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Have you ever noticed how common lists are?  Why does it seem that almost every blogger in the blogosphere churns out list after list after list?  How many times do we need to read “12 Ways to Have a Great Day”?  What if you didn’t read this list?  Would you still be able to have a great day?  What if you spent the two minutes it took to read this list and simply made a list of your own?

“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” ~   Albert Einstein

Lists, not just in the blogosphere but in almost every corner of mass media, are primarily used as a marketing ploy to “trick you” into interacting with media content because lists fit perfectly into your brain’s preference for structure and efficiency – mental shortcuts – or put bluntly, “laziness.”

In the interest of attention allocation, self-awareness and the prevention of mental laziness, I’ve put together some reasons to avoid lists:

1. Prevent ‘Attention Theft’

Media sources, including blogs, use lists to steal your attention.  Take a look at this list from a prominent blogger on “how to get traffic to your blog.”  Wait, don’t look!  I’ll save you the distraction and tell you what you need to know:  Can you guess the first item on the list?  “Use Lists!”  What do you think is at the absolute bottom of the list, coming it a lofty number 56?  “Write stuff the people want to read and share.”  The most altruistic item on the list is given the lowest priority.  Whether or not this was a conscious decision on the part of the blogger, it is quite telling.

2. Be the Hunter – Not the Hunted

Lists are the antithesis of self-awareness – they are nothing more than an old marketing tactic to get you to do something you did not consciously set out to do.  To be charitable, I must say that some media sources are often intended (and sought) as a source of entertainment, rather than education, for (and by) the end-user (you).  And that’s OK.  Aimless wandering is perfectly acceptable when aimless wandering is your purpose.  In summary, be mindful of what you are doing.

3. Lists are Listless

Lists do not provide energy – they sap it.  Certainly, one might feel a bit of elation from reading an inspirational article or blog post.  The problem, however, with this kind of short-term inspiration is that it might seem to help you in the present moment but it does not often carry over into the next moment – this inspiration is a state, not a trait, and eventually leaves an empty space that needs to be filled again by another inspiring article or blog post.

One may successfully argue that reading the right lists on a daily basis will eventually aid in the formation of positive thinking and healthy habits.  My observation, however, is that most lists are formed and published with the intent to steal the attention, which often results in a fragmented attention for the reader.  A fragmented attention is a fragmented person.

4.  Lists Are Generally Generalizations

Lists are typically “one-size-fits-all”-type generalizations.  Unless it’s a narrow subject, directed to a narrow audience, such as the “Top 10 Ways to Stay Safe in a Foreign Taxi“, then it is unlikely you will find many points useful to your needs, if any at all.

Creating a list by (and for) yourself is the perfect antidote to generalization.  At risk of entering a circular argument, perhaps a good list (other than your own) would be a list that explains how to make a list?

5. Avoid the ‘Poverty of Attention’

Information rich often translates into attention poor.

Avoid the poverty attention by allocating your attention in a similar way you would a portfolio of investments:  Each media source is allotted a certain amount of time and/or energy for consumption and serves a purpose in a larger collection of diverse media sources.

Allocating attention is quite a conscious, valuable and necessary personal development practice amidst the deafening media noise of today’s overabundance and hypervelocity of information:

“… in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else:  a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes.  What information consumes is rather obvious:  it consumes the attention of its recipients.  Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” ~ Herbert Simon

Is there ever a good reason to read a list?  This question is best answered by you; however, I will humbly submit to you that there is only one consistently prudent reason to read a list:

1. You created it.

What are your thoughts?

Kent Thune is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain and the author of The Financial Philosopher.

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The Secret To Fantastic Leadership

Image courtesy of Doshiamit

How much is an hour of your time worth to you?

That might seem like a strange question to ask – but your answer to it has a big impact on many areas of your life, especially when you’re trying to make improvements.

There are different ways to calculate your hourly value: you might choose to work out your true hourly wage (in-depth, accurate calculation from Trent Hammond at The Simple Dollar). If you bill by the hour, you might go with your post-tax hourly rate. You might place a premium value on your “spare time”: in this case, consider how much you’d want to be paid per hour to give up a Saturday morning.

(It’s also worth taking a look at Charlie Gilkey’s thought-provoking post on the  Productive Flourishing blog about how your peak creative time is worth more than the other parts of your week.)

Another method is to think how much you’d consider paying for an hour of completely free time.

