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NFTs and Digital Art: Exclusive interview with samj.eth
By: The Blockchain Review
Tags: Artist, Design Process, Digital Art, Art, Nft

Disclaimer: This article is not intended as investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Non-binary artist and founder of Making Magazine, samj.eth, is dropping an exclusive NFT digital art collection on Rarible Dec 18, 2020 12 EST. Click here to check out the exclusive art.

Digital artist all over the world are front and center of the digital art revolution. Blockchain technology has given art consumers that ability to own digital assets and share them across several digital platforms such as video games, digital museums and digital marketplaces.

The following is an interview with samj.eth:

“My two previous projects each took about a month to develop and come to fruition. They were 30 second long videos that were self produced. For this drop I wanted to do something that was a bit more instantaneous and fluid. I came up with the idea of doing daily photoshoots which was inspired by the successful Beeple drop on Nifty. I wanted to do a smaller project that had a quicker turn around time to switch up my workflow. Being able to sell my pieces as NFTs and sell them within the crypto space has provided me with a lot more agency to find an audience and market my art. I have been able to sell much more directly to consumers. Since I am also as a video artist, NFTs have given more context to my art than more traditional mediums such as paintings. I got started with NFTs because I follow other artist on twitter/instagram and I noticed that other artist found success and growth by being pioneers in the crypto art space and by selling their art as NFTs. As someone who originally got into bitcoin and ethereum during my time in art school back in 2016/2017, I felt that this was a perfect opportunity to use my existing knowledge of cryptocurrency and my skills as an artist to slowly work into the space myself. It has been quite a journey and honestly I still feel very brand new to the space since I only started minting my artwork on platforms such as Rarible or SupeRare in September 2020. My experience with Rarible has been really great. The open platform allowed me to get into the NFT space immediately. I was actually touring my city and meeting people who were running art galleries at the same time that I started minting my artwork on Rarible. I was able to essentially go full-time crypto art in a matter of weeks and not have worry about the tradition art scene within my city and because of that I have been able to create more freely and independently.”
10 Designers Will Make You Want to Become One
By: Fatima Martinez
Tags: Research, Design Process, Trends, Designer, Design

10 Designers Will Make You Want to Become One

Montage by Fatima Martinez

We could create a debate about which designer is better than whom and why they are different.

But I bring you a list of 10 designers that are so simple in their creativity that trying to understand them is next to impossible. Yet, one can instantly connect with their creations and get their message without even thinking about it.

How? Through their magnificent view of the world. If you don’t have the desire to at least try to create something alike by the end of this article, you will be aware of the messages in every single design you’ll see.
FREELANCE PRICING: ONE BITE AT A TIME
By: Kishya Greer
Tags: Design Process, Freelancing, Business Development, Creative Process, Pricing Strategy

Pricing can be difficult unless you break it down into bite-size pieces. I just wanted to share how I do it in the hopes that it helps someone else out there. It is a repeatable process that could take the fear out of undercharging.

Start here by familiarizing yourself with the Agile Methodology way of road mapping. It is simply thinking about every deliverable in the project and every task it takes to mark it complete. I should mention this may have a graphic design point of view but it can be applied to any type of work.

THINKING AHEAD: A VERY SIMPLIFIED ROAD MAP EXAMPLE

PROJECT: BRAND DEVELOPMENT

DELIVERABLE 7 OF 7: CREATE BRAND GUIDELINES

Layout round 1 (7 hours)

To include all final brand elements: logo, type, color, photo or illustration style

Email client guidelines to review (30 min)

Client to provide feedback via email within 2–3 days.

Layout round 2 (3 hours)

Email client guidelines to review (30 min)

Client to provide feedback via email within 2–3 days.

Consolidated feedback received and apply to the layout. (1 hour)

Output: PDF

Upload final files to the client file share drive (30 min) Client to share access. (Client requested this method)

Based on this it will take us a total of 12 hours total to create brand guidelines during a brand development project. You can see how I make it clear to the client what they will experience and receive. The more detailed you can get the better. We will have about 3 rounds of design, they will receive it via email, it will be a pdf, and so on.

Transparency takes the fear out or saying yes.

The things I would need from them also jump out clearly.

I would need access to upload the files to the client’s server.

I would need them to get back to me in the time we are agreeing on. In this example 2–3 days per round.

I can clearly see what could possibly be a roadblock that could hold up this project.

What if they get back to me in 5 days?

How about they wait until we are done to put in a request to their IT department to give me access to their server? Is it late?

What if we need 4 rounds of design?

