Better's Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Learn how to broach sensitive topics without stepping on a landmine.

We’ve all been there: You’re trying to have a rational conversation about something important, and all of a sudden things turn sour. You see your conversation partner turn red in the face and you feel like you just can’t get a word in. You, too, are getting flush with anger, and are eventually yelling so loud you can’t even hear your phone ring. How is it that two otherwise rational, agreeable people can enter a shouting match even when they both have the same goals?

25 May, 2020 05:40 Share

In these blinks, you’ll learn: how to have a productive talk with your teenage daughter without getting a door slammed in your face, how to deliver criticism without hurting people’s feelings, why people might not speak up when a surgeon is about to amputate the wrong foot, why one entrepreneur’s dream of a steam-powered car might have ended up boiling people alive and how to finally talk to your partner about problems that have been bothering you for years.

25 May, 2020 05:41 Share

Crucial conversations provoke an over-emotional and irrational response.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with your partner and realized that what you were actually having was an argument? Probably! These are often crucial conversations, characterized by high tension and high emotions, and an inability to effectively manage them can lead us into trouble. For one thing, it’s difficult to think rationally when confronted with such a conversation. Part of this has to do with the rush of adrenaline released when emotions run high in order to heighten our senses. The body can’t tell the difference between a heated discussion and true danger, so it prepares itself for a sudden fight or flight. This split-second decision making, however, comes at the expense of clear and rational thinking.

25 May, 2020 05:41 Share

There are many reasons to want to master crucial conversations, as those who do can better succeed in their private and public lives. For example, according to surveys of more than 20,000 people in various companies, those who mastered crucial conversations are better able to tackle challenges and thus often become the opinion leaders in their organizations. In addition, couples who can handle such conversations are more likely to stay together. In fact, they can reduce their chances of a breakup by up to 50 percent!

25 May, 2020 05:43 Share

The best solutions only arise when people freely share information in crucial conversations.

When we feel we’re approaching a controversial topic in a crucial conversation, we’re often afraid to share our ideas or criticisms because we don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. As we’ll see, this is totally backwards. Since a successful conversation depends upon the participants providing information and sharing knowledge, sharing information actually leads to smarter decisions. Even the smartest people are more prone to making mistakes when they don’t have all the necessary information available to them.

25 May, 2020 05:43 Share

a surgeon once tasked with amputating a man’s foot removed the healthy foot by mistake. What’s worse, the other medical professionals in the room simply stood by in silence – even though they knew full well that the doctor was making a mistake! Why? Because they were simply too intimidated of his high stature to share this crucial information.

25 May, 2020 05:44 Share

Furthermore, people are more likely to fully commit to solutions resulting from an open dialogue where ideas and information are freely shared. When we can see how a solution has been distilled from the available ideas, we’re more likely to be convinced that it’s the best solution. Conversely, we tend to resist decisions made without our consultation. In fact, we’re more likely to commit to ideas that we don’t agree with as long as we can participate in the discussion.

25 May, 2020 05:45 Share

you’d be more likely to try your hardest to make the plan succeed in spite of your doubts because you participated in the decision-making process. If, however, your captain had simply given you a command with no consultation, you probably wouldn’t give it 100 percent.

25 May, 2020 05:46 Share

Stay focused on your goals in a crucial conversation to prevent becoming overly emotional.

Think about the last time someone heavily criticized your ideas. Did you placidly accept their criticism and work towards a solution? Doubtful! You may have even gotten angry and stormed out of the room. However, this isn’t the most helpful way to end a conversation; what could you have done differently? Whenever you’re "attacked" by opposing ideas, the first thing you must do is take a moment to highlight your goals; if you become angry, your conversation probably won’t end with a solution.

25 May, 2020 05:46 Share

Ask yourself questions like: What is my aim here? What information do I want to ensure I clearly articulate to my conversational partner? After having identified what you really want from the conversation, you can shift your focus to identifying what you really don’t want. In other words, what is the one thing you really want to avoid in a conversation? You’re liable to want to avoid walking away from it empty-handed ‒ otherwise you wouldn’t be engaging in a dialogue to begin with!

25 May, 2020 05:47 Share

if you want to tell your partner something that might upset them, think: What do I actually want? What do I want to avoid? This simple exercise can help you rationally convey information and keep everyone calm, thus allowing you to say what needs to be said without risking a flying vase to the face.

25 May, 2020 05:48 Share

People are more likely to behave aggressively in conversations where they don’t feel "safe."

A rational conversation about even the most banal subject can quickly degenerate into a heated argument, and can’t be salvaged no matter what you do or say. How does that happen? Often, it comes down to the atmosphere: when it’s safe, i.e., when people don’t feel like they’re in danger of being attacked, you can talk about literally anything, including critical or highly controversial issues. However, once people start feeling like they’re being unfairly criticized, they tend to clam up and their emotions start to take over. The fear of being attacked causes the release of adrenaline, which, as we learned earlier, hinders rational thinking.

25 May, 2020 05:49 Share

Thankfully, people display telltale signs of aggression when they’re feeling unsafe in a conversation. In fact, these behaviors can typically be broken down into two categories: silent and violent. You can identify a silent reaction when people start to deliberately hide their opinions in a conversation. A good example of this is sarcasm, in which an opinion is deliberately (and obviously) hidden. For instance, someone might tell you, "Wow, what a flattering shirt! No one will ever think that it’s three sizes too small for you!" A violent reaction, on the other hand, is one where people try to force their opinion onto their conversation partners. If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone who just won’t let others speak, constantly interrupting them and cutting them off mid-sentence, then you’ve witnessed a violent reaction.

25 May, 2020 05:50 Share

Create safe conversations by ensuring that people feel like you respect them and their interests.

We’ve seen how an otherwise rational conversation can quickly derail once people feel threatened. So what steps can we take to keep the atmosphere in a conversation safe? A safe atmosphere hinges on these two key conditions: a feeling of mutual respect and a common purpose.

26 May, 2020 05:25 Share

Mutual respect is the absolute pre-condition for a successful conversation: if people don’t feel like you respect and value them, their behavior can quickly devolve into acts of aggression, such as shouting and attempts at dominating others. You can avoid making people feel disrespected by carefully managing how you address them. One way to do this is through contrasting, i.e., juxtaposing criticism with praise.

26 May, 2020 05:26 Share

For example, if you’re talking to an employee about his unpunctuality, stress that you’re happy with the quality of his work, and that the only problem is that he doesn’t get to work on time. This approach will make him feel much more respected as an individual, and less likely to react emotionally.

26 May, 2020 05:26 Share

conversation participants need to feel like they’re all striving towards a common solution, where their own interests and goals are taken into consideration. If, however, your common solution isn’t immediately clear, then you’ll have to create one. Imagine, for example, that you’ve been offered a career-defining promotion, but you and your family would have to relocate, which you know your partner doesn’t want. You and your partner might not have a common purpose initially: you want the promotion and your partner doesn’t want to move. In this case, invent a more general, longer-term purpose that you both share. Focus, for example, on the needs of your family over career or location. This approach ensures that there is common ground upon which a mutual agreement can be found, regardless of the outcome: you might even pass on the promotion in order to find a better job in the area, thus ensuring that everyone’s needs are met!

26 May, 2020 05:28 Share

Manage your emotions by ensuring that you’ve gotten the facts straight before you interpret.

Surely you’ve been there before: you’re having a normal conversation when, suddenly, one ill-chosen word from a certain person in a certain situation makes you lose it – even though they never would have intended to make you angry. Reactions like these are the result of an incorrect interpretation of the situation, when what you think deviates from the actual facts. In order to reach a solution, you must learn how to overcome this hurdle. One easy way to do this is to ask yourself whether you’re misinterpreting someone’s words whenever you start to feel your emotions flare up. And be sure to separate your explanation from your emotional response so you can stay level-headed. For example, if you see someone staring at you, you might think that they’re being rude and you start getting red with anger. Take a moment to objectively reexamine the facts: Is he actually staring? Is he even looking at you at all? Are you sure he isn’t looking at something behind you?

26 May, 2020 05:29 Share

Only after you’ve sorted out the facts can you find an interpretation that leads to a dialogue instead of a shouting match. Imagine you and a colleague are having a project meeting with your boss, and he stays behind and continues the meeting while you step out for a break. Your immediate interpretation might be that your coworker is trying to take credit for the work, and you react emotionally. But when you examine the facts, you realize that the reason they continued with the meeting is that they were simply passionate about the project and didn’t realize that you were, too! Knowing this, you can re-interpret their actions more accurately, and thus have a better chance at finding a solution. For instance, you could arrange a meeting with them to discuss your own interest in the project in order to develop better working practices.

26 May, 2020 05:30 Share

Make others feel safe in a conversation by creating an atmosphere where they feel their opinions are valued.

As we’ve already learned, the best way to get people to participate in a conversation is to help them feel safe. You can often accomplish this by creating an atmosphere where they feel their opinions matter. Start by showing your conversation partner that you care about what’s making them unhappy. Ask them about their motives and, where necessary, confront them on their behavior.

26 May, 2020 05:31 Share

Sometimes, however, you might be in a position where you disagree with what your conversation partner tells you. For example, your teenage daughter might say something like: "I’m a wretched person! No one likes me!" In these cases, it’s important to stay focused on understanding her, rather than challenging her beliefs. This will prevent her from feeling threatened, and thus be more likely to continue with the discussion.

26 May, 2020 05:32 Share

Choose an appropriate way of decision-making and a clear division of responsibilities to put a conversation into action.

So after following the advice in these blinks, you’re finding that your conversations are calm and rational, and everyone feels safe and valued. But this alone doesn’t guarantee that you’ll reach the best solution, or that the decision you make will be carried out effectively. The final step in managing crucial conversations is their resolution. The best way to ensure the optimal solution of a conversation is to know who should be granted decision-making power in the team and whom the decision affects. If a solution affects everybody on the team – let’s say it’s moving your entire family to another country – then you need to ensure that there’s a consensus among everybody. If it turns out that there are many possible acceptable solutions, then you could vote on them, as it would keep everyone involved in the decision-making process.

26 May, 2020 05:33 Share

This does not mean, however, that all decisions have to be democratic! For example, in cases where you have a strong, trustful relationship with a person or team, you can waive the group’s involvement and turn the final say over to a single person. Next, once the decision has been made, you must put it into practice by clearly establishing who does what by when. Everybody on the team needs to know what you want and what they must do to achieve it.

26 May, 2020 05:34 Share

If, however, your instructions are unclear, then you might experience a similar misfortune as entrepreneur Howard Hughes, who assigned a group of engineers to build a steam-powered car. After several years of hard work, they indeed created a car that was powered by steam, except that it would boil the passengers alive in the event of an accident. He obviously didn’t make what he wanted exactly clear!

26 May, 2020 05:35 Share

Final summary

Crucial conversations can often devolve into shouting matches. However, if you learn the right skills, you can master these dialogues and achieve optimal results from them, and in turn noticeably improve your personal and professional life. Focus on respect. Avoid making someone feel unsafe in a conversation by ensuring that they know you respect them as individuals. It’s okay to ask. When you feel your emotions flaring up, ask the other person if your interpretation of their behavior is right before freaking out.

26 May, 2020 05:35 Share

What’s in it for me? Change your view of life by reading a mystic fable.

