Consider the Pomodoro Technique for Increased Focus and Creativity

If you have trouble allowing little distractions to pull you away from your work several times a day, the Pomodoro Technique might be a great fit for you. This is a great time management method.

This technique is also great for those who have work that could take an unlimited amount of time like if you were writing a book. The Pomodoro Technique has four basic steps.

The first step is to simply pick a task from your to-do list. The second step is to set a timer for twenty-five minutes and you would only work on that task for the allotted amount of time.

This means you wouldn’t pause to check social media or have any distractions open in the background. It also means that you wouldn’t switch to a task that you find easier or feel more urgent.

Once your twenty-five minutes are up, the next step in the method is to take a five-minute break. After the break, you would then choose a new task, or return to your first task if it wasn’t complete and work for another twenty-five minutes.

Each task is referred to as your pomodoro. Once you’ve done four pomodoros, or after four of your twenty-fine minute sessions, the final step is to take a break that is at least fifteen minutes long.

This final break shouldn’t exceed thirty minutes. This technique has become so popular because it helps you break down complex projects into ones with manageable amounts of time.

It can be hard to doing research for five hours, but it becomes easier when you do it in twenty-five-minute sprints. You can also put more than one pomodoro in a session. So for example, if you have some simpler tasks like folding laundry or paying the doctor bill you can put them together in one session.

You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can cross things off your to-do list when you use this technique. If you’re in the middle of a pomodoro and you remember you need to do something else, don’t stop.

Simply write the forgotten task down and continue working. For this technique to work, it’s important that you don’t stop during the middle of one. Some interruptions—such as needing to pick kids up—are unavoidable.

If this happens during one of your pomodoros, simply take that time as your break, and start a new pomodoro after the interruption is over. You may find it useful to plan your pomodoros in advance to head off interruptions.

Divide your blocks of time into sections and write next to these sections what you’re going to accomplish during your pomodoro. You can also write down how many pomodoros you think it will take you, or how many you would like it to take you and then strive to reach that goal.

It’s important when planning your pomodoros not to assign yourself so much that you can’t cross everything off the list. This will leave you feeling like you failed or that it didn’t work at the end of the day. Start with the more pressing and urgent tasks, and if you have more time, then work on the smaller things.

A Proven Way to Boost Your Creativity and Focus

You might be a creative who wants to find more ways to up your productivity and your focus. But if you’re like most creatives, focus might not be your strength. You’re not alone in thinking that way.

Most creatives don’t think in concrete, specific terms when it comes to business things. That’s because the business side feels removed from the creative side. So what you need to do is tap into the creative side to boost the business side.

There is a proven way that you can boost your creativity to get more accomplished and be able to reach your goals. You have to get specific with your thoughts. Sort of having an idea of what you want, or need isn’t going to work.

It’s only when something is specific that you can identify it and work on accomplishing it.

Once you’ve narrowed down what it is you’re after, add a time constraint. For example, if money is what you need, you wouldn’t spend time saying, “Think about where or how I can get more money.”

Instead, you’d say, “What are 5 business models I can put into effect within 10 minutes?” This helps you to develop concrete ways to help take your creativity to the next level.

By having a specific goal with your thoughts, you’ll come up with ideas to improve whatever it is that you need. This step of coming up with ideas within a certain time limit keeps you from wasting time, but it also works for creatives because they don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking of the business side, which can drain creativity.

The ideas that you come up with by adding time constraints can also be put into play faster than if you were vague and spent hours or days trying to come up with a solution.

With your business, you’ll need to learn the best way to market it.

You might have gone back and forth trying to come up with ways that you could do this, but you weren’t able to pin anything down. Rather than spending a lot of effort thinking about this step, you could say that you were going to make a list of the pros and cons of a certain kind of advertising within 15 minutes.

By giving yourself that time limit, you turn into a game and this can produce quicker results and give you ideas for solutions. Plus, when you’re specific about what you want and you introduce that time limit, it boosts your creativity because your focus is intentional rather than running in different directions. It does this because it’s easier for the mind to focus for shorter periods of time versus thinking that you have several hours or days to come up with something.

How to Bounce Back From Past Failures

It is not good enough to know the benefits of starting over and banishing the past. You also have to know how to go about starting the new journey. Many people desire to let go of the past and focus on the present. However, many fail because they lack the skills and information to do it right. This chapter will empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to start this new journey.

Treat The Past As A Lesson

According to psychologists, intelligence is the ability to learn from experience to make better decisions in the future. Therefore, whoever does not learn from the mistakes of the past cannot be referred to as an intelligent person. You should be able to draw out lessons from your experience to improve your decision-making. For example, if you have been in an abusive relationship before, you should remember those factors that made you surrender yourself to a dictator.

