Self-Improvement - Page 7

A collection of posts on Self Improvement

Self-ImprovementDec 10, 2013
The Habits of Successful People: Be Inconsistent

This is the second article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel, CEO here at Buffer. You can grab all posts here. Recently 37signals published an article titled Some advice from Jeff Bezos. This wasn’t your usual advice, and I found it interesting to read and how familiar it felt as I read each next line. The post was all about “changing your mind”. The way I would describe the overall theme, is “inconsistency”. Here’s the key part of

Self-ImprovementDec 6, 2013
6 Simple Things You Can Do Every Day to Be Consistently Happy

We’re starting a new series on the Buffer blog today with great tips and insights from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . Joel will share his ideas and insights about lifehacking, building a business and working on company culture. Here is #1: Today it’s a little over three years since I first had the idea for Buffer , and with the year and a half before that which I worked on my previous startup, I’ve started to notice a f

Self-ImprovementNov 27, 2013
The Habits of Successful People: They Do The Painful Things First

Before I became an entrepreneur, I went to business school. While studying for my MBA, there was one lesson that I learned which has proved to be useful over and over again in my life. I was sitting in a marketing class and we were discussing ways to design a wonderful customer experience. The goal was not merely to provide decent service, but to delight the customer. Behavioral scientists have discovered that one of the most effective ways to create an enjoyable experience is to stack the pai

Self-ImprovementNov 12, 2013
10 Things To Stop Doing Today to Be Happier, Backed by Science

I’m fascinated by the link between the way we live our daily lives and the health and happiness we enjoy. There are choices that you make every day, some of which seem completely unrelated to your health and happiness, that dramatically impact the way you feel mentally and physically. With that said, here are 10 common mistakes that can prevent you from being happy and healthy, and the science to back them up. When the Buffer team explored the science of happiness before on this blog, the int

Self-ImprovementNov 8, 2013
The case for having no goals in your life: Why it might lead to more success and happiness

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on. And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business. What I

Self-ImprovementOct 23, 2013
If You Commit to Nothing, You’ll Be Distracted by Everything: Lessons from the “Marathon Monks”

In the northeastern hills outside Kyoto, Japan there is a mountain known as Mount Hiei. That mountain is littered with unmarked graves. Those graves mark the final resting place of the Tendai Buddhist monks who have failed to complete a quest known as the Kaihogyo. What is this quest that kills so many of the monks? And what can you and I learn from it? Keep reading and I’ll tell you. The Marathon Monks The Tendai monks believe that enlightenment can be achieved during your current life, but

Self-ImprovementOct 17, 2013
The Myth of Passion and Motivation: How to Stay Focused When You Get Bored Working Toward Your Goals

We all have goals and dreams, but it can be difficult to stick with them. Each week, I hear from people who say things like, “I start with good intentions, but I can’t seem to maintain my consistency for a long period of time.” Or, they will say, “I struggle with mental endurance. I get started but I can’t seem to follow through and stay focused for very long.” Don’t worry. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. For example, I’ll start one project, work on it for a little bit, then lose

Self-ImprovementOct 16, 2013
What These 13 Successful Entrepreneurs Wish They Knew 5 Years Ago

Five years ago I was re-doing my last year of high school, managing a retail store full-time and performing in a play five nights a week. Suffice to say I burned out pretty quickly and in hindsight I can see why. Hindsight is a grand thing, but we don’t all go through the same experiences, so the hindsight of others can be beneficial to us as well. These 13 successful entrepreneurs and startupers have some great stories to tell, and I thought asking what they wish they knew five years ago would

Self-ImprovementSep 25, 2013
The Habits of Successful People: They Start Before They Feel Ready

In 1966, a dyslexic sixteen-year-old boy dropped out of school. With the help of a friend, he started a magazine for students and made money by selling advertisements to local businesses. With only a little bit of money to get started, he ran the operation out of the crypt inside a local church. Four years later, he was looking for ways to grow his small magazine and started selling mail order records to the students who bought the magazine. The records sold well enough that he built his first

Self-ImprovementSep 9, 2013
Why I Changed My Name and What It Taught Me About Who I Am

If you take a look at my bio here on the Buffer blog, my Twitter account or my website, you’ll see that my name is Belle Beth Cooper. That’s been my name for about eight months. Prior to that it was Corina Mackay. Corina Mary Mackay, in fact, since about ten days after I was born. Changing your name so dramatically isn’t something many of us do, so I thought it would be fun to tell the story of why I changed it, what the process was like and what I learned from it. Why I changed my name Changi

Self-ImprovementJul 22, 2013
10 of the Most Counterintuitive Pieces of Advice From Famous Entrepreneurs

We all love to take advice from people who’ve previously been through the same situations as us or who are further along a similar path to us. For entrepreneurs this is particularly useful, since it’s such a difficult, unknown path to tread sometimes. Funnily enough, some of the advice I’ve come across through reading interviews and articles from famous entrepreneurs is often counterintuitive to what I would expect them to say. I thought it would be interesting to gather some of this advice int

Self-ImprovementJul 9, 2013
5 Unconventional Ways to Become a Better Writer (Hint: It’s About Being a Better Reader)

Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King Even if you’re not a ‘writer’ per se, writing can be highly beneficial. It can be helpful for a number of things: * help you to work through feelings * stay positive * express your thoughts more clearly * market your product. Generally, there are two things that writers recommend to others who want to improve: more writing, and reading. More writi

Self-ImprovementJul 3, 2013
The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action

There is a common mistake that often happens to smart people — in many cases, without you ever realizing it. The mistake has to do with the difference between being in motion and taking action. They sound similar, but they’re not the same. Here’s the deal… Motion vs Action Motion is when you’re busy doing something, but that task will never produce an outcome by itself. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will get you a result. Here are some examples… * If I outline 20 i

Self-ImprovementMay 7, 2013
How to be Happier and More Productive by Avoiding ‘Decision Fatigue’

Let’s say it’s your birthday. First, happy birthday! We got you a cake. We’ll come back to the cake in a moment. Second, we have a question for you on your special day. Your friends want to give you the celebration you deserve, but they’re stumped. They can’t decide whether to a) let you plan your perfect evening, from the first stop through the main event, or b) plan the perfect evening for you, leaving you with just one responsibility: to enjoy. Which would you pick? For myself and a surp

Self-ImprovementJan 31, 2013
How To Rewire Your Brain for Positivity and Happiness

The following post is a guestpost by Walter Chen, founder of a unique new project management tool IDoneThis. More about Walter at the bottom of the post. Ever go through a phase where you feel like every day is a Monday? You wake up, you hit snooze. Then you hit snooze again and you just don’t feel it? Yes, I know that negative emotions can eat away at my productivity, creativity, decision-making skills. And yet, I have to admit that sometimes it’s really difficult to reverse the course of a s

Self-ImprovementNov 29, 2012
The Science of Storytelling: What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains

In 1748, the British politician and aristocrat John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, used a lot of his free time for playing cards. One of the problems he had was that he greatly enjoyed eating a snack, whilst still keeping one hand free for the cards. So he came up with the idea to eat beef between slices of toast, which would allow him to finally eat and play cards at the same time. Eating his newly invented “sandwich,” the name for two slices of bread with meat in between, became one of th

Self-ImprovementSep 4, 2012
Why Creativity Blocks Happen and 4 Ways You Can Overcome Them

This is a guestpost by Iris Shoor , co-founder and VP Product and marketing at Takipi , a new start-up leveraging Big Data technology to change how developers debug software in the cloud. It originally appeared on Lifehacker , more about Iris at the bottom of the post. A few days ago I was telling someone about my startup company. “How did you come up with the