Less Screen Time

We are becoming increasingly addicted to our phone services and other communication services. So much so that it is intruding on our lives and connections with other people. March 7th was the National Day of Unplugging. A time when we can reconnect with the world around us and take a break from the mobile applications and candy crushing. One of the things that you can do is turn off notifications. Does checking a single notification turn into a half-hour of phone browsing? There are various mobile applications, such as QualityTime for Android and Moment for iOS, that monitor your phone usage and inform you just how many hours a day you're spending looking at a screen. Try to set up phone-free periods during the day. Schedule them when you're busy doing something else, in order to make the break a bit easier. I mean do you really need your phone at the dinner table, in the bathroom or while you are watching a movie. Just something to think about.

Virtual Reality: Coming Soon

That is, if you are one of the lucky people that do not get nauseous when using one of the headsets. The public’s wait for virtual reality is nearing an end. In recent days, several of the most prominent companies making headsets offered rough timetables for consumer versions of their products, ending the guessing game about when virtual reality would get its first real test. Software development professionals are also getting very anxious about it coming out because it can open up a whole new area of development and creating content. The most closely watched of those companies, Oculus VR, which is owned by Facebook, said it expected to begin widely selling a product before the end of the year. Oculus has teamed up with Samsung on the product, a headset that uses a mobile phone as a screen. Either way, I am really excited about the virtual reality sets coming out and what they will entail. What are your thoughts?

Increasing Human Intelligence

To conduct the study, published in the March-April 2015 issue of the journal Intelligence, the researchers looked at 64 years of IQ score data for more than 200,000 people living in 48 countries. Overall, they found that global IQ scores have risen by an average of 20 points since 1950. Of course, this data does not show the whole picture. First of all, it is important to note that the IQ tests cannot be standardized because of the differences in cultural backgrounds. Things might be misunderstood and therefore considered wrong because the translation might be inaccurate. Some researchers connect it to the fact that the developing countries are providing better health and education and that is improving living standards. It is thought that the higher IQ is due to the increased living standards. There has been evidence to support the effect but no clear underlying cause. One of the way to approach it differently is to use cloud services and big data. The data then could be analyzed for trends that might not have been apparent before. So are we getting smarter? The answer lies somewhere in the grey area where all the important answers are.

Changes to Office Space

Over the past decade, the idea of an office has undergone significant changes. With the mobile revolution in full swing, people can work from anywhere they want and still be in touch with the team using communication services such as internet phones and video conferencing. Since the employees are not physically in the office, many businesses will need to rethink the idea of an office and how it is laid out. It might be a good idea to have desks that are shared for people that come in at different times of the day or different days. The entire rooms themselves are changing to include standing desks, treadmill desks, and even recliners and sofas to allow the employees to be as comfortable as they can so that they can be as productive as they can. Since there is also a lack of need for a lot of space, businesses could share office space. So the costs of having a conference room, lobbies and break rooms. There are any number of arrangements that the two businesses can come to. The office as we know it is being reshaped and it will continue to change with the changing technological landscape and the fact that the internet will be available anywhere.

Things We Can Learn From "Let It Go"

It is one of those songs that no one can really escape. You hear it everywhere and even sometimes more than once a day. And most of the time, you hear little kids singing it. Have you actually listened to the words though? It is like a 300 page self help book or a motivational mobile application rolled into a three minute song. It has everything that you could need. First of all, it starts out with her saying that she tried keeping it in and pretending to be someone that she is not. It came out anyway and everyone knows. Moral of the story is that you should be who you are and you will save yourself a lot of time. Once you are able to do that, you will see just how far you are able to go to be the best that you can be. Leave the constraints in the past because that it where they belong. And the others rage and judge because that it their problem and not yours. Just let it go.

Avoiding Professional Burnout

One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to do more of what you like and less of what you dislike. It sounds a bit too easy and you may be asking can you really do that? I mean we all have things that we have to do that we do not like which takes us away from the things that we enjoy doing. The question here becomes how to do we do less of the things that we do not enjoy? The answer is to find way to delegate, outsource, or hire for the responsibilities you repeatedly find yourself resenting each week. Another way is to plan a vacation many months in advance and do not cancel it. This will enable you to plan for it and give you something exciting to look forward to. It might also motivate you to procrastinate less in order to get things done before the time off. You should also take a moment for peace and quiet every day. You can use mobile applications for meditation or take a walk without any of the communication services that are constantly at your fingertips all day. You should also try to read something that is not related to your business at least once a week, it could spark some creativity that might help with the current problems at hand.

Great First Impressions

A first impression is something that you cannot take back. Now you have to think about impressions when you are meeting people in person and online. Fortunately there are somethings that you can do to improve the perception that people have of you. You can ask your current friends what they thought of you before getting to know your little quirks that were probably misinterpreted but they persisted in getting your friendship. You should also smile, even if it looks fake. It will still look better than a stoic expression. You can even practice it on the streets. Once you got that opening, it is even more important to actively listen and this means doing more than just nodding along. You should be able to read the body language, tone, and eye contact in order to listen between the words that the other person is saying. This can even be achieved over video conferencing and internet phones. Make sure that you also ask the right follow up questions. You should also find common ground with the other person. It can be something as simple as liking the same restaurant or disliking how the content management system is run.