Motivo Academy – The Psychology of Persuasion for Managers – Free Course June 2, 2021 bizadmin I was browsing through the internet today when I came across a very interesting topic that will help in my line of work and persuasion. See below for more information. We Help Good People Do Great Things COURSE CATEGORY Life Skills, Management Skills, Professional Skills, Sales Skills Duration: 45-minutes (On-demand Videos). Why we Made this Course Helping good people to do great things, we know that the most successful people we have worked with, have mastered the skill set of persuasion and influence. They are able to enjoy not only a more successful life but also a life with less stress and conflict. We believe that this skill set will help you to do great things too. By the end of this course, you will be able to effectively influence and persuade other people without manipulation or stress. This course includes not only the latest research into the psychology of persuasion and influence but the method that we have used and taught for over 20 years to leaders and professionals around the world. You will learn: The essential concepts of the psychology of influence and persuasion. Schemas and personal constructs. How the brain processes (and resists) a message. Using beliefs to achieve persuasion. Includes role-play demonstrations. Course Duration: 45 Minutes (On-Demand Videos) More about the Course On-Demand Our courses are designed as practical guides, but also as a deeply fascinating story of success to make happier and more productive leaders and teams around the world. Case Studies and Role Play Examples The techniques you will learn are backed up with case studies and role-play demonstrations as well as downloadable resources along the way. Proven Templates for Leaders Seeking Highly Productive and Motivated Teams In the courses, you will master the leadership frameworks that Russel Potter had used with global brands including H&M, Coach, Standard Chartered Bank, Elle Magazine, TV Stations over the past 20 years. Neuroscience, Psychology and Corporate Insights. Russel Potter shares priceless insights from his book “New Energized You” co-authored with Dr. Maite Balda, on the neuroscience and psychology of human energy and productivity. The book cites over 200 research papers and has interviews with world champion athletes. Many of the insights are included in the courses. Check out >>https://motivo-academy.com/course/free-psychology-course/ Russell Potter, an experienced consultant manager, is the man behind Motivo Academy, with the website at motivo-academy.com He can be reached at the number +1 315 636 4192. The Academy is the culmination of a 25-year journey that started in London, in the UK, and has taken Russell to South East Asia and finally to Tokyo where he currently resides. Add Notes You will notice that there is an option to “add notes.” This is a space they provide for you to keep track of the insights you make as you progress through the course and the notes are completely confidential. They have no access to the notes and they are private for your eyes only. If you have any problems accessing the course please reach out so that they can support you. e-Mail: info@motivo-academy.com. 10 free online courses for entrepreneurs May 12, 2020 bizadmin When you’re starting your own online business, you need to be your own marketer, product photographer, and social media manager. Basically, you are a one-man show to get started due to limited budget. Taking an online course is one of the fastest ways to ramp-up the skills you need to succeed in every part of your online business. This will pave the way to further skills that you need to market your business effectively and not beat about the bush, trying to figure things out – all on your own. Instead of the trial and error method and learning through your own mistakes, it might be worth it to invest in courses and learn from the professionals who also started out as a noob. You can never try to save money from learning and investing in useful skills from the pros and coaches who have succeeded. [abc] Meanwhile, for others, instead of spending thousands to learn these skills, sign up for these free online courses and hold onto your savings for future Facebook ad campaigns (once you know how to run them)! By the end of this video, you’ll have a list of 10 free online courses that’ll teach you more about marketing, entrepreneurship, design, and productivity. Make sure to keep watching to see every video during this Covid-19 pandemic where the world is in lockdown and movement control order is practiced and regulated by the authorities. Break the rules and you are in for some questioning or even imprisonment at the harshest side. So, dear potential business owners and fellow bloggers, do practice social distancing too of at least 2 meters from one another to avoid getting infected with this treacherous novel corona-virus where there is no vaccine at the moment. Stay safe and stay at home as much as possible. Now your home is the safest place in the world during this mayhem caused by the unseen enemy, the virus. [abc] [abc] Tom Griffiths: 3 ways to make better decisions – by thinking like a computer March 8, 2020 bizadmin If you ever struggle to make decisions, here’s a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions — on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight. This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSydney, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you. Books to Read Book The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive Brian Christian Anchor, 2012 One concern I sometimes hear is that recognizing the parallels between people and computers might start to rob us of our humanity. Christian’s first book, The Most Human Human, is the perfect antidote to that. Participating in a Turing test, where he had to convince the judges that he was not a computer, led Christian to reflect on how intelligent machines can help us come to recognize what it is that makes us human. [abc] Book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children Alison Gopnik Picador, 2017 One of the big ideas in the talk is that understanding the trade-off between exploration and exploitation can help us understand how our approach to decision-making should change as we age. Alison Gopnik’s wonderful book explores this idea in more detail, making the argument that the very structure of human childhood is in part a consequence of navigating this trade-off. Book A Long Bright Future Laura Carstensen PublicAffairs, 2011 At the other end of the life span, Laura Carstensen tells us why we should be optimistic about old age. Book Algorithms Unlocked Thomas H. Cormen The MIT Press, 2013 For people who want to learn more about algorithms, this book does a great job of translating an undergraduate curriculum in computer science into a form that somebody with a little bit of mathematical background can easily appreciate. Book In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation William J. Cook Princeton University Press, 2014 Focusing on one problem in particular, this book is a great illustration of how computer scientists tackle the hardest computational problems — using approximations, shortcuts and a lot of ingenuity. Book Finite and Infinite Games James Carse Free Press, 2013 An inspiration for Algorithms to Live By, this book takes a single mathematical idea and then unpacks it into a manual for living a fulfilling life. [abc] This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research January 17, 2020 bizadmin Barking Up The Wrong Tree Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller! To check it out, click here. This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research (Click here to read on the blog) Impostor Syndrome is like being a secret agent — in the most depressing way imaginable. No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you achieve, you still feel like a fraud. You still question your ability and you’re waiting to be exposed. More formally, it’s often referred to as “a failure to internalize success.” You attribute your accomplishments to luck or insane amounts of effort, but never talent or skill. Ask yourself these questions: [abc] From The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It: Do you chalk your success up to luck, timing or computer error? Do you believe “if I can do it, anybody can”? Do you agonize over the smallest flaws in your work? Are your crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your ineptness? When you do succeed, do you secretly feel like you fooled them again? Do you worry that it’s a matter of time before you’re “found out”? If you’re nodding your head, you’re not alone. 