At some point in our lives, we may just feel "meh", not depressed, but not good, not burned out, but not fired up. When you're languishing, you have a feeling of emptiness, stagnation and listlessness. Languishing is part of the human condition. It can disrupt your focus and interfere with your motivation. You may feel indifferent to being indifferent, meaning you don't seek help and might do nothing to help yourself.

Languishing

Researchers found that the best predictor of well-being is not optimism - it is flow. Flow is the state of being absorbed in the present. For example, it might be cooking or running or gardening where you lose track of time and your sense of self.Bingeing is a temporary escape from languishing. You might love hanging out with the characters in a show, but they don't even know you exist. So, bingeing is passive engagement in a fictional world. Conversely, peak flow depends on active participation in the real world. Peak flow is capable of moving us out of the slump.

Bingeing vs peak flow

<ol><li>Mastery. Psychologists find that a sense of progress helps us feel motivated and joyful. Even small wins can make us feel motivated. </li><li>Mindfulness - Focusing your full attention on one task. When we task switch every 10 minutes, we lose focus. If we want flow,  we need to treasure uninterrupted blocks of time.</li><li>Mattering. It is knowing that you make a difference to other people. A peak moment of flow can be making the time to have fun with the people we love.</li></ol>

Three conditions of peak flow

This Ted talk helps to understand that "meh" feeling and how to get out of the slump.

Have you found yourself staying up late, joylessly bingeing TV shows and doomscrolling through the news, or simply navigating your day uninspired and aimless? Chances are you're languishing, says organizational psychologist Adam Grant -- a psychic malaise that has become all too common after many months of the pandemic. He breaks down the key indicators of languishing and presents three ways to escape that "meh" feeling and start finding your flow.

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to stop languishing and start finding flow

Career changes are some of the biggest moves we will ever make, but they don’t have to be daunting. Using mental models can help you clarify the direction you want to go and plan for how to get there. They are tools that will give you more control over your career and more confidence in your decisions. When you do the work upfront by examining your situation through the lens of a few mental models, you set yourself up for fewer regrets and more satisfaction down the road.

Using mental models for a career change

Do you know where you want to go? Are you moving with direction or just moving? As a mental model, velocity reminds us there is a difference between speed and direction. It’s easy to move fast without getting anywhere. We can stay busy all day without achieving our goals. Without considering our velocity, we run a huge risk of getting sidetracked by things that make us move faster (more money, a title on a business card) without that movement actually leading us where we want to end up.

Velocity

Once you know where you want to end up, it’s often useful to work backward to where you are now. This is known as inversion. Start at the end and carefully consider the events that get you there in reverse order.For example, it could be something as simple as waking up happy and excited to work every day. What needs to be true in order for that to be a reality? Are you working from home, having a quiet cup of coffee as you prepare to do some creative work? Are you working on projects aligned with your values? Are you contributing to making the world a better place?

Inversion

Take stock of the skills you already have. Why do you need to do this? So you know what you can repurpose. Here, you’re using the concept of exaptation, which is part of the broader adaptation model in biology. Exaptation refers to traits that evolved for one purpose and then, through natural selection, were used for completely unrelated capabilities. For instance, feathers probably evolved for insulation. It was only much later that they turned out to be useful for flying.

Exaptation

It’s hard to know how great (or terrible) a job is until you actually do it. We often have two types of maps for the careers we wish we had: maps of the highlights, success stories, and opinions of people who love the work and maps based on how much we love the field or discipline ourselves.The territory of the day-to-day work of these careers, however, is very different from what those two maps tell us.In order to build a more comprehensive map of your dream job, do your research on as large a sample size as possible. Talk to people doing the job you want.

Map is not the territory

<ul><li>One of the things global and local maxima teaches us is that sometimes you have to go down a hill in order to climb up a new one. If you look at your career change through the lens of global and local maxima, you will see that steps down can also be steps forward.</li><li>Activation energy requires you to think about the real effort required for sustained change. You need to plan not just for making a change but also for seeing it through until the new thing has time to take hold.</li></ul>

Global and local maxima and activation energy

In this particular situation (of a career change), it can be helpful to use a Bayesian casino.A Bayesian casino is a thought experiment where you imagine walking up to a casino game, like roulette, and quantifying how much you would bet on any particular outcome.Probabilistic thinking isn’t a predictor of the future. With any big career move, there are inevitably a lot of unknowns. There are no guarantees that any choice is going to be the right one. The Bayesian casino just helps you quantify your thinking based on the knowledge you have at this moment in time.

