Managing attention is far more important than managing time. In today's distracted world, time is plentiful compared to attention. This principle reveals:
<ul>
<li>Working longer hours provides diminishing returns due to depleted attention</li>
<li>Attention has three dimensions: focus (one task), awareness (thoughts/emotions), and direction (where focused)</li>
<li>The average person is fully attentive just 53% of their day</li>
<li>Distraction costs more than just time—it takes 25 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption</li>
</ul>
Productivity isn't about squeezing more into each day, but about investing your limited attention in high-impact activities that create disproportionate results.

Attention Management

The Rule of 3 provides clarity in an overwhelming world by constraining your intentions. The practice involves three simple steps:
<ul>
<li>Every morning, decide on three things you want to accomplish by day's end</li>
<li>Every week, decide on three things you want to accomplish by week's end</li>
<li>Every year, decide on three things you want to accomplish by year's end</li>
</ul>
This constraint works because it forces prioritization, creates clear success criteria for each timeframe, and aligns daily actions with larger intentions. When everything feels important, narrowing to just three outcomes creates immediate clarity about what deserves your limited attention and energy.

The Rule of 3

Productivity isn't about how much you produce; it's about how much you accomplish.

Managing energy is about aligning your most important work with your biological peaks. This approach recognizes several key principles:
<ul>
<li>Energy naturally oscillates in roughly 90-minute cycles throughout the day</li>
<li>Most people experience predictable energy peaks at specific times</li>
<li>High-energy periods should be protected for challenging, creative, or important work</li>
<li>Low-energy periods are ideal for administrative, routine, or less demanding tasks</li>
</ul>
The practical application involves tracking your energy for a week to identify your patterns, then deliberately scheduling your highest-impact work during your natural peaks while saving low-value tasks for your valleys.

Energy Management

The Procrastination Equation reveals the psychological forces determining whether you'll procrastinate on a task. The formula shows that your motivation level equals:<ul><li>Expectancy: Your confidence in completing the task successfully</li><li>Value: How enjoyable or meaningful you find the task</li><li>Divided by:</li><li>Impulsiveness: Your tendency to get distracted</li><li>Delay: How long until the task pays off</li></ul>This equation provides multiple intervention points. You can increase motivation by boosting your confidence, finding more meaning in the task, reducing distractions, or creating shorter-term rewards—all of which tip the equation toward action rather than delay.

The Procrastination Equation

The Mindful Productivity Cycle integrates deliberate awareness into your workflow through three key practices:<ul><li>Slowing down: Creating space between stimulus and response to make deliberate choices</li><li>Becoming aware: Noticing your patterns, reactions, and when you're operating on autopilot</li><li>Stepping back: Regularly zooming out to evaluate whether your actions align with intentions</li></ul>This cycle works because mindfulness fundamentally improves how you direct your attention—your most limited resource. Research shows that meditation practices actually expand your brain's prefrontal cortex, enhancing your capacity for focus, decision-making and self-regulation.

The Mindful Productivity Cycle

Busyness is no different from laziness when it doesn't lead you to accomplish anything.

Your Biological Prime Time represents the hours when your energy, focus, and motivation are naturally at their peak. This concept reveals important truths about productive work:<ul><li>Peak performance periods vary significantly between individuals (not everyone is a morning person)</li><li>Most people have 2-4 hours of biological prime time daily</li><li>These prime hours should be fiercely protected for your most important work</li><li>Standard 9-5 schedules often waste many people's biological prime time</li></ul>To identify your prime time, track your energy, focus, and motivation hourly for three weeks while maintaining consistent sleep patterns and avoiding caffeine, which masks your natural rhythms.

