To round out the top 100 (The big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online), I wanted to share some of my favorite articles on productivity. If ... you’re feeling super keen to kick your productivity up a gear, you might find even more inspiration here:
1. The 10 Laws of Productivity (http://goo.gl/uVU9l) - Written on The99Percent blog, one of my favorite productivity blogs, there are some very valuable lessons here on how to align your productivity with your day.
2. How to be Insanely Productive and Still Keep Smiling (http://goo.gl/8pkJP) - Written by the master of productivity, Leo Babauta of ZenHabits, this article touches on some great points. Productivity is not just about getting more done, it’s also about developing a happier self.
3. 7 Things Highly Productive People Do (http://goo.gl/X1SO9) - Based on the amazing book from Stephen Covey, here’s a post that sums up what highly productive people do when working online.
4. The Truth About Sleep & Productivity (http://goo.gl/x8dHO) - “Working overtime doesn’t increase your output. It makes you stupid”. It hit me out of the blue a few weeks ago – take care of your sleep, nothing is more important, and this post tells you why.
5. Why Boredom is Good for Your Creativity (http://goo.gl/1nluz) - Another insanely interesting post about where creativity comes from, namely from moments of boredom and honest curiosity. A great guide on how to get there.
6. Ask The Entrepreneurs: 16 Ways to Master Your Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur (http://goo.gl/Hyodg) - Entrepreneurs are known to be self-starters and need to find ways to stay motivated without a boss or someone telling them what to do. Here’s a great guide on how to get to that stage.
7. 10 Bad Habits You Need to Break to Be More Productive (http://goo.gl/vT4RC) - Craig Jarrow comes in with this all time hit on 10 habits you had better stop doing to increase your daily productivity. This post, as well as his blog in general, are an awesome resource for getting more done every day.
8. 10 Weekly Ten Minute Practices to Boost Work Productivity (http://goo.gl/j1t78) - This is a post I particularly enjoyed. It doesn’t take a huge change in life-style to become more productive. 10 minutes per week is all it takes and this post tells you how.
9. The Tao of Productivity (http://goo.gl/ujyCB) - Here’s another amazing post from Leo Babauta that had to be included here. I’ve always thought I knew what the term “productivity” means, this post definitely turned this upside down – a great read.
10. 5 Ways That Exercise Increases Your Productivity (http://goo.gl/5tU5F) - Here’s another fantastic post from Craig on how he uses exercise every day to increase productivity. The refreshing part about this post is his new perspective on “why”. We all know exercising is good, what is often hard is to make it a habit with a strong belief behind.
Sommes-nous convenablement outillés pour faire face du mieux possible aux aléas de la vie? Par toujours!
Voici les 10 aptitudes qui favorisent la prise de recul sur les événements etl’envie d’entreprendre, le tout avec un dynamisme serein propice à accomplir de grandes choses sans stress.
Ces 10 compétences qui vous permettront de vous sentir bien équipés, bien dans vos godasses, quoi que la vie vous réserve, au détour du chemin.Tous ces éléments interagissent et se nourrissent les uns les autres.
Dans le désordre:
1- Une estime de soi solide
2- Sortir de sa zone de confort
3- Renouer avec l’autodidacte qui sommeille en nous
La vie appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt et le bonheur à ceux qui sont du matin. Deux chercheuses, Renée Biss et Lynn Hasher, se sont intéressées à la question. LiveScience rapporte leur étude.
Autour de 60 ans, la plupart des gens sont du matin. Seuls 7% des jeunes aiment se lever tôt et la proportion est exactement contraire dans le groupe plus âgé: seuls 7% sont du soir.
«Nous avons constaté que les personnes plus âgées étaient davantage susceptibles de rapporter des émotions positives que les jeunes et que les personnes plus âgées étaient plus du matin que les jeunes. Le facteur “du matin” est associé à davantage de “bonheur” dans les deux groupes.»
Ceux qui sont du matin se sentent également en meilleure santé, sûrement parce qu'ils dorment mieux, selon les chercheurs. Cela leur permettrait de se sentir plus alerte et cela aurait également des effets positifs sur leur système immunitaire.
La trouvaille la plus intéressante, cependant, c'est que se réveiller de bonne heure et voir le soleil du matin n'est pas ce qui rend réellement les gens heureux. (…) Renée Biss (…) a déclaré que l'une des raisons pour lesquelles les gens qui sont du matin sont heureux, c'est parce qu'ils ne souffrent pas du décalage horaire social. “La société est bien plus organisée autour de l'emploi du temps d'une personne du matin”.»
