You may think that this is perfectly normal, and it is. However, where things get a bit blurry is when we start to base all of our decisions, as well as the course of our life, on a collective agreement from others. A simple example would be making a decision and asking your family or friends the usual question: “do you think that’s a good idea?” We already know the idea is good, but we still seek validation and agreement from our social circle....

Too often we end up wishing for things. We wish we could have more money. We wish we could be better looking. We wish we could be in better shape. What I would like to do is propose that you wipe out the word ‘wish’ from your vocabulary. Instead, replace it with the word ‘commitment’. So instead of making wishes for the things you want in life, make commitments instead....

It’s also worth reminding yourself that in a world full of social networks, blogs, and web sites reviewing everything, providing poor customer service will be the fastest way for any business to do irreparable damage to its image, and convince people that they don’t want even to consider becoming its customers. Winning a new customer is important—but it’s also chancy, expensive and time consuming. Keeping the ones you have is essential to building any kind of stable business....

Mike St. Pierre is the Dean of Students at Oratory Prep in Summit, NJ and blogs daily about productivity at thedailysaint.com

5 Benefits of Writing: Why You Should Write Every Day

Angela Booth’s 10 Best Writing Tips You Don’t Need Permission to Create Writerisms and Other Sins Brevity is a Virtue Writing Content for your Blog And about a gazillion more. It’s the kind of post that’ll make you glad you’re using Firefox. (You are, right?) You can throw all those tabs open and get a huge faceful of writing advice all in one spot. Improving Your Writing – [PigPog]

Seating positions reveal a lot When we select our meeting real estate, we send messages about ourselves to the other members of the group. These decisions are not random, and they provide insight into the power dynamics in a room. Observing a person’s seating choice, like observing their body language, can tell us how close that individual is to the other members of a group. A person’s motives may also be revealed through when they elect to sit....

Check out this infographic as it will help you understand why visual means are an essential part of everyday life. Jogging memory in the proper direction is an integral way to define the brain power and help keep it going and running. What happens when you first recall certain memories? Do you find it hard to pinpoint something that was actually very important for you to remember? Are there any sort of difficulties in achieving memory of the event?...

These six self-destructive habits are a good place to start making some changes: 1. Checking your phone during a conversation Think about the last time you were having a conversation with someone and they picked up their phone to check a text message or glance over when a notification popped up. It’s a really big turn off when you feel you aren’t being listened to. And it’s likely that while distracted, you’re probably missing some important information....

You are never going to be one hundred percent ready for a final exam. You could have studied more, read one last page before entering the classroom or taken one more practice test to enhance your knowledge. You are never going to be prepared enough to start an ambitious project. You could have asked for more opinions, attended different preparation courses or made a deeper research taking into consideration hundreds of possible variables and scenarios....

1. Eat at Home Eating out at restaurants may be the single biggest drain on your bank account each month. If you eat out five times per week during your lunch break, you’re spending a minimum of $30 per week (and that’s if it’s fast food). Couple that with a nice lunch or dinner on the weekend (at least $15) and you’re spending $45 per week on eating out. That comes to $180 per month, or $2,160 per year....

If you follow through this article, I nearly guarantee that you’ll come out the other side with something to mentally chew on. Your Goals as Waveform – [Graham English]

The BitTorrent protocol has been out in the open for around seven years now, and in that time it’s become one of the most popular methods for distributing large files on the Internet. Despite futile efforts by the RIAA and MPAA to shut down file-sharing in all its forms, people both tech-savvy and computer illiterate are using it. A few major bands have even released lossless versions of their albums using BitTorrent....

Life Is Unbalanced Imagine standing in a queue. You get behind the line and you wait for your turn. You think you will get what you deserve when your turn comes. What else can you do? You just wait for the queue to move. And Zoooooom!!! Someone whizzes past you like a freak flash-wave and gets ahead of the game! You could barely see him going! And while everyone else is still standing in line, wondering what just happened, that guy has reached straight for the bounty, grabbed it, and is off for the next....

Here are 13 tips of how you can make the most of your weekends. 13 Things To Do During Weekends To Improve Your Life

Learning how to not get distracted is a tough goal to have. Most days, you sit at your desk, ready to finally get some work done. “Okay, lets do this,” you think to yourself. You scroll over to Word or Google Drive and open up a fresh document. You have some idea of what needs to be done, but what happens next? You write a few words down but just can’t stay focused....

If this is you, then you may be subject to overexcitability. This term was coined by Polish psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski who identified overexcitability as intense feelings within us that are caused by a heightened response to stimuli. This means you can become easily irritated by anything from repetitive or loud noises, textures of fabrics on the skin, to not liking certain foods because of texture or taste. Of course, this can be more apparent in children – sometimes deemed fussy and particular when it comes to food or clothes – but can go on to develop into adulthood....

Those phone photographers are in play too. The phone is now a ubiquitous capture device making no one immune from the serendipitous photographer documenting our most inelegant moments. Unedited, they’re thrown up on Flickr.com for your viewing pleasure – often for everyone’s viewing pleasure. Pleasure? I’m not so sure. Just like those jokes we used to forward through email as web-neophytes, they swiftly become annoying. We learned only to forward those that were extra-specially, extraordinarily hilarious....

A better solution: There is a more elegant tool called Single Sheet Cutters which provides a quicker and safer way to cut out any newspaper or magazines. Draw it along the section to cut. Best of all, you don’t need to lift up the top page, only top sheet is cut, underlying pages will stay: Levenger Single Sheet Cutters – [Levenger via Kevin Kelly]

Brevity Context Something to act on Reasonable expectations A deadline I think something to act on is the most important one: What are other factors you put in to ensure a clear communication in emails? Email: an author’s guide – [Blue Flavor]