Get your brain in motion

Category: creativity (Page 1 of 7)

5 TIPS FOR THE PERFECT WORKING LUNCH

Whether you are trying to stay healthy, save money, or you feel as if you are simply too busy to take the full hour, having lunch at work is often a struggle.

However, no matter what job you do, a filling and nutritious lunch has a multitude of benefits, positively affecting your mood and your productivity in the process. To help you make the most of your midday mealtime, this article provides five useful tips for the perfect working lunch:

  1. Be realistic: It can be tempting to order an oversized lunch, however, more often than not, your large lunch just proves a hindrance to your productivity, and your concentration starts to flag. This usually happens at around 3 o’clock, just as you are about to go into an unnecessarily long meeting.
  2. Double up/buddy up/get social: While it is perfectly normal to seek some solitude with your sandwich every once in a while, lunch is one of those things that is almost always better when enjoyed with someone else. Although there may be mitigating circumstances always try and avoid being the canteen recluse.
  3. Mark your territory: If you work in a large office and one which has a communal refrigerator, there’s always the chance that your lunch will go missing. If this happens more than once, it may be time to take evasive action: write a post-it note and stick it to your Tupperware.
  4. Go outside: Lunch at your desk often involves browsing Amazon and watching videos of cats on YouTube. Scientists have proved that dining at your desk can actually be detrimental to your health, not to mention your productivity. Instead of indulging in the daily picnic by your PC, why not go outside and have a real one? Even a simple walk through the park can break up the day, making you more alert and ready to work by the time you go back.
  5. Variety: Even the most habitual of us enjoy a change from time to time, so try and vary your diet. Lunch is a great way to counter a daily routine which is otherwise hard to change, so take full advantage where you can. It could turn out to be the most important meal of the day.

Image Source: PixabayWir_Sind_Klein

 

 

10 ways to improve your Brain Fitness

Our brain, in order to work at 100% of its possibility, needs to be exercised and trained. Brain fitness has basic principles: variety and curiosity. When anything you do becomes second nature, you need to make a change. Curiosity about the world around you, how it works and how you can understand it will keep your brain working fast and efficiently.

Here are some tips to help attain your quest for mental fitness:

  1. Play Games: Suduko, crosswords and electronic games can all improve your brain’s speed and memory. You’ll get benefit more by doing these games a little bit every day. Spend 15 minutes or so, not hours.
  2. Meditation :  By creating a different mental state, you engage your brain in new and interesting ways while increasing your brain fitness.
  3. Eat for Your Brain:  Focus on fish oils from wild salmon, nuts such as walnuts, seeds such as flax seed and olive oil.
  4. Tell Good Stories: Practice telling your stories, both new and old, so that they are interesting, compelling and fun. 
  5. Turn Off Your Television: Turn off your TV and spend more time living and exercising your mind and body.
  6. Exercise Your Body: By moving your body, your brain has to learn new muscle skills, estimate distance and practice balance. 
  7. Read Something Different: Not only will your brain get a workout by imagining different time periods, cultures and peoples, you will also have interesting stories to tell about your reading.
  8. Learn a New Skill: Your memory comes into play, you learn new movements and you associate things differently.
  9. Make Simple Changes: To really help your brain stay young, challenge it. Change routes to the grocery store, use your opposite hand to open doors and eat dessert first.
  10. Train Your Brain: The basic principles are memory, visualization, and reasoning. Work on these three concepts every day and your brain will be ready for anything.

Image: PixabayMohamed_Hassan

What Emotional Intelligence Really Is

“The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.”

Alain de Botton

The more we are open to changing and adapting to live in a multitude of contests, the more emotionally mature we are. But that doesn’t come easy. Not even close.

Emotional intelligence seems to be all the hype today, one of the most saught-after soft skills by employers. Emotional intelligence though is something we should all pursue not to sound cool at our next job interview, but to travel the obstacle-ridden path that is called life.

The good news? It can be learned.

Even more good news? Alain de Botton has published “The School of Life: An Emotional Education” to teach you how.

 

emotional intelligence

Image: Pixabay (CC0 – Creative Commons)

5 tips to boost Creativity

Creativity is an inborn talent of all human beings and it can also be developed. When youace challenges which you ot able to solve in a conventional way, it’s time to get creative. he World Economic Forum says creativity is one of the top 10 skills required for the future workplace. It’s is a useful tool to explore new and innovative ways of doing things, but there’s an added benefit to your mental health, since we being creative, your brain releases dopamine, which is a natural antidepressant.

