Jul 10, 2012
Make your own damn luck:the music mix
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Make your own damn luck:the music mix
Check out this mix from 99%'s Soundcloud that one of our newest coworkers, Ray Velez, shared with us! Listenin to this mix has gotten some of us in a more productive mood. Perhaps the positivity the music emits is what influences the productivity. Whatever it is, we like it!
Hoy todo mundo habla de "Engagement". Pero este arículo habla da importancia de su contraparte: el siempre sano "Disengagement". Chéquenlo creativos... Interruption-free space is sacred. Yet, in the digital era we live in, we are losing hold of the few sacred spaces that remain untouched by email, the internet, people, and other forms of distraction. Our cars now have mobile phone integration and a thousand satellite radio stations. When walking from one place to another, we have our devices streaming data from dozens of sources. Even at our bedside, we now have our iPads with heaps of digital apps and the world's information at our fingertips. There has been much discussion about the value of the “creative pause” – a state described as “the shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether.” This phenomenon is the seed of the break-through “a-ha!” moments that people so frequently report having in the shower. In these moments, you are completely isolated, and your mind is able to wander and churn big questions without interruption.
However, despite the incredible power and potential of sacred spaces, they are quickly becoming extinct. We are depriving ourselves of every opportunity for disconnection. And our imaginations suffer the consequences... http://bit.ly/y5lLL4
A Masterplan for Taking Back Control of Your Life
Here's the problem we face, every day of our lives. Nearly everything that generates enduring value requires effort, focus, and even some discomfort along the way. At the same time, we're deeply wired to avoid pain, which the body reads as mortally dangerous, and to move toward pleasure, the more immediate the better. We're also exposed to more temptation than ever. The world is literally at our fingertips, a few keystrokes away. It's forever beckoning us, like the Sirens singing to Odysseus, who lashed himself to the mast of his ship to resist their call. The sirens sing to us, too: Have the dessert. Skip the workout. Put off the hard work. Surf the web. Check your email. Indulge your whims. Settle for the easy way out. Thanks to researcher Roy Baumeister and others, the evidence is clear that we have one reservoir of willpower. It's a highly limited resource, and it gets depleted by every act that requires its use. So how do we take back control of our lives? What follows are the key moves we can make. It's not all or none. More is better, but each one will help. 1. Make more of your behaviors automatic. Because our willpower is so limited, our best defense is to rely on it less. Here's how the brilliant mathematician Alfred North Whitehead put it: "Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them." A ritual is a highly precise behavior that you perform over and over, at a specific time, so it becomes automatic and no longer requires much willpower to get it done. 2. Take yourself out of harm's way. You can't easily lash yourself to a mast, but you can selectively avoid temptations. If you want to lose weight, it makes sense to remove your favorite high-calorie foods from the shelves, and to tell the waiter at restaurants not to bring the bread. If you want to get challenging work done, turn off your email entirely for designated periods of time rather than try to resist its Pavlovian ping. 3. Whatever you feel compelled to do, don't. The more powerfully driven you are to take instant action, the more likely you shouldn't. When the pull is intense, it's likely you've activated your fight-or-flight physiology. That's great when you're actually facing a life-or-death situation and need to react instantly. In most life circumstances, it serves you better to reflect before you react. 4. Sleep as much as you must to feel fully rested. For nearly 98% of us, that means at least 7 hours a night. "Fatigue," said Vince Lombardi, "makes cowards of us all." Specifically, it undermines our capacity for self-control, and we're more likely to default to instant gratification. The best sleep ritual is not just to choose a precise bedtime, but also to begin winding down at least 30 minutes before turning out the lights. 5. Do the most important thing first in the morning. That's when the vast majority of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions. Our energy reservoir diminishes as the day wears on, which is why it's so difficult to get to the hardest work late in the day. Conversely, the more focused you are, the higher the quality of work you'll do, and the more you'll get done. I often get more important work done during the first 90 minutes of the morning than in the rest of the hours of the day put together. 6. Eat energy rich foods in small doses at frequent intervals. Food – specifically glucose – literally fuels willpower. Unfortunately, the body can only make use of a limited amount at any given time, so we need to refuel at least every three hours. Sugars and simple carbohydrates provide a surge of energy that doesn't last, while lean proteins and complex carbohydrates provide a steadier, more enduring source of energy and therefore willpower. 7. Do one thing at a time. With so much coming at us so relentlessly – emails, texts, people, and information – we assume the only way to get to it all is to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. In fact, moving between tasks creates something called "switching time." When you shift attention from one focus of attention to another, the average time it takes to finish the first task increases by at least 25%. 8. Work in sprints. Human beings aren't meant to operate like computers, at high speeds, continuously. Rather, we're designed to pulse between spending and renewing energy. The ultradian rhythm refers to a 90-minute cycle inside us, during which we move from a state of higher physiological arousal progressively down towards fatigue. Focus intensely, ideally without interruption, for no more than 90 minutes at a time. Then take a real break, for at least a few minutes, to relax emotionally, give the mind a rest and physically recharge. *** Above all else, it's critical to ground yourself in deeply held values. Knowing what you stand for is a uniquely powerful fuel for behavior, especially when the going gets tough, and the temptation is to take the easy route. If you're clear about who you want to be in any given situation, non-negotiably, the songs of the Sirens aren't so alluring. -- What About You? How do you stay focused and motivated? -- Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Follow him on Twitter at @TonySchwartz.
