How Not To Lose Hope In Tough Times

Tough times happen to all of us. No matter how strong or powerful or confident we are, tough times will come: viciously forcing their might on us, causing us to crumble. As mighty as we can feel one day, we can feel just as lost and scared the next. I don’t say this to cause fear, I say it because it’s the truth. The hardest part of tough times is not to lose hope.

I’ve felt trapped under miles of rock, no light seeping through, and the rescue workers weren’t coming to save me. It’s a feeling mixed with loss, fear and deflated dreams.

The amazing thing about life – and I’m never going to understand how – is that as long as you’re breathing, you still have a chance. I don’t care whether you think it’s God, the Universe, or a couple of alien civilizations playing games with us, you always have a chance.

Telling you to be grateful is almost starting to sound cliché. Everybody says it, yet not a lot of people take the time to do it. It’s easy to get lost in cluttered thoughts filled with decrepit hope and feel sorry for ourselves, so I understand why we generally don’t make the effort to be grateful. But being grateful helps.

It pulls you back into the present moment, allowing you to put your troubles on the back burner, even if it’s for just a short time. It doesn’t matter how you choose to be grateful. You can write out ten things right now you’re grateful for. You can sing to the heavens all the beautiful aspects of your life. You can take a big, giant breath, hold it for ten seconds, give it a powerful exhale and yell, “YA! I’M GRATEFUL FOR THIS BREATH.”

I don’t care, just be grateful, period. If you’re struggling to come up with anything, remember you are, in fact, still alive. That won’t last forever, so take extreme advantage of it.

You’ve been through your fair share of tough times, am I right? I thought so.

What I find interesting is that you’re still here. You made it through your past tough times even when they probably felt a lot similar to the tough time you’re experiencing right now. Why should this tough time be any different?

Think back for a moment. What positively helped you through? Was it a book, friend, or a family member? Go back to what helped you through the last tough time. Was there something you did that helped? Revisit that.

Personally, James Taylor’s music has always helped me during my tough bouts. It calms me, puts me in a more hopeful mood. But I can get so lost in my struggles sometimes that I forget about Taylor’s music. It’s not until I’m proactive about my struggles that I tap into past sources of inspiration and guidance.

Be proactive and trust yourself, don’t let your tough times control your life.

During tough times you can’t give up, ever. Even during the toughest times you must keep your hopes alive by pushing through. Work on what needs to get done, try and build some momentum, and then build on it further.

That last thing you should be doing is quitting, which I slightly hesitate to say because there are some very good reasons to quit sometimes.

If you’re passionate about what you want to do, then don’t quit.

If you’re losing your life because of it, well, you don’t have to quit, but take a break from it and get your life back together.

One of my little secrets with my writing is that I write out of fear. I’m scared to death every time I type up an article or write a book. Am I going to make enough money to support myself, my wife, and my dog? Is anybody going to even read this? Is what I’m writing worthwhile, or is it hogwash? The list of insecure questions goes on and on.

The point I’m wanting to make is: Keep your head up, believe in yourself, and take life head on.

Your tough times won’t stand a chance.

Learn how others handle their tough times: The Top 10 Habits of Grateful People…Even In Tough Times

Featured photo credit: Rock climber at sunset. Kalymnos Island, Greece. via Shutterstock

Daniel CJ Grant is the author of The War On Self, freelance writer, and loves a good cigar every now and then. To find out more about Daniel and his work on depression, check out his blog at http://positivedepression.net. While you're at it, give Daniel a follow on twitter: https://twitter.com/danielcjgrant

View the original article here

7 Simple Ways to Work 10 Times Faster

If you’re having trouble staying on task and getting the most out of your day, there are actually several simple ways to maximize productivity so that you can go to sleep feeling accomplished and happy with your progress. They won’t require big life changes, only little tweaks, and you’ll be so happy with the results. Here they are:

Successful people swear by waking up early. At that point, the world is quiet. You haven’t been affected by the distractions of the day, and you get a moment to yourself. Use this time to be your most productive or create a plan for your day. If you’re not an early bird, try setting your alarm just 30 minutes earlier each day until you can comfortably wake up at dawn.

