Munro Stewart

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

Positively influence other people's lives by telling them you believe in them, you think they are a good person, they possess particular good qualities, and you expect they will perform well because they have the ability to do so.

• The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse.
• It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life.
• According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly.
• A similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations.
• The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance.
• Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

Pygmalion Effect - Wikipedia

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

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

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

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