Leyla Bonilla's List: Interesante

• ¿Qué se ha de hacer cuando los objetivos empresariales se cambian? COMUNICAR el nuevo rumbo al equipo. Si la idea sólo permanece en la cabeza del líder, el equipo no reaccionara bien pues considerara que la decisión es una imposición
• El líder guia con su ejemplo. El trabajo más pesado corresponde al líder.

• It never ceases to amaze just how different two people's views of exactly the same event can be: one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.
• why they maintain good physical health
• Participants tended to put answer such as: "To do well in school." This got them thinking about ends rather than means - the ultimate purpose of physical health.
• how they maintained their physical health. Naturally they responded with things like: "Go exercise". In other words they focused on means rather than ends, the actual process.
• low-construal thinking condition (thinking about means rather than ends
• Those participants who had been encouraged to think in high-level, abstract terms demonstrated greater self-control in enduring the discomfort of the handgrip in order to receive more accurate personality profiles.
• Research reveals that people find it much easier to make decisions that demonstrate self-control when they are thinking about events that are distant in time, for example how much exercise they will do next week or what they will eat tomorrow (Fujita, 2008). Similarly they make much more disciplined decisions on behalf of other people than they do for themselves. People implicitly follow the maxim: do what I say, not what I do.
• Global processing. This means trying to focus on the wood rather than the trees: seeing the big picture and our specific actions as just one part of a major plan or purpose. For example, someone trying to eat healthily should focus on the ultimate goal and how each individual decision about what to eat contributes (or detracts) from that goal.
• Abstract reasoning. This means trying to avoid considering the specific details of the situation at hand in favour of thinking about how actions fit into an overall framework
• Someone trying to add more self-control to their exercise regime might try to think less about the details of the exercise, and instead focus on an abstract vision of the ideal physical self, or how exercise provides a time to re-connect mind and body.
• Categorising tasks or project stages conceptually may help an individual or group maintain their focus and achieve greater self-discipline.
• avoid thinking locally and specifically and practice thinking globally, objectively and abstractly, and increased self-control should follow.

10 more annotations...

• 3. Read one page of the dictionary every day and write down any words that catch your attention in a notebook. When you need inspiration, look through the words you have written down.

•   Beware of the ten creativity “locks” identified by Roger von Oeck:

   
   
  • There is One Right Answer
   
  • That’s Not Logical
   
  • Follow the Rules
   
  • Be Practical
   
  • Play Is Frivolous
   
  • That’s Not My Area
   
  • Avoid Ambiguity
   
  • Don’t Be Foolish
   
  • To Err Is Wrong
   
  • I’m Not Creative
• 6.  Immerse yourself in the task at hand: do your research, read everything you can about your subject, attend seminars, ask experts for their input, and so on.
• 9. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Edward de Bono advises that “It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”
• 11. Create Mindmaps. Write a topic heading in the center of a white piece of paper and then start writing related ideas on branches linked to the main topic; then add more ideas as sub-branches. Create as many levels of ideas as you want. Use different colors and add illustrations.
• 12. Ask yourself lots of questions.
• 15. Constantly ask: “What if . . .”; “Why not . . .”; “How else can this be done?”; “How can this be improved?”; “What other alternatives are there?”
• 16.  Disrupt your habitual thought patterns.  Take a different route to work, try food you’ve never eaten before, listen to a music genre you normally don’t listen to, and so on.

• 27.  Use Edward de Bono’s “Six-Hat” technique.

   
   
  • Red Hat: Look at the situation emotionally. What do your feelings tell you?
   
  • White Hat: Look at the situation objectively. What are the facts?
   
  • Yellow Hat: Use a positive perspective. Which elements of the solution will work?
   
  • Black Hat: Use a negative perspective. Which elements of the solution won’t work?
   
  • Green Hat: Think creatively. What are some alternative ideas?
   
  • Blue Hat: Think broadly. What is the best overall solution?

7 more annotations...

• 1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but  they're also often quiet and at rest.
• This does not mean that creative people are hyperactive, always  "on." In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is  that they control their energy; it's not ruled by the calendar, the dock,  an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser  beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries.