70% of people have felt it at one time or another — with some experiencing it chronically. And some very big names have been afflicted with it: Albert Einstein: …the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler. Maya Angelou: I have written eleven books, but each time I think, “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” I can only dream that I will one day reach their level of astounding fraudulence. Jeez, look how inferior my fraudulence is to theirs. I’m a fraud at being a fraud… Seriously, there’s a lesson here: these two make it abundantly clear that no amount of achievement is going to convince you. That approach won’t work. And much of the advice we get isn’t helpful either. Merely “telling yourself you’re good enough” has all the scientific rigor of a Hallmark Card. Self-affirmations are as likely to cure this as they’d cure baldness. We need real answers, not platitudes. [abc] Funny thing is there’s a whole pile of scientific research that addresses this issue. It’s called “self-efficacy.” The concept was coined by Albert Bandura. He’s widely considered the most influential living psychologist and one of the most cited of all time. If there was a Mount Rushmore for psychology, his face would be up there. Bandura’s book is Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. Now I hate when people use phrases like “learning your own value” because while it sounds really nice, nobody explains how to actually do it. Time to roll up your sleeves, bubba. We’re gonna fix that. Let’s get to it… So What The Heck Is Self-Efficacy? It’s “perceived ability to succeed at a given task.” It’s a belief, not an objective measure of ability. But it’s a thermonuclear powered belief and has an eye-popping effect on your life, whether you know what it is or not. From Self-Efficacy: Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments… People’s beliefs in their efficacy affect almost everything they do: how they think, motivate themselves, feel, and behave. It can even be more important than skill. No doubt, actual skills are critical. If you have self-efficacy but no real driving ability, I’m not getting in your Uber. But that said, if you don’t believe you can accomplish something, you probably won’t try. And even if you do try, when you meet resistance, you’ll give up. [abc] And the effects of self-efficacy beliefs have been found in a staggering number of diverse arenas: academic grades, weight management, social behavior, health habits, occupational performance, etc. From Self-Efficacy: Where performance determines outcome, efficacy beliefs account for most of the variance in expected outcomes. When differences in efficacy beliefs are controlled, the outcomes expected for given performances make little or no independent contribution to prediction of behavior. “Oh, so it’s self-esteem and confidence.” That’s not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth… Um, actually, I just put words in your mouth. ANYWAY, point is, self-efficacy is distinct from self-esteem and confidence, otherwise I promise I’d be writing a post on self-esteem and confidence because explaining new words is hard when old ones work fine. Self-efficacy is your belief about your ability to accomplish a specific goal while self-esteem is a judgment of personal worth. My self-efficacy about my ability to eat ice cream might be high, but I don’t think that makes me a good person. And confidence is more generalized, while self-efficacy is task-specific. You can be a very confident person and still not have self-efficacy when it comes to performing an appendectomy. So how does this relate to impostor syndrome? Well, impostor syndrome is fundamentally a belief issue. You could be saying, “I don’t have impostor syndrome, I actually suck at this and my results confirm that.” Instead, you’re saying, “I’m aware my performance is solid but I don’t believe it’s due to talent.” [abc] Impostor syndrome is about your lack of belief in your skill at something. Having self-efficacy is a healthy amount of belief in your skill at something. If we increase the latter, we get rid of the former. We need to get you to believe that your ability — not luck or mere hard work — is the primary active ingredient in your success. (To learn more about how you can lead a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.) So how do we do boost self-efficacy? Bandura lays out 4 things that will do the job. They all have big, fancy academic-sounding names that make my spellchecker go heavy on the red underlining. We’re gonna translate them in to English-that-people-actually-speak because I don’t like migraines any more than you do. Let’s start with the one that is, in general, most powerful… 1) Enactive Mastery Experience When most people perform well they attribute it to skill on their part. (Maybe they are too inclined to attribute it to personal skill, but that’s a topic for a different, much more cynical post.) [abc] But if you’re dealing with impostor syndrome, this natural tendency to assume you’re a virtuoso is on the fritz. You do a great job and the default attribution bucket isn’t a skill — it’s luck, overwork or invisible elves that accomplished everything while you were napping. Many interpret enactive mastery experience as “keep working hard and you’ll see it’s your natural ability that’s causing the results.” If that was true, impostor syndrome wouldn’t exist. In fact, if you don’t actively change your default attributions, merely seeing yourself succeed isn’t going to fix impostor syndrome — it’s going to make it worse. From Self-Efficacy: …the impact of performance attainments on efficacy beliefs depends on what is made of those performances. The same level of performance success may raise, leave unaffected, or lower perceived self-efficacy depending on how various personal and situational contributors are interpreted and weighted (Bandura 1982a). So what do we have to do? You need to notice the system you use. Your process. Yes, you have one. No, I have not been spying on you. You probably take it for granted. Or it’s a blur as you anxiously drive yourself crazy due to deadlines or trying to meet insanely high standards. It’s probably habitual at this point and therefore often subconscious, like driving a car, but there are things you do each and every time that are producing these consistently good results. (And if you’re not consistently getting good results then you don’t have impostor syndrome, and I’m not getting in your Uber.) Everyone does not do these things you do in your process and that’s one of the reasons not everyone gets the results you do. [abc] Look at the system as separate from you. Like the recipe that makes a good cake. When you have a solid recipe, or good instructions, you feel in control. And what’s control? It’s the exact opposite of luck. When you recognize that you have a system, and the system is producing those results consistently, the depressing magical thinking of impostor syndrome fades. You have a new “why” that’s responsible for those solid results. What would your reaction be if I told you, “I took 10 weeks of tennis lessons and my tennis luck increased dramatically!” You’d laugh. Systems and training don’t increase luck. They increase skill. You’re just not noticing or acknowledging the system you use. (And if I was your system I’d be pissed that Mr. Luck and Ms. Overwork were undeservedly getting all the credit around here.) When work is a blur it’s easy to think you just got lucky. But I’m guessing you’ve noticed that people who are very confident about their abilities can often explain them to you. They’re aware of their system. Step outside yourself and notice what you do that gets the results. As the great Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” And what if that doesn’t convince you? Then set up an experiment. If you attribute your results to your lucky rabbit’s foot but you can repeatedly achieve the same results without it, then it’s hard to argue that dismembered mammal limbs are responsible for your success. From Self-Efficacy: When there is much subjectivity in judging the adequacy of one’s performances, as in social competency, an illusorily created low sense of efficacy endures despite repeated performance attainments that indicate personal capabilities (Newman & Goldfried, 1987). Dislodging a low sense of personal efficacy requires explicit, compelling feedback that forcefully disputes the preexisting disbelief in one’s capabilities. “Oh, I’m a fraud. I only do well because of hard work.” Fine. Set a time limit on how much effort you put in and see if the world comes crashing down. But before you start, think about your system and how you will do the things you always do in that shorter time frame. If you get 90% of your usual results in half the time, that’s not “hard work.” That’s talent. (To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.) [abc] Okay, “enactive mastery blah bitty blah” is the method that works best in general. But what’s the method that works best for people who are unsure of themselves — like people with impostor syndrome? 2) Vicarious Experience In English: “Watching other talented people work.” If you’re reading this, you take your skills for granted. When you see that people who do similar things to you do well and a much larger group of people who do not do those things fail, you’ll realize your system works and there are other (inferior) methods that you’re choosing not to use. This means you have control. Control means not-luck. Problem is, when people with impostor syndrome look at others, they usually look at the wrong people. Often they compare themselves to people who have zero talent and have great difficulty finding their way out of the house every morning. Yeah, this makes you feel better but it doesn’t convince you you’re talented — it just means you’re not an idiot. Other times people with impostor syndrome compare themselves to the top 1% which acts as a fast-acting injection of depression concentrate and is utterly debilitating. Instead, think Goldilocks: you’re not looking to compare yourself to “too cold” or “too hot”, you’re looking for “just right.” Bandura says you’ll get the best results by observing others who are your peers or slightly better than you. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: Persons who are similar or slightly higher in ability provide the most informative comparative information for gauging one’s own capabilities (Festinger, 1954; Suls & Miller, 1977; Wood, 1989). How does this help? Plain and simple: it’s inspiring. “If they can do it, I can do it.” They have a system. It works. You have a system (if you take the time to notice it) and it works. You’ll probably see what they do is pretty similar to what you do. You both get good results and you’re peers. It’s not luck. You can even leverage vicarious experience without the vicarious part: it’s called “self-modeling.” Watch yourself working successfully. Look at good work that you’ve done. Smart emails you’ve sent. Great presentations or reports you’ve put together. Anything that resonates with you and makes you say, “Hey, this is impressive work — oh, and I’m the one who did it.” From Self-Efficacy: Self-modeling has remarkably wide applicability and often succeeds with inveterate self-doubters where other instructional, modeling, and incentive approaches fail (Dowrick, 1991; Meharg & Wolterdorf, 1990). Apparently, it is hard to beat observed personal attainment as a self-persuader of capability. Let your “best self” be your role model. (To learn how to deal with passive-aggressive people, click here.) We don’t just want to watch others work, we also want to get help from our friends. But the trick is getting the right kind of support that will kill your impostor syndrome and not increase it… 3) Social Persuasion Translation: support and encouragement. For people who have impostor syndrome, simply seeing results isn’t enough to boost belief in their ability… but seeing results and having others praise them does the trick. From Self-Efficacy: …skill transmission and success feedback alone achieved little with individuals beset with strong doubts about their capabilities. But skill transmission with social validation of personal efficacy produced large benefits. Tell your friends you’re going through a tough time and could use their support. There are three tips from the research you’ll want to keep in mind here: [abc] 1) If the positive feedback is insincere, you’ll see right through it thanks to the negative, skeptical lens of impostor syndrome. It has to be legit praise. 2) Support from experts is preferable. Praise from someone who doesn’t understand the arena is easily dismissed. 3) Positive feedback about your hard work is nice but them praising your ability is better. If you keep getting praised for your hard work, it’s easy to conclude that you don’t have talent. From Self-Efficacy: Evaluative feedback highlighting personal capabilities raises efficacy beliefs. Feedback that the children improved their capabilities through effort also enhances perceived efficacy, although not as much as being told that their progress shows they have ability for the activity. You don’t want white lies about your lightsaber abilities, you want sincere compliments. And you’d like them from Yoda. And it’s nice to hear you worked hard but it’s better to hear, “The Force is strong with this one.” (To learn the 4 harsh truths that will make you a better person, click here.) We’ve covered systems, models, and support. What’s left? Oh, feelings. You can never get away from the power of feelings, like it or not… 4) Emotional / Physiological States Your feelings and moods matter. And if you think they don’t matter then you’re in real trouble because they’re still influencing you and you’re not even noticing it. Not getting enough sleep, being hungry or just having a bad day can exacerbate impostor feelings, but unless you take the time to establish those are the underlying causes, you’re just going to feel awful and default to blaming yourself for being a fraud. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: Mood activates the subset of memories congruent with it through an associative mood network. Thus, a negative mood activates thoughts of past failings, whereas a positive mood activates thoughts of past accomplishments… According to Teasdale (1988), negative episodes and depressed mood activate a global view of oneself as inadequate and worthless rather than just activating unhappy memories. Here’s the problem: we are absolutely terrible at figuring out the true causes of our feelings. You think you know why you’re feeling something but it’s just inference. You think you’re cranky because of what your partner said but it’s actually because you’ve been running on five hours of sleep for the past three nights. But here’s the upside: you can now use your knowledge of this emotional blurriness to your advantage. Since the cause and meaning of feelings is all about interpretation, you can choose to interpret them differently. The court of emotions has an appeals process. If you can reframe the feelings into something transient or unrelated to the task at hand then your self-efficacy doesn’t plummet. From Self-Efficacy: …if the meaning of an affective state is altered by attributing it to a nonemotional or transient irrelevant source, the state does not affect evaluative judgment because it is considered uninformative for the judgment at hand. For example, interviewers who attribute their accelerated heart rate to having rushed up a set of stairs are less likely to wonder about their capabilities to manage the interview situation than interviewers who read their pounding heart as a sign of distress. Yes, you’re fidgety before the big meeting. But that physical feeling has to be interpreted. You don’t have to believe it’s nervousness because you’re a faker. It could be excitement or anticipation. Reframe your feelings and you can reframe impostor syndrome… and that can reframe your life. [abc] (To learn more about how to make friends as an adult, click here.) Okay, we’re all Bandura’d out. We covered a lot, time for the sum up — and we’ll also answer the looming question: even if you beat impostor syndrome today, how do you know that this newly found self-efficacy will last? Sum Up This is how to overcome impostor syndrome: Enactive mastery experience: Recognize your system. Tennis lessons don’t increase tennis luck. Vicarious experience: If they can do it, you can do it. Social persuasion: I, for one, happen to think The Force is very strong with you. So there. Emotional/physiological states: Reframe feelings. You’re not antsy because you want this blog post to end, you’re just so very very excited to be reading it. People are afraid that even if they develop self-efficacy they’ll backslide into impostor feelings. Don’t worry. If you really go out of your way to push hard on the 4 principles above, self-efficacy can become as stubbornly lodged in your brain as the feeling that you’re a fraud is now. I don’t know about you but I’m all for positive feelings that are irrationally resistant to change. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: They continue to adhere to the fictitiously instilled efficacy beliefs even after the persuasory basis for those beliefs has been thoroughly discredited. Efficacy beliefs created arbitrarily survive behavioral experiences that contradict them for some time (Cervone & Palmer, 1990). Lawrence (1988) provides suggestive evidence that efficacy beliefs created by fictitious success may gain strength through a cognitive self-persuasion process. The old saying is “fake it till you make it.” But with impostor syndrome, you’ve already made it. The race is over. You won. Now it’s time for you to finally enjoy it. ***And if you want a daily insight, quote or laugh, you should follow me on Instagram here.*** Email Extras Findings from around the internet… + Want to know which qualities made children more likely to earn more — or less — as adults? Click here. + Want to know what makes top performers different from most people? Click here. [abc] + Want to know if its better to tackle easy or hard tasks first? Click here. + Miss last week’s post? Here you go: New Neuroscience Reveals 5 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent. + Want to know what makes kids more likely to experience burnout? Click here. (And many thanks to the great Dan Pink for some of the above links.) + You read to the end of the email. I appreciate it. (If you skipped down here you *are* an impostor. Tsk-tsk.) Crackerjack time: What happens when you ask the users of Reddit which accounts are bots? For the very clever answer, click here. Thanks for reading! Eric PS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can sign up to get the weekly email yourself here. [abc] Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z June 9, 2019 bizadmin Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z Get ready to meet the newest generation of talent to enter the workplace: Generation Z. While these 18 to 22-year-old candidates share many things in common with preceding generations, the conditions of their high-tech upbringings have shaped the way they think about and approach employment. The 2019 Yello Recruiting Study compares Millennial students and Generation Z students to find out what college recruiters need to know to attract Generation Z employees and hire this new wave of talent. The Generations Surveyed Generation Z: 18 – 22 year olds who are full-time or part time students in 4-year or graduate degree programs. Millennials: 23 – 38 year olds who are full-time or part time students in 4-year or graduate degree programs. Read on to find out what to expect from the first graduating class of Generation Z, how they’re different (and similar) from their Millennial counterparts and what they’re looking for from you as their first employer. Find out everything you need to know as Gen Z enters the workforce. Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z Before diving into the differences between Millennials and Generation Z, here’s a quick primer on what to expect as these 18-22 year-olds enter the workforce. Generation Z College Majors The most popular majors among the members of Generation Z are science and social sciences. 