The Biological Prime Time

Your attention functions like a muscle that can be strengthened with deliberate exercise. Research confirms several key principles about attentional training:<ul><li>Focus deteriorates with constant task-switching and distractions</li><li>Attention span can be rebuilt through consistent practice</li><li>Meditation specifically strengthens the prefrontal cortex—the brain region responsible for sustained attention</li><li>Single-tasking exercises progressively rebuild your capacity for deep focus</li></ul>Practical attention-building exercises include meditation, reading physical books without interruption, having device-free conversations, and working in distraction-free sessions of gradually increasing duration.

The Attention Muscle

Akrasia is the ancient Greek term for acting against your better judgment—the gap between what you plan to do and what you actually do. This phenomenon occurs because:<ul><li>Your present self values immediate rewards over future benefits</li><li>Your future self appears as almost a different person psychologically</li><li>Environmental cues trigger automatic behaviors regardless of intentions</li><li>Willpower is a limited resource that depletes throughout the day</li></ul>The solution involves creating commitment devices that lock in decisions ahead of time, designing your environment to make good choices easier than bad ones, and using implementation intentions (When X happens, I'll do Y) to bridge the gap between planning and action.

The Akrasia Effect

The state of being busy is not the point—and it's actually something best avoided. Busyness is nothing more than being actively engaged in meaningless work.

The Vacuum Problem reveals why being efficient with unimportant tasks only makes you less effective overall. This productivity paradox operates because:<ul><li>Nature abhors a vacuum—any space you create immediately fills with something</li><li>Clearing low-value tasks only creates space for more low-value tasks to enter</li><li>Responsiveness signals infinite availability, generating more requests</li><li>The most valuable work rarely comes to you—you must create space for it</li></ul>The solution isn't processing faster but creating deliberate boundaries around your time, attention, and availability. This means scheduling specific periods for reactive work, protecting blocks for deep work, and maintaining some deliberately empty space for reflection.

The Vacuum Problem

Tired of feeling busy but not productive? This refreshing guide cuts through the productivity noise with evidence-backed strategies tested in real life. Chris Bailey spent a year as his own guinea pig—meditating for 35 hours, working 90-hour weeks, living in isolation—to discover what actually works. Spoiler: it's not about doing more things, but about doing the right things with deliberate attention. Perfect for overwhelmed people who want to accomplish what matters.

A fresh, personal, and entertaining exploration of a topic that concerns all of us: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of our lives.   Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he tackled: Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months—all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work.   The Productivity Project—and the lessons Chris learned—are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach you: ·         slowing down to work more deliberately; ·         shrinking or eliminating the unimportant; ·         the rule of three; ·         striving for imperfection; ·         scheduling less time for important tasks; ·         the 20 second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions; ·         and the concept of productive procrastination. In an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging read, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.

Chris Bailey is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Chris Bailey has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Chris Bailey's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Chris Bailey

The Productivity Project

In the twenty-first century, the most important kind of mind will be the synthesizing mind.

Intelligence is problem-solving and question-raising ability within an area you value.People have unique profiles across 8 intelligences - like linguistic, logical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist.Content matters more than a single “general intelligence.”

Multiple Intelligences Theory

There are 5 minds vital for cognition - respectful, ethical, disciplined, creating and synthesizing.Respectful and ethical govern social interactions. Disciplined, creating and synthesizing describe thinking and learning.You need discipline to master a domain before meaningful synthesis or creativity.

The Five Key Minds

Synthesizing means taking in information then organizing it usefully for yourself and others.Psychology doesn’t really explain this: You synthesize using your own favored intelligences.<ul><li>Asking good questions and articulating reasons are crucial.</li><li>Metaphorical thinking helps capture connections.</li></ul>

The Synthesizing Mind

<ul><li>Synthesis varies - from conventional textbook summaries to original ideas advancing knowledge.</li><li>“Hedgehog” syntheses make one grand point while “fox-like” syntheses embrace plurality.</li><li>Synthesis requires artistry in structure, arrangement and communication.</li><li>Data constraints distinguish it from pure art.</li></ul>

Varieties of Synthesis

Synthesizers exhibit wide curiosity, ask good questions, have broad knowledge, read widely, collect information, oscillate between wandering and focus, and connect concepts across disciplines.Consider your nature, goals, and favored intelligences to evaluate synthesizing abilities.

