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Personal Development Through Technology And Psychology
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8 Guidelines To Get The Most Out Of Life
When it comes down to it, we all want to get the most out of life. After all, if nothing else, we are here now and we should make the most of our time here.
Sometimes we can get all wrapped up and tangled in “being productive” and “getting things done” that it just gets too overwhelming and we risk a burn out.
What does it mean to get the most out of life? Everyone should, and does, have their own personal answer to this question, but we can generalize a few things to common domain.
For me, “getting the most out of life” means maintaining ambition and always reaching for the next goal, while preserving a feeling of content with my life at any given moment.
At first this seems impossible. How can you really want to grow and better yourself if you are completly content with the way things are? Here’s what I have come up with:
- Enjoy the Little Things – The inspiration for this post came from Leo Babauta’s post at ZenHabits, entitled The Simple Life. It lists just a few of the “little things” that really define what life is all about: Really take the time out to walk around outside after a morning rain-storm; Turn off the news, cell phones, and computers, and watch the sunset with your favorite beverage. Just slow down and take in everything. It will not be there forever.
- Make Goals In Many Categories – There are many benefits of goal setting and various ways to organize your goals, but an often overlooked aspect is to vary your goal setting across different categories. You may always be aware of your goals at work or for your next project, but be sure to think about what it is you want to accomplish in other aspects of your life. Do you want to learn to play an instrument? Become a better cook? A better husband? Modularize and write down these goals just the same as you would goals for the office or work. Be aware of all your potential.
- Be Yourself – It is emotionally and physically draining to try to be something you are not. Being honest with yourself and act as though you are comfortable in your own skin and with current mindset will make you truly feel comfortable in your own skin and with your current mindset. Do not be afraid that some people won’t like the real you. Treat others with respect and respect will be returned.
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How to Make A Great First Impression
Face it. The next time you walk into a room with new people, assumptions about you will be made.
Within the first few seconds of meeting a new person, he or she will form an opinion about you based on your appearance, mannerisms, and body language.
These opinions are often difficult to overcome or undo, making these first encounters extremely significant.
Luckily, there are some things you can do to ensure that these assumptions and opinions are positive. Here are 10:
- Be Punctual - Not much is more detrimental to one’s opinion of you than tardiness. A person you are meeting for the very first time will not care to listen to your excuses, despite how “real” or “good” they are. Plan for delays in traffic or other impeding events and remember that arriving early is much better than arriving late.
- Neat and Tidy - You won’t make it far without the ability to present yourself in an organized manner. Take care to make sure you look your best. Make sure your hair is cut and your fingernails are trimmed. Is your attire appropriate for the occasion? Is it a business meeting? A casual setting? Be sure to iron and remove any stains from your clothes. This is perhaps the most important tip. Failing to present yourself in an orderly way can cost you greatly.
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10 Tips to Boost Your Body Language Skills
We’ve all heard of the many benefits of controlling your body language. It’s been flaunted as one of the many ways to move up through your company, get that girl or guy you’ve been eyeing from across the room, and just increase your overall mood.
What body language really comes down to though, is communication. Sure there are many other benefits of understanding and controlling your body language, but at their hearts, the benefits come from good communication.
This can be attributed to Albert Mehrabian’s 7%-38%-55% Rule of communication. In this rule, words account for 7%, tone of voice counts for 38%, and body language accounts for 55%. 55%! That means that more than half of communication is done through body language!
Here are my favorite tips to enhance the control of your body language and be a better communicator:
- Eye Contact - To write about all the subtleties and benefits of good eye contact would be enough for its own post entirely. For now, keep in mind the basics: maintain eye contact, but do not stare. This may seem difficult or peculiar at first, but after a few days of consistency, you’ll realize your eyes are one of the best ways to convey emotion, feeling, and to communicate effectively.
- Arms - Arms are clues to how receptive a person currently is to interaction. Let your arms rest at your sides or move them behind you. Try to refrain from crossing your arm as this is usually perceived as a defensive sign. However, arms work both ways. If you are talking with someone who just said the wrong thing, don’t hesitate to cross your arms and let them know.
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10 Surefire Ways to Get Out of A Slump
Everything is going great. You’re driving down the highway we call life and your projects are moving along swimmingly, your goals are approaching faster and faster as you press down on the accelerator.
Suddenly, the engine stutters, there seems to be a loss of power. You glance down at the dashboard and see that the fuel gauge is pointing to E. You’ve run out of gas.
Sound familiar? If so, then this post is for you.
We’ve all been hit by the sporadic slump. When it feels like your drive for success has faltered. You just don’t want to do anything. We don’t know why or when exactly it happened, but it did happen and now we are stuck in it. Here are 10 ways to avoid falling into a slump and how to recover when you’ve run out of gas.
