Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Science behind Relentless Breakthroughs

Life isn’t supposed to be comfortable all the time. While most of us crave a degree of stability, a life without challenges robs you of your fighting spirit and motivation.

Without discomfort, there can be no growth. In a rapidly-changing world, stagnation is the first step toward to obscurity and mediocrity. There’s science behind experiencing the right amount of struggle to spur growth.

The best state: optimal anxiety

Your comfort zone exists so that you have a safe space from which to operate most of the time. In your comfort zone, you know what to do and how to behave, and there are routines and patterns that you follow to reduce stress. People in their comfort zone are generally happier than those who live in a state of heightened anxiety most of the time.

Clearly, stability is something to aspire to, but if things are too comfortable, people tend to become complacent. They may not work as hard to achieve their goals, and they may even lose their ambition altogether.

If you can reach a state of optimal anxiety, then you can enjoy some time in your comfort zone while still feeling pressure to succeed. Optimal anxiety allows you to experience the burst of energy and heightened state of awareness that you need to take on a challenge.

The Harvard experiment on stress levels

We’ve known this for over a century. In 1908, two Harvard psychologists, Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson, sought to explain different levels of performance. People in a state of comfort could often maintain a steady performance level, but those with high-stress levels experienced decreased productivity. People who wanted to experience growth had to endure some anxiety.[1]

When our stress levels elevate slightly, we enter into a state of optimal anxiety. This sweet spot, just outside of our comfort zone, is the place where we can improve our performance and make greater gains in our work.

How to reach a state of optimal anxiety

Choose things that are 50% familiar to you

Things that are too commonplace, and things that are way beyond your current understanding won’t keep your attention. Without a doubt, your eyes have glazed over as you listened to someone give a technical lecture on a subject with which you are unfamiliar. You’d be equally disinterested listening to someone repeat the same story over and over. When something is 50% familiar and 50% new, it is more likely to keep you interested.

Educators think about striking this balance between familiar and novel all the time. Developmental psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, calls this area in which we are challenged to learn but not overwhelmed as the “Zone of Proximal Development.”[2] In the Zone of Proximal Development, you have enough context to understand the basics, but you also have room to grow.

Think about when you had to learn math in elementary school. If your teachers tried to teach you trigonometry in pre-school, you would not have been successful. Trigonometry is too difficult to complete without understanding basic math concepts first. It is more likely that they taught you the words and symbols associated with numbers and left the discussion of trig for your high school years.

Break things into baby steps

You might wonder how you’ll ever learn anything if you are stuck choosing things that are about 50% familiar to you because there are a lot of things that you don’t know. True, when you are trying to learn things, there are more unknowns than knowns, but narrowing the scope of your question can help.

Writers encounter this overwhelm all the time. Imagine that you want to write a book, but you’ve never written before. The concept of writing a book is so foreign that you may not even know where to begin. There’s a lot that you don’t know, and it’s going to obstruct your ability to see what you do know.

If you’ve hardly written more than a few paragraphs since high school, it is unreasonable to think that you can accomplish the Herculean task of writing a book without some steps in between. Break it down by focusing on writing one paragraph, a chapter, or a page. The more you practice, the more you can expect from yourself each day.

Make it a continuous process: Scare yourself every day

Learning must be gradual and continuous. Choose something that exists just outside of your comfort zone every day, and work to understand it. Whatever that unfamiliar thing is, keep breaking it down until you find something you are 50% familiar with. At that point, you can work to tackle the project.

Perhaps you want to be able to host a group of friends at your home for dinner, but you are afraid you’ll ruin their evening. Instead of embarassing yourself or causing too much stress by inviting over ten of your best friends, break the task down into smaller steps.

Start by trying out the recipes you want to make for your friends. Chances are, you already have some idea about how to cook, and you just need to build confidence and experiment with cooking times and menus. Then, practice by having one or two of your closest friends over. When you feel good about this step, you could invite others over for a dinner party.

People have to tackle big goals all the time. Learning to drive a car, understanding a complex concept in school, and giving speeches can all be accomplished by breaking the goal into smaller steps.