If it was because you depended on him or her for sustenance, then you should not enter another relationship until you have a job. You need to empower yourself and be valuable by making your own money. In the same way, if it was because you had low self-esteem, you need to work on that before entering a new relationship. You should be learning from what has happened to you in the past to avoid making the same mistakes...

It’s not likely that you commit to something when you are not sure about what you stand to gain by doing it. Forgetting about the past to start over has numerous benefits. This chapter will explore some of them to give you the impetus to start making changes that will give you a new lease of life.

High Self-Esteem

Your self-esteem is a product of the way you see yourself. It will be low when you feel that you don’t deserve to be loved and treasured. Note that you cannot separate self-esteem from self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the level of confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task before you attempt it. It is vital that you have high self-efficacy because it makes others trust you to handle their projects on their behalf.

You need to earn the trust of people before you can be given the opportunity to prove yourself. Meanwhile, the only way you can convince them that you can do the job is when you have confidence in your ability to get the job done. Even when you have the qualifications for a job, you’ll still be doubted when you sound unsure about your chance of success in the task...

You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....

When you have refused to start over, you are endangering yourself in various ways. As earlier mentioned, it can make you lose sight of the opportunities around you. This chapter explores what you stand to lose when you’re stuck in the past.

Depression

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a leading psychological problem affecting millions of people around the world. Note that depression is different from the occasional mood swings we have because of an unpleasant event. Depression is more intense and persistent than that. When you are depressed, you will not want to talk to anyone. You will prefer to stay on your bed rather than go out to have social interactions. At that moment, everything in the world becomes colorless and tasteless to you.

Note that depression can become fatal in the long run. It can lead to suicidal ideation. In other words, depression can make you feel like taking your life. Meanwhile, you should never get to that point. There is nothing worth it in this world that should make you feel that taking your life is the best option. As long as you are still alive, you can still rewrite your story. No one is denying that you are hurt, but you cannot get stuck in the past. The price can be too costly. ..

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...

Just as with other social media platforms, it’s the connections that you make that provide the most value to you. You should make it your driving goal on this site to locate the people you want to learn from – and lead.

This might be comedians, musicians, or others in the entertainment field. Or, it can be marketers or branding experts – other people who are creating a business. Many of these connections may offer the opportunity to take part in a Q & A session.

Many of the connections you can find here are people who already have a huge following on other social media sites. What you want to focus on is finding the people who will want to follow you as well.

That’s how you build your brand on the site. The way to find someone on the platform isn’t that difficult. There’s a search feature that will allow you to go through the member list.

Unlike other social media sites, there’s no way you can hide your profile. So anyone who joins will be able to see who you are as well as be able to read the information you put in your profile’s bio.

As soon as you join, you’ll be able to access the various rooms. When you see these rooms, the app will show you who’s in the room. Sometimes, the room will be packed with participants, but other times, there may only be a handful of people....

You might not have realized this yet, but Clubhouse is a place that’s ripe for potential product ideas that you can tap into. It’s also a great place where you can get the ideas that you may have already turned into products checked out by others.

The first thing you want to do is identify what’s missing or wanted in someone’s life. There are so many rooms with a lot of people talking about what they need. You can mine these conversations to find out what they feel they’re missing or what it is that would be helpful to them.

Sometimes during a conversation, someone might throw out a wish that has to do with a business or a personal need. You can dig through the conversations to find product ideas based on solving people’s problems.

You can also look for ways to improve on competitor’s products and bring something better to marketplace. For example, you might be in a room that’s related to the music industry and someone suggests a need for better distribution services.

That might spark the idea for you to create that service. Or you might come across an audience where some members are looking for better software within a niche. You might realize that you can provide that answer.

You can crowdsource information to help you generate product ideas. You might have an idea, but you’re wondering how it’ll go over with the public. You can use the audience to test that idea.....

The site uses followers to draw in a crowd as one way to create the opportunity to go viral. If you have a connection on the site and that person becomes a speaker, you’ll get a notice.

It’s the same way with you. Once you start speaking, those in your following list will get notified and can drop in on the conversation. You can go from a handful of people listening to thousands.

The more you interact within a room and the more you speak on stage, the more followers you’ll gain. But there are a few key tips to making sure you draw a large crowd that can lead you to viral fame on the platform.

The first is content. You must have something of value to talk about. That goes for any room that you’re in - even if you’re in a hobby room or just chatting about an interesting topic.

Have something to add to the conversation that invokes emotion or informs. Tap into the audience’s emotion and they’re with you. But you can only do this if you understand your audience.

That’s why you need to get to know the people in the room or in the club. The better you know or understand them, the more likely it is that you’ll go viral. Say something that matters and people will talk about it and you.