- Focus – Many slips into a slump are the result of being overwhelmed with just too many things going on at the same time. This feeling can be canceled out with a string of small achievements. Just make a list of the things you need to get done, prioritize the list, and then focus on completing one thing at a time. Crossing off items from a to-do list is a great way to get motivated again. Once again, I highly recommend the Three Lists of Three method as it allows for deeper focus on a specific task without the risk of an overflowing list.
- Exercise – I’ve written about the productivity increasing benefits of exercise before in 5 Lifestyle Changes To Make You Feel Great and Be More Productive and 11 Solid Ways to Enhance Your Memory. Here is another opportunity. Whenever I fall out of my exercise routine, I see myself fall out of other routines in my life as well. Exercise is a great way to uplift your mood. Exercise has a positive effect on four of the main chemicals of the brain the effect mood: Serotonin, Epinephrine, Dopamine, and Endorphin. So get up, go for a walk or run. Lift some weights. Go bowling. You’ll get a mood-boost and feel much better. This is one of the best ways to break out of a slump and you won’t regret it. (more…)
7 Concrete Ways To Combat Negativity
Everyone has a few people in their life that just refuse to appreciate the success of others. Despite any achievement you may complete, goal you may reach, or any pride you may feel, these cynics act the wet-blanket and find a way to rain on your parade.
These people come in many denominations. They can be younger or older, richer or poorer, close friends and relatives or mere acquaintances, but they are always there.
In general, odds are they are pessimistic towards your success because they are jealous or even fearful of it. However, knowing this is often not enough to deal with their negativity.
Here are 7 ways to manage such negativity, keep your aspirations high, and stay on track to a happy, successful life.
- Keep Aspirations Personal and Private - Most naysayers will not appreciate or commend something in its baby stages. Try keeping silent about your goals until you have achieved something significant. Once you have something concrete to show, they’ll be hard pressed to find something entirely negative to say about it.
- Positive Passivity - An ideal way to silence a potential naysayer is to merely shrug it off. Be positively passive. If someone is trying to shoot you down, you have no obligation to listen to them. Be aware of the potential for an explosive conversation and how to handle one. (more…)
How To Successfully Handle An Explosive Conversation
Have you ever been the victim of a bout of anger and rage in a social situation?
Maybe you’ve found yourself at an office lunch with that one person that knows exactly how to get to you, how to make subtle little comments that get your blood boiling.
You try to sit back and tell yourself to calm down, but you are upset, angry, and full of rage. You decide to let this fella have it and open your mouth to spew a stream of swearing.
But your emotions are clouded by anger and rage and you end up making a huge fool of yourself over something unimportant. This is what I like to call an explosive conversation. Explosive conversations are usually one-sided, blood-pressure-increasing, illogical conversations that have no goal or purpose.
Here’s how you can control the situation. In order to avoid situations like these and explosive conversations, we must first understand why and how they happen.
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11 Solid Ways To Enhance Your Memory
A popular analogy for a computer’s memory management systems is the human mind.In this analogy, the hard drive of a computer is equivalent to a mind’s Long Term Memory. The RAM of a computer corresponds to one’s Short Term Memory.
However, one main divergence arises: in a computer, one can easily upgrade memory by purchasing a bigger hard drive disc or plugging in an upgraded RAM chipset. One cannot do this for the human brain.
Luckily, there are methods for expanding the human memory capacity. Here are 11:
- Multiple Exposure - A common example for this tip is the average college student. For most college courses, a direct positive correlation exists between attendance and good grades. This is the result of extra exposure. Even if a student does not take notes during the class, her brain is still processing the information. Later when said student studies for an exam or does her homework, her brain will recall some of the information from the class and studying will be easier and more of a refresher. This is why most courses and education establishments employ the 3-exposure technique known as lecture, homework, and exams.
- Pay More Attention to More Difficult Information - This may seem obvious but it is often overlooked. In reality, when we are taking in information for an extended period of time, we tend to lose focus after some time or fall into an expectation of the quality of information. When the quality changes, we may continue taking it in as our expectations propose. Think of it again, as a college student. To take notes on every word a professor utters would be difficult and counter productive. To be as efficient as possible, we must be aware of information quality changes and act accordingly.
- Learn What Kind of Learner You Are - We all learn differently. Some of us learn best through visual cues, some through auditory cues, and others through pure hands-on experience. Most of us are a mixture of all three, but specialize in one. Use this test to determine what kind of learner you are and from now on, try to use it to your advantage. (more…)
5 Lifestyle Changes To Make You Feel Great and Be More Productive
The last month has been one of the most productive of my life.
PersonaDev.com is growing comfortably. My work seems easier. I am getting up early and attacking assignments and tasks with enthusiasm rather than regret.
I am getting in better shape. I am eating right and I am exercising daily.
