that are worth exploring.
- Another way to help others arrive at their own insights is to reward them for giving feedback to themselves.
Date – 11.15.17
B-Book 28: Side Hustle by Chris Guillebeau
The key message in this book: Absolutely anyone can create and launch a successful part-time business. It doesn’t require much time, money or effort to start one, and it doesn’t mean quitting your day job. A side hustle is a great idea. It gives you an extra paycheck, but without the terrifying risks of being a self-employed entrepreneur.
Actionable advice: Create a workflow for your side hustle.
When working out how your customers will purchase your product or service and receive what they’ve paid for, it’s useful to write a list of processes that need to take place along the way. This list of processes is called a workflow. When you make this master list of activities, actions and next steps, you should consider:
- How will prospective customers learn about your idea?
- What will happen immediately after the customer registers for or purchases what you’re selling?
- What else needs to occur in order for the customer to purchase and actually get your product or service?
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: Side hustle freeom, invest not too much, energy and time, feasible, profitable, persuasive, does it motivate me, earn money is it doable in a short period of time, project profit, price – pitch – promise, price should include call to action, offer must have sense of urgency, color red suggest urgency, you need a website, social media profile – twitter and facebook , payment system, provide value by responding to need, empahsiise beniefit, appeal to emotions, reach out to supporters – families and friends, mentors, influences – blogs, customers – ask , identify what your are doing wrong and do more, if you think your idea is good but people just don’t like it yet – drop it, if you are making a little money – identify what you are doign well and do more
A side hustle provides a form of job freedom that absolutely anyone can attain
- A side hustle can be defined as a profitable business venture that operates as an adjunct to other paid work or employment. No more than the bare minimum amount of time, money and effort should be invested. It shouldn’t be a big deal.
- A side hustle gives you a taste of entrepreneurship, but without all the risks of going it alone
Strong ideas for strong hustles arise from careful questioning and a bit of math
- To get going, it’s important to recognize that hustle-worthy ideas share three qualities. They need to be feasible, profitable and persuasive.
- If you can answer yes to the following three questions, then the idea is feasible. Does your idea motivate you? Will it earn you money? Can it be accomplished in a short period of time?
- An idea is persuasive if your customers can’t say no.
- So once you’ve got some feasible, profitable and persuasive ideas, you’ve got to do some basic math. You should calculate the projected profit of each hustle with this equation: “anticipated income minus anticipated expenses.
- You should calculate the projected profits twice. One should be a conservative projection, the other an optimistic one, depending on the predicted strength of possible outcomes.
Transform your side hustle idea into an offer with a price, a pitch and a promise
- Once you’ve got your idea, you can turn it into an offer. Every offer includes three elements: a promise, a pitch and a price
- The promise is a bold statement that tells customers how they’ll immediately profit – that is, how you’ll change their life. Jake promised “The most awesome guitar lessons in the universe.”
- A pitch tells customers all they need to know, with no irrelevant details. Jake’s pitch was “The typical goal is to have fun (always first and foremost), as well as learn the instrument, all while maximizing efficiency so we meet your goals.”
- Your price communicates the cost, and should also include a “call to action.” A tag like “phone this number” or “click this button” should do the trick. It needs to be easy and obvious.
- The best offers also create a sense of urgency. Your potential customers need to think they want your hustle immediately.
- A good way to do this is to ensure you respond to queries from customers quickly and efficiently.
- Another technique for communicating urgency is to use the color red. Highlighting words like “now” or “today” works wonder
Your side hustle needs resources. Make a shopping list and prioritize what’s required
- First, a website. This is your online home, and a content-management system such as WordPress can make setting it up easy.
- A social media profile. You needn’t be operating on every single platform – just one or two should be fine – Facebook and Twitter
- Scheduling tool to focus your efforts on your hustle
- A payment system. Be sure to have an invoicing system, PayPal account or shopping cart on your website before you launch
- Once you have these four elements sorted out, you should prioritize providing more value and generating more money. Value is best improved by responding to customers’ unspoken needs.
Sell your side hustle effectively by understanding its benefits and involving the right people
- So what can a side hustler learn from the Girl Scouts? Well, they sell so many cookies not just because the cookies are scrumptious but because people know that they are.
- When you’re selling a product or service, you’ve really got to emphasize its merits. Lead with the benefits. You might tell customers that your product will make them happier or their lives simpler and better. Ideally, you should connect with people’s emotions.
- Once you’re able to distill your side hustle’s benefits, you should reach out to four types of people who can help you along the way. There’s no need to do your solo side project alone.
- First, find supporters. Most likely this means your family and friends – people who can contribute in different ways and support your efforts
- Second, seek out mentors. These are guides or experts who can give you feedback and advice.
- Third, identify influencers. These are trendsetters who’ll spread the news about your product. Trusted authorities, like reviewers or bloggers, are generally best for this.
- Fourth, locate some ideal customers. These people are perfectly placed to evaluate products and respond to questions you might have with honest and detailed answers.
Identify what’s working best in your side hustle. Then do more of it
- A business is never in stasis. It’s either on an upward trajectory – or it’s sinking
- It’s important, in the early stages of your hustle, to know exactly what sort of trajectory your business is on.
- Once you’re up and running, ask yourself a simple question: is your venture making money? There are three possible answers.
- First, you might find you’re far exceeding initial expectations. Fine, that’s great. You’ve obviously got to keep going.
- Second, you might think your original idea was good, but people haven’t latched onto it. It’s difficult to admit it, but that’s the time to cut your losses and move on
- Third you’ve found your idea hasn’t completely gained traction, but as it’s making a bit of money it doesn’t make sense to pull the plug. If this last option sounds familiar, identify what are the things you are doing right and do more of it drop the rest.
Date – 11.14-2017
B-Book 27: The Power of Less by Leo Babauta
The key message in this book: Less is more. By focusing on the essential, we achieve our goals with less effort and give ourselves the flexibility we need to lead a fulfilled life.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: Get your priorities straight, ask the important questions, what are the important things, what are my goals, focus on your priorities, invest time to ask the important question,, limit wasting time on unimportant things, let other know what’s important to you, change your habit – change you life, work on one habit at a time, take care of the most important things first things in the morning, consistency is the key, failure is demotivating, habit is at the heart of change, goal setting is easy, achieving them is far harder, set up goals with sub goals, only work on 3 projects at a time, focus is the most important, no multitasking, it wastes time, live in the now, start everyday with the most important tasks, make task small – you will do them, the big tasks don’t get done, define the 3 MIT’s each day, do them early and make them close to your goals, minimize time spent on email, only read them twice a day.