Les chercheuses conseillent de changer ses habitudes de vie, et d'essayer de se coucher plus tôt, pour mieux se réveiller le matin, et aussi d'augmenter son exposition à la lumière naturelle.
All human societies are alive with the battle for influence. Every single day each of us is subject to innumerable persuasion attempts from corporations, interest groups, political parties and other organisations. Each trying to persuade us that their product, idea or innovation is what we should buy, believe in or vote for.
In our personal lives the same struggle is played out for the supremacy of viewpoints, ideals and actions. Whether it's friends and family, work colleagues, potential employers or strangers, each of us has to work out how to bring others around to our own point of view. We all play the influence game, to greater or lesser degrees.
Psychologists have been studying how we try to influence each other for many years. I've been covering some highlights of this research, which are collected below.
Some of the more transferable tips include:
+ If you’re trying to convince someone to do something, presenting a balanced argument will help.
+Repetition does too … so long as it’s in the background and reasonably believable.
+ Men generally respond better to email messages than face-to-face; women are the opposite (thanks to gender conditioning).
You can change your body language but as all new habits it takes a while. Especially things like keeping you head up might take time to correct if you have spent thousands of days looking at your feet. And if you try and change to many things at once it might become confusing and feel overwhelming.
Take a couple of these body language bits to work on every day for three to four weeks. By then they should have developed into new habits and something you’ll do without even thinking about it. If not, keep on until it sticks. Then take another couple of things you’d like to change and work on them.
Dans son article, The 10 key skills for the future of work, Jessica Stillman essaie de lister ce qui, selon elle, constituera les principales compétences dont les agents devront faire preuve à l'avenir.
+ La compréhension (Sense-making).
La capacité de comprendre et appréhender la signification profonde et l'importance de ce qui est exprimé.
+ L'intelligence sociale (Social intelligence).
la possibilité de se connecter à d'autres d'une manière profonde et directe, de ressentir et de stimuler réactions et interactions.
+ Une pensée flexible et créative (Novel and adaptive thinking).
La compétence de penser et de proposer des solutions et des réponses au-delà de ce qui est appris par cœur ou uniquement sorti de règlements.
La capacité d'opérer dans différents contextes culturels
+ La pensée informatique (Computational thinking).
La capacité de traduire de grandes quantités de données en concepts abstraits et de comprendre des raisonnements fondés sur des données.
+ Une nouvelle culture médiatique (New-media literacy).
La capacité à comprendre, évaluer de façon critique, développer un contenu avec ces nouvelles formes de médias et de tirer parti de ces médias pour communiquer.
+ L'interdisciplinarité (Transdisciplinarity).
La capacité à comprendre et utiliser des concepts à travers plusieurs disciplines.
+ La souplesse d'esprit (Design mind-set).
La capacité à se représenter et développer les tâches et les processus de travail pour les résultats souhaités.
+ La gestion de la charge cognitive (Cognitive load management).
La capacité à discriminer et filtrer les informations importante et celle de savoir de maximiser le fonctionnement cognitif en utilisant des outils et des techniques variés.
+ La collaboration virtuelle (Virtual collaboration). La capacité à travailler de façon productive, de se montrer impliqué et présent en tant que membre d'une équipe virtuelle.
Every day, we make conscious and less conscious choices on time allocation. Some uses of our time are routine — dropping off kids, eating meals, or going for a daily run. In between those routines, we look to our agendas to see what we are meant to be doing, whom to meet, when and where to go next.
Most of us will spend more than one-third of our lives and more than half of our waking adult hours in our workplaces. A natural concern, and one worthy of a New Year's reflection and resolution, is how can we be better, more honest and more efficient with that time. Here are five gut-check questions to see if you are making the greatest impact with your work time:
1. Are you working towards a purpose?
2. Are you running hard, but not getting ahead?
3. Have you done a calendar audit lately?
4. Are you booking sufficient think time?
5. Are you multi-tasking your way to lower productivity?
These simple strategies will keep you energized through the holidays and well into the new year. Here are 14 quick strategies to get and keep yourself motivated:
1. Condition your mind. Train yourself to think positive thoughts while avoiding negative thoughts.
2. Condition your body. It takes physical energy to take action. Get your food and exercise budget in place and follow it like a business plan.
3. Avoid negative people. They drain your energy and waste your time, so hanging with them is like shooting yourself in the foot.
