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A 4 step plan for learning

December 16, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

1. Embrace the fact that there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know

2. Go and learn something new

3. Be happy that you know more stuff

4. Go back to step 1

Good students know (and accept) that there is a lot of stuff that they don’t know. But they are bold in determination to learn.

Good students take on and complete assignments with an open mind and a healthy curiosity. They reflect, analyze, and adapt.

And then they go on to the next assignment.

Boldness and humility make a powerful combination.

Photo credit: SMBCollege

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: learning

Getting attention

December 5, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

It’s hard to get someone’s attention. Particularly a hurried New Yorker bustling through the city on foot or on bike. And particularly when it’s for a message about safety.

So, NYC is trying another angle – haiku traffic signs.

It’ll be interesting to see if this combination of clever images and poetry works. Hopefully it’s as successful as the mime-based safety campaign in Caracas, Venezuela.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: attention, haiku, safety, signs

Nurturing orginality

June 10, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

Well-established routines save us time and energy. They make us more efficient, and they relieve us of a lot of thinking and decision-making. Routines allow us to do things sort of automatically.

Disrupting a routine every now and again, then, may be a good way to take some of that unconscious, automatic, I-can-do-it-in-my-sleep thinking and put it out in the light. To look at it a bit differently, and maybe challenge some of it. To give yourself an opportunity to learn by forcing yourself to do something new. Even a small thing.

The purpose, of course, is not to optimize your routine. The purpose is to get a little mental exercise in looking at something in a new way, challenging some assumptions, examining new information. Done with some regularity, a habit could be formed – a habit of looking at more things in new ways, of challenging assumptions more often, of seeking out more new information (and being more open to it).

And those are some skills that may come in pretty handy when innovative thinking is required on a bit larger scale.

Photo credit: Pink Sherbert Photography

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: creativity, habit, innovation

Trust is hard to earn and easy to burn

May 31, 2011 By Tom Catalini 2 Comments

Trust is a powerful shortcut. Once you trust someone (or an organization or a brand), subsequent interactions become easy. Transactions between trusting partners require less time and analysis.

If a friend you trust asks to borrow your car, you can easily and quickly say yes. If a company or brand you trust offers a new product you might be interested in, you can easily and quickly decide to give it a try.

Once that trust is betrayed, however, subsequent decisions aren’t so easy. Things slow down and options are weighed more carefully again.

Groupon is hugely successful because they’ve earned the trust of their users, but one of their recent deals came under a good deal of scrutiny. Take a look at this article from Mashable.com:

Too Good To Be True? Groupon Users Unite To Question Suspect Offer

Some trusting Groupon users will be slowing down subsequent purchasing decisions and examining deals more closely (with a little less trust).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: attitude, communication, marketing, trust

Wrapping up fitness week with a little zen

April 23, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

Inspired by the Boston Marathon on Monday and a bunch of interesting health studies I’d recently read about, I kicked off a sort of fitness week on this blog. The idea was simple: to convey some wisdom from the world health & fitness and see if it can be applied to other areas of life – like work.

Good fitness is like good work in many ways. It can be difficult to attain, tough to sustain, and though the rules of the game seem simple, they’re often insidiously complex and non-intuitive. So, we looked at what it takes to run a marathon or achieve other long-term goals, the importance of just doing something every day – the epic battle of consistency, the often ignored need to rest and recuperate – just as important for the mind as the body, why intensity matters when trying to expand your personal capacity, and finally, the importance of always being in motion and avoiding sedentary states whenever possible.

That’s all well and good, but it’s complex to hold all these thoughts in your head simultaneously and act on them in concert without losing your focus – or eliminating all the fun. Sort of like working on your golf swing, the effort can be fickle and frustrating. Which is where some zen can be handy.

Leo Babauta, the popular blogger behind zenhabits.net, offered some timely advice about maintaining fitness routines while traveling. Traveling unravels routine, which is fuel for staying on track with efforts to be fit and sustain other areas of life. And while breaking routine is healthy in so many ways, it’s hard to control which elements are impacted. Keeping the good and eliminating the bad isn’t so easy. Leo’s post A Simple Fitness Plan for Travelers offers some insights: integration and attitude will help keep you on the right track.

