Practice – tutoriale

I once (in the autumn of 2001, at VIP) heard Șerban Alexandrescu (Headvertising) speak about leisure time within an advertising agency.

His affirmation (large approximation, here) was something in line with: if you run an advertising agency, you need to give your employees some spare time. If they work long hours, they don’t have the time for leisure, like watching plays, movies, going out, which will limit their ability for creativity.

This is so true. A lot of time, people focus on the working parts – “Oh, I’ll work so-and-so hours, I don’t need to read the news, watch some movies, listen to podcasts, listen to music, in other words – educate myself. No! All I need to do is work-work-work”.

There are two problems with that:

• First, unless you do really repetitive work, and you’re highly motivated, it’s very hard to work long hours in a day.
• Two, you won’t get inspiration. There are some really technical jobs right now (working with repetitive tasks, just doing the same things over and over again), but, generally, it should help if you can have some creativity in your job. And, in the future, I expect more and more of the repetitive jobs will be put aside, replaced by machines (digital or physical). So, I think it would be nice to know what happens around you.

How to get more creative? I think there are two solutions:

• Get more dots. Get more things to connect with. Expose yourself to various situations – see movies, read books, listen to things. Find out where information lurks, and get into the abyss.
• Connect the dots. Write some blog posts connecting ideas. Keep a journal, but don’t just mention “Today I did so-and-so”, but more into “Today I did this, which reminds me of, which also reminds me of, which I can relate to another situation”. This is rather hard – connecting the dots. It’s not hard to watch a movie, it’s hard to write an essay about ideas you got in the movies, and how does the movie fit the bigger picture (pun intended). It’s not that hard to read a book, but it’s rather hard to connect the ideas within it. Make it a habit, and it should become easier as time passes by.

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According to a study:

If you are on the receiving end, Legg says, experiments showed that an overwhelming majority—more than 75 percent—wanted the bad news first. “If people know they are going to get bad news, they would rather get it over with,” she says. Then, if there is good news to follow, “you end on a high note.”

Good News or Bad News: Which Do You Want First?

I generally focus on giving the bad news first. I’m happy that this is how people would actually expect it.

Why do this? It helps overcome fears. If someone has constantly in their head – “Oh, what will the bad news be?”, they might ignore the good news altogether.

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I found out about WOOP via a great online course (“The Science of Well-Being” by Yale University | Coursera).

WOOP is a science-based mental strategy that people can use to find and fulfill their wishes, set preferences, and change their habits. (Home — WOOP my life)

What is the WOOP method?

• W: Think about your wish;
• O: The best outcome;
• O: Potential obstacles;
• P: Your if/then plan.

(via »)

There’s also a book: Gabriele Oettingen, Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation (a nice introduction to the work on using implementation intention and WOOP in your daily life).

And an article: Stop Being So Positive. And another one: WOOP – Science’s #1 Tool For Goal Achievement and Habit Change.

A quote related to the obstacles:

“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.” ― Caitlyn Siehl

Some thoughts:

• It reminds me of a video in which Horia-Roman Patapievici talks about the present moment » (it starts at around 32:54).
• It matters a lot if I want to change something in myself, to imagine the process. And I can go really deep into this, I can imagine all the details. I can describe all the mental images, via various senses (image, audio, sensorial, smell).
• Imagining the best outcome helps me really get involved. I can see the positive final result.
• Potential obstacles are also useful because I can try and manipulate the image. How do I refer to the obstacles? How much of an obstacle are they, really? I can also get used to them.
• If I can get to love the obstacle, I can relate to them much better.
• The if/then plan allows me to set up a thing that will help me avoid a bad outcome.

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How can you tell whether someone is vegan ?

Answer: Because they tell you… again, and again, and again

One of the key things in losing weight is, at least for me, keeping track of what I eat using MyFitnessPal.com (Free Calorie Counter, Diet & Exercise Journal).

If today I eat something with a large number of calories, and with high-calorie density (highly processed foods, sweets), by weighing myself the next morning I will likely see an increase in my weight. Tracking very thoroughly my calorie intake also helps with this – it helps me keep in my mind the fact that I need to lose weight.

Other than that, I try to do some basic calorie restrictions and having a longer time frame of not eating.

I do some sports, it surely helps, but I consider the impact at a minimum level.

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It surely happened to you – you entered a room with a dilemma, and the first thing you say is, after a “Hello!”, “How can we solve the dilemma?”.

While this might appear a fine in solving the issue, it might actually be a wrong step.

What I suggest instead is to take a while.

Enter the room, ask a silly introductory question (about the weather, for example), do some small chat, take a sip of water, and only afterwards confrunt the elephant in the room.

Don’t rush it in, don’t jump right to the conclusion, don’t force things into solving hastly.

While it might appear that you’re losing precious time if you don’t go ahead and jump to the conclusion, you might actually be losing a step in the right direction for solving the problem.

So, don’t stand and solve the issue, sit, drink some tea, get into the amtosphere, and only then solve the issue.

While I might be wrong, I associate Turkish people with this kind of approach. And I applaud it!

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Sometimes, I get invitations to connect on various social networks. But there’s a maximum limit on the number of people you can add to your network.

Sometimes, I meet new people, some of them at the start of their careers. Who should I consider to be more successful in the future?

Sometimes, I need to evaluate a website on its future value. How will it grow, how will it decline?

Sometimes, I need to evaluate a partnership between a YouTube channel and a sponsor. How will the partnership go?

The thing is, life, both personal and professional, is full of surprises. A hard-working and bright person has the future in their hands, and a website, business, or YouTube channel that does things correctly now, will likely do so in the future.

But it’s very very hard, for me at least, to correctly predict luck and fortune. I don’t easily evaluate what would the career of a person look like 10 or more years in the future. It’s hard, close to impossible, to know if a business will be still on the market 5 years later, or if it will be a hit 10 years later.

The solution? Accept invitations to connect, do meet the people, do consider them capable of success in the future, do consider the potential of a business / YouTube channel / website to grow.

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Plastic cutting boards, Cliver found, are easier to sanitize. But cutting on them also leaves lots of grooves where bacteria can hide. Wood is tougher to sanitize, but it’s also (often) tougher in general – you won’t find as many deep scratches in the surface.

Fast Facts About Cutting Boards and Food Safety in Your Kitchen | NC State News

The tests results indicate that the surface of a wooden board will actually stop dangerous bacteria from multiplying and the germs simply die out after a period of about three minutes. Following the experiment, the scientists at the University of Wisconsin found that 99.9% of the bacteria placed on the wooden chopping boards had died out completely within minutes whereas some of the cheaper plastic boards had very little effect in terms of killing dangerous microbes.

Myth or Fact: The Antibacterial Properties of Wood

The study indicated that an antibacterial effect of wood, especially for pine, is caused by the hygroscopic properties of wood and the wood extractives.

(PDF) Wooden boards affecting the survival of bacteria?

The only situation where plastic appeared less contaminated than wood (when sampling had been done by contact agar) was just after a drastic cleaning and disinfecting. But we do not know how long this difference was maintained during the working period, or whether the wood had been scraped before cleaning and disinfecting.

Sanitary quality of meat chopping board surfaces: a bibliographical study – ScienceDirect

There was a significant difference in bacterial recoveries from wood and plastic. Bacterial numbers decreased faster on the wood surfaces than on the plastic surface.

Wooden boards affecting the survival of bacteria? A. Schönwälder, R. Kehr, A. Wulf and K. Smalla

& Also »

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