Prior to the Council of Nicaea (In 325 AD), churches around the world celebrated Easter at various times. In order to bring unity among the churches, council members created a formula that would calculate the date for Easter celebration around the world.
They established Easter to be held on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon, which follows the vernal equinox, but always after Jewish Passover. It was also determined that the vernal equinox would fall on March 21.

Calculating Easter

Jewish Passover is celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which is the first month of the year for the Jewish calendar. It is a time practicing Jews commemorate God setting the ancient Jewish people free from captivity in Egypt. Passover is celebrated for 8 days and is made up of several ceremonial traditions.
It was important for the church to celebrate Easter after the Jewish Passover because Jesus Christ celebrated Passover with his Jewish followers the night before he was crucified.

Easter and Passover

After the Great Schism of 1054, the Catholic and Orthodox churches still believed Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon to follow the vernal equinox.
<ul>
<li>But the Catholic Church no longer found that Easter had to fall after Passover. It also switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which was presented in 1582.</li>
<li>The Orthodox Church still held to the original Nicean Council's formula for Easter as well as following the original calendar system of the Julian calendar.</li>
</ul>
The two churches now celebrated the same Easter holiday on two different days.

Same Easter, Different Day

Before the invention of calendars and other modern methods of tracking years and seasons, people relied on the position of the sun in the sky and obvious signs in nature to indicate the passing of time.
When the equator and the hemispheres of the Earth became common knowledge, it was understood that the slightly tilted rotation of the earth causes different hemispheres to experience different seasons. The vernal equinox is the event that occurs in late March, which brings spring to the parts of the earth in the Northern Hemispheres.

The Vernal Equinox

Did you know that there are two different dates for the Easter holiday? There is one for the Catholic Church and one for the Orthodox Church. On...

Stashed ideas

Why there are two Easter dates

There are limits to the human attention span, which is why a pitch must be brief, concise, and interesting.

You can have all the knowledge about your subject, clearly state your most important points with passion, you can be well organised and still not be convincing.This is because a great pitch is not about procedure. it's about getting and keeping attention. To do that,<ul><li>You have to own the room with frame control.</li><li>Drive emotions with intrigue pings</li><li>Get to a hookpoint quickly. A hookpoint is where your listeners become emotionally engaged and involved.</li></ul>

The presenter's problem

We must know how the brain works if we want to pitch successfully.The brain consist of three basic parts.<ol><li>The inner part is referred to as the "crocodile brain" and is concerned with survival. It filters all messages for fight or flight responses.</li><li>The midbrain tries to make meaning of things and social situations.</li><li>Finally, the neocortex use reason to think through complex issues.</li></ol>When we pitch, the message is first processed by your target's crocodile brain, which is why you must bring something new, exciting and positive, to enable the "croc brain" to pass on to the next part.

Why pitching is difficult

Once you gain attention, you have to convince. You should become the prize and the object of desire. Show your audience that you are not desperate to sell and don't depend on anyone. Successful prizing means your target chase you and ask to be involved in your deal. Ask your target to qualify themselves to you. Set a time frame for when the offer expires.

Turn yourself into the prize instead of chasing your target

Frames are like lenses through which we view a situation. When people come together, the stronger frames will overpower the weaker frames. The winning frame governs the social interaction.  <ul><li>The power frame: Defiance and light humour at the same time are the keys to seizing power.</li><li>The time frame: Establish that your time is important, not that you intrude on your target's time.</li><li>The intrigue frame: As soon as your target thinks they know and understand your idea, they stop paying attention. Tell a short story about you overcoming an obstacle.</li><li>The prize frame: "I'm choosy who I work with."</li></ul>

Use multiple frames to get people to favour you

<ul><li>Set the frame. Every meeting is governed by a frame or point of view. The strongest frame always wins.</li><li>Tell the story. People often fall back into an analytical mindset. Grab attention with a provocative story that breaks the analytical mindset.</li><li>Reveal the intrigue. Use risk, danger, uncertainty, and time constraints to keep your audience's attention.</li><li>Offer the prize. Know how to change the tables so that your target chases you.</li><li>Nail the hookpoint. Most final decisions are made on emotion, not logic. Get your audience emotionally engaged in your idea.</li><li>Get the decision without acting needy.</li></ul>

The STRONG method

<ol><li>Introduce yourself and the big idea. Do it fast, clean, and problem free.</li><li>Explain the budget and secret sauce (an unexpected gain)</li><li>Offer the deal: Describe what your audience will receive when they decide to do business with you.</li><li>Stack frames and hot cognitions: A hot cognition is when you decide you like something before you understand it.</li></ol>

