“Suits” is a television legal drama series that I watch. The two main characters are Michael “Mike” Ross and Harvey Specter. They’re both lawyers who work at a fictional law firm in New York City called Pearson-Hardman.

In the episode titled “Normandy”, Pearson-Hardman is low on resources due to internal power struggles. In the meantime, Mike and Harvey have a class action suit on their hands: they’re representing a large group of women who were denied promotions due to gender discrimination. They have to argue seven cases, in seven different cities, in two months.

Mike and Harvey are debating how to best marshal their limited resources. They’re not sure what to do, but then Harvey uses the battle of Normandy for inspiration. Here’s the conversation that takes place between Harvey and Mike:

Harvey: “Do you know how we won World War II? Eisenhower had 156,000 men for eight possible invasion points.  Which means 19,500 men per point. Otherwise known as, nothing.”

Mike: “He had to put everything he had into one attack. Normandy.”

Harvey:  “So, the question is, ‘Where is our Normandy?’”

Of course, we know that the Allied Forces—which included the United States—won WWII, and that Normandy was a decisive battle. That is, concentrating all of their resources in one place was the right call. Mike and Harvey made the decision to follow the same approach.

Your Normandy

Most people have a tendency to pursue several different goals at the same time. Often, this means that they end up scattering their energy: they throw some time, money, and other resources at each of their goals, without accomplishing very much on any of them. After all, 19,500 men at eight different points equals defeat.

However, 156,000 men at one point, equals victory. If you currently find yourself trying to purse too many goals at once, ask yourself the following question: “What would happen if I concentrate all of the time, money, and resources that I have available to work on my goals on just one goal?”

The most likely answer is that this strategy would allow you to achieve that goal. Then, once you’ve achieved the first goal, you can move on to the next one. In fact, you’ll probably discover that there’s a domino effect: with each goal that you achieve, the next one becomes easier.

You can choose which of your goals to concentrate your resources on by asking yourself questions such as the following:

• What’s my most important goal?
• Where will my efforts have the most impact?
• Which goal would have the largest positive effect on my life?
• What’s the shortest route to money (this is a question that Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz asks herself when trying to decide which business project to work on)?
• Which of my goals is the most efficient target?
• What’s my Normandy?

Go ahead: choose your Normandy; and then, launch your attack and throw it all you’ve got.

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“The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex.”~ Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At the age of twenty-nine a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life; he devoted the next few years to understanding and deepening his inner transformation and then became a counselor and spiritual teacher.

Tolle is the author of the highly acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller “The Power of Now”, in which he explains that by honoring the present moment all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. The following three happiness tips were taken from his follow-up book, “A New Earth”.

Beware of Your Background Unhappiness

In “A New Earth” Tolle talks about the background unhappiness that most people experience almost constantly. It’s a general feeling of discontentment, resentment, and irritation that’s present in the background as they go through their everyday lives.

This feeling is fed by unconscious thoughts that go along the following lines:

• “There is something that needs to happen in my life before I can be at peace (happy, fulfilled, etc.). And I resent that it hasn’t happened yet.”

• “Something happened in the past that should not have happened and I resent that. If that hadn’t happened I would be at peace now.”

Most people are constantly telling themselves stories of how they’ll be at peace at some point in the future once a certain event happens, or when they reach some goal they’ve set for themselves, or if they become this or that.

Sometimes the story is about how they’ll never achieve peace of mind or happiness because of something that happened in the past. Eckhart Tolle adds that people’s stories could all be entitled: “Why I Cannot Be at Peace Now”.

He goes on to say that in order to be happy we have to make peace with the present moment. Eckhart Tolle shares his observation that after two ducks get into a fight they do the following:

• They separate and float off in opposite directions.
• Then they each flap their wings vigorously a few times to get rid of the surplus energy that built up during the fight.
• After flapping their wings they float on peacefully, as if nothing had happened.

However, if the duck had a human mind, it would probably tell itself a story such as the following:

“I can’t believe he just did that. Who does he think he is? The nerve . . . he has absolutely no consideration of others. He thinks he owns this pond. I’m sure he’s already plotting some new way to annoy me. He’s not getting away with it; I’ll show him.”

The lesson we can learn from the ducks is this: flap your wings. That is, shake off the surplus energy you feel after a negative encounter, let go of the stories you’re telling yourself, and return to the only place of power: the present moment.

In addition, we need to become attentive to our thoughts and emotions. Ask yourself constantly: “Is there any negativity in me at this present moment?” Then watch out for thoughts that attempt to explain or justify this unhappiness but in reality cause it.

Once you become aware of a negative state within yourself you realize that you’re not those thoughts, emotions, or reactions. Instead, you’re the conscious presence that is witnessing those states. And at that moment—in which you create a disconnection between your thoughts and yourself–you can choose to simply change the thoughts and beliefs that are causing the background unhappiness in your life.

Choose Peace Over Drama

Eckhart Tolle also advises that we choose peace over drama. He explains that although we all want peace—that is, we all want to be happy–there is something within each of us that also wants drama and conflict. Think of the following:

• You have an argument with someone;
• You feel you’ve been somehow slighted;
• You’re not properly acknowledged, and so on.

In all of the scenarios above your mind races to defend its position, attack, or blame someone else. Tolle adds the following:

“Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs the drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within that theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?”

Of course, that something that would rather be right than at peace is your ego, and–once again–the way to lessen your ego’s grip over your thought process is to become aware of it. For Tolle the ego is the part of us that identifies with the voice in our head that “comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on.”

