Inc. Magazine's profile of Tumblr founder David Karp in their series "The Way I Work" is a refreshing read in so many ways. Things might have changed for Karp since this article is from 2011, but nevertheless is it filled with things that you can incorporate in your own work life.

I'm on Tumblr all day. I don't follow a ton of people, but I post and reblog stuff I really care about. I love my blog. I get most of my news from my Tumblr dashboard. I used to be a 24-hour news consumer, but so much of the reporting is bad these days. I find tech reporting incredibly tedious and dull. And I've kind of given up on reading anything that anyone writes about Tumblr. It's often inaccurate.

[…]

There's kind of a hive mentality at the office. We all break for lunch between 12 and 1. Usually, one person gets up, and the rest follow. We all cram into the elevator. Once we hit the street, we break off into two or three groups and go get food to bring back to the office. Then, we all eat together.

[…]

Sleep is precious to me. I'm very disappointed if I don't go to bed before midnight. We have a rule: no laptops in the bedroom. Being on computers all the time makes me feel gross.

You find Karp's Tumblr blog here.

Inc. Magazine's columnist Glenn Leibowitz shares some of the best nuggets of writing advice found in best-selling author Stephen King's memoir "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" (2000).

Update: Do the following Google search to read the article without having to registrate.

16 years ago, King shared everything he knows about writing in a book that instantly became a bestseller: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Part memoir, part codification of his best writing strategies, the book has become a classic among writers.

I discovered -- and devoured -- it a dozen years ago, when I was trying to take my writing to the next level. I recommend it to all of my writer friends.

[…]

4. Write for your Ideal Reader.

"Someone -- I can't remember who, for the life of me -- once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this.

I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, 'I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?' For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha... Call that one person you write for Ideal Reader."

5. Read a lot.

"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books -- of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john."

Featured image: Stephen King at his home in '85 photographed by Raeanne Rubenstein. Via Dish Magazine.

In an experiment conducted by the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, results show that people got happier, more social, productive, present and less stressed by stop using Facebook for one week.

Researchers in Denmark who split 1,095 daily Facebook users into two groups, half given access to the site as normal and the remainder forced to quit cold turkey, found that after a week those on a break from the social network felt 55% less stressed.

"We look at a lot of data on happiness and one of the things that often comes up is that comparing ourselves to our peers can increase dissatisfaction," said Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen.

"Facebook is a constant bombardment of everyone else's great news, but many of us look out of the window and see grey skies and rain (especially in Denmark!)," he said. "This makes the Facebook world, where everyone's showing their best side, seem even more distortedly bright by contrast, so we wanted to see what happened when users took a break."

You find the complete "The Facebook Experiment" report here (PDF).

During a period of six months, entrepreneur Kathleen O'Grady worked as hedge fund manager Ray Dalio's assistent at Bridgewater Associates. Working for Dalio, O'Grady learned 5 key lessons that she shares in a longer blog post that was written back in 2011.

I would not be an entrepreneur specializing in Authentic Leadership if it were not for my experience working for Ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates. For approximately six months, I supported Ray Dalio (Founder), Bob Prince (Co-CIO), and Ray’s brilliant, philanthropic son Matt Dalio (Founder of The China Care Foundation) as their Executuve & Personal Assistant. Despite its brevity, this previous position has proven time and time again to be a major contributing factor to the person I am and the work I do in the world.

I learned more about self leadership in that six months than most people learn in a lifetime. Seeing the recent article on Ray in The New Yorker, titled Mastering the Machine, I was compelled to write this blog.

Featured image: Ray Dalio for Hedge Magazine by photographer Matt Furman.

Via DealBook.

In Business Insider, corporate speaker Jullien Gordon tells the differences between a high performer who works in a healthy way, and the workaholic who risks getting burned out.

Gordon says that a high performer knows when to "turn it up." They know when they're expected or required to give everything they have — and they save their energy for those occasions.

"They don't buy into the illusion of 110%," he writes in the LinkedIn post. "They know that 110% is unsustainable. Instead they focus on increasing their capacity so that their 100% is better than the competition's 110%."

