7 simple tricks to be productive

Sounds simple and straightforward but most people tend to forget the tricks in the jungle and hurry of the daily work. Doing a few of following points and got substantial productivity improvements back as a result!

1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).
3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.
6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.
7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

(via inc.com)

The 3 Biggest Barriers To Innovation, And How To Smash Them

How do you transform an opportunity into an idea? Well, the first thing is to get comfortable with the belief that any old ideas won’t do. What we’re interested in are disruptive ideas; that is, ideas with the power for great impact and influence. Ideas that challenge assumed boundaries and inspire a sense of what’s possible. In my experience, however, most ideas never get anywhere near this level.

1: Feeling overwhelmed, directionless, and without focus

The problem is that traditional brainstorming has ignored the huge difference between generating lots of ideas and capturing quality ideas. As a result, brainstorming sessions often leave organizations and teams feeling overwhelmed and directionless—a state Beth Comstock at GE insightfully calls, “paralyzed by possibility.” Simply put, if your ideas are going to have any disruptive impact, you need to move beyond a shotgun approach to brainstorming and start pursuing creative effort with a laser-sharp focus.

2: Thinking in terms of isolated products, services, and information

Gizmo-ized is another way of saying that even a product as ancient as a bottle of wine no longer stands alone as a static object; it’s dynamic. “It is offering me more functionality than I will ever be able to explore,” Sterling writes, “This wine bottle aims to educate me—it is luring me to become more knowledgeable about the people and processes that made the bottle and its contents. It wants to recruit me to become an unpaid promotional agent, a wine critic, an opinion maker—it wants me to throw wine-tasting parties and tell all my friends about my purchase.” The relationship between a product, a service, and the information they provide is more important than the details of any one particular feature alone.

3: Getting stuck at the water-cooler

As a result, they rarely escape people’s heads and instead remain there, unformed. The view from inside the company, however, is different. One of the most common phrases I hear from clients is, “We don’t need any more ideas; we have too many.” But, when I ask to see the documented ideas they have, they start back- pedaling: “Well, we don’t have them written down or anything. But, we discuss them a lot.” You can talk about ideas in general terms, at least for a while. But, abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and remember it. So, to increase the potential, you have to stop talking about it and explain it in sensory terms. Sketch it out!

Read how to smash these 3 barriers.

(via simon witcher and fastcodesign.com)

manhatten in motion

another stunning time lapse video taken with the canon mark II 5d

the social enterprise: google to join salesforce.com on stage

The new details of the dreamforce 11 conference in San Francisco sound exciting!
Dreamforce 2011 will be held Aug. 30 – Sept. 2 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

As we enter the post-PC revolution, companies are improving the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees in the cloud – transforming themselves into social enterprises. Social enterprises build social profiles of customers, create internal social networks and listen to and engage with customers over the Internet. Dreamforce offers the content and educational opportunities that will enable attendees to transform their companies into social enterprises.

(via marketwatch)

of forest and men

Yann Arthus-Bertrand was appointed by the United Nations to produce the official film for the International Year of Forests. Impressive pictures and a true message.

Amon Tobin: Amazing visualization

A perfect visualization of Amon Tobin’s music – wow!

moby at tate modern

global android activations

save as wwf

simple way to avoid printing save your documents as a wwf.

Time Lapse of Everglades Camping

Time Lapse of Everglades Camping

1,572 photos shot over seven hours on an island 68 miles South of Everglades City in Florida with a 5D mk2 and a cheap knock-off time lapse controller that works great. The beach is called Middle Cape Sable, and is the southernmost point of the continental US. Camped there with six of my awesome family members. The music, suggested by cousin Kristen, is Clelia Iruzun: Ernesto Lecuona- Always in my Heart.

Murdoch’s News Corp. intensify the activities in online learning

Interesting dossier on online learning by GOOD.is

GothamSchools reported earlier today that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. announced it was acquiring a Brooklyn-based startup that specializes in education technology called Wireless Generation. It’s the second Brooklyn-born entity with a penchant for using technology to individualize education that Murdoch’s acquired this month.

The other was New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who announced his resignation two weeks ago. Klein joined News Corp. as an executive vice president in charge of looking into opportunities in the digital learning space, part of what Murdoch refers to as the $500 billion K-12 education sector. Over the years, Klein has talked about the promise of digital learning—from online learning to so-called “blended learning” situations, where students learn from a mix of both computer-based and live instruction.

Read more on GOOD.is

a day in new york city, in miniature

Specular shots by Sam O’Hare and team. It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills.

where good ideas come from by steven johnson

at TED:

nice graphics, sad subject

Just found following graphics on flickr done by Luke Bott. Then, I found also this flickr group and this t-shirt design competition on creative allies with graphics related to BP and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (submission close 31 August). The winner of the t-shirt competition gets $ 100 and his shirts go on sale. All profits will go to the Gulf Restoration Network (GRN).

 

Why the world needs WikiLeaks

There is a very interesting interview on TED with WikiLeaks’ founder and creator Julian Assange. He speaks about the recently on WikiLeaks published diaries of the American operations in Afghanistan, what drives him and the importance and thus influence of such information. See also my entry about press freedom last year on this topic.

Wanna display your YouTube video in the Guggenheim Museum in New York?

You think your sleepy puppy videos are moving and avant-garde enough to make it into the Guggenheim Museum? Then I would not hesitate to submit it for “YouTube Play”, an exhibition of video art at the famous New York museum this fall. But you have to hurry up, submissions close 31 July.

Brilliant online campaign made with YouTube by the Metropolitan Police (UK)

“Chose A Different Ending” by Metropolitan Police, UK

HTC reports Q2 revenues up 58.5 percent

HTC‘s second-quarter revenues reached TWD 60.53 billion, up 58.5 percent from the year-earlier period. June revenues amounted to TWD 23.86 billion, up 66.7 percent year-on-year. Second-quarter net profit at the smartphone maker rose to TWD 8.64 billion from TWD 6.51 billion a year earlier. HTC said results in Q2 and June were better than expected and at record highs, showing good execution of its brand and scale strategies.

This is the direct consequence of the recent releases of their cutting-edge smartphones like Evo, Desire and HD2 which run the powerful OS Android. Google confirmed recently it is now activating 160,000 Android phones a day, up from only 100,000 a day in mid-May—indicating a monthly growth rate of 60 percent.

(via telecompaper)

Awesomeasaurus

Seen in London last week.

inspired by iceland

After the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull some people think that the whole land is covered with ash and that Iceland is in a state of emergency. The truth is that only a very small part of Iceland is being influenced by the eruption. This is quite a challenge for the Icelandic tourism industry. Hence, the industry teamed up and created a wonderful campaign: Inspired by Iceland.