Month: February 2010
Double Your Productivity Without More Work Or Stress
Zappos COO Alfred Lin enlightens us on how to become 37 times more productive in only one year! Can it be? Let’s hear him out:
“…Being 37x more productive is impossible, and I’ll show you why. But along the way it will become clear how becoming 2-3x more productive might be within reach.
His math isn’t the problem per se. It’s true that if you improve 1% each day over the previous day, that’s a 1% compounding rate. My question is: Is it possible to increase your daily productivity by an entire percent every day?
To answer that, I want to give you a fun math puzzle. Yeah, I know, “fun” is relative… Okay look if you don’t like word problems just take a random guess at the answer. If you’re up for the challenge, try to solve it without pen and paper. You know, just to prove your MIT education wasn’t for nothing.
Here’s the puzzle: You get in your car at home and head out towards your mother’s house 60 miles away. (Your mom likes this word problem, I can already tell.) You hit traffic during the first half of the trip, so after 30 miles you’ve averaged only 30 miles per hour.
Now the traffic opens up and you can go as fast as you want. The question is: How fast do you have to go during the second half of the trip such that you’ve averaged 60 mph over the entire trip?
If you’re not using pen and paper, maybe you guessed 90? 120?
Actually it’s impossible! To average 60 mph you need to travel the whole 60 miles in a single hour. But it’s already been an hour! Even if you went 1000 mph during the second half, it would have taken just over an hour to complete the 60 miles, therefore your average is still less than 60 mph.
It’s amazing how periods of low velocity wash away gains of high velocity. In the puzzle, if you doubled your speed in the second half it would increase your trip average from 30 to 40 mph. If you quadrupled your speed in the second half, your trip average would still be only 48 mph.
Once you’re behind, you can’t make up ground no matter how fast you go.”
Rubik’s Cube Robot
If you thought solving the rubik’s cube was hard, just imagine designing and building a lego robot to do the very same task. that is exactly what mike dobson did using pieces from lego mindstorms. Cubestormer, as he has named his creation, links up with a pc and can solve a rubik’s cube puzzle in under 12 seconds. the design holds the cube using four hands, which can rotate the cube in all directions. A camera is focused on the cube to tell the computer how it should turn it.
World’s Largest Dodgeball Game
Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies
Worst Free Throw Of All Time
Happy Valentine’s Day
Valentines Day 2010 from Jeremy Person on Vimeo.
Tyler and I went to the park today after church since it is 70 degrees outside! Hope everyone is enjoying their Valentine’s Day!
WWF Save The Orangutan Campaign
One of the most impactful World Wildlife Fund (WWF) campaigns I have seen.
Weather Man’s Big Day
AccuWeather.com forecast video for the coming Snowpocalypse in the DC/Baltimore area shows meteorologist Jim Kosek freaking out a little about the storm. Oh boy.
Motivated By The Moon
The documentary In the Shadow of the Moon came out in 2007. I’ve always loved to watch the trailer when I need self motivation and it is a great team building tool. Watch the above trailer and ask yourself how it applies to your life and career. Below are some excerpts I’ve noted from the video:
- “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man of the moon, and returning him safely from space.” – John F Kennedy, Jr.
- Individuals (and especially leaders) must provide vision, stretch goals, and those goals need to be time driven. Sometimes the goals seem impossible, but everything is possible under the right circumstances.
- “And that was a bold move, it had some risky aspects to it. But it was a time when we made bold moves.”
- My favorite quote of the trailer. Think about what you really want to achieve in life and go for it no matter how big or small it may be. Don’t let your fears define who you are.
- “I had a feeling the whole world was watching us. Not only do I have a lot of things I can do wrong, but the consequences should I do them wrong are be immediately obvious to 3 billion people.”
- Make sure when you are doing something big in life to think things through so you can do your best when everyone is watching.
- Make sure when you are doing something big in life to think things through so you can do your best when everyone is watching.
- “And then it dawned on me from an emotional point of view, that we are going to go to the moon.”
- Don’t forget to enjoy life along the way.
- “People instead of saying “well you Americans did it”, everywhere they said “we did it…we the human race…we people did it…and I thought that was a beautiful thing.”
- When you attempt big things in life it is great to have the support of others. Don’t let people stop you from achieving your dream should they say you can’t accomplish something you want in life. There is no “I” in TEAM.
- “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
- What you do in life may seem small to you but everyone is capable of doing amazing things. If you live life right you can not only do things that positively impact yourself, but also others.
