al setting is one of the four techniques the military used to increase Navy SEAL passing rates from 25% to 33%. Studies have also shown it makes you happier. So what are five steps to achieving your goals? 1) Shut Up Keep them secret. Talking about big goals rewards yourself ahead of time and makes you less likely to follow through. Via Daniel Coyle’s excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: While it’s natural and oh so tempting…
w to be more effective at work 1) Have A Solid Daily Ritual Here's a solid one from Peter Bregman that will help you maximize use of your time . Via 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done: STEP 1 (5 Minutes): Your Morning Minutes. This is your opportunity to plan ahead. Before turning on your computer, sit down with the to-do list you created...and decide what will make this day highly successful… STEP 2 (1 Minute…
Realize it's not about natural talent. It's about hard work. We all know intelligence is important, creativity is important… but how much do these types of natural talent control really what you can achieve in life? In ~95% of cases, they don’t. Via Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: “After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all…
ntil a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped…
bsp; 1) Want to be happy? It's more about perspective than anything else. Write down three good things that happen to you every day. Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being: Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you…
ndering minds are associated with creativity. Popular wisdom tells you to live in the moment. Huh? So is it better to be unfocused or focused? Let's look at the research. The Upside of Mind Wandering You spend up to 8 minutes of every hour daydreaming. Your mind will probably wander for 13% of the time it takes you to read this post. Some of us spend 30-40% of our time daydreaming. Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the…
live without regrets, first you need to know what the most common ones are. Over at Harvard Business Review, Daniel Gulati discusses his informal study of people's biggest regrets about their career. He talked to professionals who ranged in age and represented a variety of different industries but five ideas came up again and again: 1. I wish I hadn't taken the job for the money. "By far the biggest regret of all came from those who opted…
bsp; 1) Want to be more creative? Get happy. Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work: Our diary study revealed a definitive connection between positive emotion and creativity. We looked at specific emotions as well as overall mood (the aggregate of a person’s positive and negative emotions during the day). Overall, the more positive a person’s mood on a given day, the more creative thinking he did that day. Across all study participants, there was…
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