4. Seek out the similarly motivated. Their positive energy will rub off on you and you can imitate their success strategies.
5. Have goals–but remain flexible. No plan should be cast in concrete, lest it become more important than achieving the goal.
6. Act with a higher purpose. Any activity or action that doesn’t serve your higher goal is wasted effort--and should be avoided.
7. Take responsibility for your own results. If you blame (or credit) luck, fate or divine intervention, you’ll always have an excuse.
8. Stretch past your limits on a daily basis. Walking the old, familiar paths is how you grow old. Stretching makes you grow and evolve.
9. Don't wait for perfection; do it now! Perfectionists are the losers in the game of life. Strive for excellence rather than the unachievable.
10. Celebrate your failures. Your most important lessons in life will come from what you don't achieve. Take time to understand where you fell short.
11. Don’t take success too seriously. Success can breed tomorrow's failure if you use it as an excuse to become complacent.
12. Avoid weak goals. Goals are the soul of achievement, so never begin them with "I'll try ..." Always start with "I will" or "I must."
13. Treat inaction as the only real failure. If you don’t take action, you fail by default and can't even learn from the experience.
14. Think before you speak. Keep silent rather than express something that doesn’t serve your purpose.
The above is based on a conversation with Omar Periu, one of the world’s best (and best known) motivational speakers.
Money can’t buy you happiness, right? Wrong. Kinda.Wealthier people are indeed happier—but only to a point. All that extra cash buys just a small amount of joy. We quickly get used to having money, it turns out, and we almost immediately start comparing our fancy new toys with our neighbors’.
Psychologists have a found a way to make money-fueled happiness last, however: Buy experiences, not material goods. We adapt to things we do slower than just plain things. We’re also less likely to make social comparisons about trips and meals than cars and gadgets. As a result, experiential purchasers report being more satisfied with their lives, less anxious, less depressed, and in better mental and physical health.
Melissa Kirk, writing for Psychology Today, suggests that the pursuit of happiness might be missing the point entirely. Here's why.
When we pursue happiness and achieve it for a period of time, there's a tendency to look at its departure as some sort of failure. But inevitably happiness will always disappear, whether it's for a day or or a month or even longer.
This is because happiness doesn't equal success, just as sadness doesn't equal failure. Kirk argues that there's a general rhythm to life and, without seeing times of struggle as important we're neglecting what we can learn from them.
Rather than seeing the "bad" times as something wrong, look at them as an opportunity to grow. Make them easier to deal with, as they'll be inevitable no matter what you do. Enjoy your happiness, but avoid making it a goal.
Quieting the self-obsessing chatter in our heads may be what happiness is all about.
But for millennia before we turned to government-approved drugs, humans devised clever ways of coping: Taking a walk, eating psychedelic mushrooms, breathing deeply, snorting things, praying, running, smoking, and meditating are just some of the inventive ways humans have found to deal with the unhappy rovings of their minds.
We've decided to succinctly break down the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" from his (Stephen Covey) all-time best-selling book, which sold 20 million copies
1) Be Proactive
As human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. We have the independent will to make our own choices and decisions, and the responsibility ("the ability to respond") to make the right choices. You have the freedom to choose your own fate and path, so having the independent will, imagination and self-awareness to make the right move makes you a proactive, and not a reactive, person.
2) Begin With The End In Mind
Mental visualization is extremely important. Covey says that all things are created twice: first, the mental conceptualization and visualization and a second physical, actual creation. Becoming your own creator means to plan and visualize what you're going to do and what you're setting out to accomplish and then go out and creating it. Identifying your personal statement and your principles will help.
3) Put First Things First
With your power of independent will, you can create the ending you want to have. Part of that comes with effective time management, which is divided into what is urgent and what is not urgent. If you deal with crises, pressing problems and deadline-driven projects first, your life will be a lot easier.
4) Think Win/Win
If you believe in a better way to accomplish goals that's mutually beneficial to all sides, that's a win/win situation. "All parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan," Covey wrote. "One person's success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others." If you have integrity and maturity, there's no reason win/win situations can't happen all the time.
5) Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
If you're a good listener and you take the time to understand a concept, it will help you convey your opinions, plans and goals to others. It starts with communication and strong listening skills, followed by diagnosing the situation and then communicating your solution to others.
6) Synergize
Synergistic communication, according to Covey, is "opening your mind and heart to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options." This applies to the classroom, the business world and wherever you could apply openness and communication. It's all about building cooperation and trust.
