It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation — Herman Melville
*Yawn*
Do you have trouble interesting people in you?
You want to join in the conversation but you feel you have little to add. Do they all seem to know more than you?
You struggle to find the right words. You try to be smart but nobody’s paying attention.
Why can’t you be in the spotlight for once?
I used to be awkward at social gatherings. I struggled to come up with something valuable to say. And when I thought of something, the conversation had moved on. I felt dumb.
But I implemented a simple plan. A plan to become smarter. To draw people’s attention.
Wanna do the same?
Ever tried reading Genesis?
Well, you don’t have to go that far back.
But going to the origins makes you amazingly smart.
Let me explain.
Reading a processed idea is like cooking a dish by following a recipe. The food might be great but you don’t learn to cook.
Finding yourself in a kitchen full of ingredients, you are lost. You don’t understand how the ingredients interact with each other to produce a delicious meal.
A seasoned chef doesn’t need recipes. He knows why different ingredients are put together. He understands how to combine them to form a delicious dish.
Reading processed ideas gets you a single point of view. You might be great regurgitating ideas but you suck in making your own.
To form your own ideas, dig deeper.
Read the original writings. Follow the writer’s thought process. Learn how he builds his argument. This helps you connect the dots and build your own eye-popping ideas. When you go to the sources you have plenty of room for interpretation. And for your own original thought.
Use recipes wisely. Don’t limit yourself to them.
Take the mind-blowing book 1000 Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently by Marc and Angel. To fully understand the ideas behind it, go back to one of the classics.
The book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, for instance, gives you a deeper understanding of the concepts behind Marc and Angel’s book.
Keep looking for the origins. Dig deeper.
Become the chef. Cook your own ideas.
Quick question.
When you have a great idea, what do you do?
Do you take a mental note of it?
Or do you take out a notepad and a pencil to write it down?
Most of us are lazy. We can’t be bothered with writing down our thoughts. Heck, we don’t even spend time to figure them out properly.
We take a mental note and continue with our day. Only to find out later that we can’t remember what this great idea was about.
Keep a pen and a notepad handy to write new ideas as they pop up.
Too vintage for you? Type them on your smartphone.
I often have great ideas when I least expect them. Blog post topics pop up in my head while I’m working out or taking a shower. Having a way to write them down immediately is a great way to track your best thoughts and insights.
Don’t lose your ideas. They’re invaluable.
Let me guess.
You like to keep up to date. At breakfast you read the latest news. At work you check your email every 5 minutes.
Even sitting in the toilet you swipe mindlessly through your twitter account.
When was the last time you sat in silence? Allowing your mind to wander. Letting yourself to be bored.
Research shows that being bored increases your creativity. When you stop consuming information and you start reflecting, you begin to actually THINK.
But trying to stop consuming by relying on willpower is like resisting a delicious chocolate bar while being on a diet. Chances are you’ll give in.
Instead of wasting your energy, remove the temptation.
Find a quiet place. Turn off your smartphone. Shut the door and close your eyes.
Let your thoughts float and interact with each other. Creating connections. Sparking your creativity.
Stop consuming endless information. Start producing original thoughts.
Being interesting is not about being born with the right set of skills.
It’s about developing who you are.
People don’t listen to dumbasses. They listen to those who whet their appetite to learn more.
Become knowledgeable.
All you need to become someone worth listening to, is to learn constantly.
Become so interesting that people are drawn to you.
So interesting that they can’t help but listen to you.
Work your ass off. Become wickedly smart.
DESERVE people’s attention.
P.S. What beliefs are holding you back from drawing people’s attention? How do you overcome them? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
—
Benny (@BenjaminMalev) is an energetic family man. He’s on a mission to help men live their life to the fullest, while putting their family first. Join him and learn to live a vibrant life at Vibrant Dad.
The post How to Become an Original Thinker and Fascinate People With Your Fresh Ideas appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.
What does Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey have in common apart from their astronomical net worths? Well, more than you might think actually. They might come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all share certain traits and habits that have helped them become as successful as they are.
