How the Brain Works: The Secret to Staying on Top of Your Game [Video]

I'm a perennial student. Being gifted with a healthy dose of curiosity—especially on how things work—guarantees that I'm constantly learning new things. Lately though, I've been forgetting a lot of things, particularly specific words and phrases that describes whole concepts. So I got to thinking...

How can my mind forget something I've been doing or saying or writing or thinking for many years?

That question led me to this video on how the brain works. The target audience are students still in school, but because we're all students as long as we live, I think you'll find it helpful, too.

Video Takeaways:

How Your Brain Learns New Things

The human brain is about three pounds in weight, and can fit in the palm of your hand. Imagine that. Everything about you—in fact, a whole universe of knowledge—fits into an organ so small you can carry it in your purse. Talk about handy, unlimited hard disk drives wherever you go!

Top 9 Things You Can Do to Earn Money Online

When money is tight and the budget is short, us girls are great at finding other ways to augment our income. My mom repacked nuts and sold undies just to make ends meet when I was growing up just to feed three perpetually hungry little mouths. Others I knew took on a second job, usually after the day job was over.

Image credit stockimages/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the 21st century, most of us have discovered the money-making potential of the Internet. Few of us though, don't know just how to transform the web into their very own money-making machine.

I've been working online since 2009, and I've already earned thousands of dollars from the endeavor. Not enough to make me filthy rich, because I enjoy lots of time off, but a tidy sum to pay for my monthly bills, savings for a rainy day, and a lot of wants.

For those who haven't yet tried it but are hoping to get their feet wet earning money online, here are some of the ways you can do it. These are just the top 12 ones that you can explore with a minimum of investment—often with just a laptop, great Internet connection, your skills, and the gray matter between your ears.

1. Develop websites for companies, stores and bloggers

For those with the technical know-how, designing and developing websites for online shops, company sites, web magazines and the like is a shoo-in for making money online. Most of the guys I know develop blogs and websites on Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. Others use Adobe Business Catalyst, especially those who develop online storefronts.

A Day in the Life of a Special Assistant to a Cabinet Secretary (A Short Story)

What’s a normal day like being an Executive Assistant? That’s a question I always get asked by friends who’re fascinated with my previous job, working as Special Assistant to one of the country's more celebrated (and perhaps notorious) Cabinet Secretaries.

Warning: Long(er) Story Made A Tad Shorter

Following is how a routine day unfolds. I’ll have to tell you right off the gate that it’s a longish story.

Like I said, this one’s a typical day, but usually when we're busy. As special assistant and de facto Chief of Staff to a very busy presidential adviser, there are days when I’m cruising, and there are more days when I feel like I’m on a bumpy, small plane ride.

But it’s one life I’d never trade because (1) I learned a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have normally learned (of course), (2) I gained confidence in dealing with real life--and real live Big People, (3) I realized that powerful and powerless people are the same -- they all want happiness, and a better life for their loved ones, and (4) I can do anything I set my mind to...even seemingly impossible ones, it appears.

An Executive Assistant’s Day

Image credit: Witthaya Phonsawat/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

0630H, Thursday, Home

The iPhone on my night table rings, jarring the early-morning stillness of my darkened room. My eyes shut, I grope the table top for it and the stapled sheaf of papers it rests on.

“Hold your horses, darned it,” I speak into the phone as I sit up sluggishly on my bed.

“Good morning, Liz,” the sickeningly fresh, chirpy-crisp voice of my Boss’ close-in security blares into my ear. “Anything new from his sked?”

I open bleary eyes to look at the schedule printed on the paper I’m holding, though I already know it by heart...even five days following this one. “Just the emergency meeting of the Security Cluster at the Palace at 1530H, Music Room. They confirmed it at two this morning.”

I hear G groan. Another unscheduled stop. N’s security detail will be berating heavens and the Palace again. “Will you be there?”