30% of the members of Generation Z major in these fields, while just over one in ten major in business. Generation Z College Majors Generation Z Job Expectations About two-thirds of Generation Z students are confident they’ll receive an offer when they graduate. Generation Z Job Expectations Quick Facts 2 of 3 Generation Z business majors expect to receive more than one offer. Half of Gen Z computer science and engineering majors expect to receive multiple offers. For non-STEM majors like communications or political science, 7 in 10 of the members of Generation Z are worried about finding a job. 3 in 4 Generation Z education majors expect to receive at least one offer. They Start the Job Search Early A quarter of Generation Z students start their job search freshman/sophomore year and half start junior/senior year. Only one in ten wait until after graduation. When Gen Z-ers Start the Job Search Generation Z Salary Expectations Generation Z Salary Expectations When it comes to salary, Generation Z’s expectations are spread across the board. These first-time employees aren’t sure what to expect when it comes time for salary negotiations. 5 Ways to Curate Content on Your Blog June 2, 2019 bizadmin by Susan Gunelius Updated November 11, 2018 Content curation is a popular trick used by bloggers and online publishers to increase the amount of content they publish, share great content from across the web with their own audiences, and add personal commentary to hot topics discussed on other websites. You can curate content that you think your audience would find value in, add your own commentary, and publish it on your blog. As long as you don’t plagiarize, break any laws, publish duplicate content, or fail to attribute the source with a backlink to the original content, then content curation is a viable way to bring interesting content to your audience and increase your blog post publishing schedule. Following are five easy ways to curate content on your blog in a useful, legal and ethical way. Publish Editorialized Content That You’ve Curated It’s important to understand the difference between content aggregation, content syndication, and content curation before you can effectively curate content to publish on your blog. Here are some simple explanations of each: Content Aggregation: When you gather links to content and provide nothing else but those links (and perhaps content titles) in a single place, you’re using content aggregation. Alltop and PopURLs are examples of content aggregation websites. Content Syndication: Syndicated content is aggregated and redistributed (in whole or in part) for consumption or publishing through a third party. Sites like Newstex and NewsCred are examples of companies that offer varied content syndication services. Content Curation: When you review content from a variety of sources, gather links to those sources, share descriptions of that content, add your own commentary to that content, and publish all of those pieces in a single location, you’re curating content. While aggregation and syndication are primarily automated processes, curation is not. True content curation requires human intelligence, interpretation, and intervention. With that definition of content curation in mind, you can read, watch, and listen to content from a variety of sources that you think your blog audience would enjoy and benefit from, collect links to the best content, share a snippet from the content, add your commentary, and publish it all in a blog post. Just don’t forget to always cite and link back to the source to provide appropriate attribution. Publish Curated Round-up Blog Posts One of the most popular methods of leveraging content curation to increase your blog posting schedule and to share interesting content from across the web with your audience is by publishing round-up blog posts. For example, you could publish a weekly round-up post where you share links and descriptions of great content from multiple sources about a specific topic. You can even add your own brief commentary with each link. This is a great way to not only share great information with your audience but also to show other content publishers that you like what they’re doing. Think of it as a step in developing a relationship with other publishers whom you respect. Publish Slideshows to Highlight Curated Content From Multiple Sources Slideshows are visually appealing and can boost page views for your blog because visitors have to click through each page in the slideshow to see all of them. If your audience likes slideshows, they’re great for sharing curated content. Rather than just publishing a blog post filled with a list of links and commentary, turn each of those links into a visual slideshow where each link gets its own image and commentary page. Slideshows can also easily be repurposed into Twitter updates, Pinterest pins, and more. Embed Curated Content on Your Blog There are a variety of tools that can streamline the content curation process, and some of those tools enable you to embed the content you curate on your blog. Typically, the formatting is done for you, so the process is quick and easy. You just pick the sources, add your commentary to each, copy and paste some embed code into a blog post or blog page, click the publish button, and you’re done. For example, tools like Storify and Rebelmouse both offer easy ways to embed curated content on your blog. You can see an example of curated content embedded into a blog page using the Rebelmouse tool on Women on Business. Curate Content Into an Online Video Curated content doesn’t have to be published on your blog in written format. You could create a video that includes your insights added about a single piece of curated content or multiple pieces of curated content, publish it to your YouTube channel, and embed it anywhere on your blog. Just be sure to include the URLs to all of your sources within the video and in the written description of the video. 6 Principals of Connected Learning April 25, 2019 bizadmin The above is a sample infographic that I have taken from a site that is yet to complete. Well, here I will give my opinions to the above image. Not that I am a genius, but just an average student, in computers. To be honest, I have had my share of struggles academically in the varsity due to external pressures to excel and studied using the wrong methods; and that was speed reading instead of analysing. Now that I am more relaxed and almost mid-age, I suppose I am qualified to give my opinions and experiences learning from my home base again. On the top right, that is academically oriented, first of all, don’t panic and be overwhelmed by the extent of workload and tutorials to complete. Just stay calm, find your inner peace or pray and claim on Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through God who strengthens me. Piaget’s self discovery learning is the best form of learning. It is better than going through a classmate who may sabotage you with ulterior motive, unless you approach a group of friends who are sincere to help you and discuss like having tuition. On the right side, Production Centered is easy. Just follow the instructions and be observant of how the company production line runs, whether you are working as a technician or not. Peer Supported is group learning of at least 2 persons or more. I shall skip Shared Purpose as I am not familiar with what that means academically unless you are studying as a couple, which I presume of having the same goals and motivating each other. After all, 2 heads are better than 1. Openly networked is another topic I shall skip here. But in my opinion, I guess it means networking with people better than you and tapping their brains by hiring smarter employees. Like Robert Kiyosaki said in his popular books, A students work for C students / bosses. And finally interests powered are your hobbies that take you to learn the steps at your own pace in your free time like using a Digital SLR camera, how to focus, etc. Likewise, blogging also takes time to learn the insides out of the WordPress features. The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Second Edition (Springer Series in Statistics) 2nd Edition April 12, 2019 bizadmin For those who love science and mathematics, then this is the book for your reading from Amazon. Some of the chapters include Bootstrap versus Maximum Likelihood, Trees with Simulated Data, Model Averaging and Stacking, etc. It may sound alien to most of us but for the learned, this makes an interesting read, especially for those who are doing their masters or PhDs. The Elements of statistical learning is more for actuarial science students who will later work in the insurance industry, calculating complex data and refunds to the policy holders. Some Reviews include the below: Very comprehensive, sufficiently technical to get most of the plumbing behind machine learning. Very useful as a reference book (actually, there is no other complete reference book). The authors are the real thing (Tibshirani is the one behind the LASSO regularization technique). Uses some mathematical statistics without the burdens of measure theory and avoids the obvious but complicated proofs. I own two copies of this edition, one for the office, one for my house, and the authors generously provide the PDF for travelers like me. The author’s biography includes those from Wikipedia: Biography Robert Tibshirani (born July 10, 1956) is a Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Health Research and Policy at Stanford University. He was a Professor at the University of Toronto from 1985 to 1998. In his work, he develops statistical tools for the analysis of complex datasets, most recently in genomics and proteomics. His most well-known contributions are the LASSO method, which proposed the use of L1 penalization in regression and related problems, and Significance Analysis of Microarrays. He has also co-authored three well-known books: “Generalized Additive Models”, “An Introduction to the Bootstrap”, and “The Elements of Statistical Learning”, the last of which is available for free from the author’s website. You can also buy the book by clicking on the image above.
