PERSONAL HABITS SPECIAL..... 20 Unproductive Habits You Should Let Go of

20 Unproductive Habits You Should Let Go of

Do you feel like everyone around you is getting stuff done, and you’re, well, not? It’s likely you’ve got one (or several) unproductive habits that aren’t helping matters. Below is a round-up of 20 common unproductive habits you should let go of, stat.

1. Allowing distractions.

Distractions are something we all face–but there’s no law saying you have to cater to them. Just because someone calls, texts, or knocks on your door doesn’t mean you have to drop what you’re doing right that second. You can get back to them during your next break.

2. Not setting goals.

Until you turn what you want into concrete goals to achieve, it’s likely they’ll remain a vague generalization you’ll sigh about from time to time.

3. Setting too many goals.

On the flip side, you don’t want to set so many goals you’re unable to focus a solid amount of time on them–this sorta defeats the purpose. Quality over quantity always wins out.

4. Procrastinating.

The more you put something off, the less you’re going to feel like doing it. Trust me: the relief you feel once it’s done is well worth the temporary torture.

5. Watching too much television.

If you feel more connected to the characters on your shows than your real friends, it might be time to switch things up a bit.

6. Skipping meals.

There were days I’d get so into what I was writing, I’d forget to eat! (Gasp! I know, right?) Without proper nutrition you send your adrenal glands into overdrive, which depletes your energy and eventually leads to burn-out.

7. Spending recklessly.

When your finances are in disarray, you don’t stand a chance. Keeping your finances organized should be as much a priority as your health.

8. Dropping everything for other people.

You are in complete control of your life. Respect your time–it’s your most valuable commodity.

9. Not writing anything down.

Writing things down helps you remember what you need (and want) to accomplish. Plus, it’s the best way to keep your mind clear to focus on what you’re doing in the moment.

10. Not having structure.

You don’t need to set a rigid schedule for yourself, Sergeant Crazy! Creating a general morning and evening routine will give you creative pillars to depend on so you can take more risks throughout the day.

11. Not taking breaks.

Your mind and body need a chance to rest, no matter how brief. When you start feeling restless, take a small breather to regroup instead of burning out entirely.

12. Multitasking.

Again and again, studies show dividing your focus leads to lower quality work, and not to mention, loads of mental stress. Single-tasking not only gives your noggin a rest, it also gives you a greater sense of accomplishment.

13. Making time for personal tasks.

What’s the point of working hard if you’re not reaping the rewards in your personal life? During busier times, at least make sure the bare minimum is taken care of–bill paying, dish cleaning, laundry doing–so your home doesn’t represent your stress level.

14. Over-committing.

Ambition or excitement can too easily get the best of you, causing you to say, “Yes!” to every idea thrown at you. Instead, say “I’ll get back to you.” This will give you time to look over your obligations to see if you really do have the time.

15. Trying to be perfect.

Ah, the dreaded unicorn: perfection. We know it doesn’t exist, yet we still agonize over every little detail, wasting time that should be spent on more important tasks. We should really just stop it.

16. Avoiding decisions.

Tough decisions are,you know, tough. But if you don’t make them, someone or something will make the decision for you.

17. Consuming unnecessary information.

I find mental clutter to be more overwhelming than physical clutter. Learn the power of one: one email address, one checking account, one savings account. Cut back on the mailing lists you subscribe to so you can focus on what’s really important.

18. Neglecting your health.

Your ambition’s useless when you’re exhausted. Eat healthy foods, exercise regularly, and most importantly, do everything you can to create a consistent sleep pattern.

19. Starting something and not finishing it.

Break every project you’re working on into such small pieces you’re not intimidated by the process of finishing the task. The last 10 percent of the task will always take 90 percent of your energy, so make it count!

20. Failing to admit your mistakes.

Denying your mistakes or blaming others for your problems will do nothing to improve your life or help you reach your goals. Acknowledge your mistakes so that you can learn from them and move on.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/20-unproductive-habits-you-should-let.html

BOOK SPECIAL..... Overall Favorite Books of 2016 (7)

Overall Favorite Books of 2016

7.      HOLD STILL

“Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original… it is a continuing act of creation,” pioneering researcher Rosalind Cartwright wrote in distilling the science of the unconscious mind.

