Mental toughness is something one can nurture and practice. Let's explore the 7 habits of mentally strong people:
<ol>
<li>Recognize Your Ability</li>
<li>Being Flexible</li>
<li>Staying Resilient</li>
<li>Not Deterred By Uncertainty</li>
<li>Seeing Opportunities in Disappointments</li>
<li>Mastering Emotions</li>
<li>Practical Optimism</li>
</ol>

Seven Habits Of Mentally Tough People

Recognize your limited ability to influence issues beyond your control.

Recognize Your Ability

Being flexible when surprises crop up. Adapt plans rather than getting paralyzed by change. Train to be mentally agile enough to handle life’s curveballs, like unexpected traffic jams or canceled flights.

Being Flexible 

Strong self-awareness powers mentally tough people’s confidenceKnowing your strengths and flaws can make you have better control of the emotions, handle stress, and stay resilient.

Staying Resilient 

Mentally tough folks don’t let uncertainty deter them.
You must know plans might fail, and goals may not be met – and act anyway. Tough experiences build this willingness, so you don’t back away from a challenge, either

Not Deterred By Uncertainty

Failures reveal what's not working so you can improve – it’s as simple as that. This mindset is the fifth habit of mentally tough people, and helps you bounce back faster and better.

Seeing Opportunities In Disappointments

Sixth, negative emotions like anger and frustration are mastered, rather than allowed to escalate, in mentally tough folks. That means feeling emotional responses as they are, but not letting them run the show. Mastery comes from developing the emotional intelligence to self-regulate.

Mastering Emotions 

Let practical optimism lift their attitude. focus on hope – don’t dwell in gloom. Cautious optimism sees chances amid disasters, and can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Practical Optimism

And don’t fool yourself: no one is born tough. The good news is that we can build mental muscle by incorporating these seven habits to improve the outcome whenever disaster strikes, while developing the grit and determination to perform under pressure

Disclaimer 😜

Damon Zahariades says the secret of enduring success is mental toughness: a mind-set that helps you navigate the unexpected challenges life presents. Zahariades endeavors to teach readers, including CEOs as well as professional athletes, the ongoing process of cognitively restructuring your mind by questioning your thoughts, attitudes and emotions. Transform your life, he urges, and inspire others in the process.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

strategy

Strategy

mentalhealth

Mental Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

books

Books

Productivity expert Damon Zahariades is owner of ArtOfProductivity.com, a site devoted to showing you how to hack your day to get more things done. He wasn't always productive. Damon spent many years in Corporate America, dragging himself to ridiculous meetings and enduring the impromptu "drive-by" visits of his coworkers, before striking out on his own. Today, he owns his own content marketing agency and creates action guides that show others how to boost their productivity.

Damon Zahariades

The Mental Toughness Handbook

<ol><li>Classical conditioning</li><li>Operant conditioning </li><li>Shaping</li></ol>

 3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior

Classical conditioning is a subconscious association technique that pairs a neutral stimulus with a desirable stimulus to create an associated trigger. After many successive pairings throughout time, the neutral stimulus can elicit a positive response without the desirable stimulus present.Example:A user’s mobile device vibrates each time they order takeout from a food delivery app, eventually leading to an increase in orders.

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning is an associative learning process that guides an individual to desired behavior through the use of positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something that rewards or punishes an action. Negative reinforcement is the subtraction of something that rewards or punishes an action.Example:A social media app wants users to post more content.

Operant conditioning

Shaping is the reinforcement of different and successive approximations towards a targeted behavior. Employ a shaping strategy when a targeted behavior is complex or a difficult sell.Example:A VR editing app wants users to buy pre-built components.

Shaping

3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior. These methods are widespread and employed in almost every successful app

This article covers 3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior. These methods are widespread and employed in almost every successful app. Use with caution.

communication

Communication

product

Product & Design

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

3 techniques to influence user behavior

This applies to scenarios where you did something and then regretted it. Try to undo it.for example,you said something mean-spirited to your significant other. Well, then it’s the perfect opportunity to “undo” your hurtful action with a sincere apology.

Step 1 - Undo The Regret

There are many scenarios where undoing simply isn’t possible. This leads to step 2.AtleastAnalyze your regrets with a changed perspective can breed appreciation: giving objectively bad experiences a newfound purpose and making life more meaningful in the moment. Eg, You regret might attending school, but at least you wound up meeting your spouse there.

Step 2 - Atleast

During this step, you should ask yourself: What lessons can I learn from my regret? And strategize ways to mobilize the regret for better future outcomes.