The voice may be reliving the past or rehearsing imagined future situations. It regards the past and the future as very important–what happened in the past tells it who it is, and in the future it will achieve some goal it’s pursuing. However, it gives little worth to the present.

By listening to the voice without judging it in any way you’ll realize that “there is the voice” and “here I am listening to it“. It is then that you can override what the voice is saying and instead say to yourself: “I choose to be happy rather than insisting at any cost that I be right”.

Turn Your Work Into a Spiritual Practice by Releasing Your Ego

The subject of the “the flow state” and its relationship to happiness is one that I’ve touched on before in this blog. In “A New Earth”, Eckhart Tolle makes reference to how releasing the ego while we work allows us to be fully present and become one with the task we are performing.

He explains that those who are exceptionally good at what they do are often completely or largely free of ego while performing their work. They’ve taken their attention off of themselves:

• Their petty resentments;
• Their need for recognition;
• Their apprehension over how their work will be perceived by others, and so on.

Instead, they’ve placed their attention fully on the task that they’re performing. They may not know it, but their work has become a spiritual practice: when they work they become one with what they’re doing.

When you achieve this state of flow you’re no longer worrying if your book will be accepted by your publisher or that someone else might get the credit for your ideas. In addition, you’re no longer reliving some uncomfortable situation that happened to you that morning or last week. You’re simply present with what you’re doing and firmly rooted in the moment.

That is, you’ve quieted your ego and are completely at peace.

Conclusion

Do the following:

• Become aware of the stories you’re constantly telling yourself in the back of your mind of why you can’t be happy now;
• Decide that being happy–and at peace– is more important to you than being right; and
• Release your ego while you’re working so that you can become one with what you’re doing and–at least while you’re exercising your craft–you can forget your petty grievances and everyday concerns.

Follow Eckhart Tolle’s advice in a “A New Earth” in order to be happy and live your best life.

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“Picture this: you with a big block of time; a serene, aesthetically pleasing hotel suite with free daily massages, a pool, and a delightful café; a privacy agreement signed by encouraging family members, friends and coworkers (though you may, of course, call them); breakfast in bed from room service with abundant choices from bacon and espresso to granola and green tea; pads of paper and a box of pens in your favorite colors; and an absolutely perfect laptop.”
– from “Write. 10 Days to Overcome Writer’s Block. Period.” by Karen E. Peterson, Ph.D

Since the above scenario is not very likely to take place for most people, here are nine creativity-sparking tips to help inspire you when the laundry needs to be done, you feel a cold coming on, and the cat just knocked over everything on your nightstand.

1. Isabel Allende is one of the world’s most famous writers; she’s written over a dozen books, starting with the acclaimed 1982 novel, “The House of the Spirits”. Several of her books–which are filled with magic realism, where the mystical merges with quotidian life–have been made into motion pictures. She had this to say about her writing process for “The House of Spirits” (Source):

“I was writing at night only because I had a day job; I worked in a school. And I had two shifts, from seven o’clock in the morning until one o’clock. And then from one o’clock until seven o’clock in the evening. So it was 12 hours, the day job. No lunch break. And I could write a book at night. So when my students sometimes say, “Oh, I don’t have time to write,” I say, Get up earlier. Stay up later. There’s always a way to do it if you want to. It’s like when you fall in love, there is always a way that you will get together, even if it’s behind a door.”

Stop telling yourself that you don’t have the time to write, paint, make music, and so on. Like Allende, find time to work on your craft whenever you can.

2. Follow Hugh MacLeod’s advice: hang a sign in a prominent place where you’ll be sure to see it every day that says “Create or die!”.

3. Karen E. Peterson, whom you’ll remember from the quote at the top of this blog post, suggests that you honor your creative work by giving it a home. Go to an office supply store and purchase a receptacle for your bursts of creativity: a plastic folder, an index card box, a shoe box to collect fabric samples, a container for storing your art supplies, and so on.

4. In “The Writer’s Book of Wisdom”, Steven Taylor Goldsberry explains that your creativity is tied to physical movement. He says the following:

“If you wait to be inspired before you start writing, if you wait to experience that bolt of soul-clarifying insight, you’re a fool and have no business being a writer. Write. The physical act itself will free the imagination. In this sense writing is like dancing, or sports, where the expression of grace comes only through movement.”

5. Jan Allsopp writes that when she can’t begin or progress on her creative work, it’s usually her inner perfectionist raising its ugly head. She explains that she has become too precious about her project: the idea in her head is so wonderful, that she couldn’t possible do it justice. So she procrastinates by going online to look at the work of others.

The way in which Allsopp overcomes procrastination is by making her idea less precious. She does this through volume. Here’s what she says:

“Instead of beginning the one perfect work, I begin 7. Or 52. Or 3 if I’m being a bit lazy. How can you be precious about 7 paintings!? Well, you can, but to a much lesser extent. I can even convince myself sometimes that it is OK to have, say 2 of those as just pure experimentation. As I progress on my array of works, some naturally slip into the ‘later’ basket and others I become obsessed with, working at them until they are done.”

6. Creativity expert Michael Michalko gave an interview in which he shares different creativity techniques. One of these is note-taking. Michalko explains that Walt Whitman would collect ideas to stimulate his creativity. Any time he had an idea, he would write it down on a slip of paper. He would then place these slips of paper into different envelopes, each one titled according to the subject matter.