Although I lack early childhood memories, I do have one rather eidetic recollection: I remember standing before the barren elephant yard at the Sofia Zoo in Bulgaria, at age three or so, clad in a cotton polka-dot jumper. I remember squinting into a scowl as the malnourished elephant behind me swirls dirt into the air in front of her communism-stamped concrete edifice. I don’t remember the temperature, though I deduce from the memory of my outfit that it must have been summer. I don’t remember the smell of the elephant or the touch of the blown dirt on my skin, though I remember my grimace.

For most of my life, I held onto that memory as the sole surviving mnemonic fragment of my early childhood self. And then, one day in my late twenties, I discovered an old photo album tucked into the back of my grandmother’s cabinet in Bulgaria. It contained dozens of photographs of me, from birth until around age four, including one depicting that very vignette — down to the minutest detail of what I believed was my memory of that moment. There I was, scowling in my polka-dot jumper with the elephant and the cloud of dust behind me. In an instant, I realized that I had been holding onto a prosthetic memory — what I remembered was the photograph from that day, which I must have been shown at some point, and not the day itself, of which I have no other recollection. The question — and what a Borgesian question — remains whether one should prefer having such a prosthetic memory, constructed entirely of photographs stitched together into artificial cohesion, to having no memory at all.

That confounding parallax of personal history is what photographer Sally Mann explores throughout Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs— a lyrical yet unsentimental meditation on art, mortality, and the lacuna between memory and myth, undergirded by what Mann calls her “long preoccupation with the treachery of memory” and “memory’s truth, which is to scientific, objective truth as a pearl is to a piece of sand.”

In a sentiment that calls to mind Oliver Sacks’s exquisite elucidation of how memory works, Mann writes:

Whatever of my memories hadn’t crumbled into dust must surely by now have been altered by the passage of time. I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us farther away.

I had learned over time to meekly accept whatever betrayals memory pulled over on me, allowing my mind to polish its own beautiful lie. In distorting the information it’s supposed to be keeping safe, the brain, to its credit, will often bow to some instinctive aesthetic wisdom, imparting to our life’s events a coherence, logic, and symbolic elegance that’s not present or not so obvious in the improbable, disheveled sloppiness of what we’ve actually been through.

Nearly half a century after Italo Calvino observed that “the life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself,” Mann traces this cultural pathology — now a full epidemic with the rise of the photo-driven social web — to the dawn of the medium itself. Reflecting on the discovery of a box of old photographs in her own family’s attic, she echoes Teju Cole’s assertion that “photography is at the nerve center of our paradoxical memorial impulses” and writes:

As far back as 1901 Émile Zola telegraphed the threat of this relatively new medium, remarking that you cannot claim to have really seen something until you have photographed it. What Zola perhaps also knew or intuited was that once photographed, whatever you had “really seen” would never be seen by the eye of memory again. It would forever be cut from the continuum of being, a mere sliver, a slight, translucent paring from the fat life of time; elegiac, one-dimensional, immediately assuming the amber quality of nostalgia: an instantaneous memento mori. Photography would seem to preserve our past and make it invulnerable to the distortions of repeated memorial superimpositions, but I think that is a fallacy: photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories. As I held my childhood pictures in my hands, in the tenderness of my “remembering,” I also knew that with each photograph I was forgetting.

BRAIN PICKINGS

PRODUCTIVITY SPECIAL...... 33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

Breaking the deadlock of indecision and taking action, any action for that matter, as long as it won’t lead you to another deadlock, is OK. Besides, when talking about improving productivity, you will surely boost yours once you imbibe all the rules presented in this article. As we all know, boosting productivity is one aspect of life we can’t overdo.

That’s why the suggestion — keep on improving yourself because this will help you become more productive, is one of the best precepts of work.

Now, regarding the rules, one rule which helps me all the time is…Nuke it! The most efficient and effective way to get over a task is to delete it.  If it is not needed, take it off your list. Simple.

Another one of my favorites is — Relaxify.  This means minimizing stress by decluttering your workspace. This is one of the most basic rules; however, once you can master it, you will get ahead in your work. A clutter-free work station helps you to intensify your focus which ultimately improves your productivity.

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems.  When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point.

Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there’s no trail to follow.  An example of a heuristic would be:  Head directly towards the peak until you reach an obstacle you can’t cross.  Whenever you reach such an obstacle, follow it around to the right until you’re able to head towards the peak once again.  This isn’t the most intelligent or comprehensive heuristic, but in many cases it will work just fine, and you’ll eventually reach the peak.

Heuristics don’t guarantee you’ll find the optimal solution, nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all.  But they do a good enough job of solving certain types of problems to be useful.  Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you into action. As you take action you begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the problem.

As you gain knowledge about the problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving your chances of finding a solution.  If you try to solve a problem you don’t initially know how to solve, you’ll often figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you started moving.  This is especially true with creative work such as software development.  Often you don’t even know exactly what you’re trying to build until you start building it.

Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my favorite areas of application is personal productivity.  Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Nuke it!  The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it.  If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list.

2. Daily goals.  Without a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions.  Set targets for each day in advance.  Decide what you’ll do; then do it.

3. Worst first.  To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day.  This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.

4. Peak times.  Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times.  Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.

5. No-comm zones.  Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate.  Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods.

6. Mini-milestones.  When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working.  For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000 words.  Hit your target no matter what.

7. Timeboxing.  Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task.  Don’t worry about how far you get.  Just put in the time.

8. Batching.  Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session.

9. Early bird.  Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task.  You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.

10.             Cone of silence.  Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard.  Leave your comm gadgets behind.

11.             Tempo.  Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual.  Speak faster.  Walk faster.  Type faster.  Read faster.  Go home sooner.

12.             Relaxify.  Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace.

13.             Agendas.  Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance.  This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency.  You can use it for phone calls too.

14.             Pareto.  The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort.  Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%.

15.             Ready-fire-aim.  Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn’t perfectly planned.  You can always adjust course along the way.

16.             Minuteman.  Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision.  Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice.  Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.

17.             Deadline.  Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.

18.             Promise.  Tell others of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable.

19.             Punctuality.  Whatever it takes, show up on time.  Arrive early.

20.             Gap reading.  Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing.  If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor).  That’s 365 articles a year.

21.             Resonance.  Visualize your goal as already accomplished.  Put yourself into a state of actually being there.  Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality.

22.             Glittering prizes.  Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement.  See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park.

23.             Quad 2.  Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent.  Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner.

24.             Continuum.  At the end of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance.  The next day begin working on that task immediately.

25.             Slice and dice.  Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks.  Focus on completing just one of those tasks.

26.             Single-handling.  Once you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete.  Don’t switch tasks in the middle.  When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.

27.             Randomize.  Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it.  Pay one random bill.  Make one phone call.  Write page 42 of your book.

28.             Insanely bad.  Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone.  Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy.  With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.

29.             30 days.  Identify a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days.  A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one.

30.             Delegate.  Convince someone else to do it for you.

31.             Cross-pollination.  Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group.  You’ll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.

32.             Intuition.  Go with your gut instinct.  It’s probably right.

33.             Optimization.  Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step.  Refactor them on paper for greater efficiency.  Then implement and test your improved processes.  Sometimes we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/33-rules-boost-your-productivity.html?ref=mail&mtype=daily_newsletter&mid=20170120_customized_editor_pick&uid=687414&hash=707e797f7e757e6d794c856d747b7b3a6f7b79&action=click

HEALTH DRINK SPECIAL............. How Tea Can Help With Everything Unusual cures for everyday issues

How Tea Can Help With Everything

Unusual cures for everyday issues

MOST OF us sip our cuppas to relax, to take a break. And that’s great for mental health. But tea in various forms can cure other problems too. Here’s how...

Sleeplessness:

Chamomile tea reduces anxiety to secure peaceful sleep, and has been associated with a lower risk of depression. Studies have shown that for every three cups of chamomile tea per day, the relative risk of depression is decreased by 37 per cent.

Chamomile relaxes blood vessels and soothes muscle fibres, thus helping induce sleep. It also reduces the levels of stress hormone, ACTH, in the brain.

Make it: Pour a cup of boiling water over two to three heaping teaspoons of dried organic chamomile leaves. Allow it to steep for 10 to 15 minutes. Drink it warm at bedtime.

