Jul23

Achieving Quietly

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Achieving Quietly

A famous and overused tip is to “follow your dreams” and a hundred other iterations of it. We’re all told to dream big and then do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. That tip is, more often than not, followed up by proclaiming your goal to the whole world. You know, to keep yourself accountable.

Don’t get me wrong. It is always a good idea to follow your dreams if only to see how far you can go and what you can endure. My beef is with telling anybody within earshot that you’re “gonna go get ‘em!” If that tip works for you, well and good. However, there are some science-backed reasons for trying to keep your goals on the down-low and not sharing them (just yet) to the whole wide world.

When we are inspired to achieve a goal, we get really excited about it and want to let other people know as soon as possible. The reasons for spilling the beans vary from: you want to be held accountable for reaching it to you want others to rally you on and share your enthusiasm.

Why announcements and pronouncements might be a bad idea:

Announcing a goal might garner you premature praises, thus making you less likely to follow through. Social media makes it easy (so very easy) nowadays to get validation. One click and you get instant recognition. One study concludes that a person might think that social recognition is enough reward and may result to that person feeling that they’ve already achieved their goal and reducing his/her efforts.

The kind of praise you receive also plays a big factor in whether you follow through with your goal. One study divides praise into 2 categories: person praise and process praise. The results concluded that it is absolutely better to give process praise – praise related to how you plan to achieve your goal (that’s a really good plan!), versus person praise – praise directed towards the individual (you are very talented!)

And then there’s the fact that, if you’re just starting out on this goal reaching endeavor, you might easily get demoralized by negative feedback. Say for example, your goal is to start a self-care website. So you decide to announce it in a small circle, starting with family and friends. But then, a close friend tells you “Don’t you at least have training in order to be credible?” That might be a big demoralizer for you – and might even be a reason for you to abandon your goals altogether.

Another variation of that is hearing about a lot of competition. If you’re a beginner, hearing about other people who have “been there, done that and will probably do a better job than you could ever do” could knock you off your stilts. Researchers explain this as kind of a win by not losing mentality. It is loss aversion – “When the perception of ability becomes a major concern, competition may motivate students to make a low effort – a strategy to win by not losing.”

Do you believe that plans should be kept under wraps or are you an advocate of friendly announcements? Let us know! Stay humble, hustle hard.

Jul16

Tired of Making Decisions?

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Tired of Making Decisions?

Ever wonder why you make bad food choices at the end of a tiresome day, why normally sound people snap at loved ones, or why it’s so hard to decide on where to have dinner with your group of friends?

Apparently, we have a finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control. People make bad food choices at the end of the day after trying to eat healthfully throughout breakfast and lunch. Parents snap at children after a long day of trying to get the household together. Office workers have a hard time deciding where to get dinner after long hours of making decisions at work. Willpower is a form of mental energy and it is not unlimited.

Decision fatigue is what happens when you’ve exhausted your mental energy on making decisions throughout the day. The more decisions you make, the easier it is to succumb to decision fatigue.

Yes, choosing a salad over a burger counts as a decision so does deciding what to wear in the morning, which shortcuts to take to avoid traffic, which room to hold a meeting in, and what kind of milk to get on your way home. The things you choose to ignore or pay attention to also count as decisions. Before the day ends, you have (on average) probably made about 35,000 decisions. So, how do you manage decision fatigue?

The easiest way is to establish routines.
Routines make our lives easier and help eliminate the need to make decisions. If you can do something automatically then that’s one less decision to make.

In the famous 2012 article in Vanity Fair, no less than US President Barack Obama has this to say: “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits, I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

The iconic Steve Jobs has the same principle – famously clad in a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. So does Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, whose closet is reportedly filled with grey shirts. Singer and rock n’ roll legend Henry Rollins also has no time for fussing over what to wear as he sports a black shirt, dark pants uniform. So, there is merit in streamlining your wardrobe or having a work “uniform”.

Work in batches.
Assign certain days of the week dedicated to processes. For example, all creative work to be done on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Administrative work and/or meetings can be done on Mondays and Fridays.

