Human Capital

We manage our time around what truly matters to us, and our difficulty is not in finding more available time but instead in better prioritizing the time we have.

There are 168 hours in each week. How do we find time for what matters most? Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she's discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments each week, while underestimating the time we have to ourselves. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can "build the lives we want in the time we've got."

Effective meetings aren't simply a matter of having an agenda and starting on time. Here's how to run meetings like a pro.

Meetings are a necessary part of professional life, but most of us spend too much time in "bad" meetings - meetings that are inefficient or worst, ineffective. Sarah Goff-Dupont shares tips on the elements, characteristics and composition of successful meetings, complete with a downloadable chart. A continuous improvement meeting plan so you can have more time to actually create value.

Predicting future success based on the three criteria Warren Buffett uses to choose the people in which he trusts with his investments.

If you had €1000 and you could invest that money in someone's future, who would you bet on? Is it yourself? Outstanding speaker Conor Neill from IESE Business School illustrates how to self apply the three criteria Warren Buffett uses to choose the people in which he trusts with his investments.

Explaining why the office is not a good place to get great work done, and offering three suggestions to make work work.

An interesting Ted Talk inspired by BlackBerry about ''Why work doesn't happen at work''. Experienced manager Jason Fried explains why the office is not the best place for people to do work citing that they face involuntary interruptions from managers and meetings (M&Ms) that are the main problems hindering great work delivery at the office. Jason also argues that people need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get meaningful work done and the office does not necessarily provide such an environment. According to him, people have different places where they go when they want to get things done, like the coffee house or the basement and it's high time to replicate that environment in the workplace. View the Ted Talk now to learn more about the suggestions he gives to make employees deliver great work at the office.

Examining the procrastinator system to think harder about why we procrastinate and how it is different with and without a deadline.

In a very light-hearted and insightful talk, Tim Urban walks us through the inner operation of the mind of a procrastinator. with relatable illustrations, he takes us in a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window - encouraging us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on, and that there are more than one type of procrastination.

Three approaches to uncover, accept, and act on what's true, so we can be more effective at work.

An interesting talk about uncovering the truth by Janice Fraser. The presentation happened at mtpcon, London in 2019 where Janice explained what is the truth and some of the truths we have to accept at work. She also detailed on how she created three approaches to uncover, accept, and act on what’s true, so we can be more effective at work. Open the slides to enjoy the presentation and learn more about the approaches that she created.

Time is our scarcest resource.

Most people value money more than time and make decisions based on the present value of money vs. the future value of their money investment (ROI). In this illuminating article Ash Maurya explains that exchanging sweat equity for financial expenditure (thinking one is time-rich and cash-poor) is a huge fallacy - and that the true value of one's time is much higher than we anticipate, when we factor in all aspects.

Looking at the elements that make virtual keynotes more engaging, and how to change your mindset when presenting online.

Expert business conference performance artist and a teacher of stagecraft Marcus John Henry Brown share his top tips on how to write craft and perform a virtual talk at a virtual conference in this engaging Ted Talk. He states that virtual conference performers should always picture themselves as a film that the audience is watching from a very distractive environment. As such, the audience can easily switch the film off or stop paying attention. Thus, Marcus suggests that virtual talks need to be concise and exciting to be effective. Let's find out more from the video.

What if multitasking is a key to creativity, rather than a bad habit? Tim Harford explains how great minds like Darwin and Einstein multitasked for decades to unlock their biggest ideas.

What can we learn from the world's most enduringly creative people? They "slow-motion multitask," actively juggling multiple projects and moving between topics as the mood strikes -- without feeling hurried. Author Tim Harford shares how innovators like Einstein, Darwin, Twyla Tharp and Michael Crichton found their inspiration and productivity through cross-training their minds.

The mnemonic ‘Must I do this now’ can help you redefine your priorities, and keep ourselves and our teams focused.

How time tracking can help each of us to visualize where we are spending our life and help to make those "down" times become productive.

How tracking time spent improved the authors' understanding of life and helped create more time for essential activities. Laura Vanderkam notes that the process only took 3 minutes per day and amazingly ended up yielding great results. She started recording her time to know exactly how she spent it. Later, she realized there was more time in her schedule than anticipated that could be utilized for meaningful activities, and that she had enough time for her kids despite being a working parent.

Working smarter, not harder, is the key to better results.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix: How to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important Tasks and Make Real Progress in Your Life

Using small wins to generate motivation, engagement, and creativity.

