Nano-Tip: Know Your Cycles…

Peo­ple don’t oper­ate at full throt­tle all the time, it’s just not how the human body and just about every­thing else in nature works.

Finan­cial mar­kets, the ebb and tide of the waves, the rev­o­lu­tion of the earth, the econ­omy and our minds all oper­ate at peaks, plateaus and troughs at dif­fer­ent times of the day, week, month and year.

At cer­tain points we can feel like we can achieve any­thing, the next moment we feel like we can barely make it out of bed and into the bath­room, there’s noth­ing unusual at all about it.

The secret is to har­ness this nat­ural cycle to be effec­tive in our under­tak­ings. It is essen­tial to under­stand your­self enough to know when is the right time to push ahead, to pull back, and to pre-occupy your­self with some­thing else entirely.

Learn how you tick, then ride then ride your cycles like a surfer rides the waves!

Nano-Tip: Headphones as a conversation deterrent…

Friends are great to have around, but some­times you just want to get things done. Con­ver­sa­tion and ban­ter, while enjoy­able can really cut into your effec­tive­ness at get­ting work or other oblig­a­tions taken care of.

Enter a low-tech, sim­ple deter­rent — the hum­ble pair of head­phones. I’ve found peo­ple to be far less will­ing to engage in ban­ter with me if I am stuck into a task AND with my head­phones stick­ing in my ears, god knows why, but hey it works. Most of the time I don’t even have any music play­ing, I just have them on and wham,it’s almost as effec­tive as wip­ing dog poop on my clothing.

Next time some­one wants to engage your time with point­less chit chat, try it out.