This would prompt me to bring up how important it is to get back to me on time if we are driven by a due date. I would check in on day 2 to be sure to remind them. I could also state that a delay in the review process would result in the due date changing. I would make sure that is all in the contract. I would add a note that the price could change if another design round is needed. All things I need to think about and get an upfront agreement. I like to share roadmaps with clients so they know what to expect. This is a simplified version of this but you get the idea.
Designing a virtual Ideathon to improve the lives of migrant workers in Kuwait
By: Nicole Okumu
Tags: Socialimapct, Migrant Workers, Design Process, Participatory Design, Migrants

Migrant Workers: A Birds’ Eye View

According to the United Nations’ most recent count, there were approximately 164 million migrant workers around the globe, a number that has certainly increased for a host of reasons including climate change, unstable governments, and, simply, work opportunities elsewhere. But often, migrant workers are excluded from the safety nets of national labor laws, which include human rights issues like working condition standards, mandatory breaks, and maximum working hours. When migrant workers resettle in new countries, their residency status is commonly tied to their employers’ support. The regulations these employers face is often not enforced, yielding them more power over what is already a vulnerable population. This translates into millions of workers who end up being indentured and trapped in other countries, with no way to get home.

Approximately 90% of all Kuwaiti households employ a foreign domestic worker — there are over 620,000 migrant domestic workers in Kuwait, accounting for over 21.9% of the country’s total employment. Migrant Rights.org

The Build Ideathon 2020

BUILD is a program created by en.v in partnership with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Their mission is to support the development and implementation of innovative and user-centric initiatives effectively improving the lives of vulnerable migrant communities in Kuwait. Last November, BUILD organized an Ideathon to bring together CSO’s, migrant workers, and community advocates to create services to help mitigate the stressors faced by vulnerable migrant workers in Kuwait.

The Ideathon kicked off by pairing teams with facilitators. The goal was to gather as a community to co-create ways for migrant workers in Kuwait to access resources that could give them access to resources. Seven days of carefully curated human-centered design activities yielded ten innovations that could be further expanded to help the lives of migrant workers.

Designing a virtual experience

Grey Area was tasked to design the program and create a fully digital experience to help the 60+ participants use design methods to go from concept to prototype in just 7 days. The result was a full-suite of curated content and support that included:
The Startup Design Process
By: Thais Souza
Tags: Design Process, Design, Ux Design Process, Design Sprint, Ux Methodology

What is the Startup Design Process?

In the last years of my career, I’ve been creating and testing new products, failing, and starting back at the creation phase. During that cycle, I began to see some patterns of when an idea was successful or not in combination with the methodologies and processes used on the project.

I will share my experience with those methodologies and how you can achieve better results by combining them and the right/best moment to use them. The Design Process is a combination of methodologies and tools that will help you be more confident that you’re building the right solution for the right users.

Of course, there are many unknowns, and it sometimes seems like a mystery why some startups succeed, and others don’t. But I’m trying my best to get closer to an answer.

With that thought in my head, I went after different studies on the topic. I studied Design Thinking, Design Sprint, JTBD, Lean UX, and other non-UX topics. I realized that all of them were terrific methodologies and tools trying to helping us with the same thing. Build the right product for the right users. But should I use only one method or tool per project? Or would the combination of all of them be even more powerful?

When should I run the Design Sprint workshop?

Should I run a Jobs to be done workshop after or before the Design Sprint?

How can I convince my company to try some of those methodologies?

Is it possible to convince my team to block five days in a row for a Design Sprint?

When should I create my hypotheses? And How can I validate them?

Over the past years, I made it my mission to finally answer those questions. Working in a venture builder company, I had the opportunity to learn more about business, products, and growth and test those tools in different orders, moments, and combinations. I've focused on running multiple design sprints, JTBD, and other workshops. Understanding the pros and cons of each one of those tools, and even better, the best moment to use them.
Why architects make great UX designers
By: Nicole Schattner
Tags: UX Design, Architects, Design Process, UX, Architecture

I understand environments

The digital world has revolutionised the built environment by becoming integrated into it. Aside from advancements in computer software used for digital modelling, many buildings incorporate a digital aspect in them as humans move into a more digitally-dependent world. These “smart” buildings use digital fabrication, material techniques and connected devices. The devices are integrated across a digital ecosystem, powered by the internet of things (IoT) which is the network of physical objects or “things”, such as home appliances that are embedded with technology and connected via the internet. The previous action of switching on a light in a room now encompasses controlling the lights via a digital device to culminate in a seamless user experience.

In commercial projects, building design is usually accompanied by an online digital platform. The overall user experience and ambience is defined by how seamless a person is able to shift from the digital platform to the physical space or object and back again. Think of the shopping experience, for example. Most physical shops are not able to survive without an online presence. In a post-COVID era, some businesses are often entirely replaced by digital websites and apps.