Eat something.
There is truth to that Snickers chocolate bar commercial. We are all b*tchy monsters when we’re hungry – no one is exempt! Hunger is scientifically linked to making impulsive decisions, however, don’t just scarf down anything you get your hands on. Try a healthy granola bar or a fruit. The glucose can help stabilize your blood sugar levels and mitigate mental fatigue.

How do you combat decision fatigue? Share your stories with us! Stay humble, hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jul9

Visualize Your Work Day

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Visualize Your Work Day

I use a large 36” x 24” whiteboard to keep track of all my work projects – I use the personal Kanban Method to manage this. Actually, the personal Kanban is a pattern – there is no set method and it is highly customizable.

It is simply a (highly organized and effective) management system to take care of your to-dos. The reason why it works so well for me is that it gives you a visual representation of your running tasks and your progress – kind of like a “tasks at a glance” system. It has its roots in the Kanban method used by lean manufacturing industries, specifically the auto manufacturing industry, which was developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota.

Let me show you how to do it:
First of all, you need a place to layout and arrange your tasks. You can use a wall, a window, a board, anything that you can quickly refer to. Keep in mind that this has to be in a spot you can easily see and access.

Then you divide the board into “actions”. A basic board has three actions: To-do, Doing, Done. You can get creative on the titles…here are some suggestions:

● To-Do: Backlogs, plans, to execute etc.
● Doing: In-progress, on-going, etc.
● Done: Finished, Ended, Completed

To-Do:
These are the set of tasks that you aren’t currently working on but need to get done at some point. Move them to the doing list once you start on them.

Doing:
These are the tasks you are actively and currently working on. If you want to level up your personal Kanban skills, you can color code them according to project or according to priority. When you finish a task, you have the satisfaction of moving them to your done list.

Done:
This is obviously where you move your completed tasks to. Seeing how much you’ve accomplished is the most gratifying part of the personal Kanban method. I use a color-coded post-it system and it gives me great fulfillment to see how many cards I was able to move in a given time frame.

Two “rules”
The personal Kanban method is highly customizable but there is a framework to it – rules if you might say.

1. Visualise your work – this is why I highly recommend that your personal kanban space be a space you can easily see and access. My board hangs on a wall right beside my office desk. Post-its, magnets, and whiteboard markers are easily accessible in an organizer right beside it so that I can easily write down important points like notes, deadlines, and other needed assets.

2. Limit your work in progress (WIP) – Don’t try to do too many things all at once. The personal Kanban is all about prioritization. If everything is a priority, then nothing is…you get me?

You can set up a personal Kanban manually by using whiteboards and other surfaces (walls, windows, cork boards, etc) or you can use web apps (Trello, ZenKit, Asana, Plutio, etc.)

If you want to implement the personal Kanban, here are some further readings to check out:

● The Personal Kanban Blog
● Personal Kanban 101
● Personal Kanban on Facebook
● Personal Kanban In a Nutshell by Jurgen de Smet and Erik Talboom
● Udemy: Getting Started with Personal Kanban
● The Evils of Multi-Tasking and How Personal Kanban Can Help you
● Personal Kanban Gallery

Do you use this method? Care to share your success story using the personal Kanban method? Stay humble, hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jul2

Happy World Chocolate Day!

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Happy World Chocolate Day!

Are there any more reasons to celebrate chocolate aside from the fact that it makes everyone happy? Well, then we better have a holiday to celebrate this glorious thing! Oh, wait…

We already have reserved a day to celebrate our love for all things chocolate. If you ask me, we should be doing this everyday. July 7 is globally known as World Chocolate Day in honour of this beloved concoction. That’s when all the world celebrates chocolate in all its glory. In our household, everyday is World Chocolate Day!

We know you love it, too. Did you know that the Mayans thought so highly of chocolate that it was used as money? They used it as currency and restricted its cultivation so that its value won’t go down. They considered it to be worth more than gold dust! Here are some other interesting tidbits about chocolate:

The Top 5 Chocolate Consuming Countries: based on a 2015 survey
● UK – Brits purchase 14.6 pounds of chocolate per person per year!
● Ireland – The Irish purchase 15.1 pounds of chocolate per person.
● Austria – Austrians purchase 15.7 pounds of chocolate per person.
● Germany – Germans purchase 16.3 pounds of chocolate per person.
● Switzerland – It comes as no surprise, the Swiss top this list as they purchase 18.1 pounds of chocolate per person.

