50 Things Everyone Should Know by Mark and Angel Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy, productive life. To be self-reliant one must master a basic set of skills, more or less making them a jack of all trades. While not totally comprehensive , here is a list of 50 things everyone should know how to do. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Read the rest of the article
6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic." Whatever that means. If you find yourself resisting "being strategic," because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you're not alone. This is a tough job, make no mistake. After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what's required of you in this role. Anticipate Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industrySearch beyond the current boundaries of your businessBuild wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better Think Critically “Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. Interpret Ambiguity is unsettling. Decide
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time - Tony Schwartz by Tony Schwartz | 8:53 AM March 14, 2012 Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work? It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour. I know this from my own experience. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3.
Creatives Outfitter :: Products and Tools for Creative Professionals For too long, Creatives have suffered from inefficiency, disorganization, and careers at the mercy of bureaucracy. Behance aims to organize, connect, and empower creative careers, so the best ideas can see the light of day. Behance’s “Action” and “Dot Grid” product lines have become indispensable utilities for Creatives at work. Back in 2006, when the Behance team was just imagining ways to organize and empower creative people, they knew that they needed to start with themselves. So the very first thing they designed was the Action Pad. Long before the launch of the Behance’s network and 99U, Behance began with paper and a mission to empower the creative world. As Scott Belsky and Matias Corea from Behance tell the story, "Brainstorming from our apartments during the hours outside our day jobs, we used our personal Action Pads to capture and complete countless action steps that ultimately pushed Behance from vision to reality.
The Rise and Fall of Advertising Media Of all the venues marketers are using to get their message across, mobile marketing is the area that is experiencing an overwhelming increase. The infographic below tells the complete story of the importance of mobile. Don’t believe it?
Life Lessons From Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin was a man of action. Over his lifetime, his curiosity and passion fueled a diverse range of interests. He was a writer (often using a pseudonym), publisher, diplomat, inventor and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His inventions included the lightning rod, bifocals and the Franklin stove. Franklin was responsible for establishing the first public library, organizing fire fighters in Philadelphia, was one of the early supporters of mutual insurance and crossed the Atlantic eight times. Benjamin Franklin was clearly a man who knew how to get things done. 14 Action Inducing LessonsLess Talk, More Action “Well done is better than well said.”Talk is cheap. “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” This is probably one of the first quotes I remember hearing as a teenager. Be Prepared “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” You need a plan to accomplish your goals. Don’t Fight Change “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” Wise Up
10 Laws of Productivity You might think that creatives as diverse as Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, industrial design firm Studio 7.5, and bestselling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami would have little in common. In fact, the tenets that guide how they – and exceptionally productive creatives across the board – make ideas happen are incredibly similar. Here are 10 laws of productivity we’ve consistently observed among serial idea executors: 1. Break the seal of hesitation. A bias toward action is the most common trait we’ve found across the hundreds of creative professionals and entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed. 2. When our ideas are still in our head, we tend to think big, blue sky concepts. 3. Trial and error is an essential part of any creative’s life. To avoid ‘blue sky paralysis,’ pare your idea down to a small, immediately executable concept. 4. When working on in-depth projects, we generate lots of new ideas along the way. 5. 6. 7. 8. Few activities are more of a productivity drain than meetings. 9.
If Social Media Sites Were Superheroes It seems like a lot of designers are having fun creating infographics these days, and when they are fun like this one is, I can’t get enough. Have you ever played the card game called Top Trumps? It’s a game where each card has a character and a group of numbers on it. The numbers rank the characters on the cards for different attributes. There have been tons of different Top Trump card decks released over the years. Facebook is really like the Hulk, big and powerful. Author: Diana Adams Diana has a passion for blogging and has written over 4,000 articles on Bit Rebels. Building A Village Starts With Building The Tractor hide captionDesigned and built on Marcin Jakubowski's farm, this tractor cost far less than a commercial tractor. Jon Kalish/NPR Designed and built on Marcin Jakubowski's farm, this tractor cost far less than a commercial tractor. Do-it-yourselfers have made everything from bamboo bicycles to 3-D printers, but nothing as ambitious as what's happening on a farm in northwest Missouri where tractors and other industrial machines are being made from scratch. hide captionPhysicist Marcin Jakubowski leads the Open Source Ecology project, which aims to design and build affordable alternatives to industrial machines. Physicist Marcin Jakubowski leads the Open Source Ecology project, which aims to design and build affordable alternatives to industrial machines. Marcin Jakubowski earned a Ph.D. in physics, and his doctoral thesis deals with velocity turbulence and zonal flow detection, whatever that is. Jakubowski moved to Missouri, where he eventually bought 30 acres in the town of Maysville.
The 50 Best Mind Hacks on the Web Image: JanneM/Flickr Mind hacks. Ever since Tom Stafford and Matt Webb introduced us to the hidden logic of our upstairs system in their 2004 neuroscience tome, these simple tricks have taken the blogosphere by storm. Nowadays, there’s a hack for everything, from your sex life to your kitchen stove. Work and Career Five rules for keeping your inbox empty. How to control your workday before it controls you. Make your to-do list fun by turning it into one big game. Here’s a nifty system for keeping your desk clean and tidy. Boring, but valuable: How to automatically back up your hard drive. This is the ultimate procrastination hack. 10 things to do right now to cultivate a superior leadership year. Your Finances 9 methods for mastering your money. How to find out exactly what your job is worth…then ask for that raise. Want to know how to save money? How to go from $25/hour to $75/hour in 2 weeks. Portfolio management made easy. Life Skills These three words will solve 99% of your problems. Home Hacks
25 Things You Should Know About Word Choice 1. A Series Of Word Choices Here’s why this matters: because both writing and storytelling comprise, at the most basic level, a series of word choices. Words are the building blocks of what we do. 2. Words are like LEGO bricks: the more we add, the more we define the reality of our playset. 3. You know that game — “Oh, you’re cold, colder, colder — oh! 4. Think of it like a different game, perhaps: you’re trying to say as much as possible with as few words as you can muster. 5. Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. 6. For every right word, you have an infinity of wrong ones. 7. You might use a word that either oversteps or fails to meet the idea you hope to present. 8. Remember how I said earlier that words are like LEGO, blah blah blah help define reality yadda yadda poop noise? 9. Incorrect word choice means you’re using the wrong damn word. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Am. 15.