Effectiveness for Geeks

Check out this infographic on “How to Focus in the Age of Distraction” by Learning Fundamentals. It contains a multitude of good advice contained in a very concise and visual format. Although the title is about focus, really this covers a huge amount of productivity tools.

What do you think? Did that pretty much cover it, or do you have something to add?

Social Effectiveness for Geeks 0.1

Divia Eden — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:54:25 +0000

I just came across this list of awful book covers that had me laughing out loud a couple of times, though #10 on the list is much more relevant to our mission than the rest :

10. If only I’d had this book to read in highschool

What do affection and aggression have in common?

Divia Eden — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:09:51 +0000

Today I’ve been reading a book that I like a lot: Playful Parenting, and I especially liked it when the book validated my worldview by describing a model of threatening and intimate touch that very closely matches the model Will outlines in our book, Social Effectiveness for Geeks.

Will says:

As I have already alluded to, certain forms of touch are more powerful than others. Once again, this is derived from an ancestral environment where strangers were potentially quite dangerous. Very broadly, the more powerful areas to touch someone are the ones that are the most vulnerable. If you have good rapport, your touch will grow increasingly intimate as you move up the hierarchy. If you have insufficient rapport and overstep your bounds, your touch will grow increasingly threatening.

The Playful Parenting book says:

Research into primates shows that our closest biological kin play for many of the same reasons we do. Bonobo chimps, for example, tickle and chase one another, tease one another, and have even been seen to play a game that looks exactly like blindman’s bluff. Even more significantly, like humans, they play to reconnect after connection has been severed. Some psychologists believe that many expressions of affection evolved from the message “I could hurt you, but I am not.” Kissing means “I could be biting you, but I am not;” caressing means “I could be hitting you, but I am not.” Waving and shaking hands both say, “Hey, look, I don’t have a weapon.” In other words, pretend playing at aggression is a very real way to reconnect or show affection.

Pretty much the same idea, and it’s cool to be reminded that the hierarchy of touch isn’t just for humans! So next time you touch someone, remember: assuming you have the requisite level of rapport, the more your touch shows “I could be hurting you, but I’m not”, the more intimately affectionate it is!

Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #10: Actively Recover and Try Again

William Eden — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:33:21 +0000

This blog post has found a new home on Becoming Eden.