Now imagine you were told a fable so powerful that it made you sell your most prized possessions and leave behind the life you’ve accustomed yourself to. What kind of fable could be so persuasive? Well, these blinks unfold a fable with the power to change the way you look at life. It concerns the life of a fictional lawyer who ends up selling his Ferrari and becoming a monk.

22 May, 2020 05:54 Share

You’ll also learn why your mind is like a garden; how the image of a lighthouse will help guide you to a better life; and what a sumo wrestler can help you remember.

22 May, 2020 05:54 Share

While working as a wealthy, high-power lawyer, Julian Mantle had a spiritual awakening.

However, underneath it all, he was struggling. His workload was far too heavy for him to handle. Each day there was a new, important case for Mantle to take on and he approached every proceeding diligently. Eventually, the stress became too much for him, and one day Mantle suffered a severe heart attack and collapsed in the courtroom.

22 May, 2020 05:55 Share

In fact, no one at his firm heard from him after his heart attack. Rumor had it that he’d moved to India in search of some answers and a simpler life – and, indeed, that’s exactly what he had done. Before moving, Mantle sold his mansion and his Ferrari; he was sure that his quest for meaning was more important.

22 May, 2020 05:55 Share

Mantle had been traveling from village to village in India by foot. On his journey, he had learned about yogis who seemed to defy aging. In Kashmir, he had heard about the Great Sages of Sivana. And these new discoveries inspired him to venture to the Himalayan Mountains, where he came across the monks that lived there.

22 May, 2020 05:57 Share

A mystical fable teaches the seven principles of the Sivana System.

He was taught all of this on one condition – that he’d return to where he came from and spread the word. And this is why he went back to his law practice: to teach the life-changing Sivana System.

22 May, 2020 05:58 Share

In the middle of the garden is an enormous red lighthouse. But the tranquility is suddenly disturbed by a sumo wrestler who comes striding out of the lighthouse door. Nine-feet tall and weighing 900 pounds, the wrestler is clad in nothing but a pink wire cable to cover his modesty. While wandering around the garden, he stumbles upon a golden stopwatch. Out of curiosity, he puts it on – and immediately loses consciousness and crashes to the ground. Eventually, he awakens and is filled with energy thanks to the fragrance of the surrounding yellow roses. He quickly leaps up and looks to his left; to his amazement, he sees a path covered with diamonds. Entranced, he walks along it. And this path leads him to everlasting bliss and joy.

22 May, 2020 05:59 Share

Finding fulfillment is a matter of mastering your mind.

The garden from Yogi Raman’s fable represents the mind. A lot of people end up littering their mental gardens with waste – that is, negative thoughts or fears. The first virtue of the Sivana System, then, is to control your mind. You have to tend to your mental garden, and the best way to take care of it is to stand guard at its gates. Only let pleasant, positive thoughts in and ban the detrimental ones.

22 May, 2020 06:01 Share

But how do we get our minds to focus solely on fulfilling thoughts? Well, we all have the ability to choose what we think about, so it all comes down to exercising our minds like a muscle. The first step is to boost your concentration. There’s a technique for improving your ability to focus that the Sages of Sivana call The Heart of the Rose.

22 May, 2020 06:02 Share

Try to perform this on a daily basis, each day spending a longer period of time enjoying the rose. Eventually, you’ll find it easier to command your thoughts. You’ll stop worrying and instead be filled with a sense of calm and joy.

22 May, 2020 06:02 Share

To lead a fulfilling life, you need a purpose to guide you.

The Sages of Sivana have a clear sense of purpose, and therefore never waste time. They know that they have a duty to fulfill this purpose. When referring to their purpose, the monks use the Sanskrit word dharma – which means "life’s purpose." Dharma comes from the ancient belief that, while on earth, we each have a mission to complete. By honoring dharma, you can achieve lasting satisfaction and inner harmony.

22 May, 2020 06:03 Share

Here’s the five-step method developed by the Sages to achieve personal purpose: First, you must create a mental image of the outcome. If your goal is to lose weight, you’d envision a leaner, fitter version of yourself. The second stage is to place pressure on yourself, but in a good way. Pressure can be a wonderful source of inspiration as it can often push a person to realize their full potential. A great way to generate pressure is to tell others about your plan. The third step is constructing a timeline. To get your goal under way, you have to have a deadline in sight. The fourth step is what Yogi Raman dubbed the Magic Rule of 21. This is the idea that a new behavior becomes a habit after you’ve done it for 21 days in a row. The last step? Just enjoy the process!

22 May, 2020 06:04 Share

Constant self-improvement is key to a radiant life.

Remember the sumo wrestler? Well, he represents a virtue in the Sivana System, too. This virtue is called kaizen, a Japanese word that means constant, never-ending improvement. It’s all about unlocking your potential.

22 May, 2020 06:05 Share

Let the sumo wrestler serve as a hefty reminder of kaizen!

22 May, 2020 06:06 Share

For this virtue, the Sages created ten steps known as the Ten Rituals of Radiant Living. The first is the Ritual of Solitude, and it stipulates that your daily routine must feature a moment of silence. This is so that you can calm your mind and access your creativity. Second is the Ritual of Physicality. The aim of this stage is to get your body moving. By caring for your body, you ultimately care for your mind. Next is the Ritual of Live Nourishment. You should only eat live foods, so it’s best to follow a vegetarian diet. Fourth is the Ritual of Abundant Knowledge. Throughout your life you should keep learning – so find a way to keep your mind stimulated by reading or studying. The fifth is the Ritual of Personal Reflection. This is about looking at the way you behave on a daily basis. Could you have done anything better today? Sixth is the Ritual of Early Awakening. This one’s tough for those who enjoy sleeping in, because the idea is to sleep for around six hours and to rise with the sun. Next up is the Ritual of Music. It’s wonderful to listen to music as much as you can because it lifts your mood. Number eight is the Ritual of the Spoken Word. This is about creating a personal mantra to inspire you. Ninth is the Ritual of a Congruent Character. The point of this step is to make sure that you always follow your principles. Last is the Ritual of Simplicity. Conduct a simple life and focus on your priorities and meaningful activities.

22 May, 2020 06:06 Share

What’s in it for me? Attune yourself to a life of success and help others as you do it.

Self-improvement is all well and good, but for it to be really successful, it’s important also to think about the impact you have on loved ones, your community, and society as a whole.

19 May, 2020 05:31 Share

In these blinks you’ll learn: what the Romans thought about exercise; how to make your commute more productive; and precisely how many more hours you’ll live because of exercise.

19 May, 2020 05:32 Share

Maintaining perspective and practicing self-discipline will help you to lead a successful and happy life.

The famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking liked to tell people a simple story. We humans live on a small planet, which circles a very ordinary star, somewhere on the edge of a galaxy that is just one galaxy among hundreds of billions. He’s basically saying that we need to get some perspective: don’t take things so seriously.

19 May, 2020 05:33 Share

For instance, say that someone doesn’t hold the doors for you as you approach an elevator. Sometimes, even a minor offense like this is enough to make you fly into a rage about how nobody respects you. But you needn’t. The best answer is to shift perspective and realize that none of this has anything to do with you. Most likely the elevator user was just absentminded or in a bad mood. Don’t pay it any mind. Just go about your day with all the optimism you can muster. Instead of stewing in your own fury, let your goodwill toward others shine out.

19 May, 2020 05:33 Share

You’ll find that if you’re disciplined, your life becomes easier. There’s a good reason for this. Life often means fighting your way through difficulties no matter how tricky they seem. Imagine what would happen if you gave up on your friends as soon as you had a fight with them. Before long, you’d have no friends, which would make your life even more difficult. On the other hand, if you’re self-disciplined enough to stick with your friends and talk through difficulties with them, not only will you learn much along the way, but you’ll get to keep the friends, too.

19 May, 2020 05:34 Share

For a happier life, be honest with other people and learn how to deal positively with failure.

Keep tabs on it. Jot down how often you tell little fibs just to avoid confrontation or to make yourself liked.

19 May, 2020 05:35 Share

you should try to adopt an approach that makes honesty central to your life.

19 May, 2020 05:35 Share

The next stage is to dedicate yourself to being completely honest for a whole week. The simple aim is to be true to your word, whether with yourself or others

19 May, 2020 05:36 Share

You’ll be surprised at just how happy it will make you to keep your promises, especially if you’re unaccustomed to it! There’s another basic rule that's really useful in making happiness part of your life: learn to cope with failure and difficulties. That’s not as negative as it sounds; actually, difficult experiences teach you the best lessons

19 May, 2020 05:36 Share

Just look at people who’ve endured serious illness. In the author’s experience, it’s they who turn out to be happiest and healthiest later in life. That’s because they learned how to care for themselves in the most difficult circumstances, and so have a deeper understanding of life. There’s a related trick: put simply, life is better when you take risks and live fully. You may often fail, but that’s much better than living out a life of boring mediocrity.

19 May, 2020 05:37 Share

"Failures" such as those are actually rich experiences that can be put to good use later in life – often in finding your alternative career path!

19 May, 2020 05:38 Share

A meaningful life entails focusing on what’s essential, but don’t forget to reward yourself with regular breaks.

you need to get your priorities in order. Otherwise, you’ll find other people’s demands and requests will swallow you up. Above all, if you work out what’s essential and important to you, then your life will become more meaningful as a consequence

19 May, 2020 05:39 Share

The story goes that there once was a sword-maker who was so talented that he was charged with forging swords for the rulers of China. One of these kings was so impressed by his weapons that he went to the sword-maker and asked him what the secret to his success was. Much to the king’s surprise, the answer wasn’t that the sword-maker had mastered a secret and mystical skill. No, the sword-maker simply replied that he had dedicated his life to his work. Every waking hour for the previous 20 years had been spent perfecting his art.

19 May, 2020 05:39 Share

Just think of the world-renowned basketball player Michael Jordan. He didn’t personally secure his own contracts, pick out his suits, or work out the nitty-gritty of his travel arrangements. He had personal assistants and lawyers to take care of all of that. His own job was kept simple. His energy and time were to be spent training and playing basketball.

19 May, 2020 05:40 Share

Meaning also comes from other areas of life. Deep friendships and relationships will help, as will giving yourself time to relax. So while focusing on meaningful life goals will take you a long way, be sure to give yourself time off regularly so you can enjoy life’s other meaningful aspects. Your family will certainly thank you for it!

19 May, 2020 05:40 Share

free time doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Be sure to include regular time off in your weekly schedule. There’s a term for this: sabbaticals. Originally, these were religious holidays devoted to contemplation and prayer. But the same principle still applies: you need time to step back from life and relax.

19 May, 2020 05:42 Share

Remember how to enjoy life by imitating children and by taking good care of your body.

But there’s actually much to be said for children’s unapologetic liking for what gives them the most joy. As adults, we should imitate children in order to relearn to love life.

19 May, 2020 05:43 Share

hink of all the energy that goes to waste doing things we hate – whether it’s paying bills, organizing cupboards, updating resumes, filling out tax forms, or just worrying. These things just drain the fun out of life. Needless to say, some of those things have to be done, but that doesn’t mean you should invest any more than the absolute minimum of attention in them. A good strategy for shifting your focus away from the drudgery of these day-to-day tasks is to remind yourself of what you actually like to do.

19 May, 2020 05:43 Share

Eating ice-cream, rollerblading, dressing up, or playing with your pet are all activities you can enjoy no matter your age.

