The Authority of "I Don't Know"

From Kevin Lee at Buffer: "How 'I Don't Know' Can Make You An Authority In Your Industry"

One thing I’ve learned at Buffer is that being open to not knowing things seems to be the best way to learn quickly and teach others at the same time. So many of our biggest hits on the blog have come from saying, “We don’t know the answer. Let’s find out!”

On many matters, we haven’t any authority. 

Is this an OK way to get by?

We’ve found great success in not knowing, and there’s no reason why you can’t, too. While we can certainly see the value in establishing yourself as an authorityin your industry, being the answer-man or answer-woman isn’t the be-all, end-all of your options. 

You can survive and thrive by embracing “I don’t know.”

Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

The leading authorities on not knowing

An interesting phenomenon occurs when you’ve been not knowing things for as long as we have. You become an authority on not knowing.

That seems to be the case here at the Buffer blog. We’d like nothing more than to be known as a go-to source for social media content. When you think about social media, we’d love for you to think of us!

"Deskercizing" For Health

If you're like me, it's hard to find time to exercise. Check out Deskercise: 33 Smart Ways to Exercise at Work by Emily Milam

Remember the days when “work” meant manual labor with a side of blood, sweat, and tears? Neither do we. These days it seems we’re more likely to log hour after idle hour with our bums glued to our seats. And while you may be an Excel champ by day and gym rat by night, recent research suggests that the recommended 30 minutes of cardio five times per week may not undo the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle .

So what’s a worker chained to his or her desk to do? Luckily short bouts of aerobics, strength exercises, and stretching in between conference calls and Gchats can help improve fitness levels and heart health . While these deskercises, or desk exercises for the cubicle-bound, won’t promise Olympic mile times or six-pack abs, they might just improve strength and burn a few extra calories to boot. So whether it’s Powerpoint, Photoshop, or emails on that to-do list, we’ve got 33 sneaky exercises for a healthier (and happier!) workday.

Cardio

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1. The Twinkle Toe: Tap into your inner Fred Astaire by speedily tapping those toes on the floor under your desk. Or graduate to a harder (and less inconspicuous) move: Stand in front of a small trashcan and lift up those legs to tap the toes on its edge, alternating feet, in soccer-drill fashion.

2. The Stair Master: Want to avoid elevator small talk in favor of elevating the heart rate? Take the stairs! Accelerate on the straight-aways and take two at a time every other flight for a real leg burn.

3. The Slog, Then Jog: Instead of slogging away for hours nonstop, take a mini break for a stationary jog. Pop up from your chair (admire the butt imprint left behind!) and jog in place. Willing to huff and puff a little more? Pick up those knees! Continue for one minute, return to spreadsheets, and repeat.

4. The Celebratory Split Squat Jumps: Win over a new client? Figure out how to un-jam the printer? Is itfinally Friday?! Celebrate with the split squat jump. With feet hip-width apart, step the left leg back two feet and balance on the ball of the foot. Next, lower into a lunge, and then accelerate upwards in an explosion of celebration. While in the air, switch feet so that the left foot is planted firmly in front and the right leg is now behind. Repeat 10-12 times on each side.

5. The Cubicle Wanderer: Walking during work is totally underrated . Take a stroll down the hall to catch up with coworkers or welcome a new employee. Or, instead of dialing extensions and sending lazy emails to the manager two doors down, put in some face time. Just beware of tempting candy jars when making the rounds....

Read the rest at the link.

Working At Hiome

From Life Hacker- How to Work From Home Effectively When You Are Short On Space by Alan Henry:

Working from home—every day or just now and then—can be great. However, not all of us have huge home offices that are perfect, productive retreats. If you don't have a ton of room to work, here are some tips to help you get things done. 
For those of us in apartments, or in homes where every room has a purpose (and none of them scream "home office"), finding a place to work at home probably means plopping on the couch with a laptop. For others, it's trying to shoehorn a desk into the kitchen or some corner of a room that's already pulling double duty. Whatever your home office looks like, here's how to make sure what you do get is as conducive to productivity as possible. 

Carve Out a Comfortable, Familiar Space to Work

The first thing to do is find a spot you can actually be productive. This can be tough if you live in a 400-square foot studio in the city, and even tougher if you share that studio with someone else, but it can be equally difficult in a 2,000-square foot house in the suburbs that you share with a spouse and two kids. If every room or every wall in your home feels like it already has a purpose, you'll need to get creative

Read the rest at the link.