In general, I am getting things done and my short-term goals are being met earlier than I am setting new ones.
I sat down the other day and asked myself “Why has your last month been so productive?”
I came up with 5 activities and concepts that stimulated my month:
- Sleeping Better – I despise waking up late. When I wake up late, I feel like I’ve wasted so much time and it puts a damper on the rest of the day. This month, I’ve been rising early. First, figure out when you are most productive. Are you an early bird? A night owl? Now try to wake up 5 minutes early each day or stay up 5 minutes later every night until you are awake for the majority of your “most-productive” time.
- Eating Better – Eating right can be an amazing energy boost. Cut out fried foods as much as possible. Stick to chicken and salads whenever you can. Make sure you get the right intake of protein for your weight and activity level. Eat breakfast! Just a few minor changes in eating habits can improve your vigor significantly.
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8 Firm Ways to Communicate Effectively
Good communication skills are perhaps the most invaluable skill one can have.
No matter how much you know or how good you are at a specific task, without the ability to express yourself clearly and efficiently, you’ll never progress as far in life as you could have if you had this ability.
Luckily, great communicators are made, not born. The 8 tips below along with some practice will put you on a streamlined path to communication excellence.
(1) Understand Your Message - If you don’t understand what you are trying to say, how can you expect to others to understand? Try summarizing in one or two sentences what is the main idea of what you want to say. I find this works best by writing your intended message down.
(2) Remove Ambiguity - Look for any ambiguous words in your message and replace them with something more certain. There are two types of ambiguity for which to look.
- Definition Ambiguity - In the English language, most words have more than one meaning. For example, saying “I need a couple reports by this afternoon,” could mean a few reports or exactly two reports. In this case, it would be best to replace the word “couple” with an exact number or range of numbers.
- Sentence Ambiguity - Also known as Garden Path Sentences, it is possible for a sentence to have an unclear meaning. An example is “I know a man with a dog who has fleas.” Does this mean the dog has fleas or the man has fleas? Consider revising this sentence to something like “I know a man with a flea-infested dog.” The meaning is much clearer in the latter sentence.
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10 Websites To Make You Better, Faster, Stronger…
Well… intellectually stronger.
A few days ago, a buddy of mine asked me something like “Tim, what websites do you visit a lot?”
I answered with a few of the more popular one off the top of my head, but there were many more I forgot to mention.
In honor of this question, here is a quick list of my top ten most frequented websites.
These websites will help you increase your productivity, save time, and just make you smarter overall.
They are in no particular order, so don’t let placement have any affect on your trial.
- RescueTime – This website provides you with a lightweight app that records and graphs how you spend your time on your computer. Taking small “quicky” breaks can often turn into a 20 minute excursion to read an article on SlashDot or check out the latest on Digg. RescueTime will allow you to see exactly how you spent your time and will even send a weekly report to your email.
- Skype – Skype isn’t really a website, but I decided to include it anyway. Instead of using a landline of cellular phone to reach people you talk with often, use Skype. For a small fee, you can call anyone in the world from your computer.
- DumbLittleMan – A great source of 15-20 weekly articles with emphasis on how to get the most from your life. Examples include 20 Things I’m Glad Life Taught Me and 9 Ways to Have A Better Day Than Yesterday.
- Zen Habits – ZenHabits is about “achieving goals … and successfully implementing good habits.” Some examples of the type of content you’ll find there is: 12 Pratical Steps for Going With the Flow and Top 20 Motivation Hacks.
- LifeHacker – A very frequently updated blog with tips on increasing your productivity. A few examples: Improve Your Vision at the Computer and How to Avoid Impulse Shopping.
- Google Reader – If you do not yet use a feed reader, start. Instead of individually visiting all your normal blogs, just subscribe to their feeds. This’ll put all the articles you like into one neat little location for quick and easy reading.
- StevePavlina – One of the forerunning personal development blogs on the internet today. Steve talks about ways to master your time management, nurture motivation to reach your goals, and how to develop balance within your life. Steve has written articles like 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and 30 days to Success.
- HowStuffWorks – HowStuffWorks houses tons and tons of articles about how pretty much anything you can imagine works. Ever wonder how exactly an automatic transmission works? How about how exactly a digital camera works? If so, this site is for you.
- 43folders – 43folders provides many methods to “improve efficiency and get things off your mind” as well as “ideas about modest ways to improve your life and reduce stress.”
- LifeHack – A life hack is “any hacks, tips and tricks that get things done quickly by automating, increase productivity and organizing.” Some of my favorite articles are 10 Tricks to Get Your Writing Started and 5 Ways to Deal With Irresponsible People.
Well, there you have it. Try visiting a few of these websites daily or a few times a week and let me know if you’ve learned anything!
Photo by striatic
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