19 May, 2020 05:43 Share

you have to take good care of your body. In ancient Rome, people were well aware that a healthy mind was only really possible if the body was healthy too. That still holds true today, especially if you want to enjoy life.

19 May, 2020 05:43 Share

for each hour of exercise people undertook, they added, on average, three hours to their life span.

19 May, 2020 05:44 Share

Remember that since life is a process, focusing solely on goals may be counterproductive.

In reality, it’s the process that goes into achieving goals that is really of use. It allows us to develop and mature.

20 May, 2020 05:50 Share

. Rather than toasting to the big result, really try to acknowledge the whole process, and how it has shaped you.

20 May, 2020 05:50 Share

say you’ve been learning to drive and you've passed your test. Of course you should celebrate the impression you made on the examiner, and earning your license, but remember the equally important process you’ve been through. Along the way, you’ve taken responsibility for yourself and others, you've gained independence, and you’ve trained your powers of coordination. A key component of positive change is self-awareness.

20 May, 2020 05:51 Share

You too should take the same approach. A key part of the dynamic is to recognize areas of weakness en route. Being conscious of them is the first step to improvement!

20 May, 2020 05:52 Share

Recognize the value of time and learn to control your emotional reactions.

Most people amble through life as though time were unlimited. That’s why people often procrastinate, too. And you’d be amazed just how much time you waste on life admin, hobbies, vacations, or just staring into the air.

20 May, 2020 05:54 Share

Just think of any occasion when you’ve rehashed an old argument to yourself long after it’s over. Your partner or colleagues couldn’t care less! They’ve long forgotten it, but you’re still wasting time mulling it over.

20 May, 2020 05:55 Share

And if your emotions are burning red-hot, then really take some time out. You need at least 30 minutes to calm down; maybe a little meditation will help, too.

20 May, 2020 05:57 Share

Each one of us needs to appreciate the time that we have and ensure that we plan tasks accordingly. A good start is to work out which activities are important to you and incorporate them into your daily routine. Meditation, skills acquisition, care of the home or project work can all find a spot in the schedule. You just need to make sure you keep to your schedule and don’t let your plans drag on. Time management is one way to stay happy. But if you complement this approach with emotion management, you’ll find yourself happier still. Think about it: if you unleash negative emotions on the world, you’ll not only waste a load of time, but it’ll also lead to all sorts of negative consequences. All those friendships you’ve spent years nurturing? Poof! Too many tantrums, and you may lose them.

20 May, 2020 05:57 Share

Connecting with nature and making use of your commute will ensure happiness and success.

If you live in a town or city, you’ll know the feeling: everything seems to happen all at once. That’s what it is to be overloaded. But things used to be different. Think about just how much information is in one copy of the New York Times. If you lived in seventeenth-century England, it would take a whole lifetime to be exposed to the same amount of material. Given all of that, it’s critical that you take the opportunity to turn off your brain for a little while every now and then and relax.

20 May, 2020 05:58 Share

A great way to foster relaxation and happiness is to connect with nature

20 May, 2020 05:59 Share

A beautiful park or the woods are places conducive to letting the mind relax. The sound of the wind rustling through the trees is enough to bring him into a meditative state.

20 May, 2020 06:00 Share

It may seem like an effort to get close to nature. But you can make it easier by incorporating a little greenness into your daily commute, for example by walking through a park.

20 May, 2020 06:00 Share

If you’ve got a radio or a smartphone, you can use that time to listen to educational audiobooks or podcasts. And if you’re on public transport, you can do all kinds of constructive things, from meditation to reading. If you use your commute for self-improvement, then you’ll soon begin to reap the benefits. There’s really no reason to spend those hours idling and daydreaming!

20 May, 2020 06:00 Share

Rather than complaining, focus actively on what you can bring to the world.

We all love it when we can gripe about something, but sometimes it can go too far. You know the type of person – someone who is always sighing, complaining that he or she doesn’t have enough time to work out or learn a new language or skill. But such complaining has little to do with the real world. It’s just the result of a negative mindset. If that’s you, then you’ll be pleased to know that just by being a bit more proactive, you can get out of the rut.

21 May, 2020 05:51 Share

Griping about pollution will get you nowhere, but proactive recycling and carbon footprint reduction will make some difference.

21 May, 2020 05:51 Share

And if you feel that the economy’s stopping your career development in your company, then start polishing your CV or getting your portfolio ready to be sent out. If, say, you’re a designer, sit down and create a couple of new posters or object designs. Those first steps are critical. Once you see that change is possible, you’ll realize that complaining is just wasted energy.

21 May, 2020 05:52 Share

recognizing your own value to the world. So when you choose your vocation, think hard about what you can contribute to others’ lives.

21 May, 2020 05:53 Share

Knowing your worth will push you to get the well-paid and gratifying job you deserve. After all, you’ll know your efforts will truly be adding something to the world. Surgeons are the classic example here. A surgeon isn’t intrinsically better or cleverer than any other professional. But surgeons have spent countless hours working on highly specialized skills. Their expertise allows them to make contributions that are significant and life-altering. That explains why surgeons are seen as so valuable by society

21 May, 2020 05:53 Share

It’s never too late to begin. You, too, can work on acquiring rare skills that are needed in your community. Start reading, studying and preparing yourself to think originally.

21 May, 2020 05:53 Share

Final summary

Ask yourself who will cry when you die. If you feel that few people will miss you, it may be time to make some changes. To give your best and to enrich other people’s lives takes a bit of effort, but it’s worth it. You should aim to find personal fulfillment and live your life to its full value. You can make an active change by using your time productively and recognizing what is most important to you. The best version of you is one that will surely be missed by others.

21 May, 2020 05:54 Share

Try some journaling. Keeping a journal is a great way to help you on your journey to self-growth. Note down what happens each day, and reflect on that. How might you improve on aspects that were less than perfect? As you process events in this way, you’ll become more and more conscious of your strengths and weaknesses. This awareness is a precondition for change and personal development. Once you know what you can improve, that’s when you can work on some positive strategies to help you toward that goal.

21 May, 2020 05:54 Share

What’s in it for me? Learn what defines true leadership.

Leaders Eat Last examines these questions by contrasting our modern societies – including their many technological advances and complex systems that can lead us to disarray – with the kinds of societies we would have lived in thousands of years ago. In doing so, we find that this division into "leaders" and "followers" is merely a natural consequence of our biology, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all leaders are good. So what is it that makes a leader worth following?

17 May, 2020 09:33 Share

Our need for hierarchy and leadership is rooted in our biology.

It all comes down to hormones, which evolved over eons to help us survive by controlling our emotions and moderating our behavior, and which affect us just as much today as they did tens of thousands of years ago. The hormone dopamine rewards us with happy excitement whenever we complete a task, such as finding something we’ve been searching for or reaching our weight-loss goals. In addition, serotonin and oxytocin affect our social lives by helping us form relationships with other people.

17 May, 2020 09:33 Share

In addition to helping us survive, hormone-driven behavior is also responsible for creating the basic template for social hierarchy. In hunter-gatherer societies, for example, a rush of endorphins allowed hunters to push for miles and miles in order to secure meat for the community, which in turn earned them the privileges of higher status. Weaker individuals, who for one reason or another couldn’t participate in the hunt, had to accept less prestigious roles, such as gathering fruits. This distinction between the "strong" and the "weak" was the first step on the path towards social hierarchy. Yet, while certainly being responsible for these class distinctions, hormones also add cohesion to these hierarchical structures by giving the weaker individuals a serotonin- or oxytocin-based warm feeling towards one another as well as the leader, rather than destructive stings of jealousy.

17 May, 2020 09:34 Share

A feeling of safety is our main engine of progress and must be ensured by the group and its leader.

When it comes to survival, living in a group offers many perks, the most important of which being that we don’t have to face threats alone.

18 May, 2020 05:20 Share

Living in a group, however, allows us to divvy up the tasks necessary for self-preservation, thus enabling us to concentrate on other specific projects, such as fashioning better tools. These, in turn, help us progress as societies. As such, our brains have evolved to prioritize feeling safe, which is why we now do strange things like stay in jobs we hate simply because they make us feel secure.

18 May, 2020 05:21 Share

Working in a safe and trusting environment created a bond between the company’s employees, who even began helping each other even in times of personal crisis. Some even transferred their own paid vacation days to those in need.

18 May, 2020 05:21 Share

Today, the leader decides a company’s culture and values, and thus their employees’ mentality.

We can learn a bit about how this works by looking at the history of Goldman Sachs: between 1970 and 1990, the company operated under the motto "long-term greedy," showing a willingness to stand by clients even if that meant short-term financial losses. Since the 1990s, however, CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein and company president Gary D. Cohn shifted the company’s focus to short-term profits, even when they come at the client’s expense. Company culture doesn’t just affect leadership – it stretches all the way down the hierarchy by setting the standards that employees have to meet in order to get hired and ultimately stay with the company.

18 May, 2020 05:22 Share

Our responsibility comes from our proximity to and empathy for others, without which we can cause great harm.

Being in a leadership role doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a force of good. When the bond between the leaders and the team is somehow severed, the consequences can be horrific. In essence, this is because responsibility is actually about caring for other people; when we’re removed from the people for whom we are responsible, we’re less cautious about the damage we cause. Our feeling of responsibility comes from our empathy, the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Without empathy, we risk becoming emotionally removed from decisions that affect others. And if we add physical distance to the mix, it leads to abstraction, where the consequences of our actions seem less real than they otherwise would.

18 May, 2020 05:23 Share

While many participants expressed great discomfort at inflicting apparent harm onto the Learners, Milgram found that the less proximity a Teacher had to a Learner, the more likely they were to continue the experiment. In fact, more than half the participants of one particular group, who could neither see nor hear the writhing and screams of agony from the Learners, eventually administered what would have been deadly voltage! When abstraction occurs, we begin to prioritize our interests over other people’s, which can lead us to actively make decisions at others’ expense.

18 May, 2020 05:24 Share

Bad leadership has contributed to modern-day selfishness and the dehumanization of others.

As we’ve already seen, being part of a group offers us a feeling of safety and opportunity for progress. Conversely, feeling alone and threatened makes us selfish and causes us to dehumanize others.

18 May, 2020 05:26 Share

And once we prioritize the pursuit of profits over all else, it can lead to the dehumanization of others.

18 May, 2020 05:26 Share

We’re therefore more likely to dehumanize others, i.e., to see them as tools that fulfill a specific purpose, than we are to treat them as living, breathing people with their own wants and needs.

18 May, 2020 05:26 Share

Modern society has become addicted to better and faster performance.

What do you think of when you hear the word "addiction"? Probably things like alcohol or drugs. It may surprise you, but you can also be addicted to performance. This addiction is intimately tied to our biology. Whereas the release of dopamine was once linked directly to our survival, nowadays it’s tied to our job performance, rewarding us when we achieve better and faster performance. Many companies looking to increase their production welcome this, all too easily forgetting the stability provided by long-term goals.

18 May, 2020 05:27 Share

When we "like" some human rights campaign – or anything, really – on Facebook, it triggers a dopamine response that gives us a rush of happiness for having completed a task. In order to prevent ourselves from becoming addicted to these little bursts of dopamine, we need to balance them out with a serotonin- and oxytocin-driven sacrifice, i.e., actually going somewhere to volunteer or building relationships with real people.

18 May, 2020 05:29 Share

The problem is that technology makes it easier and easier to just click "like," and actual volunteer work stays just as hard as it always was. As a result, we become addicted to the "quick fix."