10 free online courses for entrepreneurs May 12, 2020 bizadmin When you’re starting your own online business, you need to be your own marketer, product photographer, and social media manager. Basically, you are a one-man show to get started due to limited budget. Taking an online course is one of the fastest ways to ramp-up the skills you need to succeed in every part of your online business. This will pave the way to further skills that you need to market your business effectively and not beat about the bush, trying to figure things out – all on your own. Instead of the trial and error method and learning through your own mistakes, it might be worth it to invest in courses and learn from the professionals who also started out as a noob. You can never try to save money from learning and investing in useful skills from the pros and coaches who have succeeded. [abc] Meanwhile, for others, instead of spending thousands to learn these skills, sign up for these free online courses and hold onto your savings for future Facebook ad campaigns (once you know how to run them)! By the end of this video, you’ll have a list of 10 free online courses that’ll teach you more about marketing, entrepreneurship, design, and productivity. Make sure to keep watching to see every video during this Covid-19 pandemic where the world is in lockdown and movement control order is practiced and regulated by the authorities. Break the rules and you are in for some questioning or even imprisonment at the harshest side. So, dear potential business owners and fellow bloggers, do practice social distancing too of at least 2 meters from one another to avoid getting infected with this treacherous novel corona-virus where there is no vaccine at the moment. Stay safe and stay at home as much as possible. Now your home is the safest place in the world during this mayhem caused by the unseen enemy, the virus. [abc] [abc]
Tom Griffiths: 3 ways to make better decisions – by thinking like a computer March 8, 2020 bizadmin If you ever struggle to make decisions, here’s a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions — on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight. This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSydney, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you. Books to Read Book The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive Brian Christian Anchor, 2012 One concern I sometimes hear is that recognizing the parallels between people and computers might start to rob us of our humanity. Christian’s first book, The Most Human Human, is the perfect antidote to that. Participating in a Turing test, where he had to convince the judges that he was not a computer, led Christian to reflect on how intelligent machines can help us come to recognize what it is that makes us human. [abc] Book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children Alison Gopnik Picador, 2017 One of the big ideas in the talk is that understanding the trade-off between exploration and exploitation can help us understand how our approach to decision-making should change as we age. Alison Gopnik’s wonderful book explores this idea in more detail, making the argument that the very structure of human childhood is in part a consequence of navigating this trade-off. Book A Long Bright Future Laura Carstensen PublicAffairs, 2011 At the other end of the life span, Laura Carstensen tells us why we should be optimistic about old age. Book Algorithms Unlocked Thomas H. Cormen The MIT Press, 2013 For people who want to learn more about algorithms, this book does a great job of translating an undergraduate curriculum in computer science into a form that somebody with a little bit of mathematical background can easily appreciate. Book In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation William J. Cook Princeton University Press, 2014 Focusing on one problem in particular, this book is a great illustration of how computer scientists tackle the hardest computational problems — using approximations, shortcuts and a lot of ingenuity. Book Finite and Infinite Games James Carse Free Press, 2013 An inspiration for Algorithms to Live By, this book takes a single mathematical idea and then unpacks it into a manual for living a fulfilling life. [abc]
This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research January 17, 2020 bizadmin Barking Up The Wrong Tree Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller! To check it out, click here. This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research (Click here to read on the blog) Impostor Syndrome is like being a secret agent — in the most depressing way imaginable. No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you achieve, you still feel like a fraud. You still question your ability and you’re waiting to be exposed. More formally, it’s often referred to as “a failure to internalize success.” You attribute your accomplishments to luck or insane amounts of effort, but never talent or skill. Ask yourself these questions: [abc] From The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It: Do you chalk your success up to luck, timing or computer error? Do you believe “if I can do it, anybody can”? Do you agonize over the smallest flaws in your work? Are your crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your ineptness? When you do succeed, do you secretly feel like you fooled them again? Do you worry that it’s a matter of time before you’re “found out”? If you’re nodding your head, you’re not alone. 70% of people have felt it at one time or another — with some experiencing it chronically. And some very big names have been afflicted with it: Albert Einstein: …the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler. Maya Angelou: I have written eleven books, but each time I think, “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” I can only dream that I will one day reach their level of astounding fraudulence. Jeez, look how inferior my fraudulence is to theirs. I’m a fraud at being a fraud… Seriously, there’s a lesson here: these two make it abundantly clear that no amount of achievement is going to convince you. That approach won’t work. And much of the advice we get isn’t helpful either. Merely “telling yourself you’re good enough” has all the scientific rigor of a Hallmark Card. Self-affirmations are as likely to cure this as they’d cure baldness. We need real answers, not platitudes. [abc] Funny thing is there’s a whole pile of scientific research that addresses this issue. It’s called “self-efficacy.” The concept was coined by Albert Bandura. He’s widely considered the most influential living psychologist and one of the most cited of all time. If there was a Mount Rushmore for psychology, his face would be up there. Bandura’s book is Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. Now I hate when people use phrases like “learning your own value” because while it sounds really nice, nobody explains how to actually do it. Time to roll up your sleeves, bubba. We’re gonna fix that. Let’s get to it… So What The Heck Is Self-Efficacy? It’s “perceived ability to succeed at a given task.” It’s a belief, not an objective measure of ability. But it’s a thermonuclear powered belief and has an eye-popping effect on your life, whether you know what it is or not. From Self-Efficacy: Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments… People’s beliefs in their efficacy affect almost everything they do: how they think, motivate themselves, feel, and behave. It can even be more important than skill. No doubt, actual skills are critical. If you have self-efficacy but no real driving ability, I’m not getting in your Uber. But that said, if you don’t believe you can accomplish something, you probably won’t try. And even if you do try, when you meet resistance, you’ll give up. [abc] And the effects of self-efficacy beliefs have been found in a staggering number of diverse arenas: academic grades, weight management, social behavior, health habits, occupational performance, etc. From Self-Efficacy: Where performance determines outcome, efficacy beliefs account for most of the variance in expected outcomes. When differences in efficacy beliefs are controlled, the outcomes expected for given performances make little or no independent contribution to prediction of behavior. “Oh, so it’s self-esteem and confidence.” That’s not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth… Um, actually, I just put words in your mouth. ANYWAY, point is, self-efficacy is distinct from self-esteem and confidence, otherwise I promise I’d be writing a post on self-esteem and confidence because explaining new words is hard when old ones work fine. Self-efficacy is your belief about your ability to accomplish a specific goal while self-esteem is a judgment of personal worth. My self-efficacy about my ability to eat ice cream might be high, but I don’t think that makes me a good person. And confidence is more generalized, while self-efficacy is