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Pause Before You Begin: How to Invest in Yourself
Build on your strengths
Using a pen and paper, work through the following exercises.
- Consider each area of your life over the past year (occupational, physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional). What are you most proud of in each area?
- Choose three areas where you spend the most energy on.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
"By far the most significant learning experience in adulthood involves critical self-reflection - reassessin..."
Jack Mezirow
3 areas of life to clarify
You need to have absolute clarity over 3 fundamental facts:
- Your goals (the destination)
- Your current situation (your coordinates)
- The path that connects both of them (the route).
A very simple, but crucial principle: if you don’t know where you are, you can never reach the place where you want to be.
The world of the status quo bias
Making an alternative choice is hard because we are neurologically wired to favor the default solution, even if it brings suboptimal results.
As the complexity of a decision increases, so does our tendency to stick with the answer we know.
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Key Ideas
Air quality
There are a few different things that contribute to the quality of air, including CO2 levels, pollutants, and general ventilation, and the scientific consensus is that if the air in a building isn’...
Light levels
Natural light provides our bodies with vitamin D, which in turn promotes healthy bone growth, and has been found to actively contribute to our physical and cognitive productivity. Put simply, if the indoor environments we spend time in are poorly naturally lit, our productivity can suffer – particularly in the winter, when the daylight hours are shorter.
Visual Aesthetics
Longer distance views, away from computer screens or written documents reduce fatigue, headaches and the effects of eye strain in the long term. Views also have a positive impact on wellbeing, in part by providing a psychological connection with other groups of people while in a safe space.
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Key Ideas
Tradeoffs
The real problem lies in our judgm...
Striving for Everything
A tradeoff is inevitable in almost every decision we take, as we usually forego some opportunity or benefit in our choices.
Many people strive for everything and believe there are no tradeoffs.
Focussing on less can get you something but focusing on everything may get you nothing.
Having "Everything"
We seem to think that the people around us have everything in life.
Tradeoffs in others take time to become apparent. Everyone lets go of something, making a sacrifice, to be able to focus, investing time and energy in what is important to them.