• Going to the supermarket when I'm really hungry, and without a shopping list, is a recipe for disaster. It will take an act of iron will to avoid returning without some kind of junk food. Later, after eating, I'll wonder how I could have bought junk food but forgotten healthy staples like rice and pasta
• Part of the reason people make mistakes like this is that research shows the projection bias anchors us in current emotional and cognitive states. The present is often like an emotional cage which we can't break out of to understand how we will feel in the future
• A study on subway travellers showed that people freely recalled their previous worst experience of missing the train. As a result they then predicted that if they were to miss the train later that day they would feel worse than did other people who had recalled less disastrous times they had missed the train.
• Recalling more than one past instance of an event you want to make a decision about helps average out the emotion. Also, simply be aware that you are likely to recall the best or worst past example of an event.
• More choice is often not better: Research with gourmet jams has found people can be happier, and even better motivated, when they have fewer options to choose from.

3 more annotations...

• The number of people who talked about music was surprisingly high. In the first week on average 58% of the pairs discussed music compared to 37% of all the other categories of conversation combined. Other categories included books, movies, TV, football and clothes.
• participants were asked to judge people's personality solely on their top 10 list of songs.

  "...a person's openness to experience was best communicated by their top 10 list of songs."
• Another is that people use music to regulate their mood: I want to get hyper for a night out so I put on some dance music.

1 more annotation...

• La historia del niño que fue entregado por su madre en adopción, que luego abandonó la universidad, más tarde fue despedido de la propia empresa que había creado, fracasó con su próximo negocio… pero al final volvió a su empresa original para sacarla de una inminente ruina y convertirse, él, en uno de los hombres más influyentes de la informática, la música y la animación computarizada (Steve Jobs, CEO de Apple).

   

  El niño que nació sin brazos en Nicaragua producto de la talidomina (una medicina) que le suministraron a su madre durante el embarazo, que luego decidió seguir su pasión, vencer sus limitaciones y alcanzar sus sueños a toda costa… y hoy es un famoso guitarrista que toca con los pies e inspira a multitudes a vencer sus barreras (Tony Melendez).

   

  La niña negra que nació en medio del racismo y la pobreza norteamericana, que fue abusada sexualmente por un familiar a temprana edad y luego salió embarazada durante su adolescencia… que hoy es una de las mujeres más admiradas por millones de personas en todo el mundo por el impacto positivo que ha generado a través de su imperio mediático y su mega-fortuna de más de mil millones de dólares (Oprah Winfrey, conductora por 20 años del Oprah Winfrey Show y Editora de la revista “O”).
• La diferencia surge de una decisión. La decisión de adueñarte de tu vida. La elección de conectarte con la certeza de que, en última instancia, tu destino depende de ti.
• Tu éxito no lo determina las circunstancias. Es tu respuesta ante las circunstancias—la actitud que asumes, las decisiones que tomas, los acciones que emprendes—lo que conforma tu futuro.
• parte de tu misión está en ayudar a germinar en tus hijos ese sentido de pertenencia y de responsabilidad por sus propias vidas
• La responsabilidad que dice “mi vida, depende de mí”.

• La responsabilidad que te hace aprender a no buscar culpables.

   

  La responsabilidad que te impide verte como una víctima.

4 more annotations...

• The latest research suggests that while we are peacefully asleep our brain is busily processing the day’s information. It combs through recently formed memories, stabilizing, copying and filing them, so that they will be more useful the next day. A night of sleep can make memories resistant to interference from other information and allow us to recall them for use more effectively the next morning.
• sleep protects simple memories from decay
• Matthew Wilson and Bruce McNaughton
• They taught these rats to circle a track to find food, recording neuronal firing patterns from the rodents’ brains all the while. Cells in the hippocampus—a brain structure critical for spatial memory—created a map of the track, with different “place cells” firing as the rats traversed each region of the track [see “The Matrix in Your Head,” by James J. Knierim; Scientific American Mind, June/July 2007]. Place cells correspond so closely to exact physical locations that the researchers could monitor the rats’ progress around the track simply by watching which place cells were firing at any given time. And here is where it gets even more interesting: when Wilson and McNaughton continued to record from these place cells as the rats slept, they saw the cells continuing to fire in the same order—as if the rats were “practicing” running around the track in their sleep.
• As this unconscious rehearsing strengthens memory, something more complex is happening as well—the brain may be selectively rehearsing the more difficult aspects of a task.
• For instance, Matthew P. Walker’s work at Harvard Medical School in 2005 demonstrated that when subjects learned to type complicated sequences such as 4-1-3-2-4 on a keyboard (much like learning a new piano score), sleeping between practice sessions led to faster and more coordinated finger movements. But on more careful examination, he found that people were not simply getting faster overall on this typing task. Instead each subject was getting faster on those particular keystroke sequences at which he or she was worst.
• It is also obvious that skimping on sleep stymies these crucial cognitive processes: some aspects of memory consolidation only happen with more than six hours of sleep. Miss a night, and the day’s memories might be compromised—an unsettling thought in our fast-paced, sleep-deprived society.

