Self-Improvement

The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction

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Reading Time: 16 minutes Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) In his Deep Work bestseller, Cal Newport coins the term “deep work” as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”   In contrast, Newport defines shallow work as “non-cognitively demanding, …

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Cognitive Reappraisal or How to Cope with Unpleasant Feelings through Reframing

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Reading Time: 5 minutes In psychologist Guy Winch’s book The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships, and Enhance Self-Esteem, I came across one of the most descriptive explanations of how to handle the emotional load of uncomfortable situations.  What we call feelings are complex experiences composed of several elements. Anger, frustration, sadness, rage, exasperation, etc., are our subjective experiences (“feelings”) of particular events in our life. First, these emotional experiences are always accompanied by physiological reactions: potential elevated heart rate and blood pressure, stress hormones …

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Mastering a Crucial Skill for Adaptation: Learning How to Learn

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Reading Time: 15 minutes Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson. Frank Herbert, Dune  An article published by the World Economic Forum says that we are “in the middle of a global reskilling emergency” as AI will automatize some of our …

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What is Creativity?

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Reading Time: 7 minutes One way to define creativity is to look at the same things as anyone else but see them differently. Or, as Stephen King remarked in his book On Writing:  Two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.  Similarly, Adam Grant wrote in his Originals book: I once heard creativity described as being the ability to grasp the essence of one thing and the essence of some very …

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Proven Strategies against Procrastination

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Reading Time: 12 minutes Etymologically, procrastination comes from the Latin word procrastinare, meaning “deferred till the morning” or “belonging to tomorrow “. Naturally, there is a better side of postponing work where we can use purposeful delaying of our work as a creative way to let ideas and concepts grow arms and legs. The difference between meaningful task delaying and procrastination is when a tomorrow to accomplish that specific work never quite arrives.  A common opinion is that procrastination is about poor time management skills or that procrastination is related …

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A Practical Framework to Create and Break Habits

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Reading Time: 14 minutes Habits are behaviours we repeat regularly or automatically. The good side of habits is that they can act as energy savers. We don’t focus on them while performing them. Take, for example, brushing teeth: we have to remind ourselves to be mindful of this action. Change your hand, and suddenly, brushing teeth becomes something novel and no longer a habitual activity. Imagine the mental load of getting ready in the morning if we hadn’t encoded each step of the morning schedule as a habit. …

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Life Lessons from John Grisham’s Writing Habits

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Reading Time: 6 minutes While researching for my articles, I came across John Grisham‘s fascinating debut as a writer. Grisham became the master of legal thriller books, with many of his works adapted as movies: The Client, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief, A Time To Kill, The Firm, etc.  Grisham never developed an interest in writing until he was practising as a lawyer. One day in the courthouse, he heard a tormenting testimony of a twelve-year-old girl.  I seriously doubt I would ever have written the …

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Self-fulfilling Prophecies: Can Our Beliefs And Expectations Affect Reality?

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Reading Time: 6 minutes Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right. Henry Ford  Self-fulfilling prophecies describe predictions of a situation that can change our thoughts and behaviours, thus becoming real. Essentially, self-fulfilling prophecies are the concept that beliefs and expectations can create their reality. Our beliefs about ourselves affect our actions towards others.Our actions towards others influence other people’ beliefs about us. Their beliefs cause their actions towards us.  Their actions reinforce our beliefs about ourselves.  This feedback loop can become self-fulfilling. …

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