tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69317377780387858262024-03-13T05:55:20.002-07:00The PosmakerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger291125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-80040613342263719972013-05-28T14:41:00.001-07:002013-05-28T14:41:26.045-07:00Misc: The Power of the Pen: How to Boost Happiness, Health, and Productivity<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130528121344-69244073-the-power-of-the-pen-can-writing-make-us-happier-healthier-and-more-productive?_mSplash=1">http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130528121344-69244073-the-power-of-the-pen-can-writing-make-us-happier-healthier-and-more-productive?_mSplash=1</a></div>
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Four months after a hundred senior engineers were laid off by a computer company, not a single one was reemployed. In an effort to improve the situation, Stefanie Spera and Eric Buhrfeind conducted a <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/37/3/722.short" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">startling study</a> with James Pennebaker, a mild-mannered health psychologist.</div>
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They divided the engineers into three groups. In the control group, the engineers did nothing unusual. The remaining engineers were randomly assigned to a second control group, where they wrote about time management, or an expressive writing group, where they kept a journal about their deepest thoughts and feelings associated with the job loss. Both groups wrote for five days, 20 minutes per day, describing the emotional challenges of searching for a new job, relationship problems, financial stressors, the immediate experience of being fired, losing their coworkers and feeling rejected.</div>
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Three months later, in the control groups, less than 5% of the engineers were reemployed. In the expressive writing group, more than 26% of the engineers were reemployed.</div>
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Interestingly, expressive writing didn’t land the engineers any more interviews. It just increased the odds that they were hired when they did have an interview. Expressive writing affected the quality, not the quantity, of their job search. The engineers who wrote down their thoughts and feelings about losing their jobs reported feeling less anger and hostility toward their former employer. They also reported drinking less. Eight months later, less than 19% of the engineers in the control groups were reemployed full-time, compared with more than 52% of the engineers in the expressive writing group.</div>
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Why did writing about thoughts and feelings surrounding job loss multiply the odds of being reemployed? Pennebaker believed that suppressing negative experiences was stressful, and expressing them might have lifted the burden. A decade earlier, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1987-01227-001" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Pennebaker and Sandra Beall</a> had invited adults to write for 15 minutes a day over the course of four days. In the control group, the adults wrote about everyday topics―they described their shoes, their living rooms, and a tree. In the treatment group, the adults wrote about the most traumatic experience of their lives. They expressed their deepest thoughts and feelings about the traumatic event.</div>
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Pennebaker was stunned by the results: writing about a traumatic experience made them worse off. They were unhappier and more distressed, and had higher blood pressure. Pennebaker was dismayed. He had apparently discovered a foolproof method for causing depression.</div>
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But in the next six months, the effects reversed. Consider the number of visits that participants made to a local health center due to illness. In the control group, the adults showed no changes in illness visits. The adults who wrote about a traumatic event showed a 50% decrease in illness visits per month. Expressing the traumatic event improved their health; it just didn’t do so right away. One participant explained, “Although I have not talked with anyone about what I wrote, I was finally able to deal with it, work through the pain instead of trying to block it out. Now it doesn't hurt to think about it.”</div>
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Since that groundbreaking study, Pennebaker and colleagues have <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(199910)55:10%3C1243::AID-JCLP6%3E3.0.CO;2-N/abstract" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">replicated and extended the effects many times</a>. Although writing about trauma is uncomfortable in the short run, after approximately two weeks, the costs disappear and the benefits emerge―and they last. Pennebaker’s team has demonstrated physical and mental health benefits of emotionally expressive writing with arthritis and chronic pain patients, medical students, maximum security prisoners, crime victims, and women after childbirth, from Belgium to Mexico to New Zealand. They’ve found decreases in depression, anxiety, anger, and distress. They’ve shown that writing about stressful experiences also reduces absenteeism from work among employees―and increases grade point averages among students. They’ve even found that emotionally expressive writing has objective immune system benefits. After writing about traumas, people show higher t-cell growth, better liver function, and stronger antibody responses to hepatitis B vaccinations and Epstein-Barr virus.</div>
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In total, <a href="https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&q=frattaroli+experimental+disclosure&oq=frattaroli+experimental+disclosure&gs_l=hp.3..33i21.33312.36716.0.36753.34.19.0.2.2.0.191.1770.12j6.18.0...0.0.0..1c.1.12.psy-ab.6Tt-Kor3BQA&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47008514,d.dmg&fp=5f2a0" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">well over a hundred experiments</a> have documented the health benefits of disclosing thoughts and feelings about negative events. “When people write,” Pennebaker summarizes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words/dp/1608194965" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Secret Life of Pronouns</em></a><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </em>“healthy changes occur.” Talking into a recorder works just as well as writing, but it’s not effective to express the trauma without language, through mediums such as art, music, and dance. It seems that people need to express the negative experience in words—either through writing or speaking—to reap the health benefits.</div>
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It appears that expressive writing helps people make sense of bad experiences. Indeed, Pennebaker’s research has shown that writing about traumatic events only improves health when people describe facts <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em> feelings. Together, writing about what happened and how they felt about it enables people put together a coherent story. By putting their feelings into words, they can start making sense of a negative event. They come to understand it better, gain insight and perspective, and sometimes even find silver linings. Now that they have a coherent story about the negative event, it’s easier to summarize and move on.</div>
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The benefits of expressive writing aren’t limited to negative events. <a href="http://psp.sagepub.com/content/27/7/798.abstract" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Research by Laura King</a>shows that writing about achieving future goals and dreams can make people happier and healthier. Similarly, there’s <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/84/2/377/" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">plenty of evidence</a> that keeping a gratitude journal can increase happiness and health by making the good things in life more salient. And <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/9/1033.short" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Jane Dutton and I found</a> that when people doing stressful fundraising jobs kept a journal for a few days about how their work made a difference, they increased their hourly effort by 29% over the next two weeks.</div>
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For expressive writing to be effective, timing is critically important. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, legions of more than 9,000 counselors descended upon New York, hoping to prevent posttraumatic stress and relieve symptoms of anxiety, depression and grief. But research suggests that most of the interventions didn’t do much good for local citizens, firefighters and other people close to the tragedy. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Redirect-Surprising-Science-Psychological-Change/dp/0316051888" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Redirect</em></a><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </em>psychologist Timothy Wilson describes how many of the counselors conducted critical incident stress debriefing, encouraging trauma victims and observers to spend several hours expressing their thoughts and feelings as soon as possible. Evidence shows that this can backfire: in<a href="http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/171/1/78" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">one study</a> of people who suffered severe burns in a fire, those who went through critical incident stress debriefing had higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety a year later. Expressing thoughts and feelings about a trauma turns out to be most salutary if we wait until we’re ready to start processing it with thoughts as well as emotions.</div>
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Timing matters with writing about positive events, too. In one experiment led by Sonja Lyubomirsky, people counted their blessings either once a week or several times per week. Reflecting on good things once a week increased well-being; doing it several times a week didn’t. As <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/gpr/9/2/111/" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">the authors speculate</a>, “Perhaps counting their blessings several times a week led people to become bored with the practice, finding it less fresh and meaningful over time.”</div>
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Journaling is a practice shared across many centuries by icons—not only writers like Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain, but also inventors from da Vinci to Edison, cultural icons such as Pablo Picasso, military leaders such as general George Patton, and political leaders from Washington to Jefferson to Franklin to Truman to Churchill. Along with preserving a record of their ideas and experiences, journaling might have helped them make sense of stressful experiences, focus on their goals, and achieve success. As Virgin mogul <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Losing-My-Virginity-Survived-Business/dp/0307720748/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1369657248&sr=1-1" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Richard Branson writes</a>, “my most essential possession is a standard-sized school notebook.”</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-73530837578897796902013-05-23T16:04:00.004-07:002013-05-23T16:04:42.393-07:00Misc: Beyond The Paycheck: What We Wish For<br />