5 more annotations...

• Personal search engine Lijit does a great job of making it easy to associate your account with them with all kinds of other accounts you own around the web. It's simple: they just ask what your most common username is and then they check for public profiles with that username on a long list of different services. In just moments, with a handful of keystrokes, all kinds of info about you can be gathered together.
• Social recommendation service (and, disclosure, RWW sponsor) Strands, for example, presents customers of Spanish bank BBVA with messages like the following: "Grocery spending: A married person spends 103% more on groceries than a single person. By the way, are you married or single?" That's interesting to know and would motivate me to answer the question with a click.
• if Twello (or another app) said something like this to users: "We see that you are an accountant - did you know that Twitter users who are accountants tend to post more photos to Flickr than Doctors do, but fewer than people in Defense related fields do? If you'd like to tell us what your Flickr username is, we'll connect it to your Twitter account here."
• Messages like the following greet users when they login to their Brighter Planet account: "You live with one other person and you use 15% green electricity. Improve your profile by telling us about the car you drive and your flights."
• Brand spanking new social news site SocialMedian assigns a big picture of a famous (or infamous) person as each new user's avatar. My default profile was graced with a photo of Bill Gates, but other people start out with George Bush - something that must get a lot of new users to click the "change my photo" link. It's a witty idea and we wonder just how far it could be taken.
• "You are 15 years old, clean up after circus animals for a living and love Britney Spears videos on TV. (unverified - not true? click here to edit your profile.)" Oh yeah, that could work.
• Why not let users of your app opt-in to populate their profiles with publicly available profiles from other accounts?

5 more annotations...

• 1. Stuff a little love note in your sweetie's pocket, sock, or shoe. For maximum impact, try email.
• 5. Look up the date of the next full moon and celebrate with a champagne toast.
• 7. Hate basketball and your main squeeze is addicted to it? Get tickets to a game. Despise musicals? Surprise your sweetie with tickets to a show. Go against the grain, and endure with grace and cheer.
• 15. Have a picnic. It doesn't have to be outdoors, it can be on your living room floor.
• 18. Get away from it all close to home — spend a night in a very luxurious hotel or cozy bed-and-breakfast in your own city.

3 more annotations...

• Money matters

   

  It's never too soon to give a financial lesson. If you haven't already, open a bank account for your children. Build on the math skills they learn in school and talk to them about how a savings account can grow and what it means if they overdraw the account.
• With college comes a deluge of credit card offers and if your child doesn't understand the consequences of accumulating a large balance on a high interest-rate card, they could be paying down that debt well beyond their 20s.

• So when they make a misstep, give them the real scoop about what it means to be late for work or to miss a deadline.

   

   Sitting in detention is one thing -- but missing out on bonuses and the corner office might hit home a little harder. Bad habits in the classroom can predict bad habits in the workplace.
• Take them to work with you when they have a day off from school, or attend a local school board or city council meeting so they can observe how adults communicate in a business setting.
• By college, your child should know how to wash clothes, cook up a quick meal -- besides ramen noodles -- and keep things in (relatively) good order.
• You might even want to show them how to sew on a button and iron a shirt. Then let them take over for a weekend, while you sit back and enjoy the results.

• Have your child visit job sites on the Web and read job descriptions for careers that interest them.  

   Encourage your kids to think about their career goals and craft a résumé that includes teams they've played on, clubs they've belonged to or volunteer jobs they've held. This résumé can help immensely when your child is looking for that first summer job. 

   Your child may not think playing soccer relates to a dream of becoming a lawyer, but competition and teamwork are skills that translate from the field to the courtroom.  

5 more annotations...

• Qualitative

   

  First, determine what you want to measure, whether it’s corporate reputation, conversations or customer relationships. These objectives require a more qualitative measurement approach, so let’s start by asking some questions. For example, if the objective is measure ROI for conversations, we start by benchmarking ourselves with questions like:

   

   

  - Are we currently part of conversations about our product/industry?

• How are we currently talked about versus our competitors?

   

  Then to measure success, we ask whether we were able to:

   

   - Build better relationships with our key audiences?

   

  - Participate in conversations where we hadn’t previously had a voice?

   

  - Move from a running monologue to a meaningful dialogue with customers?

