8 Ways to Take It to the Next Level
August 16, 2008
No matter what you’re doing, there comes a time when you are going to want to take things up a notch. Maybe it’s your career — even if things are going along fine right now, ultimately you’d like to get a promotion, increase your client base, or reach a larger audience. Or maybe it’s a hobby that you think you’d like to turn into a career.
Getting started with anything can be a struggle, but once you reach a certain level of success, it can be hard to figure out how to make whatever it is you do truly remarkable. The things we do have a way of developing their own inertia, and if we’re not careful, we get carried along in the routine without ever realizing the full potential of what we and our lives can be.
How can you shake things up a bit? What do you have to do to take your project, your career, your product, or your life to the next level?
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80 How-To Sites Worth Bookmarking
July 9, 2008
Sitting on my dining room table, I currently have half a dozen projects in various states of doneness. Some involve vivisected computer parts, others will eventually be wearable and a few are just cool things I’ve ran across on the internet. I like doing things myself — I think the DIY bug is one of the best communicable diseases in the lifehack community.
These eighty sites are the places I turn to when I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish any particular goal. Any time I’m facing a new project, I start searching for how-tos that will help me figure out how other people did similar things and how likely I am to finish the project with all ten fingers still intact. I’ve broken them up into a few different categories, just to help you narrow down what you might be looking for. Some are simply archives full of tutorials. Some are blogs that publish how-tos fairly regularly. Some are just great resource sites. But they all have provided me with the information necessary to carry through on a project.
Every How-To They Can Get Their Hands On
These ten sites are more than happy to host any how-to around. I’ve seen everything from computer hardware hacks to instructions for brewing beer on these sites. This is the place to start — you can narrow down your search as you get a better idea of your project.
- Make Magazine’s Blog
- Instructables
- How Stuff Works
- Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
- wikiHow
- flickr
- Lifehacker
- Popular Mechanics
- DIY Happy
- Expert Village
5 Reasons to Abandon Television
March 14, 2008
by Ron Haynes @ The Wisdom Journal
Abandoning television is a serious step in today’s society. Television is both a fantastic resource and a faceless attacker of wealth. It has the ability to inspire and the ability to depress. It can make you happy and scare you to death, it can inform and educate, but it can also help you waste your most precious resource: time. That’s just one reason I’ve decided to abandon most television shows.
Before I discuss why I am choosing to abandon television, let me say that not all television shows are bad. I don’t disparage anyone who choses to use their time watching parents change the diapers of their youngest child (of 27), or watching someone completely disrespect another person because of the t-shirts she chooses to wear, or watching a talk show host give marriage advice to a couple when the host has never been married. There are some great shows on various channels that help you better understand the world and help you learn valuable information that will improve your life. But those shows are the exceptions. What passes as entertainment and enlightenment today is an utter joke. So, I’ve made the decision to severely restrict the amount of time I waste in front of “the tube.” TV has abandoned most of what I think is important so here’s 5 reasons I have decided to return the favor and abandon television:
Reason #1. Television has abandoned understanding. Though there is a wealth of information available via the tube, for the most part, the information you gather via television is devoid of deep understanding. What is more important is drama, excitement, and the illusion that it projects. If you want to get a completely skewed view of the world, do nothing but watch television and form your opinions only based on its shallow information. Where else can someone get shot 14 times, fall off a building from 3 stories, get up and drive in a car chase, crash the car, then jump into a helicopter and fly it to some exotic island with an Italian supermodel?
Reason #2. Television has abandoned responsibility. News programs depict the crying children of famines and wars, the bodies that lie exposed to the elements and wild animals, the human devastation of a terrible natural disaster, then cut away to a commercial. “Now this.” Now that we took you to the edge of an emotional cliff, now that we’ve exposed the most horrible of human conditions, now that we’ve talked (briefly) about an intense tragedy, we want to make sure you see our commercials! Then we’ll just go merrily along to the next story after briefly shaking our heads. Now on to sports. Read more
7 Step Guide to an Effective Morning Routine
September 19, 2007
by CG.com GuestBlogger, Todd Goldfarb
Since I have been living in New York City for 12 years, I am intimately familiar with the “daily grind” and the adjoining morning rituals many working people have.
It is important to realize that what you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of your day, and habituating an effective morning custom can increase productivity in many areas of you life. By following the seven suggestions in this article, you will start to feel more alert, healthier and stronger!
Suggestion 1
Water. Drink a full glass of water as soon as you wake up. This is critical for the health of your body as you have just spent the last 7-10 hours with no food or drink. You are dehydrated and your entire system desires water to arouse the joints and muscles, and stimulate activity of your organs (especially in the digestive tract). As you drink this glass of water, feel the liquid going into your stomach and get a sense of the body waking up and responding to its lubricating effects. Water is calming for the mind as well and by making a habit of drinking water upon waking you are establishing a healthy pillar of activity first thing in the morning!
Suggestion 2
Stretch. Now that your body is nice and lubricated, and you feel more awake with water inside you, it is imperative to stretch your body. Your have just spent the last several hours in a period of physical inactivity, and you will soon be embarking on a full day of movement so it is crucial to check in with your body and give it a good stretch from the head all the way down to the toes. This is a wonderful way to begin preparing yourself for a successful day, and I recommend spending at least 10 minutes doing a varied routine of full stretches. If you are into Yoga, performing the sun salutations is a great practice and can certainly get you going.
Suggestion 3
Meditate. Meditation is an extraordinary practice that has innumerable health benefits and dates back thousands of years. Through meditation you commit yourself to the practice of listening within, and by sticking to it you will develop increased awareness, stronger intentions and enhanced patience. After a productive morning stretch, take 15-20 minutes and let everything go and just be. Sit (or lie) quietly in a comfortable area where you know you will not be disturbed. I highly recommend reading a book, listening to an instructional CD or even attending a class on meditation as you get more into it. If you do not meditate, or think that you don’t have the ability, you should and you do! It is an incredibly powerful practice to add to your morning routine.
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