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.

Stressed Out: There is a Way to Fight it

Life can be stressful, inside and out. Sometimes it can even feed on itself if you do not find a way to control it. One of the best ways to let go of stress when it gets to be too overwhelming is to pick up a book. Like an actual book that is printed on paper. It will enable you to get away from everything that requires being connected such as internet phones, cloud services, and email which can sometimes be the cause of all this stress. Another great way to fight stress is to meditate. It does not have to be for long and the smallest amount can have positive effects on your overall wellbeing. You can even focus on your breath and really pay attention to what it is like and make sure to redirect it to be more deep and full. Other times, it might help to take a step back from the situation and see it in a different light and realize that there are only so many things that you can control. Find that inner zen.

Take Time to Slow Down

I think that happiness is achieved when there is a balance between our work and our lives. There are some great meditation techniques that do not even require any mobile applications. When you are struggling with obstacles, you need to step back and ask if the issues have nothing to do with anything external. Once you have identified where they are coming from, you then have the tools to deal with them. When you are afraid, remember that it is alright to feel that way and people have overcome greater fears. Use their stories as inspiration and example. When you are stuck on a problem and the answer is not coming to you, you need to ask if you are asking the right questions. Major day-to-day demands keep many of us multitasking and maybe not managing as well as we want. Meditate on putting down the bricks of demands without guilt and anxiety, and separating the blocks that give you energy from those that drain your energy. Keep the ones that are helpful and energizing and leave the rest behind. You are well on your way to a much calmer day.

A Round Phone

The phone has always been a rectangle. What if it was round though? Display technologies have a long and rectangular history. Before smartphones there were movie screens, TVs, and computers, not to mention paintings and pages of print. And then of course there are windows—in some ways the original glass rectangles. From an engineering point of view, it is a design that is easy to make and leaves very little waste. The bottom line here is that frames matter. After all, a round screen is not great for browsing a twitter feed. We have become so entranced by our mobile applications and devices that we are extremely good at finding distractions. This phone from Runcible still has a long way to go before it makes it to the market. Besides, it is definitely easier said than done. People will not so easily give up their rectangles. A circular device would sever the link to the printed page, the TV and the computer, and invite software developers to look in other places for inspiration. Rectangles will endure. They're easy, they're efficient. Circles are zen. Just something to think about.

Internet of Things

In short, it is the network of anything that can be connected to the internet that will give and receive information. The potential and implications of this type of technology are huge. It is estimated that the internet of things will be a $6 trillion market by 2025. The basic idea is connected devices being able to send information to cloud services which will then be processed and a response will be sent back that tells the device to do something or refrain from doing something that it was programmed. Think of a sprinkler system that does not turn on at its usual morning time because it is going to rain in two hours. These are features that are going to be useful and are being developed in order to save time, energy, and money. It will not be something like being able to turn on the dishwasher from your mobile app. It is going to be more along the lines of the furnace knowing to decrease the temperature when everyone is out of the house based on cell phone GPS or alerting the user via text when it is time to change the filter. The possibilities are endless and it is going to be exciting to see where we will be headed in the next ten years with this Internet of Things.

Wind Trees

These turbines look like tree from a distance and they are perfect for urban settings. Created by a French company, these Wind Trees are three meter tall generators that can generate about 3 kW of power. The leaves are the micro turbines that can rotate. It does not sound like much but several of them in an urban setting can help offset the energy used in homes, street lamps, and to charge electric cars. There is another 12 meter prototype that is being developed which will cost about $35,000 so it is not quite available for the average consumer but many industrial architects are taking notice. Obviously, this type of technology is not the first nor the last. There are plenty of structures that are "green" and even have solar cells. The best part is that these systems are being connected to a network and internet as well as mobile applications. We can then collect data and further analyze how to best use the systems to generate more energy and decrease the impact that humans have on the environment.

Information Overload

This is the new year and you might be wondering where we are headed as far as tech goes. First of all, your smartphone will know more about you than even you know. It might be getting closer to a point where it will anticipate what you are going to do or want. Even now, the mobile applications are using our data as currency. There will also be more things that are connected, which means that they will be able to collect even more data. Secondly, there is more demand for better security. Everything that can be hacked, will most likely be hacked. I think we need to broaden this definition as well. Yes, data will be stolen and there is always the second step of it being used. It goes beyond data though. A hacker that wants to do harm can achieve it by manipulating lights, creating outages, and just wrecking havoc in general. There is really no such thing as privacy anymore and people will live in fear of being exposed because we will still remain people and suffer the human condition.

Keeping Those Dreams Alive

I am not going to sugar coat it for you, you will hit walls, people will tell you that your idea is not good enough, that even you are not good enough. There will be mountains. It is going to be up to you for either move them, scale them, or tunnel through. You are the one that has to make the decision to keep going even when it gets hard. Keeping that dream alive can be hard but there are some rules that you can follow to never give up. You have to keep in mind that no matter your age, you have a lifetime to succeed. You could even change careers several times, going from lawyer to teacher to web development professional. The possibilities only increase, you just have to be willing to take that leap of faith. There is always going to be more opportunities. It is just as important to be patient because long term success takes time and just does not happen overnight. You have to realize that we are a lot strong than we give ourselves credit for so when the going gets tough, do not lose confidence in yourself and strive to only compare yourself to yourself. If there is failure, take it as a lesson and move on. Just remember, the night is darkest before the dawn.

Tips For Sunnier Days

You should try some meditation mobile applications. It will give your mind a rest which will result in being able to function at a great level. Do not take life--or yourself too seriously. It's possible to find humor in virtually any situation. It's okay to laugh at yourself--nobody's perfect. Now that we have established that no one is perfect, it is of worth to say that one of the most important things you can do is to forgive. Having a grudge is like holding hot coals in your hands. You are the only one that is getting burned the longer you hold them. And just as important, forgive yourself. This outlook is useful when you are investing in relationships. Take the time to let the people in your life know that you love them, even in the hardest of times. Along with that, comes honest being the best policy, always. Focus on creating the life you want. Take care of your family and yourself. Do not judge. We all have the right to live our own lives in the way we intend to--which includes you.