How The Synthesizers Mind Works

<ul><li>Synthesis encompasses everything from school assignments to original ideas advancing knowledge.</li><li>Some syntheses make one key point while others delight in plurality.</li><li>Data constraints and communication artistry distinguish synthesis from pure creation.</li></ul>

A Continuum of Synthesis

We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts and cultivate these. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.

A Synthesizing Mind is a memoir from the creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory, written by renowned psychologist Howard Gardner. The book was published in 2020 and provides a look into Gardner's life and work, including his theories on multiple intelligences and the Five Minds. It provides an in-depth look at how Gardner arrived at his theories and how they have been applied in educational contexts. The book also explores how Gardner's theories can be applied to a wide range of fields, from business and healthcare to technology, media, and the arts.

An authority on the human mind reflects on his intellectual development, his groundbreaking work, and different types of intelligences--including his own. Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind was that rare publishing phenomenon--a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this influential book laid out Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. It debunked the primacy of the IQ test and inspired new approaches to education; entire curricula, schools, museums, and parents' guides were dedicated to the nurturing of the several intelligences. In his new book, A Synthesizing Mind, Gardner reflects on his intellectual development and his groundbreaking work, tracing his evolution from bookish child to eager college student to disengaged graduate student to Harvard professor.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mindfulness

Mindfulness

books

Books

Howard Gardner

A Synthesizing Mind

Early museums began as private collections of wealthy individuals, families or institutions. They displayed rare or curious natural objects and artefacts in so-called wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosities. The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/791/capitoline-museums">Capitoline Museums</a> are the oldest public collection of art in the world. It began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome. You can see medieval and Renaissance art, ancient Roman statues, coin and jewellery collections, etc.

The Capitoline Museums

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/785/vatican-museums">Vatican Museums</a> are a group of museums located inside the Vatican City. It traces its origins to the sculptural collection begun in 1506 by Pope Julius II. It displays works from the collection built up by the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries and includes masterpieces of Renaissance art.

The Vatican Museums (Musei Vaticani)

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/16117/royal-armouries-tower-of-london">Royal Armouries in the Tower of London</a> is the oldest museum in Britain. It opened to the public in 1660. Royal Armouries is located at three sites across England:<ul><li>In a purpose-built museum in <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/1402/royal-armouries-museum-leeds">Leeds</a>, West Yorkshire</li><li>A Victorian fort at <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/7396/royal-armouries-museum-fort-nelson">Fort Nelson</a>, Portsmouth, Hampshire</li><li>Its historic home at the <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/16117/royal-armouries-tower-of-london">Tower of London in the White Tower</a></li></ul>

The Royal Armouries in the Tower of London

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/1364/ashmolean-museum">Ashmolean Museum</a> in Britain is the oldest university museum in the world. In 1677, it received the cabinet of curiosities from Elias Ashmole. The museum houses an extensive collection of items with artistic and archaeological significance. Notable exhibitions include biblical manuscripts, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, watercolours by Turner, a ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia, and more.

The Ashmolean Museum

The private collection was bought by the university and city of Basel in 1661 and opened to the public in 1671. The collection is now part of a rich historical and cultural heritage in the city of Basel. The main focus is on paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600 and in the 19th and 21st centuries.

The Amerbach Cabinet

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/5711/muse-des-beauxarts-et-darchologie">Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie</a> in Besançon was established in 1694 when an abbot, Jean-Baptiste Boisot, gave his personal collection to the Benedictines of the city to create a museum open to the public. The museum is famous for its extensive collections of archaeology, paintings, and drawing cabinet and includes Egyptian mummies and works of art from famous Italian, French, and Spanish painters.

 The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie

Founded in 1717, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (<a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/15970/kunstkamera">Kunstkamera</a>) in St. Petersburg is one of the richest ethnographical museums in the world.