Probabilistic thinking

Career changes are big moves that come with stress and uncertainty. Here’s how mental models can move you in the right direction and get you the information you need to make good decisions. The result of using mental models is a new career that aligns with where you want to be.

career

Career

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Mental Models for Career Changes

In a time not so long ago or far away, eating family dinner, connecting with your spouse after tucking the children into bed or talking with your children in the in-between times like the ride to school was just routine.
But times have changed. Our growing cultural mindset is that we’re too busy to connect with those closest to us, even though we collectively want to. Parents and children alike increasingly invest their downtime in phones and on social media and there’s a general sense that there’s always more. More to read, more to reply to and more to see.

Family Time

Because of this pressure to always consume more, it can feel wasteful to slow down to appreciate the people in front of us, for fear of missing out on life happening elsewhere.
Although it’s true that we can always consume more information, it’s not true that slowing down and taking time to connect — particularly face-to-face — is a waste of time.

Appreciating Those We Are With

Making time for social connections can reduce the chances of depression and anxiety caused by loneliness. And those connections can have broader benefits as well.here are a few simple ways to integrate face-to-face interaction into your family’s lifestyle.

Face To Face Interaction

Eating together as a family requires intentional effort, but most families can manage it at least a few times through the week. The intention, however, starts at the top.
You may want to reassess the timing of extracurricular activities to see if you can align your schedules to allow everyone to have a seat at the table.

Eating Together

To get the full benefit of those meals, keep away the phones and turn off the TV. You may want to have a basket for everyone to put their phones in, on silent, before the meal starts. 
The goal is to not just eat but to get a sense of what’s going on in everyone’s lives, and to get the gist of their emotional state.

No Phones Policy

Another important opportunity to reconnect with each other is winding down together before bed. You probably know that using electronic devices in the hour before bed makes it harder to fall and stay asleep. So you can improve your physical health and the health of your relationships by using that time to connect with your spouse instead.
It’s a good idea to set your phone to “do not disturb” mode so you rest peacefully. This tech-free before sleep ritual gives you the opportunity to pay attention to your spouse and to stay emotionally attuned to how he or she is feeling.

Wind down together

The best opportunity for face-to-face, meaningful connection is to invite your family members into whatever you’re already doing. 
Ask your kids to help you cook. Invite your spouse to walk the dog with you, and turn it into an evening ritual. Or suggest they join you on that evening errand to the Supermarket. Connection develops and strengthens in the little day-to-day moments.

Live life together

We get it, we’re all busy. But real, meaningful relationships thrive when they’re face-to-face. Here’s how to make time for them.

communication

Communication

timemanagement

Time Management

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

How to Make Time With Family and Loved Ones Count

<ul><li class="ql-align-center">Abstract goals.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Outcomes that are far in the future.</li><li class="ql-align-center">A disconnect from our future self.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Feeling overwhelmed.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Anxiety.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Task aversion.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Perfectionism.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Fear of evaluation or negative feedback.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Fear of failure.</li><li class="ql-align-center">A perceived lack of control.</li><li class="ql-align-center">ADHD.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Depression.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Lack of motivation.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Lack of energy.</li><li class="ql-align-center">Sensation seeking.</li></ul>

Reasons For

Understanding why others procrastinate can help you figure out why you procrastinate. Sometimes figuring out other's issues make ours clearer and help us figure out how to overcome whatever is holding us back.