18 May, 2020 05:29 Share

Integrity and the ability to bond with others are essential for leadership.

We need to be able to trust our leaders, which means they must have integrity. We all know that leaders are only human, and we therefore don’t expect them to be perfect. What we do expect, however, is that they’re honest and forthcoming about their mistakes and take responsibility for them.

18 May, 2020 05:29 Share

For example, in 2009, the Ralph Lauren Corporation learned that its Argentine branch had been involved in bribery. Rather than staging an elaborate cover-up, the leaders of the company instead informed the American authorities and even offered to aid them in the investigation. Although this course of action meant that the company had to pay over a million dollars in penalties, it was able to keep its integrity, and thus the trust of their customers and employees.

18 May, 2020 05:30 Share

Furthermore, once leaders have earned the trust of their group, they must keep that trust by bonding with others. Whether with their employees, customers, colleagues or rivals, it’s important for a leader to maintain real connections in order to stay honest and focus on the needs of others. We can see how a lack of bonding can affect leadership by looking at the US Congress. Until the 1990s, most congressmen and -women lived in Washington and thus communicated daily, which resulted in laws built upon close cooperation. Today, however, most members of Congress live elsewhere, and fly to Washington for a few days a week. The result? Some of the lowest approval ratings in congressional history!

18 May, 2020 05:30 Share

Being a leader means putting others ahead of yourself in order to fulfill a vision.

Essentially, a leader forges a vision for the future that the entire group feels inspired to fulfill. Although every group member has individual goals, the group as a whole needs purpose in order to remain cohesive, and that purpose comes from the leader’s vision.

18 May, 2020 05:31 Share

Think of Bill Gates, for example. His goal wasn’t to earn billions of dollars, or even to build a great company. His dream was to put a computer on every desk. It is precisely this vision that ensures that Microsoft doesn’t lose itself in the abundance of profits and possibilities, and instead remains a major force on the market.

18 May, 2020 05:31 Share

Counterintuitively, by providing a vision for the future, leaders actually serve the led, and not the other way around. Indeed, true leaders understand that their duty is to serve the people that follow them. Although leaders do enjoy certain privileges, these come at the cost of an enormous responsibility to the people they lead. In times of crisis, a true leader will use all his personal resources for the good of the community.

18 May, 2020 05:32 Share

And on that path, the leaders need to follow last in line to ensure that every member of the group makes it to the end

18 May, 2020 05:32 Share

Final summary

True leaders prioritize the needs of the group over their own, and thus ensure that the group as a whole progresses. Because a leader’s vision is a cause for action, it’s important to ensure that these leaders are a force for good. Remember: Your employees are your family. When you turn to your employees, view them as family members instead of subordinates. Set a vision. If you wonder how to manage your company, try to set a vision for the future, instead of concentrating on short-term goals.

18 May, 2020 05:33 Share

What’s in it for me? Discover the neurological secrets behind pleasure.

Neuroscience has been able to shed light on some of these mysteries. As these blinks will show, pleasure, whether it comes from digging into a juicy chocolate cake, or placing a daring bet at the poker table, arises in an intricate set of structures in the brain that all work together in sometimes surprising ways. In these blinks you’ll learn why cigarettes are more addictive than heroin; the real difference between sex and love; and what running and cannabis have in common.

20 April, 2020 05:34 Share

Pleasurable experiences activate the brain’s medial forebrain pleasure circuit.

In this way, our medial forebrain pleasure circuit is a strong influence on our behavior. Scientists have examined this relationship through studies where the pleasure circuit is deliberately stimulated. One of these studies was highly controversial, and its findings have been contested to this day. It took place in the 1970s, at Tulane University, by Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath. He wanted to discover if a homosexual man could derive pleasure from heterosexual intercourse by electrically stimulating his pleasure circuit. Heath implanted electrodes into the subject’s brain and claimed that later in the study, the subject had changed so much that he was able to ejaculate during intercourse with a woman in the lab. Heath also said that the subject even had a sexual relationship with a married woman after the experiment concluded. Despite its limited scope, this study shows that direct electrical stimulation on the brain’s pleasure circuitry can be highly influential to short-term behavior.

20 April, 2020 05:35 Share

Addiction is shaped by the way in which a drug gives pleasure – and by its availability.

Of course, heroin is illegal, while cigarettes aren’t, so it makes sense that more of us take up smoking than shooting up. A drug’s availability, the attitudes of your peers toward it and the methods and rituals surrounding it are hugely influential factors in addiction. But it also comes down to the kinds of pleasure that heroin and cigarettes produce. An injection of heroin results in one big pleasure surge, while lots of puffs at many cigarettes give us lighter and more fleeting pleasure rushes. This means that acting and being rewarded for that action happens more frequently with smoking – thus addiction occurs more quickly. It’s like training a dog – if you ask him to do a trick multiple times a day and reward him with immediate, frequent treats, he’ll learn a trick more quickly than if it happens just once in 24 hours. Addiction doesn’t just alter our behavior and daily routines. It physically changes structures in the brain. This was demonstrated in a study where rats that had been administered a cocaine solution for 28 days exhibited far bushier extensions of nerve cells in their pleasure circuit than prior to the experiment.

20 April, 2020 05:36 Share

Our pleasure circuits are activated by foods full of fat and sugar.

Foods high in sugar and fat release more dopamine, which is why we enjoy chocolate and pizza so much. The urge to continue activating our pleasure circuits with such foods may be powerful even when we don’t have a huge appetite. The subsequent rewiring of our brains is what leads us to reach for the third slice of chocolate cake, and see the numbers on our bathroom scales rise.

20 April, 2020 05:38 Share

Falling in love and sex both activate the pleasure circuit, but in different ways.

Falling in love and sexual arousal both activate the pleasure circuit. But the way they activate it is quite different. Unlike in sexual arousal, feelings of love deactivate the judgment and social cognition centers of the brain. This is why when we fall in love with someone, we believe them to be better, smarter or more beautiful than everybody else. Something to consider next time you meet a friend’s questionable new squeeze!

20 April, 2020 05:39 Share

However, orgasm is normally an intensely pleasurable experience. This is because it produces a dopamine surge. Dutch scientist Gert Holstege’s brain scans of heterosexual men and women orgasming proved this by showing significant activation of the pleasure circuit. Sex and love both produce pleasure – all the more reason to combine them!

20 April, 2020 05:40 Share

Gambling is addictive because it also stimulates the pleasure circuit.

As for nurture, compulsive gambling often runs in families. Compulsive gambler Bill Lee describes in his memoir, Born to Lose, how his father dragged him round gambling dens as a "good luck charm" as a kid, and his grandfather even sold his family to another family to cover a gambling debt!

20 April, 2020 05:41 Share

We’ve already heard about drug addiction in the second blink, and seen how fatty foods can be addictive. But can a recreational behavior like gambling be an addiction too? To find out, let’s take a look at what an addiction really is. An activity or substance becomes addictive when it leads to persistent, compulsive repetition in the face of increasingly negative life consequences; increased dependence alongside increased tolerance; strong cravings in later stages that lead to a high incidence of relapse; the replacement of euphoric pleasure with desire; and dangerously pleasurable relapses after abstinence.

20 April, 2020 05:41 Share

It’s not just vices that light up our pleasure circuit – healthy living and good behavior can too.

Painful stimuli also release dopamine, which, as we know, gives us pleasure. This explains why we can actually experience pain and pleasure simultaneously, which can be the experience of women during childbirth and of sadomasochists during sex games.

20 April, 2020 05:43 Share

Runner’s high refers to the bliss that runners and other athletes enjoy even when nauseated from fatigue. This physical pain causes increased opioid release in the brain and a rise in endocannabinoids – the brain’s natural cannabis-like molecules – in the bloodstream.

20 April, 2020 05:44 Share

Knowing things simply for the sake of knowing can also activate the pleasure circuit. Ethan Bromberg-Martin and Okihide Hikosaka at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, showed that monkeys, like humans, when given the choice, opted to receive information about a future reward (such as its shape), even though it didn’t boost their chances of receiving that reward.

20 April, 2020 05:44 Share

Final summary

Meet Your Happy Chemicals (2012) provides a detailed introduction to the four chemicals responsible for our happiness: dopamine, serotonin, endorphin and oxytocin. The book explores the mechanics of what makes us happy and why, as well as why some bad things make us feel so good.

20 April, 2020 05:45 Share

What’s in it for me? Make your New Year’s resolutions stick.

In these blinks, you’ll discoverwhy it’s good to develop an addiction;the author’s greatest failure; andwho was first to run a mile in under four minutes.

30 March, 2020 01:33 Share

Your life is made up of ten areas that need to be worked on simultaneously.

Measuring your progress in ten areas of your life will allow you to see what you need to improve.These interrelated aspects are mental health, physical health, spirituality, intellectual life, marriage or partnerships, parental life, friendships, job, hobbies and personal finances. These components are key to living a fulfilling life, which is why it’s important to work consistently on improving them.

30 March, 2020 01:33 Share

rank yourself from zero to ten on each of the aspects previously mentioned. This way you will be able to identify the areas in greatest need of improvement and regularly mark your progress by comparing the results. Moreover, it will give you a clear indication as to where you should be focusing your efforts.

30 March, 2020 01:34 Share

These ten aspects are connected to and influenced by one another, and therefore improvements in one area will most likely result in growth in other areas as well.For instance, a relaxing home life will allow you to concentrate better at work, while a rich social life will lead to a higher chance of meeting a partner.Likewise, performing poorly on certain aspects could have negative impacts on other areas too. You may lack energy in the workplace if you’re not physically healthy, while not having any hobbies could negatively affect your marriage.

30 March, 2020 01:34 Share

Mental blocks may stand in our way, but we can learn to overcome them.

Most of us lug around a lot of baggage, or mental blocks, that determine what is and isn’t possible for us to achieve.One such mental block is false assumptions. Humans continuously make assumptions about the world and themselves. These are often wrong and create a barrier to our progression. These assumptions can be thoughts, such as "You’re not the creative type," "You’re ugly," "You can’t hold down a job," or "The recession means nobody will buy your product." These are almost always self-inflicted and objectively untrue in most cases.

31 March, 2020 05:56 Share

Pilots once thought it impossible to fly faster than the speed of sound, and athletes believed that no human could run a mile in under four minutes. The ones that broke through and achieved the seemingly unthinkable are those who dispensed with the negative narrative and went about proving that it was, in fact, possible.This is the mentality that former United States Air Force general officer Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager had when he broke the sound barrier in 1947. In 1954, athlete Roger Bannister also ignored the impossible narrative by running a mile in three minutes and 59 seconds. By dispelling common knowledge about physical limitations, both Yeager and Bannister succeeded where others had failed. Since then, numerous airplanes have broken the sound barrier, and many runners have recorded one-mile runs in under four minutes, now that the perceived limits have been surpassed.By revising the perceived limits, not only can you improve yourself, but you can even change the world.

31 March, 2020 05:57 Share

In 1963, it was the belief of many that the civil rights movement wouldn’t amount to anything. Most said that non-violent efforts would never achieve change and that racism was far too deeply ingrained in American society for anything to be done about it. Dr. Martin Luther King, however, refused to take these perceived beliefs as undeniable truths and led a peaceful protest march of 200,000 people to Washington, where he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. With this speech, King replaced the taken-for-granted worldview with an alternative perspective – knocking down the mental blocks in many American minds and opening them up to change.

