Tips & notes to make your life better
Welfare Educator • Teacher • Motivator
Lifestyle Researcher • Learner • Student
The solution or explanation with the fewest amount of steps or assumptions should often be preferred in order to simplify the solution down to its essential factor or factors.
Occam's Razor - Wikipedia
In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae). Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes inaccurately paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one." This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should prefer the one that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions.
- Party - Electronic, Dance, Dance Rock, Ska, Disco, Electronica, House, EDM
- Energy - Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Alt Rock, Punk Rock, Classic Rock, Metal
- Groovy - Rhythm & Blues, Funk, Hip Hop, Rap, World, Latin, Psych Rock, Jam Rock
- Lively - Adult Rock, Folk, Pop, Country, Britpop, New Wave, Progressive, Art
- Chill - Downtempo, Trip Hop, Chillout, Lofi, Jazz, Soul, Psychedelic, Dream
- Relax - Singer, Songwriter, Ambient, Easy, Blues, Lounge, Soft Rock, Soft Pop
Your beliefs and thoughts influence your mind and your life, so any expectations you have about your self, your character, your abilities, your goals, and your dreams can and often will come true if you believe they will.
Self-fulfilling prophecy - Wikipedia
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to making the expectations come true. Self-fulfilling prophecies are an example of the more general phenomenon of positive feedback loops. A self-fulfilling prophecy can have either negative or positive outcomes. Merely applying a label to someone or something can affect the perception of the person/thing and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Get started by doing something for just a minute or two, and then get up to applaud yourself for getting started.
Ways to do what you don’t want to do - Zen Habits
If you have to write something, just write a sentence. Then get up, get some water, stretch. Pat yourself on the back for getting started! Now do a little more: write a few more sentences. Get up, take a mental break (don’t go to another website), do a few pushups. Go back, do a bit more. Pretty soon, you’re in the flow of it.
- Work - Productivity, Create, Documents, Mail, Calendar, Notes, Develop, Images
- Live - Communication, Phone, Chat, Social, Groups, Forums, Camera, Microphone
- Read - Reference, Dictionary, Education, Learning, Books, News, Magazines, Blogs
- Play - Entertainment, Music, Movies, Shows, Television, Videos, Radio, Podcasts
- Fact - Information, Database, Maps, Weather, Shopping, Money, Downloads, FTP
- Tool - Utilities, System, Terminal, Automation, Clocks, Home, Calculators, Converts
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot
Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot
80% of the results will often come from 20% of the causes, so focus on finding the vital few inputs or actions that will provide the most benefit or effect.
Pareto Principle - Wikipedia
The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few"). Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity. Management consultant Joseph M. Juran developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement after reading the works of Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto, who wrote about the 80/20 connection while teaching at the University of Lausanne. In his first work, Cours d'économie politique, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in the Kingdom of Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
Each technology we create is always transforming society and we need to be careful about considering if and when different technologies may be affecting us either negatively or positively.
Study Says Technology Could Transform Society - NY Times (1982)
A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation and made public today speculates that by the end of this century electronic information technology will have transformed American home, business, manufacturing, school, family and political life. The report warned that the new technology would raise difficult issues of privacy and control that will have to be addressed soon to ''maximize its benefits and minimize its threats to society.''
- The home will double as a place of employment, with men and women conducting much of their work at the computer terminal. This will affect both the architecture and location of the home. It will also blur the distinction between places of residence and places of business, with uncertain effects on zoning, travel patterns and neighborhoods.
- Home-based shopping will permit consumers to control manufacturing directly, ordering exactly what they need for ''production on demand.''
- There will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.
Create daily habits and practices to achieve goals and make your dreams come true.
Feeling determined to change - Zen Habits
The only way you can make something stick is to create a habit through daily practice. So if you want to exercise, set up 10 minutes every day, at the same time of day, when you’re going to do your yoga or pushups or jogging/walking. Put it on the calendar, and make it an unmissable appointment. Quitting a habit is tougher, but perhaps try a “smoking-free zone” when you don’t smoke. (Or a “procrastination-free zone”.) Just an hour a day, then two hours after a few days, then three after a few more, etc. Eventually you’ll learn coping tactics and awareness during your zone that will help you quit completely.
Spend some time in solitude to think about and create ideas, make plans or goals, and solve your problems.