Understanding Procrastination

<ol><li>Establish clear, precise goals based in actuality.</li><li>Identify the when, how, and why of past procrastination to get a clearer picture of why you put things off.</li><li>Create a plan of action with anti-procrastination techniques.</li><li>Put plan of action into effect. Monitor progress as well as which techniques are working and others you could try.</li></ol>

Overcoming Procrastination

<ul><li>Prioritize tasks.</li><li>Break large, overwhelming tasks into small, actionable parts.</li><li>Remove distractions.</li><li>Set small deadlines throughout the project's progress.</li><li>Reward yourself as you go.</li><li>Visualize yourself experiencing the outcome of your work.</li><li>Believe in yourself and that you can stop procrastinating.</li></ul>

Anti-procrastination Techniques

Understanding why people procrastinate is beneficial, since it can help you figure out why you yourself procrastinate, which in turn can help you figure out how to solve your procrastination problem. To learn more about this, and to understand how you can implement this knowledge in practice, read the follow-up guide on <a href="https://solvingprocrastination.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating/">how to stop procrastinating</a>.

Understanding And More Information

I am a queen at putting things off until the last minute! This article is full of great information on breaking procrastination!

Learn why you procrastinate, so you can understand what you need to do in order to change.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The Psychology and Causes of Procrastination – Solving Procrastination

Black swans are not inconsequential anomalies, but a significant phenomenon that shapes the very world we live in. Many historical events that drastically impacted our societies and lives were actually Black Swan events. These include the 2 world wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks, the rise of the internet or the 2019 - 2020 Covid pandemic.In all these cases, no one could’ve predicted the events in advance

Overview

For thousands of years, it was widely believed that all swans were white. Then in 1697, a Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Australia, debunking this universal “truth” overnight. The term “Black Swan” has since been used to describe the occurrence of a seemingly impossible event

What Are Black Swans And Why Are They Imp

Taleb identifies 3 key features of Black Swans: <ul><li> Rarity: Black Swans are outliers that can’t be reasonably expected to happen based on based past events.</li><li>They have a profound impact on our society/world.</li><li>Retrospective predictability: Although the events are unpredictable, humans tend to explain then on hindsight as if they could be perfectly understood and predicted.</li></ul>

Three Lessons:

Black Swans dramatically change the reality of those, who aren’t aware that they’re comingThe author calls an even a “Black Swan” if it’s unpredictable not because it’s random, but because our outlook on what’s possible was too narrow. Imagine you’d known about the 9/11 attacks in advance. You wouldn’t have been surprised. In some cases, a Black Swan is only a tragedy for a single person. However, often it affects entire societies. Just think of Copernicus’s discovery that the sun is the centre of the universe, not the earth, or Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Based on the only we can be certain of - what was happened in our lives in the past - we weave a narrative that makes sense and expect that the future simply must unfold this way. For example, imagine you’re turkey and for years you live on a farm, get to roam free everyday and are fed great food by a farmer. Why would you expect anything to change? But if tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, you’re just 24 hours away from getting killed, stuffed and roasted.

Don’t Use Your Past To Explain The Future

Trying To Assess Real - World Like You Would In A Game Can Lead you to making the wrong choicesAnother fallacy Taleb describes is called the music fallacy. This one explains why we do such bad jobs at getting the right insurance policy, for example.When faced with the task to assess risk in the real world, we usually try to imagine the risk like a game, where there’s a set of rules and probabilities that we can determine up front, in order to then make the right decision.

<ul><li> In mediocristan environments, there’s a limit to the amount of randomness or deviation from the average. Inequalities exist, but they’re mild or controlled. Usually, there’re some physical constraints (e.g. height, weight, running speed) which limit the amount of variability. For example, if you add the tallest or heaviest man in history to a sample size of 1,000 people, the outlier won’t make a real difference to the average.</li></ul>

2 Types Of Uncertainty: Extremistan Vs Mediocristan

In Extremistan environments, there can be wild randomness and extreme deviations. Typically, there’re no physical constraints and no known upper/lower limits (e.g. knowledge, financial markets, e-books sales, social media “likes”). Thus, the outliers can make a big difference - if you add the net worth of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates to a group of 1,000 people, it will drastically shift the average.

Extremistan

The uncertainties to the world events can b me unpredictable.