Pitch in four sections

Gold Medal Winner--Tops Sales World's Best Sales and Marketing Book “Fast, fun and immensely practical.” —JOE SULLIVAN, Founder, Flextronics “Move over Neil Strauss and game theory. Pitch Anything reveals the next big thing in social dynamics: game for business.” —JOSH WHITFORD, Founder, Echelon Media “What do supermodels and venture capitalists have in common? They hear hundreds of pitches a year. Pitch Anything makes sure you get the nod (or wink) you deserve.” —RALPH CRAM, Investor “Pitch Anything offers a new method that will differentiate you from the rest of the pack.” —JASON JONES, Senior Vice President, Jones Lang LaSalle “If you want to pitch a product, raise money, or close a deal, read Pitch Anything and put its principles to work.” —STEVEN WALDMAN, Principal and Founder, Spectrum Capital “Pitch Anything opened my eyes to what I had been missing in my presentations and business interactions.” —LOUIE UCCIFERRI, President, Regent Capital Group “I use Oren’s unique strategies to sell deals, raise money, and handle tough situations.” —TAYLOR GARRETT, Vice President, White Cap “A counter-intuitive method that works.” —JAY GOYAL, CEO, SumOpti About the Book: When it comes to delivering a pitch, Oren Klaff has unparalleled credentials. Over the past 13 years, he has used his one-of-a- kind method to raise more than $400 million—and now, for the fi rst time, he describes his formula to help you deliver a winning pitch in any business situation. Whether you’re selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas. According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art—it’s a simple science. Applying the latest findings in the field of neuroeconomics, while sharing eye-opening stories of his method in action, Klaff describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. With this information, you’ll remain in complete control of every stage of the pitch process. Pitch Anything introduces the exclusive STRONG method of pitching, which can be put to use immediately: Setting the Frame Telling the Story Revealing the Intrigue Offering the Prize Nailing the Hookpoint Getting a Decision One truly great pitch can improve your career, make you a lot of money—and even change your life. Success is dependent on the method you use, not how hard you try. “Better method, more money,” Klaff says. “Much better method, much more money.” Klaff is the best in the business because his method is much better than anyone else’s. And now it’s yours. Apply the tactics and strategies outlined in Pitch Anything to engage and persuade your audience—and you’ll have more funding and support than you ever thought possible.

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

In 1963, before Arpanet, the proto-internet, and way before the launch of Google, two men sent the first known long-distance computer query.
Research engineer Charles Bourne and computer programmer Leonard Chaitin forgot about their experiment for about three decades, not knowing what it would become.

The groundwork for a search engine

At the time of Bourne and Chaitin's breakthrough, most approaches for retrieving information were physical, for example, data stored on punch cards and sorted by machine. The program they designed work the way Google does. A user could search for any word in the files. The data was sent over telephone lines, and after a long moment, the right answer was retrieved. Despite the success, the project was shut down. The world at that time had no use for the innovation.

The world was not ready 

Years before the birth of the Google, a forgotten experiment laid the groundwork for the ubiquitous search engine

When Was the Earliest Internet Search?

Popular psychology can be described as trying to make psychological ideas accessible, palatable, and usable to the general public.
Pop psychology consists of three main genres.
<ol>
<li>Recent developments in scientific psychology. These works focus on mind, brain and behaviour.</li>
<li>Practical help with everyday challenges. It includes publications that aim to make us better leaders, lovers, parents, smarter, thinner, fitter, etc.</li>
<li>Help in overcoming mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety or other conditions. The genre seeks to reduce suffering and dysfunction.</li>
</ol>

Pop psychology

Self Improvement

The vast majority of the self-help industry deals with the two genres of pop psychology: practical help with everyday challenges and overcoming mental health problems.
But not all popular psychology is self-help, and not all self-help literature is based on psychology. Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People, was a salesman, actor and public speaking coach. Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, was a religious educator, and M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled, was a psychiatrist.

The blurry line between psychology and self-help

It is easy to criticise pop psychology as they often offer simplistic claims, easy answers to complex problems and endless positivity.
Pop psychology often wanders away from any scientific evidence. Even when it is built on research, the foundation may be flimsy. Some research findings that support pop psychology cannot be replicated when studies are redone. Other claims are true to some extent but exaggerated in importance.

The case against pop psychology

The self-help consumer may devour pop psychology in an attempt to find happiness and success. There is some evidence that the search may be successful and make a positive difference.
Research on bibliotherapy - using books to treat mental health problems - revealed that it could effectively reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety and sexual dysfunctions. Even self-administered bibliotherapy may be at least equally effective as the standard care for people with depression.

A case for pop psychology

Popular psychology is all over book shops, podcasts and Netflix specials. The value of these ideas is hotly debated but even unguided, self-administered bibliotherapy may bring mental health benefits.