Making lists is a great way to feel productive. Keep the list small so that it does not look overwhelming. Make sure to cross things off as you go to keep your stamina up and your motivation strong. Be sure to keep the list in a place that you can reach it easily. There’s nothing worse for productivity than having multiple lists strewn all over the house. Just make one main list, and make sure that you keep it close by.

We can all be more productive if we have something that we’re looking forward to. If you have a goal to eat dinner with your friends at 6:00 p.m., you’ll be more likely to finish the tasks on that handy list that you made. You can even set bigger goals like paying off debt or reaching a specific number of people for your business. No matter how big or how small, you have to set them.

Being productive is so much easier when someone is keeping you accountable. It can be something as small as telling your mom that you want to work out every day or announcing it to the world on a blog post. Either way, telling someone else about your goals for the day will make you more likely to reach them.

It’s human nature to put off the most difficult task. This leads to more procrastination. However, if you start each day by completing the one thing you are dreading, all of your other tasks will seem small by comparison.

When you do have a great, productive day, don’t forget to treat yourself. When times are tough, you have to give yourself a little reward. Even something as small as getting an ice cream will make you feel great about all you have accomplished.

If you have set goals that you want to reach every day, make sure they are visible to you. You can do this by putting your goals on a big dry erase board or writing them on sticky notes that you put on your monitor. The point is that they are supposed to be in a place where you can look when you are feeling unproductive or weak. Those reminders of yours goals should be enough to push you forward to succeed.

Ultimately, there are many ways to become more productive. You can use an item on this list or a combination of them until you find what works best for you. We’re all motivated in different ways, and what’s most important is that you spend some time trying to find out what helps you to get your goals accomplished. Good luck, and if you have any other productivity tips, please leave them in the comment section below.

Here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

Featured photo credit: Sander van der Welvia Flickr

View the original article here

Tim Ferriss Interviews Neil Strauss, 7x New York Times Bestselling Author, on the Creative Process

Did you enjoy this sample of creativeLIVE content?

If so, sign up for the new Secrets from Silicon Valley series, a week of free classes taught by luminaries like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Check out a partial list of teachers here — you’ll recognize a lot of them.

Posted on June 14th, 2013

View the original article here

A How-To Guide: Accelerated Learning for Accelerated Times

The above video is a short presentation I gave at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.

It covers a basic framework for mastering any skill quickly, including languages, music, dance, and more.

What skill have you put off learning for longest… and why? Let me know in the comments. Perhaps I (or other readers) can help. Second, if you could learn one skill in the next six months, what would it be?

###

Important afterword:
NOTE — For my competition launched last week (not too late to join), roundtrip airfare is covered for all four winners.

Related content:
The 4-Hour Chef and Meta-Learning — 200+ pages on all I know about accelerated learning
Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes
How I Deconstruct Languages (scroll through the list)

Posted on May 20th, 2013

View the original article here

The New York Times wees itself in public

The New York Times has just pissed its neuroscientific pants in public and is now running round the streets announcing the fact in an op-ed that could as easily been titled ‘Smell my wee!’

The piece is written by Martin Lindström, famous for writing the ‘neuromarketing’ best-seller Buyology, but infamous for not making any of his data or studies public.

In fact, despite constantly mentioning the astounding conclusions from numerous brain imaging studies he was run, not one has appeared in the scientific literature.

But even without knowing about the reliability data or the quality of the analysis, it’s easy to see that he’s talking through his hat because the interpretations are so over-the-top that they are actually beyond what is possible with brain imaging science.

The piece is full of nonsense of various sorts.

I carried out an fMRI experiment to find out whether iPhones were really, truly addictive…

In each instance, the results showed activation in both the audio and visual cortices of the subjects’ brains. In other words, when they were exposed to the video, our subjects’ brains didn’t just see the vibrating iPhone, they “heard” it, too; and when they were exposed to the audio, they also “saw” it. This powerful cross-sensory phenomenon is known as synesthesia.

Actually, this is known as bullshit because synesthesia is where a conscious sensory experience in one sensory domain produces a conscious experience in another.