Once you have a rough figure in mind; say $20 for the sake of this example, you can use this as a rule of thumb to decide what’s worth your time and what isn’t. This can be valuable for:
•    Figuring out whether you should hire someone to help with your small business admin
•    Deciding whether to work overtime – or even switch to another job
•    Determining whether your frugal behaviours are really worth it

Hiring Business Help

If you own a small business, or if you freelance, chances are that there’s some tasks you do which do make the best use of your time. Perhaps you do all the administration yourself, from running errands to doing your accounts and taxes. Maybe some of the activities you’re engaged in take you ages because you’re not skilled in that area: I’m a writer, and anything involving graphics not only takes me hours but causes me endless frustration!

If you can free up an hour of your time, valued at $20, for the sake of paying someone else $15, then it’s a no-brainer: you’ll be $5 up.

This could mean:
•    Hiring a virtual assistant (you can generally find rates at $10-$15 for native English speakers)
•    Hiring an accountant (who will charge considerably more than $20/hour: but who might get everything done in a couple of hours when it would take you ten.)
•    Paying your teen to take packages to the post office, checks to the bank, etc.

Household and Garden Chores

There’s a good chance that you spend several hours a week (probably more if you have kids) on cleaning, tidying and maintaining the house. If you’ve got a garden, you’ll have tasks like mowing the lawn, watering, weeding, planting, digging… Some people love to garden as a hobby, but many others simply do it because they like having a nice-looking garden to relax in.

Have you ever considered hiring help? If having someone else do the cleaning means you can spend an extra hour a day on paying work, it’s almost certainly worth your while to hire them. As with business assistance, you might also find that they can finish a job quicker than you can.

Even if you work a 9-5 job and can’t take on extra hours, you could get a cleaner (or gardener) in order to “buy” yourself an extra hour of free time a day.

The same goes for gardening: if you always end up spending a couple of hours mowing the lawn at the weekend, you might want to “buy back” that time by hiring someone. These could become the hours you use to start your novel, research your business idea, start a correspondence course…

Frugal Behavior

I’m definitely in favour of spending money wisely, and of avoiding unnecessary costs – but frugality can easily go too far. If you end up investing an hour of your time for the sake of saving $2, it’s almost certainly not worth it.

If you’re getting obsessive about coupon-clipping, or if you spend hours trawling the shops to get the best bargains, you’re probably getting a very low return on your time.

You might want to think about:
•    Buying some convenience foods to save time in the kitchen
•    Just shopping at one store – even if you know a few items are on offer elsewhere
•    Focusing on frugality that doesn’t take extra time: eg. using energy-saving lightbulbs
•    Limiting your research for new purchases to a certain length of time (eg. fifteen minutes)

Don’t feel guilty if you opt for convenience, even when it costs a little more: if it’s going to take you twenty minutes to drive to the store and back, and you can get what you need at a small local shop for a few extra cents on each item, for a two minute round trip, go local.

What value would you place on one hour of your time? How does this impact your day to day choices – particularly those relating to your goals?

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A Smarter Approach To Time Management

There are no shortage of ‘experts’ that claim to know the secret of maximum productivity. At first someone will swear that the only way to really get things done is to multi-task: more done, less time. Then immediately someone will counter that it’s far simpler, more effective and rewarding and ultimately more ‘zen’ to do one task at a time: single-tasking.

It’s time to stop the confusion. Is one method really better than the other or does it just depend on the individual using either method?

Let’s clear things up, shall we:

Single-tasking: Do one thing at a time to be more effective

Ah, the age-old art of doing less to achieve more. This has been beaten to death for centuries. When you focus all of your efforts on just one thing, it’s assumed you will complete it to the best of your ability. While this is mostly the case, single-tasking is significantly more time consuming. If you want to create a masterpiece it will take time. So much time, in fact, that you might lose track of your other assignments.

There are even times when you’ll be trying to complete a task, and still be unable to tackle it. This, of course, leaves the task uncompleted and you having accomplished less than expected.

Despite getting only one thing done at a time as opposed to many things, the return on that one thing will no doubt be tremendous. All the work you put into the task will be reflected in how effectively you completed it. There will also be a greater sense of reward having completed something start to finish and these small victories, on a daily basis, can ultimately have a very positive mental effect.

Multi-tasking: Do more in less time.