The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?

Morbid curiosity is our fascination with ‘compelling awfulness’, like the footage of a plane crash, or a celebrity meltdown on camera.
People rubbernecking on a car crash site, for instance, cause further accidents just because the curious drivers cannot look away from the crash site and in front of their own vehicle.

Morbid Curiosity

Our attraction towards morbid, horrifying and destruction-oriented objects and situations is due to our wanting to experience someone else’s suffering, or evaluate dangers that can threaten us.
This is why we enjoy gory or sad films, curious about the misfortune of others. The problems we see mirror our own relationships, values and the connections we have. Death fascinates us, as it makes us feel truly alive.

The Desire To Experience Suffering

Can gawping at disaster be good for us, wonders Oliver Burkeman

Morbid curiosity: Can gawping at disaster be good for us?

The awareness of death is a powerful motivator, as evident in Buddhist, Samurai and Stoic teachings. Our days are numbered, and we must leave what is unimportant and focus on the essential.
However depressing it may sound, focusing on one’s death and considering oneself dead every day removes all distractions and time-wasting activities from our lives. It liberates us to move out of the fluffy cushion of life and get on to work, which is the best kind of motivation.

Effective Motivation: Death Meditation

Let me respectfully remind you Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken. Take heed. Tonight your days are diminished by one. Do not squander your life.

Every evening, simply remember that:
<ol>
<li>You will die, inevitably. Accept this fact.</li>
<li>What do you do with your limited days?</li>
<li>Tomorrow could be your last day, how would you spend it? How will you treat others?</li>
<li>What meaningful work you can do right now to feel at peace?</li>
</ol>

How To Meditate On Death

People that we deeply care about, our family, loved ones and our friends, can be incredibly motivating for us, and get us to move. We eventually work for our loved ones, not for money or fame.
A man, for example, has a basic desire for his wife and kids to look up to him as a role model. One cannot be a superhuman, so there will be flaws. But one can be trustworthy, fearless, compassionate, courageous and alive.

Effective Motivation: Meditation On Loved Ones

Play and adventure sustain our energy levels and help make otherwise boring and difficult tasks to be light and joyful. 
Serious stuff stresses us out, and turning an activity into something full of exploration, curiosity, excitement, discovery, adventure and fun is a great way to stay motivated.

Effective Motivation: Play And Exploration

<ol>
<li>Make sending and replying to emails a game, by setting time limits or adding humour in the content.</li>
<li>Make your finances a game where we keep our debt as little as we can, or keep our investments as large as possible. One can get excited about rising savings or diminishing debts.</li>
<li>Writing a book can be an explorative journey into your own mind, where you interact with yourself and your potential readers, finding life and adventure in your own written words.</li>
</ol>

Turn Normal Tasks Into Play

<ol>
<li>Get complete rest instead of watching TV or sitting up late at night on your computer.</li>
<li>Find some stillness for a while in your busy day.</li>
<li>Start small, not getting bogged down by the enormity of the task. Small actions create a compound effect.</li>
<li>Involve your friends and family to be held accountable for your goals and how you are trying to accomplish them. Instruct them to not let you fail.</li>
</ol>

Tips To Help Your Motivation

The Three Most Powerful Motivations - zen habits

Job crafting is a mindset that allows us to take the initiative to reshape and redefine our job role, so that it feels stress free, energizing and fun, while staying relevant to us and the organization.
We all have certain superpowers, the special skill sets and strengths that are unique to us, and make us exceptional. We can bring about these superpowers we possess into our current role by focusing on People, Processes and Purpose.

Job Crafting: Using Your Superpowers To Mold Your Job Role

Many people have homegrown family businesses which they were supposed to do by default, even if they didn’t like it. When complaining, the answer was that it is work, and you are not supposed to like it.
Doing a job we dislike for a paycheck has been a common practice for centuries, so we don’t find anything wrong with it. But it is still absolutely wrong. We have to create a work process that energizes us and use our strengths into our work profile in such a way that the process becomes our own non-financial reward.

Job Crafting: Use Your Strengths In the Processes

Many of us can choose to be selective regarding the colleagues that we interact with.
One can recraft the quality of our existing relationship with our co-workers by writing them ‘gratitude’ emails that build connectivity. This can be a thank you note describing the situation and how their effort, advice or action was helpful. The coworkers will most likely appreciate your efforts, improving your relationships.

Improving Relationships At Work

Our job role has to have meaning and purpose. If it does not inspire you, it is worth tweaking or having a second look. Some work may appear useless, monotonous and stressful, like creating and sending a weekly report that no one looks at.
One can try to understand the impact the task has on the overall goal or vision of the organization. Knowing that you are adding real value is a way to get inspired about your job role.