Keeping your creative juices flowing can help you embracing and feel more in control. Expressing your innate creativity will help keep you motivated about the future.

This article provides 5 useful tips to boost your creativity:

1. Use your imagination: Creating space where you can disconnect and shut out external stimulation and impulses can help you to dream up all sorts of ideas.

2. Identify your creative time: Keeping a log and working out what time you are at your best for coming up with new ideas is very helpful in knowing when you will produce your most creative work.

3. Commit to continual learning: Adopt a lifelong learning mentality and cultivate a growth mindset. Open your mind and seek out new ways to test yourself.

4. Avoid energy drains: Energy is fundamental to creativity. When you are in a creative mode, it’s important to avoid anything that drains your energy.

5. Plan to do things differently: Seeing new things can help to spark new ideas. Messing up your routine and consciously seeking out ways to do things differently by exploring new environments, taking different routes and challenging your daily habits will help fuel your creativity.

Image: PixabayElisaRiva (CC Creative Commons)

From Hobby to Hustle

There is a so-called “modern trap” affecting our societies and it’s all about losing sight of what our passions are supposed to be doing for us.

For some of us, our work coincides with our passion; we pour everything into it and dedicate most of our days to making it a success.
For some of us, work is a way to get by from a financial point of view, but there are passions that we cultivate on the side.

Well, we are observing a trend whereby these passions are turning into side hustles for many people. This is by no means something bad; on the other hand, it can feel really nice to be able to do something we love and give it value too. However, what we are losing sight of is the intrinsic value of that activity we are passionate about: it makes us feel good. This nearsightedness can bring to a very negative consequence: not feeling justified to carry out our favourite activities unless we’re turning them into something profitable.

This trend is part of a bigger one: not being able to spend time just being. Not being able to take things slow. Not being able to enjoy free time. Not scheduling any self-care time.

Read this really insightful article here: Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies into Hustles

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Source: Pixabay (CC0 – Creative Commons)

8 ways to remember anything

The mind’s capacity to store and recall information is truly wondrous.

However there are Always ways to improve our memory capacity and our abilities to recall information.

This article provides 8 stategies to rember better:

  1. Become interested in what you’re learning. We’re all better remembering what interests us. If you’re not intrinsically interested in what you’re learning or trying to remember, you must find a way to become so.
  2. Find a way to leverage your visual memory. It requires mental effort to do this, but if you practice you’ll be surprised how quickly you can come up with creative ways to generate images. Remember: Memory for humans is predominantly visual.
  3. Create a mental memory tree. If you’re trying to memorize a large number of facts, find a way to relate them in your mind visually with a memory tree. Construct big branches first, then leaves. Branches and leaves should carry labels that are personally meaningful to you in some way, and the organization of the facts (“leaves”) should be logical.
  4. Associate what you’re trying to learn with what you already know. It seems the more mental connections we have to a piece of information, the more successful we’ll be in remembering it. This is why using mnemonics actually improves recall.
  5. Write out the items to be memorized over and over and over. Writing out facts in lists improves recall if you make yourself learn the lists actively instead of passively. In other words, don’t just copy the list of facts you’re trying to learn but actively recall each item you wish to learn and then write it down again and again and again. This method has the added benefit of immediately showing you exactly which facts haven’t made it into your long-term memory so you can focus more attention on learning them rather than wasting time reinforcing facts you already know.
  6. When reading for retention, summarize each paragraph in the margin. This requires you to think about what you’re reading, recycle it, and teach it to yourself again. Even take the concepts you’re learning and reason forward with them; apply them to imagined novel situations, which creates more neural connections to reinforce the memory.
  7. Do most of your studying in the afternoon. Though you may identify yourself as a “morning person” or “evening person” some studies suggest your ability to memorize isn’t influenced as much by what time of day you perceive yourself to be most alert but by the time of day you actually study—afternoon appearing to be the best.
  8. Get adequate sleep to consolidate and retain memories. Not just at night after you’ve studied but the day before you study as well.

Imagine: PixabayGeralt

Be orderly in life, be original in your work

The contemplative life requires discipline and hard work, for sure. But it also seems to require some time indulging pleasures.