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<span style="border: 0px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130523165741-658789-beyond-the-paycheck-what-we-wish-for">http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130523165741-658789-beyond-the-paycheck-what-we-wish-for</a></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, Liberation Sans, Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Beyond The Paycheck: What We Wish For</span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Plenty of studies show that pay increases only serve as a short-term performance motivator.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Certainly salary is important; every company should strive to compensate its employees fairly – even, if possible, more than “fairly.” Equitable pay is a given.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But it’s also often true that receiving a raise is a lot like buying a new car. Pretty soon we ratchet our expectations upwards and even a new Ferrari is “just” a car (unless it's a Tesla, which is never “just a car”).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit;">So where long-term performance is concerned, what matters more than pay? What do people wish for from their work</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit;">? What helps employees feel truly valued and appreciated – and motivates them to do their absolute best?</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. Fulfilling goals.</strong> Goals are motivating. Goals are fun. Goals provide a sense of purpose and meaning to any task. Without meaning, a job is just toil… and toil sucks the energy out of people.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So how do you make a goal truly fulfilling? Show its purpose. Describe its relevance to larger business goals. Show how a goal isn’t just an arbitrary target but an outcome that truly matters.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then allow employees to help create goals, both at an individual and a broader level. They may set even higher targets than you. And, when people help set a goal they are much more likely to achieve that goal… because they own that goal.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2. A true sense of mission.</strong> We all want to feel we are a part of something bigger.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Let employees know what you want to achieve for your customers, for your business, and for your community.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And just like with goals, allow them to create a few missions of their own, because caring starts with knowing what to care about—and why.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. Recognition.</strong></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Even though it costs nothing to give, praise is priceless to the recipient. So start praising.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Be specific. Be genuine. Recognize the employee the way she likes to be recognized. (Some people are uncomfortable with public recognition; others love to bask in the glow of applause.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No one gets enough praise… and that’s too bad, because everyone loves to be recognized for their hard work, dedication, sacrifice… for just being awesome.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Genuine recognition rewards effort and accomplishment, reinforces positive behaviors, builds self-esteem and confidence, and boosts motivation and enthusiasm.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Recognition gives employees “permission” to be awesome. Help people be awesome. Praise is free – but it means everything.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. Basic expectations.</strong> While every job should include some degree of latitude, every job should also have basic expectations regarding the way specific situations should be handled.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you criticize an employee for shifting resources to a project that's behind – even though last week that was standard protocol, you risk crushing that person's morale.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When guidelines change, make sure you communicate those changes first. When that’s not possible, take time to explain why this particular situation is different and why you made the decision you made.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Communication creates understanding, and understanding is everything.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But at the same time, employees also need…</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4. Significant autonomy.</strong> Best practices can create excellence, but every task doesn't require a best practice.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Why? Autonomy and latitude breed engagement and satisfaction. Autonomy also breeds innovation. Even otherwise “systematic” and “process-driven” jobs have room for different approaches.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Give your employees the freedom to work the way they work best. If someone screws up, don’t punish the many by creating rules and guidelines designed to “control” the mistakes of the few.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5. Meaningful contributions.</strong> Everyone wants to make suggestions and offer ideas. Deny people the opportunity to give input, or shoot their ideas down without consideration, and you turn people into machines… and machines don’t care.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Make it easy for employees to offer suggestions. Make it easy for employees to question, to challenge, and to share their opinions. When an idea doesn't have merit, take the time to explain why.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You may not always implement every idea, but you can always make employees feel valued for their ideas.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6. Genuine relationships.</strong> People don’t want to work simply for a paycheck. People want to work with and for people.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A kind word, a short discussion about family, a brief check-in to see if they need anything... personal moments make a lot more impact than meetings or formal evaluations.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A manager doesn’t have to be a best friend – and shouldn’t be – but she must always be friendly, and show that she cares on a personal as well as professional level.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7. Reasonable consistency.</strong> Most people can deal with a boss who is demanding and quick to criticize... as long as he or she treats every employee the same in one important way. While you should treat each employee differently, you must treat each employee fairly. (There's a big difference.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The key to maintaining reasonable consistency is communication. The more employees understand why a decision was made, the less likely they are to assume favoritism or unfair treatment.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">8. Deserved opportunities.</strong> Every job should have the potential to lead to greater opportunities, either within or outside your company.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Take the time to develop employees for jobs they someday hope to fill—even if those positions are outside your company. (If you don’t know what an employee hopes to do someday, ask.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Employees will only care about growing and developing your business after you show you care about growing and developing <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">them</em>.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9. An atmosphere of excellence.</strong></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Superstars want to work with superstars. Excellent employees want to work in an environment where outstanding performance is the rule, not the exception.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So be unreasonably selective about the people you hire. Then, work hard to turn around a failing employee or, failing that, to weed out the poor performers. As Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, says, “You become the average of the five people you hang out with.”</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a leader, your goal is to surround every employee with awesome people. The best they have ever worked with. Make sure you do.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And, if you liked this article, you'll also probably like <a href="http://culturecode.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Culture Code</a>, a slide deck about company culture.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-28101282347817036752013-05-10T09:50:00.002-07:002013-05-10T09:50:58.830-07:00Misc: I'd like your honest, unbiased and possibly career-ending opinion on somethingHilarious!<br />
<a href="http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/I-d-like-your-honest-unbiased-and-possibly-career-ending-opinion-on-some-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8544674_.htm">http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/I-d-like-your-honest-unbiased-and-possibly-career-ending-opinion-on-some-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8544674_.htm</a><br />
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<a href="http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6067/5PZD100Z/posters/alex-gregory-i-d-like-your-honest-unbiased-and-possibly-career-ending-opinion-on-some-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6067/5PZD100Z/posters/alex-gregory-i-d-like-your-honest-unbiased-and-possibly-career-ending-opinion-on-some-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-56941461373039165522013-05-03T13:18:00.001-07:002013-05-03T13:18:42.370-07:00Misc: There Are Only Four Jobs in the Whole World<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502173937-15454-there-are-only-four-jobs-in-the-whole-world-are-you-in-the-right-one?_mSplash=1">http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130502173937-15454-there-are-only-four-jobs-in-the-whole-world-are-you-in-the-right-one?_mSplash=1</a></div>
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For the past 30 years my company has been involved in creating over 2,500 different performance-based job descriptions that define the actual work a person needs to do to be considered successful. Based on preparing these performance-based job descriptions for jobs like camp counselor at the YMCA, accountants and engineers from staff to VPs, mid- and senior-level executives in industries ranging from automotive and aerospace to construction and consumer products, I can conclude that there are only four different jobs in the whole world.</div>
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Everything starts with an idea. This is the first of the four jobs – the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thinkers</em>. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Builders </em>convert these ideas into reality. This the second job. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Improvers</em> make this reality better. This is the third job. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Producers</em> do the work over and over again, delivering quality goods and services to the company’s customers in a repeatable manner. This is the fourth job. And then the process begins again with new ideas and new ways of doing business being developed as the old ones become stale.</div>
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As a company grows and reaches maturity, more of the work gets done by the Producers and Improvers. However, without a culture of consistent improvement, the Producers soon take over and implementing change becomes slower and slower until it stops. Long before this the Thinkers and Builders have left for some new venture. Improvers soon follow to join their former co-workers and hire new Producers to add some order to the newly created chaos. The old Producers who aren’t continually evolving, learning new skills and processes, are left behind to fend for themselves. Maintaining balance across all four work types is a constant, but a necessary struggle for a company to continue to grow, adapt, and survive.</div>
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Every job has a mix of all four work types dependent on the actual work involved, the scope and scale of the role, and the company’s growth rate. To ensure balance and flexibility, all of these four work types should be taken into account when preparing any new performance-based job description. Here’s how:</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Producers: </strong>these people execute or maintain a repeatable process. This can range from simple things like working on an inbound help desk and handling some transactional process like basic sales, to more complex, like auditing the performance of a big system, writing code, or producing the monthly financial reports. Producers typically require training or advanced skills to be in a position to execute the process. To determine the appropriate Producer performance objectives, ask the hiring manager to define how any required skill is used on the job and how its success would be measured, e.g., “contact 15 new customers per week and have five agree to an onsite demonstration.“ This is a lot better than saying “the person must have 3-5 years of sales experience selling to sophisticated buyers of electro-mechanical control valves.”</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Improvers</strong>: these people upgrade, change or make a repeatable process better. Managers are generally required to continually monitor and improve a process under their responsibility. Building, training and developing the team to implement a process is part of an Improver’s role. Improvers can be individual contributors or managers of teams and projects, the key is the focus on improving a existing system, business or process. A performance objective for an Improver could be “conduct a comprehensive process review of the wafer fab process to determine what it would take to improve end-to-end yield by 10%.”</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Builders</strong>: these people take an idea from scratch and convert it into something tangible. This could be creating a new business, designing a complex new product, closing a big deal, or developing a new process. Entrepreneurs, inventors, turn-around executives, deal-makers, and project managers are typical jobs that emphasize the Builder component. Ask the hiring manager what big changes, new developments, big problems or major projects the person in the new job would need to address to determine the Builder component. An example might be, “lead the implementation of the new SAP supply change system over every business unit including international.” This is a lot better than saying “must have five years international logistics background and strong expertise with SAP."</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thinkers</strong>: these people are the visionaries, strategists, intellects, and creators of the world, and every new idea starts with them. Their work covers new products, new business ideas, and different ways of doing everyday things. Ask hiring managers where the job requires thinking out-of-the-box or major problems to solve to develop the Thinker performance objectives. “Develop a totally new approach for reducing water usage by 50%,” is a lot better than saying “Must have 5-10 years of environmental engineering background including 3-5 years of wastewater management with a knack for creative solutions."</div>