Whenever he felt the need to spark a new idea, he would look through the relevant envelopes. Whitman would then retrieve several of these ideas and look for ways to weave them together, like a tapestry. These “idea tapestries” would often be the foundation for a new poem or essay.

7. Bruna Martinuzzi–founder of Clarion Enterprises Ltd.–wrote in a blog post for AMEX that if you don’t use your talents, they will become corroded. She adds that people often allow their talents to go unused because they worry about what others will think if they fail. Martinuzzi calls this need for approval from others a “mental prison”. She encourages people to ask themselves the following two questions:

• What have you left untried because of fears?
• What is the cost to you when you let your talents rust?

8. If your muse has gone AWOL, you may need creativity prompts to coax her back. In “The Writer’s Book of Matches”, the staff of the literary journal Fresh Boiled Peanuts offers thousands of creativity prompts to get your creative fires burning. Here are three of the prompts they offer:

“Upon reading the contents of his teenage stepdaughter’s diary, the man is left fearing for his life.”

“In the wee hours of every morning, a night watchman spends his time composing the symphony he’s always dreamed of.”

“During his third night out of town, a traveling salesman discovers a voodoo doll in his hotel room.”

Here’s a prompt from “The Writer’s Block” by Jason Rekulak:

“Trace the journey of a five dollar bill through the lives of five different owners.”

9. Mark McGuinness from the blog “Lateral Action” suggests that you stop trying to be original. He explains that ” . . . Your obvious is your talent. It may seem dull or unremarkable to you, but to others, with different life experience, it will seem fresh and surprising.” So instead of racking your brain trying to come up with something wild and whacky that has never been seen before, simply show up and be yourself, and trust that it will be enough.

Now, go do something creative.

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Decision-making is an essential life skill. After all, the decisions we make shape our lives. However, most people aren’t taught decision-making techniques, so they end up making mistakes that they could have avoided if they had taken the time to learn how to make good decisions.

In this post you’ll discover three effective methods for making better decisions. The three methods are the following:

• The Four-Step Natural Brilliance Model
• The WRAP Method
• Six Thinking Hats

Each of these decision making methods is explained below.

The Four-Step Natural Brilliance Model

In his book, “Natural Brilliance”, Paul R. Scheele–founder of “Learning Strategies Corporation”–describes a four step model for making decisions. The four step model is as follows: Release, Notice, Respond, and Witness.

1. Release. Drain all stress from your body and mind. A relaxed body and mind promotes the optimal state for analyzing any situation; a state of relaxed awareness. Being stressed and tense makes us narrow our focus and therefore reduces the number of options we can come up with to solve the problem or make a decision.

2. Notice. Become aware of what is going on around you and within you. By combining steps one and two, release and notice, you achieve a state of relaxed alertness. With relaxed alertness you increase the amount of information that you have about the situation and are better able to come up with a rich set of options to choose from.

3. Respond. Take action. Anything that you do will have an effect, which means that by acting you’ll have more feedback with which to work. By acting you will either have more information on what works, or you’ll have more information on what doesn’t work. In either case, movement will provide you with real and immediate feedback.

4. Witness.  Pretend to sit across from yourself and take on the perspective of a wise and trusted counselor. Have a conversation with yourself about the results that you got when you acted. Decide how to best work with the feedback you received from your action so that you can modify your response and act once again. Continue following these four steps until you reach the desired outcome.

The WRAP Method

Chip and Dan Heath are accomplished educators and idea collectors. These two brothers are the authors of the best-selling book, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”. They have a new book coming out at the end of this month on how to make decisions.

In “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work”, the Heath brothers explain that most decision-making methods–including the pros and cons method used by Benjamin Franklin–are flawed because they fail to take into account the four villains of decision-making.

The Four Villains of Decision-Making

According to the Heath brothers, the four villains of decision-making are the following:

1. Narrow framing: The tendency to define our choices too narrowly, or to set them in binary terms. Here are three examples:

• Narrow framing: Should I break up with my partner?
• Better framing: How can I make this relationship better?

• Narrow framing: Should I buy a car?
• Better framing: How can I best use my money so that my family will be better off?

• Narrow framing: Should I accept this job offer?
• Better framing: What’s the best way for me to generate income?

2. The confirmation bias: In most situations we allow our guts to come to a decision, and then we look for information that will support that decision. That is, we have a tendency to spotlight the information that supports the conclusion we’ve come to and to disregard any information that opposes it.

3. Short-term emotions: Our short-term emotions often lead us to make the wrong choices.

For example, suppose that you’re offered a job that pays a lot more money than what you’re currently making. Your short-term emotion will probably be happiness at the prospect of making more money. However, this short-term happiness could lead you to accept the job offer without taking into account things like following:

• That the job is in a city far away from your friends and family;
• That the work you’ll be doing doesn’t have much meaning for you; and
• That the person you’ll be working for has a difficult temperament.

That is, the short-term flush of happiness could lead you to make the wrong decision.

4. Overconfidence: People have a tendency to think that they know more than they do about the future and how it will unfold. They feel certain that  X or Y will take place, and they make decisions based on their predictions. However, a lot of the time it turns out that their predictions about the future are wrong.

The Four Steps of the WRAP Method

In “Decisive”, Chip and Dan Heath offer a four step process for decision-making which takes the four villains described above into account. They use the acronym “WRAP” to help people remember the steps of the process which they recommend. WRAP stands for the following:

1. Widen your choices. Avoid the narrow definition of your choices. Instead, push for new and better options. Ask yourself how you can expand your set of choices.