That’s the basic idea of muti-tasking. Though personal development sites collectively hail that single-tasking is more effective (heck, even I support it), multi-tasking is still effective in getting things done. To be fair, multi-tasking has benefits that doing one thing at a time doesn’t.

As I’ve stated above, you get more done. A perfectly legitimate example is that you’re working on a project for your business and you also have a baby to take care of.  Will you just drop caring for the baby while you finish that big project? Or will you nuture your little bundle of joy at the risk of losing your job? Better yet, would you fare better to manage both simultaneously? I don’t know about you, but the last choice looks the best to me.

Though multi-tasking does have its benefits, there are times when it can get a bit overwhelming. Taking on a lot of difficult projects at once is definitely not a good idea. By doing this, you spread yourself too thin and the law of diminishing returns begins to kick in.

Which Method is Better?

Both methods clearly have their respective pitfalls, but which method comes out on top? Single-tasking allows you to zero in on a task and get it done sufficiently, but multi-tasking gives you a wider range in which to get your tasks done at the expense of depth of understanding.

The answer then, lies not in the general, but the specific – as with most things in life. Different tasks, assigned by different people with different expectations, must be looked at on a case-by- case basis. There is no blanket answer as no two situations nor two people are alike.

Why Not Do Both?

Is there are rule that explicitly states that, “Thou shalt not single-task and multi-task at the same time?” Neither method is better than the other because they are both useful in getting things done. You don’t have to multi-task two big things in order to get them done quicker, because it’s possible that you’ll fail at completing both of them. Spending your valuable time single-tasking small problems can lead to overestimating them.

The solution is to multi-task the small things and single-task the big things. However, what if there are two large tasks to do? Should you still multi-task? The short answer is yes. Break up both tasks into smaller tasks and do them simultaneously. The long answer is that it depends on the task and which one you think requires more attention than the other. Some things aren’t easy to chop into chunks and can only be single-tasked, whereas some things can only be multi-tasked.

Multi-task or Single-task? The choice is yours

Not everyone can multi-task. It’s not a matter of brain capacity or time management skills. Some of us just feel that it’s more convenient to do a single task until it’s done. In addition, not everyone is comfortable with single-tasking. Some people just have to do something else in order to periodically take their mind off of the task at hand; they can’t sit still and focus on one thing at time.

But it doesn’t matter what I say. Nor does it matter what any other personal development blogger might tell you. No one way is “the” way to go. Both methods are very person specific, knowing what type of person you are will dictate your choices. The important point is to honestly evaluate your strengths, weaknesses and work habits, and approach each task conscious of these traits. Then experiment with different combinations to suit your needs.

Which do YOU think is better? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

John Anyasor is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain who writes for the HiLife2B: Blog on Personal Improvement for a Good Life. He gives advice on personal development, life lessons, college life tips, and more.

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A Productivity Filled Day

Artwork courtesy of Amy Buchheit

Some days, you wake up early, storm through tons of work before lunch, and come to the evening feeling as though you’ve accomplished a lot. For many of us, though, those days are the exception rather than a rule. Perhaps you’re reading this in the middle of a rather unproductive day. Maybe you woke up late, spent time procrastinating, had to deal with a dozen “urgent” little tasks, or simple got interrupted every five minutes.

If it feels like your day is slipping through your fingers, here’s how to turn things around and make that unproductive day into a fulfilling one:

Stop and Take Stock

So often, we end up in “reaction mode”, responding in a knee-jerk way to things as they come up. This is generally an ineffective way to work: you often end up dealing with fairly low-priority tasks simply because they’re the ones which present themselves.

When your day’s running away from you, take just five minutes to completely stop. Close your email program and your browser, or simply switch off your computer monitor. Think about what you want to accomplish today. Are you on track? If not, what’s gone wrong – and how can you pull things back into line?

Pick One Important Project or Task

As you take stock of your unproductive day so far, work out one important project or task that you want to get done, something that will give your day a sense of meaning and purpose. Perhaps it’s something you’ve been putting off, like writing an important letter or email. Maybe it’s the first step in a new course of action, like signing up for a course or seminar. It could be something that will take you further towards an important goal – perhaps getting your business’s website online.

Spend An Hour Focusing On This

A whole hour of focused attention is long enough to make meaningful progress. Let everything else slide for an hour, and spend that time concentrating on your one important thing. Your emails, and phone calls can wait until that hour’s up. It might help to set a timer. If your task involves writing, try using a full-screen program like Dark Room. Shut down your email – or even disconnect your computer from the internet if it helps.

