These Navy SEAL tricks will help you perform better under pressure

The Navy SEALs use two breathing techniques that force the body into a more relaxed state when they’re in a high-pressure situation, and anyone can use them to control stress, says Everatt.  “Tactical breathing” is a technique to use when you feel yourself having a fight-or-flight response.

Fastcompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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8 Timeless Skills to Change your Life Forever – in Under 8 Hours

You can learn valuable soft and hard skills in about 15 to 20 hours of practice. And I’m talking about starting from nothing. I’ve learned 39 new skills in the past 13 months. But I’m not the only one who has experimented with that. My original inspiration came from Josh Kaufman’s TEDx talk, The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The making of Amazon Prime the most successful membership program

Amazon wasn’t always the king of online shopping. In the fall of 2004, Jeff Bezos’s company was still mostly selling just books and DVDs.

That same year, Amazon was under siege from multiple sides. Some of its biggest competitors were brick-and-mortar chains like Best Buy, which was still in expansion mode at the time, with sales growing 17 percent annually. Toys ‘R’ Us sued Amazon in a high-profile battle, alleging it had violated an agreement the two companies had for the toy store chain to be an exclusive seller on Amazon.com.

Vox.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The Top 10 Lies We Believe About Our Influence

Avoiding These 10 Lies and Focusing on Real Influence

You might not be as influential as you think. Misconceptions about influence keep us from continued success. Anyone at any level, with any title, can influence others to act willingly upon what we have to say, but only if they are willing to do the work. Influence is a learned skill requiring self-awareness, feedback and ongoing practice. But why?

Thriveglobal.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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A prisoner in my own company

In the first few years after founding AP Logic, I went from being a dreamer and a creative person who was proactive to being someone who was drowning in a box of requirements and “to-dos”. … I started to hate it. I slowed down. I focused on tasks even though I was bad at them.  How could I be trapped in my own business?

Jim Ratichek, LinkedIn.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The Importance of Working With “A”Players

We operate in a world where it’s nearly impossible to accomplish anything great as an individual.  When you think about it, you’re the product of an education system, a healthcare system, luck, roads, the internet and so much more. You may be smart but you’re not self-made. And at work, most important achievements require a team of people working together.

The leader’s job is to get the team right. Getting the team right means that people are better as a group than as individuals. Now this is important.  Step back and think about that for a second — the right teams make every individual better than they would be on their own.

Farnamstreet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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3 Easy But Highly Effective Ways To Keep Tabs On Your Business

One of the benefits of the digital age (and the direction it is moving) is the ease with which so many different platforms can easily be connected. Cyfe, for example, is a business dashboard that integrates with everything from Facebook, Google Analytics, Gmail, Shopify, QuickBooks, and EventBrite, to Stripe, Bitly, and dozens upon dozens of other platforms. Think Hootsuite, but for everything.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The Office of the Future — Brought to You by Microsoft

An interview with Microsoft’s director of office envisioning Anton Andrews…

Anton Andrews, wants to flip that equation by answering what he calls his core question: “How do you get people to lean in and do their best work together and collaborate?”

It’s a question that Microsoft has been asking itself for years.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Ten Powerful Habits That Will Change Your Life and Career

Having success in life largely depends on the habits that you repeatedly engage in, which ultimately shape your life. …

Your habits will either make or break your existence as it directly affects your source of happiness and success. Some habits are more powerful than others and simply put; your everyday habits determine your attitude and future progress both in life and in your career. The following are ten powerful habits that will improve your life and career direction. …

Forbes.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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7 Counterintuitive Rules for Growing Your Business Super-Fast

Blitzscaling a company isn’t easy; if it were, everyone would do it. Like most things of value in this world, blitzscaling is contrarian. To succeed, you’ll have to violate many of the management “rules” that are designed for efficiency and risk minimization.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Dropbox Projects Reveals How Successful Teams Collaborate

Harvard Business Review

We know a lot about how teams collaborate face-to-face, with regard to leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and other areas. But less is known about how groups work together virtually. As more and more collaboration happens in digital settings, it’s critical to understand best practices for working in such spaces.

To address this question, we studied the virtual interactions of research teams at universities around the word on Dropbox, analyzed how the collaborative dynamics related to performance and developed a list of best practices that organizations can use on any file-sharing platform to improve team performance.

HBR.org The Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The Best Leaders Delegate Outcomes, not activities

When you delegate the outcomes and not the activities, you help employees not just execute for the task at hand, but equip them for every future task after that. You’re giving true ownership to your team.

Signalvnoise.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Chinese Digital Surveillance Secrets Revealed In Database Leak

Earlier this month, security researcher Victor Gevers found and disclosed an exposed database live-tracking the locations of about 2.6 million residents of Xinjiang, China, offering a window into what a digital surveillance state looks like in the 21st century. …

EFF.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The Surprising Power of Simply Asking Coworkers How They’re Doing

When people feel like they belong at work, they are more productive, motivated, engaged and 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their fullest potential, according to our research at the Center for Talent Innovation.  … Our study substantiated existing evidence that exclusion is a growing issue. We found that more than 40% of those we surveyed are feeling physically and emotionally isolated in the workplace.