31 March, 2020 05:57 Share

Instead of letting past failures derail you, learn from them and grow.

It might’ve been a primary school teacher who told us we’re hopeless at art, or it could’ve been last month’s failed attempt at dieting. Whatever the case, past experiences can contribute to our negative thinking and keep us from moving ahead.A bad experience in the past can affect our confidence in future circumstances.A good example of this is comparing the 80% of teenagers who make New Year’s resolutions to the 30% who do so aged 60 and older. This discrepancy is because the older people get, the more failures and setbacks they’ve experienced, and so they are less optimistic about their desires coming true. But this is a false assumption, and you shouldn’t let past experiences affect your actions in the future.Instead, use those previous failures as useful advice.

31 March, 2020 05:59 Share

The author’s greatest failure occurred when he was working all year for a client – an up-and-coming author working on landing a big publishing deal. Toward the very end of the year, the client stopped taking his calls, and just like that, the author had wasted 12 months on someone who’d decided to go with another publisher at the last minute.Now, the easy choice would’ve been to give up and look for another job. Instead, the author used what he’d learned over those 12 months to improve his company in a number of ways. For instance, he realized that he should never focus on just one client, and instead spread his net wide. He also learned never to assume that a client would be appreciative of his work. To minimize the risk, he now asks his clients to explain exactly what it is they want out of the partnership.As important as it is to set future targets for yourself, it’s also critical that the goals you set are attainable. Let’s take a look at how you can achieve this in the next blink.

31 March, 2020 05:59 Share

Set challenging goals, but keep them realistic.

Some targets that we set for ourselves are so unrealistic that even the world’s greatest geniuses wouldn’t be able to attain them. On the flip side, sometimes the goals may be so easy that we lose motivation to try and achieve them because so little effort is required.The key to ensuring high enthusiasm levels is striving for a goal that’s within your capabilities, but one that also requires a reasonable amount of effort.

31 March, 2020 06:04 Share

Let’s say you’re planning to write a book. Winning the Nobel Prize for literature is a desirable goal, but it’s also quite unreasonable for a first-time writer. Furthermore, such an ambitious target could prevent you from starting altogether. Conversely, if you set your sights too low and allow yourself to finish your first draft in 6 months, you’ll end up taking too long and probably never get around to finishing. Instead, find a happy medium, which the author calls the discomfort zone. For example, give yourself three months to finish the first draft, and then another three to complete the second.Setting goals is important, but don’t be delusional.It’s possible to exceed the discomfort zone and break into the delusional zone, if you’re not careful. Just as an athlete who overtrains will end up pulling a muscle, setting delusional targets will result in you undermining yourself.

31 March, 2020 06:04 Share

One example of this is the automobile company General Motors. In 2002, they set a target to obtain 29% of the US market. This absurdly ambitious goal almost bankrupted the company.Employees were required to wear badges with the number 29 on their lapels so that they were constantly reminded of the goal. The staff became so fixated on sales numbers that they sold cars with zero-interest loans – costing the company money and affecting its bottom line. It effectively undermined the business and put the 29% target even further out of reach than when they started the initiative. If General Motors had considered it more thoroughly, they would’ve realized that the goal was delusional and this misadventure would’ve been avoided.

31 March, 2020 06:05 Share

What’s in it for me? Productivity without more activity.

We’re forever trying to fit more into our already busy schedules. That’s why we crave – you guessed it – more productivity. But how far can we stretch ourselves and our schedules? Michael Hyatt shows us an alternative to this path to self-destruction. In Free to Focus, he argues that we’re aiming for the wrong target – we don’t need to be doing more, just more of the right thing.

27 March, 2020 01:23 Share

The most important word in our culture is "more" – we are bombarded by more products, more speed, more work and more stress. We’re forever trying to fit more into our already busy schedules. That’s why we crave – you guessed it – more productivity. But how far can we stretch ourselves and our schedules? Michael Hyatt shows us an alternative to this path to self-destruction. In Free to Focus, he argues that we’re aiming for the wrong target – we don’t need to be doing more, just more of the right thing

27 March, 2020 01:24 Share

In these blinks, you’ll find outthat time is a zero-sum game;why getting more sleep means getting more done; andwhat to do in a "distraction economy."

27 March, 2020 01:24 Share

Our concept of productivity is flawed.

Workdays are filled with an endless litany of tasks – there are meetings to attend, presentations to give, reports to write and projects to complete. But our efforts are seldom enough. Sometimes it feels like we’re in a leaky boat, frantically bucketing water over the side. The water builds up, and we start to sink. That’s the moment we start buying into the myth of productivity. We think if we could work a bit faster, we’d be okay. We start to look for life hacks, each promising to give us a few more minutes of time.

27 March, 2020 01:25 Share

Finding a quicker way to write our daily emails, for instance, just means we’ll start preparing tomorrow’s emails sooner.

27 March, 2020 01:26 Share

Jack Nevison, the founder of New Leaf Project Management, compiled the results of several major studies looking into workplace productivity. He found that workers who clock more than 55 hours per week are actually less productive than those working 50 or less, due to stress and mental fatigue.

27 March, 2020 01:26 Share

Our current myths about productivity are unsustainable and inefficient. That’s why, instead of productivity, we should start aiming for freedom. Freedom can mean many things. The freedom to focus, for example, which means finding the time to focus and accomplish uninterrupted deep work. This is the most important and often most difficult type of work, as it yields more results and involves tough mental labor. Because deep work involves intense focus, it’s draining and is only possible for a limited time each day.This makes another objective of productivity even more important – that is, the freedom to do nothing. It sounds counterintuitive, but most of our breakthrough ideas actually happen when our minds are at ease. Being productive during the week means we gain the freedom to do nothing in our time off, and that’s when the creative juices really begin to flow.

27 March, 2020 01:26 Share

Scheduling time for rejuvenation isn’t a luxury – it’s necessary.

When our calendar starts to overflow and our to-do lists become longer than shopping lists, we instinctively cut down on recreation and relaxation. For most of us, busy periods mean canceling dinner with a friend or getting a few less hours of sleep. But not only does skimping on rest and leisure damage our emotional health, it’s also completely ineffective.

27 March, 2020 01:27 Share

we think we can extend our workday by 20 percent and accomplish 20 percent more. But time is fixed, and energy levels are finite. We usually get our best work done in the morning, when our minds are fresh, while after lunch we’re slower and less productive. This is daily proof that energy levels are flexible, and focus and willpower are finite resources that must be replenished

27 March, 2020 01:29 Share

another principle of productivity that seems paradoxical: if we want to maximize our focus and become more efficient, we can’t skimp on rejuvenation. It reinvigorates our tired brains and energizes our bodies. The most important – and often ignored – form of rejuvenation is sleep.

27 March, 2020 01:30 Share

sleep deprivation makes it harder to solve problems, stay focused and make good decisions. Likewise, the neuroscientist Penelope A. Lewis argues in The Secret World of Sleep that sleep-deprived people have far fewer original ideas.

27 March, 2020 01:30 Share

Our social lives are another casualty in our endless march toward productivity. Humans are innately social creatures, and intimate relationships are essential for our emotional wellbeing. Some of our most important relationships are those we have with our family, and neglecting these for work is a terrible idea. If our personal relationships deteriorate, our energy, motivation and mental health suffer – and this affects our productivity.

27 March, 2020 01:31 Share

don’t underestimate the power of play. Play refers to any recreational activity undertaken for the pure joy of it. This includes hiking, painting, fishing or just taking the kids to the park. These outings may seem inefficient – after all, playing means you’re not working toward your looming deadline – but they are actually a powerful productivity tool. Play is one of the best ways to recharge your mental batteries and launch into your work with a new, laser-sharp focus.

27 March, 2020 01:31 Share

Being productive means identifying unnecessary tasks.

productivity should give you more time for rejuvenation, making you more focused and efficient – but how can you achieve this? The first step involves acting like a gardener.

27 March, 2020 01:33 Share

you need to prune away the nonessential tasks in your workday. Doing less to be more productive may seem strange, but it’s the most important secret to efficiency. Productivity isn’t about doing more of everything – it’s about doing more of the right things. This means identifying key tasks to focus on and trimming away everything else

27 March, 2020 01:33 Share

dentify candidates for elimination by assessing your passion and proficiency for each task. Passion refers to the high level of motivation that you bring to certain tasks. Proficiency, on the other hand, means that you’re skilled at the task and that this task significantly contributes to your work.

27 March, 2020 01:33 Share

To be free to focus, you must learn the power of yes and no.

Today, it’s easy to be overworked and overcommitted – the hard part is having the discipline to prioritize. How is it that some people manage to accomplish so much more than others in the same amount of time? One reason is that highly productive people understand the power of no.

27 March, 2020 01:34 Share

Productivity superstars can say no, both to unnecessary tasks, as we saw in the last blink, and to requests from their colleagues and clients. They know that if they allowed them to, these tasks and requests could take up all their time and energy and prevent them from focusing on truly important work.Saying no like this becomes far easier when you understand that time is a zero-sum game. You can’t add a few extra hours to the day, or find spare time like loose change in the sofa. Remember – there are only 168 hours each week!

27 March, 2020 01:35 Share

yea-sayers who struggle with no, remember that there is one lurking behind every yes. If you agree to meet for breakfast at 07:00 a.m., you’re saying no to your morning run. Saying yes to working overtime means saying no to dinner with your partner. Bear this in mind when someone next asks something of you, and be strict with yourself. If someone asks you to proofread their report this evening, but you were planning on working out, simply say that you have an appointment later. This is entirely true – you have an appointment with yourself.

27 March, 2020 01:35 Share

establishing small routines throughout your week that structure your behavior. One of the best things about rituals is that they give you clarity for the day ahead or closure on the day behind you. In the morning, this clarity translates into work that targets your crucial goals. In the evening, the sense of closure will leave you content and help you rejuvenate, ready for a productive day tomorrow.

27 March, 2020 01:36 Share

Two great rituals are the morning ritual and the workday startup ritual. The finer points will vary from person to person, but a morning ritual can include things like making coffee, meditating, journaling and reviewing the upcoming day’s goals. Likewise, a workday startup ritual can include catching up with emails, reviewing your schedule and informing colleagues of the hours when you’ll be unreachable today.

27 March, 2020 01:36 Share

Plan your day around a big three and create an ideal week to aim for.

How many of us walk into the office with no plan in place, passively reacting to the day’s developments? But this behavior is setting us up to fail. The author Robin Sharma once wrote, "you will never be able to hit a target that you cannot see." This makes a lot of sense – what’s the point of being productive if our actions are unstructured and we’re not aiming for anything specific? For productivity to have meaning and for focus to have an outlet, we need direction.

27 March, 2020 01:37 Share

Therefore, it’s essential that we plan our day beforehand. This clearly sets our target and gives us something to aim for. We can do this by planning our day around a big three – three tasks that we must accomplish that day. These are our priorities, and anything else achieved is a bonus. Three might seem like a small number, but we can choose complex tasks. The advantage of this system is that it forces us to prioritize our objectives.

27 March, 2020 01:38 Share

having an ideal week mapped out. Start with a blank week planner and design your perfect week. Don’t do this when you have existing appointments, like the dentist or a meeting – this is an ideal week!