task-specific. You can be a very confident person and still not have self-efficacy when it comes to performing an appendectomy. So how does this relate to impostor syndrome? Well, impostor syndrome is fundamentally a belief issue. You could be saying, “I don’t have impostor syndrome, I actually suck at this and my results confirm that.” Instead, you’re saying, “I’m aware my performance is solid but I don’t believe it’s due to talent.” [abc] Impostor syndrome is about your lack of belief in your skill at something. Having self-efficacy is a healthy amount of belief in your skill at something. If we increase the latter, we get rid of the former. We need to get you to believe that your ability — not luck or mere hard work — is the primary active ingredient in your success. (To learn more about how you can lead a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.) So how do we do boost self-efficacy? Bandura lays out 4 things that will do the job. They all have big, fancy academic-sounding names that make my spellchecker go heavy on the red underlining. We’re gonna translate them in to English-that-people-actually-speak because I don’t like migraines any more than you do. Let’s start with the one that is, in general, most powerful… 1) Enactive Mastery Experience When most people perform well they attribute it to skill on their part. (Maybe they are too inclined to attribute it to personal skill, but that’s a topic for a different, much more cynical post.) [abc] But if you’re dealing with impostor syndrome, this natural tendency to assume you’re a virtuoso is on the fritz. You do a great job and the default attribution bucket isn’t a skill — it’s luck, overwork or invisible elves that accomplished everything while you were napping. Many interpret enactive mastery experience as “keep working hard and you’ll see it’s your natural ability that’s causing the results.” If that was true, impostor syndrome wouldn’t exist. In fact, if you don’t actively change your default attributions, merely seeing yourself succeed isn’t going to fix impostor syndrome — it’s going to make it worse. From Self-Efficacy: …the impact of performance attainments on efficacy beliefs depends on what is made of those performances. The same level of performance success may raise, leave unaffected, or lower perceived self-efficacy depending on how various personal and situational contributors are interpreted and weighted (Bandura 1982a). So what do we have to do? You need to notice the system you use. Your process. Yes, you have one. No, I have not been spying on you. You probably take it for granted. Or it’s a blur as you anxiously drive yourself crazy due to deadlines or trying to meet insanely high standards. It’s probably habitual at this point and therefore often subconscious, like driving a car, but there are things you do each and every time that are producing these consistently good results. (And if you’re not consistently getting good results then you don’t have impostor syndrome, and I’m not getting in your Uber.) Everyone does not do these things you do in your process and that’s one of the reasons not everyone gets the results you do. [abc] Look at the system as separate from you. Like the recipe that makes a good cake. When you have a solid recipe, or good instructions, you feel in control. And what’s control? It’s the exact opposite of luck. When you recognize that you have a system, and the system is producing those results consistently, the depressing magical thinking of impostor syndrome fades. You have a new “why” that’s responsible for those solid results. What would your reaction be if I told you, “I took 10 weeks of tennis lessons and my tennis luck increased dramatically!” You’d laugh. Systems and training don’t increase luck. They increase skill. You’re just not noticing or acknowledging the system you use. (And if I was your system I’d be pissed that Mr. Luck and Ms. Overwork were undeservedly getting all the credit around here.) When work is a blur it’s easy to think you just got lucky. But I’m guessing you’ve noticed that people who are very confident about their abilities can often explain them to you. They’re aware of their system. Step outside yourself and notice what you do that gets the results. As the great Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” And what if that doesn’t convince you? Then set up an experiment. If you attribute your results to your lucky rabbit’s foot but you can repeatedly achieve the same results without it, then it’s hard to argue that dismembered mammal limbs are responsible for your success. From Self-Efficacy: When there is much subjectivity in judging the adequacy of one’s performances, as in social competency, an illusorily created low sense of efficacy endures despite repeated performance attainments that indicate personal capabilities (Newman & Goldfried, 1987). Dislodging a low sense of personal efficacy requires explicit, compelling feedback that forcefully disputes the preexisting disbelief in one’s capabilities. “Oh, I’m a fraud. I only do well because of hard work.” Fine. Set a time limit on how much effort you put in and see if the world comes crashing down. But before you start, think about your system and how you will do the things you always do in that shorter time frame. If you get 90% of your usual results in half the time, that’s not “hard work.” That’s talent. (To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.) [abc] Okay, “enactive mastery blah bitty blah” is the method that works best in general. But what’s the method that works best for people who are unsure of themselves — like people with impostor syndrome? 2) Vicarious Experience In English: “Watching other talented people work.” If you’re reading this, you take your skills for granted. When you see that people who do similar things to you do well and a much larger group of people who do not do those things fail, you’ll realize your system works and there are other (inferior) methods that you’re choosing not to use. This means you have control. Control means not-luck. Problem is, when people with impostor syndrome look at others, they usually look at the wrong people. Often they compare themselves to people who have zero talent and have great difficulty finding their way out of the house every morning. Yeah, this makes you feel better but it doesn’t convince you you’re talented — it just means you’re not an idiot. Other times people with impostor syndrome compare themselves to the top 1% which acts as a fast-acting injection of depression concentrate and is utterly debilitating. Instead, think Goldilocks: you’re not looking to compare yourself to “too cold” or “too hot”, you’re looking for “just right.” Bandura says you’ll get the best results by observing others who are your peers or slightly better than you. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: Persons who are similar or slightly higher in ability provide the most informative comparative information for gauging one’s own capabilities (Festinger, 1954; Suls & Miller, 1977; Wood, 1989). How does this help? Plain and simple: it’s inspiring. “If they can do it, I can do it.” They have a system. It works. You have a system (if you take the time to notice it) and it works. You’ll probably see what they do is pretty similar to what you do. You both get good results and you’re peers. It’s not luck. You can even leverage vicarious experience without the vicarious part: it’s called “self-modeling.” Watch yourself working successfully. Look at good work that you’ve done. Smart emails you’ve sent. Great presentations or reports you’ve put together. Anything that resonates with you and makes you say, “Hey, this is impressive work — oh, and I’m the one who did it.” From Self-Efficacy: Self-modeling has remarkably wide applicability and often succeeds with inveterate self-doubters where other instructional, modeling, and incentive approaches fail (Dowrick, 1991; Meharg & Wolterdorf, 1990). Apparently, it is hard to beat observed personal attainment as a self-persuader of capability. Let your “best self” be your role model. (To learn how to deal with passive-aggressive people, click here.) We don’t just want to watch others work, we also want to get help from our friends. But the trick is getting the right kind of support that will kill your impostor syndrome and not increase it… 3) Social Persuasion Translation: support and encouragement. For people who have impostor syndrome, simply seeing results isn’t enough to boost belief in their ability… but seeing results and having others praise them does the trick. From Self-Efficacy: …skill transmission and success feedback alone achieved little with individuals beset with strong doubts about their capabilities. But skill transmission with social validation of personal efficacy produced large benefits. Tell your friends you’re going through a tough time and could use their support. There are three tips from the research you’ll want to keep in mind here: [abc] 1) If the positive feedback is insincere, you’ll see right through it thanks to the negative, skeptical lens of impostor syndrome. It has to be legit praise. 