How handy would it be to employ a UX designer to design an online shopping experience who also specialises in planning physical shops? This type of expert can create a similar and familiar experience for the user, that is no less engaging or practical than being in the physical shop itself, ensuring the environments are integrated.

The customer experience requires a holistic approach across different touch points, integrating the physical space with a digital platform.

During the research phase of both, I would ask the same questions to form the foundation of the design, be it a shop, website or app. What is the user’s first impression from the shop front or homepage? Which products should be visible first? Does the branding reflect its products and its audience needs? Which sections should be strategically placed together for customer viewing? How do the design details look and weave together to form the tapestry of the overall product? Both disciplines are a blend of business, psychology and design. Let’s have a look at how my own experience in architecture has influenced how I think about the UX design process.
Products Mini Fall 2020
By: Maggie Ma
Tags: Design Process, Product Design, Designer, Design, Prototyping

Project III: Forms of Liquid

The adjectives for my water vessel were soft, heavy, and static.
My journey in learning Design Thinking
By: Dristi Stha
Tags: Business, Design Thinking, Experience, Design Process

To be honest, In the subject, Design Thinking, I could only remember being up at 7 in the morning and being too tired to even learn anything! As a result of coronavirus, we were forced to study across a virtual platform. At first, being introduced to this subject, I thought there would be a lot of pressure as it is a theoretical subject. Needless to say, it was a pretty entertaining subject with lots of great and innovative things to be learned.

The subject consisted of learning new methods and creation and the quickness, flexibility, and effectiveness of each production method. In this semester, At first, we were also put into groups of 5 (ALPHA), we had to stay and build each other up in our respective groups. Later, some more members were added, and working together was really fun at the same time a big puzzle. This is exactly where I got to learn a lot about leadership and how different voices/ ideas/opinions can impact your whole learning process and gives a new direction to view the same thing. As a result of my involvement in the group, I grew more and more confident with my interpersonal skills and this translated to my leadership quality.

Let’s talk about class. We had two teachers and were even lucky enough to have assistant teachers as well as guest teachers to teach us things out of our normal syllabus. The teachers were more like friends to us and it was really a treat to have them as teachers. As the semester progressed, we all got a feeling of new friendships, and all in all was a very socially active semester.

To wrap it up, this semester brought to my life new and intriguing knowledge that I know will be used in future days and in my career as I progress in the business.
Дизайнер продукта в Почте России: кровь, слёзы, радость
By: Dasha Pochekueva
Tags: Digital Transformation, Design Process, Product Design

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A Designer’s Guide to Receiving Criticism and Managing Feedback
By: Alex Lefler
Tags: Design Thinking, Design Process, Design, Criticism, Feedback

You’ve probably heard a lot of conversations end poorly lately. Me too. Maybe you’ve even participated in these unproductive discussions with friends, family, co-workers… it can be a real challenge, and the social fabric of the world hasn’t exactly been helpful toward connecting with others.

These often-unpleasant interactions usually go like this:

Someone offers a viewpoint to someone else. That person hears it and has a locked-and-loaded reaction escaping their face before the first person can even finish a sentence. Oof.

Sound familiar? It can make learning difficult, let alone solving problems or being productive in work settings. So what can we do about this? And what in the world does this have to do with a designer’s skills?

On being right

As designers, we are tasked with solving problems. It’s common to be presented with something complex, and be expected to create an elegant, simple solution. And so we go about our process, beginning the work of asking questions, discovering new ways of thinking, and compiling our first pass at an idea. Somewhere along the way, we often bond with the result. It feels good to feel “right.”

Bonding with one’s work is normal, but it does come with some sneaky traps.

As humans, we are built to be efficient. We are biologically wired to seek solutions and rely on our own ingenuity to survive, and quickly. When it comes to basic needs like food, shelter, and sleep, it’s not really wise to iterate over and over on them; we need these things when we need them. When we fail to meet these basic needs, it often means danger and real harm, kicking the brain into a fight-or-flight response in milliseconds. Being “right” means getting to live another day.

But here’s the thing: solving through design is not so simple, and usually doesn’t mean life or death. But our brains are weird and sometimes they can’t tell the difference.

The skill to master

When a designer receives criticism of their work, it can trigger a flurry of emotions and reactions. It’s really important to remember what’s happening here. When we bond to anything, we ascribe it to our sense of self. A part of our identity becomes enmeshed with it. And in a way, our “solution” taps into the ego and we begin to treat it the same way we would treat our basic survival needs.