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Recognize that every person is comprised of a mix of each work type, with one or two dominant. Likewise for every job. Most require strengths in one or two of the work types. As you select people for new roles, it's important to get this blending right. This starts by understanding the full requirements of the position, the strengths and weaknesses of others on the team, and the primary objective of the department, group or company. In the rush to hire, it’s easy to lose sight of this bigger picture, emphasizing skills and experience over performance and fit. This is how Builders get hired instead of Improvers and Thinkers get hired when Producers are required. While there are only four work types, hiring the wrong one is often how the wrong work gets done.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-22224454988660510552013-05-01T15:38:00.002-07:002013-05-01T15:38:37.560-07:00Misc: 14 Telling signs you love your job<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130501144407-658789-14-telling-signs-you-love-your-job">http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130501144407-658789-14-telling-signs-you-love-your-job</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">14 Telling Signs You Love Your Job</span><br />
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You may not give your computer screen an embarrassingly gushing smile and you might not write little love notes during your lunch break. But, there are ways to tell if you love your job.</div>
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Of course, no job is perfect -- even the best of relationships have their down days. We all have to do things we don’t like. I love working at <a href="http://www.hubspot.com/jobs" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">HubSpot</a>, it's the best job I've ever had. But, even I have “off” days where I'm not spending all my time doing things I absolutely love.</div>
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So all of the following may not be the case all of the time… but when you love your job,<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">many</em> of the following should be the case <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">much</em> of the time:</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. You don’t talk about other people; you talk about the cool things other people are <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">doing</em>.</strong></div>
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“I hear Mary is heading up a new project. What are they working on?” “I’d love to know how Mike managed to rescue that customer relationship.” “Sherry developed a new sales channel; is there some way we can leverage that?”</div>
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When you love your job you don’t gossip about the personal failings of others. You talk about their successes, because you’re happy for them – and because you’re happy with yourself.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2. You think, “I hope I <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">get</em> to…” instead of, “I hope I don’t <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">have</em> to…”</strong></div>
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When you love your job it’s like peeling an onion. There are always more layers to discover and explore.</div>
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When you hate your job it’s also like peeling an onion – but all you discover are more tears.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. You see your internal and external customers not as people to satisfy but simply as people.</strong></div>
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They aren't numbers. You think of them as real people who have real needs.</div>
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And you gain a real sense of fulfillment and purpose from taking care of those needs.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4. You enjoy your time <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">at</em> work.</strong></div>
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You don't have to put in time at work and then escape to life to be happy. You believe in enjoying life <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em> enjoying work.</div>
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When you love your job, it’s a part of your life. You feel alive and joyful not just at home – but also at work.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5. You would recommend working at your company to your best friend…</strong></div>
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In fact, you can't stop talking about how cool your company is and the awesome work you're doing even when you're away from work.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6. You enjoy attending meetings.</strong></div>
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No, seriously, you enjoy meetings. Why? Because it’s fun to be at the center of thoughtful, challenging discussions that lead to decisions, initiatives, and changes – changes you get to be a part of.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7. You don’t think about surviving. You think about winning.</strong></div>
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You don't worry much about losing your job. You're more worried about not achieving your potential. Not being as impactful as you can.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">8. You see your manager as a person you work <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">with</em>, not <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">for</em>.</strong></div>
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You feel valued. You feel respected.</div>
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You feel trusted.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9. You don’t want to let your coworkers down.</strong></div>
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Not because you’ll get in trouble or get a bad performance review, but because you admire them – and you want them to admire you.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">10. You hardly ever look at the clock.</strong></div>
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You’re too busy making things happen. When you do look at the clock, you often find that the time has flown.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">11. You view success in terms of fulfillment and gratification – not just promotions and money.</strong></div>
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Everyone wants to be promoted. Everyone wants to earn more.</div>
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You definitely feel that way too… but somewhere along the way your job has come to mean a lot more to you than just a paycheck. And if you left this job, even if for a lot higher salary… you would still miss it.</div>
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A lot.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">12. You leave work with items on your to-do list you’re excited about tackling tomorrow.</strong></div>
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Many people cross the “fun” tasks off their to-do lists within the first hour or two.</div>
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You often have cool stuff – new initiatives, side projects, hunches you want to confirm with data, people you want to talk to – left over when it’s time to go home.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">13. You help without thinking.</strong></div>
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You like seeing your colleagues succeed, so it’s second nature to help them out. You pitch in automatically.</div>
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And they do the same for you.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">14. You don’t think about retirement… because retirement sounds boring…</strong></div>
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…and a lot less fulfilling.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-86373308315840778692013-04-29T11:50:00.001-07:002013-04-29T11:50:43.149-07:00Misc: Documentary, "Surviving progress"Very interesting documentary that gives you a lot to think of.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3DuampumYoc" width="640"></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-70224768102334202472013-04-24T10:19:00.001-07:002013-04-24T10:19:29.199-07:00Misc: Apple tv ad. The crazy ones.<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8rwsuXHA7RA" width="480"></iframe></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-7831502185522163172013-03-26T10:37:00.000-07:002013-03-26T10:37:03.331-07:00Misc: Disrupting education<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/naveenjain/2013/03/24/disrupting-education/">http://www.forbes.com/sites/naveenjain/2013/03/24/disrupting-education/</a></div>
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<hgroup><b><u>Rethinking Education: Why Our Education System Is Ripe For Disruption</u></b></hgroup></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Our education system is not broken, it has just become obsolete</em></div>
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When I think of all the tremendous, seemingly impossible feats made possible by entrepreneurs, I am amazed that more has not been done to reinvent our education system. I want all entrepreneurs to take notice that this is a multi-hundred billion dollar opportunity that’s ripe for disruption.</div>
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Our collective belief is that our education system is broken so we spend tremendous energy in trying to fix it. We conveniently place the blame on problems that stem from budget cuts, teacher layoffs, inadequate technology in our schools and our education policies. We need to recognize the fact that our education system is NOT BROKEN but has simply become OBSOLETE. It no longer meets the needs of the present and future generation.</div>
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Our education system was developed for an industrial era where we could teach certain skills to our children and they were able to use these skills for the rest of their lives working productively in an industry. We are now living in a fast paced technological era where every skill that we teach our children becomes obsolete in the 10 to 15 years due to exponentially growing technological advances. Meanwhile, new categories of jobs are being created because of these technological advances. It’s hard to imagine that half of the jobs that exist today didn’t exist 25 years ago.</div>
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Our education system today uses the mass production style manufacturing process of standardization. This process requires raw material that is grouped together based on a specific criteria. Those raw materials are then moved from one station to another station where an expert makes a small modification given the small amount of time given to complete their task. At the end of the assembly line, these assembled goods are standardized tested to see if they meet certain criteria before they are moved to the next advanced assembly line.</div>
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We are using the same process to teach our kids today, grouping them by their date of manufacturing (age). We put them on an education assembly line every day, starting with one station that teaches them a certain subject before automatically moving them to the next class after a certain period of time. Once a year we use standardized testing to see if they are ready to move to the next grade of an education advanced assembly line.</div>
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Rethinking education starts with embracing our individuality. Our life experiences are very different from one and other, and yet we seem to think every one of us can learn the same way. Some of us learn experientially, while others are more attracted to logical or conceptual learning. Why are we limiting ourselves to one format or curriculum when we know that each individual is going to learn differently? Further, why are we advancing children to the next level, or grade, on an annual basis, as opposed to when each is ready?</div>
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Just think of the opportunities we can unlock by making education as addictive as a video game. This type of experiential, addictive learning improves decision-making skills and increases the processing speed and spatial skills of the brain. When was the last time your child asked for help with a video game? Probably never, but so many kids are struggling with basic algebra and chemistry every day. Why is it that our young kids all across America can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking, yet we accept the fact that they can’t add or read?</div>