Click to read more Live your priorities: make and be clear about decisions. If you want to change your life, change your habits. Develop your habits slowly but surely Focus on one success at a time: think in goals, sub-goals, projects and tasks Stay focused – live in the now and concentrate fully on every task Start every day with your most important tasks Boost your efficiency by minimizing the time you spend on emails Date – 11.13 .2-17 The key message in this book: Work it out! Next time you feel as if you’re having a brain meltdown, and your focus has left the building, step away from your desk. Exercise is what you need. And remember: the gym is not the only place where you can exercise. Be creative! Simply going for a walk in the area in which your office is located, or running up and down the stairs for a bit, will help you feel more mentally agile, focused and – last but not least – ready to take on the most important work of the day. In order to become awesomely effective you have to consciously recognize your decision points. Managing your mental energy will bring you one step closer to being awesomely effective. If you want to be awesomely effective, you have to stop fighting distractions. A healthy body is a productive body! Fine-tune the noise, light and objects around you to create a powerfully productive workspace. Date – 11.12 .2-17 My Stream of Consciousness from this book: Choose life, don’t choose bad habits, rid yourself of negative or abusive people, spend time with people who give you positive energy, don’t Saying no to bad relationships leads to health and true love Saying no to other people’s expectations empowers you to follow your dreams. Saying no to scarcity and noise allows for abundance and silence. Learning to say no allows you to say yes. Date – 11.10 .2-17 B-Book 24: Nobody wants to Read your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield Actionable advice: Work your way through the resistance. This resistance takes the form of saying it is not possible and that you can’t do it, and not trying as a result. Instead, just sit down and write the short novel in three months. The first draft may not be perfect, but at least you completed the assignment, and it may lead to something amazing down the road. DEEP CONCEPTS Nobody wants to read your shit, unless it’s exceptionally good. It’s hard to find success in the writing business, but an apprenticeship can teach you lessons and build contacts. Whether you’re working in advertising or writing literature, you have to have a concept In advertising as in fiction, defining the problem or the theme is the first step toward creating a story Reading and writing are important to finding your voice, but great writing comes with maturity. Most stories follow a three-act structure, unless you’re aiming for an epic narrative. The first act hooks the audience, the second act highlights the villain and the third act delivers the climax Support others, and they will support you in return. Create meaningful, honest relationships! Great actors are attracted to complex characters and important themes Nonfiction follows the same basic rules as fiction, and both rely on a strong theme Day 292 – 11.9.2017 B-Book 23: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield Actionable advice: Cross off a nagging task on your to-do list, today. It may be as simple as filing some papers or getting your car’s oil checked, but completing a neglected task, even if just one per day, will make a huge difference toward achieving your more ambitious goals. Ask someone you admire for 15 minutes of their time. Find someone who has achieved a dream similar to your own and ask for 15 minutes of their time per month to advise and mentor you. The worst they can say is “no,” and in the best case, you might find a person who will be an invaluable resource in helping you live the life you want. DEEP CONCEPTS Enough complaining, no more excuses: You are responsible for the course of your life. Finding your purpose in life will help you better define what success means to you When you visualize your dream, you should be able to see it, smell it and feel it, as if it was real To succeed, be persistent, never give in to “no” and don’t forget to practice, practice, practice Clear your slate of unfinished business or projects: do it, delegate it, delay it or dump it We are our worst enemies when it comes to believing in ourselves. Think positively Building a support team chock-full of successful people can help you reach your goals Support others, and they will support you in return. Create meaningful, honest relationships! Being a “wealthy” person means so much more than just having a lot of cash in the bank Date – 11.8.2017 B-Book 22: Ready for Anything by David Allen Actionable advice: To get things done in a team, put someone in charge. In a team, if the responsibility for a project is distributed equally among team members, no one person will feel that they’re in charge. Consequently, nothing will get done – not on time, at least. But if you ensure that one team member is made responsible for the whole team’s outcome, the chances that important tasks will be actioned increase dramatically. Be organized but flexible. Don’t try to manage every little aspect of your work, as this won’t make you more productive. Instead, it will consume too much of your precious time and energy – resources that are better used elsewhere. Of course, you do need to have an organizational plan, but it should be flexible at the same time. DEEP CONCEPTS Having too many things on your mind will hamper your creativity. To maximize your creativity, don’t keep all your promising ideas and plans in your head Being aware of your job, goals and current tasks will enable you to make good decisions about the work to come The best plans prepare for difficulties and interruptions ahead of time The right kind of organization will help you to get things done – and do creative work Putting too much effort into organizing your life can keep you from getting things done or being creative To reach your long-term goals, translate them into short-term action steps If a team isn’t getting things done, improving team communication may help Date – 11.7.2017 Book 21: The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale Remind yourself to stay motivated. Write a note to yourself such as: “The difficult times are only mental. I think victory – I get victory.” DEEP CONCEPTS Believe in yourself: why self-confidence leads to success Give and take: how caring about others will make them care about you Not alone: why you shouldn’t face your problems on your own Attitude: why your own thoughts are the key to overcoming your problems Don’t worry, be happy: how you can overcome the destructive and unhealthy habit of worrying Give yourself a break: why you need to make the choice to be happy Never lose heart: why you should always try to see the positive even when facing problems The Bible: how faith can help you solve your problems Body and soul: why faith should be part of every form of therapy Date – 11.6.2017 B-Book 20: Manage Your Day-To-Day by 99U and Jocelyn K. Glei DEEP CONCEPTS Develop a daily routine that matches your body’s rhythm. Working frequently is the key to an effective work routine. Practice focusing your attention regularly and ignore negative distractions. For maximum efficiency, stick to one task at a time. Be aware of how and why you are using technology and social media. Technology is supposed to assist you – don’t let it control your life. Creative blocks happen to everybody, but there’s a way out Relaxation and a new hobby can boost your creativity Date – 11.5.2017 B-Book 19: Fail Fast, Fail Often by Ryan Babineaux, Ph.D. and John Krumboltz, Ph.D. Actionable advice: Make a fun map If you want to maximize the fun in your life, chart where you typically have the most fun, in addition to places of medium enjoyment, and your least favorite places. Then start frequenting the places you rated highest and minimizing trips to the lowest-rated places. DEEP CONCEPTS Fulfilled, joyful people make things happen rather than waiting for them to happen on their own Leading a fun life will inevitably spawn happiness, but it can also result in something less obvious: success Failing often provides a fast, surefire route to success, even if it isn’t always fun Appreciate your journey as a beginner and embrace the lessons that failures teach Reclaim your curiosity to uncover new and exciting things about the world around you Have ambitious goals and then break them into smaller ones to manage them Despite other’s expectations, don’t jump into a career until first considering your options You can’t get very far in life unless you have a community to support you Date- 11.4.2017 B-Book 18: The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts Actionable advice: Reframe your anxiety as excitement. Next time you’re feeling nervous about something, such as a job interview or speaking publicly, don’t tell yourself to “calm down.” Instead, say, “I’m excited!” Anxiety is a state of physiological arousal and you can flip it around to make it positive instead of letting the fear pull you in. When you tell yourself that you’re excited, it provides a valid positive alternative that allows you to stay in control. DEEP CONCEPTS As the power of religion and social norms diminishes, life becomes more uncertain Consumerism promises happiness but leaves you unfulfilled There is no pleasure without pain, so stop worrying and let go of negativity To truly experience life, have awareness in the present moment Understand that your mind and body are the same entity Date – 11.3.2017 (196) B-Book 18: The Now Habit by Neil Fiore Actionable advice: Schedule your work around your “play”. Rather than trying to squeeze in life’s most enjoyable moments wherever you can find space in your work schedule, try instead to structure your work week around the things you actually enjoy. This way, the time you spend working is limited and therefore has to count. Plus, you have the added benefit of not having to sacrifice play for the sake of work. DEEP CONCEPTS Procrastination is a strategy to avoid fear of failure We’re taught to dislike work and fear failure Our self-esteem is linked to work, and procrastination helps protect it Adopt the anti-procrastination mantra: “You only learn when you fail.” To become a producer, change your self-talk from “I must” or “I should” to “When can I start?” To be productive, integrate relaxation and play in your everyday life If you want to make a task less threatening, break it down into small, manageable units For stress-free productivity, try “unscheduling.” To fight off distractions, always have a piece of paper or a notebook within reach Date – 11.2.2017 Actionable advice: Make a if-then list. This consists of making a list that says “if Y happens, then I will do X.” It’s a sort of plan that stops us from having to make those knee-jerk decisions which often lead to poor decisions. For example: “If I finish work early, then I’ll go running.” Set up for a new habit ahead of time. To make new habits as easy to establish as possible, set yourself up. For example, if you want to go running in the morning, lay out your running gear the night before. DEEP CONCEPTS In order to take control of your habits you must know thyself Using a calendar and monitoring your habits will make creating and maintaining the good ones easier New beginnings are great for introducing new habits It’s easier to positively shape our lives when we make good habits convenient and bad ones inconvenient Safeguard against temptation and don’t use excuses It’s easier to form good habits when you find the right distractions and learn to work without the promise of rewards Pair good habits together, and give yourself a treat now and then Date – 11.1.2017 Actionable advice: Find a quiet place and meditate every day. Combat feelings of being overwhelmed by practising mindfulness or meditation techniques regularly. They require just a few minutes of your day! Meditation is a proven method of finding a center and listening to your mind and body that can helpyou gain perspective and peace, regardless of your work or social situation. DEEP CONCEPTS Parents are stressed, with no free time and too much to do. Mothers are especially overwhelmed Too much stress can physically harm our brains, and cause us to lose control of our emotions The industrial age inspired greater productivity; yet since then, workers have never slowed down Dad works; Mom cares for the children. Old