Nikola Tesla's Best Productivity Tricks - Lifehacker
Like many inventors and creative types, Nikola Tesla was an advocate for solitude when creating and working. Most famously, he's quoted as saying "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born." The idea that you need to work in solitude to get things done is by no means new. We've talked before about how it can boost creativity, and how setting aside some alone time is a great way to recharge to boost productivity. In the end, it's all about productive introspection and using your alone time well.
People may often do inconsiderate things when they are in groups, and people who strongly affiliate with one group of people may naturally want to harm outsiders who are not in that group.
When good people do bad things - MIT News Office
When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen — both good and bad. Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group.
In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself. They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals. Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity.
Give honest and sincere appreciation. - Dale Carnegie
How To Win Friends And Influence People - Goodreads
Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment." William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." He didn't speak, mind you, of the "wish" or the "desire" or the "longing" to be appreciated. He said the "craving" to be appreciated...Let's try to figure out the other person's good points. Then forget flattery. Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be "hearty in your [compliments] and lavish in your praise." and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten them.
Find and meet up with people who are doing things that you are interested in doing.
Advice for people in their early 20s - Zen Habits
Find people online doing interesting things, meet up with them in real life. Find people who are passionate, who are building things, who are pushing themselves, who dream big, who are mindful and joyful and healthy and friendly and shy and gregarious and adventurous and curious. Befriend them. Be there for them. Be helpful. Make them laugh. These are your people.
Add separators to your taskbar to keep them organized in groups, help you focus, and keep your mind clearer, possibly in groups of 6 apps together.
Three useful tricks for organizing your messy Windows taskbar - Lifehacker
If you've ever wanted to group your apps into separate spaces on your taskbar, you actually can - with a little help from this workaround we've talked about before. All you need to do is create a shortcut to a fake EXE file, give it a transparent icon, and add it to your taskbar. You can separate your office apps from your games, or even your slow-loading apps from your fast-loading apps - that way, if you accidentally click on the wrong button, you don't have to wait 60 seconds for the wrong app to load before you close it. Check out our original post for the full rundown on how this works.
But if all of that isn't built on your own original ideas and truthful analysis, it doesn't mean anything.
The Whale - Rotten Tomatoes
At this point in the course, I have given you all that I can in terms of structure, building a thesis, paragraph organization. But if all of that isn't built on your own original ideas and truthful analysis, it doesn't mean anything. Think about that, as you write and revise. Think about the truth of your argument.
Keep a dated list of tasks and projects you have completed, because looking back on your achievements provides a sense of accomplishment and motivation.
Clever uses for plain text files that can increase your productivity - Lifehacker
There's something to be said for seeing how much you've gotten done at the end of the day. You know how satisfying it is to cross out items on your to do list, and then look back at the list to see everything you completed? A "done" list, or "anti-to-do list" as Marc Andreessen calls it, works in a similar fashion: you simply take note of each thing you get done during the day. Start out with the date and just list your "done" items underneath. Not only will this help you review your productivity at the end of each day and make you feel better about what you got done, but it can be really useful to keep around as a work log. You might want to look back in weeks or months to come to see what you were working on or how long a project took to complete.
He that is down needs fear no fall. He that is low, no pride.
He That Is Down Needs Fear No Fall - Hymnary
He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.
Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage;
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.
Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one. And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come.
Peace Train - Cat Stevens
Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again
Now I've been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun
Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Think positively and change your thoughts or mindset to a new way of thinking about something in order to improve your wellbeing and get things done.
8 Ways to radically increase your productivity - The Globe And Mail
You are what you think. You cannot think negatively and have unlimited success. If you think negatively about business and finances [or leisure and relationships, or whatever else you want to change or improve in your life], your subjective experience will be a lack of both, whether or not that is true in reality. Discipline your mind towards the goals of what you want your productivity to look like and start putting the effort in right now to get there. Keep in mind that suffering over your own suffering doesn't work. Know the negative thought patterns you hold which require change and be deliberate in changing them.
I'm always left of center and that's right where I belong. I'm the random minor note you hear in major songs.
I Like That - Janelle Monae
Sometimes a mystery, sometimes I'm free
Depending on my mood or my attitude
Sometimes I wanna roll or stay at home
Walking contradiction, guess I’m factual and fiction
A little crazy, little sexy, little cool
Little rough around the edges but I keep it smooth
I'm always left of center and that's right where I belong
I'm the random minor note you hear in major songs
And I like that
I don't really give a fuck if I was just the only one
Who likes that
I never like to follow, follow all around and chase the sun