The Purpose Of Our Work

Consider this your introduction to “job crafting.”

Turn Your Boring Job Into a Job You’ll Love

We seem to set goals around New Year's to re-evaluate where we are in life.
Statistics tell us that the vast majority of people will fail at their New Year's resolutions, but by choosing the right goals and creating a well-grounded plan, we will be able to keep on track.

New Year's resolutions

A good method to achieve your goal is to break it down into bite-size pieces using SMART goals.
<ul>
<li>S - Specific. Create clear and achievable goals. Instead of wanting to write a book this year, aim for writing one chapter every month.</li>
<li>M - Measurable. Your progress should be measurable.</li>
<li>A - Achievable. Aim high, but within reason.</li>
<li>R - Relevant. You care about your goal rather than thinking you should care about the goal.</li>
<li>T - Time-bound. Create a timeline with specific dates and deadlines.</li>
</ul>

The best ways to set goals

<ul>
<li>Create a support system of friends and people who will call you out when you're slacking.</li>
<li>Failure is part of the process. When you set a goal with the understanding that you will fail a lot, it will be easier to deal with those failures when they happen.</li>
<li>Stay positive but realistic. People often confuse optimism and positive thinking with achievement. Try not to lose sight of your actual goals.</li>
</ul>

Resolutions: How to stay motivated

There is a weird cultural and societal pressure to set a goal for self-improvement in the New Year. It can be a good motivation for a lot of people, but it's unhealthy to think that you lack something if you don't have a New Year's resolution.
While it is important to have productivity goals, it is equally important to decompress and regain energy. A lot of times, busy work is not productivity. That time is better spent relaxing.

New year, new me

New Year, New You? How to Set Resolutions That You Can Actually Achieve

<ul><li>Failure is an opportunity to learn by transforming your failure into an opportunity to reflect and grow.</li><li>Failure is the universe daring you to evolve.</li><li>Failure fuels success.</li><li>Failure exposes your weaknesses, but with self reflection, they can be turned into strengths.</li><li>Failure forges greatness. You really can't know and understand success without first having failed.</li><li>Failure reminds you why it's so important to pay it forward.</li></ul>

Failing is necessary

Falling on your face, screwing up or otherwise not handling something well is hard on the ego. It feels terrible when things don't go the way you want, or when a relationship or situation spoils because of your own missteps. Even so, the most successful people have a long list of failures.

6 Ways Failing is Necessary for Success

Factors to consider when choosing a new habit to track:<ul><li>Motivation: choose a habit you personally care about. If you pick a habit out of a sense of obligation, your motivation will fade.</li><li>Regularity: find a habit you can track daily. Each habit repetition enforces it as a behavior and strengthens the pathways in your brain related to it. </li><li>Achievability: choose something achievable so you’ll feel that if you put the effort you can do it. </li></ul>

Habits You Should Track

You can’t fully focus on any behavior if you try to establish several at once. Doing so risks overloading your willpower and your habits may end up competing for priority.

Tackle One Behavior At a Time

The best way to turn a behavior into a habit is to use a trigger to remind yourself to do it. Your trigger needs to be something you always do anyway. Anything you already do without thinking works.As you build new habits, you create new triggers for yourself and stack a new habit onto it. Each existing habit acts as a trigger to remind you to complete the next one until it becomes natural to do both together.

“Stack” Your Habits

To make your habits automatic faster, plan them into your day. Do them in the same way, in the same place, at the same time every day.If you complete your new habit at any time, on any day, you won’t get the advantage of familiarity that helps you get used to doing that behavior without thinking about it.

Set a Schedule

<ul><li>Paper: if you use a diary or daily planner, make notes each day if you completed your habit or not. If you do a regular weekly or monthly review, this is a great time to check back through your notes to see how you’re progressing over time.</li><li>Spreadsheet: you can set up a simple sheet to track if you complete your habit each day. This is a good way to make your tracking more visual so you can get an idea of a glance about how you’re going.</li><li>Mobile Apps: these are convenient and you can access them anywhere.</li></ul>

How To Keep Track

I've been tracking my habits on and off for the past couple of years, but when I went through a brief stint of not tracking habits, I didn't do a very good job of building them, either.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

BeeAyKay
@beeaykay

Why there are two Easter dates

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

When Was the Earliest Internet Search?

The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?

Morbid curiosity: Can gawping at disaster be good for us?

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

BeeAyKay @beeaykay

Why there are two Easter dates

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

When Was the Earliest Internet Search?

The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?

Morbid curiosity: Can gawping at disaster be good for us?

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

BeeAyKay
@beeaykay