2) Support from experts is preferable. Praise from someone who doesn’t understand the arena is easily dismissed. 3) Positive feedback about your hard work is nice but them praising your ability is better. If you keep getting praised for your hard work, it’s easy to conclude that you don’t have talent. From Self-Efficacy: Evaluative feedback highlighting personal capabilities raises efficacy beliefs. Feedback that the children improved their capabilities through effort also enhances perceived efficacy, although not as much as being told that their progress shows they have ability for the activity. You don’t want white lies about your lightsaber abilities, you want sincere compliments. And you’d like them from Yoda. And it’s nice to hear you worked hard but it’s better to hear, “The Force is strong with this one.” (To learn the 4 harsh truths that will make you a better person, click here.) We’ve covered systems, models, and support. What’s left? Oh, feelings. You can never get away from the power of feelings, like it or not… 4) Emotional / Physiological States Your feelings and moods matter. And if you think they don’t matter then you’re in real trouble because they’re still influencing you and you’re not even noticing it. Not getting enough sleep, being hungry or just having a bad day can exacerbate impostor feelings, but unless you take the time to establish those are the underlying causes, you’re just going to feel awful and default to blaming yourself for being a fraud. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: Mood activates the subset of memories congruent with it through an associative mood network. Thus, a negative mood activates thoughts of past failings, whereas a positive mood activates thoughts of past accomplishments… According to Teasdale (1988), negative episodes and depressed mood activate a global view of oneself as inadequate and worthless rather than just activating unhappy memories. Here’s the problem: we are absolutely terrible at figuring out the true causes of our feelings. You think you know why you’re feeling something but it’s just inference. You think you’re cranky because of what your partner said but it’s actually because you’ve been running on five hours of sleep for the past three nights. But here’s the upside: you can now use your knowledge of this emotional blurriness to your advantage. Since the cause and meaning of feelings is all about interpretation, you can choose to interpret them differently. The court of emotions has an appeals process. If you can reframe the feelings into something transient or unrelated to the task at hand then your self-efficacy doesn’t plummet. From Self-Efficacy: …if the meaning of an affective state is altered by attributing it to a nonemotional or transient irrelevant source, the state does not affect evaluative judgment because it is considered uninformative for the judgment at hand. For example, interviewers who attribute their accelerated heart rate to having rushed up a set of stairs are less likely to wonder about their capabilities to manage the interview situation than interviewers who read their pounding heart as a sign of distress. Yes, you’re fidgety before the big meeting. But that physical feeling has to be interpreted. You don’t have to believe it’s nervousness because you’re a faker. It could be excitement or anticipation. Reframe your feelings and you can reframe impostor syndrome… and that can reframe your life. [abc] (To learn more about how to make friends as an adult, click here.) Okay, we’re all Bandura’d out. We covered a lot, time for the sum up — and we’ll also answer the looming question: even if you beat impostor syndrome today, how do you know that this newly found self-efficacy will last? Sum Up This is how to overcome impostor syndrome: Enactive mastery experience: Recognize your system. Tennis lessons don’t increase tennis luck. Vicarious experience: If they can do it, you can do it. Social persuasion: I, for one, happen to think The Force is very strong with you. So there. Emotional/physiological states: Reframe feelings. You’re not antsy because you want this blog post to end, you’re just so very very excited to be reading it. People are afraid that even if they develop self-efficacy they’ll backslide into impostor feelings. Don’t worry. If you really go out of your way to push hard on the 4 principles above, self-efficacy can become as stubbornly lodged in your brain as the feeling that you’re a fraud is now. I don’t know about you but I’m all for positive feelings that are irrationally resistant to change. [abc] From Self-Efficacy: They continue to adhere to the fictitiously instilled efficacy beliefs even after the persuasory basis for those beliefs has been thoroughly discredited. Efficacy beliefs created arbitrarily survive behavioral experiences that contradict them for some time (Cervone & Palmer, 1990). Lawrence (1988) provides suggestive evidence that efficacy beliefs created by fictitious success may gain strength through a cognitive self-persuasion process. The old saying is “fake it till you make it.” But with impostor syndrome, you’ve already made it. The race is over. You won. Now it’s time for you to finally enjoy it. ***And if you want a daily insight, quote or laugh, you should follow me on Instagram here.*** Email Extras Findings from around the internet… + Want to know which qualities made children more likely to earn more — or less — as adults? Click here. + Want to know what makes top performers different from most people? Click here. [abc] + Want to know if its better to tackle easy or hard tasks first? Click here. + Miss last week’s post? Here you go: New Neuroscience Reveals 5 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent. + Want to know what makes kids more likely to experience burnout? Click here. (And many thanks to the great Dan Pink for some of the above links.) + You read to the end of the email. I appreciate it. (If you skipped down here you *are* an impostor. Tsk-tsk.) Crackerjack time: What happens when you ask the users of Reddit which accounts are bots? For the very clever answer, click here. Thanks for reading! Eric PS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can sign up to get the weekly email yourself here. [abc]
Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z June 9, 2019 bizadmin Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z Get ready to meet the newest generation of talent to enter the workplace: Generation Z. While these 18 to 22-year-old candidates share many things in common with preceding generations, the conditions of their high-tech upbringings have shaped the way they think about and approach employment. The 2019 Yello Recruiting Study compares Millennial students and Generation Z students to find out what college recruiters need to know to attract Generation Z employees and hire this new wave of talent. The Generations Surveyed Generation Z: 18 – 22 year olds who are full-time or part time students in 4-year or graduate degree programs. Millennials: 23 – 38 year olds who are full-time or part time students in 4-year or graduate degree programs. Read on to find out what to expect from the first graduating class of Generation Z, how they’re different (and similar) from their Millennial counterparts and what they’re looking for from you as their first employer. Find out everything you need to know as Gen Z enters the workforce. Introducing the First Graduating Class of Generation Z Before diving into the differences between Millennials and Generation Z, here’s a quick primer on what to expect as these 18-22 year-olds enter the workforce. Generation Z College Majors The most popular majors among the members of Generation Z are science and social sciences. 30% of the members of Generation Z major in these fields, while just over one in ten major in business. Generation Z College Majors Generation Z Job Expectations About two-thirds of Generation Z students are confident they’ll receive an offer when they graduate. Generation Z Job Expectations Quick Facts 2 of 3 Generation Z business majors expect to receive more than one offer. Half of Gen Z computer science and engineering majors expect to receive multiple offers. For non-STEM majors like communications or political science, 7 in 10 of the members of Generation Z are worried about finding a job. 3 in 4 Generation Z education majors expect to receive at least one offer. They Start the Job Search Early A quarter of Generation Z students start their job search freshman/sophomore year and half start junior/senior year. Only one in ten wait until after graduation. When Gen Z-ers Start the Job Search Generation Z Salary Expectations Generation Z Salary Expectations When it comes to salary, Generation Z’s expectations are spread across the board. These first-time employees aren’t sure what to expect when it comes time for salary negotiations.
