16 things I wish they taught me in school
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under career, inspiration
This is a useful list of 16 things you probably didn’t learn about in school.
A few of my favorites include:
The 80/20 rule.
The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give.
Be proactive. Not reactive.
Your attitude changes your reality.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before.
Tags: career, lifehack, productivity, school
How to nap
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under productivity
It’s not photo related, but everyone can use a good nap every now and then to recharge.
Check out this awesome infographic for all you need to know about naps.
For example I thought the reason I got tired in the afternoon was because of that burrito from Chipotle? Turns out I was wrong. Eating at noon isn’t what makes you tired.
Part of the infographic:
Tags: productivity
An incomplete manifesto for growth.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
This list makes a nice addition to any creative workspace.
Here’s a small sampling of the inspiration I hope to apply to my work and life this school year:
Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
Tags: creative, inspiration, productivity
Explaining RSS the Oprah way.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve posted about using RSS feeds before and hopefully you’re using them, but if you want to get family and friends on board here’s a great breakdown of using RSS feeds that everyone can understand.
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that?
Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver!
For my documentary photography class everyone is required to blog. Going to our class website and checking each site is a tedious process. Not to mention you might run down the list of links to only find that one classmate has updated their blog. One quick glance at my my feed list for the class and I can tell who updated their blog without having to waste 20 minutes clicking every link to find that no one updated their site.
I prefer using Google Reader myself. It’s web based so no matter what computer I may be getting on the web from I’ll have access to my account and it works on my Blackberry so I can read my feeds on my phone. And I mean it’s a Google product. Can you really go wrong? If you have a gmail account you already have a Reader account so there’s no reason not to start using it.
Tags: productivity, Uncategorized