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No one can possibly argue against the need for new ways of educating our children.We can’t fix what’s not broken but need to reinvent it. We need to allow children to learn to be creative, learn to reason, and to solve real world problems using collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches.</div>
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As we continue to pour billions of dollars into a failing education system that seeks to advance teaching methodologies, it is time we flipped the model on its head and used technology to focus on our learners. To reinvent education or solve any of the problems facing our society today, we need to think innovatively, see the promise of education outside the box and recognize that failure is not an option.</div>
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Let’s not just focus all of our energy on leaving a better country for our children but focus on leaving better children for our country.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-48369625233821393882013-03-26T10:35:00.002-07:002013-03-26T10:43:39.961-07:00Misc: YouTube studios<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130321144755-52906-why-howard-hughes-would-have-loved-youtube?goback=%2Egde_40915_member_225301616" style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, 'Liberation Sans', Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 20px;">http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130321144755-52906-why-howard-hughes-would-have-loved-youtube?goback=%2Egde_40915_member_225301616</a></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, FreeSans, Liberation Sans, Helmet, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Why Howard Hughes would have loved YouTube</span></span></div>
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YouTube recently opened a brand new state-of-the-art <a href="http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/los-angeles.html" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">studio</a> in Los Angeles, where they invite people to come and tell their stories on YouTube. Anyone, well almost anyone, can come in and use all the top-notch facilities in the studio for free to produce content on YouTube. I recently had the chance to visit the place, and it is awesome.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.999999046325684px;">In the hallway of the YouTube Space studios stand two vintage Video Arcade games where visitors and employees can play Pac Man or Asteroids. Wonderful to play, but vintage they are. Relics of a past where videogames were custom built expensive machines to be found in arcade halls, only to be replaced by waves of Xboxes and PlayStations a few years later, and giving rise to a whole generation playing Angry Birds on their smartphones. Mass consumerization of the gaming industry, the collapse of pioneers such as Atari, and the rise of a whole new legion of game developers.</span></div>
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Perhaps the TV industry will see a similar turn of events, and YouTube could be the catalyst. YouTube couldn't have picked a better attribute than the Video Arcade games to display in their brand new studios. They couldn't have picked a better place either. The new YouTube Space studios are housed in the old Howard Hughes Helicopter factory, and one of the proud Howard Hughes helicopter models is still parked right out in front of the building.</div>
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I had the chance to visit the facilities last week, and it blew my mind. Not just the facilities, which are top notch, but more than that the implications of how we will consume television and media in the future.</div>
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I have two kids, aged 10 and 14. Safe to say, in the New Normal where digital has become a normality, I learn more from them on all-things-digital than they will learn from me. I had noticed that my fourteen-year-old daughter had been spending less and less time watching daytime TV. There were still the occasional moments that she would slouch in front of the television set, and take in the episodes of iCarly or SpongeBob Square Pants, more often than not constantly engaged with her mobile phone.</div>
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But she started spending more and more time watching content on YouTube, where her laptop clearly started to become her Primary Screen for viewing video. At first she was searching for the stuff she knew from television on YouTube. But then something flipped, and she quickly latched onto channels and series that exist on YouTube only. '<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Original Content</em>', as they call it.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Smosh</strong></div>
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Today, my daughter is hooked on <a href="http://www.smosh.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Smosh</a>. I personally can't stand it. Probably I have the same look on my face when I watch Smosh as my old folks had when I was watching the episodes of Dr. Who on the BBC when I was her age. My father never really got the Daleks. And I don't get Smosh.</div>
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If you don't have a teenager in the house, Smosh is quite the phenomenon. Today, Smosh has more than 8 million subscribers to their YouTube channels, and their content has had more than 2 billion views. Billion, that's right. Smosh was started in 2003 by two guys, Ian and Anthony, who have become the rock stars of the online video world, and have built their videos into the most subscribed channel on YouTube. Their core 'Smosh' channel has new videos uploaded weekly, featuring skits by Ian and Anthony, but another popular channel under their brand is 'SmoshGames' where you will see them playing videogames and commenting on them. My son is hooked. Anthony and Ian have become household names in our house, like Michael Jackson and Prince were to my generation, and John, Paul, George and Ringo were to my parents.</div>
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Smosh is on YouTube only. They don't want to be on TV, because as the creators say: "We are where our audience is. And our audience is on YouTube, not on plain old TV anymore." In other words, they think regular TV is dead as a doorknob. And they may be right.</div>
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Smosh is not a unique phenomenon. There are thousands of successful channels on YouTube. Some are incredibly prosperous, and very lucrative. Take <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew?feature=watch" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">freddiew</a>, the channel of Freddy Wong, who has more than 5 million subscribers. He was also the creative force behind Video Game High School, an intensely popular internet action comedy webseries, which was released on Netflix, AFTER it had been aired on YouTube.</div>
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YouTube is now producing stars by the dozen. Take Michelle Phan, a Vietnamese-American make-up instructor who has a YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/MichellePhan" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">channel</a> where she shows make-up tips, talks about beauty products, and has a healthy 3,3 million subscribers. Or Ryan Higa, who has a channel called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/nigahiga" style="border: 0px; color: #006699; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Nigahiga</a>, which mostly features himself, that has more than 7 million subscribers. These new YouTube stars all have one thing in common: they're twenty-something digital natives who have ALWAYS known things to be digital. They wouldn't want to be on TV. This generation of talent have been taking to YouTube like a duck takes to water.</div>
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YouTube has become an enormous magnet for content, and the numbers are scary. Every second more than 70 hours of video is uploaded. YouTube is one fifth of all internet traffic, and has more than 4 billion views per day. True, not all of the content is of the highest quality, and much can be put under the ‘Cats on skateboards’ category, but the next generation is pretty clear: YouTube is where the action is.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Next Gen Oprah</strong></div>
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It's pretty clear that the next generation Oprah or Jay Leno won't be coming from TV anymore, they'll come straight from YouTube. That's why YouTube has built a studio in LA. And one in London. And one in Tokyo. But the Los Angeles facility is their flagship studio. Where Howard Hughes once built helicopters, the next generation of talent is producing the next YouTube hit, the next monster YouTube channel, the next generation of content.</div>
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If you're rushing of to LA to record your stuff, hold your horses. Although the use of the studio is free, you have to have at least 500,000 subscribers to be taken seriously. That threshold is pretty steep, but it's the YouTube equivalent of 'you have to be this tall to ride this attraction'. Once you're in though, you have all the cameras, studios, lighting equipment and editing facilities to create the most perfect content, and put it straight on YouTube.</div>
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We're witnessing the end of an era. Television won't go black soon. But watching linear television as we know it, could become the passtime of the 'old-timers', the favorite way to spend the evening for the old digital immigrants who will sit in front of their television sets, watching reruns of Dr. Who, after they've read their old analog paper newspapers.</div>
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But the next generation won't be caught dead in front of a TV. They will surf the channels of YouTube, that could be streamed directly from the fabulous new studio in LA. Howard Hughes would have been proud at such daring disruptors using his old factory.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-80326444677262822752013-03-07T13:35:00.000-08:002013-03-07T13:35:29.499-08:00Misc: The power of gratitude<div style="text-align: justify;">
A while ago came across <a href="http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-power-of-gratitude.html" target="_blank">this interesting post</a><span id="goog_2138726139"></span><span id="goog_2138726140"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a> about gratitude and made me remember how much I do hate people not being thankful. When you help someone out you should never expect anything back, as you are supposed to help that person genuinely and not because you can get something back. In fact a few years ago I saw a movie called "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223897/" target="_blank">Pay it forward</a>" and although it was a pretty bad film I really liked the premise of the movie. Every time someone helps you out or do you a favor you should help out three other people. I don´t need anything back but I would love seeing the people that I helped, helping out someone else as exchange. Can you imagine how cool this would be?<br />
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Though, something that I do expect is just a THANKS. I really, really appreciate when someone takes some of their time to help me out with something and I always make sure that those people know that I appreciate their effort and the time they spend because of me. This might sound obvious and you could think that everyone does that but you are far from right. Thankfully most of the people appreciate when someone helps them out but unfortunately there are some selfish people out there that don´t care whatsoever and it really pisses me off. Along those lines I recently came across <a href="http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/networking-tips-how-to-strengthen-relationships.html" target="_blank">this post</a>, from the same guy that the previous one that does a very good analysis of this point too.</div>
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A few months ago a good friend of mind asked me if he could come with a friend of his to visit the company where I work as he was studying computer graphics and it was his dream to visit one of the main companies in the business. The company (as most companies) is closed to regular visits but the employees are allowed to let friends and family in and tour them in through the facilities. Obviously I told my friend that there was no problem so they came, I spent a couple of hours with them and everything was just fine. So far so good. A few months later I got an email from that person (my friend´s friend) telling me that he had finished his studies and if I could take a look to his demo reel. One more time I didn´t hesitate and took a couple of hours reviewing his work and sending him a pretty long email with my advice. I tried to be quite up front with him, specifying which parts of the reel were working and which not, what kind of work to expect when you are a recent graduate and which were the steps that I would do if I was in his situation. Have you ever heard about that guy right after I sent him the email? </div>