Take for example any of the following cliché triggers:

“This looks great, but maybe add a few more colors to make it POP.”

“We had our designer take a stab at it. Take a look… could you make it look more like that?”

“Can you make the logo bigger?”

I’m sure your designer heart just wept, but notice how the mind had an instinctive reaction to these statements. Perhaps a scoff… maybe a bit of judgment? I won’t lie, it triggers me too. That’s the survival talking.
Designing Sidia's Showcase
By: Fabiano Marinho
Tags: Design Process, Storytelling, Showcase, Sidia, Art

DISCOVER

Before starting to design it was important to get a better understanding of the challenge, looking for what kind of problems the showcase should solve and what are the stakeholder's expectations. The answer was simple:

Show what Sidia does, but in an unforgettable way.

Some technologies developed by Sidia.

As we work with immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, we use our expertise on those areas to tell our story, taking care to not being literal when talking about what Sidia does. In addition, due to the maintenance cost and pre-setup of this type of head mounted display devices, we decided to use high definition projectors to project the immersive experience on the walls of the Showcase. And Microsoft Kinects devices to provide gesture interaction.

So that we visited the room reserved for the Showcase and we started to looking for third party companies to work together and achieve our goals.

First time we visit the room reserved for the Showcase.

At the same time we did a lot of desk researches to learn about other immersive experiences around the world, such as those produced by teamLab, creating reference moodboards and we did some ideation sessions in order to create two concepts for the Showcase.
You can never reach success by criticizing another.
By: David Pilkenton
Tags: Design Thinking, Design Process, Business Development, Business Strategy, Personal Development

I frequently talk with people who have started new ventures because they are dissatisfied with the status quo.

The idea that you can make a better product than the competition, or “zig” while others “zag” can leave you vulnerable and exposed.

If your success becomes based on another’s existence, growth and decision making now has a lot more to do with the other person than yourself, and you’re no longer in complete control of your destiny.

There is a subtlety here — a nuanced energy of competitiveness that, like a slowly evolving poison, can overtake the culture of your company.

The winners, elite performers, and pioneers of the world stay put in their own camp, seeking to improve individual performance based on self-assessment. There’s no competition in this realm, only creativity.

The two cannot exist together — because if they do, the magic is gone and before you know it, you’ve become a commodity.
Not every project needs to follow the same process. Our goal as designers should be to seek clarity, not to impose a path to achieve it.
By: Ux Collective Editors
Tags: Startup, Design Process, User Experience, Product Design, UX

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Why instant satisfaction is fundamental when you want to build new habits 😊
By: Yahia Ghallale
Tags: Habits For Success, Life Lessons, Habits, Lifestyle, Productivity

In the last few days, I’ve been reading a book called “Atomic Habits” and I learnt a fundamental technique to start a new habit. The author (James Clear) said: “If an experience isn’t satisfying, we have little reason to repeat it”. That’s true, many times we continue to scroll social media or play videogames daily because we enjoy what we’re doing; if we follow this path, we can turn “boring” habits into something nice. We always do unproductive things because we can have immediate satisfaction; this is not achievable with habits like studying or training because we can’t see instant results.

A nice trick we can make is to create something similar to a “score bar” that we can see “growing” while we are doing a productive habit. For example, we can get 2 mugs, one empty and one full of marbles, and put a marble in the empty mug every time we finish a task (for example after finishing a math exercise or after doing 10 push-ups).

The goal we should pursue is to make our daily habits more fun, in this way we would repeat them and have a nice productive life!
Best Habits to Track in 2021
By: Coach Tony
Tags: Habit Tracking, Habit Tracker, Habits, New Year Resolution, Habit Building

Best Habits to Track in 2021

Every year I go through our data from Coach.me to see what habits people have started tracking and what habits they’ve stopped tracking. The result is a snapshot of what is becoming more popular and what is becoming less popular. This snapshot tends to change a lot more on a year to year basis than I’d expect.

Here’s last year’s for comparison.
You Become Your Habits
By: Venkatesh Agnihotri
Tags: Dream Big, Motivation, Habits

The real question is: “Are you the person you really wanna be?”

The first step is not what or how, but who. You need to know who you want to be. Otherwise, your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder.

You have the power to change your views about yourself. Your identity is not fixed. It can be changed. You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to strengthen today with the habits you choose today.