In other words, synesthesia is defined by the experiences that someone has, not where brain activity shows up.

The fact that brain activity occurs in an area previously linked to a different function does not mean it is being used for that function or that the person is having a related conscious experience.

If this is not entirely clear, think of it like this. Imagine, for the first time in your life, you just heard the sound of a guitar being played as part of a pop song. You’d be a bit daft if every time you heard guitar chords you told people that the music must be a pop song. After all, there’s a guitar in it, right?

Clearly, this is ridiculous because the guitar is an instrument that appears in lots of musical styles but Lindström is doing the neuroscience equivalent of over-interpreting guitar sounds throughout his terrible article.

He starts going on about how activation in the insula, detected in his privately conducted otherwise unknown study, means the person is experiencing love for their iPhone because insula activity has previously been linked to love.

The trouble is, as neuroimaging researcher Russ Poldrack just pointed out, it is one of the most common brain areas that turns up in fMRI studies and appears in about a third of imaging studies no matter what is being studied. In other words, it’s linked to just about every experience and behaviour you can think of.

In fact, it is probably most famous, not for its association with love, but for its association with digust, but Lindstrom apparently decided to avoid this particular interpretation.

This is just one example among many and if you want a breakdown of why the article really is full of crap, I recommend neuroscientist Tal Yarkoni’s point-by-point analysis and facepalm jamboree.

In fact, the op-ed has annoyed so many people there is now a letter to the editor signed by just about every big name in fMRI research on its way to the New York Times in an attempt to open the windows and get rid of that uncomfortable smell.

Link to NYT pissing itself in public.
Link to Tal Yarkoni’s excellent mopping up exercise.

View the original article here

Take Control of Meal Times With A Meal Planner

When you decide to eat a meal out, is it because you are consciously choosing to do so? Or is it because you haven’t the time or ingredients to prepare something at home? If you are like most people, it is probably the latter. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. With a bit of planning, less than 15 minutes a week, you can cut back on your grocery bills, eat healthier, and feel better. All it takes is a meal planner.

A meal planner is a just a collection of items that will allow you (or any other cooking person) to get a meal on the table with ingredients that are on hand. It will have the following items:

A menu plan. A menu plan is what you will eat for the meals in the coming week. It will list out all the dishes that will be prepared so you can check for nutritional balance, and also take into account family schedules.Recipes. The recipes portion of the planner has two purposes: it allows you to assemble the instructions for making a meal in one place, as well as provide a basis for the next portion of the planner.A shopping list. The shopping list is what allows you to have the ingredients on hand to make the meals you have planned. Nothing is worse than to start a recipe and find that you have forgotten to buy a key ingredient. By taking the ingredient list from the recipes, you can ensure you have everything on hand.Reminders. These instructions would allow you to remember to start dishes on time, or pull things from the freezer. If you are planning a slow cooker dinner that takes 8 hours, you need to be reminded to get it started, or dinner won’t be done on time.

I like to keep everything together in one spot. I have assembled a meal planner using basic office supplies which allows me to keep everything in one place (the front of the refrigerator).

I fastened a sheet protector to the front of a poly folder. The sheet protector holds the menu plan for two weeks. For each day on the planning sheet I have a spot for any activities that are going on that might affect dinner (early evening meetings, for example); a box for the food plan, including side dishes; and a box with reminders for the next day (such as defrosting meat, or assembling the slow cooker meal for the fridge).

Inside the folder I have sheet protectors into which I slip the recipes for each day. This makes it easy for me to find my recipes, or to hand everything over to my husband.

In the back pocket of the folder I keep the shopping list for the plan, and the shopping list for the next two week period. I add items as the week passes that will need to be purchased during the next shopping trip.

I clip the entire folder to the front of the fridge using a heavy-duty magnet.

The first step is to fill out my planning sheet. I list out the days as well as meal-affected events such as meetings, travel and birthdays (for which we eat out). Then I look through my recipes and pick things that fit the schedule and the season. During summer we do a lot of grilling and salads, but I save the labor-intensive food for the weekends.

