Category: Life

"Don't criticize, condemn, or complain." - Dale Carnegie

How To Win Friends And Influence People - Goodreads

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment...Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. "To know all is to forgive all."

80% of the result comes from 20% of your time, work, or activities, and that 80% could be good enough for many tasks by focusing on the essential 20% of your efforts and activities.

16 Things I wish they had taught me in school - Positivity Blog

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule - also known as The Pareto Principle - basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities. So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think. You can just drop - or vastly decrease the time you spend on - a whole bunch of things.

Simplify the amount of folders you use by organizing your documents into folders by type, and only creating albums, groupings, or project folders when necessary.

Geek To Live: Organizing my documents - Lifehacker

There are a million and one ways to arrange files and folders on disk. Some might argue that spending a moment even thinking about it in the age of desktop search is unnecessary. That may be true, but some semblance of order will clear your desktop and your mind and make you "ready for anything." Over the years I've come up with a six folder structure for "My Documents" which I create on every computer I use without fail. This scheme accommodates every file I might come across, keeps my desktop clear, smoothly fits in with an automated backup system and also makes command line file wrangling a breeze.

Write down a list of your goals and dreams, because writing thoughts and ideas down is the first step to making them come to life.

12 Lists that help you get things done - Lifehack.org

A list of your short- and long-term goals can be a great motivator, as well as a trigger list to help generate new projects. I also like to have a list of areas of focus, the different roles that I play, each of which comes with a different set of tasks and goals.

Are you looking for peace of mind? You won't find it in your status line.

Contact High - Allen Stone

Are you looking for peace of mind?
You won't find it in your status line
What are you trying to prove?
Whose mountain are you trying to move?

I fell for it, too, yeah
Whatever keeps you occupied
Whatever gives you contact high
Whatever keeps you busy, baby
Will never make you satisfied

Are you looking for security
Validation or identity?
You won't find it in things
The more you got, oh, the less you see, yeah

I've been all over the world, yeah
I've dug for diamonds and I've dove for pearls
And the real treasure that we all seek
Is hiding in plain sight of me, oh

You can positively influence other people's lives by telling them you believe in them, you think they are a good person, they possess good qualities, and you expect they will perform well because they have the ability to do so.

Pygmalion effect - Wikipedia

The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse. It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life. According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations. The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

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.

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." - Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee’s top 7 fundamentals for getting your life in shape - Positivity Blog

If you want to improve your life then it’s tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don’t really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived. Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.

Take a quick break every hour to evaluate what you have done and refocus on what task to do next.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.

An 18 minute plan for managing your day - Harvard Business Review

You can have all the best ingredients, but you need to know when to pull the cake out of the oven. - Bill Maris

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed, that's all who ever have. - Margaret Mead

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. - Louisa May Alcott

But we've discovered that owning things, and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. - Jimmy Carter

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. - Confucius

I think it's very important to actively seek out, and listen very carefully, to negative feedback. - Elon Musk

Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars. - Les Brown

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. - Mark Twain

If you don't build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs. - Tony Gaskins