Learn To Master A Skill Successfully With This

The Practicing Mind is a bestselling book written by a piano technician who used to work at a performance venue for guest concert pianists. The author, Thomas M. Sterner, held a very demanding job, preparing pianos and thus in the everyday challenges of his job managed to gain the inspiration to write the book. And by packaging his experiences in a 150-page, easy-to-read book, he has helped countless students and adult alike.

The Practicing Mind isn’t just an ordinary book. It offers invaluable tips and strategies for someone practicing to master a skill, whether it is golfing, music or just anything that is skill-based. During those times when you are tirelessly struggling to acquire a talent to help you defeat a formidable challenge, it is only patience, focus and disciple that would dictate your success. And in this bestseller, Thomas Sterner shows precisely how to gain the skills, learn from failures and eventually be a success.

Learn through practice

Every skill in life is learned through trial-and-error practices and never giving up in the face of failure. In the study, the author notes the principles of training, the procedure of picking an objective and working towards achieving it. He teaches that procedure done right isn’t slavery, but rather a technique of mastering a fulfilling process that will inevitably build discipline, perfection, and success.

Finding joy in your pursuit of success

The highlight of the book is what the author advocates for – finding joy in your pursuit of success instead of having a notion that happiness would only arrive at the finishing line. He says that a lot of stresses we usually encounter is as a result of failing to relish the moment and worrying about other goals, tasks, and commitments that belong to the future.

By reading the book, some of the information you will find helpful includes:

• Practicing towards a goal is better than merely having it.
• Life is all about practice, and good practice is enjoyable – it isn’t hectic and stressful.
• Active practicing differs from passive learning.
• The Japanese plate story and why you need someone to ensure you do the job right.
• Goals are like a rudder on a boat and offer direction.
• Judging your work doesn’t get the job done.
• Your goal is a compass – not a buried treasure.
• The most important part of entrepreneurship is subdividing your limiting beliefs – not money.
• The Zen concept of a beginner’s mind.
• Habits are second nature – practice your skill, and it will soon be a habit.
• Make time to sit and relax.

The Practicing Mind is accessible to all passionate readers of whatever philosophical backgrounds and offers helpful tips and strategies for anyone wishing to learn a skill or expertise. Irrespective of your perspective, you will not go wrong with this book’s insightful and compelling tips. It is available online for purchase.

Reading duration: 3 hours 28 minutes

Get The Practicing Mind from Amazon at $12.22.S

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crossconnectmag: Pencil portraits from Florian Nicolle. “I try...

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Pencil portraits from Florian Nicolle.

“I try to create an image that retains the freshness of the first paint stroke, and to find the union between spontaneity and realism.”

Cross Connect Mag is on Facebook!

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Can Your Bed Be Your New Favourite Gym Place? Let This App Tells You

If you are like most people, not really ready for the day’s challenges when you first get out of bed in the morning. Unfortunately, most people are extremely busy and getting as much sleep as possible is really important. This often means that you set your morning alarm to wake you up precisely at a specific time and you jump out of bed with little time to spare.

This can take its toll on your body and make it very difficult to get yourself properly motivated to get prepared for the busy day ahead. There is a simple solution to this problem and it is called the Wakeout App.

You Can Get Ready On Your Bed Now

The Wakeout App is a powerful motivational system that is designed to get you ready for the day before you even leave your bed. The system instantly turns your bed into your gym and it provides three easy to follow exercises that are chosen randomly. The whole routine can be done in 3 minutes or less.

The app features a customizable alarm that you set to the time you want to be woken up in the morning. Once you are awake and before you get out of the bed you perform the three exercises that are displayed on your iPhone.

Make Your Bed your Favourite Gym Place

Mini Workouts Wake Up Your Body in 9 Minutes 

The app comes with 80 mini works out built in and if you choose the pro membership option your list of workout will be automatically updated as they become available. In order to keep things from getting stale, each day’s exercise routine is chosen randomly. This means that you will not know what exercises you are doing until you wake up.

Each of the mini exercises in the routine is designed to use your whole bed on the gym floor and your pillow as the weight to add resistance to specific exercises. Your whole daily exercise is done before you even get out of bed in the morning.

How This App Has Changed My Morning

I realized that I was needing to add some exercise in my life in order be healthier, unfortunately, I am not a real morning person. This made it quite difficult for me to be motivated to get up and go to the gym before my workday started. That all changed when I was introduced to the Wakeout app.

I was really impressed with how well thought out the app was and it was extremely easy to use. It is only available to iOS-enabled phones and can be gotten from the iTunes. Once I installed it on my iPhone and set the alarm for my usual time to wake me up in the morning. It woke me up the next morning and the three exercises were really easy to do and three-minute workout put me in the perfect frame of mind.

We would highly recommend the Wakeout App for anyone who is looking for an easy way to add some exercise to their life without having to drive to a gym. To see more and find out how to get it, just click here.

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Are You Using Time Differently In The Knowledge Economy?

The saying used to be that “time is money,” with the thinking going that putting in more time will guarantee good results. A common example of this is the 10,000 hour idea put forth by Malcolm Gladwell and others. In short: if you want to master something, you need 10,000 hours of repetition at it. This would directly tie “time” (the hours) to “success” (mastery), but unfortunately, the 10,000 hour theory has been debunked by many.

Here’s a micro example: sometimes, a person will study for days and days (time) for a test, then do poorly (no success) on the test. How is this possible?

It is because results and success have less to do with time, and more to do with how productively you’re using the time — namely, how much attention you’re giving to receiving information and applying it appropriately.

