People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive (U.S.: 45 hours a week; 16 hours are considered unproductive).
It’s 2:00 p.m. Your lunch sits snugly in your stomach causing fog to settle over your brain. Your energy is low. Thought processes stop mid-stream. You know what needs to get done, but your body is resisting it.
We can all relate to this feeling, but the similarities stop there.
Some people fall prey to chronic procrastination and fail to turn their intentions into actions. Others consistently power through low-energy moments and lead more impactful lives.
Turning 30 can be a turning point in a person’s life, and career. It’s the point where career goals start setting in and the hunger to land a spot in the corner office increases.
Let's see some CEOs as to what they would want their employees to have done before they turn the big 3-0. From saving-money to travelling the world, starting your own business and taking risks, here’s some advice from CEOs who have done it all before.
Turns out, your brain cannot really tell the difference between completely imagining something, and actually experiencing it. That means, that if you don't have time to practice throwing baskets into the hoop one day, but you usually practice, you can imagine throwing basket after basket, and your brain will actually improve your skills when you get back to the court. It means, that if you can picture yourself doing something that you are afraid of, you will become less afraid, as if you actually did it for real.
It’s early and dark. The alarm sounds, and you reach over to switch it off. After a short pause, you sit up.
You swing your legs off the bed, touch the floor with your feet, and reach for your phone. You sit quietly while your phone’s screen illuminates the dark bedroom. There are a few notifications waiting—new emails, a Twitter reply, a prediction of rain. You look at your messages, the news, and the weather. “I’m half asleep,” you think. “I’ll just look at Twitter while I wake up.” Ten minutes pass, then another five. You’re not asleep, but you’re not really awake either.
You might be under the impression that intelligence is a fixed quantity set when you are young and unchanging thereafter. But research shows that you’re wrong. How we approach situations and the things we do to feed our brains can significantly improve our mental horsepower.
That could mean going back to school or filling your bookshelves (or e-reader) with thick tomes on deep subjects, but getting smarter doesn’t necessarily mean a huge commitment of time and energy, according to a recent thread on question-and-answer site Quora.
When a questioner keen on self-improvement asked the community, “What would you do to be a little smarter every single day?” lots of readers–including dedicated meditators, techies, and entrepreneurs–weighed in with useful suggestions. Which of these 10 ideas can you fit into your daily routine?
The average person who smokes may die 10 years earlier than a similar non-smoker
More than 5 million people die across the world every year due to consumption of tobacco in some form or the other, especially cigarettes or bidis and India accounts for nearly one-fifth of this huge number. Although, people are aware of the adverse effects of smoking, the number isn't reducing much due to the inability to control the urge for smoking in most of the cases.
We all have to deal with our share of hotheads and crazies. What does research say works with them?
First off, you can’t get angry too. Because then there are two crazy people arguing. While very entertaining to onlookers, this doesn't accomplish much.
Telling yourself that an angry person is just having a bad day and that it’s not about you can help take the sting out of their ire, a new study suggests… the researchers monitored participants’ brain activity and found that reappraising another person’s anger eliminated the electrical signals associated with negative emotions when seeing angry faces.
The simple method takes hardly any time, and can be done pretty much anywhere
These are all words and phrases that have come to be associated with the “Milliennial Generation,” which is also sometimes referred to as Generation Y. Recently, however, two additional adjectives have worked their way into the Millennial description pool: stressed and sleepless.
Five strategies to employ if you want your communication style to be more assertive, and less passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive. 1. Identify the belief that’s holding you back. You probably have one major belief that is holding you back from being an assertive communicator. Most of the reactions we have when faced with uncomfortable situations are reactions to our interpretation of the event, not to the event itself. There are (at least) two sides to every story. You may have been raised to believe that it’s not polite to disagree or that being assertive means being selfish. You may think that in order to get your way, you have to be aggressive, or that you’re being honest when, in fact, you’re just being a bully. Once you identify that belief, acknowledge its presence and your ability to change it. Think of it this way: I do not have to be aggressive in my interaction with Tom. I’ve always believed that aggressive people get what they want. In fact, it is up to Tom whether he does or doesn’t accept my request. All I can do is to ask politely.