The most influential book of the past seventy-five years: a groundbreaking exploration of everything we know about what we don’t know, now with a new section called “On Robustness and Fragility.” A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.” For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb will change the way you look at the world, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,” which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a landmark book—itself a black swan.

books

Books

The Black Swan is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes. A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.   Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”   For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,” which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.   Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book—itself a black swan.   Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb   “The most prophetic voice of all.”—GQ   Praise for The Black Swan   “[A book] that altered modern thinking.”—The Times (London)   “A masterpiece.”—Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail   “Idiosyncratically brilliant.”—Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times   “The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate   “[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne. . . . We eagerly romp with him through the follies of confirmation bias [and] narrative fallacy.”—The Wall Street Journal   “Hugely enjoyable—compelling . . . easy to dip into.”—Financial Times   “Engaging . . . The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.”—The New York Times Book Review From the Hardcover edition.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan

The Black Swan: Second Edition

Personal agency, or self-agency, describes the experiences we have when we set goals for ourselves and take action to achieve them.<ul><li>People with high agency feel a sense of control over their lives, and they can make decisions about what they want or need and act to meet those needs.</li><li>People with low agency may feel like something outside their control, such as luck or fate, is shaping their path. If someone has low agency, they may feel powerless to change the direction of their lives. And powerlessness is a very uncomfortable feeling for most of us.</li></ul>

Personal agency

<ul><li>Intentionality assumes that humans are making conscious choices to improve their lives. </li><li>Power means that a person has the resources, capabilities, and knowledge to act on their goals. </li><li>Rationality: We can understand the circumstances of their situations and keep track of the outcomes of their actions.</li><li>Forethought: our ability to choose the right actions to achieve their goals and anticipate the outcomes of their actions.</li><li>Self-regulation: our capacity to monitor their emotions, behaviors, and motivations as they act upon their goals. </li><li>Self-efficacy: a person’s belief in their ability to succeed.</li></ul>

The six components of high agency

Low self-agency is not a moral failing; there are many social, economic, and cultural reasons people may feel that they have little control over their lives.You have probably come across people with low self-agency in your everyday life. Perhaps you know a coworker who constantly complains about their workload but never takes it up with their supervisor, a family member who believes they are cursed with bad luck. This may be because they are struggling with low self-agency.

Low self-agency

<ul><li>Examine your beliefs. Would you describe yourself as someone with high agency, low agency, or somewhere in between?</li><li>Practice intentionality. Setting a small intention at the beginning of each week can help you get in the habit of purposive thinking about your wants and needs. </li><li>Understand your circumstances. High agency requires resources like time, money, knowledge, and skills. </li><li>Find support. If you struggle with self-agency in your career, consider working with a career coach or a mentor.</li></ul>

From low agency to high agency

People with high agency feel a sense of control over their lives, and they can make decisions about what they want or need and act to meet those needs.

High agency: how to feel more in control in your life and work

Decluttering- the removal of unnecessary items from an untidy or overcrowded space<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">This process can be applied to tangible physical items in your home or workplace, such as books, furniture, and clothes</li><li class="ql-align-justify"> Can also be applied to intangible things, such as negative thoughts, worries, and responsibilities, that constantly occupy your mind </li></ul>A calendar crammed with too many commitments, or people making unnecessary demands on your time and attention, can become overwhelming and cause anxietyHere are some ways to declutter your mind and your life

Importance Of Decluttering 

A cluttered home or work space leads to a cluttered mind<ul><li>Cluttered surroundings are constantly telling your brain that there’s stuff to be done, organizing, cleaning, tidying, etc</li><li>The brain feels bombarded by these stimuli, causing stress and anxiety</li></ul>An uncluttered and organized living environment has a calming psychological effect

Declutter Your Physical Space

If your mind is awash with things that you need to remember, simply write them down<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Make a list on a notepad, an app or digital planning tool</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Choose a place where thoughts, ideas, appointments, shopping lists, etc can be emptied from your mind to be dealt with another time such as a journal or diary </li><li class="ql-align-justify">You can also write down specific worries, things you need to address in a difficult conversation with someone, plans for the future, etc</li></ul>The goal is to clear space in your mind by emptying these thoughts onto a page