27 March, 2020 01:38 Share

you might want to schedule all your appointments for Mondays so that they don’t interrupt the rest of your week. You could devote Fridays to working on team projects and dealing with clients, and schedule in a couple of hours overtime on Wednesdays to catch up with any backlog. Be sure to schedule in plenty of time for rejuvenation! Perhaps you’d like to go to a yoga class on Thursday evenings and hike on Saturdays.

27 March, 2020 01:39 Share

When planning our ideal week, we should also plan our days. You might want to spend the time from 07:00 a.m. to 08:00 a.m. every day learning a new skill like a language, or take an hour at 01:00 p.m. to catch up with your team.

27 March, 2020 01:40 Share

Obviously, our ideal week won’t be achievable every week – we’re constantly pitched curveballs, and issues arise that disrupt our rhythm – but that’s okay. Life isn’t perfect. When we have a clear picture in our mind of an ideal week, we gain a new sense of purpose, a target to aim for and a sense of satisfaction when we hit it

27 March, 2020 01:40 Share

If you can challenge the distraction economy, you’ll reap the rewards.

In fact, we can view the instant gratification culture that technology has fostered as a new type of economy – the distraction economy. Things like phone calls, emails, social media and news sites are all competing for our attention, and this is a valuable commodity – that’s why we call it paying attention!

27 March, 2020 01:40 Share

But these diversions, hidden behind a mask of speed and convenience, have made it harder than ever to focus and conduct deep work. We start to write out a weekly report, pause to check Facebook and suddenly find ourselves checking the news and refilling our coffee mugs. When we return, we’ve interrupted our train of thought, and we have to work to get back in the zone.For example, a study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of California, found that once interrupted, it takes an office worker an average of 23 minutes to return to her original task. If you’re interrupted five times a day, that’s over two hours of wasted time! So, what can we do to retain our focus and concentration for longer periods?

27 March, 2020 01:40 Share

Start by checking your emails only twice a day, in the morning and after lunch, and make good use of your phone’s "do not disturb" mode when you need to complete deep work. If you want to take things further, try a focus application. These are computer programs that let you customize what software and websites you can access during certain periods of the day.

27 March, 2020 01:41 Share

One 2011 study by Princeton University found that, because of the visual stimuli, a cluttered environment significantly reduces your ability to process information

27 March, 2020 01:41 Share

Final summary

Productivity isn’t about saving a few minutes on each task and using that time to blindly take on more work. We need to be smarter about which tasks we choose to focus on, ensuring that these are high-value jobs that most benefit our business. If we are more discerning about what we undertake and combine this with high-quality rest and recovery, we set ourselves up for a highly productive day – as long as we can negotiate the minefield of the distraction economy.

27 March, 2020 01:42 Share

Create a not-to-do list.As we’ve seen, the secret to enhanced productivity is not doing more, but doing more of the right things. And for productivity-minded individuals, the hardest part often comes when trying to decide which tasks and responsibilities to eliminate from their weekly schedule. To tackle this challenge, consider creating a not-to-do list. For example, don’t want to waste time dealing with issues outside your department? Put these on your not-to-do list, and stick to that. This will help shift your attitude away from a damaging "take on everything" mindset.

27 March, 2020 01:42 Share

What’s in it for me? Learn how to free up more time for yourself by becoming super efficient.

We all wish we had more time to spend on the things we love doing, whether that means being around our family or working on our hobbies. Yet, despite these wishes, time is something of which we never seem to have enough

26 March, 2020 05:12 Share

They show you how you can find time in your schedule and space in your brain to spend most of your time doing what you want to do. Based on three central aims – Optimize, Automate and Outsource – they inform you how to unleash waves of efficiency in everything you do, from organizing your finances to maintaining your health

26 March, 2020 05:12 Share

you’ll discover • why you’ll never have to personally book a table in a restaurant ever again; • why running errands is a thing of the past; and • how to turn your smartphone into a portable bank manager.

26 March, 2020 05:13 Share

Track your life to learn where you can start saving time.

Maybe you’ve heard of the 80-20 rule? It states that 80 percent of what you accomplish is the result of a mere 20 percent of all the time and energy you invest. And this isn’t only applicable to work or study. It’s the case for everything you do. So how can we figure out what time isn’t worth spending?

26 March, 2020 05:13 Share

But what does it mean to improve something as broad as our daily routine? Think of it as optimizing your processes. For a role model, look to IKEA. Each IKEA product comes with highly optimized instruction manuals for assembling each product, whether it’s a coffee table or geometric lamp. These instructions have been boiled down to their very essence – a few language-independent, easy-to-follow steps. It’s time to approach your life like IKEA approaches their manuals. Whatever the task, whether it’s writing emails or organizing meetings, you should minimize fuss and get it done in as few steps as possible.

26 March, 2020 05:14 Share

Create an external brain to save valuable space in your own.

We all like to think of ourselves as great multi-taskers with brilliant memories. But often we don’t actually have enough room to juggle everything in our minds. Life would be so much simpler if we just had an extra brain.

26 March, 2020 05:14 Share

You can consider Evernote simply as a backup of your brain. Neuroscientists have even shown that Evernote organizes information in a very similar way to the human brain, linking similar thoughts together into complex, interconnected networks. But what if you know how to organize but want to spend less time organizing?

26 March, 2020 05:15 Share

An on-demand assistant service consists of a pool of assistants. Say you’ve got a task that needs doing, like proofreading a document or improving a PowerPoint presentation. Whoever’s available in the pool will do it. For $25 a month, Fancy Hands allows you to get assistance with as many as five tasks. For $95, you can request assistance with an unlimited amount of tasks per month.

26 March, 2020 05:15 Share

Customize to save time – and money!

Say you’ve got a great idea for the perfect bedroom shelving unit to suit your needs. You know you’ll have to build it yourself, which means buying the materials, borrowing tools and spending hours preparing and cleaning up. But if only there were an easier and less expensive way! Well, there is: 3D printing. 3D printing offers a world of possibilities for creating your own customized products. Take Shapeways, a site where you simply upload a 3D model, and they print it for you.

26 March, 2020 05:16 Share

The author, for example, wanted to create a custom bracket to mount his new MacMini to the wall. He made a simple sketch of his idea and used the online outsourcing platform Fiverr to find someone who could make a complete 3D model of it. He then sent this model to Shapeways and, a week later, the completed bracket was waiting for him in his mailbox. If that sounds like a success to you, then get this: the author then used the Shapeways ecommerce platform to sell his MacMini bracket, and made $400 by selling six of them.

26 March, 2020 05:17 Share

Consider Vitamins on Demand, a service that collects all the medications and supplements you require and then organizes them into separate packs for each day. Say goodbye to loading up your holiday suitcase with all your pill bottles while worrying whether you’ve got them all. Instead, just grab the number of packs you need and head out the door!

26 March, 2020 05:17 Share

Take control of your workweek.

you simply can’t get a book written if you only work four hours each week! Nevertheless, the book made an important point: you need to make your workweek yours, and decide what to do, and when.

26 March, 2020 05:34 Share

Begin by determining which hours of the day are your best working hours. This will automatically make you more effective. Some people prefer working in the night; others, in the morning. Some like working a bit every day, while others like to squeeze a lot into shorter periods of time.Everybody works differently, so figure out what works best for you!

26 March, 2020 05:34 Share

It’s also vital to figure out what is slowing you down. Often it’s external factors

26 March, 2020 05:35 Share

And there’s also another part of your workday that’s sapping your time: the scheduling of meetings. Did you know that, on average, the normal procedure for organizing a meeting requires an exchange of seven emails? Luckily, applications such as ScheduleOnce will, as the name suggests, help you get that meeting scheduled the first time around.

26 March, 2020 05:35 Share

Errands add up, so eliminate them!

One great way is by signing up for an online delivery service. Amazon’s Subscribe & Save, for instance, delivers necessities like toilet paper, razors, shampoo and laundry detergent to your door at certain intervals.Perhaps you go through two tubes of toothpaste every month; so arrange to have those two tubes delivered to you at the end of each month and never waste time buying toothpaste again.

26 March, 2020 05:37 Share

There are some errands that you can’t automate, however. You know, those ones that catch you by surprise, forcing you to rush out and do them before it’s too late. Well, thanks to outsourcing, you don’t have to waste time on these, either.TaskRabbit is a great example of an online outsourcing marketplace for those small, unforeseeable tasks – a quick run for groceries, for instance, or a sprint to get your computer or car fixed.

26 March, 2020 05:37 Share

Stay on top of your finances with the latest tools.

Mint.com is a great tool for organizing your finances and keeping track of your financial health.Just provide Mint.com with your details and logins for bank accounts, loans and credit cards, and they’ll let you know via email when a balance is dipping toward the red, or if there’s been a big deposit or withdrawal from an account, as well as making sure that you’re getting paid.

26 March, 2020 05:37 Share

Another innovative new tool to help you stop stressing and start saving is BillShrink. BillShrink simply asks for a few personal details: your checking account information, your driving habits, how often you use your cellphone and how much you spend on other services, such as movie streaming and magazine subscriptions.Based on this information, Billshrink outlines cost-effective alternatives and outlines how much these alternatives would help you save over a two-year period; they also alert you to new deals and offers.

26 March, 2020 05:38 Share

Give yourself limits and boost your quality of life.

But there’s no need for this headache! You can overcome it simply by setting limits for yourself.Start off by setting an upper limit. This will help you locate and keep track of your possessions.Take the author’s electronic gear stash, which once occupied an entire closet. Over time, though, the closet became overcrowded, and finding a specific cable meant dragging the whole mess out of the closet and onto the floor. The author realized things had gotten out of hand, and decided to take action.So he bid his electronics goodbye and sold off most of his gear on Ebay. What was left fit into one box, which became the upper limit. If he buys a new piece of electronic gear, some other piece has got to go. This way, his stash is manageable, tidy and he can always find what he needs.

26 March, 2020 05:39 Share

By setting lower limits. The author, for example, has set a lower limit of at least one trip every month, at least 30 miles of running per week and cooking meals at home at least three days a week. By setting lower limits for your leisure time in this way, you’ll make sure your time doesn’t always get gobbled up by work.

26 March, 2020 05:40 Share

Batch your tasks to stay focused.

Have you ever had the frustrating experience of just getting into something – and then being interrupted by a distracting text or email? It ruins your focus and now you’re irritated to boot.Well, there’s a way to keep your focus from being destroyed like this: batching. Batching is the simple process of grouping similar tasks together and completing them in batches, instead of one at a time, here and there. This way, it’s easier to focus on what you’re doing right now.

26 March, 2020 05:41 Share

The author pays all his bills for the week on Fridays, instead of paying them as they come in.

26 March, 2020 05:41 Share

A great place to start is by getting rid of unnecessary paperwork. Sure, there’s a lot of talk about living in a paper-free society, but everyday we still find ourselves dealing with pesky papers. Which is why online tools are around: to help us eliminate paperwork even further.

26 March, 2020 05:41 Share

Health is the ultimate productivity secret.

It’s as simple as this: getting enough shut-eye and eating healthy determines how much energy you will have to do the things you want to do. No amount of productivity apps in the world can change this!

26 March, 2020 05:42 Share

If you want to improve your sleep, there are two simple steps that will help. Firstly, take D-vitamins with your breakfast each day. Secondly, avoid devices emitting blue light, such as TVs, iPads and computers in the hour before you go to bed.

