Willpower: The Key to Success? –republishing-

If only you could control yourself. If you had more willpower, you could finally lose those last 10 pounds. If you had more self-control, you could finally stop procrastinating, save for retirement, stick to an exercise routine, and avoid various vices such as alcohol and cigarettes. That's a lot riding on mere force of will. As the American Psychological Association notes, people allover the world  tend to place a lot of stock in the power of willpower. According to their annual Stress in America Survey, people identified a lack of willpower as the number one factor holding them back from achieving their goals. Change can be difficult and a large portion of people believe that one of the biggest obstacles preventing them from making a change is this seemingly elusive power of will. However, some of the most popular theories of behavior change suggest that willpower alone is not always enough to make a real and lasting change. According to the Stages of Change model, it is important to first recognize that there is a need to change, identify possible barriers to change, come up with a plan of action, monitor progress, maintain and manage the change, and cope with any possible relapses. Willpower plays a role, certainly, but it is not the only factor that impacts success. While many of us struggle with willpower and self-control, most people also seem to believe that this is a skill that can be learned and strengthened. Fortunately, researchers have also come to similar conclusions and suggest that there are a number of things that you can do to improve your self-control.   Photo Credit: Cultura/Edwin Jimenez / Riser / Getty Images source : www.about.com

Wearable airbag designed to protect seniors when they fall–republishing

 

The ActiveProtective airbag (pictured undeployed) reportedly reduces impact to the hip bones by 90 percent For anyone who uses a car, collisions are an ever-present danger – that's why vehicles are equipped with safety features such as airbags. For senior citizens, however, simply falling down can also result in life-changing injuries. With that in mind, Pennsylvania-based company ActiveProtective is developing a wearable airbag that deploys in the event of a fall, to protect seniors' hip bones. ActiveProtective's Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Robert Buckman, first came up with the idea when working as a trauma surgeon. He noticed how many elderly people were being brought into hospitals with broken hips due to falls, and how they often never entirely recovered from the injuries. The resulting airbag is designed to be worn like a belt, either on top of or beneath the clothing. When its onboard 3D motion sensors detect atypical motion that's unique to falling, it uses a cold gas inflator (the same type used in seatbelt-mounted airbags) to deploy a slab-like airbag that runs down the sides of the hips. When the wearer hits the ground, the bag reduces impact force to the hip bones by a claimed 90 percent. Functional testing of the device is taking place at Operative Experience, a Maryland-based business also owned by Buckman that builds human cadaver simulators used for teaching combat casualty and emergency trauma surgery. Testing of the airbag has already begun, using a replica of a 90 year-old woman. So far, the results have reportedly been very promising. The company tells us that human trials are scheduled to begin this year, with commercialization planned for the end of 2016. Source: ActiveProtective via Free Enterprise

5 Ways to Improve Your Attention

 