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I am wondering if all this guy wanted was me to get him a job at the company I work or what, as I never heard back from him. I am also wondering if he got upset because I was honest or if he just thought that saying thanks wasn´t necessary. The funny part of the story is that a few months later, when I had completely forgotten about this guy he wrote back to me asking for more favors WTF??? Can you believe it? The guy didn't have the decency of saying thanks but he did had the nerve to write back asking for more help. If that person would have responded in the first place I wounld't had hesitated to help him again but obviously, this time I ignored him.</div>
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Then some months later something similar happened to me again. That time it was a student that contacted me asking for advice and one more time, I took my time to advise her the best I could and it took her more than two months to get back to me to say thanks. Are you kidding me? Weirdly enough the previous story repeated itself again. When I thought I would never hear from that person again, she reached me out again a few month later, asking for a recommendation letter. Honestly I am still in shock. How can people be so little appreciative and on top of that having the nerve to ask for a recommendation letter to someone that they don't know?<br />
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Unfortunately this has been happening to me more often that I would like so unfortunately , from now on, whenever anyone asks me for help or for advice, specially if it is someone that I don´t know, I will ask myself if I am going to be wasting my time again or not. I really hate being in a situation where I may decide not to help out nice people that would have really appreciated it because of those others asses.</div>
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This two guys are looking forward to get a job in the computer graphics industry and although it may seem a pretty big industry with lots of people working on it, we are not that many and it is quite likely that we will cross paths either directly or indirectly in the future. Unfortunately for them if by any chance, anyone asks me know this people I am never going to be able to give any good feedback about them and all because they decided not to write back with just one text line saying thanks.<br />
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Unfortunately this kind of behavior is more extended than it seems. I don't think people do it consciously and it is probably due to too many things in everyone's head but I think those little details are very important. I have found the same issue with closer people and friends as well where I have spent my time writing them for their birthday or congratulating them for something and never hearing from them back with just a "thank you note" moreover when I don't have facebook and its birthday alarms. </div>
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Like Ellen DeGeneres says, "Be kind to each other" and be thankful every time someone takes some of his time to help you out. Not only because it is what you have to do but because you never know if you will bump into that person again one day in the future.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-53784809120149751182013-02-14T11:44:00.001-08:002013-02-14T11:44:28.208-08:00Misc: Boss vs leader<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-35477465078496073362013-02-05T21:55:00.000-08:002013-02-05T21:55:34.211-08:00Misc: The science of storytelling<br />
<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains?fb_action_ids=10151326488662615&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151326488662615%22%3A133605103460290%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151326488662615%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Liberation Serif', serif; font-size: 26px; line-height: 1.2;" target="_blank">The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains</a><br />
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">Leo Widrich</a></strong></div>
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<a href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/187euru1qwc8ojpg/original.jpg" rel="lytebox" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;"></a><i>A good story can make or break a presentation, article, or conversation. But why is that? When <a href="http://bufferapp.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">Buffer</a> co-founder Leo Widrich started to market his product through stories instead of benefits and bullet points, sign-ups went through the roof. Here he shares the science of why storytelling is so uniquely powerful.</i></div>
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In 1748, the British politician and aristocrat John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, spent a lot of his free time playing cards. He greatly enjoyed eating a snack while still keeping one hand free for the cards. So he came up with the idea to eat beef between slices of toast, which would allow him to finally eat and play cards at the same time. Eating his newly invented "sandwich," the name for two slices of bread with meat in between, became one of the most popular meal inventions in the western world.</div>
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What's interesting about this is that you are very likely to never forget the story of who invented the sandwich ever again. Or at least, much less likely to do so, if it would have been presented to us in bullet points or other purely information-based form.</div>
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<b>For over 27,000 years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods.</b> Recently a<a href="https://twitter.com/kabaim" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">good friend</a> of mine gave me an introduction to the power of storytelling, and I wanted to learn more.</div>
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Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use it to make better decisions every day:</div>
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Our brain on stories: How our brains become more active when we tell stories</h3>
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We all enjoy a good story, whether it's a novel, a movie, or simply something one of our friends is explaining to us. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?</div>
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It's in fact quite simple. If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that's it, nothing else happens.</div>
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When we are being told a story, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1354716276-vBCJNxgtIuIFGnU+PmkBpA&_r=0" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">things change dramatically</a>. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, <b>but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too</b>.</div>
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If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it's about motion, our motor cortex gets active:</div>
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"Metaphors like "The singer had a velvet voice" and "He had leathery hands" roused the sensory cortex. […] Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like "John grasped the object" and "Pablo kicked the ball." The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body's movements."</div>
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<b>A story can put your whole brain to work</b>. And yet, it gets better:</div>
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When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:</div>
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"When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. <b>By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains</b>."</div>
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Anything you've experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas that you've activated that way, active too:</div>
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Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling—how to make use of it</h3>
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Now all this is interesting. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. The still unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other, have such a profound impact on our learning?</div>
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The simple answer is this: We are wired that way. <b>A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect</b>. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation. In fact, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secrets-of-storytelling" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">Jeremy Hsu found</a> [that] "personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations."</div>
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Now, whenever we hear a story, <b>we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences</b>. That's why metaphors work so well with us. While we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we activate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_cortex" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">a part called insula</a>, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, or disgust.</div>
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The following graphic probably describes it best:</div>
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In a great <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">experiment</a>, John Bargh at Yale found the following:</div>
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"Volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment shortly. In reality, the experiment began when the experimenter, seemingly struggling with an armful of folders, asks the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee. As the key experimental manipulation, the coffee was either hot or iced. Subjects then read a description of some individual, and those who had held the warmer cup tended to rate the individual as having a warmer personality, with no change in ratings of other attributes."</div>
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We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. Everything in our brain is looking for the cause and effect relationship of something we've previously experienced.</div>
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<b>Let's dig into some hands on tips to make use of it:</b></div>
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Exchange giving suggestions for telling stories</h4>
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Do you know the feeling when a good friend tells you a story and then two weeks later, you mention the same story to him, as if it was your idea? This is totally normal and at the same time, one of the most powerful ways to get people on board with your ideas and thoughts. According to Uri Hasson from Princeton, <b>a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience</b>.</div>
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The next time you struggle with getting people on board with your projects and ideas, simply tell them a story, where the outcome is that doing what you had in mind is the best thing to do. According to Princeton researcher Hasson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people's minds.</div>
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Write more persuasively—bring in stories from yourself or an expert</h4>
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This is something that took me a long time to understand. If you start out writing, it's only natural to think "I don't have a lot of experience with this, how can I make my post believable if I use personal stories?" The best way to get around this is by simply exchanging stories with those of experts. When this blog used to be a social media blog, I would <b>ask for quotes from the top folks in the industry or simply find great passages they had written online</b>. It's a great way to add credibility and at the same time, tell a story.</div>
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The simple story is more successful than the complicated one</h4>
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When we think of stories, it is often easy to convince ourselves that they have to be complex and detailed to be interesting. The truth is however, that the simpler a story, the more likely it will stick. Using simple language as well as low complexity is the best way to activate the brain regions that make us truly relate to the happenings of a story. This is a similar reason why multitasking is so hard for us. Try for example to <b>reduce the number of adjectives or complicated nouns in a presentation or article</b> and exchange them with more simple, yet heartfelt language.</div>
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<b>Quick last fact</b>: Our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories awesome. Scientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelling have also discovered, that certain words and phrases <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="border: 0px; color: #719602; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">have lost all storytelling power</a>:</div>
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"Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like "a rough day" are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more."</div>