Write Things Down

If your to-do list seems unending, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of different tasks that your feel under obligation to do<ul><li>Each day pick out the things that’s important to get done that day</li><li>Focus on a short list of your most important tasks and make sure that it’s only these priorities that occupy your mind</li><li>Then break down your larger items of mental clutter into smaller chunks that are easier to tackle individually</li><li>After that, set aside a specific amount of time to focus on the task at hand</li></ul>

Stop Multi-Tasking And Prioritize 

The volume of information that we’re exposed to from numerous sources each day is mind boggling from news stories, social media, TV, text messages, emails, etc <ul><li>Go through your email inbox and unsubscribe from mailing lists, email marketing, newsletters, and blogs that you don’t use or read</li><li>Be disciplined about how much time you spend watching TV, using social media, or aimlessly browsing the Internet </li></ul>Be critical about the sources of information you’re choosing to read or interact with

Restrict The Daily Flood Of Information 

If the number of appointments and commitments in your calendar is overwhelming, consider whether they’re all necessary Don't feel under obligation to attend social events because you ‘feel you should’<ul><li>Choose engagements that are worth your time and energy </li><li>Spend time with the people who boost your mental wellbeing</li><li>Attend activities that are beneficial for you personally or professionally and discard the rest of you can </li></ul>

Be Decisive And Don’t Feel Awkward About Saying No 

Many of us spend a lot of time pondering over regrets, worrying about past mistakes or bad decisions, thinking about people we have hurt, etc <ul><li>Write down your worries and things you’ve dwelled on. For each one, ask yourself, can I change this situation?</li><li>If you have control over the problem, then do the things in your power to change it. If you don’t, then let it go</li><li> </li></ul>

Don’t Dwell On The Past

Relaxation is not only restorative for a tired body, but also for a busy mindThere are a number of activities and techniques you can try that will help to clear your mind of invasive thoughts and mental clutter<ul><li>Meditation is possibly the most powerful tool for helping restore mental clarity</li><li>It involves learning to focus on the present moment, on your breathing and on the sensations in your body </li></ul>

Make Time For Relaxation

Too much mental clutter can have a negative impact on your life in the form of anxiety, sleep disturbance, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. Using these techniques below will help you to begin emptying your mind and your life of unnecessary worries and thoughts.

Learn how to identify unwanted mental clutter. Discover techniques to clear your mind and focus on what really matters.

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Decluttering Your Mind | SkillsYouNeed

Hustle culture may be toxic, but the way the world functions is on productivity. Productivity determines your success, both financial and personal, in a world like ours. But where do you cross the line? Where do you decide that overworking beyond this point will lead to problem? What you might need is focus. Focusing on your work while at work and on your home when at home will make life easier.

5 Books To Make You Focused In Life

Here’s a list of 5 books to make you focused in life. These books will boost your focus, your productivity, professionally and personally.

habits

Habits

5 Books To Make You Focused In Life - GoBookMart

Whether it’s the weekend or an upcoming holiday break, a number of studies have shown that people who set personal goals to achieve during their time off — such as seeing friends, pursuing a hobby, or even organizing a closet — report being happier than those who don’t.
The reason this works is that it makes us more intentional about how we will spend our time away from work and not because it allows us to cross things off from yet another to-do list.

Intentional Time Spent Is Better

Employees who have holiday goals further anticipate allocating 24% less time to passive leisure activities such as watching TV, napping, or doing nothing, and 28% more time to socializing with their friends and family. 
These differences in how we plan to spend our time off matter for our well-being: Studies show that planning to spend more time with loved ones is associated with greater happiness. This is in line with one of the most consistent finding in time-use and well-being <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21678165/">research</a> on the unique benefits of social connection.

Time Well Spent

Similar to holidays, people who have goals for their weekends are also more likely to spend their weekends pursuing social activities and less likely to spend their weekends resting or doing nothing. And spending one’s weekend engaging in social activities may in turn lead to greater happiness.
The positive effects of setting goals aren’t just limited to weekends and holidays, but can actually be tapped into on a daily basis — setting goals for how we spend our evenings can even be beneficial.