Things You Can Do to Minimize Distraction and Increase Concentration It happens to the best of us. You're sitting in class or in a meeting and you suddenly find yourself daydreaming, losing focus, and not paying attention. In one study of over 2,000 adults, people reported that their minds weren't really on the task at hand almost 50 percent of the time. Perhaps even more importantly, people report feeling less happy when they are distracted. So what can you do to improve your attention, increase your focus, and prevent your mind from wandering? Researchers have discovered a few different things that might help: suedhang/Image Source/Getty Images 1. Stop Multitasking Trying to do many different things at once makes it more difficult to concentrate on any one thing. While it might seem like multitasking can help you accomplish more, research has shown that juggling multiple tasks actually reduces both productivity and accuracy. If you want to make the most out of your attentional resources, try focusing on just one task at a time. Thomas Barwick / Getty Images 2. Practice Mindfulness Mindfulness involves purposely paying attention to things in a particular way, and new research suggests that practicing mindfulness might actually help improve your ability to concentrate. According to research presented at an annual conference held by the British Psychological Society (BPS), children who took a short training course in mindfulness were better able to concentrate and ignore distractions. Juzant / Getty Images 3. Meditate Researchers have found that those experienced in meditation are better at focusing their attention on a single item and ignoring irrelevant items. What about people new to meditation? Can practicing this skill help you better focus your attentional spotlight? The research indicates that the answer is yes. Participants in one study who learned to meditate and practiced for approximately 30 minutes per day were quicker to notice new stimuli, indicating that they had improved their attention. So why exactly does meditation help? One suggestion is that it decreases the attentional blink that we all experience. Attentional blink is a brief period of time after we focus on one item, about half a second, where we are unreceptive to secondary stimuli. Essentially, focusing on one thing makes us briefly blind to other things. One study found that participants who received meditation training demonstrated a marked reduction in attentional blink. Tetra Images / Getty Images 4. Turn Off the Technology From smart phones to video games to online video, it seems like we spend a huge chunk of our day absorbed by various forms of technology. Unfortunately, research has demonstrated that the constant distraction presented by such technology can actually make it more difficult for young children to focus on activities such as reading for an extended period of time. If you want to focus your attention and fully devote yourself to a task, turn off the technology - at least for long enough to let you finish the job. Zakaria Wakrim / Getty Images 5. Practice Makes Perfect Meditation can help you learn to improve your focus, but it takes practice to learn how to bring your bring your attention back to the task at hand. Researcher Wendy Hasenkamp suggests that becoming aware of when your mind has wandered, actively disengaging from the distraction, and bringing your focus back to the task at hand can help make people more mindful of how they utilize their attention. The more you notice that your mind has wandered, and thus the more you actively bring yourself back to a state of attention, the better you will become at maintaining your focus on a single task. "Understanding the way the brain alternates between focused and distracted states has implications for a wide variety of everyday tasks," Hasenkamp explains. "For example, when your mind wandered off in that meeting, it might help to know you’re slipping into default mode—and you can deliberately bring yourself back to the moment. That’s an ability that can improve with training." Final Thoughts If you've ever felt like you have a "short attention span" or if you often catch your mind wandering when you should be focusing on a task, you might be able to benefit from some of these "attention boosting" activities. Eliminating distractions, putting an end to multitasking, meditating, and actively practicing these skills are just a few of the things that researchers believe can have a beneficial influence on attention. Think of attention as a muscle – the more you work with it, the stronger it will be.

22 Simple And Creative Ways to Earn Money

 

