Time Management For Students And Helpful Resources

How To Be Creative
I guess some people are naturally creative and some are not, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t all improve our creativity. So here is a list of some of the best ways to improve your creativity:Creativity comes out of new combinations. It’s very rare to produce something which is completely new in every respect. Creativity is much more commonly the result of bringing together two or more existing ideas and combining them in a new way. Creativity comes out of perspiration. If you want to have new ideas then it’s important to keep working at them. Inspiration comes to those who are actively engaged in a problem, not to those who are just sitting back waiting for the big idea to come to them. Creativity comes out of knowledge and experience. This is closely related to the previous two. The person who will have the most creative ideas about a subject is the person who knows it back to front.Creativity comes out of questioning. There is a danger that people who know a subject well become wedded to “the way it’s always been done”. This is not a bad thing when that way is built on years of knowledge and experience. But the person who can bring a “new mind” to the subject will frequently see things which the old hands can’t see because they are blinded by familiarity.Creativity comes out of restrictions. It’s much easier to be creative when the terms and boundaries have been defined closely. The closer you define the question the more likely you are to be able to answer it. Creativity comes out of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction with the way things are at present is one of the keys to creativity. But beware - this dissatisfaction can express itself in destructive ways instead of creative ways.Creativity comes out of changing one thing. Often the key to creativity is to list the various factors involved and experiment with doing just one thing different.Have you got any ideas to add to this list?

How To Make More Intelligent Info Product Purchases
If you’re a growth-oriented person like me (OK, growth addict would be more accurate), you probably consume lots of information products, including books, ebooks, audio programs, self-study courses, classes, workshops, seminars, and more.  Once you get started on this path, it’s easy to become a lifetime growth junkie because the payoff from such products can be enormous.  One good idea can induce [...]

The Effort Effect
There’s a very interesting article on the Stanford Alumni Association website about the reasons why some people achieve their potential while others don’t. Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory.

Dieting: The Ratchet Effect Update
The first two days of the new system have been a bit inauspicious. So far I have gained 1.5 lbs and have two rules in effect. But not to worry - what I expect will happen is that I will stabilise at a number of rules which will keep my weight slowly declining. I hope that it will be not too high up the scale!

How To Set Goals You Will Actually Achieve
A major obstacle that prevents people from enjoyably achieving their goals is that they set their goals incorrectly to begin with.  This problem occurs because people don’t understand the nature of time well enough.  When people consider a particular goal, they often worry about the time commitment:  If I start my own business now, it could take years to make it [...]

Dieting: Introducing The Ratchet Effect
Now that I’ve started back on my diet I must confess that I am getting rather bored with it. Specifically it’s the rate of loss of 1 lb per week that’s boring me. It’s too unvarying. It also isn’t sensitive to what is going on in my body at any specific time. So for instance when I first started the diet back at the beginning of December 1lb per week was too slow. I was losing weight faster than that with hardly any effort and had to hold myself back. But a couple of months later it was too fast. To keep up I had to cut back on eating to a greater extent than I was prepared to put up with. So I’m going to experiment with a different way of adjusting the daily target weight. To do this I am not going to have a pre-determined rate of loss, but instead will let my body arrive at it’s own rate of loss. I will employ the “ratchet effect” - movement is only allowed in one direction. The method of dieting remains exactly the same, except that my aim each day is to stay at the current target weight. However whenever I go below the target weight, that weight becomes the new target weight. Let’s see how that would work out. If I weight myself in at 200 lbs to commence with, 200 lbs becomes my target weight and my aim each day is to maintain myself at that target weight. Every day that my actual weight is above 200 lbs I add a rule. If my weight is exactly 200 lbs I keep the rules that I have (if any). Everything so far is exactly the same as before. Here’s the difference. If my weight one day falls to 198 lbs, then I can take one rule off and the new target weight becomes 198 lbs. So each day the target weight can remain the same or decrease. What it can never do is increase. I won’t really know how this will work out until I have tried it for a while. It seems to me that it will be more interesting than a regular decrease in target weight. Interest is one of the main motivating factors in keeping to a diet. Of course it is theoretically possible that I might remain at the same target weight for evermore, but I don’t think that is very likely. It may well result in a much slower rate of weight loss - but that’s better than giving up the diet because one’s body can’t keep up. (Full details of the diet I am following can be found here.)

Great FireWall Of China
I see that according to the website http://greatfirewallofchina.org/ my website is blocked in China. I can’t imagine why that would be. If anyone in China can actually read this, perhaps you would let me know!

Overcoming News Addiction
A little over 30 days ago, I decided to go on a news fast, using my trusty 30-day trial method.  I had already dropped TV news and newspapers, but I still had the habit of checking Yahoo News or CNN every day or two, so for 30 days I decided to drop all news sources and go totally news-free.  In [...]

Student Graduates College In Only Two Semesters
Two readers emailed me about a story in the Washington Post today about a student who graduated college in only two semesters (plus summer school).  The student, David Banh, even got a double major. The reason people emailed me this story (with some ribbing that I’d been outdone) was that I graduated from college with a double major in three semesters (but no summer school).  I [...]

The Science Of Success
A few weeks ago I evaluated The Science of Success program from James Ray.  James is one of the cast members of the underground hit movie The Secret, and you may have seen him on Oprah earlier this month or read my recent interview with him.  I spoke with James on the phone in January, [...]

Setting Your Primary Focus
At the start of each new year, in lieu of creating a New Year’s resolution, my tradition is to select an area of primary focus for the coming year.  Whereas a New Year’s resolution may succeed or fail, the choice of primary focus endures throughout the year.  Usually the choice is obvious enough that remembering it is a no-brainer. How to choose an [...]

8 Changes I Experienced After Giving Up TV
In June I decided to do a 30-day trial of no TV watching.  DVDs were OK, but I wasn’t going to watch any regular programming or cable shows or tape anything with my DVR.  At the end of the 30-day trial, I was pleased with the results, so I kept going.  Now that it’s been [...]