Have A Goal For The Weekend

While setting goals for our time-off is important, that doesn’t mean we should treat those goals like a to-do list. We should be flexible.
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1509/jmr.14.0591?casa_token=3co9CjhhIb0AAAAA:kwErL-umQy0EvU8M7FjR4mtCaORg0mJUvCYqac6Q12rHahDHjLFkLooCZ1Zm-EnRQaSg-_VCzus">Research</a> by Gabriela Tonietto and Selin Malkoc showed that scheduling leisure activities can undermine the enjoyment people experience from such activities in part because leisure starts to feel like work. These authors found that when people scheduled leisure activities loosely, they were still able to maintain the enjoyment of leisure time.

Flexible, Fun Goals

Research suggests that setting (loose) goals can help you recharge more effectively.

Be Intentional About How You Spend Your Time Off

“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”

If we want to do things that haven’t been done or learn things that have never been learned — in short, be more creative — we must learn to ask the right questions, ones so good that they’re half-answered in the asking. And to do that, it might help to understand the process.
Warren Berger proposes a simple method in his book A More Beautiful Question; an interesting three-part system to help (partially) solve the problem of inquiry. He calls it The Why, What If, and How of Innovative Questioning. Each stage of the problem-solving process has distinct challenges and issues–requiring a different mindset, along with different types of questions.

Asking The Right Questions

Expertise is helpful at certain points, not so helpful at others; wide-open, unfettered divergent thinking is critical at one stage, discipline and focus is called for at another. 
By thinking of questioning and problem solving in a more structured way, we can remind ourselves to shift approaches, change tools, and adjust our questions according to which stage we’re entering.

Expertise

A good Why? seeks true understanding. Why are things the way they are currently? Why do we do it that way? Why do we believe what we believe?
This start is essential because it gives us permission to continue down a line of inquiry fully equipped. Although we may think we have a brilliant idea in our heads for a new product, or a new answer to an old question, or a new way of doing an old thing, unless we understand why things are the way they are, we’re not yet on solid ground. We never want to operate from a position of ignorance, wasting our time on an idea that is half-baked.

Why? Questioning

The truth is that a really good Why? type question tends to be threatening. That’s also what makes it useful. It challenges us to step back and stop thinking on autopilot.
It also requires a step back from knowing — that recognizable feeling of knowing something but not knowing how you know it. This forced perspective is, of course, as valuable a thing as you can do.

The Why Is Threatening

All great ideas tend to be, almost by definition — by asking What If…?Berger illustrates this one well with the story of Pandora Music. The founder Tim Westergren wanted to know why good music wasn’t making it out to the masses. His search didn’t lead to a satisfactory answer, so he eventually asked himself, What if we could map the DNA of music? The Pandora story started with someone’s wondering about an unmet need. It concluded with the questioner, Westergren, figuring out a way to bring a fully realized version of the answer into the world.

What If? Questioning

Smart recombinations are all around us. Pandora, for example, is a combination of a radio station and search engine; it also takes the biological method of genetic coding and transfers it to the domain of music. In today’s tech world, many of the most successful products–Apple’s iPhone being just one notable example–are hybrids, melding functions and features in new ways.

Smart Blends And Recombinations

Once we think we’ve hit on a brilliant new idea, it’s time to see if the thing actually works. Usually and most frequently, the answer is no. But enough times to make it worth our while, we discover that the new idea has legs.The most common problem here is that we try to perfect a new idea all at once, leading to stagnation and paralysis. That’s usually the wrong approach.Another, often better, way is to try the idea quickly and start getting feedback.

How? Questioning

The point is to move along the axis of Why?–What If–How? without too much self-censoring in the last phase. Being afraid to fail can often mean a great What If? proposition gets stuck there forever. Analysis paralysis, as it’s sometimes called. But if you can instead enter the testing of the How? stage quickly, even by showing that an idea won’t work, then you can start the loop over again, either asking a new Why? or proposing a new What If? to an existing Why?Thus moving your creative engine forward.

Avoiding An Analysis Paralysis

Solve creativity problems with these three questions

How do we ask better questions, and why does it matter? Warren Berger helps us with his book "A More Beautiful Question," proposing a three-part system.

creativity

Creativity

Warren Berger's Three-Part Method for More Creativity - Farnam Street

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