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Link the desired behavior to a clear signal

Linking desired behavior to a clear cue is a smart way to change behavior. This idea is similar to making “if-then” plans, where you decide in advance what you will do in a particular situation. By choosing a clear cue that reminds you of the desired behavior, it becomes easier to exhibit this behavior automatically and regularly. This works like a habit: the cue triggers a routine that provides a reward, encouraging you to repeat the behavior.

Implementation intentions help you achieve your goals by making desired behavior happen automatically. By deciding in advance what you will do in a certain situation, it becomes easier to stick to your plans. For example, you might decide to meditate for five minutes every morning after brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth then becomes the cue to start meditating, making it a fixed part of your daily routine.

By automating behavior with clear signals and specific plans, the process becomes more predictable and requires less mental energy. This leaves more room for other tasks, which can improve your productivity and effectiveness. By linking desired behavior to a clear signal, it becomes easier to develop and maintain positive habits. This increases the likelihood of achieving your personal and professional goals.

Large organizations extinguish employees' passion

Large organizations often try to place employees in fixed roles. These roles are usually intended for the average employee and not for people driven by passion and the desire to excel. As a result, passionate employees may feel limited in their ability to fully utilize their talents. The structures and processes within large organizations are often focused on efficiency and predictability, which can lead to an environment where innovation and personal involvement are less encouraged.

Sometimes the organization and an enthusiastic employee have different goals. What a manager may find unimportant can be very important to the employee. This difference can cause the employee to feel frustrated and undervalued. If their hard work is not noticed or appreciated, it can reduce their motivation and engagement.

Finally, enthusiastic employees may feel excluded in large companies. They may think that their ideas are ignored or viewed with suspicion. This can cause them to withdraw or even leave to find a place where their enthusiasm is appreciated. Therefore, it is important for large companies to create an environment where passion and innovation are encouraged, so that employees can develop and contribute to the company’s success.

In case you wonder what’s with all the posts today: I am republishing some of my notes on micro.blog to create my own digital garden.

Once I finished posting the backlog, my posting rhythm should get back to normal again.

Ensure that your computer screen is large enough so that you can view both the work document and the reference material at the same time

Use a large screen on which you can see both your work document and your reference material side by side. This way, you need to switch between windows less often. This makes it easier to concentrate and helps you work more efficiently.

The idea that a larger screen can increase your productivity comes from being able to see more information at once. This helps you work faster and better, especially if the information is important for what you are doing. With a larger screen, you can, for example, view a document and other necessary information side by side. This allows you to look things up more quickly and reduces the need to search for what you need.

Appreciate the feedback you receive and be deliberate about the feedback you give

Feedback is a useful tool that helps people and organizations improve and grow. It is important to see feedback as an opportunity to learn, even if it sometimes feels uncomfortable or difficult. By appreciating feedback, you create a safe environment where people dare to express their opinions without fear of negative reactions. This ensures good communication and collaboration, which is important for success.

When giving feedback, it is important to do so in a positive and thoughtful manner. Feedback should be intended to help the other person and should be practical so that the recipient can actually do something with it. Also, consider the right timing and manner of giving feedback so that it is well received. By carefully considering the feedback you give, you show respect for the other person and contribute to a culture of understanding and improvement.

It is also important to remember that feedback is just a suggestion and you can choose what to do with it. It is normal to sometimes feel attacked when receiving feedback, but try to understand that the other person wants to help you. By being open to feedback and appreciating it, even if you disagree with it, you can grow and improve your skills. The ability to accept and use feedback is a sign of maturity and an important step in your personal development.

Connect notes to start a conversation with your own thoughts

It is important to connect your notes with each other so that you can build a network of ideas and insights. This helps you not only to store information but also to truly understand and integrate it into your own thought patterns. By linking notes together, you create a system where ideas are related rather than isolated. This ensures that you understand things better and generate new ideas because you actively seek connections and patterns between different pieces of information.

Connecting notes is like having a conversation with your own thoughts. This is similar to the Zettelkasten method, where notes serve as building blocks for a larger whole. By linking notes together, you create a network that helps you organize and deepen your thoughts. This network works like a memory palace, where you can always return to earlier ideas to expand or adjust them. It is a way to actively maintain your knowledge and ensure that it remains useful and applicable.