A workaholic attempts to go all out all the time: "They have difficulty prioritizing what's important, therefore, everything is important in their mind."

He tells Business Insider: "The hardest worker doesn't always win, but the winner does work harder."

Darius Foroux short piece in the Observer, gives you some useful advice on how to get on with your reading and read more books.

Simple advice really, but I usually read just one book at a time, which actually doesn't make sense. If for example, I read a book about personal development, it will take time to process the book, so then reading something like a novel alongside seems only logical.

But, eat when your eat – that's my two cents.

There are no rules to reading so you can do whatever you want. At times, I'm reading 5 books at once. I might read 50 pages of one book in the morning and then read another book in the afternoon.

That's how I prefer it. Others like to read a book cover to cover and only then read something new.

If you're reading something that's complicated, you might want to read something that's easier for the evenings. I like to read biographies before I go to sleep because they are like stories. Fiction also works well in the evening.

When filmmaker Kevin Smith worked in a convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey in the early 90s, listening to an interview on Howard Stern with director Robert Rodriguez and hear him talk about producing the film "El Mariachi" (1993), had an profound impact on Smith's life. As a direct result, Smith's first feature film "Clerks" (1994) took place at his current workplace and also got him out of there.

So I was sitting there in a convenience store listening to that, and I was like, "Wow, that's kind of tight — all you have to do if you want to make a movie, make a film, figure out a story nobody else has told but, like Robert Rodriguez said, work with what you got." I wasn't going to set something in outer space. So I looked around and thought, What do I got? Where can I shoot a movie? I've never seen a less likely location to shoot a movie. God, I hate this job. If only I could turn it into something better. It took me weeks to figure out — Oh, you could shoot a movie in a convenience store. Nobody's ever done that before.

By combining different ideas and some of your skills, you can shortcut the 10,000 hour rule as popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book "Outliers: The Story of Success" (2008) according to hedge fund manager and entrepreneur James Altucher.

Isn't this 15 minute glass timer by Manchester-based company Polite looking good or what?! A perfect companion to place on your desk for a gentle reminder to take a break every now and then.

Outside Magazine's correspondent Gordy Megroz decided to get more sleep so he better could endure the physically demanding ascent to climb the 13,770-foot peak Grand Teton in Jackson, Wyoming.

After some minor changes of habits, the payoff was tremendous, something that can act like a good reminder for the rest of us to not neglect our sleep.

Going into my experiment, I worried that not working at night would put me way behind schedule. But after just three days, I was feeling so refreshed each morning that I was far more efficient behind the desk. By six I'd completed most of my work for the day and still had plenty of energy for my workouts, without having to caffeinate.

Ten days later, my friend Andy and I climbed to the top of the Grand, summiting just before sunset. On the way back down, after a good nine hours of effort, Andy let out a big yawn. "Man, I'm getting tired," he said. "Weird," I responded. "I'm not."

Featured image: New York City, 1972 by photographer Michael Putnam taken from Putnam's book "Sleep" 2007. Via The New Yorker.

Lifehackers series "This Is How I Work" is a real favorite of mine. In the series, you get a glimpse of how skilled professionals, mostly writers and individuals with a strong online presence, manage their workdays and what type of resources they're using to establishing a nice workflow. And another important thing – most of them don't neglect sleep and exercise, which for me was a happy discovery.

Here is my list of the 25 most inspiring "This Is How I Work" interviews:

