Emmy winning artist Chris Timmons has created a humorous look at the Presidents using GIF art. You can see more of Chris Timmons’ work on Instagram, and all the Presidents on his website. See the previous post on Timmons’ work.
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Posted by Lisa.
crssEmmy winning artist Chris Timmons has created a humorous look at the Presidents using GIF art. You can see more of Chris Timmons’ work on Instagram, and all the Presidents on his website. See the previous post on Timmons’ work.
Find art that makes you smile - follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Posted by Lisa.
In the average American home, there are over 300,000 items.[1] That’s true even though 1 in 10 Americans (and rising) rent offsite storage[4] and even though the size of the American house has tripled in the past 50 years.[2] Do some math too: the average American home ownership tenure is about 9-10 years, meaning people are accruing 30,000+ items each year to reach the 300,000 total above.[3]
What is all this stuff, though? It can take many forms: loose change we’ve been hoarding, kids’ old toys, outfits that don’t fit or went out of style, screws and nails, stationery, or items that we have an emotional attachment to, like an old a concert program or record player.
People tend to keep more things because they believe that some day in the future, these things will be useful or gain value. This is right to an extent. These items, especially ones with emotional memories, are not trash, but whether or not these things are useful for their owners is a question.
It’s not easy to kickstart decluttering and deal with all the 300,000+ items, most people run into these three problems when they are trying to determine usefulness of an item:
But here’s a way out.
The best acronym to move past this is using the framework RFASR:
As you ask yourself these questions, plug in this equation:
R (Low) + F (Low) + AC (Low) +SC (High) + RC (High) = Not Worth It
For example, a typical declutter scenario for many families is clothes, which often flows like this:
In such a situation, you get rid of the clothing. It’s not going to add value or usefulness in the future.
If there’s an emotional attachment (e.g. a gift from someone you care about) try to remember this: when it was presented as a gift, it already achieved its primary goal. Two or more years later, it’s just clothing taking up space. That doesn’t change the connection to the gift or the person who gifted it.
While the declutter formula can help you get rid of the stuff you have already collected and help you decide whether you should collect or buy things, there’s always a dilemma when you want something more than you need it.
To combat it, consider waiting a week to make the purchase. In the week, think about that equation and think about the relative degree of want and need. If you decide to purchase the new item, get rid of one item at your house. One in and one out is a relatively simple rule here.
The real value of the declutter formula is more than saving money and space. It is also saving you mental energy.
There’s a massive amount of mental energy involved in organizing and cleaning old clothes and items, or even preparing yourself to do it. There’s also a large amount of mental energy involved in ignoring what you need to do, which is a common tactic of those with clutter. Think about this: if I hand you a white piece of paper with a large black dot and say “Don’t think about the dot,” you will have to try hard not to think of that black dot. That’s plenty of energy spent on trying not to think of the dot.
It’s the same with getting your house in shape. You know all that clutter is there. You know you need to declutter. But you keep finding ways to ignore or procrastinate on it, and that’s actually reducing your attention and priority away from where it should be.
The best way to re-focus on what matters to you and reduce distractions is by repeatedly applying the formula, you’ll have a house full of (a) things you like and (b) things that are valuable to you. That’s a huge win in the decluttering game.
| [1] | ^ | Los Angeles Times: For many people, gathering possessions is just the stuff of life |
| [2] | ^ | NPR: Behind the Ever-Expanding American Dream House |
| [3] | ^ | Credit Sesame: How Long Are Americans Staying in Their Homes? |
| [4] | ^ | The New York Times Magazine: The Self-Storage Self |
The post A Declutter Formula to Help You Throw Stuff Away Without Regret appeared first on Lifehack.
Kate is a hard-working manager working at a startup company. She toils at work but gets that nagging feeling that she’s missing out on living her life. And then perversely, when she’s not working, she tries to switch off ‘work-mode’ to enjoy her passions, friends, family… but eventually she finds that she just doesn’t have the energy.
Many people are like Kate, misunderstanding the true meaning of work life balance. They try to keep ‘work’ and ‘life’ separate, but this brings undesirable results.
Those who are trying to maintain a work life balance only by dividing their time – by driving a sharp wedge between work-mode and life-mode – are inadvertently dividing themselves.
When people juxtapose ‘work’ and ‘life’, they unconsciously think in terms of ‘work’ versus ‘life’ – and are constantly forced to choose one at the expense of the other. In this framework, a gain on one side is always a loss on the other side.
And so people start to see ‘work’ as the times when they are not living their lives. ‘Work’ is seen as a necessary evil that they must suffer through until it’s time to switch off. But if you encode everything related to work as negativity and suffering, while your ‘life’ strains under the weight of unrealistic expectations of enjoyment, there really is no balance there at all.
Re-balancing work and life is possible by seeking out a new and enjoyable job to a certain extent. But no job is perfect. There are always going to be tedious aspects to any job. And before long you’ll wind up on the same ‘life’ versus ‘work’ see-saw because you haven’t changed the old framework.
The true goal is to redistribute the positive (+) and negative (-) evenly across life.
Most people try to make it all positive off work to compensate the negativity at work like this:
If it’s all negative at work and all positive when the work mode is switched off, the work performance will suffer – creating even more negativity. People will lean heavily on their off-mode life for happiness, but they can’t truly achieve happiness because they are not facing the problems at work.
Conversely, there are those who do strive to put positivity into their work life. Their work life balance looks like this:
Unfortunately, if these people are still stuck in the old on/off framework, all the negativity will shift to their off-mode self, and their relationships and health will suffer.