Fatigue:

Exhausted? Drink black tea made with fermented leaves. It has moderate amounts of caffeine (approximately 50mg) that can prevent tiredness. Two cups of black tea a day also helps maintain the stress hormone cortisol, which can make you age faster, at its proper level. If you’re a workout fanatic, drink a cup of black tea 30 minutes before you hit the gym to boost your endurance.

Cough and cold:

Made with steamed tea leaves, green tea has a high concentration of EGCG, a polyphenol that helps fight cold. It is rich in catechins, which help build immunity. A study comparing the immune activity of coffee drinkers to that of tea drinkers found it to be up to five times higher in those that chose tea. Green tea with lemon helps clear the chest and reduces pollen allergies. It also fights the ill-effects of inhaling smoke. Add a teaspoon of honey to your green tea to double its power.

Make it: Steep one teaspoon of green tea in a cup of hot water for two-three minutes. Strain and add lemon/honey. Drink it twice a day.

Indigestion:

Overeating, excessive alcohol, stress and being glued to a desk 12 hours a day creates a weak digestive system. A cup of carom seeds (ajwain) and ginger tea, without milk, sipped 30 minutes after meals, cuts down bloating, acid reflux and heartburn.

Make it: Peel the skin off a one-inch piece of ginger, add it to boiling water with one teaspoon of carom seeds. Boil for three to five minutes, strain and drink hot.

Pain:

When it comes to painkillers, most people rely on anti-inflammatory drugs that have adverse side effects, especially with long-term use. However, a natural home remedy is turmeric tea, which is a potent painkiller. Turmeric contains the chemical curcumin that can decrease pain and inflammation. It’s a one-stop solution for muscular pain, stomach pain, joint pain and even headaches.

Make it: Add half an inch of fresh turmeric root to a cup of boiling milk and let it boil for two to three minutes. Drink hot once a day.

Brittle bones:

White tea, uncured and unfermented, is rich in phytochemicals that helps lower inflammation by fighting free radicals. It can stimulate bone formation and strengthening. Studies have shown that regular tea drinkers have stronger bones than nontea drinkers, even when other variables (such as milk) were adjusted for. It has the potential to help prevent and treat osteoporosis and other bone diseases. Make it: In one cup hot water, steep the white tea over five to seven minutes.

Cavities:

Due to presence of the antioxidant catechin, regular intake of green tea can fight cavities and help promote healthy teeth and gums. It can suppress the growth and acid production of cavity-causing bacteria in dental plaque. Tea also contains fluoride and tannins, both of which help reduce plaque buildup and tooth decay. Combined with a good dental hygiene regimen, this could keep your teeth healthier for longer.

Do it: Rinse your mouth with green tea five times for 30 seconds each at three-minute intervals.

CAUTION:

Pre-packaged sweetened tea is loaded with empty calories, sugar and preservatives, which can offset any health benefits.

·         By Lovneet Batra The author is a well-known nutritionist and TV personality

HTBR22JAN17

BOOK SUMMARY 311 The Dan Sullivan Question

BOOK SUMMARY 311 The Dan Sullivan Question

·         Summary written by: Adil Zuberi

"Answers are a dime a dozen. What's rare in this world is a really great question. What's yours?"

- The Dan Sullivan Question, page 9

You can transform anyone’s future in just one question.

Dan Sullivan is the author of more than 30 publications. He is the founder of Strategic Coach Inc. and the creator of Strategic Coach Program. I was introduced to The Dan Sullivan Question a couple of months ago by one of my teachers, Bill Baren. Ever since it has become part of my consulting practices, with surprising results.

Today, everyone is facing the huge challenge of adjusting to a continuously increasing complexity in all areas of life, thanks to short attention span, advertisements everywhere, and constant hunger to receive notifications. There are always more things to think about. This causes three problems. Please are experiencing greater confusion, isolation, and feelings of powerlessness, as things around them are forever changing.

How do you sell your high-value product or service to people who have a greater number of choices than ever before? Especially if you are someone who provides a high-value offering in a face-to-face setting? The key is to ask just one important question.

The Golden Egg

The ONE question

"If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to have happened in your life, both personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress?"- The Dan Sullivan Question, page 11

In the world of continually increasing complexity and everyone fighting to take a piece of attention of people, how do you differentiate yourself (in a client presentation or meeting) from anyone else?

The answer is, with a question.

Ask the question quoted above, and don’t say anything until the person answers. Become comfortable with an uncomfortable silence after this question if need be.

