There are five actions that leaders can take to:<ul><li>contribute to economic development,</li><li>advance global security and sustainability, and</li><li>make space a safe and globally accessible domain.</li></ul> Space already plays a role in furthering global sustainability and security priorities, but a bigger potential can be unlocked.

A space renaissance

Over the past decade, advancements in space technology have allowed access to more players, unlocked new use cases, and positioned space to address significant global priorities. However, the advancement of the space sector and global dynamics create a risk for continued international collaboration and industrial progress. Therefore, to fully understand the benefits of space, the international community will need to consider keeping space a place of cooperation.

Advancements in space technology

Stashed ideas

The role of space in driving sustainability, security, and development on Earth

A method is useful, but it is not the answer to every problem. When we get overly attached to a method, we become blind to whatever doesn't fit. Holacracy, also known as self-organisation or self-management, is a method for running an organisation differently. It is criticized that it's rigid, complex, and inhuman. Yet, Holacracy has its limits and its strengths.

Holacracy is a framework

Holacracy is a rule-based method. The rules are documented in the 15 pages Holacracy Constitution. When organisations adopt Holacracy, they sign the same rules, regardless of size, industry, culture, purpose, etc. However, Holacracy is a framework, not a blueprint. The constitution doesn't tell you how to structure your organisation but gives you a toolbox to figure out how to structure your organisation.

Criticism: Holacracy is rigid

Holacracy does not prescribe certain qualities or goals for the design of your organisation. The goal is the organisation's purpose. You can use the tools and building blocks of Holacracy to create a directive management hierarchy.

Holacracy is an empty framework


The problem with Holacracy is not that it's too rigid but that it is too flexible. The simple pattern language of circles and roles can be used to map a host of different structures. Flexibility and rigidness are two sides of the same coin. If you want lots of flexibility and agility in your organization, then you will also need to get rigid and firm about your purpose and boundaries.

Holacracry is too flexible, not too rigid

Methods are useful. They are like a recipe, encoding the lessons learned by others and helping us avoid common pitfalls. They also carry a risk, however. We tend to get attached to our methods, blinding us to whatever doesn’t fit.   

Holacracy: A Framework, Not A Blueprint 

Even the notoriously uninhibited creatives can benefit from time tracking – be it for billing their clients or for improving their time management skills. But they have to be careful not to mix up time and results.You can’t force creativity – and there is nothing worse for the artist than a clock mercilessly ticking away. Chances are you’ve visited these circles of creativity hell. Here’s how to dodge the fall (and how to take it like a champ if you do trip).

The Time Crusade Of Creative Professionals

This phase is characterised by excitement over the perceivably positive activity of time tracking, as well as overenthusiastic appreciation of any aesthetic solutions offered by the application. However, it is critical in this phase not to idolise the ticking timer – no matter how neat it looks. Let it do its job, while you do yours.The lesson: Start the timer, then LOOK AWAY.

Creative Hell: Initial (Over)Excitement About Being Productive

For people with a wandering mind, the ticking timer seems to carry authority disproportional to its role. Getting stuck staring at the timer might force a false perspective that measuring time is more important than measuring results. It is not. Do your work first, check your stats later.The lesson: Track time, but measure work.

Creative Hell: Continued Fixation on Process Over Substance

Nothing brings the hammer down like a ticking timer on top of a blank page. While having sat for ages without doing anything might seem depressing, you can turn this around by acknowledging that sometimes you just need to drop what you’re doing and move on.The lesson: when the timer hits 20 minutes and you’re doing nothing, change tasks.

Creative Hell: Acute Awareness of Time As An Unstoppable And Unforgiving Force

If you fail to heed the warnings and push past the 20-minute mark, you’ll soon enter productivity twilight zone. Also known as the “what am I doing with my life” phase, it acts much like a black hole by crushing everything you enjoy about your work into a very unremarkable-looking speck. This phase can last for hours (and it will feel like days).The lesson: if you’ll be doing nothing, make sure that nothing is something that makes you happy.Just remember that most things in life can ultimately be fixed with Netflix and ice cream.

Creative Hell: The Shutdown

Chances are you’ve visited these circles of creativity hell. Here’s how to dodge the fall (and how to take it like a champ if you do trip).

The Four Circles of Creative Hell

The reason so many of us find ourselves trapped in meetings we don't want to be in comes down to the fact that we don't want to offend anyone. But there's a real cost to being nice. We wind up wasting hours of our life going to meetings we don't need to be at.This is an especially difficult trap when you're a leader and other people want or even expect, you to attend. By choosing not to go, you risk creating the perception among other attendees that the meeting isn't important.