Very few lucky people experience positivity on both sides of the equation, their work life balance looks like this:
If you are one of those who experience positivity in both sides, lucky you! You are one of the less than 5% of the population.
For the rest of the 95% of the population, here is a cure to having a realistic work life balance.
The solution is to recover the sense of a unified self. When you do, you’ll dismantle the competing work/life binary, and you’ll stop unconsciously labelling work as ‘suffering’ and life as ‘enjoyment’. Positive energy will begin to flow smoothly and effortlessly through your life.
To recover the sense of a unified self, ask yourself: Why do I really do what I do, in life and in work?
Your answer to this question make up your blueprint of a unified self, charged with meaning that relates directly to who you are and what you care about.
Use your blueprint now to examine your life at work, your leisure time and your relationships and see if they align with each other. The new framework is no longer ‘balance’, but ‘alignment’.
This will reveal to you a number of things:
Crucially, you never need to use the on/off work model again because you’re constantly acting in accordance with what you truly value. As a result, you’ll find that your positive energy will not be subject to draining or overflowing, off/on, but will instead flow consistently through all your states of being in a perpetual positive feedback loop.
This is how a realistic work life balance is like:
Your renewed conceptualisation from ‘balance’ to ‘alignment’ is an inner transformation that can empower you whatever your current circumstances are.
For example, it may reveal that you truly are suffering in your current job. But now you can unroll your blueprint to identify the cause of the negativity (i.e. what isn’t aligning with what you value?) and either remind yourself why you’re really doing what you’re doing, or make a tweak… or indeed change your job.
Even if the latter, you can still be sustained by positivity until you find that new job. You may hate your everyday tasks, but one of things you value is to be a good provider for your family – so you’re spurred on, knowing that you’re doing that every day.
Or if you’re a workaholic, your blueprint may reveal that what you previously undervalued as ‘off-mode’ (relaxing, having fun, pursuing a passion, spending time with family and friends) actually contain a wealth of values that support – and even enhance – a well-rounded working life.
A value-rich and optimally tuned work life alignment helps maintain a flow of positive energy and happiness in all aspects of being. So go ahead and make the blueprint of you.
The post Why Work Life Balance Is a Curse appeared first on Lifehack.
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The usual approach when preparing a presentation is putting the points into slides. But the best presentations do not seek to merely inform. They make a lasting mark. Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech inspired a nation to reconsider their assumptions around race and social justice. Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin, delivered in 1987, wasn’t an objective remark on historical events. It was a passionate plea, an attempt to hasten the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Neither will be remembered for their PowerPoint presentations, but for their heartfelt messages.
The best presentations are not collections of facts or statistics. They are stories, put together and performed with dramatic flair. The first question you need to ask yourself is this – “What is the point of this presentation?” Don’t start your preparations until you can provide a confident answer. What emotions are you looking to trigger in your audience? How exactly do you want to influence them, and what actions do you want them to take as a result of your presentation?
There is much more to a speech than writing the words and moving through a set of key points written on a card or set of slides. How will you move around and vary your voice in such a way that emphasizes your message? Think about the gestures you can use, the facial expressions you will use, and how you will move around the stage.
Most presentations are purely informative. The audience are directed to focus on the presentation slides rather than the person speaking. While if you want to leave an impression, you need to make yourself the focus. Presentation slides are just supplementary. Never, ever let them steal the limelight. See how Scott Dinsmore did that.
To be the limelight on stage, you can’t just directly put all what you want to say on the slides. You need to carefully plan and edit every part.
When you provide little on the slide like only one word in the middle, people will look to you for elaboration. When you put multiple points into a single slide, the audience will be so hard working digesting all the information on the slide. This doesn’t help them understand better as human’s brains aren’t designed for multi-tasking. The more points you want them to get, the less they can understand.
More than that it means the message isn’t conveyed clearly enough and people will zone out. They’ll completely ignore what you’re going to say even if your ideas are truly brilliant.
Although it’s tempting to include all the interesting things you know/you found when doing research, these would only make your key message weaker if they aren’t highly relevant. Be bold to cut them whenever they don’t add value for the key message. It’s often not what’s added that matters, but what’s cut that matters.
This sounds contradictory but it’s not. When the image can catch audience’s attention and wake them up, you’re actually telling them to look at you again, that you’re going to raise a great point next. What’s more, people retain 10% of what they hear three days following a presentation, but if the information is accompanied by a picture, this figure jumps to 65%.[1]
Cliches are hardly memorable. Always add in additional details and fascinating statistics where possible to add character and interest. Like you could simply tell your audience that buying a car is an important decision, but a better approach is to reframe it in terms of numbers and emotions: “To buy a car it entails choosing a vehicle that helps you make memories, that will keep your life running smoothly, and transports you and your loved ones over 13,000 miles each year.”[2] Specific facts and emotive stories will give you a direct line to your audience’s hearts, and you are sure to leave a great impression.
| [1] | ^ | Inc.com: Google’s CEO Doesn’t Use Bullet Points and Neither Should You |
| [2] | ^ | Carinsurance.com: Average miles driven per year by state |
The post How Not to Give a Boring Presentation appeared first on Lifehack.
Perspective matters. When you change the way you think, things change. Read the following quotes to gain a little perspective and quiet the negativity inside your head.
The post Best 100 Positive Quotes That Everyone Can Life By appeared first on Lifehack.