2. Reality-test your assumptions. Ask yourself how you can get outside your head and gather information you can trust. Pretend that you’re a trial lawyer and that you have to argue for the decision that you’re thinking of making, and then take the other side and argue against it.

3. Attain distance before deciding. Broaden your perspective by getting some distance from your short-term emotions. One way to do this is to ask yourself how you would advice a friend trying to make a decision similar to the one that you have to make. Another way is to ask yourself what someone you admire would decide under similar circumstances.

4. Prepare to be wrong. Suppose that you’re wrong, and things don’t turn out the way in which you think they will. Are you prepared for that scenario? What steps can you take in order to be prepared in case you’re wrong? What sort of “insurance” can you set up in order to protect yourself in case the future doesn’t unfold like you think it will?

The Heath brothers argue that if you follow the WRAP process you’ll be able to keep the four villains of decision-making at bay, and you’ll start making better decisions.

Six Thinking Hats – Looking at a Decision from Several Points of View

The “Six Thinking Hats” is a decision-making process or method created by creativity expert Edward de Bono. Basically, it involves looking at a problem from six different perspectives by “wearing” six different hats.

The six hats are the following:

White Hat: With this thinking hat, you gather all of the information that you possibly can about your subject matter. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

Red Hat: Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Ask: “What do I feel I should do?”; “What are my emotions telling me to do?”; and “What does my intuition say about this?” You can also ask yourself what the emotional reaction of others will be if you make the choice that you’re contemplating.

Black Hat: Look at things pessimistically, thinking of everything that could go wrong. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This highlights weaknesses in possible courses of action that need to be addressed. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans in case problems should arise.

Yellow Hat: When wearing the yellow hat you should think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it.

Green Hat: The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to the problem you’re facing or get more creative when it comes to choosing a course of action. There’s a whole range of creativity tools you can use while you’re wearing this hat.

Blue Hat: The Blue Hat stands for process control. When you’re wearing this hat you make sure that you gave adequate time and attention to each of the thinking styles represented by the other five hats. In addition, you should sum up everything that you learned while wearing the other hats, and come to a decision.

Conclusion

Make sure that your life moves forward in the direction that you want it to by making better decisions. The three methods described above are a great place to start.

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In 1772 a man named Joseph Priestley wrote a letter to Benjamin Franklin asking for his advice on a decision he was trying to make.

Benjamin Franklin wrote back indicating that he couldn’t tell Priestley what to do, since he didn’t have enough information about Priestley’s problem. However, he could tell Priestley how to make his decision.

Here’s the decision-making process proposed by Franklin, in his own words:

When these difficult Cases occur, they are difficult chiefly because while we have them under Consideration all the Reasons pro and con are not present to the Mind at the same time; but sometimes one Set present themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of Sight. Hence the various Purposes or Inclinations that alternately prevail, and the Uncertainty that perplexes us.

To get over this, my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.

And tho’ the Weight of Reasons cannot be taken with the Precision of Algebraic Quantities, yet when each is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better, and am less likely to take a rash Step; and in fact I have found great Advantage from this kind of Equation, in what may be called Moral or Prudential Algebra.

Does the decision-making process recommended by Franklin sound familiar? It should, since it’s basically the pros and cons list. Franklin’s letter to Priestley appears to have been the birth of this decision-making method. The process described by Franklin goes as follows:

1. Take a sheet of paper and create two columns by folding the sheet in half. Title one of the columns “pro”, and other column “con”.  Basically, you’re creating a visual tool to add clarity to your thinking.

2. Take a few days to think about the reasons for and against taking the measure that you’re considering. As each reason occurs to you, write it down on the sheet of paper in the appropriate column. By taking a few days to think about the decision that you’re trying to make, you force your brain to come up with all of the positive and negative aspects of taking the measure you’re considering.

3. Once you have your completed pros and cons list in front of you, assign weights to each item on your list depending on its importance.

4. When the weight of a item on your “pro” list is equal to the weight of an item on your “con” list, strike both of them out.

5. What is left in the balance is the choice you need to make. Wait a few more days and, if nothing new occurs to you, act on the decision you’ve made.

Conclusion

And there you have it: moral algebra.

Learning how to make good decisions is vital to living your best life. Therefore, my next post will also cover the topic of how to make good decisions. In fact, one of the methods that I’m going to propose to you comes from Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers who argue that Franklin’s decision-making method is flawed due to biases in our thinking.

Stay tuned for more on how to make better decisions.

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Brain plasticity, or neuro-plasticity, refers to the ability of the brain to change and adapt, and even rewire itself. A mounting body of evidence suggests that our brains contain more plasticity than previously thought, and that there are many things we can do to strengthen our brain.

Below you’ll find 20 brain hacks to help you keep your noggin in tip-top shape .

1. For brain health, eat two or three servings of fish weekly. Fish is rich in omega 3 fatty acids which are essential for brain function and development. These healthy fats have amazing brain power: higher dietary omega 3 fatty acids are linked to lower dementia and stroke risks; slower mental decline; and may play a vital role in enhancing memory, especially as we get older.

2. Learn to Juggle. Brain researchers at the University of Regensburg in Germany have found that learning to juggle can change brain structure. Researchers conducted a study in which they divided 24 people into two groups: 12 people were taught to juggle and the other 12 were not.

Magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure the size of different areas within the brains of the subjects. Brain scans were taken before anyone practiced juggling, three months after the jugglers practiced, and three months after the jugglers stopped practicing.