stereotypes still persist in our modern age Do we need to work 100 hours to be productive? No. Flexible working hours are the future Gender stereotypes are not innate. Through good public policy, they can be overcome Admit that you can’t do everything today. Spend time practicing mindfulness or meditating Date – 10.31.2017 Actionable advice: Choose content over delivery. The next time you feel your blood boiling over because of something someone said, try to listen to the content rather than how they packaged it. By really paying attention to what they’re saying, it’s more likely that you’ll uncover the message they were actually trying to get across! A word of appreciation goes a long way. If you are the manager of a business or the leader of a project, remember that everyone contributes to your successes, and you should share it with them. The best way to do this is by actually speaking to them, rather than offering faceless material rewards. This will encourage everyone involved to keep doing their best. DEEP CONCEPTS To create better habits you have to pause, breathe, and identify an area of focus Daily preparation focused on processes – not solutions – will help you develop good habits To improve your communication habits, focus on the content of the message and avoid arguing To strengthen your relationships, don’t expect too much. Focus on what you appreciate about the people around you To get the most out of your work, accept failure and share success You’ll be able to optimize your work habits if you can neutralize negativity and accept criticism Date – 10.30.2017 DEEP CONCEPTS In order to increase performance, we need to focus on managing our energy rather than our time We can reach full engagement by maximizing all four of our energy levels In order to maintain energy levels we need to train our energetic muscles and give them time to recover To reach your full potential, you must develop and maintain good physical energy In order to maintain positive emotional energy levels, never neglect what you enjoy or your physical health Training your mental energy helps you stay focused and creative at the same time Spiritual energy is the source for motivation, derived from committing to others as well as ourselves To live at full engagement, you must find a positive and intrinsically motivating purpose We have to connect to our deepest values to fuel the energy which gives our lives purpose Facing the truth and accepting our limitations increases positive energy Rituals are powerful tools to effectively manage energy capacity Date – 10.29.2017 seeking out spiritual places and attending to the present moment, you can find true peace. Actionable advice: Savor what you eat. Learning how to properly support yourself and enjoy every moment is no small task, but a great place to start is with your food. Simply begin paying attention to the tastes and textures in your mouth. Nothing else is required. Rather than thinking about the person you have a crush on or the promotion you want at work, truly consider the way your body responds to this daily act. DEEP CONCEPTS Lasting fulfillment can only be found within yourself. Human perceptions and emotions are self-generated, so you can guide your experience of life. Most people respond to life events compulsively, but you can choose to respond consciously. Contrary to popular belief, responsibility increases your freedom. Enlightenment requires the alignment of body, mind, emotion and energy. The human body is part of the earth and the universe; you’re connected with powerful forces. Our intellect prevents us from experiencing life to its fullest. Certain locations are loaded with spiritual energy, and visiting them can kickstart a spiritual journey Date – 10.28.2017 both. Personal Kanban will help you do this – organizing your to-dos into an easy-to-use visual format that makes planning, monitoring and executing your tasks a snap. Actionable advice: Realistically estimate your workload by accounting for hidden tasks. The next time you set about estimating your workload, be sure to do it honestly; that means digging up all the “hidden work.” This step is key, as many people simply omit tasks that don’t seem like real work. For instance, a teacher might fail to account for calling parents and cleaning up after school, because she only considers “work” the time she spends teaching. Leaving such auxiliary tasks unaccounted for is a sure way to see time disappear, which will make you feel inefficient, even if you’ve accomplished a lot. DEEP CONCEPTS A work-life imbalance can cause you to lose sight of meaningful goals, but the Personal Kanban can help. Kanban was developed for companies, but Personal Kanban is customized for your life.. Building your Personal Kanban is as easy as choosing a medium, putting it in place and following three simple steps. your Personal Kanban is designed to visualize the flow of your work, so while you can draw it on your computer, it’s much more effective to use a medium that can be put somewhere you see every day. A whiteboard is ideal – you can put in your office or in a prominent location at home. Working with Personal Kanban is just another four steps away. Personal Kanban is full of pluses. Personal Kanban will help you unearth problems before they get out of hand. Personal Kanban is a better motivator than deadlines, as long as you keep a couple of things in mind. You can flexibly adapt your Personal Kanban to meet your needs Date – 10.27.2017 Unlike invisible aliens, systems really do influence so much of what we do every day. Whether it’s driving to work or running errands with the family, think about all the systems that affect you. The traffic on the highway, parking lots, fossil fuel prices, your company’s administrative processes, even the social systems of communication and language. Systems are everywhere. Once you start to see systems everywhere, you can start to think about how you can flip the script: Instead of them just affecting you, how can you work them? These blinks will show you how. DEEP CONCEPTS Get the systems mind-set: the world is a logical system of processes, not a chaotic mess Stop agonizing over systems that are beyond your influence, and start taking control of the ones you can change. Take a step back to analyze systems from an outsider perspective. Get into the driver’s seat: become a system manager. Focus on your role as a leader. Run your business like a machine. Maximize your process efficiency with realistic goals and good communication. Date – 10.26.2017 The questions this book answered: How and why do we make the wrong decisions? How can each and every one of us use nudges? My Thoughts (My stream of consciousness from this book): We don’t make right decision all the time, we often make bad decision based limited information or on no experience, we act mostly on gut, automatic system response, gut instinct, rational or reflective, we don’t have time so we go with gut, lack of will vs temptation, don’t take large portions, it breaks the will; companies work on our psychology, companies can create need in us as well; nudges give us freedom to choose (good or bad) – apples in visible area vs icecream in the freezer, defaults are good, making the wrong decision is easy – cake and scales or drinking and headaches, use nudges to achieve your goal – new year’s resolution, nudges can help you throughout the year, nudge can help teenage moms with not getting pregnant. DEEP CONCEPTS We don’t always make decisions that are best for us in the long run. We often make bad decisions based on either too little or overly complex information. Human beings act mainly on gut feelings. Sometimes we make faulty decisions because we succumb to temptation or act without thinking. Some companies exploit the human tendency to make the wrong decisions. Nudges are subtle changes in context that help us avoid making bad decisions. Defaults are highly effective nudges that cause people to automatically do what’s best for them. Nudges are most useful when we have too many choices or when the future is at stake. Many people use nudges to achieve their goals. States and other institutions should use nudges to encourage wise decisions. Date – 10.25.2017 Actionable advice: The next time you feel completely exhausted at the end of an unproductive day, consider taking an “internet sabbath.” DEEP CONCEPTS Date – 10.24.2017 This book answered the following questions: What do you need to do to work effectively with a clear head? Use your brain for thinking and leave information storage to external collection buckets, like notebooks and physical inboxes. This way, you don’t need to worry about all the tasks and ideas that pop in your head throughout the day. What simple tools make up the GTD method? Implement a rigorous data management system where you have separate lists for projects with clearly defined outcomes, next actions and things that you might be interested in later on. Use your calendar or a separate “tickler” file to store ideas and tasks that are connected to specific days. What kind of attitude is necessary to put the GTD philosophy into practice? Use the natural planning method to define the steps you need to take to execute your projects. Start by thinking about the end goal of the project and then let your mind brainstorm all the different steps needed to get there. Jot them down on a piece of paper and organize them so the concrete actions you need to take become clear. DEEP CONCEPTS Your brain is a thinking tool, not a storage device. If you want to think clearly, you need a trusted “collection bucket” outside your mind. Take out the trash – empty all your external collection buckets weekly. When emptying your collection buckets, put your “stuff” away in the right places. A “Projects” list provides an overview of all your current projects. Instead of keeping a daily to-do list, try a calendar and “Next Actions” lists. “Waiting For” lists can be very helpful when you work with other people. Save day-specific information on your calendar or in a tickler file. All ideas with potential future relevance should be put onto a “Someday/Maybe” list. A structured workplace and a weekly review of your system are indispensable for working productivity. Date – 10.23.2017 Actionable advice: Up your productivity by avoiding distractions. If you want to be productive, you need as much of your attention as you can possibly muster. Unfortunately, there are plenty of distractions out there, ready to hijack your attention. Just think of your phone alerts whenever you have an incoming message or e-mail. It takes time to refocus every time you hear one, so do yourself and your productivity a favor by deactivating as many potential distractions as possible. DEEP CONCEPTS Productivity is about working smarter by managing your time, attention and energy. You can increase productivity by recognizing your personal values and motivations. The Rule of 3 can help you organize your life and be smarter about your work. Avoid procrastination by making tasks more attractive and rewarding. Overworking can lead to inefficiency, so keep your work week under 50 hours. Writing down your appointments and tasks frees up your brain power for better productivity. Date – 10.22.2017 The key message in this book: Wealth – in whatever form – is seldom the result of luck or coincidence. Far from that, it’s almost always the result of different traits and skills that anyone can learn and acquire. Actionable advice: Write down the things you want to achieve DEEP CONCEPTS Goal setting and detailed planning are the basis of every achievement. Successful people have an unwavering faith in themselves. By using auto-suggestion, our subconscious can influence our behavior. Knowledge is power – but it doesn’t have to be what you learned in school. The workshop of the imagination – where we can turn our dreams into reality. Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses increases your chances of professional success Positive emotions are the key to a successful life – and need to be strengthened. Successful people are remarkable for their determination and steadfastness. Only the persistent will succeed. Date – 10.21.2017 Actionable advice: Build an evaluation ritual. Practice the Mental Workout to reduce anxiety about a task. First, relax your mind by controlling your breath. Inhale for five seconds, hold your breath for two seconds, and exhale for six seconds. Next recite a personal mantra, or a fixed set of encouraging statements. For example, “I’m strong, smart and confident and things will work out well.” Spend 60 seconds visualizing the situation you’re afraid of. Imagine what you’re going to see, how you’re going to feel, and what you’re DEEP CONCEPTS It’s just not productive to focus on more than one goal at a time if you want positive results. Prioritizing tasks and organizing tomorrow is the key to better time management and productivity. Maximize the time you have by finding ways to structure goals and increase meeting productivity. Create a ritual of your new lifestyle goals to avoid procrastination and stick to new, positive behaviors. Self-evaluation is effective as long as you focus on the process, not just the results, of your work. How you think and talk to yourself can either build you up for success or let you down toward failure. Being a normal person can get in the way of achieving greatness. Seek to be abnormal! Date – 10.20.2017 all your tasks. You can do this by having a future-oriented vision, which will help you set effective goals. When you put your “first things” first, instead of putting the urgent or smaller things first, you’ll achieve happiness and inner peace. Actionable advice: Imagine your ideal 80th birthday. What do you see? Who is around around you, and what have you achieved? Imagining your ideal life when you’re 80 will help you identify your most important goals. The goals you want to have achieved by then should be your “first things”, so start working towards them! DEEP CONCEPTS Living a meaningful life isn’t about doing things as quickly as possible – it’s about doing “first things” first. Instead of focusing on what’s urgent, focus on what’s important. Having a high quality of life depends on meeting your needs and focusing on your principles. Develop a strong vision for the future, and use it to know where you’re headed. Only goals based on principles and a vision for the future are likely to be reached. Making the right decisions depends on finding the right perspective, and acting with integrity. Focus on interdependence and cooperation, not independence and competition. Be a strong personal leader by empowering those around you. Picture your different roles and tasks as parts of one whole, not as separate pieces. Striving to improve your quality of life and putting “first things first” will result in inner peace. Date – 10.19.2017 Actionable advice: Increase productivity by increasing your sleeping hours, not your working hours. Studies have demonstrated the way in which sleep improves your brain’s ability to solve complex problems. The expression “sleep on it” has real biological significance, and an awareness of this will allow us to be more effective at work. So next time you’ve got a large task, don’t sacrifice your sleep to work on it – you’ll be much more effective when you allow your brain to refuel and continue work in the morning. Click to read more DEEP CONCEPTS The brain can only focus on a limited number of stimuli at a time. Because we’re surrounded by more and more information, we’re forced to make more and more decisions. Find a designated place for every single object. Give your brain a break – move your organizational processes outside your head. Junk drawers for miscellaneous items are incredibly effective – use them every day. Set aside time to refuel so you can increase your productivity later. It’s important to think about the worst-case scenario so you’re always prepared. We can’t know the answer to every question, but we can know where and how to find it! Get to grips with probabilities and gain a vital skill for assessing information. Date – 10.18.2017 The key message in this book: In spite of how it might seem, only a few things are actually vital to our goals and well-being, and everything else is unimportant. By focusing on these few essential things and Actionable advice: Be an editor. Rather than constantly adding more and more responsibilities and material possessions to your life, try instead to find ways to cut things out. The more trivial things you can eliminate from your thinking and routine, the better you’ll be at what’s left; the things that truly matter. Click to read more The 4 points of Essentialism If we become overwhelmed by our tasks, then we lose our ability to make choices for ourselves Embrace the idea of “less but better” and accept trade-offs as an inherent part of life. Giving yourself space to escape and seeing the bigger picture will help you pick out the vital from the trivial. Get your creative juices flowing by playing – just don’t forget to give yourself time to rest. Be ruthless in cutting away things that aren’t essential. Say “no” to nonessential tasks and plan the essential ones carefully. Stop doing unnecessary things by withdrawing from failures and setting boundaries. Keeping on top of what’s important requires that you eliminate what slows you down and that you prepare carefully. An essentialist life centers around yourself, a routine and proceeding step-by-step. Date – 10.17.2017 Actionable advice: Know yourself and how you work. My 2cents: I am a planner, a visualizer, an arranger and a data analyst. I see much of myself in much of what Tate has to say. I find however, that I tend not to be at my greatest, and he touches on this, because I tend to fall away from process. In recent days I have been working on a more efficient me. In this way I can focus much better in order to get the thing I have on my plate that is of value done! I need to tighten up my process – I think I will take my time, listen to myself and work in my pattern. Date – 10.16.2017 Our shortcuts in judgment can be used against us. What kind of people do we tend to comply with? You Can Negotiate Anything shows that negotiations occur in every walk of life and that it is vital to have the skills and understanding to deal with those situations. The book outlines the key factors affecting negotiation success, as well as ways of negotiating for win-win solutions. To find these blinks, press “I’m done” at the bottom of the screen. My 2Cents: like the idea of influence. I have noticed quite a few of these techniques being used on me in the past and I most admit I have probably used a few on others in the past. I think the idea of people liking you getting suckered is true, but I think if folks are close to you they tend to separate you into more categories and in some cases that might lessen the effect. B-Book 1: The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo The key message in this book:: The Pomodoro Technique is as simple as it is effective: Chop your work into more manageable 25-minute chunks during which you work totallyuninterrupted. Afterwards, take a break to relax and recharge your batteries, so you can start your next 25 minutes of focused work without getting tired. Actionable advice: Don’t get caught in a web of distractions! My 2 Cents: I really want to get this productivity thing down. I have so much to do and not a lot of time to do it. I think with the tremendous amount of effort that I am putting into getting this thing arrange. I am already feeling much more strucutred. It is starting to feel familiar again. Can’t wait to get the sense of accomplishment that I am so used to.
If you want to concentrate on what’s necessary, get your priorities straight..
B-Book 26: Two Awesome Hours by Josh Davis
The key message in this book: You can harness at least two awesome hours of effectiveness every day by following five simple strategies: recognize your decision points; manage your mental energy; stop fighting distractions; leverage your mind–body connection; and make your workspace work for you. This way, you’ll provide yourself with the psychological and biological conditions you need for top performance.
B-Book 25: The Power of No by James and Claudia Azula AltucherThe key message in this book: We make countless decisions each day that have drastic effects on our lives. We must learn to say no to the things that damage us so that we can say yes to health, abundance and happiness.ignore what you don’t like, choose your personal story, don’t conform to other’s expectation, say no to scarcity, appreciate the things you have, realize you have a lot, say no to noise, be aware of the noise around you – shut off the news, give full attention to those around you, discernment, compassion, health, go on a gratitude diet – focus on the good things in your life. Focus on all 4 areas of your life – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
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– then list all the good things in your life, from breathing fresh air to having a roof over your head.
– Then go on a gratitude diet: Start each day by thinking about ten things you are thankful for. This will help you focus more on the good in your life and say no to the bad.
The key message in this book: A good story doesn’t require clever wordplay and flowery prose. Instead, it’s about creating a powerful, well-structured story that has a meaningful theme and characters with depth and nuance that reflect that theme. Whether it’s exciting, dramatic or romantic, by working hard and being well read, you can reflect on your own experiences in life and use structured narratives to create something people will love to read.
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My Stream of Consciousness from this book: You are your life director, change is not easy it requires discipline, examine your reason for being, what are you personality traits, create statement of life purpose, break down vision into goals, and goals into tasks, push beyond your comfort zone, affirmation in the first person, connect with vivid image, close eyes and imagine, color, sun, sound,
The key message in this book: You can achieve your greatest ambitions, but it takes some know-how. Following and practicing the principles of success will equip you to reach your personal and professional goals and live your dream life.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: You are your life director, change is not easy it requires discipline, examine your reason for being, what are you personality traits, create statement of life purpose, break down vision into goals, and goals into tasks, push beyond your comfort zone, affirmation in the first person, connect with vivid image, close eyes and imagine, color, sun, sound, feeling smells, the more sensory the better, be persistent, practice your affirmation daily, keep trying,perseverance is the key to success, schedule completion weekend, do it, delegate it or dump it – also with relationships, forgive – write truth letter, think positively, self love is always beneath self criticism, build your a team of mentors or support group, get a list of 6 or so people you can conference with each week, each should have a skill, get a mentor, ask for 15 min per month from a mentor, help others and be honest and truthful, appreciate others, and be authentic, wealth is more than just money – it has intellectual, moral, and civic facets, offer time to worthy cause.
– I love driving down the highway in my new yellow Lamborghini” is far more effective and precise than saying, “I want a new car
– To do this, close your eyes and imagine your affirmation in as much detail as you can. If your affirmation is, “I enjoy relaxing in the sunroom of my villa in Madrid,” visualize the colors of
your house, the furniture in the sunroom, and so on.
– Add sounds, smells and tastes to your mental picture. What does it physically feel like to sit on the couch in your sunroom? Can you hear the sounds of the busy street, or birds singing?
– To move forward, you need to forgive. Forgiving doesn’t mean doing someone else a favor, it means that you have let go and released tension for your own benefit.
– One effective technique you can use to help you forgive someone is to write a “total truth letter” to vent your anger. Write down things that have angered you, and you’ll notice that
acknowledging your pain and grudges is the first step toward forgiveness.
The key message in this book: If you want to be more creative and productive in your personal or professional life, then you have to prepare yourself. This involves using techniques to free up your “psychic RAM” as well as developing the mental flexibility to effectively shift your focus to wherever it’s needed at any given time.
– Is this project leading me towards my ultimate goal (working only on things that are important towards goal achievement – don’t waste time)
– The best time to deal with potential obstacles is while a project is still in the planning stages, and not when it’s already underway.