• Quantitative

   

  If the goal is to measure traffic, sales or SEO Search engine optimization ranking, we can take a more quantitative approach. There are some free tools that can help with this type of measurement, including:
• In addition, you might look at how many people join your social network (or become your connection) in a given period of time, how much activity there is in your forum or what the click-through rate is to your product pages from any of these platforms that result in direct sales.

2 more annotations...

• Están siempre llenos de ideas, relacionadas con nuevas empresas o en la forma de mejorar su proyecto actual.
• La parte difícil es lograr el equilibrio entre tantas ideas, el tiempo, la vocación y los recursos.
• Usa el sentido común. Tu proyecto tiene que generar ingresos, primero para hacerlo sustentable en el tiempo por si mismo (sin necesidad de créditos e inyección de capital al infinito).
• Nunca creas que lo que va a ocurrir es que llegará Google o amigos a comprar tu compañía
• Si vas a copiar la idea que otra persona u compañía ha tenido, ten en mente que copiar no es sencillo.
• Preparate para por lo menos 2 años difíciles. Lo más seguro es que sea menos tiempo, pero hay ideas que tienen que germinar antes de alcanzar la gloria.
• Un error grande es ir creciendo la compañía a un ritmo muy rápido.
• Si la dimensión de tu compañía es muy grande (con muchos empleados, tiendas, oficinas) y el flujo de caja se detiene por una crisis, un producto que fracasa, etc. No vas a poder manejar el tamaño de tu empresa. Vas a despedir gente o lo que es peor, vas a tener que cerrar.
• Mientras trabajes en un empleo normal ahorra un dinero que puedas usar para mantenerte unos 3-6 meses. Siempre vas a poder conseguir un nuevo trabajo.
• Si fracasas vuelve a intentarlo. No necesariamente lo mismo. El sentido común y tu pasión te dirán si puedes seguir con la misma idea o necesitas reformularla.
• Aunque parezca mentira, muchos proyectos, sobre todo con la llegada de Internet tienen una inversión inicial de 0 euros o 0 dólares
• Nunca engañes o dañes a nadie en la vida.
• Escucha los consejos de tus amigos y clientes. Jamás escuches la envidia a través de los consejos de amigos y clientes.
• Aprende los conceptos básicos de la contabilidad y administración. Delega en un profesional estos aspectos “cotidianos” de toda compañía.
• De verdad nunca hagas algo por lo cual no sientes una pasión medianamente desenfrenada. La razón que el mundo esta tan lleno de compañías mediocres es que solo se enfocan en el dinero y las ganancias.

13 more annotations...

• The millionaire mindset is the entrepreneurs’ mindset.

• 1. Possibilities

   

  Wannabes: Unless I win the lottery, there is no way I can become a millionaire.
   Millionaires: It’s very possible to be rich and I work hard every day toward this goal.

• 2. Work

   

  Wannabes: I chose my job for the pay and working conditions (such as location).
   Millionaires: I chose my business because I love doing this, I am good at doing this, and I can make people happy doing this.

• 3. Money

   

  Wannabes: Show me the money.
   Millionaires: The money follows me when I deliver value.
• Wannabes: Millionaires use money lavishly.
   Millionaires: It is critical to use money mindfully. Also, it’s important to get the best life out of things. (One proudly reports he has been driving the same car for 19 years.)

• Luck

   

  Wannabes: Luck is everything to get rich. And I have no control over luck.
   Millionaires: Luck comes to those who do the honest hard work, and I can find and catch it

• Failure

   

  Wannabes: I hate failures. I’m afraid of failures.
   Millionaires: We learn through overcoming failures. My success came through learning from failures.

• People

   

  Wannabes: I have some friends, but I’m pretty much on my own.
   Millionaires: I’m grateful for all the people who have guided me and supported me. I have the trust of many people (50+) because I always do my honest best.

• Mentor

   

  Wannabes: Mentor? You mean someone who can teach me job skills?
   Millionaires: I have mentors. I learn more about life from my mentors.
• 9. Education
• Wannabes: Education adds credentials to get a good job.
   Millionaires: Education is not only about formal education. Any experience that you can learn the desired skills, such as apprenticeship, is good education. (Some reports taking low-paying jobs as a way to learn the trade and to build network.)

9 more annotations...

