Author: admin
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Smartphone Liberation — MIT, February 10
Tomorrow I’ll be leading an interactive session at MIT called “Smartphone Liberation.”
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Five Ways to Practice Mindfulness Without Meditating
The term “mindfulness” is often used hand in hand, or even synonymously, with “meditating,” and for good reason–mindfulness meditation is one of the most longstanding and widely-used techniques for practicing mindfulness. It isn’t, however, the only way. In Buddhist teaching it is said that there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment. Here I’ll…
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Taking Control of Notifications to Take Back Your Attention
Receiving a reminder of an upcoming meeting or task from our smartphones can be a great way to remember to be somewhere to get something done on time. All too often, however, our smartphones beep, flash, and vibrate at us every few minutes to provide us with information we don’t really need. And…
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A Preemptive Strike in the Battle Against Messaging Fatigue
Do you feel like you spend more of your day responding to messages than living? Do you need to turn off your smartphone at work and hide in a closet just to get “real” work done? If so, you may be suffering from messaging fatigue. One source of this ailment is the need–whether…
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Making Email Slow Again
When I first began to use email in earnest, while a student at MIT in the early 1990s, writing and reading emails had much the same feeling as writing and reading handwritten letters. By far the easiest way to write an email was to go to one of a small number of computer clusters…
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Set Your Intention, See Your Intention
Setting a clear intention is one of the most important parts of mindfulness practice. At the beginning of the day you might set an intention to act respectfully towards everyone you interact with, to be grateful for what you have, or to exhibit generosity.
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Full Screen Focus
Today’s tip for using technology mindfully is as simple as it can get: use your apps in full screen mode whenever possible. That’s it. Maximizing the window that you’re working in has the benefit of blocking all other windows from view so that you can stay focused on doing one thing at a time.
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A Technological Trick for Avoiding Mindless Meetings
A good meeting can energize people, refocus a team, and strengthen interpersonal connections. A bad meeting can suck the energy out of a room and leave everyone feeling frustrated and exhausted. No wonder that corporate meetings are the bane of office workers and are an endless source of humor for comedians and sitcom…
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Take a Break to Stay Focused
The workaholics among us (I can count myself in that group too much of the time) often feel that taking a break is a sign of weakness, or at least will reduce our productivity. In reality, and perhaps counter intuitively, taking breaks can help you to rejuvenate and regain your focus, and thereby increase…
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Protecting Yourself Against Yourself: Blocking Apps for Focus
Although we’d all like to have such a high degree of self-control that we don’t need any external aids to keep ourselves focused and present when using technology, in practice we can all use a little help. There are a variety of apps you can use to resist technological temptation by making it impossible…