25 (+1) Useful Pieces of Information to Help Anyone Write Better
Today, most of us are writers. Of course we're not all novelists, journalists or even bloggers, but in our plugged-in world, nearly everyone writes e-mails, Twitter posts, Facebook updates -- so on and so forth.
And so, we think, it's increasingly important to be, at the very least, capable of forming a strong sentence or two, replete with correct grammar and structure. But as a side-note, don't be too distraught if you've made an error on something in the past; last night I wrote a silly Facebook post about being a freelance writer and aptly spelled one of those key words wrong. Last night, according to me, I was a "freelancer writer." I could have deleted the post if I had caught in time, but once I noticed my error, so many friends had commented on it that I couldn't very well erase it. And so, life goes on. Don't let it discourage you from trying to write.
Ultimately, the point here is not that everyone needs to be a trained writer. Nor is it that mistakes should be made. The significance of this post is that writing is something we all do these days, and that we should at least make an effort to do it as well as we are all, individually, capable of.
We found a simply fantastic post on the99percent.com titled 25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer and though we'd like to detail the entire post below, in the interest of professional integrity, we'll simply summarize and direct you to the original post, which lists out 25 insights, each of which has an accompanying quote from a writer. Absolutely go check it out. But if you want a shortened version of the list of 25 Insights in our words, sans quotes, continue reading.
1. Procrastination + writing don't go well together; sit your a** down and write.
2. There is no such thing as "getting ready to write." Simply start writing.
3. Write when (and where) it works for you. Every time.
4. Disconnect from all social networks -- and perhaps the internet altogether -- when you write.
5. Write about things that mean something to you.
6. Be organized, in your very own way.
7. Create an outline. Use it.
8. Write it all down in a formless draft without worrying about it. Edit it later.
9. Write like it's your job. Pretend you "have" to and do it.
10. Write badly. It's OK--you're writing.
11. Don't be too afraid or you'll never write anything.
12. Don't look back until it's all done and time for editing.
13. Concentrate. Even if you don't end up writing a single word.
14. Create a stockpile of ideas to choose from--so you won't choose the ever-available "do nothing" option.
15. Make writer friends.
16. Listen to some feedback.
17. Get a non-romantic friend to read your draft who will look at it with what Margaret Atwood calls "innocent anticipation."
18. Let other writers' success encourage you (rather than simply allowing it to make you jealous).
19. Finish while you're ahead--stop before you need to stop.
20. Get up and move when you get stuck in your writing. Come back later.
21. Don't let a work in progress get out of control. Tame it every day.
22. Again -- Just write. Write in the midst of chaos/sadness/happiness/whathaveyou.
23. Write as well as you can.
24. Keep writing even when you don't want to. Writing a couple hundred (or thousand) words can cure many ailments.
25. Pen. Paper. Computer. Blank .doc page. Whatever. Write.
26. We'll add this one: Drink coffee. It's sort of like lubrication for a writer's (potentially) rickety brain.
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posted by Sami Ewers | @samiewers | [email protected]
"How can I get more website visitors?" This is one of the most common questions I hear from clients, frustrated at the lack of business their website brings them... Often, there isn't much wrong with the site iteslf - it's professionally designed, and the portfolio is full of gorgeous work. But it just sits there, in an obscure corner of the Internet, being quietly ignored. Taking a website from zero to a few hundred or even a few thousand visitors a month is not easy, but it's eminently doable - as long as you recognize a harsh truth about the Internet: The online world is an attention economy. Attention is finite, and therefore scarce. So if you want people to pay attention to you, you need to earn it. You can't expect your work to speak for itself. Most of the time, it won't. You need to accept that marketing is part of your job, just as much as making. But the game changes when you start applying your creativity to your marketing - it becomes more fun as well as more effective. Here are four ways to use your creativity to attract the right kind of visitors to your website... http://bit.ly/pjQgWv
Are you trying to replace bad habits with good habits? In this article, Scott Young gives a few pointers on how to achieve that transformation. Check it!
(via 99%)
Cómo tener feliz a un creativo con su trabajo (y hacer que él te tenga feliz a tí)... Las empresas generalmente se enfocan más en las motivaciones extrínsecas. Pero la clave, según este artículo, parece encontrarse más en las intrínsecas... Why You Can't Buy Creativity From a conventional management perspective, it probably sounds like common sense. But to anyone who understands the nature of creativity and what motivates creative people, it's a recipe for disaster. Rewarding people for hard work is a great thing to do, but it's no guarantee of loyalty - and certainly no guarantee of creativity. And using rewards as an incentive - or even a threat - has been proven not to work when it comes to complex, challenging, creative work. There is a large body of research evidence - from the work of Harvard Business Professor Theresa Amabile and others - that relying on extrinsic motivations (a.k.a. rewards and punishments) has a negative impact on creativity. While it may seem obvious that the stick has a negative impact on creativity, it's counterintuitive that the carrot has the same effect. But when you're focused on a reward, you're not focused on the work itself. And as any creative will tell you, doing outstanding creative work - whether solving a technical problem or creating a work of art - requires 100% focus on the task in hand, to the point of obsession. You have to love what you do. Of course companies need to pay people well. If they don't, compensation becomes a bone of contention, and a distraction from their work. But if you really want outstanding creative performance, you need people to focus on intrinsic motivations - factors inherent in the work itself. Things like challenge, interest, learning, meaning, freedom, and creative flow. They are what really motivates creative people - and the research demonstrates a strong link between levels of intrinsic motivation and creativity... http://t.co/DVdGcZA