Evergreen company
Chocolate comes from the the beans of the Cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). It is from the evergreen family, Malvaceae. Other members of this family include Mallows, Okra, Cotton, Cola Nuts, and Flame tree.

Gods eat chocolate
The Cacao tree from which chocolate comes from has a scientific name of Theobroma cacao. This roughly translates to “food of the gods”. Very apt, isn’t it?

Don’t feed the animals
We should not share chocolate with our favorite furry friends. While some people might think that they’re giving their pets a treat, chocolate can be potentially lethal for dogs and cats. The substance called Theobromine present in all kinds of chocolate (even white chocolate, but more on that later) is toxic to our furry friends.

Death by chocolate
Humans can actually die of chocolate overdose, too! But you have to eat 22 pounds of chocolate in order for the Theobromine to be fatal. Imagine eating 40 bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk, that’s how much chocolate it will take.

Real chocolate
Speaking of white chocolate… white chocolate doesn’t contain cocoa solids or cocoa liquor – products that a chocolate bar should contain in order to be classified as chocolate. Instead, it contains cocoa butter. Still…yum!

Chocolate high
Chocolate can give you a longer and more intense “buzz” than kissing does. It can give you 4x more of an intense high than a passionate kiss. “Chocolate contains phenylethylamine which can raise levels of endorphins, the pleasure-giving substances, in the brain. It also contains caffeine which has a stimulatory effect on the brain. [1]” Imagine if it were chocolate kisses…

How do you plan to celebrate World Chocolate Day? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help

References:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6558775.stm
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/top-10-countries-that-eat-the-most-chocolate

Jun25

How to be more productive by taking up a hobby

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How to be more productive by taking up a hobby

Working while on vacation has become the norm. But it is still wise to use your vacation leaves in order to recharge and make sure you increase your productivity when you get back to work. According to this survey from Wrike, 40% of men and 30% of women plan to work while on vacation.

So you’re back from break for a while but still feel that you aren’t achieving as much as you like at work. At this point, you can’t go on another 2 week vacation – but you really need to get your work mojo back. It might be time to try a different strategy. It’s time to pick up a new hobby.

Why pick up a hobby?
A study by Kevin Eschleman, lead author and assistant Psychology professor at San Francisco State University says that “the more you’re engaged people in an extracurricular hobby, the better you’ll do at work. Eschleman’s research concluded that you won’t do just a little bit better, your performance will improve from between 15% and 30% better!” Studies also reinforce the idea that we’ve known all along – the most productive and successful people we know often have a hobby that they enjoy outside of the workplace.

Having an interest in things outside of work can motivate employees to work on their interests making them more engaged and more positive when they’re at work. Having a hobby also makes for great conversation around water coolers. Hobbies also greatly reduce stress – which automatically improves the well being of an employee.

The science behind getting a hobby.
The thing about hobbies is that they help you relax and take your mind of some of the most pressing issues in your life. Just like meditation, immersing yourself into a hobby takes you to a place where your mind is still somewhat active but not actively thinking about stressful concerns. Now let’s break down your hobbies into 2 categories. There is such a thing as “active relaxation” and “passive relaxation”.

Active relaxation involves doing activities that you find enjoyable. Most exercises fall under this category. So if your hobby is running, doing yoga, hiking or going on nature walks – that falls under the active relaxation category.

Passive relaxation involves a less strenuous activity list. Reading, watching movies, gardening, going out for coffee, are all hobbies that fall under the passive relaxation category. They require less energy but are just as enjoyable.

Both forms of relaxation ease tension and put you in a more peaceful mental state. All of them are hobbies that you can enjoy outside of work and require a bit of time investment.

Make a list.
Here’s an assignment for you. Come up with 5 ideas for hobbies that involve passive relaxation. Some examples are: cooking, gardening, coloring (yes, those adult coloring books that were the rave sometime ago), painting, creating playlists. You get the idea.

Now, do the same for hobbies that involve active relaxation. Some examples are: biking, swimming, rock climbing, surfing, or diving.

Keep this list handy and refer to it from time to time. Pick one that you want to try out – or if you’ve already started – pick one to master and get really good at it!

What hobbies are you into? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help