– On any project, delays and interruptions are to be expected. So, if your timetable doesn’t allow for such interruptions, every unforeseen event will result in your project running
behind schedule.
from arising.
– You have to remain flexible
– If your management system is too detailed and rigid, you might fail to seize a great opportunity.
– To get started, you could break down your novel project into action steps, such as finding a title, creating a rough structure, or even writing just one page per day. Compared
with attempting to tackle the whole project at once, each of these steps will take only a very brief amount of time.
– Once you organize your project and time into manageable steps, you will find that, suddenly, the work of writing the novel fits snugly into the slivers of free time you have
The key message in this book: No matter how insurmountable they may seem, there are no problems in your life that cannot be overcome by the power of positive thinking. By staying calm, gaining perspective, nurturing your faith and focusing on positive outcomes, you will have the power to create a happy, healthy life.
My Stream of Consciousness from this book: anxiety is huge, change your circumstances by changing your thinking, visualization – good brings positive, the opposite with negative, we all want to be appreciated, show others you like them and who they are, they will like you back, there are those who you are or will be challenged to like – try to like them anyway, no situation is hopeless, you can find a way, negative thoughts and isolating yourself leads to defeat, we have limited time use it wisely, use meditation to clear your brain, your attitude is key, change your attitude to control your surrounding, sleep is supremely important, don’t’ watch news before going to bed, think positive get positive results, the opposite is negative, it is natural to worry, thinking negative is a habit, rid your mind of negative thoughts before going to sleep, they sink deeper, make choice to be happy, sleeplessness stress and headache, unhappiness is a choice, don’t expect the work, self fulfilling prophecy, practice positive thinking , your subconscious can be trained to positivity, you might not find the answer on the first attempt, mind and body is inextricably related, we must take care of both, vast of mind lies beneath the subconscious, you have to believe in your physical and spiritual healing and that requires faith.
The key message in this book: By paying attention to our natural rhythms, we can maximize our energy on our priorities and rest, exercise or do other hobbies when it’s in tune with our rhythm. Sometimes, despite what we feel like doing, we just need to focus to complete certain tasks we don’t feel like doing.
– First, find ways to strengthen your will power at work by training it in other areas of your life. Put simply, adopting even small routines such as regular flossing can help you avoid the distractions of the workplace.
– Second, you can replace any non-work related negative distractions with positive ones and then reward yourself when you’re successful in doing so.
The key message in this book: No one likes to fail. But fear of failure can hold us back from amazing opportunities. Taking risks and learning from the inevitable failures along the way allows us to live much more rewarding lives.
– Business people talk about networks, but this implies contact only when you need something from them
– Instead, cultivate a interdependent community builton reciprocation.
– correspond with a wide variety
– cultivate relationships with people who encourages you
– reciprocate if anyone needs help
The key message in this book: Nothing is set in stone. Your habits, mind-set and personality traits are flexible and subject to change. Once you realize this, your life can start changing for the better. To help facilitate this change, use the five-second rule, a simple tool that can help you adjust your “default” reactions, one five-second decision at a time. By changing the way we make decisions, this relatively small act can add up to redefine who you are, how you feel and what you do with your life.
The key message in this book: Nobody is born lazy. In fact, putting off work – procrastinating – mostly has to do with learning a negative attitude towards work as children. Since it’s something learned, procrastination can also be unlearned by a changing our mind-set.
– First, when you want to do a good job on something so you can live up to others’ and your own expectations
– Second, you find the work dull. It’s no fun and getting started
– Finally, it’s unclear what qualifies as a “good job”: you simply don’t know how to live up to others’ expectations and deliver
– If you start working on the task, you spend your time on something boring, plus you risk failing and disappointing both yourself and others as well.
– If you don’t start working, you can avoid this boredom, uncertainty and the fear of failure.
B-Book 17: Better Than Before by Gretchen RubinThe key message in this book: You can create and maintain good habits, as well as steering clear of bad ones, by employing some simple strategies: Distract yourself, use treats instead of rewards, know what sort of person you are and make your good habits convenient!
Know thyself, upholder, questioner, obliger, rebel, making decision is hard, put it on calendar and put it on automatic, monitor your action to change your habit, change during a major change, it easier if you make an action easy and convenient – to become a habit, make it fun – habit, don’t struggle against temptation, anticipate and minimize, resist temptation, moral licensing, distract yourself, it take about 15mins, shift to something fun and light, pairing is also a good technique, give yourself a treat every now and then.
– The difference between a treat and a reward is that you don’t earn them, they’re just something we give ourselves.
– The main thing is that it’s a spontaneous gift, rather than a planned one, and it’s not given in return for any pre-determined accomplishment.
B-Book 16: Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte
The key message in this book: We needn’t lead our working and private lives in accordance with outdated ideas and old-fashioned beliefs. Instead, we can change our personal lives, our workplaces and our society at large to create less stressful and generally happier lives.
– Moreover, the amygdala – the most ancient or “primitive” part of the brain associated with feeling fear, aggression and anxiety – correspondingly grows in size in people who are constantly stressed.
B-Book 15: The Power of Full Engagement byJim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The key message in this book: All you need for bad habits to weaken their grip on you is four seconds: the time it takes for one deep breath in and out. By taking this micro pause, you’ll be better equipped to collect yourself, gather your thoughts and act in ways that benefit you, rather than work against you. Pause when you get criticism or have to deal with gloomy colleagues, and then turn that negativity around.
– Use the following three-step process.
– First, pause, breathe in and out deeply for four seconds, and think. For instance, if you’re out sailing in your boat and run into a storm, breathe, and think.
– Next, assess your options. Ask yourself: given the resources and information I have available to me, how can I get to my desired outcome?
– Last, make a decision and stick to it
– Arguing is about nothing other than getting the upper hand. Even if you start to see some flaws in your viewpoint, it’s unlikely that you’re going to suddenly admit it if you’re in the middle of a fight!
B-Book 14: The Power of Full Engagement byJim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The key message in this book: In order to become fully engaged in whatever you do and perform at your absolute peak, you must first actively build your energy capacity in all dimensions of life –physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – and manage this energy intelligently.
– If you suffer from constant negative thoughts; write down your thoughts every morning and read them to yourself. THe discomfort with force you to reflect
– First, your purpose must be positive. Imagine sitting in a leaking boat: your purpose – keep the boat from sinking. But if you’re only focused on bailing out water, then there’s no way to navigate towards the shore!
– Second, our purpose has to be intrinsically motivating – Studies show that the more you reward kids for doing the things they love to do, the less they love it.
– Finally, our sense of purpose must be rooted in something beyond mere self-interest – Working out to look good, but how about being health to make sure you are around to take care of your family.
– Example of Vision statement: “I fight passionately for what I believe, but remain open to learning and growing. At work, I am committed to helping people grow, deepen and behave more effectively in the world.”
– One way is to use a technique called priming: every time you’re tempted by something “bad,” do something “good” instead.
B-Book 13: Inner Engineering by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
The key message in this book: The key to inner happiness and joy lies within yourself. Only you can control your experience and perception of the world, whether it is one of bliss, pain or despair. By balancing your body and mind,
B-Book 12: Personal Kanban by Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry
The key message in this book: Many people think that work life and personal life are separate spheres. The truth, however, is that they’re interconnected parts of a whole, and in order to accomplish all you want, it’s key to pay equal attention to
– The first is to visualize your workflow by using a board to diagram all your tasks. This helps you simultaneously monitor everything you need to do and easily ascertain your next task.
Instead of mentally juggling several pressing tasks, your Kanban lets you quickly weigh the tradeoffs of each.
– The second principle of Kanban is to keep your work-in-progress (WIP) to a minimum. There’s no need to put more on your plate than you can realistically handle.
– Step four is to pick the most pressing tasks from your backlog and place them in your workflow – key to put the most urgent tasks into the READY column of your board.
– Step five is to begin pulling – moving, as time allows, high-priority tasks from READY to DOING as your WIP space frees up
– Step six, the action really begins as you start tackling the tasks in your DOING column. Remember that moving things to DONE will always be your sweet reward.
– The motivation you’ll derive from the prospect of moving an item to DONE is the icing on the cake!
– Step seven is to assess your progress in different areas, an easy task given the system’s visual nature. Kanbans work by visualizing every step and task
– For example, say you realize that creative tasks are a total breeze for you, but accounting work drags on and on. Identifying this problem is a major step toward finding a solution.
– A glance at your DONE column might be enough to show you just how many small, easily forgotten tasks you’ve actually accomplished.
– Start by taking a look at your DONE column to determine how many tasks you work on in an average day and which tasks give you the most grief or pleasure.
– For example, while conducting your retrospective, you might realize that you hate filing your taxes, and that, as a result, you always procrastinate right up to tax day. It’s easy to see
that hiring an accountant to file your taxes could seriously cut your stress.
