When Your Calling Seems Vague and Unclear, You’re on the Right Track. When Your Calling Seems Vague and Unclear, You’re on the Right Track Most people don’t know what to do with their lives. And that’s okay. “We see in order to move; we move in order to see.” —William Gibson These days, there’s a lot of talk about discovering your dream. More and more people are unwilling to exchange their ideals for a paycheck. I’m sure there are people who know exactly what they were born to do, who have had a vision of their life since they were six years old. So where do you go from there, if all you’ve got is an itch, a vague premonition of an un-lived life? That was the question I sought to answer in my book, The Art of Work.
Lesson 1: Don’t wait for clarity “I have never had clarity. The other day, I was on a call with a young woman who was passionate about getting involved in social work — she just didn’t know where to start. As the discussion continued, she confessed that she didn’t know what her calling was. Takeaway: Clarity comes with action. So where do you start? The Psychology of the Second Wind. By Maria Popova “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake… We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in contemplating what it really means to be awake, adding: “Only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life.” Those rare individuals are the ones who lift themselves out of ordinary life’s mediocrity and, through the sheer force of their creative and intellectual wakefulness, rise to the level of the extraordinary.
They are the people we come to celebrate as luminaries, those whose ideas endure for centuries. James begins with the curious psychological phenomenon of the “second wind,” familiar to everyone from athletes to artists to entrepreneurs — a perplexity that had captivated his imagination for years: Illustration by Judith Clay from 'Thea's Tree.' Talks to watch when you don't know what to do with your life | Playlist. The Secret to Productivity: Focus.
Technology has helped us do so much more, so much faster. But many experts argue that work-related systems and tools haven’t necessarily made us more productive. How many times does your phone, tablet or computer chime to indicate email or a Facebook notification? The reality is that while technology has the ability to improve productivity, too many people allow it to distract. Ultimately, the key to getting more done in less time requires focus. A cluttered, overly busy mind is like a cluttered, messy home; it takes too long to find stuff and get things done. Here are tips to improving focus. Stop switch-tasking. Schedule tasks in blocks of time. Focus on the one-thing. Turn off notifications including the ringer on your phone. Wear headphones. Keep your work area organized based on how you work.
This-7-minute-morning-routine-will-change-your-work-life. 5 Unusual Ways to Start Working Smarter, Not Harder, Backed by Science. One of the things I love about the culture at Buffer is the emphasis on working smarter, not harder. Our team is all about getting plenty of sleep, exercise and recreation time so that our time spent working is as productive as it can be. Working harder can be an easy habit to slip into, though. Sometimes it’s hard to switch off at the end of the day, or to take time out on the weekend and stop thinking about work. With a startup of my own to run, I find this even harder to manage lately. Whenever I’m not working on Buffer, I’m working on Exist, and it’s easy to fall into a pattern of “always working,” rather than working smart and fitting in time to look after myself as well. If this happens to you, too, here are five methods to try that’ll help get you working smarter, not harder. 1. In one of my favorite books, Stephen Covey tells a story about a woodcutter whose saw gets more blunt as time passes and he continues cutting down trees. 2.
So when should you be taking a nap? 3. 4. 5. 5 More Unexpected Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder. I wrote a post recently about ways that you can work smarter, not harder. As I worked through the list of techniques I’d collected, the post became so long that I had to split it in half. Here are even more suggestions to help you make your day more productive without putting in extra hours. 1. Limit your to-do list I’ve written about the history of the to-do list before, and how to write a great one. One way to do this is by choosing 1–3 Most Important Tasks (MITs). “Do your MITs first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. The rest of your to-do list can be filled up with minor tasks that you’d like to do, so long as you’ve prioritized 1–3 MITs. Plan the night before Another to-do list tip that can reduce work anxiety is to write out your to-do list the night before.
Focus just on the present day My most recent and favorite change to my to-do list has been separating my “today” list from a master list of everything I need to get done. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6 Tips to Be a Productive Procrastinator. There are advantages to putting things off—really! Here’s how to "do it tomorrow" the right way. As a freelance writer who works from home, I spend a lot of time procrastinating (if I have ever met you, even in passing, I have Facebooked/Googled you, just FYI).