Here were the results:

• At the first brain scan, there were no differences in the brains of the study participants.
• However, at the second brain scan, a significant expansion was found in two areas of the brains of the 12 jugglers, areas that are important for processing information related to moving objects. No changes were seen in the brains of non-jugglers at the second scan.
• At brain scan #3, after the jugglers stopped juggling, the brain expansion seen earlier was reduced. So, keep it up.

3. Make blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Research in animals shows that blueberries help protect the brain from oxidative stress and may reduce the effects of age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Studies also show that diets rich in blueberries significantly improved both the learning capacity and motor skills of aging rats, making them mentally equivalent to much younger rats.

4. Challenge your brain. The brain, just like the body, needs to be kept in shape so that it can perform at its optimum level. Your brain is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it will get.

For some great free games to exercise your brain visit the “Brain Metrix” site. One that’s lots of fun and which will stimulates your creativity is “silver ball”.

5. Get enough sleep. Without adequate rest, the brain’s ability to function quickly deteriorates:

• Concentration levels drop and memory becomes impaired.
• The brain’s ability to problem solve is greatly impaired.
• Decision-making abilities are compromised, and the brain falls into rigid thought patterns that make it difficult to generate new problem-solving ideas.

Aim to sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night.

6. Do lateral thinking puzzles. The brain becomes complacent if you stop stimulating it. Lateral thinking puzzles demand a creative approach, an open mind, and an ability to construct a variety of possible answers before settling on the right one. This helps keep the brain on its toes. You can try any of the following:

• Outstanding Lateral Thinking Puzzles
• Cunning Lateral Thinking Puzzles
• Colorful Lateral Thinking Puzzles

7. Exercise. Recent studies have linked exercise to brain cell growth. In one study, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, the brain cells in the hippocampus doubled in adult rats that exercised on running wheels.

The book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain explains that you can lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat. Scientific evidence demonstrates that aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance.

8. Drink water. Carla Hannaford, Ph.D., author of Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, explains that the brain is between 75 and 90% water.  In addition, as a major component of blood, water is vital for transporting oxygen to the brain.

Drinking water throughout the day improves concentration and focus.  Many of us have a habit of choosing soft drinks, carbonated beverages, and juices over water. Start replacing these drinks with water.

9. Relax.  Neuroscientists have found that continuous or intense stress can harm brain cells, brain structure and brain function, causing such side effects as memory problems or depression. In one study reported by the Society for Neuroscience, when researchers stressed rats by restraining them, cells in the hippocampus—a brain area important for memory—withered. Therefore, reducing stress is vital to maintain a healthy brain.

10. Make guacamole. Every organ in the body depends on blood flow, especially the heart and brain. Eating fruits like avocados–yes, avocados are fruit–can enhance blood flow, offering a simple, tasty way to fire up brain cells.

11. Put together jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles quiet the mind and induce a state of creative meditation. They tap into our creativity and rewire our brains to make “connections”. Putting together jigsaw puzzles stimulates both hemispheres of the brain:

• The left brain hemisphere, our linear, analytical side, sees all of the separate pieces and attempts to sort them out logically.
• The right brain hemisphere, our creative side, sees the “big picture” and works intuitively.

In exercising both sides of the brain at the same time, we create actual “connections” between the left and right sides. These connections increase our ability to learn, to comprehend, and to remember. In addition, completing a puzzle, or even just the successful placement of one piece, encourages the production of dopamine, a brain chemical that increases learning and memory.

Try to make it challenging: choose puzzles with 500 pieces or more.

12. Eat chocolate.  Dark chocolate has powerful antioxidant properties, and contains natural stimulants like caffeine, which can enhance focus and concentration.

13. Go out and socialize. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health used data gathered from 1998 to 2004 from the Health and Retirement Study to study the effects of social isolation on mental decline.

Their findings suggest that strong social ties, through friends, family and community groups, can preserve our brain health as we age and that social isolation may be an important risk factor for cognitive decline in the elderly.

14. Do things differently. The brain loves novelty. When you challenge your own assumptions, look at things from many different perspectives, change your routines, break your habits, and so on, you actually open new pathways in the brain and nervous system. Try the following:

• Brushing your teeth, eating, drinking, opening doors, using the remote, etc. but done with your opposite hand instead of the hand you normally use.
• Taking a shower, eating, tying your shoes and so on, done with your eyes closed

15. Learn something new. Challenging a specific part of the brain encourages it to grow. There are numerous studies showing that challenging a specific part of the brain encourages that region to grow and develop, as in the well-publicized example of the London taxi drivers, who develop a larger hippocampus – the part of the brain responsible for spatial memory – as they learn their way around the city.

16. Smell the sandalwood. Michelle Schoffro Cook, doctor of natural medicine and author of The Brain Wash has the following to say about the benefits of sandalwood:

“Natural scents have a direct pathway to the brain and research shows that some chemical constituents of aromatherapy oils, particularly . . . sesquiterpenes [a chemical compund found naturally in plants] can cross the blood-brain barrier and increase oxygen flow to the brain.”

Extra oxygen increases energy, immune function, positive moods, and learning. Frankincense and sandalwood are particularly effective at increasing oxygen levels in the brain.

17. Improve your creative thinking. Michael Michalko explains in “Cracking Creativity” that–when confronted with a problem–people typically look for a solution by thinking about past problems they’ve encountered. Because a certain solution worked in the past, they’re confident that it’s the best solution for the problem at hand. That is, they look for the expected, conventional response to the problem.

