What are some good ways to manage energy instead of time?
Hi there!It is a good question to ask.The energy resource for a day is limited and runs out much faster than time. As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon first suggested, “when information is plentiful, attention becomes the scarce resource”. This means that your energy for a day is pretty much fixed and you can deal only with a limited number of tasks. Make one difficult decision, and the next one is more difficult. It is easy to become a sloth even after a couple of tasks!As to David Rock's book “Your Brain at Work”, one of the most cognitive consuming processes is dealing with abstract ideas you’ve never faced before. You are more likely to face that situation when you’re:Planning your workdayPrioritizing your tasksMaking decisionsLearning new informationStart your work with cognitive-consuming actions before anything else. It is the time while your mind is still fresh and is able to deal with difficulties.What’s even more important, we spend most of our energy by making energy-consuming actions we don’t even notice. By this I mean constant switching from one activity type for another in a short period of 2 mins or less. It’s shocking how often we do this in a modern digital workflow!When you’re switching your attention to another type of brain work, you waste time and energy following an irrelevant course of focus - attention - unfocus - focus. Think of switching gears up and down in a car - same happens to your mind with every switch to another app, website or task. Also, context switching requires you to keep all the information regarding current tasks in your temporary memory. And our temporary memory is very ineffective and small.The most difficult here is to spot this unconscious actions and develop a useful habit to switch by groups of tasks similar by the type of brain activity. It requires commitment and additional tools to keep an eye on your working behaviour.Our team developed an app inspired by the latest neuroscience accomplishments. It is designed to help digital workers cut off digital distractions, spot unproductive habits and save energy for important things for a day. You may try it for free on y-productive.com.Please feel free to ask me if you want to learn more about the brain behaviour at work and the hints for overcoming productivity limits for a day. We cut our teeth on this topic when we developed Y-Productive!
What traits does a Psychic Vampire posess?
Psychic has the connotation of predicting the future, so I'm going to use the term Psychological Vampire. The key feature of such a person is that they deliberately "feed on" the psychological energy of others. They acquire happiness by making somebody else unhappy, essentially draining happiness as though it were blood, hence the vampire reference. They must be adept at subtle manipulation and also willing to disregard their effect on other people, or at least consider that effect irrelevant compared to their own needs. You know you're a psychological vampire if, after your encounters with people, they come away tired and possibly unhappy, while you come away feeling pretty good about yourself. If you always take more than you give, emotionally speaking, you might be a psychological vampire. I disagree with the notion that the most dangerous are those unaware of their influence. That aspect of deliberate manipulation must be there. Otherwise, they would run out of people to victimize. If people always feel worse after spending time with somebody, why would they continue to spend time with them? They wouldn't, unless that person intentionally makes such interaction necessary, and that requires awareness.
My friend believes in ghosts, spirits and demons. She believes I have a negative energy around me and it is powerful. Every time someone mentions I have a "negative energy" I get anxious and defensive. Is that normal?
Oh dear.You are not responsible for your friend’s nutty beliefs.You do not have ‘negative energy’.No-one has ever detected ‘negative energy’. It is a nonsense term.There are a range of behaviours both conscious and unconscious that people may perceive differently at times.If you are pessimistic compared to the ‘norm’, people may describe this ‘negative’ yet pessimism is essential for human survival and behaviour control.An overly optimistic or ‘positive’ person may end up in trouble because they have not considered the possible consequences of their actions.While it is important to remain aware of your own behaviour and the effect it may have on others in specific circumstances, it i also important to relax and be yourself.If someone carries on about spurious ‘negative energy’ I would go looking for more rational friends.
Witchcraft and mind reading?
Well, I will not tell you it is not true because it is possible to me connected to someone and know what that person is thinking, but you can't do it only because you want to. There is more to the universe than we think, you can't be connected to someone for your personal gain. You need to meditate, pray and know that you are not doing this for something personal so meditate, pray believe that you can do it and don't mess with it because you may open the door to something more than you can close! Good luck!