1. Susan Kare – graphic designer
2. Tim Ferriss – author and entrepreneur
3. Zach Frechette – founder of Quarterly Co.
4. Maria Sebregondi – co-founder of Moleskine
5. Ryan Holiday – author, marketer, and entrepreneur
6. Guy Kawasaki – author, publisher and entrepreneur
7. Anna Holmes – writer, editor, and founder of the blog Jezebel
8. Jamie Todd Rubin – coder, science fiction and technology writer
9. Ryan Carson – CEO and co-founder of Treehouse
10. Kathryn Minshew – CEO of The Muse
11. Brian Lam – editor and founder of The Wirecutter
12. James Altucher – investor, hedge fund manager and entrepreneur
13. Leila Janah – social entrepreneur and CEO of the Sama Group
14. Chris Anderson – author and entrepreneur
15. Walter Isaacson – writer and journalist
16. Pamela Fox – product engineer at Coursera
17. Dave Greenbaum – owner and technician at DoctorDave Computer Repair, and writer at Lifehacker
18. Russell Brown – principal designer at Adobe
19. Clive Thompson – freelance journalist, blogger and science and technology writer
20. Daniel Pink – author
21. David McRaney – author
22. Mike Rowe – host of "Somebody's Gotta Do It"
23. Ryan North – creator and author of "Dinosaur Comics"
24. Charles Duhigg – journalist and author
25. Mark Frauenfelder – editor-in-chief of MAKE and co-editor of Boing Boing

Featured image: hedge fund manager James Altucher

Blogger Darren Rowse wrote an excellent article about improving his health by incorporating a few small daily changes such as walking more and getting started with the 5:2 diet. I can easily identify with some of the things Darren talks about: I exercise daily, and eat healthy food overall, but tend to spend too much time at home, which means I don't walk as much as I should.

It's been 3 months now since I started and I feel a whole heap better than I have in a long time.

Like I said above I'm feeling a lot more alert and productive and just... lighter.

I don't want to lose much more weight but would like to begin to work on increasing my strength and fitness going forward.

By no means is what I'm doing for everyone and nor do I see what I've done so far as anything too remarkable. In fact I'm kind of amazed how a few simple changes have had such an impact.

To help students with their studies, The University of Borås, Sweden, in collaboration with sound designer Martin Ljungdahl and Grammy nominated composer Håkan Lidbo, have composed three symphonies to listen to while studying which will increase both creativity and concentration, as well as relaxation and the release of dopamine.

Toccata Creativo

Unexpected musical twists that stimulates the brain's cognitive thought processes and increases the listener's creativity. (download mp3)

Sonata Concentrata

Slow and monotonous melody that lowers the heart rate. Helps the listener to relax and improves concentration. (download mp3)

Pepp in A major

A positive up-tempo symphony that affect the listener's brain to secrete dopamine, the natural neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. (download mp3)

Via @alexandernoren.

Writer Austin Kleon sat a personal record last year by reading 70+ books. This is his advice on how to become an avid reader:

1. Throw your phone in the ocean
2. Make a budget, buy books you want to read, make a stack of them
   that you walk past every day (library is great, too, of course)
3. Carry a book with you at all times
4. If you aren't enjoying a book or learning something from it, stop reading it immediately (flinging it across the room helps give closure)
5. Schedule 1 hour of nonfiction reading during the day (commute / lunch break is good)
6. Go to bed 1 hour early and read fiction (it will help you sleep)
7. Write about the books you read and share with others, as they will send you more books to read

Via @jordisoler.

When Mexican entrepreneur Salvador Abascal Álvarez visited Richard Branson on Necker Island, the trip made him reflect on how to go from, as Richard puts it, "stop doing to begin being".

I always have a to-do list: send emails, hold meetings, return calls, etc. But I have never had a to-be list: From 1pm to 2:30pm I will feel the miracle of life, from 2:30pm onwards I will be inspired, at 8pm I will enjoy being with my family (without doing anything, just being).

[…]

Last week I met a man that by being a great master at "being", can do anything. He can direct over 400 companies, operate in all five continents, plan space trips for the general public and walk around his own island in his bathing suit sharing experiences, asking questions and inspiring entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Richard Branson is a great master at "being"; he is authentically present in body and soul, he looks into your eyes, he is simple and he is having a great time. I was able to spend some time with Richard for three days. I did not see him at any moment carrying a mobile phone or in a hurry to arrive to his next appointment or activity.

[…]

My visit to Necker Island shows evidence that it is vital to make an effort to obtain the best inspiration possible from your work team. It is crucial to achieve camaraderie and a good work environment. Having a space to break the routine and surround oneself with different types of people is elementary. We observe that Richard’s inspiration system touches his own people as well as strangers, which leads me to ask myself: Where is my island? What do I usually do or what must I do to inspire my team more? And above all, what changes do I have to make in my life to stop "doing" and start "being"?