Step 3 - Analyse And Strategize 

How should we go about healthily investing in regret? Turns out, there’s a handy three-step process for doing exactly that. Let’s take a look

‘No regrets.’ You’ve heard people proclaim it as a philosophy of life. That’s nonsense, even dangerous, says Daniel H. Pink in his latest bold and inspiring work. Everybody has regrets. They’re a fundamental part of our lives. And if we reckon with them in fresh and imaginative ways, we can enlist our regrets to make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and deepen our sense of meaning and purpose. In The Power of Regret, Pink draws on research in psychology, neuroscience, economics and biology to challenge widely-held assumptions about emotions and behaviour. Using the largest sampling of attitudes about regret ever conducted from his own World Regret Survey – which has collected regrets from more than 16,000 people in 105 countries – he identifies the four core regrets that most people have. These four regrets, Pink argues, operate as a ‘photographic negative’ of the good life. By understanding what people regret the most, we can understand what they value the most. And by following the simple, science-based, three-step process that he sets out, we can transform our regrets in a positive force for working smarter and living better. With Pink’s signature blend of big ideas and practical takeaways, captivating stories and crisp humour, The Power of Regret offers an urgent and indispensable guide for a life well-lived.

career

Career

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022: BUSINESS A DAILY UK NEWS BEST BOOK OF 2022: BUSINESS Everybody has regrets. They’re a fundamental part of our lives. In The Power of Regret, Pink explains how we can enlist our regrets to make smarter decisions, perform better and deepen our sense of meaning and purpose. Drawing on the largest sampling of attitudes about regret ever conducted from his own World Regret Survey, Pink identifies the four core regrets that most people have. With his signature blend of big ideas and practical takeaways, captivating stories and crisp humour, he argues that by understanding what people regret the most, we can understand what they value the most. We can transform our regrets into a positive force for working smarter and living better.

Daniel H. Pink is the author of six provocative books — including his newest, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. WHEN has spent 4 months on the New York Times bestseller list and was named a Best Book of 2018 by Amazon and iBooks. Dan's other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller A Whole New Mind and the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 39 languages. He and his wife, who live in Washington, DC, have three children -- a college senior, a college sophomore, and a high school sophomore. 

Daniel H. Pink

The Power of Regret

Creativity is the main engine of innovation and entrepreneurship, and a major driver of resilience. The current foundation of creativity training is the technique known as divergent thinking.But there’s a problem: Research has shown it to be at best inadequate and at worst counterproductive. The training doesn’t work.

Problem With Creativity 

Have everyone anonymously write down something they like but are afraid to admit to the group. Then share the answers, maintaining anonymity.When each answer is shared, ask everyone to take two minutes to imagine that they like the same thing Silently plan a way to incorporate it into the workspace. Benefits:<ol><li>Removes subjectivity </li><li>stimulates teams to actively appreciate nonconformity </li><li>it primes the brain to value anomalies: the most potent biological source of creative inspiration</li></ol>

Exercise 1: To Foster Originality 

Think of a new competitor in your market — an existing startup, maybe, or an established company that might enter your lane, or some kind of organization that you anticipate might emerge in the future. Identify one highly anomalous feature of the competitor — and now imagine that you are that competitor. What does your anomalous feature enable you to do in the market?Stretch your horizon as long-term as you can.

Exercise 2: Instead of brainstorming, think counterfactually

<ol><li>For step one, take each of your team’s newly imagined options and rank it on the scale of 1 - 10. Options ranked at the bottom (0–2) are low in creativity and low in innovation potential. Options at the top (8–10) are moderate-to-low in creativity but high in innovation potential. Options in the middle (3–7) are low-to-moderate in innovation potential but moderate-to-high in creativity</li><li> </li></ol>

Exercise 3: Meet the moment process (Step 1)

For step two, assess your current operational environment in the scale of 1-10.Is it stable? Or volatile? Certain? Or uncertain? If it’s high in stability and certainty, go with an option ranked 9 or 10. If it’s moderate, go with a 7 or 8. If it’s low, go with a 6 or 4. (That’s not a typo. Go with a 4, an option you think might not work.) If it has no stability or certainty, go with a 5.

Meet the moment process (Step 2)

These new methods for increasing creativity might seem weird, implausible, and even flatly wrong. But that’s exactly how it should be. 

teamwork

Teamwork

creativity

Creativity

3 Exercises to Boost Your Team’s Creativity

Tools and the approach <ol><li>Have a plan</li><li>Come prepared </li><li>Visualization </li><li>Collaborative exercises</li></ol>

Communicating Abstract Ideas To People With Little Understanding

Tailor your approach to how you present your recommendations, so it's aligned with people make decisions

Visualization

Plan how to make your ideas resonate with the audience or the decision makers. Make things simple for making things easiers for them to absorb

Have A Olan

Do your research, be prepared to present findings from your own research, blogs, books, any source that backs up what you are trying to communicate. Have a backup to prove your point

Come Prepared 

Use sketchin, whiteboard, anything that help stakeholders visualise what you are trying to communicate and educate

Visualization 

Design studios, sketching exercises, or workshops with teams to help build a shared understanding

Collaborative Exercises 

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/aaroni268/communicating-ia

World Information Architecture Day is dedicated to the empowerment of local leaders. Our celebrations inspire the global growth of information architecture as a community of practice and we value diverse thoughts and thinkers in our celebrations. World IA Day is jointly produced by a network of global, regional, and local volunteers.