Building better habits aren’t about littering your day with life hacks. It’s not about waking up early in the morning or taking a cold shower every day or wearing the same t-shirt each day. It’s not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress. These are just momentary gains. Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally this is not about having something. This is about becoming someone.
Time vs. Energy Management
By: Shao Zhou
Tags: Habits, Change, Time Management, Personal Development, Productivity

Time vs. Energy Management

Photo by Shao Zhou

Time management is traditionally the foundation of productivity. Methods like Time Blocking and The Pomodoro Technique layout times for when we should complete certain tasks. It allows me to roadmap dozens of things I want to do each day. And is how I’ve approached productivity. The more items I can check off, the more productive I associate with that day.

If the game is to do the most amount of things per day, then the wake-up-and-grind mentality is certain to become unsustainable. Remember freshman year of college when you had to choose either good grades, a social life, or sleep, but never all three? Well, I’d like to think you can have all 3 — all the time. This resurfaced again in my late 20s when the 3 things were a job, business school, and a boyfriend.

What happened? Well, let’s just say I’ve had my own share of experiencing burnout. Harvard Business Review mentions “time management skills [are] among the most desired workforce skills, but at the same time among the rarest skills to find.”¹

So how do we become better time managers? A valuable characteristic not only in the workplace but also in our personal lives. As I step into the new year and a new decade that is my 30s, I am going to try adopting a new method of productivity by applying James Clear’s Step 1 of his Simple Ways to Be More Productive Every Day²: manage your energy, not your time.

Here, energy is not the type that’s associated with caffeine and feeling wired. Energy is the ability to be present and grounded. When you are able to focus on what you are doing, and therefore, your attention is less divided.

If we can do more of the work that energizes us at certain times, magic will happen. We enter that coveted state of flow.

In this post, I layout in the following:
12 Simple Habits That Will Improve The Quality Of Your Life
By: Laine Kaleja
Tags: Self Improvement, Habits, Life, Self, Productivity

12 Simple Habits That Will Improve The Quality Of Your Life

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash.

There are dozens of “habits that will change your life” lists, and I believe each one of them contains some fantastic habits.

I will not claim this list to be unique and something like “magic help.”

With this article, I aim to provide you with a list of very simple habits that have improved my quality of life in the past few years. They are simple habits a lot of people know, but most are not doing. At least consistently, not. The benefits of these habits have been proven scientifically.

These habits will contribute to a better quality of life, increased concentration, productivity, and greater happiness.

They are very foundational and straightforward for everyone to implement in their daily life.
If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Badly
By: Jimmy Cerone
Tags: Ideas, Habits, Writing, Routine, Consistency

Idea of the Day #45

If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Badly

When I first started writing, I would agonize for months over each story I wrote. Frequently, I’d write half of a story and let it “simmer” for months while I avoided finishing it.

Usually this fear of finishing was usually a sign that I was afraid of the topic. One story, about my struggles with my masculine identity, sat in my drafts box for almost a year before I got around to finishing it.

Yet another, about politics, is still in my unfinished story pile.

We all fear hard things, vulnerable things. Unfortunately, they tend to be the best things to write about.

Today, I don’t want to write this story because it’s 2:47 AM and I just want to go to bed.

My dog is asleep at the foot of my bed and I’m afraid that whatever I write will be shit.

However, I know if I do go to bed, I’m establishing a pattern.

I can not write if it’s not convenient for me.

If I don’t “feel” like it.

If I’m scared of what I’m writing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m an advocate for rest and an advocate for listening to your body.

I just think we should also try to call our own bullshit.

My bullshit tonight is that I’m scared of writing vulnerable things.

I am rebelling against writing because my $5 a day bet is over.

I know I don’t have to write anymore.

I know that I no longer have to dig deep everyday to reveal something about myself to the world.

And I fucking love to hide. There’s a childlike part of me that would love to hide away from the world and live in a fantasy land.

But those 40 some days of writing were some of my best in a long time and I get so much pride from looking over all those finished drafts on my medium profile.

My inner child who only wants to be away from the troubles of this world doesn’t see the aftermath, where I’m proud and content.

So here I am. It’s late, I’m tired, and this is probably very bad.

But I’m here. And I’m writing. And I will thank myself later.

Because I think writing is a good thing, and good things are worth doing badly.
My New Year Resolutions
By: Nika Paradis
Tags: Habits, Life, Self, New Year, Resolutions

For 2021, I’m making twelve new resolutions, all of which are ways to improve my self physically and mentally.

Making resolutions is easy. Maintaining them is another story.

As I wrote in an article I published a few weeks ago (Motivation #3), the key to making resolutions work is to not plan big or quick changes. If the changes are small and gradual, they become more manageable and easier to maintain.

I’ve decided to make twelve small changes in my daily life. That way, I allow them to become habits, and I will eliminate some bad habits in the process.

I will write at a scheduled time every day.

I will dedicate at least 15 minutes a day to working on my memoir.

