Do 3 Essential Tasks Everyday. No More. No Less. Designed by Dmitry Baranovskiy for the Noun Project The creative routines of famous creatives has been popular internet fodder this year. The Pacific Standard thinks this obsession and trend of emulating famous artist’s habits is problematic, to say the least. The larger picture, says Casey N. Cep, is that most artists did not always followed these routines they’re known for anyways. The idea that any one of these habits can be isolated from the entirety of the writer’s life and made into a template for the rest of us is nonsense. We often talk about process at 99U, so we think this is a great debate. Read the rest of the article here.
The 10 O’Clock Rule This is a nifty one, simple to implement and, in my experience, surprisingly effective. Set your watch to beep every night at 10 o’clock. When your watch goes off, get up that instant and prepare for morning. Whether you’re in the middle of watching a DVD, rushing to meet a work deadline, reading that one last blog entry, etc., get up and get rolling. Your Morning Prep Checklist In addition to brushing up, walking the dog, and otherwise getting ready for bed as usual, do as many morning tasks as you can ahead of time: Plan breakfast and make sure the fridge is stocked (if necessary, run out to the grocery store to stock up on milk, eggs, etc.) Once you’ve figured out which tasks can be done, write them down on an index card and keep it handy. Organize Your Space I inherited a lovely little stand for hanging out your outfit, wallet, and keys for the next day from my grandfather. This 10 o’clock routine might take anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Reap the Benefits Photo by jmv.
Why Your Vision Must Be Grounded in Reality Whether you realize it or not, you're on a path. You can look back and see exactly how you got to where you stand today. The path ahead is far more nebulous, of course, but it's still a path. Your actions and decisions help to define it, as do all sorts of factors both in and out of your control. If you think of your path as a physical entity, you can easily see that it has certain properties. And understanding those properties can lead to surprising and profound insights into how something as simple as awareness of what's going on inside and around you can help you to visualize and influence your future. No, this isn't some metaphysical or philosophical mumbo jumbo. Your path is part of a larger landscape. Your path is an extension of you. Your path has varying degrees of clarity. Now, with that thought experiment in mind, here are a couple of important takeaways for entrepreneurs and business leaders: Vision that isn't grounded in reality is always flawed.
Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson Learn more about the science of success with Heidi Grant Halvorson’s HBR Single, based on this blog post. Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. 1. To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. 3. Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. 7. To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do. 8. 9.
Do you really need more time? The single biggest “push back” I get from people when I share about how building practices into their life can unleash new ideas and help them be more productive goes something like this: “Yeah, that’s great, but I really just don’t have the time.” After collecting myself, I reply…Did you at any point in the last week: Watch TV? The inevitable response: “yes“. “OK,” I reply, “then you didn’t mean to say you ‘don’t have time.’ Stares. Each of us has 168 hours in a week. 48. 4 hours per day every single day for family activity? 5 hours per week for hanging out with friends? You can still watch TV, read and do other things if you’d like. The point is this: you have time to do things that matter, that create value and that help you get where you want to be in your life and career. We need to overcome the fear of the unknown and simply get moving on what matters.
10 Instant Emotional Fitness Tools When things get out of control and you momentarily lose your emotional balance, there are any number of little things you can do to regain it. Here are ten tools to help get you started. 1. Wash your hands and face and brush your teeth. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. None of these tasks has to be uncomfortable or take you much time. Dr. 30 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less Many of us attempt to measure our happiness based on the duration of certain favorable experiences in our lives. The longer a favorable experience lasts, the happier we think we’ll be. But the truth is, life is simply a string of small, independent moments that are always changing. Thus, a few minutes well spent here and there can make a big difference in what we get out of life in the long-term. Here are 30 things you can do in 30 minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those closest to you. Learn something new by starting a free course at one of the hundreds of online self-education resources bookmarked here: 12 Dozen Places To Educate Yourself Online For Free.Watch one of the thousands of educational videos streaming at TED.com, Academic Earth, or Khan Academy.Read an online book list and find a new book to grab next time you’re at the library. What simple life-enhancing activities do you participate in on a regular basis? Photo by: Rachel Sian Related
Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5' Following on the idea of the procrastination dash and Jeff’s progressive dash, I’ve been experimenting with a squirelly new system to pound through my procrastinated to-do list. Brace yourself, because it is a bit more byzantine than is Merlin 2005’s newly stripped-down habit. It’s called (10+2)*5, and today it will save your ass. Who it’s for procrastinatorsthe easily distractedcompulsive web-surferspeople with a long list of very short tasks (a/k/a “mosquitos”) people having trouble chipping away at very large tasks What you’ll need a timermust be easy to resetelectronic kitchen timer is particularly good (pref. with multiple alarm memories), oran app like Minuteur (get the newest version—several cool new features)a reduced subset of your to-do list tasks that can be worked on (not necessarily completed) in blocks of 10 minutes or lessGTD people: next actions only, pleasean hour of your time (less is potentially okay, but it’s non-canonical)your sorry, procrastinating ass How it works
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