Learn. Share. Grow.

A lot of love goes into each World IA Day celebration.

Location organizers around the world plan from July to February curating quality information architecture content based on our global theme.

Each celebration is unique and local teams are creative, designing a day that brings value to their community and awareness to the practice of information architecture. 

We have been celebrating World Information Architecture Day since 2012 and our celebrations grow every year.

World IA Day

World IA Day 2013 - Communicating IA (Aaron Irizarry)

Right amount of urgency is needed in order to get things done quickly or to drive progress. But too much urgency can lead to destruction of team's morale and productivity and Too little can induce lethargy or stagnation.

Urgency As A Tool For Team's Productivity

Urgency meansimportance requiring swift action.

There are two types of unnecessary urgency <ol><li>Fake urgency - self inflicted or external influencer</li><li>Avoidable urgency - something could’ve been avoided and wasn’t - created based on procastination or by poor time management </li></ol>Both can kill a planned workday. Save urgency for important matters that are critical and unavoidable

Understanding Unnecessary Urgency

<ul><li>Always act in ways that maximize benefit – and minimize harm</li><li>Create a Plan of action</li><li>Working in a way that makes team members lives easier </li><li>Measure twice and cut once - strive to do things right the first time </li><li>Prioritize by importance </li><li>Minimize procastination </li><li>Plan multiple steps ahead </li></ul>Cultivating a proactive mindset can help control the kinds of urgency you accept and propagate. use urgency with care, and avoid creating unnecessary urgency for others

Cultivate Proactive Mindset 

Implement a proactive system to manage your work effectively and boost productivity. when requesting work, state the deadline, and make sure your team does the same. Stay organized and manage activity by time

Staying In Proactive Zone

Manage urgency by balancing the following, tune each dials based on the situations<ol><li>Time </li><li>Scope </li><li>Quality </li><li>Bring in more resources </li><li>Use budget to outsource things </li><li>Risk - reduce risk by cutting </li></ol>

Urgency Can Be Adjusted

For external urgency, try to be responsive and not reactive. When there is urgency, <ol><li>Pause your work</li><li>Acknowledge the task </li><li>Evaluate </li><li>Prioritize & decide on course of action </li></ol>Ask why the issue’s urgent – or whether it’s really urgent at all. If you do this politely and firmly, people will see that you’re focused on what’s important.

Respond Or 

To mobilize the team into action, you’ll need to communicate deliberately and clearly the task at hand. That starts with demonstrating that you care about the task and committing fully when it’s truly urgent.Some key points,<ol><li>set accountable deadlines </li><li>Cultivate a culture of accountability </li><li>Allow team to ask "why of the task" question </li><li>Inspire actions by acknowledging and rewarding the team</li></ol>

Driving An Internal Urgency

In today’s fast-paced workplace, many things are made out to be urgent – when they’re really not. The key to working in a sustainable, successful way is to recognize and reduce unproductive urgency while seeking out opportunities to maximize productive urgency.

Leverage the power of urgency to avoid burnout and increase performance Urgency—that frantic feeling that we need to be doing more, and faster—is a destructive force in today’s workplace. Unnecessary urgency can be toxic, causing stress and burnout. But not all urgency is bad, and sometimes we really do need to get things done quickly. Too little urgency can lead to inaction and lost productivity. So how do we find the right balance where we can use urgency as a meaningful tool to keep productivity up, without generating burnout? Urgent! is a guide to using urgency for good to help achieve your goals, to drive success, and minimise stress for yourself, your teams, and your business. This book will teach you to moderate urgency for yourself and those you lead. In our age of fast-paced technology, it’s easy to swing between extremes, working reactively one minute, and being inactive the next. The middle ground, described in this book, allows us to work in the “Active Zone” where we maximise proactivity and productivity. By following the practical strategies outlined in this book, readers will learn to understand urgency, become proactive rather than reactive, and lead teams to their fullest potential. • Eliminate stress and burnout for yourself, your teams, and your businesses • Learn how to dial urgency up or down, depending on the situation • Keep teams working in the optimal productive zone by moderating urgency • Stay focused on what's important and learn prioritisation skills to avoid burnout If you feel that you and your team are caught up in busy work, stressed to the max by competing demands, leaving no room to focus on what really matters, Urgent! will show you a new way of thinking, leading, and responding. Learn the skills to reduce overload, get more done, and achieve better performance each day.