Eliminate As Many Distractions As Possible

You might have to struggle to find just one hour to devote to something truly important. To keep your day on productive lines, eliminate the distractions that are sapping your focus. That might mean that you close your email and leave it closed until it’s nearly the end of your working day. Perhaps you’ll let your phone go to voicemail. Let your colleagues know you’d appreciate only being interrupted in a real emergency – or if you work from home, explain to your family that you could really use some uninterrupted time.

Challenge Yourself to Be Productive

Some unproductive days aren’t simply caused by us succumbing to distractions – they’re partially influenced by external events. Maybe you have several meetings scheduled, a lot of family duties, or various chores to run. Challenge yourself to squeeze in as much productive work as you can: perhaps you’ll jot down some notes while waiting in line at the post office, or maybe you can blitz through some emails with your toddler on your lap. If you have routine chores to do around the house, listen to audio books or podcasts during them – it’s a great way to fit some learning into your day.

Review Your Day

When you’ve had an unproductive day, don’t waste time and energy feeling guilty about it. See it instead as an opportunity to learn about the conditions in which you work best. Spend ten minutes reviewing how your day went, asking questions like:
•    Where did things start going wrong? (eg. “I woke up late”, “I checked my email first thing”)
•    What distractions did I succumb to?
•    What could I have done differently?
•    What helped me to focus?

There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes – they’re great learning opportunities, and chances to eliminate methods of working that aren’t helpful to you.

Do you find that you regularly have unproductive days? How do you turn things around?

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Image courtesy of Chelsea Grainger
Are you progressing in life, or are you just treading water?  This is a brief article intended to motivate you beyond stagnation into purposeful action, once and for all.  These are the steps I use to get things done.

Almost everyday I go to the gym, and almost everyday I see people in the gym who are unfortunately making very little progress.  Although these individuals frequent the gym quite regularly, they are experiencing very little change in their bodies.  This is quite the misfortune.

Today I want to discuss this phenomenon and explain the steps that cause some people to progress, while others stagnate.

You Must Grow

The reality is, if you’re not going forward, you are going backwards.  I think it’s interesting that one of the definitions of stagnate, is to decline.

We know that if living things are not growing and developing, they are dying, and who wants to die before their time?

In order to move from “stuck” into “rapid progress” the following 3 steps are requisite:

Step 1: Decide How Your End Result Will Look and Commit to Achieve It

You have to see your end result clearly.  It is just as difficult to get to a place you can’t see, as it is to come back from a place you’ve never been.  When I ran track as a child, they told us to never look to the left or to the right, but always stay focused on the finish line.  You must see the port in the harbor to which you are headed.

Additionally, you must commit to the vision of what you want to achieve.  You must draw a line in the sand and confess that you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, before you will be able to go forward.  Nothing really happens until you get angry; nothing happens until you are tired of the pain.

Step 2: Simplify Your Life

When the lion tamer goes into the lion cage, he brings a pistol, a whip and a chair.  The chair is said to be the most efficient at controlling the beast.  Why is this?

When the bottom of the chair is pointed in the direction of the lion, the lion becomes unsure as to which leg to focus on, and begins to stagnate.

Don’t be like the lion with so many things to focus on that you can never make any progress.  Determine the critical steps needed for your success, and create the habit of performing only those steps everyday.  You must have laser focus; you can’t stroll to a goal.

Step 3: Act Now

Last, but never least, is to get into action today, because tomorrow never comes.  When you get into what you are calling tomorrow, you will rename it today.  Decide what your end result will be today, determine the critical steps needed to achieve it, and start performing those activities right now.

All of the self development material in the world is worthless, if we never act on it.  We’ve talked about progress long enough; it’s now time to apply what we know, so we may grow.

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Mr.SelfDevelopment is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of MrSelfDevelopment.com.

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The Little Book of Productivity

Time is our most valued asset. Our most precious resource.

Many people claim that they are overworked, over-stressed, and incredibly pressed for time. While I don’t know if that’s necessarily true or not, I can say that time is something that’s always on everybody’s mind.

In the personal development world, we often think of time as something we “spend,” and when we want to grab more time for an activity, time is something we then “create.” But is that really true? The fact is that you can never really create any more time than what you’ve been given. You can free up time. But you can never truly create more of it.

