Western work culture has been like this:<ul><li>80-hour work weeks.</li><li>High-pressure environments.</li><li>Little time for rest and recovery.</li></ul>Why do people waste an entire day and only have a few hours for themselves that also includes preparing for the next day?This has been a talking point for a long time now. 4-hour workdays, singular focus, and meaningful work are becoming the norm in our little pocket of Twitter — and we are creating a future of passionate individuals that produce world-shifting creations.

The Premise

Ancient Romans, Ancient Greeks, Steve Jobs, Charles Darwin, and an infinite list of visionaries, strategists, and innovators attributed their success to surprisingly low “work” times.Writers from multiple domains, like Hemingway and Tarantino, would spend the majority of their days lounging by the pool, spitting games with girls, and doing everything aside from what they deemed “work.”

Less Work Is More

Imagine going to the gym for 8 hours trying to be as “productive” as possible. You would try to max out on main exercises like the nervous system taxing deadlift, then go on to do accessory movements. In one day, you would run out of exercises to do. Would you be able to come back and give it your all the next day? How about 5 days in a row? Would you be able to tough it out until you can use your paid vacation time to recover and do it all over again?Your body would be decimated without rest and recovery.

Importance Of Rest And Recovery

While corporate culture is handing you a pretty paycheck to incentivize sustained intensity, we must push back.Intensity isn’t sustainable. It’s not rocket science. Sustainability, consistency, and creativity must be prioritized before we even mention the word “productivity.”

Push Back From Capitalist Demands

Fill your brain in the afternoons with books, learning, and socialization.Empty your brain before bed with journaling, planning, and meditation.Use your brain in the morning with creation, output, and focus.

Your psyche is wired for survival. If you have attachments to the external world — relationships of any form — that threaten your identity when the relationship is challenged, then you will not be able to act authentically. That is to say, you will have difficulty opening your mind to reality to leverage nature. Your attachments — or perceived needs — will act as obstructions that slow the flow of your productive and creative energy.You cannot be your true, authentic self if you need something that you do not already have.

A Word Of Caution

Productivity is related to the balance and degree to which you engage in deep play, deep rest, and lastly deep work.For value creators, those that intend to put good out into the world, you must adopt the habit of conscious study. Without expanding your worldview, mind, and knowledge through exposing yourself to novel perspectives; how do you plan to create? Creativity, in some aspects, is about pulling from multiple sources and mashing them together. Like deconstructing a topic, learning about its parts through study, and building your own creation as you would playing with legos.

Fill Your Mind

When aligned with your vision, values, and goals you can consume information with the intention to understand and apply. This can begin to act as a vessel for raising your consciousness. You start to gain clarity on your life’s work through exposure to the information that aligns with you the most. If you don’t know where to start, re-read the book that changed the way you think, it will do it again.

Consume Information To Raise Your Consciousness

Aside from movement and exercise being great for your health, there is something unique about walks. Ancient masters swore by it, industry leaders took them religiously, and the world’s most respected creatives made them a part of their everyday routine.The ideas flow in a steady stream. From the  subconscious to conscious. Sometimes you just need that one word, letter, sound, example, anecdote, or story to bring up a thought that leads you down a rabbit hole of questioning and exploration.

Going For A Walk

When you get out of the house you become less prone to familiar distractions that will impact your study just by being in that environment. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to block out the distractions. You know they are there and they will occupy creative energy.Filling your mind can be done at any time, and may be scattered throughout your day, but for the sake your own experimentation and clarity; start with doing this in the afternoons. If you do not have time to do this in the afternoon, sprinkle it throughout your day. I will give personal examples below.

Reading In The Sun

In psychology, there is something called the Default Mode Network. From the book Rest, this default mode network is “a series of interconnected sections that activate as soon as people stop concentrating on external tasks, and shifts from outward-focused to inward-focused cognition.”When “activated” through restful, meditative, or open activities the brain is not any less active than it would be when engaged in something like focused work, or something that demands narrow focus and concentrated attention.

Empty Your Mind

When your focus is open, your subconscious mind is still working hard and munching on problems. Many programmers understand this well. They will often work on a project, encounter a bug, struggle to fix it, “give up,” and go about their day. At the most unexpected time, the perfect solution will pop into their head and the excited programmer will rush to open their code base to test it out. Shower thoughts is another example of this.