Mark down your worries during the process and review them later

When you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, your brain is going to try to protect you by giving you lots of things to worry about. The torrent of “what ifs” can hold you back from making real progress.

Instead of letting those thoughts own you, write them down. After you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone for the day, review what you wrote. You’ll find that most of the things you worried about didn’t happen. In the future, you’ll be able to recognize that most of your fears are unfounded.

Keep track of your tiny achievements every day

Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to achieve the end result that we forget to recognize the small accomplishments we make every day. Any accomplishment–regardless of how great or small it is–activates the reward centers in our brains.

If your goal is to exercise five days per week, keep track of your work outs every day. When you see how much you’re doing, it can motivate you to do more. When work seems so overwhelming that you are prone to procrastination, try taking note of each time you begin a project early instead of waiting until the deadline.

Every time you catalog a success, your brain releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine.[3] Dopamine triggers that feeling of achievement and pride and energizes us to keep moving forward with our goals. Since your brain loves to be rewarded with a hit of dopamine, it will motivate you to replicate your actions.

Make room to grow every day

Busting out of your comfort zone is more than just a means to achieve your dreams. Finding your optimal level of anxiety affects everything from the amount of motivation that you feel to the neurotransmitters in your brain. A fear of the unknown is just an opportunity to break what you need to learn into accessible steps.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” –Neale Donald Walsch

Reference

The post The Science behind Relentless Breakthroughs appeared first on Lifehack.



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Cristián Berríos - CBR house, San Pedro de la Paz 2015. Via,...

Food Turned Into Beautiful Art By Giulia Bernardelli The Italian... crss





















Food Turned Into Beautiful Art By Giulia Bernardelli 

The Italian artist Giulia Bernardelli creates images using coffee, chocolate, honey, and spices. 

Giulia lives in Mantua, Italy. She has always been interested in arts: grew up in her dad’s bookshop and art gallery, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. She has always been fascinated by colors, compositions, details, shapes and through practice acquiring good manual skills. Everything that she needed was around her if only she looked carefully: she decided to replace the paint brush with what nature offered her. Leaves, fruit skins, food, liquids and everything in between these. All these elements come with different colors and textures. As such, Giulia never plans her creations well in advance, she simply follows her instinct via.


Art is the only way to run away without leaving home - run with us.

posted by tu recepcja

crss

Food Turned Into Beautiful Art By Giulia Bernardelli The Italian...





















Food Turned Into Beautiful Art By Giulia Bernardelli 

The Italian artist Giulia Bernardelli creates images using coffee, chocolate, honey, and spices. 

Giulia lives in Mantua, Italy. She has always been interested in arts: grew up in her dad’s bookshop and art gallery, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. She has always been fascinated by colors, compositions, details, shapes and through practice acquiring good manual skills. Everything that she needed was around her if only she looked carefully: she decided to replace the paint brush with what nature offered her. Leaves, fruit skins, food, liquids and everything in between these. All these elements come with different colors and textures. As such, Giulia never plans her creations well in advance, she simply follows her instinct via.


Art is the only way to run away without leaving home - run with us.

posted by tu recepcja

Padilla Nicás - Water pumping station, Monteporreiro 2016....

Graser Architekten - Lindensteig housing, Lucerne 2012. Photos...

yanshee:Ateliers Centraux 09 by yanshee Look at that lush green...



yanshee:

Ateliers Centraux 09 by yanshee

Look at that lush green moss.

Sharpen Your Brain and Fall Asleep Faster With a Before-Bed Brain Dump

With access to different information platforms like Google, Facebook, News channels, families and even your own perspectives walking down the street, your mind becomes cluttered. Your brain is busier than ever before as an information-processing system.[1]

As you sit down to work in front of your computer, you may find yourself too overwhelmed to focus. Your head is stuck and you are mentally paralyzed.

An office worker could be trying to finish his project but gets distracted by customer emails. A mom of two kids could be wondering how she would ever be able to meet her deadline. An entrepreneur could be battling his fears of not doing good enough and thinking about getting a new job.[2]

The Sequel of a Cluttered Brain

What happens all the time is that you don’t give your brain one thing to focus on. Your brain is trying to focus on too many things at once and you end up getting stuck.