We all have our own inspiration island, that place where we stop doing to start being. For some it is their temple or parish, for others it is their family, others find it in the golf course or in the jogging track. How many do we invite into our own island? How inspired are they and we when we leave it? How often do we visit it? Do I have a beautiful island which I never visit? How can I remodel and improve my own island?

Featured image: Necker Island via The Yacht Week.

Arianna Huffington had a rough awakening when she collapsed in her office due to sleep deprivation and burnout, a lesson we can all learn from.

In her book Thrive, she lists 12 steps that you can take to fill you with energy, and make you more present:

1. Unless you are one of the wise few who already gets all the rest you need, you have an opportunity to immediately improve your health, creativity, productivity and sense of well-being. Start by getting just thirty minutes more sleep than you are getting now. The easiest way is to go to bed earlier, but you could also take a short nap during the day -- or a combination of both.

2. Move your body: Walk, run, stretch, do yoga, dance. Just move. Anytime.

3. Introduce five minutes of meditation into your day. Eventually, you can build up to fifteen or twenty minutes a day (or more), but even just a few minutes will open the door to creating a new habit -- and all the many proven benefits it brings.

4. Listening to your inner wisdom, let go of something today that you no longer need -- something that is draining your energy without benefiting you or anyone you love. It could be resentments, negative self-talk or a project you know you are not really going to complete.

5. Start a gratitude list that you share with two or more friends who send theirs to you.

6. Have a specific time at night when you regularly turn off your devices -- and gently escort them out of your bedroom. Disconnecting from the digital world will help you reconnect to your wisdom, intuition and creativity. And when you wake up in the morning, don't start your day by looking at your smartphone. Take one minute -- trust me, you do have one minute -- to breathe deeply, or be grateful or set your intention for the day.

7. Focus on the rising and falling of your breath for ten seconds whenever you feel tense, rushed or distracted. This allows you to become fully present in your life.

8. Pick an image that ignites the joy in you. It can be of your child, a pet, the ocean, a painting you love -- something that inspires a sense of wonder. And any time you feel contracted, go to it to help you expand.

9. Forgive yourself for any judgments you are holding against yourself and then forgive your judgments of others. (If Nelson Mandela can do it, you can, too.) Then look at your life and the day ahead with newness and wonder.

10. Make small gestures of kindness and giving a habit, and pay attention to how this affects your mind, your emotions and your body.

11. During your day make a personal connection with people you might normally tend to pass by and take for granted: the checkout clerk, the cleaning crew at your office or your hotel, the barista in the coffee shop. See how this helps you feel more alive and reconnected to the moment.

12. Use a skill or talent you have -- cooking, accounting, decorating -- to help someone who could benefit from it. It'll jumpstart your transition from a go-getter to a go-giver, and reconnect you to the world and to the natural abundance in your own life.

Featured image: You find the "12 Steps to Thrive" artwork here. Available in high quality if you'd like to print and frame it.

This is a great time management technique by John Zeratsky. You set out to do one big thing for the day, three medium things and a few little ones.

Bob Proctor´s mentor Earl Nightingale had a simple way to look upon time management. In a world in which we tend to overanalyze and complicate things, I find this mindset to be so refreshing:

[...] Bob asked Earl, who he was working for at the time how on earth he managed his time, with all the projects, businesses, and commitments he juggled each and every day. There didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to accomplish all that the famously extremely successful Earl Nightingale accomplished or so he thought.

Earl said “No such thing as managing time, impossible to do and this does not exist…cannot do it. What I do is manage my activities.”

Earl continued: “At night before I go to sleep, I plan and write down the 8-10 activities I want to do the next day. This prepares my subconscious mind the night before and sends a signal to the subconscious of all the people I will talk with, meet with, have interactions with… be it meetings, appointments, or phone, while I am sleeping. Additionally, the Universe, the Field, Infinite Intelligence is handling the details while I sleep and is getting everything ready for me so that my day will unfold and progress and that I will accomplish what I set out to do and or be shown what I need to know to accomplish my intentions. [...]