At this point I have filled out the menu planner and have a pile of recipes. I record each recipe’s ingredients on a shopping list, then file it in the planner pocket for that day.

The shopping list is then double-checked against the planner board in our kitchen for things we are out of, and also compared to our pantry ingredients to see if there is anything we already have on hand.

With a menu planner, we are able to keep our food budget in a good place and only go out to eat when we wish to, rather than because we don’t have our acts together enough to cook. Do you have any tips for meal planning? Share below.

LJ Earnest is a computer programmer by day, productivity geek all the time. Using the principles of productivity and simplicity at SimpleProductivityBlog.com, she helps people get through the stuff they have to do so they can get to the stuff they want to do. She can also be found at Twitter and Facebook. Remember, a productive life doesn't have to be complicated.

View the original article here

Upgrade Your GTD Calendar and Keep Up with the Times

While I love Getting Things Done (GTD) as one of the best time management systems around, many of its user struggle to implement its recommendations.

The reason? GTD was developed in the 1990's at a time when email volumes were low, mobile email access was limited, there was no such thing as tweeting and 2 people weren’t forced to do the job of 8. It was invented for a simpler time, and taught users to create lists of tasks tagged by “contexts,” which were mostly determined by a combination of one’s physical location and proximity to required tools.

Things have certainly changed, and today, some of those who are inspired by GTD’s rules are taking a new approach in order to keep up with life in 2011.

In the first place, they are, according to Sven Fechner, abandoning the old notion that work is defined by location. Tags such as @Blackberry or @iPad obviously have little meaning due to the mobility of these devices, @Computer seems like a quaint reminder of the days when email was only received at your desk, and with the advent of cloud computing and mobile technology, @Home has become the functional equivalent of @Work.

Today, users of GTD have different problems: they are struggling (like everyone else) to keep up with the increasing amount of stuff they want to do in the limited time available. Luckily, there is a solution inherent in GTD’s principles, but it can only be understood by looking at the way strict GTD’ers manages their tasks.

At the start of any activity, a user of GTD contextual tagging follows this process:
1. Determine my current context e.g. @Computer
2. Scan the list of items that are tagged with that particular context
3. Decide which task to act on first
4. At the end of the task, go back to step 1

Frequently, a GTD user must also conduct a “Weekly Review” of all their tasks to make sure that they are appropriately tagged.

It’s a sequence that’s easy to understand and implement, and the key to making it work is to have every single task tagged with the right context. This approach has worked fine for many, but there are a growing number who are complaining about their inability and unwillingness to conduct an effective Weekly Review.

What’s happened is simple to explain. As the number of tasks, messages, communication channels and mobile devices has increased, the process of scanning every item on each list has become overwhelming. It is taking too long, they complain: a tedious chore that is not worth the effort.

Something else has also added to the feeling of being burdened.

All effective knowledge workers engage in some form of active time-planning at certain critical moments in the week: before starting work each morning, on Sunday nights before the week starts, just before they agree to accept a new assignment, and when a breakdown of some kind occurs. At these moments. they quickly scan their mental calendars, and start moving items around in their heads to ensure that they can complete the most important tasks before they are due.

This juggling act is especially essential for complex activities, such as paying one’s taxes by the April 15th deadline. Most people don’t think only about the big day itself, but also focus on carving out time to complete the preparatory work some weeks and even months ahead of the due date in order to prevent a last minute panic.

As you might imagine, the most organized professionals don’t do these tasks on their own. They use planning tools such as paper calendars, tablets, laptops, smartphones and web services to help them manipulate due dates, durations and deliverables in an explicit schedule, unknowingly adopting some of the established best practices in project management.

Curiously however, GTD famously discourages its users from transferring these mental schedules out of their minds. Its most rigorous users only use these planning tools to track appointments that cannot be moved, such as the non-negotiable April 15th due date. Any and all activities that can take place on flexible dates before then, do not belong in a calendar. They wouldn’t, for example, set time aside in their schedules to find bills, purchase software, consult past records and consult tax tables.