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This means, that the frontal cortex—the area of your brain responsible to experience emotions—can't be activated with these phrases. It's something that might be worth remembering when crafting your next story.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-22918715919755326162013-02-05T11:34:00.002-08:002013-02-05T11:34:26.745-08:00Misc: Realtime rendering inside Unreal engine<a href="http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?175000-Mass-Effect-style-character-WIP-Realtime-UDK/page2&s=2bdc8e6d88ae8cc2bf110a6ef5c631c3">http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?175000-Mass-Effect-style-character-WIP-Realtime-UDK/page2&s=2bdc8e6d88ae8cc2bf110a6ef5c631c3</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-12606741884809197552013-01-26T22:09:00.000-08:002013-01-26T22:09:17.399-08:00Misc: 25 things I have learned about lifehttp://startuplife.quora.com/25-Things-Ive-Learned-About-Life?ref=fb<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, Palladio, 'URW Palladio L', 'Book Antiqua', Baskerville, 'Bookman Old Style', 'Bitstream Charter', 'Nimbus Roman No9 L', Garamond, 'Apple Garamond', 'ITC Garamond Narrow', 'New Century Schoolbook', 'Century Schoolbook', 'Century Schoolbook L', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;">When I turned 25 a few months ago, I wrote down some of the things I've learned over my short time on earth. The last year has been a crazy roller-coaster ride which has enabled me to see certain things like never before. Last year during this time, I was working at what I would consider my "dream job" - well, before I discovered my current "job" (I don't think I can even call it a job). Over the last year, I've tried to learn from people who have "made it" in life - entrepreneurs, figureheads, lawyers, bankers and even politicians. I've realized that there is no formula to success in life, but there are definitely lessons that can be learned to help along the journey. I came up with the following list which I hope to someday come back to - but for now, I think it's a pretty accurate depiction of how I think ;) So without further adieu:</span><br />
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Take risks when you're young. The older you become, the harder it gets. But they should always be calculated.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">The most important thing you learn in school is <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">how </i>to learn. Once you master that, nothing will stand in your way. Never stop learning.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">I would rather say that I tried and failed than live a life of regret. You miss every shot you don't take.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Dream big. Life is too short to only be mediocre.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Music is the cheapest and simplest cure to life's problems. Queue up your favourite play list, put on some headphones, and take a walk. You'll instantly feel better.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Drink beer. Lots of it. It makes you think more creatively. Oh, and wine too.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Join clubs and put yourself in as many different social settings as possible. It will help you understand people and make you a better communicator.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Start your own business as young as possible. Even if it's a lemonade stand, it will teach you business lessons you'll use for the rest of your life.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">If you're going to fail, fail fast and make it public. Don't drag it on. Then pick yourself back up. Knowing that others watched you fail will encourage you to prove them wrong.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Meet lots of different people. Life is serendipitous in many ways and you never know what can happen.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">When life throws lemons at you, make lemonade. Then pour it for all your friends. Be optimistic. It spreads like wild fire.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Success does not lead to happiness. You need to be happy first before you can become successful. Find what makes you happy. Don't stop until you find it.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Many people don't want to start businesses because they are scared. Successful entrepreneurs got to where they are because they were willing to tread where others wouldn't. If you're too scared to leave your 9-5 job, entrepreneurship is not meant for you.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Surround yourself with people way smarter than you. That is the only way you will be challenged to grow.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Only those who are with you during the struggles deserve to be with you when you celebrate the successes.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Pick and choose your battles carefully. There are only 24 hours in a day. If something isn't worth your time, just say no...or outsource it to India ;) (thank you <span class="qlink_container" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a class="external_link" href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background-image: url(http://d1vgw4v7ja2ido.cloudfront.net/-d00b84133c0b47df.gif); background-position: 100% 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #19558d; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 12px 0px 0px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">4 Hour Workweek</a></span>)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">The most important asset to invest in is yourself. Take classes to make yourself a better person and never stop learning. Buy books. Lots of them.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">True friends will never question why you disappeared off the face of the earth. They will be there for you unconditionally.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">The more comfortable you are with a job you don't want to be doing, the harder it will become to leave it and chase your dreams. Learn what you can, then go change the world.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">A dream job does not exist. You have to create it.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Travel as much as you can. You will come back with a wider perspective of the world and more ideas on how to change it.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">"Thank You" - the most powerful two words in the English dictionary.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">God gave us all a purpose. Don't settle until you find yours. I didn't think mine was to sit in front of computer screens and trade foreign exchange, so I kept looking.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">The world may seem big and scary. But the older you get, the more you realize that everything is man-made. Nothing is set in stone. Don't stick with the status quo.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Life is not easy. But having the right support group with you during your journey goes a long, long way.</li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-64670186941448530002013-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:002013-01-26T14:54:43.455-08:00Misc: 4 simple steps to freedomhttp://tinybuddha.com/blog/4-simple-steps-to-freedom/<br />
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1. Don’t take anything personally.<br />
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Nothing anybody says or does to you has anything to do with you. Each person’s opinion is solely the product of their own life and reality.<br />
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It’s hard to imagine this. It’s way easier to get offended, mad, or pissed off or to internalize and believe what they said. Rather than getting consumed by it, obsessed over it and letting it affect you, just let it go. Hear what they say, accept that it is a reflection of their world and poof. See the thought disappear.<br />
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This is also true when someone is giving you advice. Have you ever shared your biggest dream? The responses can be all over the place. One person may say, “Good luck with that, maybe you should come back to earth” while another may be all about it, “YES! Go for it!”<br />
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Does that mean the first person doesn’t believe in you? Absolutely not. It means (s)he doesn’t believe in himself. In other words, it is hard for that person to imagine your dream in his own realm of possibility.<br />
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When someone says something to you, whether it be an insult, piece of advice, or anything at all, connect back to your awareness. Only you can know what is true or not. By taking another person’s opinion of yourself to heart and choosing to believe it, you are doing yourself a huge injustice.<br />
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2. Don’t be a victim.<br />
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It’s easy to think that the world is against you. Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong? It happens. There are things in our control and out of our control. You can’t control the world around you, but you can control how you react to things. Don’t fall into the downward spiral of the victim trap.<br />
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Embrace each and every thing that happens as an opportunity. When something “bad” happens ask, “What is the universe trying to tell me?”<br />
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Often it’s saying stop, slow down, and come back to the present before your life zips passed you. And if it’s not saying that, it’s saying something. So listen.<br />
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Accept situations as signs or opportunities, and remember that there is a purpose and a greater good to each. Look for the lesson rather than getting stuck in victim mode.<br />
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My new favorite mantra when the times are tough is “Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!” Feeling gratitude for all things, at all times is incredibly freeing.<br />
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3. Be gentle, kind, and compassionate with yourself.<br />
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As the awareness behind your thoughts, acknowledge what you say about yourself. Are your thoughts kind? Or are you your own worst critic? When you look in the mirror, do you see pure beauty or do you pick yourself apart?<br />
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Imagine having a little person on your shoulder telling you horrible things about yourself all day long. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? How do you think that would affect your life? Well, that is what we’re doing to ourselves if we stay in a place of constant negative self talk.<br />
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Work on shifting your thoughts to ones that are more loving and kind. Every time you think something negative about yourself, replace it with a positive. Focus on the good things and give attention to your awesomeness. Eventually you will start believing them. Doing so allows you to have the freedom to just be you.<br />
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4. Practice forgiveness.<br />
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The powerful F word. Oprah said it best: “Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.” Forgiveness isn’t about saying that whatever happened was okay, right, or just, but about letting it go.<br />
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Forgiving is releasing the power that a certain event has on you. By not forgiving you are keeping your mind in the past, thinking and wishing that things could have been different. This traps you and makes you feel powerless.<br />
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Forgiveness puts you back into the present—the only time that truly exists—where you have the power to live free and happy.<br />
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Next time you feel stuck, turn your awareness within. What do your thoughts look like? Allow your mind’s grip to release so the joy can flow in.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-71425979254163730582013-01-11T13:46:00.001-08:002013-01-11T13:46:55.874-08:00Short film: Pixar's The Blue Umbrella<div style="text-align: justify;">
Pixar's has finally officially anounced the new short film that will play in Monsters University. I had the luck to work in the project as a lighitng artist and I have to say that it has been one of the more memorable projects I have worked on. </div>
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You can read a little bit more about it <a href="http://www.disneydreaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Pixar-Short-The-Blue-Umbrella.jpg">HERE</a>:</div>
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you can also take a look to the tumblr account that the Director setup a while ago and where he was giving away some information about the film while it was still in production and the project hadn't been announced yet <a href="http://rainycitytales332.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-55037494020178451732012-12-19T15:01:00.000-08:002012-12-19T15:01:00.771-08:00Misc: How rejection breeds creativity<br />