B-Book 12: Work the System by Sam CarpenterThe key message in this book: Hard work doesn’t automatically lead to success, especially if you waste your efforts working on the wrong things. To make the most out of your work, you have to identify the systems within which you operate, and then discern, analyze and improve the dysfunctional parts in them.
– Chaos does not rule the world, but an underlying inherent order, even if we can’t always see it – oil is extracted and make it to the gas stations for your convenience.
– Don’t want to get into the habit of tackling problems as they arise. You want to pull out the problems at the root, thus pre-empting future difficulties
– Means identifying which problems are symptomatic of flaws in your system
– Problems that you discover are actually opportunities to improve the functionality of your systems
– Looked at your relationship as a system and identified the cause of the problem within that system
– Even the best client relationship will turn sour, for example, if you neglect to give it the necessary attention.
B-Book 12: Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein
They key message of this book is: People often make unwise decisions, but the slightest of changes – so-called nudges – can give people incentives to make better decisions. That’s why countries and private institutions should also use nudges.
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B-Book 11: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Distractions are everywhere in the modern world where multitasking has become our default state and is killing our productivity. The good news is we can take back control of our time by eliminating distractions and letting our brains focus on one task at a time.
– Doing tons of things at once is the most productive use of their time, but this logic is dead wrong.
– Multitasking is no good for productivity. Neither is being electronically connected all the time.
– A 2013 Study: the average worker spends over 60 % of the workweek using online communication tools and surfing with just 30% devoted to reading and answering emails.
– Completing small tasks and moving information around makes us feel busy and accomplished
– Overcoming Roadblocks:
– Monastic Approach: Eliminating all sources of distraction and secluding yourself like a monk.
– Bimodal Approach: Setting a clearly defined, long period of seclusion for work and leaving the rest of your time free for everything else.
– Rhythmic approach: Form a habit of doing deep work for blocks of, say, 90 minutes and using a calendar to track your accomplishments.
– The journalistic strategy: Take any unexpected free time in your daily routine to do deep work
– The key here is to remember that they’re methodical, not random.
– We get in the zone by chance and often only after hours of procrastination. On the other hand, deep work is intentional and desired, which makes it essential to have rituals that
prepare your mind for it
– One ritual might be to define your space – placing a “do not disturb” sign on your office door, or going to a library or coffee shop
– Another ritual is to define boundaries, – disconnecting the internet or turning off your phone.
– Finally, make your deep work sustainable – because, whether it’s light exercise, food, or a caffeine pick-me-up, it’s essential to give your body what it needs if you want to focus
– Our brains are wired to be easily distracted. Evolutionarily, these distractions could pose risks or opportunities. As a result, it’s hard for us to deeply focus on one task.
– But don’t worry, productive meditation can rewire your brain and help you focus. Here’s how it works:
– Use moments that would otherwise be unproductive – to consider a problem you need to take care of without letting your mind change subjects.
– To get started, ask yourself questions that identify different issues in solving a problem. Then, once you’ve a specific target, ask yourself action questions – “What do I need to
accomplish my goal?”
– By scheduling everything you do, you’ll free up time for being mindful of how you spend it.
– It’s inevitable that your schedule will change during the day, but if this happens, just rearrange your blocks. It will let you cultivate awareness about how you spend your time.
– It’s also key to plan your evenings and weekends ahead so you can take actions toward specific goals. Imposing limitations and not checking your email after a certain time.
– Finally, planning your evenings and weekends around activities other than those involving the internet can help you revitalize your mind and body. Maybe it’s reading, exercise or just
some quality time with loved ones.
B-Book 10: Getting Things Done by David AllenIn order to devote ourselves fully to our tasks, our minds need space. That’s why we should bundle all important information in a reliable productivity system outside our own heads.
– To be successful in your work is to be a good organizer.
– Whether we want them to or not, our brains are forever trying to work out unsolved problems and reminding us about them at the most inopportune moments
– Always use a collection bucket: a place outside your mind where you can deposit any piece of information or idea that’s bound to distract you.
– You’re writing a work email when you remember you should pay the abill, you can just jot the task down on a piece of paper and keep focusing on your work.
– Your collection bucket can take on various forms: notebooks, lists on your computer or even physical boxes where you can put objects and papers
– The key here is to have your collection bucket(s) close by so it’s easy to call up the information they contain.
– Having reliable external collection buckets frees up your mind so you can concentrate fully on your actual work.
– The system only serves its purpose when you make sure to process and clean out the contents of your collection buckets on a regular basis.
– To prevent your brain from losing faith in your collection buckets, you should make a habit of completely emptying all of them once a week.
– If, upon review, an item is unimportant, take it off the list immediately
– If you can take care of some very quickly (in two minutes or less), do it immediately;
– Going through this procedure regularly, ideally once a week, is the only way to guarantee reliable, stress-free productivity.
– It’s only when you empty your external collection buckets each week that you have to make decisions: What kind of stuff do I have? What should I do with it?
– We should take pains to include only concrete, practicable tasks on these lists,
– When you organize the items in your collection bucket, you should do the following:
– remove anything unimportant, take care of small tasks immediately and put appointments or deadlines into your calendar;
– If it’s a complex activity (that is, if it requires more than one concrete task), turn it into a project with a clear goal;
– Projects are a key component of every productivity system. A project as a desired result that necessitates taking more than one action step.
– Define a project, you have to think about results – When this project is done, I will have…
– Once a project is identified by its desired result, it must be stored on the Projects list, which should be reviewed and updated regularly.
– Everything you want to change in your world at the moment should be on this list.
– When we know that such a list exists, we feel a sense of control, which helps us boost our productivity and relax at the same time.
– You should always make sure that every project has a next task that finds its way onto the Next Actions list,
– A far more effective method is to work with a calendar and one or multiple Next Actions lists.
– You should treat it as a holy territory that provides a fixed structure for planning the rest of your activities.
– Depending on the number of tasks on your list, sometimes it makes sense to have multiple Next Actions lists and distinguish them according to the context
– Whenever you’re dependent on other people’s work
– it’s worth keeping a Waiting For list. This is where you note everything that other people have to deliver to you, along with their deadlines.
– Write yourself reminders on certain days on your calendar. This way, you know you’ll have to make a decision soon
– Keep a tickler file, which can help you access the information you need at the right moment.
– Another important component of the GTD method is the so-calledSomeday/Maybe list
– Everything that doesn’t qualify for the Next Actions or Projects lists but shouldn’t be buzzing around in your head either. The Someday/Maybe list contains all things you haven’t been able to translate into concrete ideas or tasks just yet.
– It helps you keep track of project ideas that might be extremely important in the future.
– The Someday/Maybe list can also be split into sub-lists where you can keep ideas about your personal interests, such as: trips I’d like to take; wines I’d like to taste; and music I’d like to listen to
– Setting up a workplace for yourself where all relevant materials are available is a must.
– In addition to emptying your collection buckets once a week, you should be reviewing and updating all the lists in your productivity system just as often.
– The goal of the GTD method is to feel relaxed and in control of all your current projects: to keep track of them and make sure that they are moving forward.
– It’s essential that your productivity system is up-to-date and complete at all times. Your mind will only be at ease and able to concentrate fully on the task at hand if you trust your system.
B-Book 9: The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey
The key message in this book: Being productive isn’t only about getting more things done – it’s about working smarter by finding ways to be efficient and make the most of your time. To do that you have to acknowledge what’s most important to you and only then take care of business in the most efficient way possible.
by the time you go to sleep
attention and energy on what’s important.
frustrating, difficult, unstructured or ambiguous, lacking in personal meaning andlacking in intrinsic rewards.
grabbed a table at your favorite cafe, sat down with a tasty beverage and were able to get in some enjoyable people watching while taking care of business?
unlimited.
B-Book 8: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
– Every success story begins with people who know what they want to achieve.
– Ex: if you want to get rich, you should decide precisely how much money you want to make, a plan that outlines every step you’ll need to take until the realization of your goal and by when
– First, write down your goal and your detailed plan for achieving it.
– Then, read it aloud twice every day: once in the morning after you get up and once every night before going to bed.|
– First, write down your goal and your detailed plan for achieving it. Then, read it aloud twice every day: once in the morning after you get up and once every night before going to bed.
– Our own faith in ourselves has an enormous influence on our self-image and way of life.
– Auto-suggestion describes a way of influencing yourself by thinking very specific and purposeful thoughts or ideas.
– You can use it to convey certain commands or positive goals to your subconsciousness increasing your belief in yourself.
– you can use auto-suggestion to reach your goals – your thoughts can be transformed into reality
– If you impress your desires and goals in your unconsciousness, it will steer all your thoughts and actions towards making them come true.
– Knowledgeable or well-educated isn’t limited to having a high school diploma or university degree.
– If you want to be successful, you don’t just need many facts – use your own strengths and fully exploit your own potential.
– The most important basis is a willingness to continue learning throughout your life.