• 1) Choose the right format. A social network can’t be successful unless it’s easy and fun to use. This might include the ability for members to easily post videos, photos and questions and create attractive profiles
• 2) Promote your network. Don’t assume you can build it and they will come. Social-network creators often must work exceptionally hard to drive membership. Some of the most successful offer incentives for joining, buy advertising and send emails to friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Also promote the network on email signatures and in other places where people might see it.
• 3) Update often. The best social networks offer engaging content that’s refreshed often, along with numerous features. Early on, the network’s creator will likely have to spend a lot of time populating the site with content and coming up with interesting tools and features that will appeal to members.
• 4) Make them want to come back. The success of a social network is often measured by repeat users. Again, not easy. Offering tools like RSS feeds and email newletters that inform members about new content can help. Also encouraging them to start their own discussions, make “friends” or form subgroups will boost the odds they’ll interact and return.

2 more annotations...

• There are two main reasons why I get fired up about competiting with really sharp people. The first is validation. One of the nice things that Sergey and Larry had going for them was that they didn’t have to convince anybody of the need for a search engine when they were developing Google. Once you have strong competitors in your space it becomes less about whether the idea makes sense and more about whether you can be the ones to successfully pull it off.
• The second reason is that I believe that competition is probably the main driving factor in fostering innovation.
• 1. Be honest, realistic and transparent about your competition - Don’t pretend like they don’t exist while at the same time don’t overestimate their impact
• 2. Learn from your competitor’s mistakes - If they get to market/revenue/profitability/etc. before you consider that a blessing. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from their miscues. One of my favorite things is seeing new companies launch sites and trying to predict how well they’ll do. Do this enough and you’ll start to develop a keen sense for factors that lead to success and failure
• Don’t emulate your competition - Too many people get way too caught up in what the competition is doing. You see this a lot in software development. People think that just because their competitor included a feature that they need to too (the dreaded “We Have to Win the Battle of the Feature Matrix” syndrome). Rather than overly focusing on your competition spend time with your customers instead
• Every time you’re in a meeting and you’re tempted to talk about a competitor, replace that thought with one about user feedback or surveys. Just think about the customer.”
• 4. Realize that the world is abundant - In our soon-to-be-posted Manifesto you’ll notice that we’re big believers in the theory of abundance. In other words, the pie is not fixed but rather growing and our actions help in part to grow it.
• 5. Never quit until your vision becomes a reality - As an entrepreneur you either have a vision of a world that’s better because of your company or you don’t. If you don’t, quit now.

6 more annotations...

• I’d venture to say that 99% of the technology kids learn is done outside the classroom environment. They figure out how to e-mail, IM, social network, etc. on their own. This makes schools much less relevant than in the past where the only way to learn the important stuff was in the classroom.
• Schools
• They do a less than stellar job of teaching leadership, emotional intelligence and teamwork. I’d offer that extracurricular activities like sports, drama, music and arts programs do a *much* better job of this. However, schools are not a necessary component here as many homeschooled kids who play on area sports teams and belong to clubs could attest to.
• The quality of free educational materials is nearing and will likely soon surpass the quality of traditional educational materials

2 more annotations...

• if you talk on a mobile phone while driving – even legally with a hands-free kit. You listen to language on the phone and lose the ability to take in the language of road signs. Worst of all is if your caller describes something visual, a wallpaper pattern, a view. As you imagine this, your visual channel gets clogged and you start losing your sense of the road ahead. Distraction kills – you or others.
• In an influential essay in The Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr asks: “Is Google making us stupid?” Carr, a chronic distractee like the rest of us, noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
• “The next generation will not grieve because they will not know what they have lost,” says Bill McKibben, the great environmentalist.
• People make big money out of distracting us. So what can be done?
• The first issue is the determination of the distracters to create young distractees. Television was the first culprit. Tests clearly show that a switched-on television reduces the quality and quantity of interaction between children and their parents. The internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold. Paradoxically, the supreme information provider also has the effect of reducing information intake.
• 90% of sites visited by teenagers are social networks. They are immersed not in knowledge but in “gossip and social banter”.
• Teenagers are being groomed to think others can be picked up on a whim and dropped because of a mood or some slight offence. The fear is that the idea of sticking with another through thick and thin – the very essence of friendship and love – will come to seem absurd, uncool, meaningless.
• This, for him, puts democracy at risk. It is a form of government that puts “a heavy burden of responsibility on our citizens”. But if they think Paris is in England and they can’t find Iraq on a map because their world is a social network of “friends” – examples of appalling ignorance recently found in American teenagers – how can they be expected to shoulder that burden?

6 more annotations...