Shower Thoughts And And Open Focus

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

How do you empty your mind?By immersing yourself in the present moment. Flowing with the river of life and the highs and lows that it presents.There are many ways to make this easier on you to grasp, but understand that all of these means lead to the same end:<ol><li>The Gym</li><li>Nature</li><li>Meditation</li><li>Physical mediums</li></ol>

The Present Movement

Gym bros talk a lot about “mind-muscle connection” and other things that are just short for anchoring your attention in the present. When you are at the gym, be a silent observer. Observe the voice in your head that tells you to quit. Observe how the muscle feels as it contracts. Observe the blood flowing quicker through your body.This works for any exercise, not only the gym. Elevated bodily functions that are easily observable make it easier to treat the gym as a meditation practice.

1. The Gym As A Meditative Practice

From a psychological lens, nature presents the perfect formula for flow. On a hike, you order your consciousness by having a vision of how you want the hike to go. You construct a hierarchy of goals in your mind that allow you to gain clarity on the climb. You may have a water intake goal, distance goal, health goal, or just the goal to have a good time in nature. From there, you begin your ascent up the trail and are faced with a challenge. Even better, you planned the hike to match your skill level and you don’t have to incessantly think. Hiking becomes an art form and you kick into flow.

2. A Hiking Trip In Nature

Conscious meditation (obviously), conscious walks, conscious listening during a conversation, conscious writing, and conscious creating.When you are just starting out, and even when you are deep into the space, you are just doing the activities that people tell you to do. Most people are meditating unconsciously, which is a funny example. They are mechanically going through the motions because it has become habitual. They aren’t getting the benefits they would get if they simply prioritized consciousness at any given moment — not just during meditation.

3. The Always On Meditation: Being Conscious

Everything that is not absolute truth (unknowable or unspeakable with words alone) is relative. Relative means that there is a relationship. Cause and effect. Polarity. One thing cannot exist without the other. During meditation, can you follow a thought to another thought to an event until the lines are blurred and you glimpse into Infinity?

Everything Is Relative

Another way to order consciousness or create clarity is to express the unorganized thoughts that are in your head. This is done through writing or speaking.One such method is brain dump journaling. How do you brain dump journal? First, by writing out every single thing that you can bring your attention to in your mind. Once you have all your thoughts, reactions to feelings, emotions, and tasks written in a chaotic fashion on your paper — you can start to organize them.This is where connections are made and clarity is gained.

4. Physical Mediums

Using your mind comes last as we have filled and emptied our minds. By filling our minds we have expanded them, broadening our awareness and allowing The Law of Inspired Action to come into play. This gives us fresh creative firepower for when we use our mind. By emptying our mind we have allowed the Default Mode Network to come into play. Our subconscious mind will deliver insight to our conscious mind and we can order said consciousness through brain dump journaling.

Use Your Mind

There are 3 main things that come into play when getting into deep, focused work:<ul><li>Leveraged familiarity</li><li>Ordered consciousness</li><li>Connection to The Unknown</li></ul>Our goal with focused work is to eliminate distractions, get into flow, and produce quality work in the short amount of time that our finite creative energy allows.

Deep, Focussed Work

Leveraged familiarity is a soft morning routine. The human brain loves to conserve the energy wasted on familiar things. Hence why habit formation is so popular, like putting certain and preferably beneficial aspects of your life on autopilot. As with most things, there is depth to the term habits. There are mental, emotional, physical, and financial habits that could each be broken down even further to take a peek into how robotic we truly are in our unconscious lives.

Leveraged familiarity

There are 3 steps to unlocking deep focus:1. Goal (direction)2. Plan (clarity)3. Reduced friction (action)A desired outcome + knowing how to get there + simple execution will put you into a distraction-numbing state of flow.

Unlock That Flow Mode

Everything about productivity in a nutshell.

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

habits

Habits

timemanagement

Time Management

The 3-Part Daily Routine For Maximum Productivity - Dan Koe

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

When did Christians start celebrating Easter? How is it celebrated around the world? Where do Easter eggs and bunnies come from? Here's everything you need to know about the most important Christian holiday

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History

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Society, Arts & Culture

food

Food

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

The Easter Celebration

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...

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.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

business

Business

startup

Startups

books

Books

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.

Oren Klaff

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

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

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Science & Nature

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

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.

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

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

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

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.”

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Career

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Corporate Culture

teamwork

Teamwork

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Turn Your Boring Job Into a Job You’ll Love

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: How to start over in the New Year

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

<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

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

It's never too late to start over and build the life you want

How To Start Over: Reboot Your Life

When the holidays are coming to a close, we’re faced with the question that turns up around that time: How do I start over in the new year?

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

Start Over In The New Year: Keep Up With Your Resolutions

<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.

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