The Kunstkamera 

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/418/british-museum">British Museum</a> in London was founded in 1753. Sir Hans Sloane's personal collection of curios provided the initial collection. Today its collections number more than seven million objects from around the world and illustrate and documented the story of human culture.

The British Museum

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/5340/uffizi-gallery">Uffizi Gallery</a> in Florence started in the 15th century by Cosimo de’ Medici. It is one of the most famous museums of paintings and sculpture globally, containing universally acclaimed Primitive and Renaissance paintings. It includes works by Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio.

The Uffizi Gallery

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/15967/the-state-hermitage-museum">State Hermitage Museum</a> in St. Petersburg, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, contains over three million works of art and artefacts of the world culture. It includes paintings, graphic works, sculptures and works of applied art, archaeological finds and numismatic material.

The State Hermitage Museum

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/773/museo-nacional-del-prado">Museo del Prado</a> in Madrid. Founded in 1785 by Charles III of Spain, the significant royal collection represents the foundation of the Museum's collection as we know it today. Today, we can see great masterpieces such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosh, The Nobleman with his hand on his Chest by El Greco, Death of the Virgin by Mantegna, The Holy Family known as The Pearl by Raphael, Emperor Carlos V on Horseback by Titian, The Foot Washing by Tintoretto, Self-portrait by Durër, Las Meninas by Velázquez, The Three Graces by Rubens, and The Family of Carlos IV by Goya.

Museo del Prado

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/358/belvedere">Belvedere</a> Palace of the Habsburg monarchs in Vienna opened in 1781 with a collection of art. It holds the greatest collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to today.

The Belvedere Palace of the Habsburg monarchs

The <a href="http://museums.eu/museum/details/702/louvre-museum">Louvre Museum</a> opened to the public in 1793. It contains nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 19th century.

The Louvre Museum in Paris

The first collection was established around 1790. The collections were officially opened to the public in 1817, making it the oldest institution of its kind in Romania. The museum comprises:<ul><li>European Art, Romanian Art and the Library (in the Brukenthal Palace),</li><li>Contemporary Art and the Museum of History (in the Altemberger House),</li><li>the Museum of Natural History, Museum of Pharmacy and Museum of Hunting.</li></ul>

The Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Transylvania

The Museum was founded in 1773. It is the oldest in Latvia and the whole of the Baltics. The Museum is situated in Old Riga, in a remarkable architectural monument of the 13th–20th centuries - the ensemble of the Riga Dom. The rich and diverse collections of the Museum came from an art and natural sciences collection of a Riga doctor, Nikolaus von Himsel (1729–1764). It houses over 5000 000 items, grouped in about 80 collections.

The Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation

A list of some of the oldest and finest museums in Europe that you can still visit.

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History

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

The world’s oldest museums

<ul><li>Reflect on your career history and current job. What skills do you already have? You may have had experience selling goods and helping customers.</li><li>How do you feel about work? Do you enjoy people interaction or sitting behind a desk? What work feels personally meaningful?</li><li>What is the biggest obstacle in your way? You may feel that you don't know what you are good at. Do you know other people with similar interests as yours? What do they do? Would you like to do anything they are doing? Talking to people can help to generate some ideas.</li><li>What skills do you need to develop/build on?</li></ul>

Finding a fulfilling career

With no career plan, Simon did what he knew he could do. But after years of doing the same work, he battles to define what a fulfilling career looks like. The community assisted by sharing their thoughts. 

With no career plan, Simon fell into jobs he knew he could do. Now he has the chance to find a career that lights him up, but after years of the same

career

Career

“How Can I Change My Career, If I Don’t Know What Else I’m

Also known as the Festival de Cannes, the annual film festival is a celebration of cinematic works of art, highlighting select movies from France and other countries since 1946.
The festival has made Cannes an international luxury destination attracting top celebs from all over the world and is extensively covered by the media.