I’m not sure if this is what the author of GTD intended, but the effect on GTD users on a whole is that they walk around with almost-empty calendars, but very complex mental schedules. Once again, this wasn’t a problem when GTD was developed in the 1990's. However, in today’s workplace, trying to keep complex and ever-changing calendars in one’s mind has lead to feelings of overwhelm and burden as users are forced to build, remember and recall mental schedules that stretch over several months.

About 5 years ago, I also thought that my electronic calendar was the problem and tried following the GTD approach to task planning. When more of my commitments starting falling through the cracks, I didn’t understand why, but now I do — it’s too hard to keep a mental calendar in today’s world of ever-increasing tasks.

The answer, thankfully is not to abandon GTD, but instead to tweak it.

The purpose behind tagging tasks with a context is to provide a filter that gives the user a small, manageable range of tasks to choose from. Now that we have more demands on our time, we need different filters than the ones described in the book.

Today, the key resource constraint is time, and there are already some users who are using temporal tags to help them do this filtering. For example, imagine that you’re in the middle of a tense meeting at 9:30am and you receive a message from your Nanny: “Pick up the milk on the way home from work.”

What used to be “@GroceryStore — Pick Up Milk” now becomes “@Mon evening — Pick Up Milk” or even “@6pm — Pick up Milk.”

In this example, the biggest challenge for working professionals is not remembering what to do once they are at the grocery store. Instead, it lies in remembering to make the detour to the store at 6pm after a day of tough meetings Those who are most likely to “remember” don’t in fact use memory. They use tools like smartphone calendars to make sure they don’t have any conflicts, before placing the item in the 6pm time-slot along with a notifier such as a buzzer, beep or vibration.

While this solution seems simple enough, the fact is that electronic calendars weren’t built for this purpose, and need to be customized to meet each user’s needs. If you decide to do make this upgrade, it’s a good idea to keep experimenting to see if life does improve by asking the following:
Question 1 – Am I better off managing my activities in a tool rather than in my memory?
Question 2 – Am I using the tool in a way that is increasing the odds of picking up the milk?
Question 3 – Am I able to reduce the Weekly Review by scanning tasks scheduled for the near future?

These shouldn’t be abstract questions — they should be answered as you experiment with your upgrade to see whether or not further changes are needed, or even a rollback.

The fact is, there is no longer any one-size fits all, permanent solution to managing our commitments, and we need to keep tinkering to find new ways to get better. Upgrading our systems and the way we use GTD’s recommendations can be fun as we discover new ways to be productive, but we must be willing to change with the times.

I am a consultant who own a management consulting firm in Hollywood Florida. I recently moved to live in Jamaica, where I began to study time management techniques in earnest when I discovered that I needed a new, custom system to cope. I began to write about what I was learning, and I discovered Time Management 2.0 -- the creation of custom time management systems for every working professional.

View the original article here

Watch TEDTalks from some of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2011

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

How Many Times A Day Should You Check Your Email?

In my last post, I talked about six of the most common work habits that sabotage your productivity. The first offender on my list was how frequently you check your email. As I was writing my last article, I found that there was a ton of information on that topic, and it was really deserving of its own dedicated article.

When it comes to our work email, most of us see it as a ball and chain. We’ve constantly got to be checking it, or risk the wrath of the bosses and co-workers that are trying to communicate with us. If we don’t respond to an email within 5 minutes, we’re seen as lazy or unproductive.

But according to some experts, checking your email too frequently is actually a major factor that can contribute to diminished productivity. If you are one of those “every time my phone dings I must check my email immediately” sort of people, read on to discover why you may have become your own worst enemy.

How Often is Normal?

So just how often does the average person check their email in a given day? It’s hard to track down reliable statistics. According to one poll, about 40% of people surveyed that they thought they checked their email between 6 and 20 times per day. Of course, it’s hard to say how accurate a person is when gauging their own email habits.

Another survey says that 56.4% of people only check their email between 0-5 times per day. However, that study is from 2009, and arguably quite dated.

“Never Check Your Email in the Morning”

Oprah’s favorite organizational expert is a woman called Julie Morgenstern, author of “Never Check Email in the Morning.” Guess what she advises?

