Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

productivity

  • ‘Intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you’

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    1 min read

    Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and takes to the air, he is still on the…

  • Impatient with action, patient with results

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    1 min read

    Impatient with action, patient with results. Taking consistent, small steps, each day turns thousands of drips into a bucket of water. But it’s not so much the practice that matters — it’s the execution. Proper action uncomplicates thinking. As Albert Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.” Shooting the basketball with improper form every…

  • The running conversation in your head

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    1 min read

    The mind is perpetually stuck in the future, worried about tomorrow instead of tomorrow’s yesterday. It’s as if we’re running toward an elusive finish line, lured by the temptation of retirement. Hold up…why do we move so fast? Skimming and skipping produce a race to the bottom. We expect the algorithms and Google shortcuts to…

  • ‘Give yourself Permission to Suck’

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    1 min read

    If we never get started, we never get good, and you can’t get good without first being bad. To overcome perfectionism and get started, you need to accept that your first attempts will not be up to your standards. You have to give yourself Permission to Suck. David Kadavy

  • Sitting decreases blood flow to the brain 🧠

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    2 min read

    We hear it all the time. Get up and go for a walk. It’s how Walt Whitman jogged the brain so he could keep generating writing ideas. Even Steve Jobs held walking meetings. But now the science proves that taking a quick stroll reactivates the flow of blood to your brain. Scientists at Liverpool’s John…

  • Four to one

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    2 min read

    The goal is to be good at more than one thing. Everyone should be versatile. But sometimes it is better to narrow yourself to expand. Instead of doing everything, you focus on doing one thing well. And the rest gets better as a result. Take social networking for example. It’s a misperception that one has…

  • Jeff Bezos 1997 interview

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    1 min read

    Taped in June 1997, the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos outlines his vision for his company’s music and books webstore model. Flash forward 21 years later, and the company is not only corroding the retail sector by selling everything online, it also owns everything from grocery stores, newspapers, its own web services, to who know’s…

  • The importance of mind recess

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    1 min read

    Inactivity cultivates new insights. It’s not so much as being bored as it is the value of pausing. It’s a good thing we can’t write everything our brain says down on paper. Most of it would be jibberish. Even when we dictate our thoughts onto the computer, we’re impeding the darts of words from overwhelming…

  • You’re better off going into the wilderness

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    1 min read

    The game of goal setting is a choice. Instead of leaving your future to the whims of nature, you can create your own course and chase an ideal outcome. As Hunter S. Thompson advised: “a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” Choice, however, does not…

  • The simple but effective Pomodoro Technique 🍅

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    2 min read

    Thirty years ago, college student Francesco Cirillo used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer to help improve his productivity. Working for 25-minutes intervals with 5-minute breaks in between, he called it the Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro translates to tomato in Italian. The time-management method intends to help people focus on tackling projects uninterrupted, grouping pomodoros together to track…

  • Happy Bullet Journal Day!

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    1 min read

    If you look around Pinterest and Facebook groups, you’ll see that bullet journalling is all the rage but what most people don’t know is that Ryder Carroll is the originator of the Bullet Journal Method. Today marks five years since Carroll introduced bulletjournal.com to the world, helping millions of people like myself organize and prioritize…

  • The courage to believe

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    1 min read

    If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Faith drives action. Faith drives results. Without faith, nothing works. Indifference and pessimism are attractive because they’re the easiest to obtain, the most accessible to deploy and practice. “Ask yourself this: would your childhood self be proud of you, or embarrassed?” Julien Smith, The Flinch Pursuing the…