Connecting notes helps you deepen your knowledge. When you truly understand a new idea and add it to what you already know, it becomes a useful tool in your daily life. This requires discipline and perseverance, as you need to look beyond just first impressions and superficial connections. By actively seeking related notes and merging them, you create a system that ensures important ideas and insights remain vibrant and easily accessible.

When helping someone, give that person enough information and boost their confidence by showing how that information can help others

When you help someone, it is important to provide them with enough information so they can move forward. This doesn’t mean overwhelming them with details, but sharing the key points and useful knowledge they need to progress.

In addition to providing information, it is important to boost the person’s confidence. This can be done by showing how the knowledge they gain can help not only them but also others. When people see that their knowledge and skills can positively impact others, they often feel more motivated and confident. This can be achieved, for example, by encouraging them to give advice to friends, which not only deepens their own understanding but also increases their confidence.

In training sessions and workshops, encouraging mutual advice can be a powerful way to enhance participants’ confidence and motivation. By giving participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and help others, they discover their own skills and the value they can offer. This not only aids their own learning process but also fosters a culture of collaboration and support, ultimately leading to a more engaged and confident group of people.

Make reversible decisions as quickly as possible

Most decisions in life are not final. These decisions, also known as Type 2 decisions, can easily be reversed if they do not yield the desired result. This is different from Type 1 decisions, which have consequences that are difficult or impossible to reverse. By acting quickly on decisions that can be reversed, we can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on overthinking and analyzing.

The Pareto principle, which states that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts, can help with this. Instead of striving for complete certainty, which is often not possible, we can make decisions based on the most important 20% of information we have. This makes the decision-making process faster and allows us to act and learn from the results more quickly.

Taking quick decisions that can easily be reversed gives us the opportunity to test what works and what doesn’t in practice. Often, you only truly know if a decision is good when you try it out. If the result is not good, you can easily adjust or reverse the decision. This process of deciding, testing, and adjusting allows for a flexible approach, enabling us to make progress faster and respond better to changes.

Rephrasing a text helps me to better understand what the author means

When you rewrite a text in your own words, you have to think carefully about what is written and what it means. This helps you to understand the main ideas and arguments of the writer and to express them in a way that is clear to you. By doing this, you gain a better understanding of the text because you are not just reading, but also actively engaging with the information.

Rephrasing helps you to better understand a text. Just like with modern art, it is important to know what the writer means and in what context the text was written. By repeating a text in your own words, you think about the context and how it connects to what you already know. This can give you new insights and help you to better understand the writer’s message.

Finally, rewriting a text helps you to learn better and understand its meaning. It gives you the opportunity to engage in a conversation with the writer and discover what he or she means. By actively engaging with the text, you cannot only understand it better but also appreciate it and add it to what you already know. This makes reading an engaging and educational experience, where you not only absorb information but also build new knowledge.

Work in 90-minute cycles separated by 20-minute breaks

Your energy moves in waves through the day: stretches of about 90 minutes of high alertness, alternating with dips of 20 to 30 minutes in which concentrating takes real effort. Kleitman called this the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle and saw it as the waking continuation of the sleep cycle, which also runs in blocks of roughly 90 minutes.

That link to the night does not hold up. Lavie measured daytime sleepiness rhythms in 1995 and found they are not anchored in the sleep stages: mornings have a different structure than afternoons, and the first dip arrives about 100 minutes after waking, whatever stage you woke from. The rhythm is real, but the clock of your night does not set it.

The 90 minutes is a rule of thumb, not a stopwatch. Huberman points out that you can start a cycle yourself, unlike your circadian rhythm, and that two or three of them fit in a day. Storoni works with 60 to 90 minutes, shorter as the day wears on. Among the 10 percent most productive people, DeskTime measured 112 minutes of work followed by a 26-minute break.

So put your hardest work in blocks of 60 to 90 minutes, with the most demanding part in the first twenty, and then take a real break instead of sliding into the next screen. Do not wait for the right moment in your rhythm, because you start the cycle yourself; the break is what makes it repeatable.