The Single Best Piece of Marriage Advice Ever Given. First, some numbers: I’ve been married (to the same person) for twenty-seven years. Those twenty-seven years have included six in which we were researching an anthology about marriage. That anthology (The Marriage Book: Centuries of Advice, Inspiration, and Cautionary Tales, from Adam & Eve to Zoloft) is 560 pages long. Those 560 pages include 529 entries that we arrived at after scanning—honestly—tens of thousands of books, poems, newspaper articles, letters, postcards, photographs, and songs. So after all that searching, I’ve been asked to name the one—just the one—best piece of advice that my husband and I would offer a newly married couple.
Are you ready? With the caveat that there are 3.7 pounds of other wisdom in our book, this is it. It was written in a notebook in 1909 by the poet William Butler Yeats when he was 44: How do you do this? The Brief NewsletterSign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. You have to banish contempt. This is a modal window. How to communicate. Communication in the Internet Century usually means using email, and email, despite being remarkably useful and powerful, often inspires momentous dread in otherwise optimistic, happy humans. Here are our personal rules for mitigating that sense of foreboding: Cover of 'How Google Works,' by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg How Google Works 1.
Respond quickly. There are people who can be relied upon to respond promptly to emails, and those who can’t. Strive to be one of the former. 2. 3. When you open a new message, you have a few options: Read enough of it to realize that you don’t need to read it, read it and act right away, read it and act later, or read it later (worth reading but not urgent and too long to read at the moment). If you do this well, then your inbox becomes a to‑do list of only the complex issues, things that require deeper thought (label these emails “take action,” or in Gmail mark them as starred), with a few “to read” items that you can take care of later. 4. 5. Why French children are taught to love food instead of its nutrition and diet... Just four days before the US elections, the Paris Agreement officially became international law after receiving formal sign-off from 55 countries that contribute 55% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
This landmark deal marked a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change, particularly given its ratification by a majority of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, including India, China, the United States, and the European Union. However, the election of Donald Trump has ushered in a new administration that has vocalized opposition to the agreement, leaving a wake of uncertainty. Now, more than ever, it’s important that we make every dollar and every action count in the fight against climate change. To make this happen, the Paris Agreement needs to include one key group that has been largely left out of the most prominent plans to combat climate change: smallholder farmers.
Thinking about the little guy Developing a framework Collaboration is key. How to Write Email with Military Precision. In the military, a poorly formatted email may be the difference between mission accomplished and mission failure. During my active duty service, I learned how to structure emails to maximize a mission’s chances for success. Since returning from duty, I have applied these lessons to emails that I write for my corporate job, and my missives have consequently become crisper and cleaner, eliciting quicker and higher-quality responses from colleagues and clients. Here are three of the main tips I learned on how to format your emails with military precision: 1.
Subjects with keywords. The first thing that your email recipient sees is your name and subject line, so it’s critical that the subject clearly states the purpose of the email, and specifically, what you want them to do with your note. The next time you email your direct reports a status update, try using the subject line: INFO – Status Update. 2. Shannon knows that no response is required because it was marked INFO. 3. How to Listen When You Disagree: A Lesson from the Republican National Conven... So, I asked: “Thank you for sharing that.
Tell me your story? I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.” She seemed surprised by my interest. “Why? “Give me more to listen to.” “They should be locked up! She paused…then inhaled the entire world. “And it’s not fair. I wondered if she could hear my heart breaking. “…so, I guess I get upset when I see people who can get pregnant, who can have kids, whose bodies work…who can be moms…and they just choose not to…” Sometimes, there’s nothing to “disagree” with. I didn’t need to be right. I just needed to be there. She wiped away a few tears, gave me a hug, and thanked me for listening. She exhaled, and walked back into the RNC circus. Maybe one day, she’ll hear my story. I hope she felt loved. How to Think About Your Career. How to Think About Your Career If you had asked 22-year-old me what my “career aspirations” were, I would have looked at you blankly and then casually changed the subject to what programs you’d recommend to model cute 3D bunnies for a video game, or whether the writers of Alias would be so devious as to ship Sydney Bristow and Sark.