productivity

Productivity

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Leverage the power of urgency to avoid burnout and increase performance Urgency—that frantic feeling that we need to be doing more, and faster—is a destructive force in today’s workplace. Unnecessary urgency can be toxic, causing stress and burnout. But not all urgency is bad, and sometimes we really do need to get things done quickly. Too little urgency can lead to inaction and lost productivity. So how do we find the right balance where we can use urgency as a meaningful tool to keep productivity up, without generating burnout? Urgent! is a guide to using urgency for good to help achieve your goals, to drive success, and minimise stress for yourself, your teams, and your business. This book will teach you to moderate urgency for yourself and those you lead. In our age of fast-paced technology, it’s easy to swing between extremes, working reactively one minute, and being inactive the next. The middle ground, described in this book, allows us to work in the “Active Zone” where we maximise proactivity and productivity. By following the practical strategies outlined in this book, readers will learn to understand urgency, become proactive rather than reactive, and lead teams to their fullest potential. • Eliminate stress and burnout for yourself, your teams, and your businesses • Learn how to dial urgency up or down, depending on the situation • Keep teams working in the optimal productive zone by moderating urgency • Stay focused on what's important and learn prioritisation skills to avoid burnout If you feel that you and your team are caught up in busy work, stressed to the max by competing demands, leaving no room to focus on what really matters, Urgent! will show you a new way of thinking, leading, and responding. Learn the skills to reduce overload, get more done, and achieve better performance each day.

Dermot Crowley

Urgent!

Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. His six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five “discovery skills” that distinguish them.

InnovatorS' DNA 

It’s a cognitive skill that allows creativepeople to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.

Association

Ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture.

Questioning

bility to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior.

Observing

lways trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds.

Ability To Experiment

good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

Networking

questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill

Best Of All Five

Innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).

What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G’s A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. Fryer: You conducted a […]

How Do Innovators Think?

our skills, achievements and qualifications are what really matter on your résumé, but how you present that information is just as important.

Designing Your Resume

ColourAs a general rule of thumb, choose a high-contrast color scheme — and stick to it. A safe color scheme is black (for general text), white (for the background) and a third color like red, green or blue (for headings).Layout This keeps text away from the edge of the page, which aids in the overall readability of your résumé. Increase or decrease the margin based on the content Font choose professional font - Calibri, Helvetica, Avenir, Georgia or Garamond.

Keep It Simple

<ul><li>Create an eye-catching header</li><li>Divide content into clear sections</li><li>Set headings for each section</li><li>Use bullet points</li><li>Use digits for numbers </li><li>organize with columns and tables </li></ul>

Content Hierarchy

Your résumé must always include these five essential sections:HeaderSummary or objectiveEmployment historyEducationSkills

Essential Sections

Try to keep your résumé to a maximum of two pages. If you’re just out of college and don’t have much work experience, meanwhile, one page will usually be more than enough.

Mind The 

Find out how to design your own winning résumé with these format and layout tips!

writing

Reading & Writing

How to Design Your Résumé: 15 Formatting and Layout Tips

How to effectively communicate your design decisions to the stakeholders. The following are not only restricted to design

3 Ways To Effectively 

Answer the most important question when you prepare the presentation - what does the audience need to know and what they'll do with the information that you give

Focus On Audience 

Be clear on what is being shown and what specific parts the audience should pay attention too

Speak To Specifics, Not Generalization

Engage with the stakeholders rather than you talking yourself. For eg. For 30 mins presentation, split 10 mins for presentation and 20 mins for questions, clarifications or to share feedback

Present Less, Listen More 

Easier said than done. There’s considerable knowledge in designing something, and a designer develops awareness of the customer, business, constraints, potential solutions, and tradeoffs through…

Three ways to more effectively present your designs

Are you having trouble in speaking out your idea/points to others? Do you get confused while presenting? Did you wind up being unclear exactly what you hope other people will do?If yes, then the habit of brevity can help you

The Habit Of Brevity

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

The average leader -- even the above-average one -- might gather the team and explain why it's such a great opportunity for the company/organisationThe emotionally intelligent leader, however, frames everything from the point of view of his or her teams

To Effectively Communicate..

<ul><li>think about different angles to craft the right message.</li><li>segment things better, so that you don't try to communicate everything to everyone at once.</li><li>Try to be brief </li><li>Take time to weed out the many things you might want to say in order to make the ones that you truly need to say more memorable, makes the difference between confusion and clarity.</li></ul>

Crafting Your Message In A Emotionally Intelligent Rute

How to be emotionally intelligent while conveying your message

The Mental Toughness Handbook

3 techniques to influence user behavior

The Power of Regret

3 Exercises to Boost Your Team’s Creativity

World IA Day 2013 - Communicating IA (Aaron Irizarry)

sampath kumar Arunachalam