But I spend even more time beating myself up about my procrastination. After all, when you think of the positive attributes of yourself or someone else, “big procrastinator” never makes the list. For most of us, procrastination is synonymous with lazy. I just might be. The Plus Sides of Procrastination When you postpone doing something, “your subconscious is still working on the task,” says Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., a psychologist and author of Better than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love.
Procrastination also allows stress to build up as due dates approach. Sometimes procrastinating is not only beneficial, but necessary, Vaden says. How to Procrastinate Positively 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 4 Reasons Why Being Comfortable Isn’t a Good Thing. We should all be comfortable, shouldn’t we? Well the answer may be obvious to most; yes of course everyone should have the right to a comfortable life. However comfort most often goes hand in hand with stagnation, in whatever your goals may be. Being comfortable means that you have accomplished what you think is necessary and have no further interest in pursuing goals of self-improvement in your health, career, mind and overall life. If you are comfortable and have no intentions of interrupting the daily motions of your current lifestyle, then read no further; however if you are looking to better yourself and pursue goals and dreams, I have compiled four reasons why you should never let yourself get comfortable until you have accomplished all that you have set out to accomplish.
“Even though I played professionally in Cleveland, I still lived in Akron. Everything was comfortable. 4. You may be suffering from the same dilemmas as Lebron was while playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. 3. 2. 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily. 4 Things You Thought Were True About Time Management - Amy Gallo. By Amy Gallo | 1:00 PM July 22, 2014 I don’t know anyone who doesn’t struggle with how to make the most of their time at work.
How do you stay on top of an overflowing inbox? How do you get work done when your day is taken up by meetings? How can you get through a continually expanding to-do list? How do you even find time to make a list in the first place? To make matters worse, there are lots of misconceptions about what time management really comes down to and how to achieve it. It’s about managing your time. Time management is a misnomer, says Jordan Cohen, a productivity expert and author of “Make Time for the Work That Matters.” Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of The Progress Principle, whose expertise in this area comes from reading the work diaries of thousands of workers who documented their struggles to get work done, says it’s more about managing your overall workload.
This may be partly true. How-to-be-productive_530adf38cc928_w1500. The Exact Amount Of Time You Should Work Every Day. Editor's Note: This is one of the most-read leadership articles of 2014. Click here to see the full list. You know that taking frequent breaks is good for your productivity, focus, and creativity, but you just never seem to get around to it. You feel stressed and exhausted when you hammer away at your keyboard all day, and the evidence is everywhere.
A study earlier this year from the University of Toronto on lunch break patterns of office workers revealed the absence of a proper lunch break can actually lower productivity. John Trougakos, associate professor of Organizational Behavior & HR Management, who coauthored the study, argues our brains have a limited pool of psychological energy. "All efforts to control behavior, to perform and to focus draw on that pool of psychological energy. Recently, the Draugiem Group, a social networking company, added to this growing body of research. Follow these tips to ensure you’re getting enough breaks in your day: Top 10 Qualities of Extremely Successful People. 25 Productivity Secrets from History's Greatest Thinkers. James Clear: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the 'Two-Minute Rule' Recently, I've been following a simple rule that is helping me crush procrastination and making it easier for me to stick to good habits at the same time.
I want to share it with you today so that you can try it out and see how it works in your life. The best part? It's a simple strategy that couldn't be easier to use. Here's what you need to know. How to Stop Procrastinating With the "Two-Minute Rule" I call this little strategy the "Two-Minute Rule," and the goal is to make it easier for you to get started on the things you should be doing. Here's the deal: Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren't actually difficult to do -- you have the talent and skills to accomplish them -- you just avoid starting them for one reason or another. The two-minute rule overcomes procrastination and laziness by making it so easy to start taking action that you can't say no. There are two parts to the two-minute rule... Part One: If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.
Try It Now. Daily Rituals: A Guided Tour of Writers’ and Artists’ Creative Habits. By Maria Popova Hemingway wrote standing, Nabokov on index cards, Twain while puffing cigars, and Sitwell in an open coffin. “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone,” the William James’s famous words on habit echo. “Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.” Given this omnibus of the daily routines of famous writers was not only one of my favorite articles to research but also the most-read and -shared one in the entire history of Brain Pickings, imagine my delight at the release of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (public library) by Mason Currey, based on his blog of the same title. Currey, who culled the famous routines from a formidable array of interviews, diaries, letters, and magazine profiles, writes in the introduction: The notion that if only we could replicate the routines of great minds, we’d be able to reverse-engineer their genius is, of course, an absurd one — yet an alluring one nonetheless.