The Cannes Film Festival

<ol><li>The two-kilometer long red carpet is changed thrice a day.</li><li>People fund the festival's budget, which is roughly 20 million Euros.</li><li>Movies from six new languages were added in 2010 to broaden the international appeal.</li><li>The first Cannes film festival was proposed in 1939, but was cancelled due to World War II.</li><li>Critics Emile Vuillermoz, Rene Jeanne along with writer Philippe Erlanger cooked up the idea of the Cannes Festival.</li></ol>

Five Interesting Facts About Festival de Cannes

The 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival finally began at the French Riviera on July 6, 2021. Thus, here we have listed out five interesting facts about the ‘Festival De Cannes’.  🛍️ Cannes Film Festival 2021: Know 5 Interesting Facts About Festival De Cannes.

movies

Movies & Shows

Know 5 Interesting Facts About Festival De Cannes

<ul>
<li>Pablo Picasso was a great artist who created 50,000 works of art in his life. He devoted his life to art and every idea he had, had to be captured on canvas;</li>
<li>Thomas Edison, over the course of his lifetime, had acquired more than a thousand patents. He was not only an inventor but also was a manufacturer and a businessman;</li>
<li>Barbara Cortland was a profound writer who wrote 723 novels and until the moment she died, she had 160 unpublished novels that were waiting to be published;</li>
<li>Seth Godin published a post every day for over a decade and was a best selling author of 17 books.</li>
</ul>

Prolific Minds Keep On Giving

The law of progression states that if you can persistently create and share your body of work and don't stop and break the cycle, you will become unstoppable.
Anyonce can apply and become better over time. If you stay prolific, your creative efforts will pay off. Prolific output demands deliberate practice for as long as possible.

The Law of Progression

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

<ul>
<li>Start with being curious and keep feeding your focus for that curiosity;</li>
<li>Know your end goal before you start;</li>
<li>Do your best work first thing in the morning without any distractions;</li>
<li>Take action almost everyday and make time for what you do best;</li>
<li>Allow yourself to wander, take walks as it leads to creative thinking;</li>
<li>Think long-term and maintain career progression for an extended period of time without losing focus; and</li>
<li>Build a creative output system that works well for you.</li>
</ul>

How To Be Prolific

Becoming prolific means to maintain having a flexible mindset that adapts and still your own personal style.
Highly creative people are not always perfect yet they never fail to take the necessary steps. They will just keep creating, keep building, or keep writing. Creativity can be found in many types and forms and the tools for creative expression today is widespread.

Action: The Key of Consistency

Practical exercises, tools and concepts to help you develop and enhance your creative thinking 

health

Health

communication

Communication

Unlocking your Creative Potential

Prolific minds keep on giving. Their creative outputs are sometimes beyond comprehension. Many of the world’s best creatives are insanely prolific. Picasso created 50,000 works of art in his life. He…

productivity

Productivity

habits

Habits

problemsolving

Problem Solving

timemanagement

Time Management

The Picasso Principle — Habits of Highly Prolific Minds

It took thousands of years for the European culture to realise that a child is not an object but a human being.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, or On Education (1762), that "nature wants children to be children before they are men." He did not see children as humans but appealed to parents to look after their offspring. However, he did not take his own ideas to heart and abandoned his offspring at birth.

Children as objects

<ul>
<li>In ancient Greece, babies were often left by the road or in the garbage. If a passer-by took the child, it was often raised for the slave market. This is because children were considered private property.</li>
<li>The Romans followed the custom to put a newborn on the ground just after birth. If the father picked the baby up, the mother could care for it. If not, the newborn was thrown away.</li>
<li>When Greeks and Romans did decide to raise their offspring, they showed them love and attention. Plato wrote that parents have the duty to care for their children's physical and mental development.</li>
</ul>

Ancient cruelty

Christians condemned the practice of abandonment of newborns and ordered followers to care unconditionally for every child. This trend became so strong that it survived the fall of the Empire. Unwanted children ended up in shelters opened by monasteries. 
Legal provisions outlawed parents from killing, mutilating and selling children. As children survived into adulthood, parents did not develop emotional ties with their offspring. During the Middle Ages, most European languages did not contain the word 'child'.

