Archive for March, 2015
Flexible Work, Boredom, and Protein Powder Drama (Sunday Reads #12)
Welcome to Sunday Reads on Refocuser, a collection of weekly links from around the web to help you do incredible things. These links span topics like creativity, performance, focus, exercise, nutrition, and positivity.
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Work-Life Balance, Boredom, & Creativity
In Work-Life Balance Is Dead, author Ron Friedman says that “providing employees with more control over their schedule—to the extent that flexibility is possible—motivates them to work harder, produce higher-quality work, and develop greater loyalty for their company.” Anecdotally, this feels right to me.
Finding ways to cope with boredom may help make you more creative according to a recent study. In this study, participants who had been asked to complete a boring writing task were more creative afterwards than a control group who had done more interesting work. In other words, being bored may prime your brain for creative work.
Embrace Grit, Enjoy the Journey, and Always Be Reading (Sunday Reads #11)
Welcome to Sunday Reads on Refocuser, a collection of weekly links from around the web to help you do incredible things. These links span topics like creativity, performance, focus, exercise, nutrition, and positivity.
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Getting Creative Work Done
If you struggle to declutter your magazine pile, a technique called ABR – Always Be Reading may be for you. As someone who spends many hours a week focused on helping people read more (with a Kindle preferably) this approach sounds interesting, and is actually pretty aligned with what I personally do.
Are you a manager? Your late-night or very early-morning emails may be hurting your team. Being always-on hurts team results in a big way. I’ve been in the habit for years of delay-sending the email I write after 6:30pm on Friday or over the weekend until late Monday morning.
If you’d like to form successful habits, you need to know what motivates you.
A recent study showed that heavy cellphone users report higher anxiety levels and dissatisfaction with life than their peers who use their phones less often – and another showed a correlation between stress levels and the barrage of alerts and notifications. This app automatically tracks how much you use your iPhone or iPad each day and helps you set limits.
Creativity Myths, Decision Fatigue, and Gluten-Free Fanatics (Sunday Reads #10)
Welcome to Sunday Reads on Refocuser, a collection of weekly links from around the web to help you do incredible things. These links span topics like creativity, performance, focus, exercise, nutrition, and positivity.
Join thousands of other readers by subscribing to this blog and email newsletter or by following @Refocuser on Twitter. If you’re receiving this in your email inbox, spread the love and forward it to a friend.
On Creative Work
If you still think you couldn’t possibly be creative, the 5 Creativity Myths You Need to Stop Believing should help.
One of the most important thing you can do for lifelong learning & creativity is to read a lot. According to Warren Buffett, knowledge builds up like compound interest and reading is the mechanism to enable it. This article introduces the 10% Rule; a new system for reading more books on Amazon’s Kindle.
Omar Shahine tells us how to hit Inbox Zero every time you check your email. I bounce at zero daily most days, but I haven’t tried this approach yet.
Children are natural born mindfulness practitioners. So perhaps you could learn mindfulness by watching a child.
Great write-up on Farnham Street on Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset research. If you’re a parent, you need to read this. Everybody else should as well 😉
A short analysis of INTJ, a specific Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that I just happen to be. “They tend to be both methodical and perfectionistic, and they have the drive to put their ideas into action and the persistence to realize their dreams.” I’ll take that. There are articles on other personality type indicators linked from that article as well.
Could your company have 9-5 hours, a full hour for lunch every day, 5-7 weeks of annual vacation, and zero email on nights and weekends… and still thrive? Tony Schwartz believes so.
