Truths from Books - In a Nutshell

Givers - people who try to benefit others in their interactions - are the most successful people, since they create durable, career-enabling relationships.
- Give and Take by Adam Grant

Brands exist only in people's minds, which is why they have to be identifiable and differentiated.
- Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Stress-free productivity is a product of knowing your long-term priorities and breaking your near-term goals into actionable projects.
- Getting Things Done by David Allen

IQ alone is not enough to be successful and must be complemented by self-control, persistence, and motivation.
- Emotional Intelligence by Dan Goleman

After leading one of the largest companies for 23 years, Sloan discovered that decentralization breeds innovation.
- My Years With General Motors by Alfred Sloan

People are motivated more by meaning than by pleasure or even happiness.
Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Good companies become great by confronting the brutal realities of their business, finding out what they're uniquely good at, creating a culture of discipline, and building and maintaining momentum.
- Good to Great by Jim Collins

Make a Great Presentation - Tips

Tip #1: Typography matters. Choose a good font to convey your style or intended message of presentation. The first 3 fonts are clean and professional, the 4th is juvenile and unless you are in grade school or a cartoonist, don't use Comic Sans.

Advice For Life

Paint, draw, write, read, make movies, learn new things, and socialize. Take long walks.

Think nothing. Just listen to the voice inside you. It will push you to do certain things and you will succeed and fail. You will feel pain and you will feel pleasure. You will cease doing certain behaviors and then commence with others. You will live a life to the best of your ability.

You don’t have to accept your brain’s first interpretation of the things that happen to you. You can frame them in any way you wish to stay undisturbed by the randomness of life, because if good things make you happy and bad things make you sad, you will forever be a slave to things that you cannot control.
-www.cracked.com


Here's a scene from movie "Dumb and Dumber" that perfectly expresses "reframing":

Quotes I Luv

“ When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that's my religion. ” — Abraham Lincoln
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then
you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I
have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two
ideas." -- George Bernard Shaw

If you punish honesty, expect people to lie to you.
-unknown

"Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you."
-Ovid

"The mind is everything. What you think you become."
-Buddha

"Misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort. Also, courage.
"...let's pledge to do ...anything - add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people...."
Cracked

The case for trans-, rather than inter-, disciplinarity in graduate education has been made by educational researchers on the basis of expectations that “graduate students need to be educated for a diverse, technical, problem-oriented world that does not yet exist, which makes it imperative that they become self-directed, lifelong learners who can thrive and participate in collaborative environments with ever-changing disciplinary boundaries.” [link]

“If you want to keep a secret,” George Orwell advised in “1984,” “you must also hide it from yourself.”

"If you're not watching your money, it might be up to no good."

"People are tired of simple things, they want to be challenged." -Umberto Eco

"Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you ought some sweatpants." - Karl Lagerfield

"In England, everything is permitted, except what’s prohibited.
In Germany, everything is prohibited, except what’s permitted.
In France, everything is permitted, even what’s prohibited.
In the USSR, everything is prohibited, even what’s permitted."
-Winston Churchill

"Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you"—Ali ibn abi Talib

“I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

"Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently."

- Maya Angelou

Source of Math et al

Mathematics is, at its purest level, an abstract system of thought that can be developed without any reference to the natural world. You might consider a "space of all possible ideas", and mathematics would be a subset of this space. Mathematics as we know it (or will ever know it) is a discovery made by explorers of that space. 

Mind you, if you believe that the space of ideas is a real thing, then nothing at all is ever invented. The steam engine, the telephone and the computer all existed in this timeless space of ideas long before humans thought of them. (Source)

Links to Self-Enrichment, etc

Educational/Learning

• khanacademy.org - video lectures on just about any subject
• ted.com - lectures by smart people
• academicearth.org - classroom lectures
• freerice.com - expand your vocabulary while feeding the hungry
• classicshorts.com - the best short stories
• unplugthetv.com - a collection of intellectually stimulating videos
• factsie.com - a place to learn amazing and unusual historical and scientific facts
• 100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time - Today, knowing how to use Google effectively is a vital skill.  This list links out to enough Google related resources to make you an elite Google hacker.
• Work.com - An extensive directory of how-to guides for beginning entrepreneurs.

Learn Skills

• highercomputingforeveryone.com - learn to program in C
• htmldog.com - learn html
• codecademy.com - learn to code through interactive lessons
• digital-photography-school.com - learn photography
• memrise.com - learn a foreign language
• justinguitar.com - guitar video tutorials
• Woopid - Watch free technology training videos.  Get help and answer your computer and gadget questions with thousands of video tutorials for PCs, Macs, and various software applications.

Useful Web Apps

• mint.com - for budgeting your money
• printfriendly.com - make any webpage print friendly
• printwhatyoulike.com - print precisely what you want from any webpage
• pipl.com - a search engine for finding people
• radioreference.com - listen to radio channels across the nation
• jimmyr.com - link aggregator
• msworddit.com - Reddit in Microsoft Word form
• wepay.com - like paypal but less scummy
• whatismyip.com - figure out you I.P. address
• spreeder.com - improve reading speed and comprehension
• camelcamelcamel.com - tracks prices for any product
• ptable.com - an interactive periodic table
• retailmenot.com - find coupons for just about anything
• searchtempest.com - search all of craigslist with one search
• join.me - peek in on somebody’s computer screen
• woorank.com - find out what your website is missing, how you can improve it, and how to make Google recognize it better
• scribblemaps.com - draw on maps then share them with friends
• mailvu.com - video email
• rhymer.com - online rhyming dictionary
• homestyler.com - design your dream home
• wetransfer.com - an easy way to send big files
• dropbox.com - backup your sensitive document online
• seatguru.com - find out where the best seats are on your plane flight
• unlistmy.info - find out which websites store data about you, and tell them to unlist your info
• reddpics.com - a look at Reddit’s favorite pictures
• network-tools.com - network tools
• amazon.com - the best place to buy things online
• writecheck.com - correct grammar and check for plagiarism
• pcpartpicker.com - plan out your next pc build
• nophonetrees.com - talk to an actual person instead of a machine when you call customer service
• theuselessweb.com - visit random useless websites
• ShowMeDo - A peer-produced video-tutorials and screencasts site for free and open-source software.  The large majority are free to watch and download.