The history of time

In the then agriculture-driven economy, time management wasn’t so important. Most people spent their days farming or tending to animals. Why would anything really need to be tracked, per se?

Soon, the Industrial Revolution moved more people off farms and into factories. Now there was a reason to track time. The evolution of the 40 hour work week (around the mid-1920s) made time a huge commodity. Time was, essentially, the new money. To get paid your hourly wages (actual money), you had to track time. Your value was quite literally tied to the hours you put in.

The current economy has been described often as “The Knowledge Economy.” It’s much less about the number of hours put in (although people still work a lot), and much more about the amount of knowledge you can acquire and transform into something better.

The problem: many management approaches still are focused on the time side. Consider the idea of “seat time.” Most places in the first world are WiFi-enabled, so many Knowledge Economy workers can work from anywhere. They can access emails and files via the cloud. But lots of bosses are obsessed with “seat time,” or seeing the employees physically in a place near them. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s rooted in the “time is money” economy.

Right now, many companies are focused more on employees being in a specific place for a specific period of time, instead of how to increase focus, energy, and delivery of high-impact tasks. And what’s worse: the “time is money” attitude stresses out employees majorly.

Manage your energy and attention, not your time

For as long as we can predict, time will continue to tick on at the same rate, but what actually fluctuates on a day-to-day basis is how much energy and attention you have — in the Knowledge Economy, that’s what makes or breaks how productive you are, and more important, it’s something you can actually control.

Time is a necessity of work and of nature, but as far as productivity is concerned, it should merely be the backdrop against which you work.

Consider the sheer idea of the 9-to-5 workday. Today, when productivity is about what you accomplish and not how much you produce, a nine-to-five workday makes as much sense as diligently tracking your time out on the farm. After all, what if your Biological Prime Time falls when you’re not working, and you have the most energy from 6 to 9 a.m., or from 7 to 11 p.m.? Or what if you have trouble focusing because you’re trying to multitask on a million things at once? Or what if you’re constantly bombarded by distractions and interruptions?

People — all workers — are different. And if the goal is productive output, we need to understand and respect that.

When we schedule time for something, what we’re actually doing is simply deciding when we will invest our attention and energy into the task. That’s where time management should fit into the productivity equation. Managing your time becomes important only after you understand how much energy and focus you will have throughout the day and define what you want to accomplish.

It’s much less about the time involved, and much more about the output.

So how can we work less and get more? 

If your workplace has flexible working hours, make use of that. Have enough rest and come in ready to work so that you are at your optimum performance. During the day, take short breaks to disconnect. The optimal human ratio for work is 52 minutes on, 17 minutes off. 

Schedule, but schedule differently: I schedule my entire day, and I’ve found that doing so makes me incredibly productive—especially when I form a strong intention about what I’m going to get done. But I only ever plan out my day after I account for how much attention and energy I will have, and most important, what I intend to accomplish.

Consider “focus days” where your entire focus is high-level, big projects and new learning. Block your calendar out so no one can throw meetings on it and stir up distractions.

Remember that the goal of the Knowledge Economy is different from the goal of the initial Industrial Economy. Now your time needs to be productive, not just a set amount of hours, so move towards that.

Featured photo credit: http://ift.tt/2ksAFPC via theindependentbd.com

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Knit Your Favourite Pattern 50% Easier With This App

No one can escape the occasional stresses of life, though we can definitely find a way of keeping the annoying boredom and anxiety off our life. As well as eating well, sleeping, meditating or working out, an excellent life hack to help calm our nerves and let the mind relax is by indulging in a hobby that relaxes the body.

Of the many hobbies you aren’t probably thinking of right now is the age-old art of Knitting, yet it has several unbelievable benefits that help the mind and body stay calm. Knitting calms the body in almost similar ways as meditating, alleviates causative signs of stress, anxiety and depression and even fights arthritis and tendinitis. Besides, knitting brings a subtle sense of pride and enhances creativity.

Let knitting calm your nerves 

To help you rekindle your grandma’s favorite hobby while still managing to escape from life’s hard knocks, here’s Love Knitting App. If you have been wondering how you can knit your own scarf, gloves or pairs of warm socks, or even small pairs of socks for your little one, worry no more. Just pack your yarn, knitting needles and ensure your device has enough charge!

Knitting Has Never Been That Easy With This App

The app is a product of passionate crafters at LoveKnitting who know how tiring old school knitting tools can be. Zooming in on your patterns is a breeze and you can count the rows, mark the end points and start knitting, like a Pro. It is fun, user-friendly and incredibly addictive once you have discovered the secret of using it.

Fun, User-Friendly Knitting App

An app so intuitive with hundreds of knitting ideas and designs, everything presented in a simple, easy-to-follow manner, you will fall in love with it. It comes loaded with beautiful and exciting patterns, HD photos and directions to help you ditch pen and paper designs.

A mobile for every ardent knitter, it combines:

• Everything you would need to learn to knit!
• Organized knitting library!
• Knitting on the Go!

You will have free access to LoveKnitting and Ravelry library where there are hundreds of designs. Of all its features, it is the lovely and convenient row counter that helps you keep track of your progress while keeping your space clutter-free.

Love Knitting App is freely and exclusively available for Apple users. Download yours here today

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Contemporary Art from John Wentz

John Wentz is a contemporary painter from Alameda, CA.His work teases figures out of colors and shapes. He seems to working on our isolation in society in some of his work. You can see more of his work on Instagram.  

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