HBR.com (Harvard Business Review) click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Scalability and Automation – Why it is so crucial for your company

In every incubator, the founders say this sentence about 1000 times a day. “Scaling, scaling, scaling.”  But the smart founders … mean the following: Does your business model still work when you suddenly sell 3000 socks a day instead of 3? It is just one example.  Is your business model practicable if you have to supply significantly more customers?

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Why We’re Bad at Estimating Time (and What to Do About It)

If you understand the reasons why we tend to underestimate how long tasks will take, you can take steps to avoid the pitfalls of the planning fallacy and start forming more realistic estimates. …

To avoid the negative consequences of underestimating—at both work and in life—you have to make an effort to stop estimating using intuition only. And the best way to do that is to use an estimation technique: an exercise designed to help you form more realistic estimates.

The following six estimation techniques are all designed to help you avoid underestimating when you’re trying to determine how much time a task will take.

Zapier.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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42 Productivity Habits to 10x Your Workflow

I was asked how many productivity tips, tricks, hacks, and tools do I know. And as I began to think through all of the things I have learned, this list was born. …This is my exhaustive list from my own research, experience, and conversations with others. There are bound to be more tips and tricks, and I hope you will share them after this list.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Not All Marketplaces are Created Equal: What a Founder Discovered

The evolution of marketplaces is tied closely to distribution and closing the information asymmetry gap between supply and demand (aka lead generation). Technology and new business models have essentially created transparency of opportunities. The first evolution was moving from traditional brick-and-mortar transactions…

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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10 In-Depth Strategies to Improve Your Focus and Produce High-Quality Work

Our ability to be selective with our attention is not due to demographics, media consumption, or social media use, but rather it’s the intentional environment that we make for ourselves for when we focus on a task/activity. … there are 10 highly-specific strategies that I incorporate into my work life that have helped me produce high-quality work amidst both digital (i.e. social media) and analog (i.e. meetings) distractions.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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How to 10X Your Results, One Tiny Tweak at a Time

If you’ve enjoyed my previous in-between episodes, then this might be your favorite episode ever. It’s one of the most actionable, information-packed interviews I’ve ever done. … Joel wanted me to help him figure out 5 areas he could upgrade in his own life… we discuss a wide variety of topics, including:

  • How I choose what to improve from infinite options
  • How you can subtract your way to success
  • Why self-improvement doesn’t mean self-centered
  • How I say no to time-consuming lunches, coffees, and other meetings
  • How I tackle cold introductions
  • Tools and tactics for reversing email overwhelm

TimBlog.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The Best Leaders Aren’t Afraid to Ask for Help

As a leader who advocates vulnerability as a strength, I am surprised to realize that I have, somehow, bought into the notion that I need to be super-human and that any weakness diminishes my leadership.  In fact, I see clearly now that it is precisely the opposite. … hiding our weaknesses in an attempt to be strong leaders makes us weak leaders. …

HBR.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

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How to Debate Ideas Productively at Work

Arguing could be a very good thing — perhaps the key to their success —  if they could train people to do it in a healthy way.

Research tells us that cognitive diversity makes a group smarter. Two heads are, indeed, better than one, and many heads are even better, especially when everyone is willing to share their expertise and opinions.

HBR.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

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What Sales Leaders Need to Excel Over Time

We are not aware of any companies that have term limits for sales leaders, such as the vice president of sales. But should they? Term limits could help ensure that once-effective sales leaders are replaced before situations such as the following arise. …  The sales leader gets out of touch. … The sales leader develops blind spots. …  Subordinates cower as the sales leader’s personal power grows. … The sales leader locks in on favorite team members. …

HBR.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

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3 Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions

I have three methods that I use… The first method is to use habits as a way to reduce routine decision fatigue…  The second method is to use if/then thinking to routinize unpredictable choices. … my third decision-making method: use a timer. …

HBR.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong

Intellectual humility is simply “the recognition that the things you believe in might in fact be wrong,” as Mark Leary, a social and personality psychologist at Duke University, tells me. … it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots. … It’s about asking: What am I missing here?

Vox.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The most powerful person in Silicon Valley

Question: Can anyone challenge him?

Billionaire Masayoshi Son–not Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg–has the most audacious vision for an AI-powered utopia where machines control how we live. And he’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars to realize it. Are you ready to live in Masa World?

FastCompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Reach Any Goal This Year with a Spreadsheet, a Calendar, and the SMART System

Achieving big goals isn’t easy, which is why most people don’t accomplish most of theirs. But with the proper framework, you can do just about anything.

Here’s how to go from goal setting to celebrating your goal accomplishment. All you need is your favorite to do app, a spreadsheet, and Google Calendar.

Zapier.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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