There is much fascinating variety in the daily habits of celebrity and creative humanists to be discovered browsing their biographies.

Monkish and lonely Nietsche used to eat incredible amounts of fruits at lunch, and a much loved beefsteak, before setting himself for long mountain walks in the Swiss Alps.

Prodigious Karl Marx was accustomed to working long hours at night, accompanied by ceaseless smoking.

Rather predictable and orderly Immanuel Kant tried to stick to the rule that he would smoke only one pipe, but the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on…

Remember Gustave Flaubert’s quote?

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Maybe, the addition of a little “bad habit” or two might help too!

Discover more in this article of Openculture

Source: Pixabay – Rawpixel (CC0)

31 tips to enjoy the holiday season

The holidays are often associated with joy, rest and spending time with family; but for many of us it can also be a stressful time, taking us out of our comfort zone and changing up our daily routine. It can also be uncomfortable for some of us to take a break from our busy schedules and dedicate some time to rest and reflection.

The stress that emerges from these situations can result in irritability and a feeling of unease that prevent us from truly being present and enjoying the moment.

That is why today I am sharing with you a Holiday Journal prepared by Calm (a wonderful meditation app I strongly suggest you try, it does wonders!) to help you face this merry but sometimes challenging time of the year.

I am sure you will find some good prompts for journaling or reflection in there!!

These holidays might just be the occasion to start living in a more mindful way!

https://blog.calm.com/relax/31-ways-to-cultivate-more-peace-and-joy-this-season

Image result for calm holiday journal

 

5 steps to “Thinking in New Boxes”

We have all been told that thinking outside-the-box is often the secret to finding resolutive solutions to our problems. In a world that seems to be evolving faster and faster, it is imperative that we find ways to adapt ourselves and our businesses to new circumstances and new challenges.

But due to the way our mind works, it is often harder than expected to actually think out of the box. First of all, what box are we talking about? And second of all, if we get out of that box, where are we supposed to go.

This is precisely the problem that Alain Iny, BCG Associate Director, and Luc De Brabandere, BCG Senior Advisor, address in their book “Thinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity”.

They propose a new form of strategic creativity, which they defined “thinking in new boxes”, that helps people tap into their creativity while being sure of addressing the right questions.

We must come up with many new boxes, and then choose the most appropriate one to solve our problem.

The authors outline a 5-step approach to thinking in new boxes:

  1. Doubt Everything – Challenge your current perspectives. The way you are thinking right now could be preventing you from developing new solutions.
  2. Probe the possible – Maintain self-awareness while re-examining the world around you. Explore all options and be conscious of what is happening within and outside your environment.
  3. Diverge – Generate many new and exciting things, even if they seem absurd and opposing. Jot down even those ideas which are unpopular and unattractive. But always keep in the back of your mind the framed question that you began with.
  4. Converge – Evaluate and select the ideas that will drive breakthrough results.
  5. Reevaluate – No idea is a good idea forever. Embrace the change. Always reevaluate, relentlessly.

 

If you wish to learn more you can:

  • Watch Alain Iny’s TED talk: 

 

  • Watch Luc De Brabandere’s TED talk:

 

MindMapping to learn better

Mind Maps are a tool introduced by Tony Buzan which help organize our thoughts and ideas through key words in a hierarchical yet creative manner. Mind maps can be used for anything from studying, to tackling problems, to making decisions and even preparing for our next job meeting.

Here are the main steps to creating a mind map:

  1. Take a blank piece of paper and place it horizontally
  2. Write the core concept you wish to analyze
  3. Add branches which represent the main ideas which are linked to that concept
  4. Each branch can have further branches stemming from it
  5. Lines representing the branches should be thinner as you get further away from the central point
  6. Be creative: use colors, use curvy lines, use images which help evoke certain ideas
  7. DO NOT FOLLOW A LINEAR PATH: you can go back to branches and add or subtract as you wish

Most important of all, find your own mind mapping style. In order to make ourselves be understood by others, we must find our voice!

 

Here are two TED talks on Mindmaps:

 

 

 

If you want to learn more about mind mapping, you should check out these previous articles:

The Ultimate Book of Mind Maps (part 1)

The Ultimate Book of Mind Maps (part 2): the success formula

 

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