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<span class="intro" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px 0px 30px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 17px 30px 0px; text-align: justify; width: 555px;"><a href="http://99u.com/tips/7251/How-Rejection-Breeds-Creativity?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ALL&utm_campaign=MIH%20-%20December%2012&utm_content=Final" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22px; text-align: start;">http://99u.com/tips/7251/How-Rejection-Breeds-Creativity?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ALL&utm_campaign=MIH%20-%20December%2012&utm_content=Final</a></span><span class="intro" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; display: block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px 0px 30px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 17px 30px 0px; text-align: justify; width: 555px;">In 2006, Stefani Germanotta had hit a turning point in her career. She had quit a rigorous musical theatre program at an elite college to focus on her musical passion and, after a year of hard work and little income, had signed a deal with Def Jam records. But this promise wouldn't last. Just three months after signing, Def Jam changed its mind about Stefani's unusual style and released her from her contract.</span></div>
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Rejected, Stefani went back the drawing board, working in clubs and experimenting with new performers and new influences. These experiments produced a new sound that was drawing positive attention from critics and fans. Within a year, there was another offer; this one from Interscope Records. Nearly two years after her initial rejection, Stefani was finally able to introduce her sound and her self to the world – as Lady Gaga.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Rejection happens and, when it does, how we respond to it matters. Lady Gaga responded by experimenting with new influences and making her sound more unique. Just as Gaga experienced, recent research suggests that when most of us experience rejection, it can actually enhance our creativity, depending on how we respond to it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">In a series of experiments, researchers led by Sharon Kim of Johns Hopkins University </span><a href="http://releases.jhu.edu/2012/08/21/dont-get-mad-get-creative-social-rejection-can-fuel-imagination-jhucarey-researcher-finds/" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">sought to examine the impact of rejection on individuals' creative output</a><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">. In the first experiment, participants were given a series of personality questions and told they would be considered for participation in several group exercises in the future. </span></div>
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Rejection happens and, when it does, how we respond to it matters.</div>
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When the participants returned to the laboratory a week later, some of them were asked to complete a few tasks before joining their group (inclusion), others were told that the none of the groups had chosen them and they would need to complete their tasks independently (rejection).</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">The tasks in the experiment were a series of rapid associative tests (RAT), a common measurement of divergent thinking. A RAT question works by presenting three seemingly unrelated words (e.g. fish, mine, and rush) and asking participants to think of a single word that can be added to all three to create a meaningful term (e.g. gold; goldfish, gold mine, gold rush). The RAT question is a useful measurement because it requires both elements of creative thinking: novelty and usefulness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">When they calculated the results, the researchers found that "rejected" participants significantly outperformed those that were included in a group. But that wasn't all the researchers found. Embedded in the personality questions was a measurement of how individualistic or collective participants viewed themselves (called independent or dependent self-concept). Those who had test results that labeled them as independent showed even greater gains in creativity after feeling rejection. Consider the difference between those who respond to rejection by sulking versus those who respond by rolling</span><em style="border: 0px; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </em><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">up their sleeves and thinking "I'll show them."</span></div>
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<span class="blockquote" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-size: 22px; font-style: italic; line-height: 26px; margin: 16px 80px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 12px; text-align: justify;">Those who had test results that labeled them as independent showed even greater gains in creativity after feeling rejection.</span></div>
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The researchers wanted to know if this independent self-concept could be manipulated. Could people be put into a mindset that dealt with rejection in a way that enhanced their creative output? To answer this, they reran their experiment with a slight tweak. Instead of embedding the self-concept measurement in their personality questions and examining correlations afterward, participants' self concept was altered or "primed" through a simple activity designed to focus participants either on themselves or on how they fit into a larger group. Remarkably, even a task as small as circling the singular "I" or plural "we" pronouns in a story was enough to alter their self-concept and affect their response to rejection.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">As they expected, participants primed with an independent self-concept solved significantly more RAT problems following rejection than those primed to think collectively. The results were conclusive: rejection breeds creativity, especially for those who consider themselves highly independent. In final a follow-up study, the researchers found the same trend using a different measurement of creativity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Taken together, these experiments hold interesting implications for responding to rejection. While it is never a comfortable experience, the feelings of rejection can actually help us access our more creative selves. Free from the expectations of group norms, we can push the limits of novelty. Moreover, we can enhance that ability by changing the way we respond to rejection. Instead of dwelling too much on the pain of being turned down or turned aside, consider the freedom you now have to explore new possibilities and less mainstream options.</span></div>
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Feelings of rejection can actually help us access our more creative selves.</div>
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<a href="http://99u.com/articles/7207/Why-Great-Ideas-Get-Rejected" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://99u.com/articles/7207/Why-Great-Ideas-Get-Rejected" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Being rejected is often a statement that you (or your ideas) are too far from the current mainstream to be considered safe or comfortable</a><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">. This could actually be a good thing. You're ahead of your time. While the group or client may not believe they need you right away, the world probably does. If you're too far from the mainstream, you could be the one pushing progress forward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Consider how Lady Gaga's work was too unique for Def Jam, but was an international hit just two years later with Interscope. Decades before Gaga, George Bernard Shaw, the Nobel Prize winning writer, weighed in on the same phenomenon, saying "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-63198220924442484242012-12-17T13:42:00.001-08:002012-12-17T13:42:21.982-08:00Film: Brave, Pixar and mathInteresting video by Inigo Quilez about how maths were used in Brave to create the forest.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EnaA9ZRPXiE" width="560"></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-67778767397731484782012-12-12T12:00:00.000-08:002012-12-12T12:00:43.264-08:00Misc: 5 Easy ways to stay motivated<br />
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://linkedinworld.com/5-easy-ways-to-stay-motivated-2/?goback=%2Egde_1834604_member_194081740">http://linkedinworld.com/5-easy-ways-to-stay-motivated-2/?goback=%2Egde_1834604_member_194081740</a></strong></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">No matter what you do for a living</strong>, the key to success is superlative performance, day after day after day. And that’s only possible if you make optimism, expectancy, and enthusiasm part of your daily experience.</div>
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That’s easy if you’re pursuing your life’s dearest dreams. But what if, like almost everybody else in this world, you’ve got a job that’s not exactly perfect. Here’s how to remain a go-getter, even when the getting gets tough:</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STEP #1: Realize That YOU Are in Control</strong></div>
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Your attitude isn’t controlled by the outside world. That’s an illusion, a fantasy that, if you believe it, you’re simply using to escape responsibility for managing this all-important part of your career.</div>
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For example, if you run into snowstorm that’s making you late to a customer meeting, you can get frustrated and start cursing…, or you can look forward to the appreciation that the customer might feel because you were committed enough to fight the weather to make the meeting.</div>
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Similarly, when the economy goes south, you can start obsessing about how it’s going to affect your job, or you can be one of those individuals who use tighter budgets as a way to streamline operations, develop new markets and create innovations.</div>
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It’s all in how you see it!</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STEP #2: Neutralize Your Negative Triggers</strong></div>
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Stop letting exterior events trigger negative thoughts.</div>
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For example, suppose you’re traveling to a customer meeting but keep running into red lights and traffic delays. That IS a problem, but if you get flustered, you’ve got TWO problems: the fact that you’re late, and the fact that you’re flustered.</div>
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And if you walk into the meeting flustered, the customer might wonder if you’re moody and unreliable. So now you’ve got THREE problems.</div>
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To get a better result (and achieve a better attitude), modify your interpretation of exterior events that tend to trigger a negative outlook. Once the events in your life take on a different, more useful meaning, they won’t trigger a bad attitude.</div>
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For example, while the delays may be making you late, use the extra time to collect your thoughts, consider your options, and decide on a damage control strategy. Or use the time to come up with a better schedule, so that you always leave plenty of time, just in case there’s traffic.</div>
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As a mentor of mine once said: “Life is like those signs that say ‘You Are Here’ What you make of where you are is up to you.”</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STEP #3: Detoxify Your Media Consumption</strong></div>
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Much of today’s news programming consists of “if it bleeds it leads” stories followed by commercials offering some form of (often addictive) security or comfort. The constant flow of negative imagery automatically creates a negative attitude about life, the world, and everything in it.</div>
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If you want to maintain a positive attitude, you MUST reduce or even eliminate your exposure to broadcast news programming. Rather than waste time with that garbage, add material and content into your life that will help you become more successful (like this column!)</div>
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Start and end each day reading something positive! When you’re on the road, rather than listening to negative, emotionally-charged talk radio, listen to motivational tapes, music that raises your spirits, or maybe great literature.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STEP #4: Avoid Negative People</strong></div>
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You probably have one or more friends, relatives, or acquaintances who make you feel tired and drained. They always seem to have something sour to say; criticisms come to their lips far more quickly than compliments.</div>
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Such folk are toxic to your attitude (and hence to your success) because, if they’re not actively tearing down your enthusiasm, they’re trying to get you to think the same way about the world as they do. What a drag! Literally.</div>