I will do one thing that is not in my comfort zone at least once a month.

I will drink more water, juice, and herbal tea.

I will drink less coffee.

I will listen to a podcast regularly.

I will not finish books I don’t enjoy reading.

I will use learn a new word every week and repeatedly use that word in spoken and written language until it becomes part of my vocabulary.

I will limit my time on social media.

I will dedicate a specific day and time to my craftwork.

I will do one home improvement project every month.

I will write down the qualities I admire in twelve people I know, one person per month. I got this idea from Sebastian Hetman (https://sebastian-hetman.medium.com/your-core-values-hide-in-the-qualities-you-admire-in-others-9884263f8d74).

To be honest, I started experimenting with all of these changes this month just to find out the best schedule for my writing and craftwork and to allow myself to make the changes more comfortably. It’s happening, and I’m excited about maintaining these changes.

I want to encourage everyone to form new habits by making small changes that help them achieve more, create more joy, and focus on what matters to them.

To new beginnings!
The FCGAS concept is what Amal Totkays are for!!
By: Siddra Noor
Tags: Amaltotkay, Habit, Amalacademy, Life

Faking It

Creating It

Getting Out of yawning/ dozing zone

Asking for help and a bit of

Self-talk.

The lives of successful yet compassionate people are the hub to such attributes & we call them entrepreneur now a days.

One can learn to take self-advice and brainstorm using these tidbits while being realistic yet positive regarding the outcomes. Getting to ride the high needs courage and moreover, one can always ask for help that can help in efficient creation of new better habits for achieving the desired goals. The most important of them is the make-believe perception of your own optimistic thoughts.

‘Believe it you can do it and you are half-way there’

For practicality, the smaller the better. Next time, you get up.

Squeeze the deadline.

Make your bed as soon as you get up rather waiting for breakfast etc.

Make the brain, rain.

Instead of a conventional way, spare sometime and reach the office by trying the new route.

Share the good times

While doing chores, ask your sibling to pass the food wrap or an office colleague to help you staple even a 8–10 page file. This brings about sharing and connect each other also conveying a way to be helpful even in the easiest of times.

All these teeny tiny doings will contribute in transforming your mindset into a Growing one. The roots of small act of care, share, ponder over will give rise to the branches of grandeur, connections, work ethic and more. Soon, you will see a tree of success in the garden of your life.

Make sure to keep in under the shadow of perseverance and keep it watering through the smart work canal.
Create Magic in 2021
By: Victor Sagar
Tags: Spiritual Growth, Growth Hacking, Habits, 2021, Intentions

Forget about those useless New Year’s resolutions. Try intention setting instead for 2021. It’s a real game-changer for creating magic in your life.

The word resolution comes from the word resolute. Which means unwavering & determined. This type of effort usually creates conflict in us. Between what we are and what we want to become.

The statistics on how many people follow through and accomplish their New Year’s resolutions are rather grim. Studies have shown that less than 25% of people stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them.

New Year’s resolutions might be the textbook definition of insanity. Why not try something different in 2021. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. It’s so simple and yet so powerful.

Try writing down your intentions for 2021; it’s that easy. A recent study showed that you would be 42% more likely to achieve your goals by simply writing them down.

Create a section in the reminders area of your phone. Use a journal or even an ordinary piece of paper. Don’t think of these as goals. Instead, a direction you want to travel. Losing 10 pounds becomes eating healthier and moving my body every day. Reading five books becomes finding time to read every day. Every few months, review your intentions and see what kind of progress you are making.

Forget about a 42% chance of success with your intentions. Here’s a proven hack to make sure it’s almost impossible to fail. It’s all about taking tiny steps forward in the beginning. If you don’t read or exercise. Start with 5 minutes a day and build off that, increasing incrementally. Most people fail to make real changes because they shoot too high. They try to start meditating for 20 minutes a day, find it too tricky & quit. Start with 1 minute on day one instead. I suggest reading Atomic Habits by James Clear if you want to learn more about habits science.

Please feel free to share this or leave a comment if you have any questions. Write down your 2021 intentions and make it the best year of your life!

Victor Sagar
Discipline yourself with this productivity cheat code
By: Radu Preda
Tags: Self Improvement, Habits, Productivity

Keep playing, keep winning

With the 50% rule, any performance goes. It can be less than 50%. Be it 40%. Or 10%. You never lose when you act. A habit is complete even when you give it your 1%. You did your job. You showed up. And this flurry of small performances is going to compound like crazy and outmatch the person whose doctrine focuses on “rare, big hits”.