According to Morgenstern, checking your email first thing when you get into the office each morning is problematic because it can a false sense of accomplishment. You answer 40 emails, and you feel like you’ve done a lot of work, but in reality you probably still have piles of paperwork, meetings, and phone calls to make. Answering email is essential to doing your work, but it isn’t always something that is actively making money for you or your company.

Productivity expert Sid Savara also agrees with Morgenstern. “When it comes to email, ignorance is bliss.  That’s why if you’ve got something important you want to make progress on, I have these four words for you: Don’t check your email. As soon as you get up, work on something important for 30-45 minutes, and only then check it. If you can stand it, wait even longer.  Some days I don’t check email at all until after lunch…Any new information you get can cause you to get distracted. I can’t control everything, but I can control my own self made distractions.”

The 24-Hour Method

Other people argue that rather than check your emails starting later in the day, you should just check them once per day, in the morning. Among the members of this camp is productivity expert Elizabeth Grace Saunders. She generally clears out her inbox during the first 1-2 hours of her day, and formulates her game plan for the rest of the day after that. After that, she doesn’t generally look at her email again for the rest of the day, allowing her to focus completely on business development and client projects.

This is harder, of course, if you are at the bottom of the food chain at your company. But if you are in upper management or you are self-employed, setting this routine can be a great way to boost your productivity.

When in Doubt, Check the Chart

Scott Scheper checks his email twice a day, and has created a handy flow chart for helping you to blow through all the unread messages in your inbox.

Every time you open a new email, ask yourself 3 basic questions:
1. Is this relevant?
2. Can I solve this?
3. Will it take less than 2 minutes of my time to deal with this?

By following his handy flow chart, you’ll develop a new way to bust through your inbox more efficiently.

5 A Day

And just in case you hadn’t had enough conflicting expert opinions, here’s one more. Rod Kurtz of Business Week argues that you ought to be checking your work email five times per day.

“Check your inbox only five times daily–first thing in the morning, mid-morning, after lunch, mid-afternoon, and end of day. Or even less if you are capable. This works when you turn off the automatic send/receive function, allowing you up to two hours to focus on your work, rather than to be continually interrupted. It works when you group the sorting of your e-mail, making you more productive and efficient in dealing with it.”

Conclusion

There’s a difference between being busy and being productive. Make sure that you schedule your email time in such a way that you avoid confusing the two. If you approach your email with the correct attitude, you can boost your productivity by leaps and bounds.

In the words of Scott Scheper, “A day filled with shooting the breeze with employees, answering questions, staring at emails, checking social networks and chatting with colleagues won’t make you rich. It’ll make you busy.”

What’s your daily email routine? Do you plan to try any of these tips? Let us know in the comments below!

Tucker is a writer and social media professional living in New England. When she's not staring into a tiny electric box, she engages in pointless acts of stupidity at BadBoozeReview.com and posts daily at MargeryJones.com

View the original article here

Psychosis keeps up with the times

Delusions in conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have tracked social concerns over the 20th century, according to a wonderful study just published in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry.

Psychologists Brooke Cannon and Lorraine Kramer reviewed the patient records of a state psychiatric hospital in the US looking at each decade of the 20th Century in turn.

They recorded the content of the delusions for every patient with psychosis and while they didn’t find that the level of delusions changed, they did find that they tended to relate to the social concerns of the time.

…more patients after 1950 believe they are being spied upon is consistent with the development of related technology and the advent of the Cold War.

Delusional content tended to reflect the culture at the time, with focus on syphilis in the early 1900s, on Germans during World War II, on Communists during the Cold War, and on technology in recent years.

Indeed, delusions now are being reported relating to computers, the internet and computer games.

An earlier study that looked at hospital records from Slovenia found a similar pattern – with madness also reflecting developing social themes.

The researchers of this study noted that “After the spread of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s in Slovenia, there was an obvious increase in delusions of outside influence and control as well as delusions with technical themes.”

Link to PubMed entry for study on delusions in 20th Century US.
Link to PubMed entry for study on delusion in in 20th Century Slovenia.

View the original article here