Tag: “Self-Improvement”

Minimalism was an art movement that peaked in the early 1960s. By eliminating all the dispensable features and forms from the objects in works of art, it was intended to highlight their “true” essence. In short, it was a style that sought maximum effect through a minimal number of elements.

The pursuit of mastery—the constant desire to get better and better at something that matters to you—is one of the three forms of behavior that drives people to their highest productivity level. The other two are autonomy and purpose.

It often seems that side projects are only an entrepreneurial thing, that they are done just by people who seek a new or alternative way to get money and make a living. Of course, that might be the target of a side project, but you don’t need to think about working on a side project only in terms of starting another company. Having a personal side project, apart from your usual work, has many other benefits:

Many theories about human motivation—especially those used to motivate employees at work—focus on one basic idea: People tend to respond to positive and negative reinforcements (rewards and punishments) and tend to analyze what interests them in a rational, objective way.

GTD, Autofocus, ZTD, Pomodoro technique, Personal Kanban… Personal productivity has always been surrounded by different formal methods intended to systematize our behavior to make it less erratic and allow us to better focus on what we have to do. From time to time there is a new method — or a variation of an existing one — supported by a handful of evangelists, which enjoys a period of relative popularity… until it is replaced by the next.