Let's Fight (our) Mediocrity, One Round at a Time!
All in Productivity
Despite the bad reputation of New Year’s Resolutions in the scientific world and my mixed record with meeting my annual goals in the past, I continue to make resolutions year after year. New Year's Eve would just not feel the same without good intentions and lofty goals.
After going all S.M.A.R.T. in 2016, this year it's about going small, taking a page or two out of Stephen Guise's book Mini Habits.
I have a history; you might even call it a habit, of backing Kickstarter projects with the potential to ease the troubles of modern life. My newest Kickstarter acquisition is a little box called "Monument". The promise of the Monument campaign was nothing less than creating “The world's smartest photo storage and management device.” Did they deliver on that promise?
What if you would not have to read hundreds of pages to get the wisdom of the most popular non-fiction books? What if you could sign-up for a service providing you bite-sized book summaries? Would that work?
The abundance of productivity apps is a double-edged sword. It definitely has the potential to be a productivity trap by itself. However, smartly combined productivity apps can be a great help.
My own little system of interlinked apps grew over the past four years. Read how I manage digital information with a set of mobile and desktop apps and join the discussion about what works best.
It had been very long ago since I had been as emotionally touched by a martial arts event as I have been with UFC 193. The unexpected KO victory of Holly Holm against larger-than-life athlete, Ronda Rousey had really been pumping my fists in front of my television.
Holly Holm’s KO victory was not just an absolute awesome display of intelligent fight preparation, discipline, striking technique and sportsmanship; it was in my eyes most of all a triumph of focus, a triumph of mindfulness. Watching the fight provided a lot of motivation to intensify the search for my own inner Holly Holm.
While I do not see a chance to outsource parts of my management job to a helping hand in India, and don’t plan to do so myself, I was nevertheless intrigued by the idea of delegating tasks I am completely incapable of doing myself. So when I was starting with the preparations for Life-Sparring, I had my first stabs at outsourcing 2.0, primarily using a web service called Fiverr.
