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Why neuroplasticity may be the secret ingredient to business success.
Via donhornsby
The 12 life skills I strongly feel are most important some of which schools touch on but don’t emphasize nor go into enough detail about. Too much graphing parabolas, memorizing the quadratic formula, and learning to diagram sentences and not enough real world material to use and apply. With that being said, here are the top 12 life skills I wish I learned more about in school:
Via Jim Lerman
There are three skills you need to be financially successful: making money, keeping money, growing money. James Altucher is mostly only good at making money. "I’ve had several instances where I’ve started a business, sold it, made a lot of money, and then basically lost everything I made, whether it was $50 million or $5 million or whatever," he tells Fast Company. "I always have a tendency to lose everything I made." There are some simple rules, like drink coffee first thing in the morning and 20 minutes before you write so that it "sets your brain on fire, makes you go to the bathroom, cleans your body out before you set your heart on fire." Then, there’s his 30% rule, which basically says that everyone should cut or rewrite at least 30% of their masterpiece after they think they’ve finished it.
Via The Learning Factor
While the components of a great job support, challenge, autonomy are hard to quantify, everyone understands free snacks in the pantry. So perks become proxies for other upsides. They also tap into the psychology of gifts. While it seems crazy that doctors would be influenced to write prescriptions by free pens, they were (before an industry code ended the practice). Likewise, freebies at work are loved beyond their actual dollar value. They invite reciprocity. Or, to put a more positive spin on it, “Maybe it’s just recognition,” says Danielle Saladino-Evans, who works in corporate communications at Fingerpaint, a marketing and communications firm, and is part of the committee that decides her company’s perks. “You’re working hard today. Go have something on us.”
Via The Learning Factor
It always seems the job you would love never comes with the pay you want. Money is unfortunately a necessity that we all need in order to survive, and its significance causes us to make decisions and create goals that are derived from the idea of attaining wealth. It is often our primary motivator in life. However, if we look back at the most successful people in the world, their motivation and drive had less to do with money than one may think. And this surprisingly enough is often what enabled them to succeed.
Via The Learning Factor
Many people hate change; contemplating the unknown is scary. So many stick with familiar things even though they no longer fit. This is especially true of careers. Sometimes people get stuck in a career direction or work environment that makes them terribly unhappy, and they stay there because it's tough to change careers once you have gained experience, power, and good compensation. People often end up in the wrong careers by accident. They start out with a job and become proficient, so they advance and make a good living. They may even start a company in that field. They get so focused on growth, meeting objectives, or making the money to support their lifestyle, they don't realize how toxic their life has become.
Via The Learning Factor
We focus on completing the task at hand, fighting for the next promotion, outperforming a colleague. But there are many seemingly minor actions that can have a major impact on your career’s trajectory. Ignore them and you risk arriving on a shore you didn’t choose, or worse, capsizing on an unexpected reef! Here are 5 career mistakes that can negatively impact your career down the road: 1. Network only within your company. Most people are aware of the value of networking.
Via The Learning Factor
We're all living longer than ever - but will a poor lifestyle send some of us to an early grave?
Worldwide, a girl born in 2012 can expect to live to 73 and a boy can expect to live to 68, according to a recent World Health Organisation report on life expectancy.
In the UK, life expectancy for a boy born in 2012 is 79 and for a girl it is 83, meanwhile in the U.S. it is 76 and 81 respectively.
But are your habits and lifestyle knocking years off your life?
In a bid to raise awareness about the risk factors for a premature death, Canadian medical experts from various organisations - including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - compiled this life expectancy calculator.
Via The Learning Factor
You can’t figure out the future. Even young people who have a plan (be a doctor, lawyer, research scientist, singer) don’t really know what will happen. If they have any certainty at all, they’re a bit deluded. Life doesn’t go according to plan, and while a few people might do exactly what they set out to do, you never know if you’re one of those. Other things come along to change you, to change your opportunities, to change the world. The jobs of working at Google, Amazon or Twitter, for example, didn’t exist when I was a teenager. Neither did this job.
Via The Learning Factor
Forming a personal mission statement means identifying your purpose. While this may sound like too profound a question on par with the meaning of life Rimm says asking “what am I here to do?” isn’t as challenging as it seems. Here, she walks us through what it takes to make a personal mission statement Fantasize about your perfect day or week What do you need to have in a day to make it joyful? For Rimm, a joyful life meant connecting with people on a daily basis and doing something that made a valuable contribution to someone else’s life. Make a list of all the things you need in your day to make it joyful. Perhaps it’s as simple as spending time outdoors every day or seeing your kids off to school. “It’s not picturing yourself on a beach with a pina colada, but what you need to make your life meaningful to you,” says Rimm.