According to Psychology Today,

“Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli, causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren’t necessary or important.”

When you are not giving yourself a place to focus, your mind chooses to focus on the fears and negative emotions. This makes you end up losing time and money.

How to Declutter Your Brain — Utilizing a Braindump

Decluttering your brain starts with a braindump. It can last as quick as ten minutes.

According to Tech Target,[3]

“A brain dump is a complete transfer of accessible knowledge about a particular subject from your brain to some other storage medium, such as paper or your computer’s hard drive.”

Braindumps are the best way to take everything going on in your head out onto paper. This can get yourself out of a state of overwhelm and confusion, and turn your mental paralysis into action.

By doing an effective braindump, you release all of the information your brain tries to store and allows you to decide what is important.

10 Minutes of Braindump Every Day

Each night when you are done for the day, do a braindump exercise. Use this information to build out your to do list for the next day. This also frees up your mind to focus on family and even sleep.

You may find that when you get started with a braindump, you have a hard time writing down what is in your mind. At other times you may mass distribute the words in your head onto paper at rapid speed. Whichever the case, grab a pen and paper and set the timer for ten minutes.

Whatever comes to your mind, write it down. Do not edit as you write or worry about grammar. By simply writing, you transfer all of that information and later you will read this information and store it as needed.

Write for ten minutes straight, if you cannot think of anything to write, write “I have nothing to write”. Doing this keeps your pen to paper and opens up the creative flow.

Categorize Your Braindump

Jotting everything down on paper and putting items into your calendar is the goal. It starts with looking at your braindump and identifying the themes.

  • Are there projects / tasks on the paper?
  • Which items are new ideas?
  • Which items are work related, family related, or hobby related?

Create different categories and begin organizing each of the items on your braindump. Include a miscellaneous section for the random thoughts that you have.

When you start to organize your braindump, you can see where your mind is focused and possibly where you need to spend more time. An effective braindump will allow you to focus on what matters. What you write down may not be relevant right now but you may need it at a future date.

Turn Ideas into a To-Do List

When you do your braindumps at night, you are able to create your to do list for the next day and set yourself up for success. Instead of showing up to work the next morning to get organized, you are ready to go and can jump right in.

While building your to-do list, you can either defer tasks to a later date or delegate them out.

Take a look at your calendar and start carving in the time. Identify the tasks that need to be done the next day or a few days later, focusing in on two to three major tasks a day. You can prioritize the tasks based on their importance and urgency.

When braindumping becomes a part of your life, you will notice that you’re less overwhelmed and have more time to focus on tasks at hand. You will see a boost in your productivity and the quality of work.

The Less Clutter, the Sharper Your Brain

Braindumps are a great way to declutter your brain, from negative emotions to the tasks you work on each day. At the end of your day, conduct a braindump for ten minutes. Give yourself enough time after the braindump to take a look at the tasks on your list.

Identify the tasks that have a high priority and cannot be delegated or deferred, and begin to place the high priority tasks into your calendar.

By focusing on the tasks each day, you know what you are working on and what your next step is. You will save a lot of time and energy by spending it on what matters.

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

The post Sharpen Your Brain and Fall Asleep Faster With a Before-Bed Brain Dump appeared first on Lifehack.



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10 Best Laptop Backpacks for Everyday Carry

Living in the digital age, it’s no surprise that most of us need our laptops with us at all times.We go to business meetings with them. We go to lectures with them. And we even bring our laptop with us when we travel or go hiking. Given this, it’s important to have a backpack that you can use to keep your laptop safe at all times. (As well as helping to carry the essentials such as a mouse, power supply, etc.)

There are lots of backpacks available – so which one to choose?

Fortunately, the editorial team at Lifehack has hand-picked 10 of the very best laptop backpacks for you. Let’s take a look at them right now.

1. TYLT Powerbag Travel Battery Charging Backpack

This hi-tech backpack features a USB charging hub for phones, laptops, tablets and portable electronics, and can charge up to three devices using a powerful built in rechargeable 10,400 mAh battery. The backpacks work with all USB charging cables for fast convenient recharging of virtually any cell phone or electronic device (two 1 Amp ports and one 2.1 Amp port). The backpack also offers cord routing anchors to organize cables.