That guy goes to the gym when he feels full of energy. AKA, once per month. Maybe less. He won’t want to read 2 pages a day, because something just keeps getting in the way! He’ll read his daring “50 pages minimum” target in the weekend. Will he ? This guy talks to the girl he likes when the moment is “just right”. Meaning? Never. He accepts nothing short of big, instant fixes.

Time is his enemy.

A right moment is never actually given. You make the moment and put the ‘‘right’’ in it. You go talk to her. Maybe she won’t turn out to be your soulmate, but you enjoyed what was and took the shot. You will go to the gym a bit tired, skipping some of your routine, maybe you’ve only put in 70% or less. You decide to read 2 pages right now. It’s not a chunk, it’s not a proud amount. But it’s progress. You have time.

It’s less than the “supreme victory” (whatever you set it to be), but it’s also more than from rationalizating your way out, like what our unlucky guy is doing.

Time is your friend.

Going for something is always better than going for nothing. Your subconscious loves messing up with your motivations and drive, be it due to fear or strive for comfort. Reasons reveal themselves as excuses. Steven Pressfield puts it quite bluntly:

Instead of showing us our fear (which might shame us and impel us to do our work), Resistance presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work. — The War of Art

Don’t let Resistance take over you. Do the work you’ve set out to do. The excuses feel real, because they are real. Your ego is subtly telling you that you may not get the desired result, to which you respond: I’m fine with that. Take comfort in knowing that you’re performing a bit less than the “theoretical maximum”. But you are still performing. Others may have chosen not to play at all.

It turns out, if you keep playing, even poorly, long enough, you start winning.

Thus, the next time you intend to cancel your habit or activity because you feel you can’t do it properly, tell yourself this:

Maybe I can’t do 100% right now, but 50% is still much better than nothing. I’m doing it.

Cut your ego a thousand times. And you will see that what’s left is a beautiful sculpture.
Amal Totkay Reflection
By: Tayyaba Noor
Tags: Success, Highly Effective People, Achieving Goals, Habits, Learn

Let’s call it Amal remedies. So basically remedies are like a prototype of treatment. In this context, the bigger picture is Amal which is a practical approach to something and these remedies will cost less and produce more significant changes.

So the first tip is of self-talk and it reminds me of Shakespeare's novel Macbeth in which there is a great role of soliloquy in all the bloodshed leading him to mania. I truly believe in self-talks because you can fake it to anyone except yourself.

These days there are paid workshops to adopt a behavior of gratitude. What is the point of paying money to learn to say thank you? Doesn’t it sound crazy? but yes this is important because your mind likes to habituate. it likes to continue a certain chain of thoughts. When you start saying you are incapable, your mind treats it as a command to act as incapable and the disaster begins. It is like a drug that you can’t get rid of and the pessimistic thoughts keep on residing over one another.

At this time you need to switch the button of pessimism to optimism by talking to yourself and even writing your statements gives you even more courage to stand again with all of your might and be an agent of positive change.

comfort zone

Success definitely knocks on your door but what if you are sleeping comfortably on your couch. There is no point in claiming that you were not lucky enough to go grab your part of life. If you love adventures comfort zone will vanish your esteem. To electrify your soul, you must be where it wants to be.

Habits let you know who you are. These habits derive you from what you are designed for. You realize the activities where you are out of time and space. You forget the whole universe around it and your focus and engagement levels are that high that nothing can distract you.

Habits change into character

In this time technology and advancements have made us self-sufficient to a great level. As the research shows that most of the entrepreneurs are self-employed. But we need humans around us. We learn from each other and it's often quite relaxing to just imagine that I am not alone in a certain situation. We need people around us who can genuinely suggest us to refine our knowledge & skills.

Genuine people

And here comes my favorite totka that suggests fake it till you make it. This strategy will help us analyze our future goals as well as get ready to shoot for the moon. Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules of Life states the first rule to keep a positive confident posture. Now you must be thinking that what posture has to do with the faking until making it.

So your final goal is to achieve the level in your life for which you could be proud of yourself. This proud and confident is even evident from the spark of your eyes. Peterson suggests you to fake that confidence until you achieve it. This technique will help you attain it earlier in a more efficient manner.
100 Secrets of Japanese success.. An easy to read and understand insight…
By: Martin Giles
Tags: Japan, Habits, Japanese, Culture, Knowledge

An easy to read insight into the Japanese mind and the philosophies and behaviors that lead to their success.

25 years in Japan has taught me a lot about Japanese society, and being married to a Japanese person for 20 of those years has further deepened my curiosity and desire to continue to learn more through my own studies.

This article serves as an index to 100 separate short entries based on my time and studies in Japan to bring to you an exciting insight into the deep richness of the knowledge, thoughts, and habits of these truly fascinating people.