Money by Dianna Labrien Money, you always wish you had a bit more, right? To buy that fancy dress or a new gadget, to save more for your vacation or a cool dinner date, to pay off your debt faster or just feel more laid back about your whole personal finance situation. This list features some simple, yet effective ways to earn a few extra hundreds each month without spending neither much time, nor efforts!   1. Recycle your old phone(s) Bet you got a few ancient Nokia’s hidden somewhere around the house. You’d be surprised to know that you can actually get some cash if you decide to sell them. A lot of companies offer compensation for recycling old phones which are shipped somewhere to Asia and getting dismantled there. You can check the list of companies and possible earnings here. Ask your family and friends if they’d like to give away their old phones too for a bigger bucks.   2. Invite people for dinner If you have relatively impressive cooking skills and some room to host guests, sign up for Eat With – a cool new service connecting travellers with hosts around the world, who invite them to a small dinner party for a fixed fee. As a host, you can set a rate per guest, choose the time and dates when you are available to throw a feast and indicate the max amount of people you are ready to invite (usually less than 6). To become a host fill in an application form where you tell about yourself, your cooking talents and your place. Currently, the service is available in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and some major cities in Europe, Middle East and South America. The money you can earn for a small party are more than decent.   3. Become a part-time mover This option is more suitable for guys, but girls are often accepted too to move around fragile stuff and do some minor cleaning. Moving jobs are typically per request and you can always choose a suitable time for you to do them. A lot of moving companies allow you to create an account with them for a fee, list your services, rates, working hours etc and get hired for temporary jobs. Check out this list of moving jobs to get a better idea of how things work and how much you can actually earn for lifting someone’s sofa.   4. Get paid 35$/hour to drive people around Yes, that’s exactly how much you can make with Lyft – a cool app and service eliminating the need to use taxis. Users can just login from their phone and request a drive in all major cities in US. It’s faster and at least twice cheaper than calling the typical cab. You, as a driver, will get a notification and can take a lift request. You set your own working hours and earn 35$ per hour as the site says. Obviously, you’ll need your own car to earn with them and some initial money to pay for the gas.   5. Review music for cash All music lovers gonna love this job – all you need to do is listen to and review unsigned bands and artists online at Slicethepie. It may take a while to build up your reputation, but you can earn extra $50+ per month for spending 5-10 min a day listening to some aspiring music talents (or not so talents).   6. Distribute leaflets It sounds like a bit of a lame job, but some companies can offer you good money for giving away promotional staff or doing door drops. For say working 4-5 hours on the weekends, you can expect to earn somewhere between $40-$60 per 1.000 distributed leaflets.   7. Get cash rebates for scanning your receipts You do buy groceries, cosmetics and other staff monthly, do you?, Why don’t you earn some extra bucks for that? Download a free Ibotta app, browse around and see what rebates their are offering if you scan and upload your recipient for a certain product they request. For instance, they offer 50 cents if you upload a picture of a recipient where you bought milk and offer $10 for a picture of a Best Buy receipt. Of course, it makes no sense going out and purposefully buying products with the highest rebate, yet it won’t take much of your time taking and uploading pictures of things you typically buy and stash some extra cash by the end of the month.   8. Sell your wardrobe Girls, that’s a perfect option for you! How many dresses do you have that you wore like 3 times and now they’re hidden somewhere deep in your closet? Clothes you no longer wear shouldn’t pile up around the house, when they can be turned into cash asserts. You can either organise a yard sale yourself (which is kind of a hassle), or better sell the items through ThredUp, which will pay somewhere around $2-$25 for staff from Gap, Banana Republic, H&M, etc. You can browse around to see how much different items are worth. The best thing about ThredUp is that all you need to do is pack your clothes in a box and then just ship it to them (shipping costs are covered by the company).   9. Test websites for money A lot of big companies look for feedback on the usability of their websites and you can get paid doing that. Expect to earn somewhere from 10 cents for an assignment taking less than a minute, to $10-$15 when it comes to larger questionnaires requesting more of your time. Here’s a big list of sites where you can create an account and start earning cash. All the payments are typically made via PayPal either at the end of the month or when you have earned a certain sum.   10. Get paid for being someone’s friend Rent a Friend is an absolutely legit US service where people offer their friendship (and nothing more!) starting from $10 and up to $50 per hour. As Scott Rosenbaum, the creator of the service says: “Just to hang out with, go to a movie or restaurant with or find someone to show you around an unfamiliar town”. As current users say you can get invited to be someone’s +1 on a VIP event, wine tasting tour, concert or some other cool activity that will cost you nothing to attend! If you are easygoing and communicative, that’s might be the best job for you. Some users claim to do it full-time and earn over $50.000 per year! To become a friend, you’ll need to fill in an application form describing your personality and send it to the community manager.   11. Earn by tweeting If you have a relatively large following on Twitter you can get paid somewhere from $.50 to $20 for tweeting sponsored tweets and content to your audience. The rate depends of the amount of followers you have and some other factors e.g. the age of your account. You can earn with SponsoredTweets; PaidPerTweet and some other services alike.   12. Try match betting It’s an absolutely legit, risk and tax free technique. The system works by taking advantage of free bets vastly offered by online betting sites through ‘matching’ them at a betting exchange. Matched betting eliminates the risk as you are betting both for and against a certain result at the same time! Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you get started with this. Don’t forget you have to be over 21 (18) to bet!   13. Do odd jobs at Fiverr At Fiverr you can offer any kind of service starting from $5. Register an account, browse around the gigs and offer something similar. Seriously, at this online marketplace you can sell and buy all sort of things from voiceovers to logo design to things like “I’ll pretend to be your girlfriend on Facebook for 2 days”. Write an attractive gig description clearly outlining what you’ll do for 5 bucks e.g. translate 200 words from French to English; add extras e.g. translated 300 words more for $5; deliver the order in just one day etc; add a payment method – Paypal or Payoneer and start promoting your gig and earning money!   14. Sell your notes If you are good at writing notes and attended all lectures, you can sell your asserts to less committed students via NoteSale. You can create a listing for free, but the site will take a per cent from each of your sales. Typed notes in PDF/Text format sell best, yet it’s worth trying with scanned handwritten notes too if you have nice clear writing.   15. Sell old books the smart way Instead of just taking them to the thrift shop and receiving peanuts, try using BooksCounter app instead. Scan the book barcode, upload it to the app’s system and see which of 20+ different buyback companies offers the highest payout. Once you found the right company, all you have to do is fill in some basic information of how you’d like to get paid, download a free shipping label and pack up all the books to dispatch.   16. Do data entry jobs This may include mere copy-pasting, minor text editing, data categorisation, translations and staff alike. You can work a few hours a day and earn some hundred bucks by the end of the month. Obviously, the total payout depends on how fast/good you are. Sign up to ClickWorker if you can tolerate handling some boring, routine tasks in exchange for cash injections.   17. Become a mystery shopper Go undercover to local stores, look around, take notes and sneaky pictures of stuff doing nothing, fill in the questionnaire afterwards and get your cash. You can get mystery shopping assignments via Mobee app (typically the payments are not that big, yet the tasks you need to do are simple too) or get an account with Marketforce - a more established website where you’ll need to carefully fill in an application form and pass a review process. The potential earning are much bigger.   18. Sell out your old CDs, movies and games Again you might be surprised to know that some companies pay cash for your old compact discs. Music Magpie will pay you somewhere between a few cents to over ten bucks for all your old staff. It’s a nice way to finally de-clutter your home too!   19. Teach classes online If you are particularly good at somethings, say map design, capable of creating a series of video lessons, you can become a tutor at SkillShare. You’ll be in good company with folks like Seth Godin and James Franco among others. You don’t need to have prior teaching experience, just skills and passion about what you do. SkillShare tutorials and 30 days teaching challenge will help you create a winning video tutorial. Your earnings will depend on the popularity of your course, but even low attendance will let you earn some decent money. Sign up here.   20. Sell handmade and vintage items on Etsy Found some retro clothes in your grandma’s chest or made a few cool brooches your friends admire? Become an Etsy seller to earn money for your crafts. Opening your shop, listing products and prices takes less than 30 minutes. It costs 0.20$ to list one item in your shop for 4 month (or till it sales) and Etsy takes 3.5% commission from each sale you make. Mind that fact when setting up the prices. Shipping costs are either to be covered by you or by the buyer (you can set the rates depending on the buyer’s’ location e.g. free shipping around US; $10.99 shipping to Europe). 21. Become a field agent Sign up for an account with Field Agent and get paid to do small tasks around town for different clients. Those usually involve scanning barcodes with your Phone, checking prices at your local drug store and conducting field surveys. Your earnings vary from assignment to assignment and depend on the area you are based in. For example, one listing offers $9 for 4 pictures of any products in the toothbrush section of the local Target in Mission Viejo, CA; while taking one picture of $19.99 & under video game display taken in any Toys “R” in NYC will earn you $5.50.   22. Become a language tutor online Did you know that English language practice is in high demand in Asia? Sites like Italki.com allows teachers to list their rates and services, schedule classes and provide you with tools to conduct them in real time. You can expect to make $15-20 per hour which isn’t that shabby, right? If English isn’t your first language, no worries, Italiki also invites French, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Russian and more native speakers to join. You’ll have to fill in a detailed application form, get it approved and afterwards create a professional looking profile, suitable schedule for you and different courses you offer. The service will handle the rest – scheduling, marketing payments and so on. Featured photo credit: Newton Free Library via flickr.com Love this article? Share it with your friends on Facebook Dianna Labrien Dianna is a former ESL teacher and World Teach volunteer, currently living in France. She's a passionate traveler, slightly addicted to apps and always in search of new ways to make her life simpler. You can tweet her at @dilabrien Write For Us!

Window Socket: energia sustentável e criativa

 

A busca por explorar de forma eficaz as fontes renováveis de energia é um dos grandes esforços da sociedade atualmente, e é aí que entra o design, para desenvolver soluções criativas para determinado problema. Pensando em energia sustentável, os designers Kyuho Song e Boa Oh desenvolveram o Window Socket, um gadget muito simples e usual para transformar a energia solar em elétrica. Se trata de um painel solar equipado com ventosas e acoplado em uma tomada convencional. Para usá-lo, basta grudar o equipamento em alguma janela de frente pro sol esperar alguns minutos e plugar a tomada. O Window Socket suporta 1000 mAh, demora de 5 a 8 horas pra ser carregado totalmente e dura cerca de 10 horas após carregado. www.sala7design.com.br