Photo credit: Josefe aka Hipnosapo

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Fitness, zen

Movement

April 22, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

Movement is essential. Being sedentary is bad. Inactivity is so bad, in fact, that Dr. James Levine, a researcher in inactivity studies at the Mayo Clinic, calls excessive sitting a “lethal activity.”

Dr. Levine recently completed a two-month study, the most complete of its kind, with a surprising finding. Volunteers were monitored constantly. Calorie intake was measured meticulously and motions were tracked with special clothing. Traditional exercise was prohibited. The difference between those who gained weight and those who didn’t as calorie intake was increased? Lots of little movements, or put another way – the ability to avoid long sedentary states.

Taking the stairs, walking around, or otherwise moving about made the difference. And, these little things, Levine and his colleagues argue, matter more than a trip to the gym. That’s because offsetting the effects of long sedentary states can’t be so easily undone as was once thought. Bursts of traditional exercise just aren’t as good as keeping in motion more consistently.

Constantly moving, even in small ways, can yield benefits in other ares as well. Avoiding the sedentary knowledge-worker equivalent of couch-sitting – plodding along ambivalently, not moving in new directions – might also be key to surviving and thriving in the new world of work.

Photo credit: StormyDog

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Fitness

Intensity

April 21, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

One of the best ways to get physically fit is through high-intensity interval training. The studies are pretty clear on this. Intervals of short, but really hard all-out efforts with longer, moderate efforts in between yield the best results. In one recent study, cyclists who did interval training totaling just 20 minutes of high-intensity work over two weeks increased their aerobic capacity as much as riders who did 10 hours of moderate-paced work over the same time period.

Intensity matters. What’s more, those who use interval training methods report enjoying their workouts more. Sure, intervals are harder to do. But they’re not boring. And they come with a greater sense of accomplishment.

What if we applied interval training to work? Intense focus and effort, even for a short amount of time, could bring about real progress. Repeated the intervals regularly could lead to remarkable results. And the process might be a little more fun and exciting too.

Photo credit: Spatial Mongrel

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Fitness, focus, Intensity, work

Doing and rest

April 20, 2011 By Tom Catalini Leave a Comment

Persistence and determination help us reach our goals, but rest is key to performance.

The psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) test is a common method scientists use to detect impairment caused by sleep deprivation. Numbers are flashed on a computer screen at random intervals and you press the space bar as soon as you see the numbers. Response delays are measured, which determines if you’ve lapsed into what is called microsleep. The ten-minute test is easy (though tedious) if you are awake and alert. If you’re not well rested, your performance will suffer and the test results will show this clearly.

Using the PVT in extensive studies, researchers examined groups of sleepers who were allowed varying amounts of sleep per night over a two week period. Not surprisingly, those with the most restrictive sleep budget performed poorly. And their performance declined over time.

Here’s the surprising part. The subjects acknowledged that they felt a little sleepy, but thought they were performing well. They thought that they had adjusted to the new, lower sleep budget over time. The PVT showed the opposite. Their performance had actually declined dramatically.

So, working diligently and consistently is important. But so is rest. ‘Powering through it’ or otherwise denying yourself rest will come at a cost.

Not doing is a good (and necessary) compliment to doing.

Photo credit: ex.libris

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Fitness, rest, work

30 minutes a day

April 19, 2011 By Tom Catalini 2 Comments

From Richard Simmons to Shaun Thompson many gurus will give you almost limitless techniques that can be used to achieve fitness. Many promise a unique, efficient path to real results. And they’re probably all right.

The trick, though, is not about what to do or how to do it. The real requirement is persistence. Following almost any program consistently will lead to real results.

It’s proven that 30 minutes of just about any kind of exercise per day can reduce risks for a plethora of health concerns. It’s the persistence that yields results that are measurable and that come with a long list of long-term benefits.

The how and what are not as important as the doing. The doing must be done, and consistently. That’s the hard part. But it’s also the part that matters – in fitness, and in a whole lot more.

Photo credit: sanchom

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Fitness, Persistence