The Niceness Trap

The first step you need to take is to evaluate the meetings you attend and make an objective analysis about the ones you are truly mission-critical to. Do you find yourself going to a regular update meeting? Not mission-critical. What about a meeting where you can just read the minutes to get all the information you need? Not mission-critical. If you're dealing with meetings where you are regularly asked to make decisions on the big objectives for the company, then yes, mission-critical.

Mission-Critical Only

Once you have identified the meetings you want to excuse yourself from, schedule some private conversations with the leaders and organizers of those meetings to communicate with them that you no longer want to attend the meeting--while also explaining why. The key is to communicate that you still value the need for the meeting and that you trust this leader to continue moving forward. You also need to make it clear that you remain available to attend the meeting in the future on an ad-hoc basis when needed.

Communicate One-On-One

Once you have established your exit plan with the leader of the meeting, your last step is to do something similar with the other attendees. 
What you want to avoid is sending the message that this meeting isn't important. You can do that by sending a clear message in your final appearance at the meeting about why you're not attending the meeting going forward, that you truly appreciate all the work that everyone is doing, and that the meeting itself remains important to continue.

Group Communications

How to Get Yourself Out of Meetings

Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur who owns Virgin Galactic, boarded his rocket for its maiden space voyage, debuting private space tourism and beating Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to the private space race.
<ul>
<li>Unity, the rocket plane with two pilots, flew the billionaire to the edge of the earth, reaching 282,000 feet up in the sky, and getting back within the hour.</li>
<li>The flight departed from New Mexico where Elon Musk joined in to support Sir Richard Branson.</li>
<li>The space project was conceived in 2004 but was delayed due to technical problems including a fatal crash in 2014.</li>
</ul>

Billionaire In Space

The Virgin Group owner plans to start commercial space tourism in 2022 and has already taken a USD 250,000 deposit from 600 individuals keen on a space ride.According to Jeff Bezos, the height achieved by the Unity Space rocket is not 100 km, the internationally recognized altitude where one enters space, even though the U.S. Government puts the height at 80 km.

Space Tourism: The Next Frontier

Unity is a sub-orbital rocket and cannot achieve the velocity or altitude required to maintain its position in space or circle the earth. It is carried into space using a bigger rocket up to 15 km and can achieve a maximum height of 90 km.It has a unique feather mechanism to self-stabilize its fall while gliding back to earth.

Unity The Rocket

The UK businessman realises a lifetime's ambition by riding a rocket plane high into the sky.

Virgin Galactic: Sir Richard Branson rockets to the edge of space

Time compression the phenomenon where time goes by quickly when we're immersed in something that we're doing.
This usually happens to people who play video games or movie bingers.

Time Compression

Virtual Reality gamers or users experience amplified time compression due to the lack of bodily awareness.
Studies have been done and proved that virtual reality indeed warps one's perception of time due to being totally immersed in VR and that the environment VR gives is one that prevents a person's awareness.

Time Compression and Virtual Reality

<ul>
<li>VR users unintentionally spend an excessive amount of time in games because VR headsets are becoming more comfortable for long-session usages.</li>
<li>It entails a risk of addiction that is associated with depression and insomnia, thus reducing their ability to tend to their mood and health.</li>
<li>Clocks must always be easily accessible and appear automatically at regular intervals.</li>
</ul>

Research Involving Time Compression and Virtual Reality

There are studies that involve the use of VR for patients undergoing therapy who claim to experience time compression effects.
Another study suggests that using VR during sessions as such is a surprisingly effective painkiller due to the power of distraction.
As technology evolves, we hope to see more advancement in this area.

Virtual Reality for Medicine

Ever lose track of time while doing something? It gets worse with a VR headset on. ​

Time Management

Virtual reality warps your sense of time

<ul>
<li>According to studies, 91 percent of employees that took part in the research, believed that Work From Home (WFH/Telecommuting) is more productive.</li>
<li>41 percent liked the choice about the place and time of working.</li>
<li>Imposed WFH had a portion of employees feel less happy or valued at work.</li>
<li>WFH employees with shorter working hours spread on all seven working days were the happiest, as compared to others with typical or unusual working hours.</li>
<li>The study highlighted how flexibility is important as many employees have different preferences and home environments.</li>
</ul>

Remote Working Study: Behaviour Of Remote Workers

Natural light has a direct effect on productivity and also reduces depression.
Poor lighting can affect an employee's mood and focus. Studies conducted by the Lighting Research Centre show that light has a strong influence on alertness, affecting the circadian clock of the employee as well.
Windows and daylight exposure has an increased positive impact, and a greater sense of health according to the Journal Of Clinical Sleep Medicine. It affects the mood of the employee, leading to more exercise and better rest.