Condemning the practice of abandonment

During the Middle Ages, families decided the fate of the children. The canon law of the Catholic Church stated that a bride had to be older than 12 and the groom, 14. But the father, desiring to increase his resources and prestige, looked for a daughter- or son-in-law immediately after a child's birth.
Interest in children as persons was revived in Europe when ancient philosophers' writings were discovered, and the fashion for educating children returned.

Children as independent beings

At first, corporeal punishment was the primary tool in the education process. In the 17th century, philosopher John Locke urged parents to use praise to stimulate children to learn and behave well.
The fashion then was for a wet nurse to feed a newborn, and then the child was passed on to grandparents or poor relatives for a salary. The child would return home around age five and be educated by the biological mother. Rousseau condemned all of this. After Emil, it became fashionable for the mother to breastfeed her child.

Education and corporeal punishment

In the 18th century, it became the norm again to abandon unwanted children. They usually went to care facilities, but few survived into adulthood. Condemnation by the Catholic and Protestant churches did not help.
The Industrial Revolution turned out to be more effective. In Great Britain, the financing of shelters placed a burden on municipal budgets, but the new cotton mills in Lancashire, Derby, and Notts were seen as a godsend. Orphans became a source of cheap labour, working twelve hours a day. They had to earn a living to receive shelter and food.

Shelter and factory

German educator Friedrich Fröbel gave lectures on returning children to their childhoods and encouraged adults to provide children with care and free education.
In 1839, the Prussian government reacted by banning the employment of minors. France followed two years later. Britain only adopted the Factory Act in 1844. The legislation prohibited children under 13 from working in factories longer than six hours per day and required children to be educated in factory schools.

Emerging morality

In April 1874, under the guidance of social activist Etty Wheeler, 10-year-old Mary Ellen Wilson told a New York court of her almost daily whipping by her stepmother. The request for intervention was repeatedly refused, and Wheeler turned to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) for help.
Its president Henry Bergh agreed that the child was not her guardians' property and established American Humane, an NGO fighting to protect harmed creatures, including children.

Fighting to protect children

Towards the end of the 19th century, the custom of entrusting the care of offspring to strangers fell away. Parents were urged to provide their offspring with love and a sense of security.
But the pioneering work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed that home education ought to be replaced by social education. The aim was to prepare young people to fight the conservative generation of parents for a new world. In 1924, the League of Nations adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child, although it's still not implemented in many parts of the world.

The rights of the child

It has taken thousands of years for our view of childhood to develop into what it is today, i.e. that children should be educated and safe from harm. What drove this change after centuries of child workers and cruelty against children? We look at the history of children in Europe in this article.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

parenting

Parenting

The birth of childhood: A brief history of the European child

The Japanese have a secret that embodies the idea of happiness in living, and it is called Ikigai.Essentially, Ikigai, loosely translated to life value, or life worth, is a concept of living that the Japanese culture imbibes for decades.

Life Value

Ikigai is illustrated in four overlapping circles, as in a Venn Diagram which talks about a synthesis of:<ul><li>What you love to do.</li><li>What you are good at.</li><li>What the world needs.</li><li>What you can be paid for.</li></ul>

Ikigai: The Reason for Being

According to psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya, the concept of Ikigai is similar to happiness, but with a difference.Ikigai looks at the larger picture of life, allowing you to be ok with a miserable situation, as the grand vision of life, and the future is still positive.

Ikigai and Happiness

The concept of Ikigai aligns with everyday life, as opposed to a lifetime. It makes us appreciate our daily life, celebrating it, and experiencing the small joys of living.Ikigai is the reason you wake up in the morning for, that thing you live for, daily.