“I don’t know, but he’s got stuff with me he has to deal with.” I briefly scan the surprisingly slow schedule on his column, the packed one on my own. “Any surprises on your end?”

What are Your Signature Top Strengths?

I'm a deeply reflective person. Although I can't say that I think long and hard about what I say or do before I open my mouth or do something, you'll always see me picking apart my words and actions afterwards to learn from them.

So most of the time I'm clear about my motivations. As a young kid who had to fight her schoolyard bullies, I learned the art of subtlety. You have to hide where you're coming from so they won't expect a strike...but you always have to know what moves you so you're always right with yourself. Kind of a scary thing for a kid to know, huh?

But I knew my strengths, and I played on them. Pretty soon, the bullies were leaving me alone. Besides, it helped that I had cousins and siblings who taught me how to give as good - or better - as I got, heh.

Procrastination and Productivity: The Twin Devils of the Work-at-Home Life [Video]

Working from home can get quite lonely. Yes, you can dictate your work hours and you don’t have to commute—in 2 seconds flat (for me, at least), you’re in your ‘office’ and ready to start the day. But then, there are two evils that you have to contend with when freelancing from home: procrastination and productivity.

Yep, the two Ps of work-at-home life. And if you can’t conquer one, you can’t have the other.

Here are two videos that may shed light on the science of both and how to master procrastination and improve your productivity...and of course, increase the dollars that you can rake in. :) 

The Science of Procrastination

Indeed, there’s a scientific reason why we put off things that we can do today. It has something to do with rewards and dopamines. Here’s how AsapSCIENCE, one of my favorites on YouTube, explains it:

Takeaways:

1. Temporal discounting has everything to do with our tendency to procrastinate...something about getting rewards nowe—and having that rush of the pleasure hormone dopamine—versus getting our rewards later.
2. The Pomodoro technique...which is simply breaking down your work into 20 minutes then a 5-minute break...definitely helps.
3. Acknowledge that you will procrastinate so best do something about it from the start. Create a deadline. An externally-imposed deadline is more effective.
4. Enjoying the process of doing something will prevent procrastination. Make a list of the reasons why you want to achieve a goal.
5. Work somewhere else if you can't remove the distractions. That way, the things that encourage procrastination is far from you.

Don't Sit and Die. Use Workrave.

Several posts ago, I talked about how sitting for prolonged stretches can be the death of us desktop warriors. I forgot to mention that hitting at them keyboards for long stretches of time can--and often, will--lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. Now that isn't something you want to happen to you if your livelihood depended on your hands, believe me!

There's one free tool that I stumbled on a few weeks past that's designed to prevent (1) repetitive strain injury, and (2) croaking over your desk because you've been sitting an hour too long. It helps you take micro-breaks and longer rest breaks…and it tells you when your eight-hour workday (or your daily work limit) has ended.

Let me introduce to you…dun dun dun dun (drum roll)…Workrave.

It's a nifty tool for your Mac or PC and you can get it for free. (Praise God for good souls like the developers of Workrave.)

Workrave, like I said, has two kinds of breaks: the micro-break and the rest break.

Introduction to Psychology: Some Takeaways

As I’m moving more towards a career in copywriting, I’m regaining my earlier fascination with psychology…how the mind works, why we feel what we do, and why we want stuff.

When I stumbled onto this free online course at Udemy, I immediately signed up with my Facebook profile.

Here are some of the takeaways from the introductory session:

4 Things About Perfection That I Learned From Adrian Monk

I have just finished watching Season One of  Monk, a TV show produced by NBC Universal. Despite the “defective detective” label, I totally identified with Monk—his uniqueness, his imperfections, and his humanity.

I learned four valuable lessons from Adrian Monk, obsessive compulsive, that helped me accept myself despite of and in spite of:

1. We all want to be perfect…

Accept it: there really is a reason why Monk and the rest of us sweat the small stuff.  We have been hot-wired since birth to want perfection because we were made for perfection!