Getting There Eventually

From Jason Fried at Signal vs. Noise- Faith In Eventually

Making something new takes patience. But it also takes faith. Faith that everything will work out in the end.

During the development of most any product, there are always times when things aren’t quite right. Times when you feel like you may be going backwards a bit. Times where it’s almost there, but you can’t yet figure out why it isn’t. Times when you hate the thing today that you loved yesterday. Times when what you had in your head isn’t quite what you’re seeing in front of you. Yet. That’s when you need to have faith.

There are designs that are close, but not there yet. There are obvious conflicts that will need to be resolved. There are lingering things that confound you, confuse you, or upset you, but you know that eventually they’ll work themselves out. Eventually you’ll find the right way to do something you’ve been struggling with.

It’s hard to live with something that isn’t quite right yet – especially when it’s your job to get it right. It’s important to know when to say “it’s fine for now, but it won’t be fine for later.” Because moving forward is critical to getting somewhere. And, eventually, you’ll figure it all out. It’ll all work out in the end.

This is what I’ve always believed, and have always tried to practice. A dedicated faith in the eventual resolution of a problem, the eventual execution of a concept, and the eventual realization of the right design. Even when something’s poking out you don’t like, or something isn’t aligning quite right, or the words aren’t as elegant as you’d hoped, or something just isn’t easy enough yet, you need to have confidence it’ll all come together eventually.

Remember that what you’re making is in a perpetual state of almost right up until the end.

In the meantime, you just press on and keep making things, trying things, and getting closer and closer to the time when you can tie the loose ends into a perfect bow and present it to the world. What fun it is!

Monkeys and E-Mail

This is a fascinating piece on the thing in the office we all love to hate - E-Mail.- Six Monkeys: Physical interactions With E-Mail.

Six Monkeys – commissioned by Mailchimp – explores our interactions with email through physical Internet connected objects.

Email is often thought of with negative connotations; overflowing inboxes, strategies on how to get to inbox zero, dealing with the constant barrage of spam whilst each week seemingly giving raise to a new start-up that will promise to tame the evils of email.

There is however another side. Email is a ubiquitous, easy to understand system, working across any platform that can deliver not just the unwanted and the unloved but often the exact opposite; messages from friends, exciting opportunities, memories of trips taken and a million other things. It may not be perfect, but what is? It's flawed yet it's also beautiful.

Six Monkeys is a series of six connected objects that look at how we might change our relationship to email by changing the surrounding context of how we interact with it. By placing email within our everyday physical spaces it may get us to look at the familiarity of email in a new light; we may even learn to love it again.

Lucy

Lucy responds to commands sent via email. Email Lucy with the subject "blink" and a colour in the body of the message and she will blink that colour. Set the subject to static and she'll stay at whatever colour you specify, either through a keyword or using RGB values.

Anything that can send email can talk with Lucy. This is email as an API, without having to write a specific API. Have a device or a service that can send email? Then it can automatically talk with Lucy. In our research we hooked it up to ifttt.com, without having to create any kind of specific channel, and had it telling us changes in the weather, sending us alerts to remind us about important appointments and anything else we could think of......

Much more at the link. 

Building New Habits

Interesting article by James Clear - How to Build a New Habit: This is Your Strategy Guide.

According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day. [1]

Understanding how to build new habits (and how your current ones work) is essential for making progress in your health, your happiness, and your life in general.

But there can be a lot of information out there and most of it isn’t very simple to digest. To solve this problem and break things down in a very simple manner, I have created this strategy guide for building new habits that actually stick.

Even more detailed information is available in my free guide, Transform Your Habits, but the basic principles mentioned in this article will be more than enough to get you going.

1. Start with an incredibly small habit.

Make it so easy you can’t say no.
—Leo Babauta

When most people struggle to stick with a new habit, they say something like, “I just need more motivation.” Or, “I wish I had as much willpower as you do.”

This is the wrong approach. Research shows that willpower is like a muscle. It gets fatigued as you use it throughout the day. Another way to think of this is that your motivation ebbs and flows. It rises and falls. Stanford professor BJ Fogg calls this the “motivation wave.”

Solve this problem by picking a new habit that is easy enough that you don’t need motivation to do it. Rather than starting with 50 pushups per day, start with 5 pushups per day. Rather than trying to meditate for 10 minutes per day, start by meditating for one minute per day. Make it easy enough that you can get it done without motivation.

Read more at the link.

Welcome to Ideas & Trends

Greetings! I've set up this new blog as a place to capture and share with my friends things that I find in my reading on topics like leadership, business trends, the economy, interesting new technologies. Hope you enjoy it!