Everyday Life and a Lifetime

Japanese have a large number of senior citizens, including many centenarians, with the average lifetime being 87 years for women and 81 years for men.Ikigai has been a major reason for the long life of the Japanese, along with special kinds of diets.

Ikigai and Longevity

Make three small lists:<ul><li>Your values</li><li>Things you like to do</li><li>Things you are good at</li></ul>The cross-section or overlap of these three lists, is your Ikigai, something you should do for the rest of your life.

Make Your Ikigai

Ikigai is not a theoretical concept to be understood and left aside, and can only work in daily action and constant practice.Your work should make a difference in people's lives, and not necessarily would be just working hard.

Purpose of Action

Japannesse know something we in the West we ignore

For Japanese workers in big cities, a typical work day begins with a state called sushi-zum e, a term which likens commuters squeezed into a crowded train car to tightly packed grains of rice in sushi. The stress doesn't stop there.

longevity

Longevity

Ikigai: A Japanese concept to improve work and life

Doing more in less time is not the ultimate solution to productivity. It's the path to burnout.
Productivity rests more on small improvements. By focusing on the small things, the big things will take care of themselves.

Focus on the small improvements

Most people perform a combination of varied small tasks in a day. There may be many small improvements you could make to your workflow or environment to get more done.
Step one is finding out what those things are. Involve your peers or your manager if you need help with this.

Identify the small improvements you could make

Every week, choose one thing from your list and focus on it. 
<ul>
<li>Think of ways to improve this one thing.</li>
<li>Experiment, and see what works.</li>
<li>Talk about this one thing with your manager and ask for feedback.</li>
</ul>
The goal is to find ways to improve that small part of your work.

Work on one improvement at a time

Communicate how the small changes helped you to improve. After a week focusing on this one thing, our natural tendency is to want to share how we did toward our output.
Be sure to talk about the small thing you focused on. It will help reinforce that focusing on the little things consistently over time will produce big results.

Communicate your improvements

Large, abstract goals are intimidating. This is why focusing on smaller areas for improvement can put us in control over our own development.
Instead of an abstract goal like "becoming a better manager", you could use an actionable step like, " I want to devote one hour a week to preparing more for my 1:1s with my team."

Small things add up

As a support trainer, I've learned that getting more done depends on thinking small. Find one small thing you can do better, focus on doing that for a week, then repeat that process.

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Remote Work

Why big changes happen when you focus on small improvements

"If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution."

Stop whatever you're doing right now and notice the pattern that has been going on that's caused you despair and change it, regroup it, and remove yourself from the situation.
Don't let the fear of failure take over because you refuse to live in anguish any longer. Take the time away from everything that is stressing you out and for as long as you need until you're ready to face the challenges if you ever choose to do so.

Break The Pattern

Concentrate on relaxing, recovering, and giving yourself constructively, healthy thoughts and experiences. Change your everyday habits to more relaxing pursuits and practice silence in order to clear your mind.
If your space of healing allows, make time for your friends and your loved ones.

Free Your Mind

Look for something that sparks your interest and gather ideas from the internet, acquaintances, podcasts, or recommendations and dive in.

Collect Ideas To Kick-Start Your Thinking

Gently daydream about the possibilities you have with your new ideas, but try to approach it in a more relaxed manner where it will naturally surface.

Give Your Situation Some Preliminary Thought

It takes time for our minds to process the situation properly. Practice patience because you do not need all of the answers right at this instant. Like with any creative process, the first answers aren't usually the best ones.
Keep in mind that the right answers will arrive in due time.

Trust The Process

The advice that you've found or that was given to you was uplifting and hopeful. This has given you a more positive outlook in life but what are the steps you can take in order to put your new ideas into practice?

Reset Your Reality Through Change

In order to make positive changes and heavily impact your life, it is important to identify the thoughts and actions that put ourselves in the hole of despair in the first place in order to uproot it.
Life seems rough from time to time but we must not lose focus on what's important to us.

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