For example, when asked “What’s one-half of thirteen?” most people will say “six and a half”. This is thinking reproductively based on similar problems they’ve had in the past.

However, creative people think productively, not reproductively. When confronted with a problem they look for all the different ways they could possibly solve it, instead of just asking how they’ve been taught to solve it. Then they come up with many different responses, some of which are unconventional.

This is how a creative thinker might answer the question “What’s one-half of thirteen?”:

• Thir-teen (four letters on each side) = 4
• XIII = XI and II = 11 and 2
• 1 and 3

Productive thinking is about generating as many choices as one possibly can. A creative thinker thinks about the problem from many different angles. This gives them a number of possible solutions to choose from.

The next time you’re confronted with a problem, instead of jumping to the first obvious solution, take a step back and see if you can find several alternatives. By stimulating your creativity in this way you’ll be keeping your brain on its toes.

18. Improve your critical thinking. Just as you should improve your creative thinking, you should improve your critical thinking. In Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms, the word “critical,” implies “an effort to see a thing clearly and truly so that not only the good in it may be distinguished from the bad and the perfect from the imperfect, but also that it as a whole may be fairly judged and valued.”

Alvaro Fernandez, co-founder of sharperbrains.com, explains that instead of just believing what you’re told or what you read you should always ask yourself, “Where is the evidence?”. He adds that even if an article has been endorsed by 20 Harvard Medical School researchers and doctors, nothing should substitute your own brain in action.

Other aspects of critical thinking are to think of counterarguments–to make sure that you’ve examined both sides of the issue–, to look for an author’s motivations, and to check if what you’re reading or what you’re being told is in alignment with your own personal experience.

19. Think positive, loving thoughts. A decade of research at the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior led by neuroscientist Richard Davidson found that choosing specific thoughts and emotions can permanently change the working of the brain.

When participants practiced feeling love and compassion, their brains went into action — connecting and building new circuitry at high speed.

Davidson has concluded that emotions play a strong role in mental acuity and that spending just 10 minutes a day focusing on feeling loving and kind can make you smarter — and happier.

20. Choose the Indian Restaurant Instead of the Steakhouse. Scientists from the University of California discovered that curcumin–a yellow-coloured compound found in the curry spice turmeric–can slow down the onset of memory loss. Small doses of curry could also help protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease. Curries with a yellow tinge will have the highest curcumin count.

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Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review. In his book, “18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done” he describes a ritual which he uses every workday in order to make sure that he makes the best use of his time.

As you can guess from the title of the book, this ritual, or productivity plan, takes 18 minutes a day to complete.

Before you can apply Bregman’s 18 minute plan you need to take a preparatory step: each year you need to establish five areas of focus. Then, each day, you do the following:

• Take 5 minutes at the beginning of each day to plan your day.
• Stop once an hour during the eight hours that you spend working and take a minute to refocus.
• At the end of each work day take 5 minutes to review.

There’s more on Bregman’s 18 minute plan below.

Set Five Areas of Focus

Bregman indicates emphatically that you can’t do it all. If you keep telling yourself, “I just don’t have the time to do everything that I want to do”, Bregman would agree with you. However, you do have the time to do those things that are most important to you.

Therefore, before you can apply the 18 minute plan, you need to identify the things that are most important to you. You do this by setting five areas of focus at the beginning of the year. What’s an area of focus? In Bregman’s own words, “an area of focus establishes activities you want to spend your time doing”.

For example, here are the five areas of focus which Bregman set for himself last year:

1. Do Great Work With Current Clients
2. Seek Out New Business Opportunities
3. Speak and Write About My Ideas
4. Start a Leadership School
5. Nurture Myself and My Family

Once you have your five areas of focus, you’re ready to apply the 18 minute plan.

Take Five Minutes to Plan Your Day

At the beginning of each day you’re going to take five minutes to plan your day. First, take a look at your five areas of focus. Ask yourself: What can I realistically accomplish today in my areas of focus? This will allow you to generate a list a of tasks, or a to do list, for the day.

Second, transfer the tasks from your to do list to your calendar. Transferring  tasks to your calendar will allow you to achieve two things:

• You’ll be creating a “when” and “where” for each item on your to do list, which will ensure that you get them done.
• You’ll be creating a boundary: a to do list can go on and on forever, but when you put things in a calendar, you have to limit yourself to the amount of time that you have available. If your entire to do list does not fit in your calendar for the day, then cross off the items with the least priority.

In essence, what you’re doing during the five minutes of planning is structuring your day in a way that guarantees that you’ll be working on those things that are most important to you.

Take Eight Minutes to Refocus Throughout the Day

Set an alarm–it can be on your computer, your iPhone, and so on–to go off once an hour during the eight hours that you spend working. When the alarm rings, take a deep breath and ask yourself these two questions:

• Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?
• Am I being who I most want to be right now?

Those two questions will interrupt what you’re doing so that you can make sure that you’re working on the right things. Are you still following your calendar, or did you get distracted? If you lost focus, simply recommit to making better use of the next hour.

Take Five Minutes to Review Your Day

At the end of your workday take five minutes to review your day. Ask yourself questions like the following:

• How did my day go?
• Where did I succeed?
• What challenges did I face?
• What did I learn?
• What’s working?
• What’s not working?
• What changes do I need to make?

These five minutes of review at the end of each day will make sure that you stay on track.

Conclusion

When you get to the end of each day, to the end of each year, and–ultimately–to the end of your life, you want to be able to say that you used your time well. You didn’t do it all, but you did those things which were most important to you. That is, you lived your best life. The 18 minute plan, or daily ritual, explained above is a great tool for achieving that objective.

