Six Lazy Ways to Trick Your Brain Into Being Productive The Extended Mind The extended mind is an idea in the field of philosophy of mind which holds that the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of skin and skull. Tools, instrument and other environmental props can under certain conditions also count as proper parts of our minds. The EMT[edit] The "extended mind thesis" (EMT) refers to an emerging concept that addresses the question as to the division point between the mind and the environment by promoting the view of active externalism. The EMT proposes that some objects in the external environment are utilized by the mind in such a way that the objects can be seen as extensions of the mind itself. Specifically, the mind is seen to encompass every level of the cognitive process, which will often include the use of environmental aids. In "The Extended Mind," a thought experiment is presented to further illustrate the environment's role in connection to the mind. References[edit] Jump up ^ Analysis 58: 7-19. Further reading[edit] See also[edit]
30-Second Productivity Strategies Half a minute is all it takes to make each day more productive. 1. Take 30 seconds to set the stage for awesome success. Here's how: Before you start doing something, answer the question, "What can I do to make this awesome?" That's basically what Mike Williams of the David Allen Company (the Getting Things Done folks) asked me. At first, it sounded cheesy. Keep in mind this applies just as much to your personal life, too. Don't just move blindly on to the next task. Answer that question, and whatever you do, you will do a lot better. 2. Unfortunately, all too often you forget what happened. Don't. Then you will remember what's important--and be able to act on what's important. 3. That's a shame, because meetings involve people--and that means there's a lot to think about ahead of time. Terrible meetings are all talk and no action. 4. Feeling stressed? Need to switch from quiet mode to outgoing and engaging? Find little rituals that help prepare you for stressful or unusual situations. 5.
10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance - Smashing Magazine Advertisement by Marco Sousa Before getting started with Photoshop, we all should have first visited the “Edit > Preferences” menu and change the “Performance” settings to fit our personal taste and computer specifications, but this isn’t always the case – in many situations designers simply forget these aspects. If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider. 1. Maybe you already went through that bad feeling of clicking “undo” dozens of times and realizing that Photoshop wouldn’t provide you with more previous steps, but this problem can be easily resolved by changing the History States setting in the “Edit > Preferences > Performance” menu. Overall, you may add up to 1,000 history state levels in Photoshop. 2. 3. The displayed available RAM is the value left for applications after the Operating System loads into memory.
5 Ways to Make Your To-Do Lists More Effective To-do lists seem pretty straightforward: A list of all of the tasks you plan to accomplish during any given day or week. And, really, there are few things more satisfying than drawing lines through each entry. Progress! But, many times, they balloon to unrealistic levels, and we end up feeling overwhelmed and ineffective. 1. When you take a few minutes to write your to-do list the night before, you can hit the ground running the next morning, Pozen advises. 2. Everything that goes on your daily to-do list should fit two criteria: It should be something important that you need to do--versus that which doesn’t really need to be done or which can be delegated to someone else--and something that needs to be done on that day. “When people don’t take control, they go through their days passively. 3. Whether it’s five minutes or two hours, include an estimate of how long it will take to complete, recommends Omar Kilani, cofounder of popular to-do list app Remember The Milk. 4. 5.
Improving Photoshop CS4/CS5 Performance « Ramin Hossaini (blog) 15Nov/08 Note: This was initially written for Photoshop CS4, but from what I've seen, it also applies to Photoshop CS5. If you're having performance issues after installing Adobe's latest version of Photoshop, try having a look at these options: Allocating more memory to Photoshop Edit -> Preferences -> Performance to allocate more RAM to Photoshop.Don't use too much (over 90% for example), your OS will need RAM too! Set up a scratch disk This is similar to virtual memory. Set up your cache-levels Purge Undo, Clipboard, or Histories This clears up memoryEdit -> Purge Reduce the number of History states By reducing the number of history states, you decrease the amount of memory used by Photoshop.To set the number of history states: Edit -> Preferences -> Performance Saving PSD files with the compatibility feature GPU use CS4 makes use of your graphics card's GPU, instead of the computer CPU to speed its screen redraw. Disabling OpenGL Minimize palette preview thumbnails Bigger Tiles plug-in
8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating “Music helps me concentrate,” Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder. Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. Do you know a person like this? The Science Behind Concentration In the above account, Mike’s obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it’s almost an impossible routine to get out of. When we constantly multitask to get things done, we’re not multitasking, we’re rapidly shifting our attention. Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert When Mike decides to start writing his History essay, blood rushes to his anterior prefrontal cortex. Phase 2: Find and Execute The alert carries an electrical charge that’s composed of two parts: first, a search query (which is needed to find the correct neurons for executing the task of writing), and second, a command (which tells the appropriate neuron what to do). Phase 3: Disengagement 1. 2. 3. 4.
Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin @itsjareds: Sorry for the VERY late reply but I'm assuming you've tried WINE? @Vignesh Mohankumar: Well I was mainly pointing that out because I would have tried Digsby if it was native, otherwise I'll just stick with pidgin. Stanford Literature Review What is it? A critical literature review is one of the most important activities in the process of research and is usually included as part of the introduction to a research report or thesis. The aim of a literature review is to show that the writer insightfully evaluated the existing published literature on a particular topic. A good literature review should do the following: Define the scope of the problem Place the current study in a historical perspective Show the relationship between previous research and the current research thesis Avoid unnecessary duplication Evaluate different research methodologies and emphasize key studies Compare and contrast different research findings on a topic while grouping together authors with similar conclusions and noting areas in which authors are in disagreement Report gaps in the previous research and how the current study can add to the literature in general Conclude by summarizing what the literature says How does one begin? C.