26 March, 2020 05:42 Share

Design your own exercise regimen to include three types of movement.First, there should be a strength and skill component – something like rock climbing or parkour will do the trick.Second, include high-intensity interval training – a short interval of exerting yourself to the maximum, followed by an interval of active rest.And, finally, you should engage in some kind of mobility training – something like yoga or just a good old-fashioned stretching session.

26 March, 2020 05:44 Share

If you want to work effectively, limit yourself to the essential.

Many of us use our energy to take care of everything and be everywhere without differentiating between the essential and the inessential. Productivity techniques are designed to help us take care of as much of everything as possible every day.But having a lot to do isn’t the same as actually getting a lot done. Most of the time, people who have a lot to do end up doing a lot of unimportant, unnecessary things.In order to stop that from happening, we have to set limits for ourselves and force ourselves to focus on the essential things.And by limiting ourselves to the essential, we manage to achieve the greatest impact with the least amount of effort.

25 March, 2020 00:33 Share

People who limit themselves learn to concentrate on what’s truly important to them in all areas of life. By consciously tackling fewer things in a day, they can do a good job of taking care of what’s truly important. Because limiting our focus to our most important projects – as opposed to working on 20 projects at once – will enable us to finish these few projects quickly and successfully.Deliberately limiting ourselves forces us to work effectively on the things that will really help us move forward.

25 March, 2020 00:35 Share

If you want to concentrate on what’s necessary, get your priorities straight.

If you want to concentrate on the essential, you have to figure out exactly what things are essential to you. As soon as you know what you find indispensable, you can begin to get rid of all the things in your life that are superfluous.

25 March, 2020 00:36 Share

How can you tell what’s essential? By judging how things change your life and whether they match up with your long-term goals.

25 March, 2020 00:36 Share

What are my values and goals?What’s important to me? What do I love?What has the biggest influence on my life?What things have the biggest influence in the long term?What do I really need? What are just desires?

25 March, 2020 00:37 Share

In order to become clear about these things, make a habit of taking the time to take a step back and observe your life from the outside.That goes for all areas of life. You can also ask yourself:What are my main goals?Which of my obligations are really essential?Which of my projects match up with my long-term goals?How much email do I really need in my life?What possessions do I really need?

25 March, 2020 00:37 Share

If you know your priorities, you can judge how important all your tasks, projects and other obligations really are. It’s worth investing time to gain a clear idea about these important questions.

25 March, 2020 00:39 Share

Live your priorities: make and be clear about decisions.

Living without restrictions is like shopping without a credit limit. Because the only way we end up focusing on what’s truly important is by being forced to budget. Limiting ourselves allows us to focus our energy on the important things in life. In other words, we can stop wasting time and energy on things that aren’t actually worth it. The point of this is actually not to restrict ourselves; rather, by deliberately setting limits, we free up time and energy to do important things and get rid of the unimportant ones. By giving up unimportant projects, we free up time to spend with our loved ones.

25 March, 2020 00:40 Share

If, for instance, your family is your top priority, you shouldn’t be wasting your free time doing favors for random acquaintances instead of spending it with your children. That also means that we have to make sure other people understand that our time is limited and our priorities are clear. In this way, the people around us appreciate our time and energy, and stop bothering us with unimportant things. People who learn how to say no offend others far less than they think. On the contrary, they often earn respect from the people in our immediate environment: they figure out that we can’t grant them every wish or be diverted from our important tasks for every little thing.We thus have to learn to prioritize, say no, and be clear to others about our limits.

25 March, 2020 00:40 Share

If you want to change your life, change your habits.

If you want to make a lasting change in yourself, you have to learn to form and develop new habits.That works best when you limit yourself to working on one habit at a time. If you manage to do one new habit each day, they’ll become second nature.

25 March, 2020 00:41 Share

Habits that produce a positive change in life for many people include the following:Only checking emails twice per dayTaking care of the day’s three most important tasks every morningDoing five to ten minutes of exercise every dayEating fruit every day

25 March, 2020 00:41 Share

Develop your habits slowly but surely.

If you want to acquire a new habit, the smaller you start, the greater your prospects of success. Because, as stated above, big changes often lead to failure, and failure is demotivating, causing you to want to ditch your plans.Changes are most successful when you work consistently on one new habit. And to make sure your well of enthusiasm doesn’t run dry, keep on working in very small steps.

25 March, 2020 00:42 Share

If you want to form a habit of, say, exercising every day, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting with only five minutes of exercise per day: after all, it’s so little you’re sure to do it. Using this technique, you can continue progressing while experiencing lots of little moments of success along the way.Habits lie at the heart of change – and consistency is the secret ingredient to creating new habits.

25 March, 2020 00:42 Share

Focus on one success at a time: think in goals, sub-goals, projects and tasks.

Setting goals is easy; achieving them is exponentially harder. We need energy, focus and motivation – all of which we only have in limited supply.

25 March, 2020 00:43 Share

we’re most likely to achieve something when we focus exclusively on that one specific goal. If you have a goal that can be achieved in, say, six to 12 months, it would make sense to put all your energy into achieving that one goal.

25 March, 2020 00:43 Share

By achieving a sub-goal every week, you come a small step closer to achieving your main goal every week.

25 March, 2020 00:44 Share

Then identify projects for the actual work you have to do. You have to define a concrete status you want to have achieved by the end of the project. In order to achieve this status, you should create a number of concrete tasks that can be taken care of as quickly as possible. Ideally, every task should be short enough to finish in 30 minutes.

25 March, 2020 00:44 Share

In order to guarantee that you finish all your projects, you should never work on too much at once. Choose no more than three projects and don’t begin any new projects until these three have been completed.

25 March, 2020 00:44 Share

Stay focused – live in the now and concentrate fully on every task.

When doing your tasks, stay focused on the important, the essential. The most effective way to start your day is to take care of the most important task, then the second-most important one, etcetera.While working on one task, concentrate completely on that one task. Multitasking and constant interruptions make you inefficient.

25 March, 2020 00:45 Share

If you’re tempted by distractions, pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and redirect your full attention to that one activity.

25 March, 2020 00:45 Share

For spontaneous ideas and other disturbances that can prevent you from getting your work done, keep a notebook or a piece of paper nearby at all times. That way you can write down whatever pops into your mind and quickly refocus your attention on what you should be doing

25 March, 2020 00:45 Share

In order to concentrate fully on every task, it’s important for us to learn to live in the now and focus on the present rather than incessantly thinking about the past or future. That makes us happy and enables us to immerse ourselves fully in our work.We should practice focusing on the now in our everyday life. When we eat, we should eat and not do anything else; when we exercise, we should exercise and not do anything else. We should practice being focused entirely on that one particular activity. This type of concentration is like meditation and helps us to live in the now and enjoy it.

25 March, 2020 00:46 Share

Start every day with your most important tasks.

We don’t do projects – we do tasks. And doing so effectively requires us to concentrate fully on one task at a time. Multitasking doesn’t work.

25 March, 2020 00:46 Share

The smaller the task, the greater the likelihood we can work on and complete it.One particularly effective method is to define the three MITs – or Most Important Tasks – that you should take care of first thing in the morning before tackling other tasks. By doing the most important tasks at the beginning of the day, you can ensure that you’re a small step closer to achieving your goal – regardless of what happens during the rest of the day.MITs should be as closely related to your goals as possible and help you get a step closer to achieving them. You’d be wise to define your daily MITs a day in advance so you can get started on them first thing in the morning.

25 March, 2020 00:46 Share

Boost your efficiency by minimizing the time you spend on emails.

try to minimize the amount of time you spend on emails.

25 March, 2020 00:47 Share

Start by reducing the number of inboxes to one by pooling together all your email addresses into one program. Then, go through your emails as quickly as possible and, whenever you open your inbox, always empty it out.

25 March, 2020 00:48 Share

Set up a filter to sort out certain senders

25 March, 2020 00:48 Share

Reduce the flow of incoming emails by deleting all irrelevant messages immediately (as in forwarded images or joke emails)

25 March, 2020 00:48 Share

Final summary

Less is more. By focusing on the essential, we achieve our goals with less effort and give ourselves the flexibility we need to lead a fulfilled life.

25 March, 2020 00:49 Share

How can setting limits lead to working more effectively?If you want to work effectively, limit yourself to the essential.If you want to concentrate on what’s necessary, get your priorities straight.Live your priorities: make and be clear about decisions.

25 March, 2020 00:49 Share

How can creating habits change behavior?If you want to change your life, change your habits.Develop your habits slowly but surely.

25 March, 2020 00:49 Share

How can planning and focus lead to higher productivity levels?Focus on one success at a time: think in goals, sub-goals, projects and tasks.Stay focused – live in the now and concentrate fully on every task.Start every day with your most important tasks.Boost your efficiency by minimizing the time you spend on emails.

25 March, 2020 00:49 Share

What’s in it for me: discover how you can better wield your willpower to achieve your goals.

In The Willpower Instinct you'll read why you shouldn't deprive yourself of your favorite foods when dieting, and you'll discover why thinking that you hold no prejudices will make you act in a more prejudiced way

23 March, 2020 01:28 Share

Why is willpower important? Research shows that people with stronger willpower are better off in almost every aspect of life: they’re happier and healthier, have more satisfying and long-lasting relationships, are more successful, make more money – and even live longer. In a nutshell, if you want to improve your life, your willpower is a good place to start.

23 March, 2020 01:28 Share

Willpower consists of three forces: I will, I won’t and I want.

Life is full of temptations: you may be offered a chocolate chip cookie right after you've started a diet, or find a pack of cigarettes just as you've resolved to quit smoking. These situations are willpower challenges – a challenge in which your immediate desires fight with your long-term goals. So what makes you able to exert self-control in these situations? The strength of your willpower, which consists of three powers: "I won’t," "I will," and "I want."

23 March, 2020 01:29 Share

You can determine your most important "I won’t" challenge by asking yourself: Which habit that is hurting your health, happiness or career would you most like to give up?

23 March, 2020 01:30 Share

The second element of willpower is your "I will" power – the ability to do what you dislike now for a better future.Your "I will" power helps you accomplish those tasks that are both unpleasant and necessary to achieve your goals – for example, studying to pass exams and get a degree.You can find your most important "I will" challenge by asking yourself: Which habit should you stop putting off in order to improve your life?

23 March, 2020 01:30 Share

Finally, there’s your "I want" power – the capacity to remember what you truly want.What you truly want is what is best for you in the long term – despite present temptations. To resist the present you need a clear long-term goal that guides your actions. It’s this goal that fuels your "I want" power by reminding you what’s at stake.

23 March, 2020 01:31 Share

Meditating increases awareness and helps avoid distractions – which in turn boosts self-control.

This was shown in a study where students were instructed to remember a telephone number while making a choice between which snack to eat during the experiment: chocolate or fruit. The students with their mind distracted chose the chocolate 50 percent more often than a group of students who were given no memorization task.

23 March, 2020 01:32 Share

But there is a way to deal with distractions – by raising your awareness through meditation.Neuroscientists have discovered that people who meditate have more grey matter – indicating higher levels of performance – in the regions of the brain responsible for self-awareness.Meditation cultivates a moment-to-moment self-awareness which helps us realize when we are being distracted and refocus our energy back on the task at hand.In fact, scientists have shown that it only takes three hours of regular meditation to improve self-control and develop a higher attention span, and after 11 hours of practice the changes are already observable in the brain.

