Making Stress Work For You

We have been taught that stress is horrible and we should avoid it at all costs. Stress is bad for us in massive quantities but it can also be helpful as a motivator. Also, the way to approach it is to find a way to deal with it instead of avoiding it. First of all, you need to see the stress in a positive light because it can actually help alleviate some of the side effects of stress such as anxiety and depression. Also, when things get overwhelming, it is important to think back to overwhelming situations and how you overcame them. When you have a big web development presentation looming, just remember that you have done it before and either way, it will be a learning experience. Lastly, music can be a way to deal with stress. Music has been shown to change your response to stress and let you deal with it. It might also help for the music to have a great bass.

Making Mornings More Bearable

Mornings can be rough, there is no denying it. Between the internet phone calls, making coffee, not forgetting your lunch, and just getting ready in general, you might have a lot on your plate. When you are about to get out of bed, make it while you are still in it. It will speed up the process and you will be able to add a bit of whimsy to your life. To keep you moving in the morning, create a morning playlist and use it as a timer. Make sure to keep it upbeat and very pleasant. Shower for two songs, get dressed during one song and so on. There is also nothing worse than forget your badge, glasses, or keys. Make little pouches that you can move from bag to bag without forgetting anything. It will save you time and headaches. If you are prone to forgetting things that you need to take for the day, put your keys on top of it. It will help never to forget your lunch again.

Preparing for Your Day

Whether you work in research or software development or are a business owner, you need to be able to start the day right. Take the first minute to clear your head. This needs to be done without any mobile applications or tablets. As you are clearing your head, pay attention to your breathing and do it consciously. Then take three minutes to write some thoughts down that you have or even doodle. This will help bring to light that things that are stressing you or work out the kinks in some ideas you might have. After you wrote those ideas down, take a look at the list or picture and make a plan about how to address it. It will only take a minute. If you spend those seven minutes to start your day, things will go much smoother and you will be happier in your work.

Apps to Let You Achieve More

There is a slew of mobile applications and web applications out there that claim to increase your effectiveness and productivity. I have found a round up for entrepreneurs that might actually work. Two of the virtual assistant apps are Feedly and IFTTT. Content marketing becomes automated so you do not lose any sleep. If you need to send a message to a group of people, Google lets you send it to the email addresses that are in Docs quickly and easily. Upwork allows you to outsource well-defined tasks such as data entry, research, design, and content. If you also do a lot of business over the phone, you should try CallRail which will record and track your calls. It will also tell you which web search or page the person is calling from so that you can get insights into how you can get the most calls. You should also consider having Xero which is an accounting software for your small business. It will save you time and even project to see if you can afford to hire someone new or get that instrument.

Happiness: A Matter of Choice

The web has so many different opinions about how to be happy. There are some pretty good ones and plenty of dumb ones. When you looking for happiness, there are several things to remember. First of all, it is not a one size fits all deal. You have to find your own happiness and it might be different from someone else's. Have you ever been doing something with such intensity that you forget yourself and time? Playing gaming applications do not count in this category. You can crush candies some other time. This is the space and state where happiness can be found. If we keep challenging ourselves, we will always be able to get to this space. To get to happiness, we also need to be grateful and always remind ourselves of the little gifts in life that we have. It sounds too simple to be true, but research actually shows that if you smile, you'll have better health, a better marriage and other relationships, and increased life expectancy.

The Apple Watch: What to Do With It

So critics have been saying that it won't be that big of a deal but here we are and it is sold out. So far the mobile applications have been extensions of existing iPhone applications and no completely new ones. IFTTTs spin off, the Do Button, lets you automate certain tasks that you do every day that can be automated. Think of things like your thermostat or other services. To be totally secure, you should have a different password for each service you use, and they should be hard to remember. That's where a service like 1Password can make a difference: It keeps all of your codes in one place (securely) and, on Apple Watch, will let you quickly pull them up, should you ever forget them. Now if you have time to be wasting, you can download an Apple version of the digipet. Do you even remember those? Try Sidekicks: Dragor, which puts on your wrist an adorable virtual pet that demands food, play, water and sleep. As if you did not have enough to worry about when it came to taking care of the people around. Doesn't everyone wish to have a pet dragon?

Building Resilience

Whether you are a business professional or a software development expert, it is important to be able to be resilient. Heck, it is just an awesome life skill to have. One of the first things that you should do is remain realistic. You need to be able to understand the reality of the situation in order to solve any problems that arise. If you are not, you can slip into denial and the problem will just spiral out of control since you are not equipped to fix it. Problems and mistakes can be perfect learning tools. You need to be able to walk away from a problem that is solved with experience. You cannot be asking yourself what have you lost. So next time, you know to do it better. You also need to be able to be resourceful. When faced with a tough problem, the solution might not always been given to you or be very obvious. Lastly resilience requires facing down the competition, improvising solutions and creating something meaningful out of work.