Lighting At Work

A number of studies on office temperature revealed that:<ol><li>The ideal working temperature should be 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit.</li><li>Cold temperatures increase feelings of sadness and loneliness.</li><li>20 percent of employees have argued with coworkers about the office temperature being too hot or too cold, with the same number also secretly changing the temperature.</li><li>While 53 percent had low productivity with a cold office, 71 percent felt they were less productive with warm temperatures.</li><li>Overheating shoots up the cost of cooling by about ten times.</li><li>Not just the temperature, but the ventilation in the office contributes to the perception of comfort.</li></ol>

Office Temperature And Productivity

If an organization focuses on employee wellbeing, they report greater employee engagement, better retention, and less absenteeism.
Corporations that actively promote health and wellness programs see all-around benefits like a decrease in absenteeism, 25 percent better retention, and 47 percent better engagement of employees.
The factors that influence wellbeing include design and construction elements like comfortable furniture, thermal comfort, quality of air, lighting, daylight views, gym facility, food quality, and options for mental relaxation.

Employee Wellbeing And Productivity

A study showed that standing desks are beneficial for employee health, and increase productivity. Calling is more impactful while standing as opposed to sitting, with about a 53 percent better success rate.
Standing desks ensure better circulation and bring more oxygen to the brain, boosting mental clarity, provided the necessary precautions are taken and guidelines are provided.

Standing Desks At Work

A study showed that employees with 150 minutes of physical activity a week had better work satisfaction, especially when they exercise before work.
Exercise, as expected, also results in less depression, and lowers job burnout.

Physical Activity And Productivity

Valuable Lessons Learned from Productivity Studies - nTask

It’s dedicated time to think about the past week, reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and plan for the week ahead. It’s a chance to get aligned with your goals and ensure that the work you’re doing on a daily basis is helping you reach them

The weekly review

<ul><li>Get Clear: process all your loose-ends.</li><li>Get Current: make sure all your items are up to date.</li><li>Get Creative: come up with new ideas to improve how you live and work.</li></ul>

The 3 parts of a weekly review

<ul><li>You gain an objective view of the week: a weekly review forces you to practice intention by taking time to pause and reflect as you consider what you did versus what you planned to do.</li><li>You become proactive in planning: a weekly review isn’t only a retrospective, but a prospective too. It lets you run through the upcoming Monday to Friday proactively.</li></ul>

Benefits of weekly reviews

<ul><li>Choose your weekly review day, time, and place: Consistency will keep you on track when motivation won’t. Keep your weekly review at the same time on the same day every week.</li><li>Create your weekly review checklist: Have a checklist handy that details exactly what you’ll go through during your weekly review.</li></ul>

Completing your weekly review

<ul><li>Be objective: Try your best to take an unbiased look at your week and lean on objective measures of your performance for the week.</li><li>Be efficient: Move from one checklist item to the next without lingering too long in any one area.</li><li>Be kind: Instead of beating yourself up about a bad week, gently reflect on what went wrong and plan for a more productive week ahead.</li></ul>

Going through your weekly review

...  to ask yourself during your weekly review:<ul><li>How do I feel I did this week overall?</li><li>What enabled me to reach my goals this week?</li><li>Has anything stopped me from reaching my goals this week?</li><li>How can I improve for next week?</li><li>What can I do next week that will set me up for my long-term goals?</li></ul>

Develop a set of questions

“… the Weekly Review is the critical success factor for marrying your larger commitments to your day-to-day activities.”

Moving from task to task each day leaves little room to be strategic about the big picture of our lives. Jam-packed days turn into hectic weeks. Busy months become a whirlwind year. If you're lucky, you happen to make incremental progress towards your goals.

The Weekly Review: A Productivity Ritual to Get More Done

<ul>
<li>Back in the Industrial Revolution context, productivity was translated into the amount of production per factory or per worker for a given day.</li>
<li>These days the discussion revolves more about personal productivity and it relates to how much work we can get done in the smallest amount of time possible.</li>
</ul>

The Evolution Of "Productivity"

Productivity = Useful Output/Time x Fun Factor
The more output we generate, the more productive we are; also the less time it takes to generate it, the more productive we are. But we should give our energy the useful things - there no point in being productive if we are not productive about the right things. And when your tasks are fun, they no longer feel like work.

The Productivity Equation

It's very important to make our productive tasks enjoyable.
When the activities we are focusing on are pleasant to us, the fun factor influences our outputs and the the time we take to make them. Plus, we no longer have to worry about motivation, consistency, willpower and discipline.