It’s not that I didn’t think about my career at all. I was ambitious — I wanted to be a part of something big. I wanted to be able to support myself financially and not worry my parents (as this was a high bar set at doctor, aka the “stablest of all professions,” I suspect they still secretly worry about this.) I wanted the kind of job where I wouldn’t be watching the clock every hour, daydreaming like Rebecca Black about Friday. But beyond that, the specifics of “thinking about my career” was a giant grey cloud to me. Here’s the thing though: your career, like your life, moves forward whether you think about it or not. The reverse isn’t true. Mini-Retirement Week 1: Time Management | theOrangeMango. The past 4 years have been a blur operating, expanding and managing The Hostel Crowd. I can speak for the entire team when I say that 24 hours in a day was never enough. We just bounced from one crisis to another.
Somewhere along the way, a method to deal with the madness began to emerge. The method was not holistic and as ironic as it may sound – I never had the time to write about time management. Now on my mini-retirement, I’ve got sufficient time to analyze and walk you through a few techniques that I’ve come across in the past years. So what is success? The Evolution of Time-Management The First Generation of time-management consists of simple to-do lists which all of us are more than familiar with.
The Second Generation of time-management solved this problem with the Calendar through scheduling. And that’s when the Third Generation of time-management brought prioritization to the table. The New Time-Management Paradigm Quadrant 2 – Steven Covey The ONE Thing – Gary Keller The Tools No. What makes for a dream job? Here's what the evidence says. 80,000 Hours is a non-profit that gives you the information you need to find a fulfilling, high-impact career. Our advice is all free, tailored for talented graduates, and based on five years of research alongside academics at Oxford.
Start with our career guide. We all want to find a dream job that’s enjoyable and meaningful, but what does that actually mean? Some people imagine that the answer involves discovering their passion through a flash of insight, while others think that the key elements of their dream job are that it be easy and highly paid. We’ve reviewed two decades of research into the causes of a satisfying life and career, drawing on over 60 studies, and we didn’t find much evidence for these views. Instead, we found six key ingredients of a dream job.
In fact, following your passion can lead you astray. Rather, you can develop passion by doing work that you find enjoyable and meaningful. Watch this video or read the full article (15 minutes). The bottom line 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Sheryl Sandberg Berkeley commencement speech. The Busy Person’s Lies. HOW’S life? Oh, busy. So goes the mindless modern conversation — a constant assertion of the scarcity of time. A December Gallup poll found that 61 percent of working Americans said they did not have enough time to do the things they wanted to do. Some of us feel this more acutely than others: A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that 9 in 10 working mothers said they felt rushed all or some of the time. In an attempt to understand this frenzy, I spent the past 12 months studying my own time during what might turn out to be the busiest year of my life. I had another baby in January 2015, bringing my total to four under the age of 8.
So I logged on a spreadsheet in half-hour blocks every one of the 8,784 hours that make up a leap year. After hitting hour 8,784 at 5 a.m. on April 20, I started analyzing my logs and adding up the categories. These data points exist, but there was plenty of evidence of a calmer life. This wasn’t my first time analyzing time logs. How to Read a Book a Week. Executive Summary Reading gives us access to great ideas, allows us peek into the minds of the smartest people, and gives us fuel to be valuable contributors in conversations. But who really has time to read every book that would help us as business leaders?
Everyone, according to the author, because the key to reading is not taking in every word, but understanding the concepts that the author presents. Following his advice, you have the potential to read at least one nonfiction book a week. The formula comes down to being engaged with the material, keeping your mind alert, and actively trying to figure out what the book really means. It was the late 1980s and I was sitting in a university lecture hall listening to Abbie Hoffman, an author and an activist, ranting about my generation’s indifference. “It’s such a unique opportunity to be here,” I said to her, “to be part of these conversations with smart, thoughtful people.” “Oh, don’t be silly,” she responded. I told him I was. 1 Minute of All-Out Exercise May Have Benefits of 45 Minutes of Moderate Exer...
Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter. The Myth of Quality Time. Photo EVERY summer for many years now, my family has kept to our ritual. All 20 of us — my siblings, my dad, our better halves, my nieces and nephews — find a beach house big enough to fit the whole unruly clan. We journey to it from our different states and time zones. We tensely divvy up the bedrooms, trying to remember who fared poorly or well on the previous trip. And we fling ourselves at one another for seven days and seven nights. That’s right: a solid week. The answer to the second question is yes, but to the first, an emphatic no. I used to think that shorter would be better, and in the past, I arrived for these beach vacations a day late or fled two days early, telling myself that I had to when in truth I also wanted to — because I crave my space and my quiet, and because I weary of marinating in sunscreen and discovering sand in strange places. There’s simply no real substitute for physical presence.
We can try. But people tend not to operate on cue. How to write paragraphs — Advice for authoring a PhD or academic book. In English the core building blocks of any intellectual or research argument are paragraphs. Each paragraphs should be a single unit of thought, a discrete package of ideas composed of closely linked sentences. The most generally applicable sequence to follow is — Topic, Body, Tokens, Wrap. The opening ‘topic’ sentence alerts readers to a change of subject and focus, and cues readers (in ‘signpost’ mode) about what the paragraph covers.
It should never link backwards to material that came before (linkages are instead always made forward in ‘wrap’ sentences). So be wary of starting paragraphs with linking words (such as ‘However’, ‘Never the less’, ‘Furthermore’), lest they lead you into looking back. Instead topic sentences should clearly signal a new focus of attention. Yet they also need to be carefully written, to give readers the impression of a fluent, ‘natural’ progression of thought. Rational, skimming readers do not treat all parts of paragraphs in the same way. 6. Why You Should Wait Five Minutes Before You React - Motto. A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view. It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. It’s easy to talk about knee jerk reactions as if they are things that only other people have.
This came to a head back in 2007. And what did I do? His response changed my life. This was a big moment for me. Richard has spent his career thinking about these problems. There’s also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. If you aren’t sure why this is important, think about this quote from Jonathan Ive regarding Steve Jobs’ reverence for ideas: And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence.
How I Became A Morning Person, Read More Books, And Learned A Language In A Year. You’ll notice that I made the title of this post sound quite impressive (at least I hope I did!). But the great thing about this story is that anyone can have such an impressive outcome, and it’s not at all as daunting as it might sound. In fact, all these outcomes came from doing small things every day over a long period. I’m a big fan of working smarter, not harder and finding small ways to make my work more efficient.
As I became Buffer’s first content crafter about two years ago, I got the chance to explore these topics quite a lot. Now I’m excited to be back to show you exactly how I came by these wins in 2015. From a habit of practicing French for just five minutes a day, I can now read, write, and speak basic French. From a habit of reading just a page every night, I managed to increase my reading list by five times over the past couple of years. Basically, I used small, everyday habits to build up into big, long-term outcomes. 1. Finally, I came across this idea of starting small. 2.
52 things I learned in 2015. 52 things I learned in 2015 This year I got an amazing new job (at Fluxx) and continue to be surprised by the amount of things still to be learned in the world. $8 pizza tastes 11% better than $4 pizza, even when the pizza is the same. [Bourree Lam]In 1990, more than 12 million children died before the age of 5. In 2015, that number will fall to 5.9 million. Previously: 52 Things I Learned in 2014. Things I published this year: Why Do All Records Sound the Same?
More like this on My Tumblr or learn more about Fluxx. Does Trying to Be Happy Make Us Unhappy? Why Reporters Like Me Ignore Famous Female Economists. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Tidying Up. Screw Finding Your Passion.