7) Sharpen The Saw
Sometimes you're working so hard on the other six habits that you forget about re-energizing and renewing yourself to sharpen yourself for the tasks in front of you. Some sharpening techniques include exercise and nutrition, reading, planning and writing, service and empathy and commitment, study and meditation.
At some level, we all know that the way we spend our time reveals our priorities, much more than merely what we say or think.
Maybe it’s true that we don’t always have the luxury of writing frequent, long personal emails, but we can all make a more conscious effort to show people that they matter and that they’re special.
I’ve come up with a list of 50 simple ways to make someone feel special. (To avoid writing “he or she” repeatedly, I’ll assume that the person is female.)
Here they are:
1. Make a note of the important events in her life and ask her how the events went.
2. Give her a specific and genuine compliment.
3. Praise her in front of other people.
4. In a group setting, ask her to tell her favorite story.
5. If she’s telling a story to a group and she gets cut off for some reason, be the first person to ask her to continue telling it.
6. Ignore her tiredness. Nobody wants to be told that they have dark rings under their eyes or that they look like they just woke up.
7. After meeting someone new, follow up the next day with an email or handwritten note.
8. When you first call her on the phone, ask if it’s a good time for her to talk.
9. If, while talking on the phone, you hear something going on in the background, ask her if she needs to attend to it.
10. Don’t multi-task while you’re on the phone. She’ll be able to tell.
Même si notre travail nous plaît, on pourrait améliorer des petites choses pour être parfaitement épanouie. Maud Simon, psychologue du travail* nous donne quelques pistes.
Conseil numéro 1 : On redonne du sens à son travail
Conseil numéro 2 : On recentre son boulot autour de ses talents
Conseil numéro 3 : On brise la routine
Conseil numéro 4 : On embellit son environnement de travail
Conseil numéro 5 : On améliore ses relations avec ses collègues
A big part of my day-to-day life is defining and accomplishing microgoals. Microgoals are things that I can achieve in one week or less if I am diligent about it, and they’re quite useful in many aspects of life, including personal finance.
Let me give you a pair of examples. Right now, I have two ongoing microgoals:
The first one is to finish reading and write reviews for five books. These are personal finance and personal productivity/development books for The Simple Dollar. For me, book reviews are the most time-intense posts I do on here and I’m making a special effort right now to get several weeks ahead on them so that I can focus on moving later in the summer and then facing the birth of my daughter in the early fall.
The second one is to define a very precise number that we can afford to spend on the house. This way, I know very well what we can realistically look at for home purchases. This will involve several sub-tasks: some serious evaluation of our financial situation, a phone call to our banker, and so on.
Both of these are larger tasks than I could accomplish in a sitting or in a day, but they’re not so large that I can’t easily wrap my hands around the task and finish it in a week.
The first and most obvious question is how can I use this idea to improve my financial bottom line? There are many personal finance tasks that can be done in a short timeframe, but are very difficult to complete in one sitting. Here’s a list of potential microgoals that can improve your financial bottom line:
+ Improve the energy efficiency of your home Install CFL or LED light bulbs, install programmable thermostats, clean out your air vents, and make sure your residence is air sealed.
+ Organize your financial documents Here’s a paper filing system and also an electronic filing system.
+ Set a frugality goal Pledge to not eat out for a week, or not visit any grocery or department stores for a week. Make it something challenging.
Obviously, microgoals such as these can be utilized in every aspect of life because they’re very effective at keeping you on a task that needs to be done and producing a great sense of accomplishment when you finish.
Always late? Here's how to beat the clock and never be tardy again.
Nobody likes to be late. It's stressful and can trash your rep as a responsible, competent leader or employee. But for some of us, tardiness is a tough habit to break. I spoke to Julie Morgenstern, author of Time Management from the Inside Out about how to make being prompt your new way of life.
Figure out which of these 6 tips works for you -- and you may never be late again.
More and more people are going back to school to take courses to get further qualifications these days.
These like-minded people want to improve themselves for better futures. These mature students, along with current students in college or university, may find it a real challenge to keep up with all the studying required to do well in their courses. Indeed, this is very much related to productivity issues of getting enough done.
When I started in university many years ago, it was a bit of a culture shock. One of the most extreme differences on campus compared to high school was that the professors didn’t really seem to care whether I showed up for classes or not. In some classes, many students were even falling asleep.
This study strategy is ideal especially for courses that involve final exams that cover all material that was introduced during a semester or entire year.