– There are many different ways to achieve this – going to university, attending evening courses or acquiring practical experiences.-
– Behind each and every idea is the imagination.
– It is, essentially, the creative workshop of our minds that transforms our dreams into ideas and our ideas into reality.
– By using our creative imagination, we are able to come up with completely new things – composers, visual artists and writers
– The synthetic imagination, by contrast, rearranges old ideas into new combinations – Steve Jobs reimagine Sony’s playback device
– The synthetic imagination, by contrast, rearranges old ideas into new combinations – Coca Cola was a medicine.
– If you want to keep your imagination from getting sluggish, you need to challenge and encourage it – like a muscle, the more frequently you use it, the more productive and powerful it will become.
– One important building block for professional success is Self-Awareness: knowing your own strengths and weaknesses
– In order to figure this out exactly it’s advisable to perform a thorough and honest self-analysis.
– Have I achieved my aim for this year?;
– Was I always friendly, courteous and cooperative?
– Did I make all decisions promptly and firmly?
– Then you should compare your subjective self-analysis with somebody else’s objective evaluation of you.
– Our subconscious receives and stores sensory stimuli, feelings and thoughts. It saves everything we’ve ever experienced – regardless of whether it was positive or negative.
– If we want our subconscious to help realize our desires and goals, we have to make sure that positive feelings play a leading role in our lives.
– We must “feed” our subconscious positive things, if we do, it will act as a helpful and constructive guide.
– you should make it a point to increase all positive impulses, such as enthusiasm and love
– A certain degree of stubbornness – as long as it does not transform into a deaf obstinacy – can be advantageous.
– Opinions are cheap: everybody has one and most people want to dispense them
– Over the course of any project – regardless of its nature – we are all bound to encounter obstacles and difficulties.
– Most of us are too quick to give up our plans and let the project die.
– Few, despite obstacles, stick to their original plans and give their dreams space to blossom into reality.
– Persistence and endurance are key – obstinacy and inveteracy should be avoided at all costs:
– If you want persistence and endurance to take root in your habits, here are four simple yet crucial rules
– a concrete goal and a burning desire to achieve it
– thorough and precise plan to support the implementation of your goals
– keep away negative and disheartening opinions
– develop intimate and trusting relationship for support and assistance
Achieving great things requires being smart and surrounding yourself with smart people.
– if two or more people who work well with one another combine their skills, talents, specialist knowledge, experiences, relationships and all other resources and use them to accomplish the same shared goal, the results will be more than just a sum of its parts: it’s a surplus with which you can achieve things you could have never achieved alone
B-Book 7: Organized Tomorrow Today by Dr. Jason Selk, Tom Bartow and Matthew Rudy
The key message in this book: If you want to be highly successful, you need to know how to control your mind and talk with yourself in a positive fashion. Always remember to focus on the solution rather than on the problem. And even when you’re at the top of your game, never forget the process that got you there.
– Making a long list isn’t the most effective way to go about making improvements.
– Our conscious mind can only process between five to nine concepts – “Channel Capacity – George A. Miller in 1956”
– Since every task requires its own amount of data, working memory can suffer from info overload when trying to juggle multiple tasks.
– If you try to change two or three things in your life at the same time, we tend to get stuck; focusing on one yields results
– The secret to having a productive tomorrow is to organize it today.
– Prioritize tasks by making a list of the Three Most Important things you want to achieve; include the time needed to accomplish them.
– Then, pick one that absolutely needs to be done that very day.
– First: Break complex tasks into manageable subtasks – steps
– Second: Prioritize and schedule wisely
– Third: Write it down: that keeps it front of mind
– Don’t waste time waiting around
– Use the “Ask and Chop” technique to avoid procrastination: chop off the first thing complete it and then repeat
– Set your game clock
– Pre-structure your meetings to meet solid goals – unstructured, aimless meetings are a waste of time
– Making a ritual of the positive habit you want to adopt. Making a ritual means doing something each and every day
– Appreciate when you do things well
– It’s important to focus more on the process than on results.
– When you focus on the process, you’ll learn what works best to reach your goals and what you might need to improve.
– How you talk to yourself impacts your self-confidence.
– You can convince yourself of fail by negative thoughts, or you can increase your chances of success by encouraging yourself.
– Think of it like a coach rallying his team with positive messages
– Do not overthink a problem
– Take stock of everything you have at your disposal, the tools that can help you solve your problem
– The main virus that plagues normal people is procrastination.
– A secondary virus, related to procrastination, is focusing on things you can’t control.
– Abnormal people pay attention to what they can control and the parts of their lives they can improve.
B-Book 6: First Things First by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill
The key message in this book: Too often, we focus on the wrong things in life, which results in stress and disharmony. To increase your quality of life, you need to identify your priorities, replace urgency with importance and create balance between
My Thoughts (my stream of consciousness from this book) – Slow down. Urgent and important are not the same, Don’t’ go for the adrenaline rush. Focusing on principle and being future oriented let you know what you working toward. Have a mission statement with goals based on principles. Use both long and short term view in making decision. Have integrity in the moment of choice. Focus on interdependence and cooperation, strong principles help you to make decision, don’t compartmentalize life – keep a balance view. Watch for discouragement, pride and unrealistic expectation. Think about the jar with the rocks, gravel, sand and water and remember what to put in first.
– Actually, living a meaningful life isn’t about crossing things off a list; it’s about using the compass of your life to identify the first things that have a long-lasting, positive impact on your happiness.
– For most people, the first things are personal relationships with family and friends. Have you ever heard of a person looking back and wishing they’d spent more time at the office?
– The problem is that often the “urgent” and “important” things in our lives aren’t the same. When we have to choose between doing tasks that are urgent, and tasks that are important, most people choose the urgent ones.
– Another reason is biological: taking care of urgent responsibilities can give you an adrenaline rush, which makes you feel energized and alive.
– Unfortunately, when we focus on urgency, we have less time for what’s really important.
– Important things like spending time with family are what bring us long-lasting happiness, but these things are rarely urgent, so they can be easy to neglect
– So what’s the first step in focusing on the important things in life? Well, you need to identify what those things are! To increase your quality of life, you have to fulfill your four basic human needs:
1. The first, the “need to live,” is physical. It means having food, shelter and good health.
2. The next is mental, the “need the learn.” It means being intellectually stimulated.
3. Our social need is the “need to love,” which means having people you trust and care for.
4. The last is spiritual – the “need to leavealegacy,” which means having a sense of purpose in life.
– Our happiness depends on meeting these needs. If they aren’t met, we experience stress, anxiety or fear.
– To fulfill and balance your needs, you must focus on your principles. Your principles are your inner compass – they’re what guide you in the direction you want to go in life.
– Being able to make decisions easily depends on how future-oriented you are.
– Having a clear vision for your future makes it easier to make choices and generally improve your quality of life. Your desire to achieve your dream will be stronger than negative feelings like fear or doubt, so you’ll get over them easier.
– Having a future-oriented vision also helps you through times of struggle, by reminding you what you’re fighting for – Victor Frankl, a famous Holocaust survivor
– So how can you develop a powerful vision for the future? One good way is to write a personal mission statement for yourself.
– Picture yourself at your eightieth birthday. What do you see? A big family? Maybe you’ve created a successful business? What have you achieved by then?
– Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution you didn’t end up completing? On New Years many people set personal goals, such as exercising more, only to quickly fall back to their old habits.
– So what makes the difference between goals that are reached, and those that aren’t’? Firstly, the goal must be consistent with your principles.
– For each goal, identify the: what, why and how: the right thing (what) for the right reasons (why) and in the right way (how).
– For instance, imagine your what is to maintain a healthy body. In this case, your why might be because you want to feel good and set an example for your children, whereas your how could be to change your eating habits and exercise regularly.
– Additionally, make sure your goal is within your influence. it’s okay if your goal might take years to complete
– Like a photographer you need to use the right perspective when making your important decisions.
– Most people use only one perspective when making decisions or plans – “Close up view for immediate needs and wide-angled view” for long term
– The best solution is to combine these two perspectives by planning in weekly terms.
– Try creating a weekly calendar – allot time for things that matter to you,like work, family or leisure.
– When possible combine goals
– In addition to using the right perspective, you also need to remember your principles – helping a friend vs having a relaxing evening.
– Sticking by your principles in decision-making is called having “integrity in the moment of choice,” and this integrity is crucial for making good choices.
– Comparing ourselves to other is not good and have a negative impact on us.
– Trying to achieve everything alone and in competition makes us rush to get things done –
– People “rush to live” by getting fast food while running to an appointment, instead of taking time to eat healthily – bad diet leads to health problems
– Others “rush to love” by moving from one relationship to another – ending things when difficulty arises, rather than working through it. Couples lacking patience leads to divorce
– Rather than being driven by independence and competition, we need to focus on interdependence and cooperation.
– Why these two concepts in particular? Well, consider that the four basic human needs (living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy) all involve having relationships with others.