In this post, I want to explain four easy tips to help you find more time to do the activities you love. Let’s get to it!

1. Take an entire day off for relaxation.

The first tip I have might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s worked wonders for me.

When you’re feeling as if you have too much on your plate, one of the best things you could ever do is clear everything off of your plate. Just let all nonessential responsibilities slide to the side for the day. True, something urgent might pop up, and you probably won’t be able to be relinquished of all of your responsibilities, but a day of relaxation can seriously free up your mind.

Instead of stressing out and trying to find little ways to cut corners here and there to free up time, take a day off just to let your mind think and relax. When the next day rolls around, see if you can spot any ways to more efficiently and productively schedule your time. By taking a day off, you gain an outsider’s perspective into your time management dilemma. You can take a step back, clear your mind, and tackle your challenges with a fresh perspective.

2. Swap time given to one activity with to another activity.

Fairly simple, right? Choose one activity that you do that really doesn’t need to be done, and replace it with a better activity.

Instead of watching TV for an hour, go build your online business. Instead of idly reading cheap romance novels that don’t have much inherent value, go connect with your family members and friends. With this method, you’re taking large chunks of time already devoted to certain activities and reassigning that time to something else.

3. Be consciously aware of what you’re doing.

Everybody’s been in those tricky situations where they’re pressed to meet a deadline and the project they’re working on isn’t quite done yet. Whether it be for school or work, you know the dreadful feeling of the clock ticking faster and faster as the deadline quickly approaches.

What happens to your productivity in these situations? It naturally shoots up like a rocket. When suddenly nothing else matters but the project that’s due in two hours, you somehow magically manage to get it completed. Why do you think this is? It’s because you were consciously aware of what you were doing. When you don’t have time to waste on anything, you become acutely aware of the time.

What if you lived your life like this, just for a day? For one day, don’t just go through your daily motions. Be totally aware of how you’re spending your time. Keep a clock by you at all times and notice what you’re spending your time on. Are you going to be speeding up certain tasks and taking your time with other ones? How is your time going to be managed if you completely realize that there’s only a certain amount of minutes in a day?

4. Trim the fat off of what you’re already doing.

Do you really need an hour to do a task that you know you can complete within 45 minutes? Go though all of the tasks you do, estimate the time it takes you to complete all of those tasks, and see if you can snip away extra minutes. Try doing hour tasks in 45 minutes; try doing 30 minute tasks in 20 minutes.

Some tasks will naturally take too long if you give yourself too much time, such as writing a new blog entry or cleaning up your house. Most of the time, it doesn’t take long at all for people to get into the flow of things, so they mindlessly procrastinate because they’ve given themselves so much time towards completion. Don’t let this happen to you! Force yourself to get your work done in less time, and then assign those minutes to something else worthwhile. Make a schedule and document the true value of time that needs to be dedicated to each task. If you’ve figured you can do something in 30 minutes, and you’ve laid out that plan for yourself, it is far easier to get it done within that allotted time.

Getting things done in a thought out, timely matter, will end up generating a lot more free time to spend on the things you really love doing. Not only will you accomplish more, but getting to the point and getting things done you will also free up your mind, so you are not distracted by all of the things you haven’t yet accomplished and you will be able to put your full energy into every moment.

What are some of your suggestions for reclaiming and reassigning your lost time?

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Matt is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain.com and  is the founder of Refocused Living – a personal development blog dedicated to genuinely helping people out through all aspects of self-improvement.

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Image courtesy of Rosswell86

It has been 7 years since my graduation day and I still remember the excitement; I was relieved that the ”exam phase” of my life was over; I looked with enthusiam towards my first job. Little did I know that the “working world” would require an extraodinary effort and loads of other skills!

My journey on the career ladder would have been smoother, had I known a few important lessons. While there are many ”on the job” lessons, some things in life must be experienced, to be truly understood. What follows are 8 such career lessons, I wish they’d handed out to me along with my diploma.

1. Your career is not your life. Many of us rely heavily on our careers for satisfaction in our lives. We get immersed in the day-to-day rush of our work and discover that we no longer have the time, energy or inspiration.
For some people (my former self included), it’s as if our jobs are part of our bodies, and if we don’t see ourselves as successful in them, we feel almost physically unhealthy. As a result, we question ourselves when things aren’t going in the direction we hoped. Consciously separating your self from your career allows for a greater perspective on both.