The Progress Principle is the idea that there is inherit motivational power in small wins. The feeling of accomplishing a goal, achieving an objective, or even as little as completing a task is a key component of motivation. This fact was discovered by Teresa Amabile researching thousands of diary entries of employees to identify what had happened on those days where high motivation was reported. The feeling that an accomplishment had been achieved that day was ranked as most important.

A radical shift from standardized schools is necessary, where natural talents can flourish through personalized learning.

Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning to create conditions where natural talents can flourish. He argues that our education is linear and excludes people from embracing their talents because they only dedicate their whole life targeting one single goal at the end of the education trajectory. Ken concludes that the education system needs a revolution rather than a reformation to achieve a personalized curriculum where people can explore diverse talents. Enjoy the Ted Talk and learn more about why we should brace our natural talents.

Teaching is intricately linked to learning, and by welcoming new knowledge we allow ourselves to learn even from those that we teach.

To Sinek, teaching is as much teaching what you do not know as it is teaching what you do know. This approach gives him an opportunity to better engage his students, learn from their own experiences, and integrate the sharing into his teaching. It is less about being an expert and more about being a curious learner.

Making a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility, and accepting being wrong.

We will do anything to avoid being wrong and get stuck on the need to be right. "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

Scientifically proven ways to learn or improve on creativity.

Creativity is often thought to be innate, as if we either have it or we don't. Child prodigies make us think that some are just born with an exquisite mind, and that the rest of us just have to make do with what we have. Anna Guerrero shares that creativity can be learned, not just in school, but through life experiences as well. She outlines 9 things to boost your imagination, and the one sure-fire proven way to unlocking your creativity.

Approaching learning in a whole new way to master practical knowledge and skills through overcoming the toughest part of learning anything.

Author and skill teacher Josh Kaufman leads this Ted lesson on ''How to learn anything'' sharing how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way. Josh says that as an indoor-working parent he had to master new skills to tend to his child as well as work and the 10,000 hours recommended by professors to be an expert in something new, were not an option. He dived into research and based on his findings, we only need 20 hours to be reasonably good at something, as also proposed in the learning curve. As such, he suggests four simple steps to rapid skill acquisition. Check the Ted Talk to know more about these steps.

Moving from stage-paralysis to expressive self, to use our voice as an instrument and really find the confidence within.

In this fun and personal talk, Caroline shares a story of moving from stage-paralysis to expressive self. Accompanied by an unusual prop, she encourages us to use our voice as an instrument and really find the confidence within.

Showing how the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas.

Author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Shift from a focus on deficits to leveraging natural talents.

Most of us has spent a lifetime focusing on our weaknesses - our faults and deficits - since parents, teachers and managers are experts on spotting mistakes. When asked to focus on one versus the other, most people rather focus on weaknesses. In this article Rebecca Bradley examines why we have grown a focus on deficits, the reasons why weaknesses are so attractive, and how to master the courage to be brilliant.

The best and most unconventional ideas that have greatly benefited my own life.

We often admire most of the world's famous people due to their achievements, but what really geared to their success and what can we learn from them? Vincent Carlos takes us through 12 important lessons that he mirrored from some of the most successful people in the world that prompted a change in his life. Among these, we learn that limiting the number of decisions you make every day, conserves your mental energy and positions you to make a well-thought-out decision in the future.

A small time investment for great life benefits

How can we best invest the few hours we have to spare each week? What if you could change your life with just 64 hours? Danny Forrest presents 8 skills that can do just that. Each is presented with the why, the how and further research resources to make your more skilled, more adaptable and equipped to learn anything new much faster.

Excellence comes from doing what you do best - but you need to make sure you're doing it at the right times.

Organizational psychologist and podcast ace Adam Grant hosts this TED educational podcast interviewing Michael Hartle, who is an author and a successful powerlifter - about how to maximize your natural strengths, build them, and where managers go wrong at work. Leaders often only delve into an employee's weaknesses when doing a performance review and this in most cases loops them to preventing failures, rather than soaring. Instead, they suggest that managers should be keen on developing strengths as an excellent job does not happen when people repair their weaknesses but when they work from a more natural strength.

Predicting success by analyzing not an individuals' IQ, but by looking at their motivation to persevere.

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn't the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of "grit" as a predictor of success.

Three things to keep in mind to adopt a daily habit of developing empathy and compassion.