The Fun Factor In The Productivity Equation

The plane, pilot, engineer analogy - these are the roles we play in a day:
<ul>
<li>On pilot mode (10-15% of our time): This represents the time of the day the when we have clarity and we decide where we want to go. The pilot sets the course/ the direction of the plane.</li>
<li>On plane mode (80%of our time): This is us most of the time, executing instruction from the pilot mode. The plane follows the course and directions from the pilot, without deviation.</li>
<li>On engineer mode (5-10% of our time): This is the time we take to consider the use of principles, tools and methods to keep everything efficient. The engineer makes sure the engine is efficient (using the right amount of energy) and keeps the entire system organized;</li>
</ul>

A Mental Model For Productivity

Get FREE access to the class here - https://skl.sh/2VmCEbm Hey friends, I'm pleased to bring you my latest SkillShare class that's being released today on the Principles of Productivity! Productivity is probably the question I get asked about most often and through reading books, blog posts, articles as well as experimenting with numerous techniques myself over the years, I feel I've developed a bit of knowledge about productivity and that's why I've decided to put together an extensive series of Skillshare classes to share my own knowledge in the realm of productivity and hopefully help us all work towards living happier, healthier and more productive lives. This is the first class in that series so click the link to get started! MY FREE ONLINE COURSES: 🚀 Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity 🎬 Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing 🎓 How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying 😃 How to be Happier - Stoicism Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/stoicism MY FAVOURITE GEAR: 🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal ⌨️ My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 📝 My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE: 📚 How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 🎵 Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound 🌐 My website platform (Ghost) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ghost 🎤 My podcast hosting platform (Transistor) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/transistor OTHER RECOMMENDED COURSES 📔 Effortless Output with Roam Research - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/roam 📓 Building a Second Brain - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/basb 🎙My weekly podcast - https://www.notoverthinking.com My brother and I host a weekly podcast where we discuss happiness, creativity and the human condition. You can find it by searching “Not Overthinking” on any podcast app (eg: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts etc). BE MY FRIEND: 💌 Sign up to my weekly email newsletter - https://email.aliabdaal.com 🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal 🎮 Twitch - https://twitch.tv/aliabdaal WHO AM I: I'm Ali, a junior doctor working in Cambridge, UK. I make videos about medicine, technology, productivity and lifestyle design. I also have a weekly podcast with my brother (https://www.notoverthinking.com), and I write a weekly email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts + links to interesting things (https://email.aliabdaal.com). 🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com GET IN TOUCH: If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @AliAbdaal directly will be the quickest way to get a response, but if your question is very long, feel free to email me at hi@aliabdaal.com. I try my best to reply to things but there sadly aren't enough hours in the day to respond to everyone 😭 PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

<ul>
<li>Make sure to set aside time to talk to your boss, have an honest conversation with him about yourself, the things you've accomplished, and constantly ask for feedback. </li>
<li>Keep being proactive. There are a lot of things we end up missing doing because we forget it under all the things we have to manage. </li>
<li>Like tasks, mood is something we also have to manage. We tend to get "bored" while working because the work feels insignificant, but nothing is more motivating than making progress.</li>
</ul>

Communication, Feedback, and Mood Management

No, answering e-mails is not enough to call yourself productive. With the hours you have in your hands now, name a project you've done with exceptional work. If none is your answer then it's best if you set your priorities straight. 
Now that you have time in your hands, it's not about how much time you spend on a project or a task but what you do with the time given. Try doing more of less, it's simple and cost-effective.

Be Proactive, Not Reactive. Judge Results, Not Hours.

It is important to know your strengths and weaknesses as an individual. Studies show that 2.5 to 4 hours after waking up is when most people's brains are sharpest. Give the painfully exciting tasks your best hours and commit to finishing it. 
Know yourself even more. This allows yourself to be provided with options of what works for you and what doesn't so you know when to go for it or when to avoid it. Watch yourself work, take notes, find patterns and alter your schedule accordingly.

Magic Hours

If you want to take time into consideration, consider making a day-to-day schedule. It will help you keep yourself on track of your goals and help you prioritize what is important rather than just being reactive the entire day. 
When it comes to your environment, learn how to set spaces for where you feel motivated to work, a space for relaxation, and a space for your hobbies. It aids your mind to wind down from what you did that day.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Jesse
@jes_o

The role of space in driving sustainability, security, and development on Earth

Holacracy: A Framework, Not A Blueprint

The Four Circles of Creative Hell

How to Get Yourself Out of Meetings

Virgin Galactic: Sir Richard Branson rockets to the edge of space

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Jesse @jes_o

The role of space in driving sustainability, security, and development on Earth

Holacracy: A Framework, Not A Blueprint

The Four Circles of Creative Hell

How to Get Yourself Out of Meetings

Virgin Galactic: Sir Richard Branson rockets to the edge of space

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Jesse
@jes_o