2. Be indispensible (at least one area)
There are certain things that you can do, or that you can learn to do, that can make you extraordinarily valuable to yourself and to others. Identify your special areas of uniqueness and then to commit yourself to becoming very, very good in those areas.
Take stock of your unique talents and abilities on a regular basis. What is it that you do especially well? What are you good at? What do you do easily and well that is difficult for other people? Identifying what separates you from thoses around you, and concentrating on those skills will make your unique skill set invaluable and hard to replace.

3. Don’t grow stale in your career. We live in a world where technology is evolving rapidly. This has a direct consequence on your career. Stay up to speed on the latest happenings in your field. Read various articles and books to keep your mind sharp. Attend seminars at your present job if offered. Seek out mentors who can advise or educate you. Don’t become comfortable with the status quo or complacent about things you are already good at – you can always be better, so taket he time to find out how.

4. Guard your time like a hawk. At work, we often find ourselves bombarded with ‘urgent’ requests. All of these urgent requests can disrupt the thinking processes. Sometimes it may take twice as long to get something done, simply because of the interruption. Learn to say No (with good reason!) and prioritize your tasks.

5. Polish your people skills. You may do your job well, even so well that no one can complain. But you never seem to get ahead. Sound familiar?
People issues can be one of the main reasons people leave jobs. It can also be a cause for dissatisfaction and reduced productivity. Bottom line: you need people skills to move up.

6. Communicate effectively. No matter what career path you choose to follow, you have to have good written and oral communication skills to get ahead in your career.
Make a real effort to listen to everything that’s being said to you. Observe and learn from others who make it seem effortless.

7. Keep your cool. We sometimes forget that we are in a professional environment and tend to curse and behave like a teenager. Whatever happens, don’t explode or throw your arms up in resignation. Keep your mind clear at the worst of times and you’ll be able to handle anything. There’s nothing more respectable than being calm under fire. So take a deep breath, or a walk around the block, and find away to diffuse your frustration before you address whatever the problem is.

8. Shield your reputation. The people you hang out with will add value or break your good name. Also, if you spend time with people who gossip and tear others down, you are likely to catch it too.
So, identify ways to develop and maintain a professional image that is positive and genuine. Surround yourself with positive people who seek to grow and improve.
Looking back at your career, what has been most responsible for your success? Any lessons you would like to add to this graduation day handout?

Shamelle is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of The Enhance Life, a blog offering real life wisdom, for modern life growth.

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We have two ears and one mouth. Just based on our body parts, you’d think we’d all be natural listeners. But we’re really not. You’re born with the ability to hear, but you have to develop the ability to listen. The normal listening mode for most people is passive. Words come in one ear, and go out the other. Important information is missed. Details are overlooked. Reasoning is misunderstood. People feel disrespected.
The alternative to passive listening is active listening, where you’re more of a participant than a spectator, even though you’re not the one talking. It’s a better way to listen effectively. Here’s how to do it:

1. Be prepared to actively listen.
If you start off intending to listen passively, you’ve already lost. Listening well is much harder than you think, and it won’t happen by itself. Simply deciding that you’re going to actively listen puts you in the right frame of mind for actually doing it.
2. Stay physically focused.
If your body can’t stay still, your mind won’t either. Being physically present in the conversation is obviously essential for good listening, but many people fail at it. Don’t multitask. If you’re checking your email while talking on the phone, you’re not listening to that person. Don’t fidget, drum your fingers, or do pen tricks. Make good eye contact, and don’t interrupt the conversation to take a phone call or perform any other task.
One great way to ruin a conversation is to look at your watch when someone’s talking. While you may have a good reason for doing so, it’s a clear signal to the other person that you’re not as interested in listening to them as you are in getting on to your next thing. Even if you think you can be subtle about checking the time, they’ll probably notice. If you absolutely must look at your watch, do it when you’re talking, not when they’re talking. This makes a huge psychological difference to the other person.
3. Stay mentally focused.
OK, you’ve managed to make your body sit still. That’s the easy part. Just because you appear to be listening doesn’t mean you are. Does your mind jump around between topics that have nothing to do with the conversation? Listening requires your full attention, so a wandering mind is no good here. Save the daydreaming for your own time. If other conversations are happening around you, tune them out. Block out all background noise and focus on the person you’re talking to. Specifically, focus on the message they’re trying to get across. If you’re thinking about how they don’t pronounce the g at the end of a word they’re sayin’, you’re paying attention to the wrong thing. The important part is their message, not their grammar or diction. Tone and body language can be very important too, so don’t forget to look beyond their words. If you find yourself in a boring conversation, try to find something interesting about it. Putting up with a few minutes of less than stellar discussion might pay off. Anyway, it’s the polite thing to do.
4. Let them talk.
When they’re talking, you want to be sure you give them room to say what they want to say. Don’t get impatient if they don’t get to the point as quickly as you’d like. Be respectful, and let them talk their way.
Don’t correct mispronounced words, finish their sentences, make disapproving faces, or interrupt to say you disagree. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about what you’re going to say next. Just listen. To make sure they know you want to listen, encourage them to keep speaking by nodding and saying “go on” or “tell me more.”
5. React appropriately.
After they’ve finished talking, only then should you respond. Don’t jump the gun by rushing to judgment before they’ve even finished. In fact, even after they’re done, you still might want to pause to think before responding.
Do it in a way that shows you were paying attention. You can summarize what they said in your own words, to make sure you understand it correctly. You can ask follow-up questions. Offer feedback based on your careful consideration of what they said. Listening is fairly simple, but it’s not easy. It does take effort, especially when you’re not really in the mood for it. But it’s worth it. By listening well, you not only greatly reduce misunderstandings, but you also give people that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that someone really listened to them.
About the writer: Hunter Nuttall wants you to stop sucking and live a life of abundance. Visit his site to learn how to improve your life and your income.

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At times, we all have things going on in our minds. There can be the little worries of having to go to the shop because there’s no food in the cupboards, to the big worries like being severely in debt or having a family member in hospital.

The “problem” with worrying is that it can have serious implications on our physical and mental health. People who have previously been in top shape can let one problem get to them so badly that they start having panic attacks or have their problems incessantly on their mind.

I should know, I’ve had times in my life where I have let my problems literally take over my thought patterns and consume me at all times. Yet, with the four simple steps today, it’s actually fairly simple to literally eliminate unnecessary worrying from your life.

After this, I also believe that life will start to feel a lot lighter, as if a heavy burden has been lifted from your shoulders.

1. Consider the Worst Possible Outcome

A few years ago one of my friends confided in me that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to continue playing for the school football team that we were on. At the next training session when he didn’t show up, the coach asked me what was wrong, and I told him that my friend might have lost his passion and I wasn’t sure if he would be back.

A couple of days later my friend came back to me and said how he really wanted to start playing again, and had merely been going through a rough time when he told me what he did. I instantly remembered how I had told the coach my friend might not want to play anymore, and started worrying about the possible outcome.

Thoughts ran through my head such as “Would the coach pick him for the next game?”, “Would the coach tell him what I said?”, “Would he be dropped from the team?” and so on. I let this situation really get to me and the possible outcomes really consumed my thoughts.

About a week later I built up the courage to tell the coach I might have been wrong about my friend and the coach gave me a very nonchalant reply “Oh it’s fine, I had forgotten about it anyway”. Instead of worrying for a week, I could have looked at the worst possible outcome – probably that the coach would tell my friend and I would have to explain things – and then just taken action.

The worst that could have happened is rarely that bad when we really look at things, so I advise you to do this with all of the things you are worrying about. Look at the worst possible outcome, and then work to improve on that as best you can.

2. Keep Yourself Busy

The reason that we love Television so much is that it literally absorbs us into what is going on. When we are watching the black box we forget about everything else for a while and are totally consumed in the flashing images on screen.

It is for this amount of time that our worries and problems disappear, even if at the time we aren’t aware of it. It is only when we have the time to think and worry about something, that it actually becomes a problem.

If, on the other hand, you can keep yourself busy doing something like studying, cleaning or just socialising then you limit the time you have to let your problems consume you. After all, something is only a problem when you think about it.

3. Realise You Can Get Through Anything

I firmly believe that it is completely up to us how we deal and react with every single situation in life. And, for that reason, I believe it is possible to see the positive in everything and enjoy almost all aspects of life. That being said though, it is much easier said than done, and there are definitely hard times which we have all faced in life.