5 Ways to Curate Content on Your Blog June 2, 2019 bizadmin by Susan Gunelius Updated November 11, 2018 Content curation is a popular trick used by bloggers and online publishers to increase the amount of content they publish, share great content from across the web with their own audiences, and add personal commentary to hot topics discussed on other websites. You can curate content that you think your audience would find value in, add your own commentary, and publish it on your blog. As long as you don’t plagiarize, break any laws, publish duplicate content, or fail to attribute the source with a backlink to the original content, then content curation is a viable way to bring interesting content to your audience and increase your blog post publishing schedule. Following are five easy ways to curate content on your blog in a useful, legal and ethical way. Publish Editorialized Content That You’ve Curated It’s important to understand the difference between content aggregation, content syndication, and content curation before you can effectively curate content to publish on your blog. Here are some simple explanations of each: Content Aggregation: When you gather links to content and provide nothing else but those links (and perhaps content titles) in a single place, you’re using content aggregation. Alltop and PopURLs are examples of content aggregation websites. Content Syndication: Syndicated content is aggregated and redistributed (in whole or in part) for consumption or publishing through a third party. Sites like Newstex and NewsCred are examples of companies that offer varied content syndication services. Content Curation: When you review content from a variety of sources, gather links to those sources, share descriptions of that content, add your own commentary to that content, and publish all of those pieces in a single location, you’re curating content. While aggregation and syndication are primarily automated processes, curation is not. True content curation requires human intelligence, interpretation, and intervention. With that definition of content curation in mind, you can read, watch, and listen to content from a variety of sources that you think your blog audience would enjoy and benefit from, collect links to the best content, share a snippet from the content, add your commentary, and publish it all in a blog post. Just don’t forget to always cite and link back to the source to provide appropriate attribution. Publish Curated Round-up Blog Posts One of the most popular methods of leveraging content curation to increase your blog posting schedule and to share interesting content from across the web with your audience is by publishing round-up blog posts. For example, you could publish a weekly round-up post where you share links and descriptions of great content from multiple sources about a specific topic. You can even add your own brief commentary with each link. This is a great way to not only share great information with your audience but also to show other content publishers that you like what they’re doing. Think of it as a step in developing a relationship with other publishers whom you respect. Publish Slideshows to Highlight Curated Content From Multiple Sources Slideshows are visually appealing and can boost page views for your blog because visitors have to click through each page in the slideshow to see all of them. If your audience likes slideshows, they’re great for sharing curated content. Rather than just publishing a blog post filled with a list of links and commentary, turn each of those links into a visual slideshow where each link gets its own image and commentary page. Slideshows can also easily be repurposed into Twitter updates, Pinterest pins, and more. Embed Curated Content on Your Blog There are a variety of tools that can streamline the content curation process, and some of those tools enable you to embed the content you curate on your blog. Typically, the formatting is done for you, so the process is quick and easy. You just pick the sources, add your commentary to each, copy and paste some embed code into a blog post or blog page, click the publish button, and you’re done. For example, tools like Storify and Rebelmouse both offer easy ways to embed curated content on your blog. You can see an example of curated content embedded into a blog page using the Rebelmouse tool on Women on Business. Curate Content Into an Online Video Curated content doesn’t have to be published on your blog in written format. You could create a video that includes your insights added about a single piece of curated content or multiple pieces of curated content, publish it to your YouTube channel, and embed it anywhere on your blog. Just be sure to include the URLs to all of your sources within the video and in the written description of the video.
6 Principals of Connected Learning April 25, 2019 bizadmin The above is a sample infographic that I have taken from a site that is yet to complete. Well, here I will give my opinions to the above image. Not that I am a genius, but just an average student, in computers. To be honest, I have had my share of struggles academically in the varsity due to external pressures to excel and studied using the wrong methods; and that was speed reading instead of analysing. Now that I am more relaxed and almost mid-age, I suppose I am qualified to give my opinions and experiences learning from my home base again. On the top right, that is academically oriented, first of all, don’t panic and be overwhelmed by the extent of workload and tutorials to complete. Just stay calm, find your inner peace or pray and claim on Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through God who strengthens me. Piaget’s self discovery learning is the best form of learning. It is better than going through a classmate who may sabotage you with ulterior motive, unless you approach a group of friends who are sincere to help you and discuss like having tuition. On the right side, Production Centered is easy. Just follow the instructions and be observant of how the company production line runs, whether you are working as a technician or not. Peer Supported is group learning of at least 2 persons or more. I shall skip Shared Purpose as I am not familiar with what that means academically unless you are studying as a couple, which I presume of having the same goals and motivating each other. After all, 2 heads are better than 1. Openly networked is another topic I shall skip here. But in my opinion, I guess it means networking with people better than you and tapping their brains by hiring smarter employees. Like Robert Kiyosaki said in his popular books, A students work for C students / bosses. And finally interests powered are your hobbies that take you to learn the steps at your own pace in your free time like using a Digital SLR camera, how to focus, etc. Likewise, blogging also takes time to learn the insides out of the WordPress features.
The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Second Edition (Springer Series in Statistics) 2nd Edition April 12, 2019 bizadmin For those who love science and mathematics, then this is the book for your reading from Amazon. Some of the chapters include Bootstrap versus Maximum Likelihood, Trees with Simulated Data, Model Averaging and Stacking, etc. It may sound alien to most of us but for the learned, this makes an interesting read, especially for those who are doing their masters or PhDs. The Elements of statistical learning is more for actuarial science students who will later work in the insurance industry, calculating complex data and refunds to the policy holders. Some Reviews include the below: Very comprehensive, sufficiently technical to get most of the plumbing behind machine learning. Very useful as a reference book (actually, there is no other complete reference book). The authors are the real thing (Tibshirani is the one behind the LASSO regularization technique). Uses some mathematical statistics without the burdens of measure theory and avoids the obvious but complicated proofs. I own two copies of this edition, one for the office, one for my house, and the authors generously provide the PDF for travelers like me. The author’s biography includes those from Wikipedia: Biography Robert Tibshirani (born July 10, 1956) is a Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Health Research and Policy at Stanford University. He was a Professor at the University of Toronto from 1985 to 1998. In his work, he develops statistical tools for the analysis of complex datasets, most recently in genomics and proteomics. His most well-known contributions are the LASSO method, which proposed the use of L1 penalization in regression and related problems, and Significance Analysis of Microarrays. He has also co-authored three well-known books: “Generalized Additive Models”, “An Introduction to the Bootstrap”, and “The Elements of Statistical Learning”, the last of which is available for free from the author’s website. You can also buy the book by clicking on the image above.