By Melissa
It’s around this time New Year’s Resolutions start to slip.
Remember counting down to when the clock struck midnight? The second it happened, a burst of fireworks shot into the sky. They exploded into an array of colors, signaling the promises, hopes, and dreams of a new year to come.
But as January slowly crawls towards February, our enthusiasm from that moment wanes. The New Year, with its new hopes, turns into “maybe later”. We begin to back out of our aspirations.
By Melissa
Forget the aesthetics. Forget the newest design trends buzzing around. Forget the fancy workplaces in countdown lists.
If you run your own business or work remotely, chances are your workspace isn’t going to look like those you see in glossy magazine pages. Besides, do you really want a full playground in your room?
Well, maybe you do. Regardless, the point is that you don’t have to turn your office upside down to improve your workspace. With a few tweaks, you can create an environment that helps you become happier, healthier, and perform optimally.
By Melissa
When you gaze at a painting, are you the one admiring it or are you the one putting on the final touches?
When you watch a video, are you the one pointing and criticizing, or are you the one making the edits?
When you see what someone else did, do you wish you did that, or are you figuring out how to replicate the steps they took?
It’s easy to let things come to you, like a gust of wind that blows in your direction. It’s much more difficult to produce things. Anything you create and show to the outside world will get exposed to harsh elements, such as criticism, shame, and doubt.
Still, it is something you must do if you want to achieve anything.
By Melissa
What is the easiest way to absorb information, learn from others’ experiences, and escape to faraway places?
The answer is simple: read. Read, and you’ll be transported to worlds as extraordinary as the mind can conjure. Read, and you’ll glean more about a topic than you would otherwise.
That’s all well and good, but there’s just one problem. Time. Every day, we have a never-ending list of tasks, errands, and chores. As we get older, the responsibilities pile up, leaving little space in our schedule to read. Even if a book looks enticing, we put it aside until it can be squeezed in later.
While it can be hard to find a quiet afternoon, catching up on a book can be combined with regular routines to save time. Here are five ways you can sneak in that book you’ve been meaning to read:
By Melissa
You are the product of your environment.
The environment we live in influences, and in some ways, reflects who we are. Similar to how our bodies reflect the foods we eat, the places we visit and the people we meet reflect the way we think and believe.
Being raised in an inner-city neighborhood means you’ll likely live in the same neighborhood as an adult, while growing up in a middle-class area is a strong predictor of your future lifestyle. It’s difficult to escape the chains in which we are bound.
So how do you thrive in an environment that doesn’t support your goals?
In Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the protagonist Edmond Dantès is set up for a promising future. He’s soon to become captain of a ship, newly engaged, and popular amongst his peers. However, his perfect life is about to take a turn for the worse.
By Melissa
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska
Once in a while, we sit down and try to figure out what we need to start doing. We ponder our past actions and their results, where we are right now, and what we should do next.
While these are logical steps to take, we neglect the fact that putting more things into our lives means we have to take out other components. After all, we only have so much time and energy in the day. And in order to make space for what we want to do, we need to discard our bad habits first.
By Melissa
Music has a way of permeating through empty corners and filling up environments with substance. It can help you relax, make you well up in tears, or feel alive. But can it make you more productive?
We use music to set the tone of our environment and our mood, whether we’re unwinding after work or throwing a party. But in an age when many of us spend our time staring at a computer screen, music has also become a mode of escape from outside distractions or dull tasks.
So how useful is music when it comes to focusing on your work?
Let’s take a look at the science behind music and productivity.
By Melissa
It was the first day of class.
We sat quietly, listening to the professor explain the syllabus. He raised the required textbook up in one hand and the workbook in the other, telling us that we needed to purchase them from the bookstore.
I had enrolled into Spanish class as an elective and found myself sitting with about 15 other students. As he spoke about the things we were going to learn, someone’s hand shot up. The professor put down his books and peered at the student. “Yes,” he said in a firm voice.
She put down her hand and asked the question that sat on everyone’s minds. “When is the first test?”
The professor gave her a stern look and shook his head. “No.” After a pause, he replied: “Every day is a test.”
By Melissa
In 1998, Google was put up to a large task: to create a search engine that would be used by people all over the world.
They weren’t the first company to launch a search engine. Far from it. In the previous years, numerous other companies had launched various search engines that were already being used.
It wasn’t long before Google’s search engine became a leader in the industry, though. Users remarked on how easy it was to use Google for internet search. The homepage was so simple, so clean, and it delivered exactly what people wanted.
On the surface, the design looks incredibly basic. There are only a few things on the page, and its design almost seems like a no-brainer. But underneath that simple design was a lot of planning, systems, and just saying “no.”
By Melissa
These days, working long hours is seen as a badge of honor. Having little time to relax has become a source of pride that people frequently refer to when discussing work. You might hear about a hospital worker enduring 36-hour shifts, start-ups that use all-nighters to get ahead, or a company employee who burns the midnight oil to stay competitive.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” seems to be the popular rallying cry of today.
A lot of the remedies we use to counteract low energy are immediate and have a short-term effect. For instance, a grueling week’s work is remedied by downing energy drinks to stay afloat. A grumbling stomach is fixed by ordering a cheesy pizza dinner.
These are quick methods that keep us going through long hours. The problem is, they aren’t sustainable in the long run. It’s like treating a wound with a band-aid: it’s fine for now, but something’s got to be done about it sooner or later.
Think of your energy levels like a bank account. A healthy account has a sufficient amount of funds, where more money is deposited than taken out. Run your account into the negatives, however, and you face penalties that drain your account even more. Too many lapses in payments and your account can shut down completely. [Read more…]