Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Power of Intuition

I totally agree with what Steve Jobs had to say about his 7 month stay in India and the profound effect it had on him.

“Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.

Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.

Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.”

Excerpt From: Isaacson, Walter. “Steve Jobs.” Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Reality Distortion Field

recently discovered that Dilbert has already taken a gibe on Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field." For the unaware, reality distortion field is a term used to describe Steve Jobs' charisma and his ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything.


Reality Distortion Field

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

How to Use Music for Better Productivity

1. Select a music genre that you don't usually listen to, as music genres you like and listen to for general entertainment use are often distracting when used for focus enhancement. If you generally say love jazz, then try using the Classical or Ambient genres when using the system.

2. Remember to skip any piece of music that you find distracting while you are focusing on a task. This is how you teach the system what works for you.

3. Use quality headphones or external speakers that have a richer bass response. Using the internal speakers in a laptop for instance is too thin a sound and does not provide the full frequency stereo response that works best.

4. Take a break every 100 minutes or so. This can be as simple as getting up, stretching and taking a few deep breaths.

5. Don't share the system over speakers in an office for several people. This is because we have found that effectiveness of music for productivity is highly individual. What works well for one person will not work at all for another. The perfect genre channel that has been specifically "tuned" over time by skipping tracks will work extremely well for that person, but can be equally distracting for anyone else.

Via focus@will

Saturday, February 2, 2013

A Project Manager's Worth

Here's a classic joke that points out the real worth of a project manager:
A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, "I'll have a C monkey please." The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fitted a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be $5,000."
The customer paid and walked out with his monkey. Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only a few hundred pounds. Why did it cost so much?" The shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can program in C - very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money."
The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage. "Hey, that one's even more expensive! $10,000! What does it do?"
"Oh, that one's a C++ monkey; it can manage object-oriented programming, Visual C++, even some Java. All the really useful stuff," said the shopkeeper.
The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in a cage of its own. The price tag around its neck read $50,000. The tourist gasped to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"
The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen it do anything, but it says it's a project manager".