It’s a work in progress, and as I complete each entry I’ll be adding it accordingly to the index. So be sure to check weekly for updates!
Habits
By: Danial Naqvi
Tags: Books, Flow, Habits, Choices, Reading

I finished a book today.

My first on Kindle.

Which was a great investment.

Something about a physical book doesn’t do it for me.

However, I’ve just figured out, from reading this book (Atomic Habits), that I have another book, in print, which I now have to read.

So I’ll just do that.

I’ve learned a lot about habits, hopefully some of which I can digest further tomorrow.

Habits
Build Better Habits with Habit Grouping
By: Ash Blankenship
Tags: Tasks, Habits

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

Building new habits is challenging because it requires that we start by doing something out of routine. But I’ve discovered a method that allowed me to build multiple habits at once. I’m calling it Habit Grouping.

Here’s how it worked for me and I believe this method can work for you as well.

Prior to Habit Grouping, I’d water my plants inconsistently and I could not remember when I had watered them last. I similarly could not keep track of when I’d last washed my hair (I don’t wash it daily). So I decided that two days a week for each task was a good goal.

I chose Tuesdays and Saturdays as the days that I’d perform both tasks. I grouped watering my plants with washing my hair. And the method worked so well, I haven’t missed a day yet, even as several months have gone by.

I have also begun adding other habits into this pattern. I decided just over a month ago to start doing 100 push-ups a day and knew I needed some rest days so my body could recover. I grouped this too with my other habits, using Tuesdays and Saturdays as my rest days. I’ve now created a total of three new habits.

Habits don’t have to be on a particular day of the week. They’re just tasks you’d like to group in order to create new habits.

What habits would you like to start that can be grouped?

Give this some thought prior to getting started. Then try grouping the habits you would like to create. Add them to your calendar if you’d like. Then follow through. After just a few weeks, your new habits will become routine.
Quotes from The Creative habit by Twyla Tharp
Tags: Habits For Success, Creativity, Habits, Creative Process, Habit Building

“Creativity is an act of defiance.”

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

I have been reading this book for a while now and these are some lines that I found useful:

“You can’t overthink when you don’t have time to think at all.”

“There comes a point where you have to let your creation out into the world or it isn’t worth a tinkerer’s damn.”
習慣說
Tags: 中文, Habits, 生活, 習慣, Life

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Habits from a Programmer’s Point of View
By: Ishant Juyal
Tags: Self Improvement, Habits, Change, Growth, Atomic Habit

One of the biggest failures of a human brain is the inability to understand that correlation doesn’t always mean causation. This incapacity to differentiate between the two makes it easier for our brain to assume things which may or may not be true. One such case is when we form a bad habit just to ignore the anxious state of our mind. We associate that habit as the reason for relief from our anxiety, while in reality it is just another distraction.

Habit formation is a basic function that our brain performs in order to reduce the energy consumption. When we want to do a task, which is a part of our habits, our brain doesn’t need to look for alternate ways to complete it. It has already figured out an efficient path which would complete the task and would also provide satisfaction (dopamine).

So that answers our question “What leads to habit formation?”. Habits are the direct result of our brain’s addiction to dopamine and its need for less energy consumption.

Think of the time when you smoked a cigarette for the first time. Try to relive the moment if you can.

Now, think of the last time you smoked a cigarette. Try to remember what you had in mind while you were craving for it.

Notice the difference in the two moments. You didn’t smoke cigarette the first time because you needed to, you did it just because you wanted to. While the last time you did it, it was most probably because you felt the need to do it.

Now one may ask “How are the habits formed?”. The answer is simple, habits are formed because of triggers or cues.

Habits are formed because of cues. We associate every cue with a certain action which promises us satisfaction in the form of dopamine. Our brain works like a computer which doesn’t analyze the consequences of its actions if it is getting enough dopamine. Let us understand the process of habit formation in the form of a code snippet.

def perform(cue):

while (task not completed):

do_task

return (reward, result) habits = {notification: see messages, feel anxious: smoke}

def do(cue):

if cue in habits:

return(habits[cue])

else:

(reward, result) = perform(cue)

if reward == dopamine:

habits[cue] = result

Every time you see a cue which is already associated with a specific habit, you have to perform that task as it is integrated in your system. Your brain doesn’t ask questions because according to it, the code runs well as it is getting correct result for the given test cases.

There is no such thing as bad habit or good habit, there are just habits. Inherently, all the habits are the same, they are just another way to get dopamine.

A bad habit is called “bad” only because it degrades the performance and efficiency of our program called life. All bad habits are those edge cases for which our code crashes.