Via The Learning Factor
‘Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.’ – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework In March of 2011, I was in the depths of burnout. I had been working 80+ hour weeks at least twice a month since the previous fall. We had an ongoing project that grew beyond all reckoning, swallowed the majority of our billable time, and crippled our ability to pursue new work. I developed vision trouble. Distant objects refused to snap into focus and reading became difficult. Stress-induced bald spots cropped up in my beard. My relentless schedule created tension on the home front. Something had to give. I bought a better monitor. I delegated more (I hired Jason around this time – poor guy didn’t know what he was in for). I made a half-hearted attempt at afternoon power naps. My eyesight improved, but the stress and exhaustion persisted. These efforts were really just Band-Aids on a gaping wound. As soon as time opened up and things slowed down, the hours were magically filled with other things. My motivation for working long hours wasn’t creative exuberance. I was driven by a superhero complex – a burden of responsibility that we shouldn’t have shouldered. I had said yes so often that I’d developed a warped sense of what I was truly responsible for. I was driven by fear of failure and an addiction to work. Let’s say you work in a high-level management position for a monthly or weekly publication. You’ve been with the company for years and have lived through several waves of growing pains. Over time, you said yes to more and more responsibilities, even if it seemed many of them weren’t sustainable. You became responsible for the output of one or two additional departments. You add more content, more platforms, more offices. Granted, in the world of time-sensitive content and late-breaking news, the occasional frenetic day is unavoidable. But for years, this has been your norm. And when you finally break down and scale back, a host of new tasks floods in the gap. Family ties weaken and friendships fall by the wayside. The weight of the world is on your shoulders, and if you don’t stand under it the entire operation might collapse. You’re in crisis mode even on a good day. Does this situation sound familiar? When a friend asks how you’re doing, is your default answer some version of “busy”? Do you feel a touch of pride when “complaining” about the busyness of your schedule to a friend? Do you dream about an easier life, but feel victimized by a slave-driving boss or company culture? (Here’s a hint: You’re not a victim. You’ve merely said yes to the wrong things). In the U.S., we’re trained to think that successful people are busy. If our schedules aren’t chock-full, we’re unimportant. We run around like chickens with their heads cut off, as my great-grandmother used to say. People who take long vacations or even long lunch breaks are viewed as lazy or untrustworthy. We’ve all heard about the inevitable burnout that occurs when people work too much. But we quickly forget these cautionary tales and rationalize our habits, because we’re afraid of what our lives will look like if we slow down and pay attention. Deep down, many of us wonder if we’re wasting our time on things of little consequence. So we keep skittering along the surface at a feverish pace, avoiding the mirror of introspection. ‘Our frantic days are really just a hedge against emptiness.’
– Tim Kreider, NYTimes.com At Metagramme, the problem wasn’t cruel or unreasonable clients. They were actually kind and generous, for the most part. I had no one to blame but myself. It was time to man up in a major way. One of the glaring issues I faced was a total lack of boundaries. No phone call was too late to answer, no email too early. My lack of boundaries came from fear. Fear of what would happen if I said no more often. Fear of missing deadlines or disappointing customers. I was also afraid of allowing quiet reflection and creative diversions into the work day. I was punching the clock like any hourly employee. The story I told myself was that slowness and emptiness were the same thing. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ve found recently that when the time is used well, slowness can actually be one of the most profound sources of abundance. When fear rules our lives, even the most amazing calling in life can be downgraded to a career. On the trajectory of fear, careers wane through the grey purgatory of jobs, and jobs break down in quivering heaps at the fiery gates of slavery. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to settle for anything less than a life’s calling. And I’m sick and tired of seeing beloved clients, colleagues, and friends settle for less.
Via Mark Strozier
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Ridiculously productive people don't succeed by accident.
Friedman profiles luminaries including Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, and Sheryl Sandberg in his book and shows how they gradually became leaders. He shows the skills they exercised and how they integrate different parts of their life together. Friedman says he chose subjects who possess what he calls the three principles of total leadership: "Being real, acting with authenticity and knowing your values and vision; being whole, respecting the whole person and knowing there are different parts of your work, community, and personal lives that affect each other; and being innovative, constantly learning and experimenting in new ways to get things done."
Via The Learning Factor
We’ve all been there, even if you don’t want to admit it. It’s life. And take it from someone who usually has great composure in a professional setting. You can try as hard as you want, bottle it all in, throw on some peppy tunes, but sometimes you just can’t help losing it a bit at work. I started my first real job in February, and up until about three weeks ago, I was the epitome of professional. I showed up on time, wore appropriate clothing, engaged in meetings, spoke up when necessary, you get the picture. But then Monday rolled around, and I felt like my life (outside of work) had fallen apart. I was knee deep in friend drama, utterly confused about the dating scene in NYC (it’s rough), and I just found out that I was, yet again, roommateless and apartmentless for my impending move in September.
Via The Learning Factor
Whether we like it or not, conflict is a constant in life. From big-picture decisions about the future to where to eat lunch, every day we have myriad differences of opinion with others. Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas. Here are five steps to stop avoiding conflict and start managing it.
Via The Learning Factor
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Barack ObamaCourage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear not absense of fear. Mark TwainYour life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. Jim RohnI've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. Maya AngelouThe only reason we don't have what we want in life is the reasons we create why we can't have them. Tony Robbins
Via The Learning Factor
A simple view of negotiation presents a cold transaction between what one person has and what the other person is willing to pay for it. If the price is right, the deal gets done. As anyone who has recently bought a car or sold a house knows, however, negotiations are rarely so dispassionate. As soon as the checkbook comes out a flood of emotions comes out with it—fear, anxiety, competiveness, anger, annoyance—all of which can influence what either side is willing to accept.
Via The Learning Factor
What an extremely tough thing to figure out: what to do with your future! Now, I can't really know exactly what this young woman should do, but I can share what I've learned looking back on my life, and what I would tell my kids (the oldest is 21 and still figuring things out, but I also have 17- and 16-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl). Here's what I'd say.
Via The Learning Factor
Is fear holding you back from trying something new or going after what you really want? Here are some ways to get past it. I hate fear. Fear has cost me a hefty sum in dental bills from grinding my teeth. Fear interferes with sleep, digestion, and many other things that make life worth living. When you examine some of the worst things human beings have done, you'll often find fear as the root cause. There's no doubt about it: Fear sucks. Here's what's worked best for me over the years. (And if you've found something else that works, I'd love to hear it!) 1. Ask yourself: Should I take action to solve this fear?
Via The Learning Factor
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