Give people as much time as they need to answer this question. Don’t be surprised if they take an hour or two to answer this.

This question enables people to simplify their personal and professional complexities by providing a framework that:

·         Replaces confusion with clarity when they answer “what has to have happened for them to be happy with their progress”.

·         Converts isolation into confidence when they realize that they can clarify their own future.

·         Feelings of powerlessness transform into feelings of being capable as a result of their new clarity and confidence.

Gem #1

The Power of Pre-positioning

"Specifically, what dangers do you have now that need to be eliminated, what opportunities need to be captured, and what strengths need to be maximized?"- The Dan Sullivan Question, page 30

This is an add-on question to the question above. Though it is secondary, it is also tremendously powerful. It boosts the emotional impact of the first question. It also allows for reflection and a focus on simplicity in a complex world.

This question makes it easy for people to articulate what is most important to them by making them think inside a particular structure which uses their most powerful motivating emotions.

Even the most rational people start their thinking from these powerful emotions

·         Fear of losing something

·         The excitement of gaining new things

·         Confidence from capabilities and resources we already possess.

These emotions motivate most of our thinking and achievement. They form the basis for how we act.

People feel deprived of their emotional freedom with confusion, isolation, and powerlessness in the continuously growing complexity around them. This question suddenly gives them the sense of their emotional freedom.

Just asking this question puts you in the right position in your subject’s mind as somebody who care about them and someone who can help them.

When people are confused by complexity, fear is a great paralyzer. But when they become clear, fear becomes a great motivator.

You can also use the power of “three” to prioritize the answer. Steve Jobs was famous for using the rule of three in the development of iPod. Everything people want should be accessible within three clicks. “Three” is simple, easy to remember and easy to recall.

When taking notes for the question you asked, note down the top three dangers (or challenges), top three biggest possibilities of gaining something new, and top three existing resources and capabilities that need to be maximized.

This will give you a list of 9 possible opportunities of engagement. Becoming clear to this level of detail gives a great feeling to anyone who is having this conversation with you.

This is the greatest service you can provide during your prospecting meeting. If you can solve one or more of the above 9 challenges, you’ve got a sales conversation, without being overtly salesy.

Gem #2

Demonstrate Power

"I don't even know you. Why would I ever tell you anything about my future?"- The Dan Sullivan Question, page 19

What people do in their business or life is a direct reflection of what is going on inside their mind, both consciously and subconsciously.

If you face resistance such as the above quote, act the role of someone in charge. Close your books, thank for their time and walk away politely. And don’t look back.

What if you are in a team setting and are presenting to a group of people and you see the resistance?

This immediately shows that the group members are not aligned in their commitment and agendas. Don’t get yourself strangled in working with groups that go round in circles.

In other words, tell them that you wanted to see if you could be useful to the prospect in his/her future. Since the prospect doesn’t want to tell you anything, there is nothing you could do for him/her. It’s not a good fit.

And then walk away and give no second chance.

People are used to vendors begging to buy their products or services. Vendors are willing to sell even if there is no fit. With you, if they are not a good fit, they can’t get your services no matter how much money they put on the table.

That makes you valuable and rare. That feeds your inner power hungry beast too. That gives you tremendous confidence and people can sense this in your very next consultation.

The Dan Sullivan Question is a quick read (88 pages in total) but highly actionable. Rather than focusing on a lot of abstract ideas, this book focuses on the ONE question and on the way this question transforms lives.

I have been using this question in my own business with great results. I have noticed that almost every hyper-successful service I sign up for, is using a variation of this question.

This book is for anyone who sells anything through consultation or presentation. The application of the ONE question is especially crucial for high-value offers.

I am not exaggerating by saying that the outcome of including this ONE question in your practice is more quality sales. This question clearly helps your prospect see how their life will be with your help.

Helping people gain a sense of clarity, confidence, and capability that was missing before is a great service. This clearly is valuable for your clients.

You did it by making them more clear, confident and capable.

A great quality service is useless if it doesn’t fit the bigger picture. Most people are confused about their bigger picture. A ‘good enough’ quality offering is great if it fits the strategy well.

Test the results of this question on your next 10 engagements with your potential clients and see the difference. Give it a fair try before judging whether it’s working for you or not.