Some people go through life carried forward on the wings of good vibrations. These people are the chipper, resilient, Leslie Knopes of the world. But not all of us are born with the superpower to be naturally positive. Luckily, you can acquire positivity. Being positive is a skill that can be developed over time by tweaking small habits. If you build some of these traits into your daily life, things will become brighter day by day. And it’s not because things are any better–it’s because your perspective will be. Here are a few things positive people do differently, and ways you can add a little sunshine to your daily routine:
1. They find something every day to look forward to. Whether it’s catching up on a favourite TV show, trying out a new dessert recipe, or having a phone conversation with a friend in another town, these things don’t have to be big. Having concrete activities to look forward to will make your days unique, distinct, and hopefully give each one a sheen of happiness.
2. They celebrate the small stuff. Don’t prolong happiness. Find joy in even the tiniest things–your favourite song coming up on shuffle, a funny text from a friend, a beautiful sunny day–because it adds up. Soon, you won’t have to stop and smell the roses because you’ll be smelling them all the time.
3. They’re kind. When in doubt, choose kindness. Positive people look on the bright side, sure, but they also tend to pay it forward by passing on their positive energy to others. Giving is generous, but it also makes the giver feel even better. Now that’s a win-win.
4. They stay busy. “Busy” isn't code for “stressed out of your mind.” Instead, being busy means filling your life with fulfilling activities. It relates back to having something every day to look forward to. Start a hobby. Structure your weekends with fun things to look forward to. Most of all, be proactive about keeping busy, because living your life to the fullest is up to you.
5. They accept responsibility for their actions. Being positive doesn’t mean being delusional. By owning up to where you trip up or make mistakes, you’re being honest with yourself. So, since you’re not hiding from yourself, you can then…
6. They forgive themselves. As much as you want to treat others with kindness, you deserve the same treatment. Okay, so we all make mistakes, and we all have regrets. Learn from them. Forgiving yourself will make it infinitely easier to…
7. They know when to move on, and not dwell on defeat. You gotta pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and valiantly forge ahead. A positive person knows that a defeat isn’t the end of the journey, but part of the journey.
8. They resist comparisons. Being positive is far simpler when you do not set yourself against others, as we all have separate strengths and struggles. Instead, work on achieving your own fulfilment, which you can only find by searching inwards–and, of course, by staying positive.
Whether you've woken up in the middle of the night and treated yourself to a midnight snack, or decided to have a pizza on the way home from a night on the town, eating late at night can potentially cause havoc with your brain.Research has foundthat eating when we should be sleeping can push our circadian rhythms out of sync and lead to a lower quality of sleep overall.
Those conclusions are based on a study of lab mice by scientists from the University of California. Mice are nocturnal, so sleep during the day: when one group was encouraged to eat during the day for two weeks, they had more frequent and shorter bouts of sleep than the group that was eating normally. The mice were all getting the same amount of sleep, but those whose routines had been disrupted weren't enjoying the same benefits.
Some simple Tips, Tricks and Life Hacks to lead a simple life
Don't be a people pleaser. Spend time with your parents and treat them well. They will not be around one day. Mind your own business. Don't lie, cheat or be dishonest. It spoils your name in the long run. When the phone battery is down to the last bar, don't answer the phone as the radiation will be 1000 times higher. Don't cheat if you are in an unhappy relationship. Just leave.
This Fishermen's story will have answer to this Question!!
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
Scientists say this simple strategy can help you learn anything
In his book Fluent Forever, opera singer Gabriel Wyner suggests that one of the best ways to learn a new language is to practice remembering it. In other words, instead of reading and re-reading a list of vocabulary words, you should read it once and then test yourself repeatedly.
The same strategy works for pretty much anything you're hoping to commit to memory, and there's a growing body of research behind it. Psychologists call this phenomenon the 'testing effect'.