– When we work independently, we often think that in order to win, we must cause someone else to lose
– To be a good personal leader, you must strive to empower those you lead.
– You do so by creating conditions to build trust, respect and honesty which will naturally lead to empowerment in others.
– So when you lead someone, focus on mutual trust and accountability.
– Strong principles are essential for improving your quality of life. They’ll guide you in deciding how to spend your time, and generally move you in a fulfilling direction.
– One of the most important principles that provides this guidance is balance.
– Most people view their lives as having separate compartments: work, family, free time, etc..
– When people view their lives as compartmentalized, they have difficulty transferring their skills between compartments
– In reality, all our roles and tasks are related. If you only focus on one, it will cause frustration.
– So don’t compartmentalize your life – keep a balanced view, and remember that everything is connected.
– If you aren’t fully satisfied with your life, it’s likely that discouragement, pride or unrealistic expectations are the problem. They are the three most common preventers of inner peace, which is necessary to have a high-quality of life. Sometimes they all occur at once – example of not getting a promotion.
– The biggest key to reaching inner peace is putting “first things first.” – ex of professor with the jar – rocks, gravel, sand, water
– What can we learn from this? Think of that jar as the time in your life: the rocks as the important things, and the sand, gravel and water as the rest. If you put in the sand and gravel first – the unimportant daily chores – there won’t be room left for the rocks. But when you put in the important things first, everything else will fall into place.
B-Book 5: The Organized Mind – by Daniel Levitin
The key message in this book: We live in an age of information overload. This presents a challenge for our brains, which are wired to manage information by focusing attention on one thing at a time. By learning about the way our brain distinguishes, focuses and categorizes, we can better organize our own lives.
– When we switch our attention between different activities, our brain is unable to function effectively. This in turn causes us to make thoughtless mistakes, or forget and misplace things. Example of car.
– we can manage the flood of information by focusing our attention. But how, exactly? Example of looking for dog
– This automatic process of honing our focus down to what’s necessary should also be reflected in our decision making.
* For example, one type of decision we often need to make is about purchasing products or services that can make our lives easier. A good way to analyze these decisions is by thinking about the monetary value of our own time,
because it allows us to compare it to the benefit the product promises. Let’s say you’re thinking about hiring someone to clean your home instead of doing it yourself. Just ask yourself: Would you be willing to pay $50 for two extra
hours of free time? If the answer is yes, then go for it without deliberating any further!
– There is, in fact, a special part of our brain dedicated specifically to remembering the location of things. It’s called the hippocampus, and it was crucial for our ancestors who needed to know where a watering hole was, or the areas where predators
might pounce.
– However, the hippocampus can only provide us with information about objects whose location doesn’t change. This isn’t a problem for a taxi driver trying to remember how to get to a particular building, but is a constant problem for us when we try
to remember where our frustratingly mobile keys are.
– Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the different ideas and thoughts floating around inside your head? The best way to ensure you can keep track of them is to organize them outside your head.
– A time-tested trick to unburden your brain is to write things down. Good old-fashioned flash cards are an easy and effective way to record and organize ideas as soon as you think of them.
– Think of it in terms of the two-minute rule: if the task takes longer than two minutes to complete, then write it down. Otherwise, do it straight away.
– Another effective approach is to organize your written thoughts into categories. This mirrors the way our brains are constantly categorizing new stimuli and helps simplify our thinking, thus saving time and increasing our attention capacity – Example: if we see a flying object with feathers, our brain recognizes it as part of the category “bird.” Though this bird might be a hawk or an eagle, it’s easier to place it in this broader category rather than identify it
specifically. Our could be “Personal Life,” “Work” or “Kids.”
– But what should we do with objects and ideas that don’t seem to belong in any pigeonhole? Well, these miscellaneous items can form their own category.
– In our homes, there’s usually at least one place where random objects like single light bulbs, paper clips or car-cleaning products go. Why? Because it wouldn’t make sense to have a special drawer for light bulbs if you only had a few – combining them with other spare objects is much more space efficient – we will need to perform a little bit of maintenance from time to time.
– if you’re sorting through objects that you haven’t yet felt the need to use, it’s unlikely that you’ll need them in the future. These can be thrown out.
– Everyone knows that you tend to be far more productive after a good night’s sleep. And yet, we’re often tempted to skip a few hours of kip in order to work just a little bit more – this is a mistake
– Memories, problems and ideas often appear in our dreams; we may find ourselves better positioned to solve a problem after “sleeping on it.”
– Sleep isn’t the only way that we can refuel our minds – relaxation and play is important too, as they tend to drive up productivity.
– Each time you plan something, you should consider all the things that could go wrong and think of a solution to them before they occur. Planning for failure in this way needn’t be difficult – it’s as straightforward as placing an extra
key under the flowerpot by your front door.
– It’s also important that we don’t rely on technology alone to prevent us from slipping up. Phones, computers and other technical devices aren’t perfect and at some point will let us down without warning. This is why you should also
prepare non-technical solutions as a backup.
– One of the greatest changes is the way we can easily access vast amounts of information in no time at all. Googling something takes less than a minute! Nevertheless, there’s one important question we should continually ask
ourselves: Is this information reliable? Ex: Wikipedia
– However, not every problem can be solved by checking online. In complex dilemmas, particularly in the workplace, you’ll need to think for yourself in order to find solutions. Inventive and innovative thinking is something you just can’t
google for! In such cases, the ability to reason, estimate and develop hypothetical assumptions is vital. Ex: Google problem in calculating weight of the Empire State Building.
– We must also keep in mind that our perception of probability is often relative to the situation we are currently in – our starting point.
– Imagine that you’re very sick. Your doctor offers you a treatment that will increase the likelihood of your recovery by ten percent. If the treatment increases your likelihood of recovery from zero to ten percent, you’ll go from certain
death to a ten percent chance of living. And, if it increases from 90 percent to 100 percent, your recovery is guaranteed. In both cases, you’ll likely opt for the treatment.
– But what if it increases from 20 percent to 30 percent? Then, you might hesitate and inquire about the side effects and cost of the treatment before agreeing to it. From a statistical perspective, this is bizarre since in all of these
cases, the increase of ten percent is the same. The scenarios just feel different because of their varying starting points.
B-Book 4: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
learning to do better by doing less, we can craft a life that is far more productive and fulfilling.
DEEP CONCEPTS
– Embrace less but better; identify
– Reject the notion that you should do everything; chose one direction and excel
– Constantly question yourself and update your plans
– Put the above point in play
– If we become overwhelmed by our tasks, then we lose our ability to make choices for ourselves.
– Adopting this approach means being willing and able to make trade-offs, which can prove to be difficult.
– Creating a space in your schedule just to think about your life – what options, problems or challenges you face – will help you assess which are vital and which aren’t.
– Play is essential but not at the expense of sleep.
– Use the 90-percent rule, anything that is less than 90 (even an 89) is a zero. After considering all the options, discard everything that scored less than 90.
– Don’t be scared of saying no – separate the decision from the relationship
– Remember, failing to say no to the things which aren’t vital can lead you to miss out on the opportunities that truly are.
– Once you get used to saying no when it’s in your best interest, you can focus on the vital tasks that are left over.
– Boundaries are not there to constrain you, but to make your life easier and more enjoyable.
– Develop the courage to admit your errors and mistakes and let them go.
– If it’s clear that something isn’t going to work out, then don’t be afraid to cut your losses and abandon ship.
– you can prevent unnecessary obstacles by being prepared.
– One of our biggest mistakes is assuming that our plans will go as expected.
– An essentialist life centers around yourself, a routine and proceeding step-by-step.
– While it might be frustrating to take small steps, the consequences of even small steps can be far-reaching.
– Routines create a habit, thus making difficult things become easier over time.
– It’s therefore prudent to create a routine that aligns with your goals.
-Book 3: Work Simply by Carson Tate
The key message in this book: To remember the key lessons from these blinks, just keep in mind the phrase “Know the TWIST“: You need to Know yourself, learn to manage your Time, have the WIllpower to focus on the tasks at hand and find your own productivity STyle.
The next time you start a project, take notes on the task, particularly how it fits your goal and how much you liked doing it. Do this a few days in a row and you’ll gain practical insight on how you can tweak your working style to best fit your personality and make lighter work of your daily tasks.
B-Book 2: Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
The key message in this book: Humans tend to use predictable “shortcuts” to deal with certain decision-making situations, and people like advertisers, con-artists and salespeople take advantage of these “preprogrammed” responses. Since we cannot stop using these shortcuts, we must defend against manipulators who would abuse them.
What mechanisms within us can be easily manipulated?
If you are in the middle of focused work and your colleagues, who you like and respect, want to chat with you about the game last night, simply politely yet firmly tell them that you’ll get back to them shortly. Personal relationships are important, but allowing these sorts of interruptions will simply cascade into another wasted day where nothing gets done!