ArchivesCategory: Performance

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco Hacking work is all the rage these days, along with tips for managing email, taking notes, and running meetings. But, at a higher level, what can we learn from analyzing the different types of work we do and how we allocate our time?First, let’s take a look at the five kinds

Morten Schroder of Van Houtte Coffee knows something about being a sustainability leader. In fact, Van Houtte has a long, proud history of adopting sustainability measures, even before a clear ROI matrix has been established. (The latest example is Van Houtte’s implementation of Renewable Natural Gas, a product I helped position and market). “We believe

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco In a few short years, multitasking has gone from star child to black sheep in productivity pop culture. This is because the most common forms of multitasking require rapidly switching between similar tasks, which creates a sort of “flickering” effect in your brain. (Think of a connection gone bad… annoying at

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco Time and time again, creative people are given two pieces of advice: (1) Listen to your critics and seek feedback, but also (2) Ignore your critics and follow your intuition. Clearly, there’s a powerful contradiction here in need of reconciliation.Whether you’re starting a new business, debuting a performance, or working with

Though I am guilty of using it from time to time, I’ve never particularly cared for the word “productivity,” which is defined as (1) the “quality of being productive,” and (2) the “rate of output per unit.” While it’s easy to imagine how to control for output in certain contexts — say, turning out 100 widgets of equal

  by John Caddell   Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco   The beginning of a new year is a time for reflecting and making resolutions, right? How about trying something a little different this year: Take note of your 2011 mistakes and take action to avoid repeating them in 2012… and maybe even consider making a mistake or

About this presentation Fuseproject founder Yves Béhar, the creator of the Jawbone headset and the $100 laptop, shares the seven principles that define his unique approach to the design process. His vision is one of “holistic making” in which the designer is involved from beginning to end — from defining the business model to designing

I got this from Bioneers Nonprofit. Six happiness habits worth cultivating. (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/happycircle-ggsc.pdf ) These all stimulate the creation of positive affect, which is consistently being shown not to be a cognitive event (the reflection on one’s life), but rather, an experience of the nervous system’s regulation. A peaceful nervous system itself affects the view through

Former Rolling Stone journalist and author Julia Cameron once said, “What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”
Quotes like this sound great, but can a career ever work out that way? Ben Barry, a designer at Facebook, will you tell it can. Walking the halls of Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, you’ll see his work everywhere, including a signed poster from President Obama. Today, he’s helping design the company’s new campus, laying out materials for its f8 developer conferences, and coming up with ways to visually represent Facebook’s famous hacker culture.