TYLT Powerbag Travel Battery Charging Backpack, $99.43

2. Incase Icon Pack

The Incase Icon Pack features a huge number of individual pockets and organizational sections, designed to hold everything from pens to keys to tablets to headphones to smartphones. Handily, the backpack also stands up on its own, making access very easy. (This may not work if the backpack is overloaded and top heavy.) The laptop space is well padded with a plush lining, and once you’ve inserted your laptop – the bag still has plenty of space left. A nice touch is the different compartments the backpack offers for tablets, laptops and accessories.

Incase Icon Pack, $153.15

3. OutdoorMaster Hiking Backpack 50L

A spacious backpack brimming with pockets and features. It’s great for hiking, travel, camping, and as carry-on luggage. This good-looking backpack includes a waterproof rain cover, a padded laptop compartment (15.6″) and plenty of room for all your equipment and accessories.

OutdoorMaster Hiking Backpack 50L, $36.99

4. ASUS Republic of Gamers Nomad v2 Backpack

If you’re a keen gamer, then this backpack is designed especially for you. An internal suspension and padding system is designed to keep up to 17″ notebooks safe during travel. The backpack also includes tailored compartments for all other gaming hardware.

ASUS Republic of Gamers Nomad v2 Backpack, $169

5. ProTactic 350 AW Camera Backpack From Lowepro

This high-end backpack is aimed at amateur and professional photographers. As well as a section to house a laptop, there are also specially designed compartments to protect lens and cameras. (Fits 1-2 Pro DSLRs, one with up to 24-70mm f/2.8 lens attached, 6 lenses/speed lights, 13″ laptop, tripod and accessories.)

ProTactic 350 AW Camera Backpack From Lowepro, $149

6. Booq Boa Squeeze

As the image shows, this backpack has a unique turtle shell design, which helps to distribute the weight of the bag load better than most other backpacks. It also features ergonomic shoulder straps, which contour to all body types, and removable key fob and high-performance YKK® zippers.

Booq Boa Squeeze, $129.95

7. Targus Drifter II Backpack for 17-Inch Laptop

One of the main selling points of this backpack is its jumbo storage capacity. The largest compartment features a well-padded laptop sleeve that can hold a laptop up to 17″ in size. The backpack also offers shock-absorbing shoulder straps and thick padding on the back to help ease the burden of a full (and heavy) load.

Targus Drifter II Backpack for 17-Inch Laptop, $61.07

8. Lifepack Solar Powered and Anti-Theft Backpack with laptop storage

If you’re looking for a unique backpack – then look no further than this one! Firstly, the Lifepack offers a 3-in-1 powerbank, bluetooth speakers and a solar charger. In other words, you can charge your laptop, cell phone or tablet exclusively with solar power. In addition, the backpack also has an integrated retractable lock and built-in rain cover. We think this would be a great bag for city people or riders.

Lifepack Solar Powered and Anti-Theft Backpack with laptop storage, $199.99

9. NIID-UNO I Water Repellent Slim Laptop Backpack

This ultra-stylish backpack has tons of storage space, which includes a smart organizing system with in-built USB charging port. The backpack is suitable for laptops up to 15.6″ in size. The exterior is made from durable eco-polyester with water repellent coating. Inside the bag, you’ll find three different types of interior panels specially designed for cameras, sports and art. The bag is ideal for city and nature walkers.

NIID-UNO I Water Repellent Slim Laptop Backpack, $79.99

10. AmazonBasics Backpack for Laptops Up To 17″

If your budget is the most important thing, then you should definitely consider this Amazon backpack. It has a huge storage space, and meets all the basic needs without being pricey. We think it’s great for people who just want a standard laptop backpack.

AmazonBasics Backpack for Laptops Up To 17″, $29.99

Hopefully, from the list above, you’ll be able to pick the perfect laptop backpack for your needs.

And please remember to check back with us regularly, as we’ll be providing other hardware recommendations that you won’t want to miss!

Featured photo credit: OutdoorMaster via amazon.com

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