Entertainment 

• redditunes.com - Reddit’s favorite music
• grooveshark.com - great place to listen to tunes
• slashfilm.com - the best movie news blog on the internet
• justthefirstframe.com - just the first frame of today’s webcomics
• music-map.com - find similar musicians
• iwl.com - find which famous writer your write like

Other Interesting Blogs

• thedailymiscellany.com - daily tips, DIYs, ane more
• getrichslowly.org - personal finance advice
• brainpickings.org - a human-powered discovery engine
• fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com - a look at politics through the numbers
• hackaday.com - a new DIY project every day
• shorpy.com - old and interesting pictures
• The Big Picture - amazing pictures covering the latest news around the world
• newscientist.com - science news
• zenhabits.net - take a breath and read this blog
• dwellinggawker.com - check out how amazing the inside of some homes look
• thesimpledollar.com - more personal finance advice
• veryquiet.com - world news and analysis
• mentalfloss.com - where knowledge junkies get their fix
• mrmoneymustache.com - financial advice through badassity
• studyblue.com - study tips
• lettersofnote.com - personal letters written by famous people
• Function Space - For Science Enthusiastic blog.

  

11 Online Places to Learn Wordpress

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MaAnna Stephenson's blog.

10 Bits of Advice for Life

1. Primacy and recency : People most remember the first and last things to occur, and barely the middle.

When scheduling an interview, ask what times the employer is interviewing and try to be first or last.

2. If you work in a bar or in customer service of any kind...

...Put a mirror behind you at the counter. This way angry customers who approach you will have to see themselves in the mirror behind you and the chances of them behaving irrationally lowers significantly.

3. Once you make the sales pitch, don't say anything else.

This works in sales, but it can also be applied in other ways. My boss at an old job was training me and just giving me pointers. I was working at a gym trying to sell memberships. He told me that once I got all the small talk out of the way and presented the prices, that the first person to talk will lose. It didn't seem like a big deal but it actually worked. Often there were long periods of awkward silence as the person tried to come up with some excuse, but usually they bought.

4. If you ask someone a question and they only partially answer, just wait.

If you stay silent and keep eye contact they will usually continue talking.

5. Chew gum when you're approaching a situation that would make you nervous like public speaking or bungee jumping.

If we are eating , something in our brain reasons 'I would not be eating if I were danger. So I'm not in danger'. It has helped me to stay calm a few times.

6. People will always remember not what you said but how you made them feel.

Also most people like talking about themselves so ask lots of questions about them.

7. If you get yourself to be really happy and excited to see other people, they will react the same to you.

It doesn't always happen the first time, but it will definitely happen next time.

8. The physical affects of stress - breathing rate and heart rate - are almost identical to the physical affects of courage.

When your feeling stressed from any situation immediately reframe it : Your body is getting ready to be courageous, it will NOT feeling stressed.

9. Pay attention to people's feet.

If you approach two people in the middle of a conversation, and they only turn their torsos and not their feet, they don't want you to join in the conversation. Similarly if you are in a conversation with a coworker who you think is paying attention to you and their torso is turned towards you but their feet are facing in another direction, they want the conversation to end.

10. Avoid saying "I think," and "I believe" unless absolutely necessary.

These are phrases that do not evoke confidence, and will literally do you no good.

Books for Entrepreneurs

Best Stupid Joke

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". 

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. 

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. 

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. 

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. 

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". 

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. 

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. 

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.


[Found this joke and others here.]

Dalai Lama's "A to Zen" of life

Create a landing page for your twitter account

http://www.twylah.com/

I don't do things right - I do the right things.

"winners never quit" is the biggest lie - people have a built-in tendency to value what they have over what they could have instead (aka "loss aversion")...

Doing things right is no substitute for doing the right things. 

What makes everyday life more interesting?

a poWErFUL ImaginatiON

Rare Moments in Photos

A young Stephen Hawking.

Alfred Hitchcock and MGM's mascot.

Teenagers and the Science of Kinetic and Potential Energy

Take a rubber band, and stretch it between the thumb and index finger of one hand. Hold it there for as long as you can. Answer the following questions in your journal.

• At what state is the energy in the rubber band? Potential energy is stored in the rubber band in its stretched form.
• As your hand gets tired, what state of energy is it fighting against? The rubber band’s potential energy.
• Release the rubber band from your finger. At what state is the energy in the rubber band as it is released? Kinetic energy.

Why do parents get tired of fighting with their teenaged children?

Your teen is the rubber band. You raised your child to think for herself or himself, now they are almost adults and want to explore. You think that they aren’t yet mature enough to do some things and they perceive this as stifling their growth. Why are you so tired? Because you are fighting against their POTENTIAL.