When Stanford University bioengineer Manu Prakash traveled to a mosquito-infested rainforest in Thailand a couple of years ago, he visited a clinic with a sophisticated, $100,000 microscope that sat unused in a locked room. It was then Prakash realized that what global health workers really need is an ultra-low cost, simple-to-use, portable microscope that could be deployed in the field to diagnose disease—and he took it upon himself to develop one!
The result is the Foldscope, a ‘use and throwaway’ microscope that Prakash demonstrated last week at the first-ever Maker Faire at the White House.
Clockwise from upper left, Foldscope projecting a magnified image onto a table; a diagram of an assembled Foldscope; magnified images of disease-causing microbes as seen through a Foldscope.
Here’s what you need to know about the Foldscope. It’s made out of thick, waterproof paper and a glass-and-polymer lens that’s the size of a large grain of sand. While it can be used by simply holding the device up to the sun or a light bulb, there’s also a version illuminated by tiny LEDs powered by an inexpensive watch battery.
The framework of the Foldscope is printed onto a sheet of paper that’s perforated in a way that each shape can be easily snapped out and folded in a manner resembling the traditional Japanese art of origami. A diagram showing how to assemble the Foldscope is even included on the sheet, and can be understood by anyone, regardless of their native language.
Different designs, folding patterns, and types and numbers of lenses create different types of microscopes: bright field, dark field, fluorescence, and lens-array. A low-magnification microscope costs as little as 50 cents, while a high-mag version is just shy of a dollar.
So, how do you use the Foldscope? It turns out that this bookmark-size device uses the same glass slides that one uses in a regular microscope. So, the preparation of blood or tissue samples remain the same. In the simplest version of the scope, the slide is inserted between the microscope’s paper layers and the user, with a thumb and forefinger grasping either end of the microscope strip, holds the lens close to one eye and flexes the strip to find the target object and bring it into focus. I had the chance to try this at the White House event, and found that learning how to use it is very easy. In more advanced versions, the device can project the image onto a wall or any other flat surface—a great, low-cost tool for educating healthcare workers and others in low-income nations about various infectious diseases.
Prakash is currently fine-tuning Foldscopes so they can be field tested in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, and Peru for diagnosis of malaria, microfilariasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, and sleeping sickness. His team at Stanford is also busy designing Foldscopes to help diagnose 30 other diseases, and drawing up plans for a next generation of Foldscopes that will utilize microfluidic components rather than glass slides—a step that should make sample collection and analysis even easier.
Not only will Foldscope give healthcare workers around the globe better ways to detect, and thereby treat, disease, it will also place magnifying power within the reach of all the world’s students, enabling them to ask and answer a great many scientific questions. To this end, Prakash has launched the Ten Thousand Microscopes Project to entice inquiring minds to beta test these devices and design experiments that can then be compiled into a crowd-sourced microscopy text. Imagine a world in which every kid carries around a 50-cent portable microscope, and brings science out of the lab and into real-world biology.
Already 10,000 citizen scientists from 130 countries have answered the call. Among the ideas: a proposal from a Mongolian farmer who wants to use Foldscope to detect potential pathogens in camel milk. Think about it – what would you do if you had one of these in your pocket?
Manu Prakash
Manu Prakash received a B.Tech from IIT, Kanpur and a PhD. in Physics of Computation and Physical Biology from MIT. He was nominated a Junior Fellow in Physics at Harvard Society of Fellows. Manu is a Pew Scholar, a two-time Gates Foundation Explorations Award Winner, Terman Fellow, MIT Tech review TR35, Popular science “Brilliant 10″ and a TED Senior Fellow. Manu is a member of Stanford Biophysics Program, Woods Institute of the Environment and a core faculty in Department of Bioengineering at Stanford.
He has been involved in technological interventions in resource-poor settings, tackling public health problems. The lab has recently invented a new tool tackling a major diagnostics bottleneck in global health: Foldscope, a microscope built via folding paper. It currently costs 50 cents to manufacture at scale with a goal to provide a “microscope for every child” in the world.