Here is what this strategy involves :
+ For each of your courses, schedule a regular study session each week.
+ Stick to this study session schedule faithfully like a job.
+ During each study session, review everything that you have covered in your course so far from day one to present.
+ Continue reviewing all content each week even if you don’t have an upcoming test or exam.
Although there will be more material to cover each week for each course as you move along the semester, covering earlier material will become faster as you become more familiar with them each week. You might not have to increase that much time to each study session as the year goes by.
Le lâcher prise permet de vivre dans le Ici et le Maintenant et faire le point.
En période de résolution annuelle, le lâcher prise ne se réduit pas à l’absence d’activité ou à la recherche de zénitude; c’est un rendez-vous avec soi qui peut être facteur d’innovation et d’inspiration. Du lâcher prise en période de stress ou d’échec (cf La loi de Murphy , quand les événements négatifs s’enchaînent) au lâcher prise lorsque tout va vite … trop vite….pour capitaliser, analyser, reprendre du souffle, le point de bascule c’est la souffrance intérieure. Notre corps parle et parfois nous lâche avant que notre conscience parle.
HK et PPC ont réalisé une vidéo en 7 minutes. Si vous avez l’impression que votre présent vous échappe, vous trouverez certainement des clefs de réflexion utiles en écoutant La vidéo du succès sur le « Lâcher prise ».
There is a way to be lucky. It involves a positive attitude, hard work, observation, preparedness, action and a willingness to see every setback as a learning opportunity and a step towards success.
Let me give you a piece of advice - be lucky. Sometimes you have good luck and sometimes you have bad luck. But do you have a choice? Can you make your own luck?
Dr. Richard Wiseman has studied why some people are lucky and others are not. He advises that there are four main traits that lucky people have that help them to be 'lucky'.
1. They create, notice, and act upon chance opportunities that come up.
2. They make good decisions using their intuition as well as their logic.
3. They have positive expectations about the future.
4. They don't let bad luck get them down; they find a way to turn it into good fortune.
There are more details in his book, The Luck Factor.
By changing your attitudes, behaviours and actions you can change your luck. If you see obstacles as opportunities rather than difficulties then you can turn them to your advantage. If you notice unusual things and think laterally you can see novel openings. This is particularly true in the contexts of creativity and innovation.
European cities dominate worldwide Quality of Living ranking, with cities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada also ranked highly. Singapore is the first Asian city in the Top 25, at 25.
+ Vienna is No. 1 in the Quality of Living ranking.
+ Luxembourg tops our Personal Safety ranking, with Bern and Helsinki following.
+ Baghdad has the lowest quality of living among the 221 cities we ranked and is also last in the Personal Safety ranking.
Mercer’s criteria for Quality of Living are objective, neutral and unbiased. Our objective system measures the quality of living for expatriates based on 39 criteria grouped into 10 key categories. We weigh each category to reflect its importance for overall quality of living. We assess the degree to which expatriates enjoy the standard of living in each host location, factoring in the interaction of political, socio-economic and environmental factors in the host location.
Les seniors qui se disent heureux ont un risque de mourir dans les 5 prochaines années 35% plus bas que leurs pairs mécontents. C'est ce que démontre une étude britannique publiée lundi dans la version internet de la revue Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
«J'ai été un peu surpris de voir que les effets du bonheur étaient si forts, même parmi les personnes atteintes de maladies chroniques», a confié le chercheur Andrew Steptoe à MSNBC
Extreme exercise programs like P90X, CrossFit, and Insanity will without a doubt kick you into the best shape of your life in a very short amount of time—but only if you stick with their crazy-for-most routines. The majority of people (trainers I've spoken with say something like 9 out of 10) give up on these workouts because they're really intense and require an hour almost every day to do them.
We've created a workout that borrows a few of the best ideas from these popular, though extreme, fitness programs, but tailored the workout to be easier for the average person to stick with, and we've plugged it into Fleetly, a group exercising webapp and iPhone app, so we can all work towards a shared goal of getting fit. It's equipment-free, it's something anyone can incorporate in their day regardless of their current fitness level, but it's still about incorporating fitness in your life. This is The Lifehacker Workout.
Given the choice, most people would take a high-paying job with longer work hours over a good-paying job with reasonable demands on their time, a new study shows.
The findings suggest happiness may not be a person's main goal in life. "You might think of happiness as the ultimate goal that people pursue, but actually, people think of goals like health, family happiness, social status and sense of purpose as sometimes competing with happiness," Rees-Jones said.
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