Tim Ferriss, author and host of Fearless, leads this interesting life lesson on the ''3 ways to be incredibly likable''. He teaches about the importance of developing empathy and compassion citing that it should be a daily habit for everyone as it helps you feel more content and have a greater sense of peace. Start today to make a difference to the people and world around you.

How visual note-taking can make you a better professional.

Sketchnoting, or taking notes visually, can help individuals connect with the information on a deeper level while providing an inspiring artifact that can be shared. In this article, Yuri Malishenko dives into different formats you can use, the multitude of mediums available, presentation styles, getting started with videos, how to train and coach others, and other considerations.

A visual summary of the book, demonstrating how you can accelerate your career and take control of your future.

Cofounder and Chairman of Linkedin Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha summarise ''The Start-up of You'' book in seven chapters and presented it with well-detailed slides. Through the chapters, they teach us how to grow ourselves and our businesses to cope with the dynamic challenges in life today leveraging our in-built entrepreneurial skills, competitive advantage, and good use of information. Open the visual presentation to learn more about strategic personal and business growth techniques from these experts.

Breaking down the creative method and exploring the fundamental elements of creativity.

Jason Theodor, a long-standing Creative Director in the digital advertising world, breaks down the creative method and explores the fundamental elements of creativity in this presentation. Most scientific phenomenons can be defined and expressed using the scientific method but creativity is not like that. It can only be described using the creativity method that generally defines it as the act of coming up with something that never existed. If you want to live a more creative life by understanding the meaning of creativity, the difference between the creativity method and the scientific method plus their elements, this presentation is a must-see.

Applying the skills of research, define personas, explore UX patterns, and lo-fi sketch to oneself.

Designers spend a lot of time perfecting the products they work on each day without using their design skills to finely craft themselves. Mick Gow breaks down the activities of designers on a product translating them to the experience users have with the product. He states that designers should instead treat themselves as a product to understand their audience's experience. Read the article to learn more about why designers should consider themselves as a product and how they should craft themselves to adapt to their audience.

The way people learn skills changes as their ability in the skill grows.

Martin Fowler talks about Shu-Ha-Ri, an interesting learning technique coined from the Japanese martial arts style Aikido, citing that the technique involves three stages where a student first masters a task, then the task's underlying principles, and lastly creates his own approaches and adapts to what he has learned. He also notes that the same concept is also applied to learning techniques and methodologies for software development. Check the article to learn about ShuHaRi and apply it in your daily life.

How working in projects built within existing guidelines ultimately make your work more successful, efficient and cohesive.

Adopting new routines require a leap of faith and determination, as it takes time to form the new habits.

Adopting unknown scrum events requires a leap of faith and determination. Trying something new hurts at first, and before you improve you have to get used to the moves. Only if you stick to it you will see benefits. Making a comparison with yoga, Todd Lankford explains that at first you must first silence the voice telling you to go back to pre-scrum patterns. Then in time you will form new habits - and your degree of success will depend on how much you can let go of your old ways.

A learning method that can help you understand any topic faster and more thoroughly.

While most learning methods have only managed to help learners predict what to study during exams, the popular Feynman Technique named after its founder Richard Feynman is deemed to have answered the most important question in an exam scenario of "How to learn". The technique helps learners grasp concepts faster and broadly by coming up with simpler explanations about them. Here, we explore the Feynman Technique widely understanding the exact steps to follow to use it, its benefits, and a lot more.

Analysing through experimentation if we can really un-learn or if we just replace our old biases.

We often talk about unlearning old way in order to acquire new knowledge, but in this entertaining video Destin Sandlin shows us just how hard it is to unlearn something we have deeply rooted in our brains. In this exploratory activity, we face just how rigid our thinking really is, and the little plasticity our minds have. A truly valuable resource for anyone learning agile, and trying to unlearn what they have been thought though years of structured school learning.

Is your resume ready to help you win a DevOps job? Learn how to tailor your resume for these in-demand IT roles.

How to decode the structure of difficult conversations to discuss what matters most and handle emotionally charged confrontations.

The dilemma we face in difficult (or emotionally charged) conversations is that we have learned from past experience that we can lose both ways: if we avoid the problem or if we confront the problem. When avoiding we often feel like a coward who has been taken advantage of, we lose the opportunity to improve things, and our feelings fester. When we confront the problem things usually get worse and out of hand quickly. What we don't realize is that we need to shift from a "message delivery stance" (proving a point, giving our piece of mind, or getting our way) to a "learning stance" where we understand what happened from the others' point of view.