Donating = Loving. Here's How The World's Most Brilliant People Scheduled Their Days. Alas, there are but 24 hours in a day. And when you have a seemingly insurmountable load of work, it can be a quite a challenge to even know where to start. But remember that history’s most legendary figures — from Beethoven to Beyonce — had just as little (or just as much) time as you have. Using the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, RJ Andrews at Info We Trust designed some enlightening visualizations of how history’s most creative and influential figures structured their days.
Unfortunately, there is no common prescription for the perfect schedule, and each person had a very different set of rituals. Based on the charts, we learn that some of history’s icons had more eccentric habits than others. Think your mornings are stressful? Honoré de Balzac, the French writer, was said to live his life as “orgies of work punctuated by orgies of relaxation and pleasure,” according to one biographer. Check out the other creative routines below:(Click here for a bigger image.) Here’s How The World’s Most Brilliant Minds Scheduled Their Days. Sources: RJ Andrews Infowetrust.com Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals:
How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Presence Over Productivity. By Maria Popova “The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.” The meaning of life has been pondered by such literary icons as Leo Tolstoy (1904), Henry Miller (1918), Anaïs Nin (1946), Viktor Frankl (1946), Italo Calvino (1975), and David Foster Wallace (2005). And though some have argued that today’s age is one where “the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning,” there’s an unshakable and discomfiting sense that, in our obsession with optimizing our creative routines and maximizing our productivity, we’ve forgotten how to be truly present in the gladdening mystery of life. From The Writing Life (public library) by Annie Dillard — a wonderful addition to the collected wisdom of beloved writers — comes this beautiful and poignant meditation on the life well lived, reminding us of the tradeoffs between presence and productivity that we’re constantly choosing to make, or not: There is no shortage of good days.
Traits of the disciplined mind. Stop Procrastinating by "Clearing to Neutral" By Thanh Pham We often procrastinate because there is this one hidden thing holding us back. It is this one thing that makes you procrastinate and most people are not even aware what this is, but if you eliminate it you can say goodbye to procrastination forever. Friction A lot of times we procrastinate because we have to jump through a lot of hurdles before we can do the thing we actually want to do. For example, let’s say you need to prepare dinner. So you need your dishes, cutlery, pots and pans. To put it in other words, before you can do your main activity (cooking), you have to all these others things (cleaning) before you can get to your main activity. If you make it hard for yourself to get started, that’s when you will most likely procrastinate. Now imagine you actually cleaned your desk and now you need to do some work on your computer.
All these little starting points where you have friction are very common. Our friend Eben Pagan uses the analogy of cleaning a grill. Next Steps. These Are The Things That Make Up A Successful Person And An Unsuccessful Person. Start Every Day as a Producer, Not a Consumer. 7 Qualities of Uber-Productive People. Developing self discipline. Don't Break the Chain. How the 'Seinfeld Strategy' Can Help You Stop Procrastinating. How to Finish Your Work, One Bite at a Time. How To be so Productive You Can't Stand it. The Brain-Based Secret to Personal Productivity.
17 Small Productivity Habits. Time Management Tips: How to Find the Right Mindset to Succeed With Time Management | The Best Time Management Tips. How to Train Your Brain and Boost Your Memory Like a USA Memory Champion. 8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating. The Memory Palace System - The Minimalist Blog | Hobbies | Finance | Fitness | Health | Business. 5 Ways to Make Your To-Do Lists More Effective. The 18 Minute Ritual That Will Make Your Day Dramatically More Productive. 6 Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day.
5 Routines To Clear Mental Clutter. How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day. Do you dare to dream? Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5'. How To Waste Time Properly - Issue 7: Waste. 27 Hard Questions Awesome People Ask Themselves Right Now. | Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
The Morning Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity. Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives. 50 Ways to Get Your Life in Order. 6 Scientific Tactics to Stop Procrastinating. How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 New Steps Backed By Research. Poor time management practices. The 10 Most Important Questions You Can Ask Yourself Today. Magical Mornings: How to start your day with more creativity, serenity, and insight — Better Humans.
Plan For Failure: How to be Consistent. Taking Journaling to Another Level. Start From The Edges. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To. People Who Achieve Their Goals Do These 5 Things. 7 questions to ask to help make sense of your life.