Have you struggled? Is there something that has happened in your life that was really terrible? If so, then realise you got through it in one piece. How do I know? Because you’re sitting in front of a computer screen and able to spend your time reading an article like this.

No matter what challenges you have came across in your life, you have been able to get through them. Because of that, you will be able to do exactly the same again with whatever you are worrying about now or anything that faces you in the future.

4. Put Things Into Perspective

Just like looking at the worst possible outcome can force us to realise our worries really aren’t that bad, so can the art of putting things into perspective.

Unless something threatens your health or the health of those around you, then it is not that big of a problem. Debt, a break-up or even losing a material item is really nothing compared to the possibility of death or something really serious.

I remember the story of one man in a poor area of America who really wanted to become a music producer. He spent as much of his spare time as he could making music and honing his talents. Yet, his parents wanted something different. They wanted him to become a lawyer or a doctor purely for financial reasons, despite the fact that he had no interest in either.

They pushed him so hard and so often that one day he ended up committing suicide, leaving a note of how he wished they would have supported him. Put things into perspective.

Thanks to the four steps above, and living in the moment as often as possible, I have practically eliminated all worries and problems from my life. If you follow these steps and put them into action, you’ll find that it is perfectly possible for you to do the same.

I would love to hear your feedback and additions in the comments below!

Glen is  Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain.com. He writes on the subject of Personal Development at PluginID. He also teaches people that they can be who they want to be through personality development.

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An entrepreneur needs to be someone who can both visualize and actualize.  He needs to be able to visual something-and once that “something” is visualized, he needs to see exactly how to make it happen.

In order to make it happen, there are several steps that you as an entrepreneur must take on your way to entrepreneurial success.  Do not just enhance what is, but advance towards what will be: keep the long term in sight.

It is essential that you are able to marry your work and what you love.

When in sales, there is no right or wrong way to sell: all you need is passion and enthusiasm for your product. This passion will ignite the minds of your potential client, facilitating connections, and connections between will be made.  Your passion and enthusiasm for your product will be what encourages the sale-not the rote duplication of someone else’s selling system. What you do to sell and promote your business has to be a reflection of what you are already willing to stay up late for and get up early for.

It has to connect to your why and be a part of your own experience.

Second, you must start working your plan, whether you are ready nor not.

Know the four good things that you are about to do: first, that your business is going to be built on a great idea; second, that great idea is going to connect you to a market; third, that you will create a plan based on what you learn, on an ongoing basis, about that market; fourth, that you will adjust that plan over time.

After you have visualized your plan, find the right partner… and avoid the wrong one!  You will have a significant advantage over one-man businesses if you come together with another person regularly to make important decisions.  Find someone with whom you have good chemistry, someone who fills your blind spots. Successful partnerships are based on the idea of taking different perspectives in a discussion and having different talents.

Once the groundwork has been established, set priorities for the absolutely crucial first year.  Concentrate on why you are doing something-not how.  Your why will keep you closely connected to your company and your product.  As soon as you lose sight of why, you will also lose sight of your driving force and your motivation.

Through your first year and beyond, court clients-and keep them coming back! In order that you become a successful entrepreneur, it is essential that you are the person who is willing to pick up the phone and call people to talk about making deals and doing business. When you make this phone call, make sure you are absolutely certain about the product that you are selling.  With this certainty, you can use confidence to build up a network of contacts.  The network cannot be established overnight-it is going to take a lot of phone calls.  You cannot just wave your magic wand over a corporation and change them into a profitable client.

In order to keep your client base, you need a great team to work with.

Make sure that your company has shared values, that there are rewards for quality improvements, and that there are strong internal and external relationships. Empower the best, lose the rest!

Inevitably, there will be failure.  You must learn from failure: use it as a stepping-stone. Do not forget what mistakes you have made, but do not allow yourself to dwell on them.  Take from your failure: take the lesson learned-do not let it take anything from you: not your energy, not your time and not your space.

Finally, in order to keep your company going and keep your clients happy, maintain good relations with your vendors.  It is essential that you support the people who support you.  If you are making a big commitment to a client, make sure you have a solid relationship with your vendor.

In the end, take energy from taking risks.  Live in the spirit of the entrepreneur!

Thinking about becoming an Entrepreneur? Get Your Questions Answered!

Robert Tuchman is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain.com. He is an Executive Vice President at Premiere Global Sports and the author of Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneurs Guide To Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out On Your Own.

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