23 March, 2020 01:32 Share

In such situations the fruits of meditation can help again: by taking a breath and refocusing your concentration on the long-term goal at hand, you can break the distraction cycle and regain control over your impulses.When your mind is preoccupied you lose significant amounts of willpower. Avoiding decision making when distracted and increasing your self-awareness through meditation can help to save you from willpower failures.

23 March, 2020 01:32 Share

Willpower is a biological instinct that protects us from harm in the long term.

What does a saber-toothed tiger have in common with a chocolate cookie? Each of them can interfere with your goal of a long and healthy life.That’s why evolution has given us the instincts to fight both the saber-toothed tiger and the temptation of a chocolate cookie.You have probably heard of the fight-or-flight response, an instinct that kicks in when we face scary or life-threatening situations. Basically, it’s your body’s built-in ability to devote all its energy to getting your butt out of an emergency.What most of us don't know is that willpower itself is based on a biological instinct.

23 March, 2020 01:33 Share

What does a saber-toothed tiger have in common with a chocolate cookie? Each of them can interfere with your goal of a long and healthy life.That’s why evolution has given us the instincts to fight both the saber-toothed tiger and the temptation of a chocolate cookie.You have probably heard of the fight-or-flight response, an instinct that kicks in when we face scary or life-threatening situations. Basically, it’s your body’s built-in ability to devote all its energy to getting your butt out of an emergency.

23 March, 2020 01:33 Share

What most of us don't know is that willpower itself is based on a biological instinct.One study showed that facing a willpower challenge can activate a specific state in your brain and body that gives you a willpower boost.This state is called the pause-and-plan response, and as its name suggests, it is very different from the fight-or-flight response:While the fight-or-flight response heightens your awareness of an external threat and increases your speed (to avoid the tiger), the pause-and-plan response shifts your focus to the internal conflict between your rational and impulsive selves, and slows you down to help control your impulse (to avoid the cookie).

23 March, 2020 01:33 Share

So how can we strengthen this willpower instinct to better slow down our minds and make the best decisions?By paying close attention to everything that places stress on our minds and body, like anger, anxiety, chronic pain and illness.

23 March, 2020 01:35 Share

there are plenty of ways to improve your stress-resistance and thereby your willpower. Meditation, exercise, a good night's sleep, healthy food and quality time with your family and friends can all help reduce your levels of stress.And getting active outdoors for only five minutes a day will give you a quick willpower boost too – so get out there

23 March, 2020 01:35 Share

Willpower is like a muscle – it can be trained but also overused.

For your willpower, it’s just the same: after flexing your willpower muscle too much you become exhausted and can’t control yourself anymore. And if you hit the willpower gym, you could improve the strength of your willpower muscle.

23 March, 2020 01:36 Share

why does overusing your willpower cause you to run out of it?Because every successful attempt to exert self-control draws from the same limited source. This means that resisting a temptation will not only weaken your ability to avoid other temptations, but also prompt procrastination and other willpower failures. And this willpower exhaustion happens all the time. This is because many daily tasks you would not think of as willpower challenges – having to commute, sit through a boring meeting or choose between 20 brands of shampoo – all draw from our limited daily willpower reserve.

23 March, 2020 01:36 Share

although we are constantly draining our willpower, we can do our best to maintain it at a high level by keeping our blood sugar steady and our energy levels high. Low-glycemic foods such as nuts, cereals, fruits, vegetables and high-fiber grains all contribute to resourcing our willpower.

23 March, 2020 01:37 Share

there is another way of improving our willpower – by training the willpower muscle.Just as it’s possible to train your arm muscle through weight lifting, it’s possible to train your willpower muscle with willpower challenges.By performing small but regular willpower challenges you can gradually improve your self control. For example, keep a forbidden candy jar in an easily visible location you’re never allowed to touch – no matter how tempting it looks. Regularly practicing with this small temptation will train your willpower muscle, which will help you cope when it comes to larger willpower challenges.

23 March, 2020 01:37 Share

Don't indulge in the present because you think you've done well in the past.

Actually, thinking that you are "virtuous" lowers your self-awareness and discipline.This was shown in a study where a group of university students were asked to agree or disagree with strongly sexist statements. Not surprisingly, very few agreed.

23 March, 2020 01:38 Share

A control group then received milder versions of the same sexist statements, and this time many more people agreed.But when both groups had to make a decision in a hypothetical hiring situation, it was paradoxically the students who disagreed with the highly sexist statements who were more likely to discriminate against female candidates than the students from the group who had agreed to the milder versions. And the exact same pattern emerged when racist statements were used.This is because when we feel we are being virtuous enough, we see less need to control ourselves.

23 March, 2020 01:38 Share

Another example of using good past behavior to excuse present bad behavior is when we give ourselves something "bad" as a reward for being good – for example, eating a doughnut after a long workout.However, this is counter-productive: giving yourself a reward which undermines your long-term goal is not a promising strategy for success. So don’t allow your successes to loosen your self-discipline. Otherwise you might find yourself nullifying your progress by allowing your self-indulgent behavior. Instead, stick to a rule which serves your goal, but is not so challenging that you can’t stick to it every single day without failure.

23 March, 2020 01:39 Share

When the reward system of your brain takes over, temptation becomes almost irresistible.

Why do we often feel bad and guilty after satisfying our immediate desires, like buying a new sweater we don’t need, or spending a lazy evening in front of the TV? And why do we do it again and again, despite knowing better?Because your brain’s reward system is not always your friend – and sometimes it leads you in the wrong direction.

23 March, 2020 01:40 Share

The system releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine which activates the areas of the brain responsible for attention, motivation and action. These dopamine releases can be triggered by anything we have associated with feeling good: a 70-percent-off sale sign at a mall, the smell of a rib-eye steak (or a vegan burger), or an attractive face smiling at you. And when this dopamine is released, the object that pulled the trigger immediately becomes very desirable – even if it’s against our long-term interest, like unhealthy food, internet binges, binge drinking or one night stands. This is why we engage in activities that seem to be irresistible at first glance, but afterward leave us feeling guilty and dissatisfied. Our prehistoric ancestors, however, were not troubled by this reward mechanism. In fact, being attracted to sweet things was to their advantage, as sweet fruit and berries were a crucial part of their diet. Our ancestors were also more free to pursue sexual impulses without modern-day societal constraints. But even though this impulsive mechanism isn’t as useful in our day and age, it’s still there, and we have to make sure it doesn’t push us toward unhealthy or unwise choices

23 March, 2020 01:40 Share

combining unpleasant tasks with something that gets your dopamine firing. For example, bring your boring paperwork to your favorite café and finish it over a delicious cup of hot chocolate.

23 March, 2020 01:41 Share

Feeling bad undermines willpower by triggering cravings and high expectations.

Stress is one of the biggest threats to your willpower because it induces dreaded cravings.How?Stress makes you feel bad about yourself, which motivates you to do something to make yourself feel better.Unfortunately sometimes the easiest way to feel better is by doing the very thing you’ll later feel bad about.For example, losing money at the casino can make you feel so upset that you continue gambling in order to win a game – and thereby relieve the stress.But this impulse might actually lead you to greater and greater risks, and eventually lose you a fortune.So how can you overcome this? When you feel stressed, don’t give in to immediate cravings. Instead try out stress-relief strategies that have a more sustainable effect, like exercise or meditation. These activities might involve more effort, but will leave you with a feeling of satisfaction, not guilt.

23 March, 2020 01:42 Share

don’t make unrealistic resolutions to counter stress – you’re more likely to give up early.

23 March, 2020 01:42 Share

for the higher we set our goal, the more difficult it is to stay on track. Failure to meet our expectations then leads us to frustration, guilt and self-doubt, and soon we typically abandon our efforts altogether.To avoid this fate, remember: when you fail to achieve your goals, don’t despair. Just forgive yourself and try again.

23 March, 2020 01:43 Share

When we are too focused on the present moment, we make bad long-term decisions.

We don’t see our future selves as ourselves, but as distant, different people. Our brain perceives them as strangers due to our inability to observe their thoughts and feelings.This can lead to us putting off tasks, hoping that our future-self will have more willpower to deal with them – or even worse, racking up debt and hoping our future selves will be able to pay.These hopes lead nowhere because your future-self is not different from your present self, and will also struggle when facing challenges, be it mustering the willpower to do an unpleasant task or balancing the budget

23 March, 2020 01:43 Share

: imagine your future-self thinking back on the decisions you are making today and their consequences.

23 March, 2020 01:44 Share

When a tempting object is staring right at you, resistance often feels futile because the reward system in our brain reacts so strongly to visible rewards.Why?Because visible rewards make us overestimate the benefits of instant gratification and underestimate the value of exerting self-control. This leads us to make decisions that our future selves later regret.

23 March, 2020 01:44 Share

temptation becomes weaker if you then create some distance between you and the object – for example, by making it less visible or more difficult to reach.This was shown in a study where office workers had access to candy. When the candy was placed out of sight inside a desk drawer instead of on the top of the table, the subjects’ candy consumption was reduced by one third.

23 March, 2020 01:44 Share

Attempts to push aside unwanted desires actually make them stronger.

for the next five minutes don't think about white bears. Can you do it? Most people fail in this task. Even though we never usually think about white bears, if you actively try to not think about them, it becomes almost impossible to stop. The same is true for your cravings: though suppression might seem to work at first, it actually makes them worse.This was shown by one researcher who believed that thought suppression compels us to do the very thing we are trying to not think about

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

So how can you overcome cravings without pushing them away?When you’re on a diet, don’t deprive yourself of your favorite foods because it will only increase your cravings.Instead of deciding "you won't" eat fast food or cupcakes, devote your energy to the idea that "you will" eat more healthy food. A decline in unhealthy food will automatically follow and you'll have a much easier time sticking to such a positive challenge.Another way to overcome cravings is by merely observing them: When the unwanted urge appears, allow yourself to notice it. Observe your breath and what you are feeling. Then imagine the urge is a cloud which dissolves and passes on by.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

This technique, inspired by mindfulness traditions, is especially useful if you want to rid yourself of an unpleasant habit like smoking.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

Willpower is contagious: our social environment can increase and decrease our willpower.

tudies showed that if we observe other people acting impulsively, we are more likely to be impulsive ourselves and neglect our long-term goals for a pleasurable moment. What's more, the more we like the person observed, the stronger this effect is, and the more willpower we lose.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

who we interact with influences our beliefs, goals and actions to a remarkable degree. And even characteristics like a strong or weak willpower can be "picked up" from our social context.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

his mechanism can also be harnessed for good, for example, with dieting: research shows that having a close friend or family member who recently lost a lot of weight increases your chances of also losing weight.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

do you know someone you admire for their willpower? Try thinking about them more often – because research shows that just thinking about someone with good self-control increases your own willpower.Another way of harnessing the force of willpower contagion is to get friends and family involved with your willpower challenges.

23 March, 2020 01:45 Share

So if you and your loved ones share a willpower challenge, make it a group project!

23 March, 2020 01:46 Share

Final Summary

By learning how to concentrate on our long-term goals, maintain our willpower supply and train our willpower muscle, we can gain greater control over our bad habits – and live more fulfilling lives.

23 March, 2020 01:46 Share

Keep close track of how you are managing your willpower challenges.For at least one day, try to observe your decisions very closely. Were there situations you could have avoided to better maintain your willpower supply? Were there times when you gave in to an impulse because you lost sight of your long-term goal? Pinpoint your weaknesses and visualize yourself overcoming them.

23 March, 2020 01:46 Share