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You’ve probably heard this adage countless of times: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This, of course, is Parkinson’s law.

In a nutshell, Parkinson’s law means that if you give yourself a week to complete a task, said task–even if it was a simple task to begin with–will increase in complexity so that you’ll end up having to use the entire week in order to complete it.

Parkinson’s law doesn’t just apply to time management; it applies to everything:

• Your belongings will expand in order to fill all of the storage space that you have available. You’ve seen this happen: you move into a bigger apartment and, at first, you have lots of space available. However, within a remarkably short amount of time every nook and cranny seems to be occupied by a piece of furniture, books, sports equipment, knick-knacks, and so on.

• Your needs will expand so that you spend all of the money that you have available. Every month you tell yourself that you’re going to save ten percent of your paycheck; however, all sorts of things “come up”–a sale, a gift you have to get for a friend, and so on–and by the end of the month all of the money is gone.

• Your appetite will increase in accordance to the amount of food that’s on your plate, so that you’ll end up eating everything that’s on the plate (if you love to eat, as I do, you know that this is true).

The end result of the application of Parkinson’s law is that you don’t have enough time to do everything that you need to get done; you don’t have any money left over at the end of the month in order to set up a six month emergency fund; you’re surrounded by clutter; and, since you’re constantly overeating, you’re putting on weight.

Being aware of Parkinson’s law can radically improve your life because of the simple solution that it offers. The obvious solution is to break Parkinson’s law by setting limits:

• Decide what tasks you need to get done, and then set a limit on the amount of time that you have available to perform each task;
• Set a limit on the amount of money that you have available for spending;
• Set a limit on how much storage space you have available;
• Set a limit on the size of your food servings; and so on.

Each of these limits is further explained below.

Set Time Limits

Setting time limits and deadlines is the most straightforward way to break Parkinson’s law. When you shorten the amount of time that you have available to complete a given task, you’re making sure that you’ll focus on the essential elements of the task.

For example, if I give myself an open-ended amount of time to write a blog post, it takes me forever to write it. I can spend hours surfing the internet looking for the perfect topic to write about; once I choose a topic I’ll research it to death; and I’ll spend far too much time writing the post–picking the right words, working on the sentence structure, adding more examples, and on and on.

The solution that I’ve found to this problem is to set limits for each stage of the writing process. And it works beautifully:  once I’ve reached the time limit for one step, I move on to the next one. In the end, I publish whatever I have once my time is up.

Set Storage Limits

A few years ago I lived in a large apartment. The apartment was filled with my furniture and my “stuff”. I had gotten so used to my “stuff” that when I thought of decluttering I couldn’t even imagine what I could do without.

However, I left my job at the Panama Canal and started working for myself, and I moved to a smaller place in order to save money. During the move I got rid of a lot of things that just wouldn’t fit in my new apartment. Today I’m comfortable in the smaller apartment, and not only do I not miss the stuff that I threw out or gave away during the move, but I can’t even remember what it was.

When it comes to storage space, we all have a tendency to accumulate more and more things until all of the storage space is filled up. The solution, then, is to limit the amount of storage space that you have available. Here’s an example of how you can do this:

• If you have book clutter, give away all of the books that you don’t really need any more and limit yourself to one bookshelf. Then, since you’ve limited the amount of storage that you have available for books, if you want to bring a new book into your home, one of the old ones has to go.

Set Portion Limits

Last year, New York City banned restaurants, movie theaters and sports arenas from selling sweetened drinks in sizes larger than 16 ounces. The reason for the ban is that the United States–as well as other nations–has an obesity epidemic. In addition, there’s research to support that shrinking the size of food and drink containers helps to shrink people’s waistlines.

University of Pennsylvania epidemiology and nursing professor Karen Glanz explains that people tend to drink what’s in the container they purchase. Therefore, if they’re forced to buy a smaller container due to the ban, they’ll drink less sugary soda (which means that they’ll be consuming less calories). In addition, another Penn professor has the following to say:

“Other research … has showed that when you divide the same amount of food into two small containers, rather than one large container, it reduces consumption [because] people notice their progress more when consuming from smaller containers . . . ”

Based on the research cited above, do the following:

• Instead of buying a can of Pringles, buy the single-size serving.
• Instead of buying a bag of M&Ms, buy the smaller “fun size”.
• When you’re serving your cereal in the morning, choose a smaller bowl.

Set Money Limits

A derivative of Parkinson’s law is that expenditures rise to meet income. As you earn more money, your needs increase and you end up spending more money. Therefore, in order to succeed financially, you need to break Parkinson’s law when it comes to money. Again, you do this by setting limits.

Motivational speaker and author Brian Tracy explains the following:

“Here is a rule that will almost guarantee that you become wealthy over the course of your working lifetime: Save and invest 50 percent of any increase you earn in your salary or compensation for the rest of your career.

You can spend the other 50 percent of the increase on improving your standard of living. But resolve today to save half of every increase for the rest of your career. This discipline alone will ensure that you achieve financial independence, probably several years before you expect.”

Of course, the other limit that you can set is to have a portion of your salary directly deposited into a savings account each month. Then, you’re free to spend whatever money you have left. Improve your finances by setting limits on the amount of money that you have available for spending.