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If you want to maintain a positive attitude, consider sharply limiting your daily exposure to such people. Don’t show up at the daily “water cooler complain-fest.” Don’t go to lunch with the “grouse and grumble” crowd. If you’ve got family members who are constantly negative, tune them out.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STEP #5: Adopt a Positive Vocabulary</strong></div>
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The words that you use—both what you speak aloud and your internal dialogue—have a vast influence in how you perceive what’s happening in the world. All words carry a certain amount of emotional baggage, inherent in their exact definition and the way that they’ve been used in the past.</div>
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For instance, the words “despise,” “hate,” and “dislike” mean essentially the same thing, but carry very different emotional baggage. If you “dislike” something, but tell yourself that you “hate it” over and over and over, it will intensify the original emotion.</div>
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To keep a positive attitude, use weak words for negative feelings and strong words for positive ones. This thwarts the downward spiral of negative feelings and words, and accelerates the upward spiral of positive feelings and words.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-47368854718772743942012-12-11T10:56:00.000-08:002012-12-11T10:56:38.581-08:00Misc:8 Beliefs That Make You More Resilient<a href="http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/8-beliefs-that-make-you-more-resilient.html?cid=em01013week50">http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/8-beliefs-that-make-you-more-resilient.html?cid=em01013week50</a><br />
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Most people live lives of quiet desperation because they focus on things that they cannot control: outside events, stuff that happened in the past and what other people are thinking. As a result, they fail to focus on what they CAN control: their own beliefs, their own attitude, their own emotions, and their own behavior.</div>
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Of these four things, by far the most important are your beliefs, because what you believe about work and life largely determines how you feel (your attitude and emotions) and what actions you take (your resulting behavior.)</div>
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In my view, there are eight personal beliefs that not only will propel you completely out of desperation but give you the emotional oomph to handle just about anything the business world throws at you. </div>
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Here they are:</div>
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1. Today's success can breed tomorrow's failure if I let success make me complacent about staying motivated and moving forward.</div>
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2. I learn more from failure than from success. Failure renews my humility, sharpens my objectivity and makes me more resilient.</div>
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3. Goals that contain the phrase "I'll try..." are self-defeating. If I want goals that truly motivate me, I use phrases like "I will" and "I must."</div>
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4. What holds most people back is fear of failure, but if I don't take action, I'll fail by default, so what have I got to lose?</div>
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5. What I say reinforces what I think, so if something is about to come out of my mouth that doesn't serve my purpose, I should simply keep my mouth shut.</div>
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6. I am responsible for my own happiness, so when other people are unkind to me, it reminds me to be kind to myself.</div>
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7. There are five magic words that make even the most difficult business situation easier to handle. Those magic words are: "Do not take it personally."</div>
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8. While there are situations (such as a death in the family) where strong emotions are appropriate, most business situations are not worth even an ounce of misery.</div>
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I wish I could say that I figured out these beliefs all by myself, but frankly I'm not that smart. They're based upon conversations with <a href="http://artmortell.com/" style="color: #003399; text-decoration: none;">Art Mortell</a> and <a href="http://omarperiu.com/" style="color: #003399;">Omar Periu</a>, who know more about motivation and personal growth than I'll ever know.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-19133829436565728962012-12-10T21:13:00.003-08:002012-12-10T21:13:50.279-08:00Misc: The wonderful world of clients<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-24170429131789055192012-12-10T12:12:00.002-08:002012-12-10T12:12:15.662-08:00Misc: The power of negative thinking<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://99u.com/articles/7232/The-Power-of-Negative-Thinking?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ALL&utm_campaign=MIH%20-%20October%2012&utm_content=Final">http://99u.com/articles/7232/The-Power-of-Negative-Thinking?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ALL&utm_campaign=MIH%20-%20October%2012&utm_content=Final</a></div>
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Lie back and picture life after your ambitions are fulfilled, the motivational gurus used to say, and you'll bring that end result closer to reality. Make an effort to visualize every detail – the finished screenplay sitting pretty on your desk, the gushing reviews in the paper, the sports car parked outside.</div>
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The gurus claimed these images would galvanize your determination. They said you could use the power of positive thinking to will success to happen. But then some important research came along that muddied the rosy picture.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Gabriele Oettingen's psychology lab at New York University has </span><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311100031X?via=ihub" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">shown that visualizing our aims as already achieved can backfire</a><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">. The positive imagery can be inspiring at first but it also tricks the mind into relaxing, as if the hard work is done. This means the more compelling the mental scene of success, the more likely it is that your energy will seep away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">In the study, volunteers felt de-energized after visualizing success in an essay competition. In another, participants who </span><a href="http://www.99u.com/articles/7198/How-Goals-and-Good-Intentions-Can-Hold-Us-Back" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">fantasised about their goals</a><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"> for the coming week felt less energetic and achieved fewer of their goals.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Why Picturing Future Obstacles Actually Helps</span></strong></div>
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A related problem with picturing what life will be like after we've achieved our goals is that it encourages us to gloss over the obstacles to success that are standing in our way. While the fantasy about our successful new fashion line or our future gym-fit physique might give us a frisson of excitement, it also distracts us from the practical steps we need to put in place to turn dream into reality. Of course you need to have an end goal in mind – purpose and direction are vital – but just as important is to think hard about the hurdles lying in wait.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Oettingen's team call this strategy "mental contrasting" – thinking about how wonderful it would be to achieve your goals, while paying due attention to where you're at now and all the distance and difficulties that lie in between.</span><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="blockquote" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-size: 22px; font-style: italic; line-height: 26px; margin: 16px 80px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 12px; text-align: justify;">Visualizing our aims as already achieved can backfire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Two weeks after a group of mid-level managers at four hospitals in Germany were trained in this mental contrasting technique, </span><a href="http://www.psycontent.com/content/820136l770k8m672/?p=371596a571fb414d9e314a6d7b726fae&pi=3" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">research by Oettingen's group</a><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;"> showed they'd achieved more of their short-term goals than their colleagues who'd missed out on the training, and they found it easier to make planning decisions. That's another benefit of mental contrasting: by thinking realistically about the obstacles to success, it helps us pick challenges that we're likely to win and avoid wasting time on projects that are going nowhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Have a go – think of one of your ambitions, write down three benefits of succeeding, but then pause and consider the three main obstacles in your way, and write those down, too. Going through this routine will help ensure you direct your motivation and energy where it's needed most, and help you identify if this particular goal is a non-starter.</span></div>
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It's worth noting, however, that mental contrasting works best as a counter-point to high morale and expectations of success. When you're feeling confident, it ensures your positive energy is channelled strategically into the tasks and activities that are essential for progress. (If you're feeling low and struggling to get going on any project at all, then this is not the technique for you.)</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Positive Feedback as a Multiplier for Progress</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">One scenario when we're likely to be flush with confidence and optimism is after receiving positive feedback. In a </span><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311200056X" style="border: 0px; color: #e91c6b; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">more recent study</a><span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">, Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues tested the value of mental contrasting in a simulation of just such a situation.</span></div>
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By thinking realistically about the obstacles to success, it helps us pick challenges that we're likely to win and avoid wasting time.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">Dozens of volunteers took part in what they thought was an investigation into creativity. Half the study participants were given false feedback on a test of their creative potential, with their results inflated to suggest that they'd excelled. In advance of the main challenge – a series of creative insight problems – some of the participants were then taught mental contrasting: writing about how good it would feel to smash the problems, and then writing about the likely obstacles to achieving that feat, such as daydreaming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">The best performers on the insight problems were those participants who'd received the positive feedback about their potential and who'd performed mental contrasting. They out-classed their peers who'd received inflated feedback but only indulged in positive thoughts, and they outperformed those participants who'd received negative feedback (regardless of whether they, too, performed mental contrasting).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">So, the next time you receive some positive feedback, don't lose your focus. Indulge yourself a little – you're on track after all – but also take time to think about the obstacles that remain, and the practical steps you'll need to enact to overcome them. The mental contrasting technique guards against complacency, ensuring the boost of your early win is multiplied into long-term success.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-12957795187483669992012-11-14T13:04:00.003-08:002012-11-14T13:04:55.807-08:00Misc: Animatronics reelWow! I'm speechless...<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G1iVJExd5vA" width="560"></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-15497205110951371432012-11-07T11:04:00.001-08:002012-11-07T11:04:24.651-08:00Misc: Cg-Studio mapInteresting site similar to google maps with most of the CG companies worldwide.<br />
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<a href="http://www.cgstudiomap.com/">http://www.cgstudiomap.com/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6931737778038785826.post-43103127250530246312012-11-07T10:32:00.000-08:002012-11-07T10:32:09.064-08:00Misc:The Surfer's Guide to Taking Risks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18.399999618530273px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 25px;">Life is like the ocean: sometimes it's stormy, choppy, and a complete mess. Other times it's calm and perfect. In the ocean, risk and opportunity go hand-in-hand. The more waves you go for, the more you'll catch. Every day in the water and every wave presents a new opportunity.</span></div>
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