Category: 🌱 Life

Write down a list of your goals and dreams, because writing thoughts and ideas down is the first step to making them come to life.

• A list of your short and long-term goals can be a great motivator, as well as a trigger list to help generate new projects.
• I also like to have a list of areas of focus, the different roles that I play, each of which comes with a different set of tasks and goals.

12 Lists that help you get things done - Lifehack.org

Keep a dated list of tasks and projects you have completed and random things you have done, because looking back on your achievements or even little events from your life may provide a sense of accomplishment and purpose.

• There's something to be said for seeing how much you've gotten done at the end of the day.
• You know how satisfying it is to cross out items on your to do list, and then look back at the list to see everything you completed?
• A "done" list, or "anti-to-do list" as Marc Andreessen calls it, works in a similar fashion: you simply take note of each thing you get done during the day.
• Start out with the date and just list your "done" items underneath.
• Not only will this help you review your productivity at the end of each day and make you feel better about what you got done, but it can be really useful to keep around as a work log.
• You might want to look back in weeks or months to come to see what you were working on or how long a project took to complete.

Clever uses for plain text files that can increase your productivity - Lifehacker

Spend some time in solitude to think about and create ideas, make plans or goals, and come up with solutions to solve your problems.

• Like many inventors and creative types, Nikola Tesla was an advocate for solitude when creating and working.
• Most famously, he's quoted as saying "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.
• No big laboratory is needed in which to think.
• Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind.
• Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."

Nikola Tesla's Best Productivity Tricks - Lifehacker

Give people sincere praise about something they have done well or that you appreciate about them before giving them negative feedback or an idea for something they could change or do differently.

• "Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise."
• One well known strategy for feedback is the “criticism sandwich,” popularized by the above quote from cosmetics maven Mary Kay Ash.
• In the sandwich, you begin with praise, address the problem, and follow up with more praise.
• In fact, the more of the conversation you can frame positively, the more likely your recipient is to be in the right frame of mind to make the change you’re looking for.

How to Give and Receive Feedback at Work: The Psychology of Criticism - Buffer

Live your life by being true to yourself and following your dreams and passions, in order to make your life and the lives of others better and happier, instead of only doing things that other people want or expect you to do.

• I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all.
• When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.
• Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
• It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way.
• From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late.
• Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

Top 5 regrets of the dying - Huffington Post

Choose to be happy with your current situation and life, as research has shown happiness may come down to your attitude and perception, not our faulty estimation of what we think we want, even big changes like getting a dream job, goal, partner, or money.

• Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want.
• Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned.

The surprising science of happiness - Dan Gilbert - YouTube

Have a growth mindset by believing that you can grow, learn new things, improve your skills and knowledge, and realizing that temporary and recurring failure are a necessary part of learning and growing.

• Dweck, like many adults, had learned to hide her frustration and anger, to politely say "I'm not sure I want to play this anymore" instead of knocking over the board.
• She figured the successful kids would be the same - they’d have tactics for coping with failure instead of getting beaten down by it.
• But what she found was radically different.
• The successful kids didn’t just live with failure, they loved it!
• When the going got tough, they didn’t start blaming themselves; they licked their lips and said "I love a challenge."
• They’d say stuff like "The harder it gets the harder I need to try."

Believe you can change - Aaron Swartz

The solution or explanation with the fewest amount of steps or assumptions should often be preferred in order to simplify the solution down to its essential factor or factors.

• In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements.
• It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae).
• Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", although Occam never used these exact words.
• Popularly, the principle is sometimes inaccurately paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one."
• This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should prefer the one that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions.

Occam's Razor - Wikipedia

Consider using simple text files to help you get things done and keep track of your tasks, todo lists, projects, and goals, instead of using a complicated tasks app.

• While I love the apps mentioned above, I personally look for super simple.
• So I’ve settled on a setup taken from Gina and Adam’s articles on Lifehacker (read the tutorials: Geek to Live and Hack Attack).
• Text files: Basically, I organize my tasks in a series of text files.
• That’s because they’re super simple, easy to manipulate, and small.

Amazing Mac apps for getting things done (plus a custom-rigged setup) - Zen Habits

Remember everyone is emotional and people are all going through the ups and downs of life, so try not to take it personally when people get angry, and try to comfort or support others when they are in a bad mood.

• Perhaps this is an exaggeration.
• But the core of the message is that people tend to have stronger feelings about something than they let on.
• People who regularly have outbursts of anger, depression or flamboyant enthusiasm are generally frowned upon in most cultures.
• This especially applies to men (for women trying to figure us out).
• The application of this rule is to not assume everything is fine just because someone isn’t having a nervous breakdown.
• We all have our individual problems, angst and upsets that are normally contained.

The critical 7 rules to understand people - Scott H. Young