Conclusion

Break Parkinson’s Law–by setting time, money, storage, and portion limits–and radically improve your life. What limits are you going to start setting in order to break Parkinson’s law? Please share in the comments section

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Here are 40 fun ideas:

1. Discover how much–or how little–you know about geography by taking the quizzes on this site. I took the quiz on the countries in Africa (and I definitely need to retake it).

2. Everyone knows how to do something, whether it’s making a great spaghetti sauce, growing herbs, or creating an awesome PowerPoint presentation. Create a how-to of your skill and post it on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, hang it up on your supermarket’s bulletin board.

3. Draw simple pictures on napkins and put them in your children’s lunch bags. Here’s a Flickr stream of napkins drawn by a father for his daughters’ lunch bags over a five year period: “The Napkin Drawings”. You can also try sandwich art.

4. Purchase something–it doesn’t have to be expensive–as a symbol for your need to create: it can be a sketchbook, a coffee cup with an Impressionist painting stamped on it, a journal with a great cover, a poster of a Picasso painting, and so on.

5. The great Katherine Hepburn was once on a list of actors considered to be “box office poison”. She acquired the film rights to “The Philadelphia Story”, gave herself the lead female role, and staged her comeback. The film was a big hit. Have things been going awry for you lately? Start planning your comeback.

6. Memorize your favorite poem. Mine is “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” by Pablo Neruda (and yes, I have it memorized).

7. In his 1942 story “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov offered his now-famous Three Laws of Robotics:

• First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
• Second Law: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and
• Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Come up with your own three laws of robotics (or five, or ten).

8. Host a marathon of movies written and produced by the Coen brothers. Here are three of them:

• “Burn After Reading”
• “Fargo”
• “Raising Arizona”

9. Follow Benjamin Franklin’s advice: take out a book by your favorite author and copy an entire chapter by hand so that you get a feel for the flow and composition of great writing.

10. Create fan fiction based on your favorite book. As an example, there’s a whole cottage industry based on adaptations of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (including one in which Mr. Darcy is a werewolf , and another one in which he’s a vampire).

11. Homer began”The  Odyssey” with an incantation to the muse:

”Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy”

Create your own incantation to the muse.

12.Write a cinquain, which is a five-line poem. Here are the rules:

• First line: One word which tells you what the cinquain is about (the title).
• Second line: Two adjectives which describe the word in the first line.
• Third line: Three action verbs that relate to the word in the first line.
• Fourth line: Four words that indicates a feeling related to the word in the first line.
• Fifth line: One word; a synonym of the word in the first line, or something that wraps it up.

Here’s an example:

Fall
Crisp, Cold
Falling, Raking, Celebrating
Enjoying a lovely day
Autumn

13. Read someone’s palm (make it up as you go along). Alternatively you could use Tarot cards or Runes.

14. Go to a playground and hang upside down from the monkey bars.

15. Make a sock puppet. Pretend it’s your alter ego.

16. Make a recording of your loved ones’ laughter.

17. Make up a knock-knock joke. Tell it to your friends and see if anyone laughs.

18. In the last Miss Universe pageant, Miss Venezuela was asked, “If you could pass a new law, what would it be?” I didn’t watch the show, but apparently she gave a really awkward answer. What would your answer have been?

19. Write a letter to the President of your country explaining in detail how you would solve one of the country’s biggest problems.

20. Set a beautiful table and photograph it.

21. Write your Creativity Manifesto. Tape it to the wall where you can see it.

22. Make a list of the ten things you most enjoyed doing as a child. Do at least two activities from the list.

23. Learn the lyrics to a song you love. Sing it in the shower.

24. Leave a dollar somewhere in public for someone else to find. Sit somewhere out of sight and watch to see who finds it. (I found $25 on the ground on Sunday; finding money is one of the greatest feelings in the world.)

25. Buy a goldfish and name it after your favorite composer.

26. Create a flow chart of your morning routine.

27. Come up with a comic strip loosely based on your family members.

28. Have you ever had an Elvis sandwich? It’s made of peanut butter, bananas, and bacon, and it’s named after Elvis Presley because he loved to eat them. Invent a sandwich with your favorite ingredients. Name it after yourself.

29. Learn a magic trick.

30. Get yourself a latch hook kit . You get a canvas with a shape on it, a latch hook, and the pre-cut yarn in all the colors that you’ll need. I love these because they make me feel crafty, even though I’m not. And for the men who think that crafts are only for women, know this: Ryan Gosling knits.

31. Come up with a great title for the novel you’ll write someday. Tom Robbins has great names for his novels:

• “Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas”

• “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”

• “Skinny Legs and All”

• “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”

32. Learn to make Pierogi.

33. Solve the mystic square — also called the 15 puzzle or the 15 sliding puzzle (I solved it; you can do it too).

34. Come up with 100 uses for paper rolls. Here’s one: cover a toilet paper roll in peanut butter, roll it through bird seeds, and put it up on a tree branch to attract birds.

35. Learn to do the Hula Hoop.

36. Create a scavenger hunt for a kids’ party.

37. Take a photograph of the same scene at different hours of the day (Monet-style).

38. Learn to hold a steady beat on a drum.

39. I love A to Z projects. Seth Godin–the marketing guru–has a new book out titled “V is for Vulnerable”. It’s an A to Z on how to be more creative. Here are three examples:

• A – Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance . . . Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn’t make you better.
• B- Birl that log . . . commit to feet in motion until you’re birling.
• C – Commitment is the only thing that gets you through the chasm.

Come up with your own A to Z project.

40. Ride a carousel or a Ferris Wheel.

Here are 6000 fun ideas.

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