If you’ve always wanted to be rich and successful, it may be useful to learn of the habits of these billionaires and other little details of the richest people in the world (we’re talking about those who earn more than $160,000 a year and have $3.2 million in assets).
This fantastic infographic by Business Management Degree highlights the top habits of the super rich and gives you a glimpse into how the world’s richest people plan their day and manage to be so effective and create so much wealth. It is based on a study by Thomas C. Corley that looked into the daily habits of 223 wealthy people listed on the 2013 Forbes World’s Billionaires list compared to 128 poor people.
If you want to take a page out of Bill Gates’ playbook, for example, wake up early, exercise, read more, cut back on your reality TV intake and write a daily to-do list. These habits won’t necessarily make you rich, but they are definitely worth a shot. Check out the infographic below for more great tips and statistics, including a gender breakdown and where the world’s nearly 31.7 million millionaires call home.
Featured photo credit: OnInnovation via flickr.com
The post Habits Of The World’s Richest People [Infographic] appeared first on Lifehack.
The post The Ultimate List You Should Follow To Have A Better Life appeared first on Lifehack.
If you’re at all familiar with Microsoft Excel, chances are you’ve used it at one point or another to organize and present critical data. And chances are you’ve thought to yourself, “There must be a better way.” As it turns out, you were right. From charting global statistics on malaria to creating stunning charts and graphs or crafting maps that tell a story, here are 7 data visualization tools you should be using right now.
Nuvi is a tool that lets you see what’s happening, in real time, on social media. Keep track of followers, engagement and comments in your Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram accounts to stay ahead of the game in your industry. Their bubble stream view allows you to see social interaction going on in real time. The bigger the dot, the more influential the entity. Green represents positive sentiment, red negative, and blue neutral. Use these patterns and insights to tailor your decisions to get the most returns on your investment.
Created by MIT, Exhibit lets you quickly and easily create web pages with charted worldwide data, interactive maps and historical data sets. Create a map with flags of the world, an interactive bubble flag hovering over every country. Design a map of the United States with interactive bubbles over the most populated cities—the bigger the bubble, the more populated the city. Think of some statistic or fact you want to display with some kind of map, and let Exhibit help you create it. Exhibit is maintained and developed in an open-source community.
Use DataHero to chart business data and get actionable insights to make business decisions. DataHero can work with your data in almost any form, whether it’s online, in cloud storage drives, or in excel. You’ll be able to create excel dashboards, beautiful charts, and interactives that will allow you to make important decisions in real time. DataHero also connects to applications like Hubspot, Shopify, Zendesk and dozens more to make using your data with your favorite apps all too easy.
Created with the needs of designers and data journalists in mind, Kartograph is a source for building interactive maps without needing to use any other kind of mapping service. It is most useful for charting defined data, not worldwide data, and does so quickly and effectively. Kartograph gives you a lot of options when it comes to mapping information and lets you do so in compact SVG maps as well as interactive maps that run across all major browsers.
A brainchild of former Mint.com employees, Visual.ly is a community platform for data visualizations, making it easy to create infographics, videos, interactives, presentations and micro-content. The site is both a showcase for infographics as well as a marketplace and community for researchers, publishers and designers. Create a profile, craft and publish visualizations to it, and then share the visualizations through your social platforms.
Bring history to life by creating a stimulating and visually appealing timeline with Dipity. Create, share, embed and collaborate on a timeline that integrates a number of features, including image, video, audio, text, links and more. Dipity offers both free and premium versions for those with different needs. The premium version, for example, allows for custom branding and backgrounds as well as custom iPhone apps. Create a timeline and it could be featured in their “trending topics” area.
This data visualization tool displays some of the world’s more distressing data but does so in an attractive way. Select different countries and indicators like “access to water” and “happiness score” to look at and track progress made. Though you can’t upload your own data, the data available to look at is extensive and spans decades. Better World Flux is also quick and easy to use and allows for an interesting interactive ride.
Featured photo credit: Nuvi Reviews, Price/Costs and Features via aboutanalytics.com
The post 7 Ways To Visualize Data Without Excel appeared first on Lifehack.
Sig Nordal 