Earl continues with the instructions: “The next day I begin with the first thing on my list of 8-10 things and just focus on the 1st thing on my list…totally focus on that, complete it and go on to the next thing, focus on that…complete it and go on to the next one on my list until my list is completed. Just one thing at a time, do it, complete it, scratch it off the list and go on to the next one.” [You can have a list of less or more…up to you…Charles Schwab says he had 6 action steps on his daily list and that doing similar to the above contributed to his success.]

Earl said: “I am managing my activities not my time and it allows me to stay focused, use the Creative Intelligence of the Universe [...] to help me while I sleep.

Featured image: A vintage Jantar Russian mechanical alarm clock. Via Svpply.

So many times I´ve been amazed at how long a few minutes seem to last when I´ve turned off my computer or TV and sat down to focus on an assignment with just a pen and paper at my disposal. Time seems to slow down since there are no distractions, and I come out of it feeling refreshed and with a new sense of how much I´m able to accomplish in just a short while.

I´ve noticed that a task such as reading a book sometimes can be a bit difficult because the habit of skimming through text on the Internet, but after awhile I tend to maintain focus and reading then become a rather tranquil experience.

Sandra Bond Chapman, Ph.D. tells us how you can switch from being a multi-tasker to a single-tasker and why that is both healthy and makes you smarter:

Many scientifically proven strategies to boost your mental performance involve easily embraceable, common-sense tactics that can have an immense impact on the long-term health of your most important natural resource. One such tactic is eliminating toxic multitasking.

[…]

So often we find ourselves in environments that erroneously place a high value on being able to multitask, the prevailing perception being that the more you can do at once, the more expertly intelligent and efficient you are. Alarmingly, some people even believe that multitasking is a good workout for the brain.

This type of thinking is damaging to your health.

Multitasking is a brain drain that exhausts the mind, zaps cognitive resources and, if left unchecked, condemns us to early mental decline and decreased sharpness. Chronic multitaskers also have increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can damage the memory region of the brain.

The truth is, your brain is not designed to do more than one thing at a time. It literally cannot achieve this, except in very rare circumstances. Instead, it toggles back and forth from one task to the next. For example, when you are driving while talking on the phone, your brain can either use its resources to drive or to talk on the phone, but never both. Scans show that when you talk on the phone, there is limited activation of your visual brain – suggesting you are driving without really watching. This explains how we can sometimes end up places without knowing exactly how we got there.

Frequently switching between tasks overloads the brain and makes you less efficient. It’s a formula for failure in which your thoughts remain on the surface level and errors occur more frequently.

The Health Editor James Hamblin from The Atlantic talks about this subject in an excellent way. I think we all recognize ourselves more or less listening to what he has to share with us:

Featured image: A multi-tasking dad in a Citroën C4 Picasso commercial (video).

Related:

• Stop multitasking. It's a brain, not an octopus

Maria Popova from Brain Pickings gives us an insight into the daily working habits of well-known writers. The post is so good, it became a difficult task to choose which portion I wanted to publish here. I went ahead with the advice of writer E.B. White:

I never listen to music when I’m working. I haven’t that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn’t like it at all. On the other hand, I’m able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on: it is a passageway to the cellar, to the kitchen, to the closet where the phone lives. There’s a lot of traffic. But it’s a bright, cheerful room, and I often use it as a room to write in, despite the carnival that is going on all around me. A girl pushing a carpet sweeper under my typewriter table has never annoyed me particularly, nor has it taken my mind off my work, unless the girl was unusually pretty or unusually clumsy. My wife, thank God, has never been protective of me, as, I am told, the wives of some writers are. In consequence, the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man — they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

Featured image: E.B White in North Brooklin, Maine 1976. Photograph by Jill Krementz.

Image via Painting Box.

Related:

• Virginia Woolf on the Benefits of Keeping a Journal
• Ernest Hemingway´s Productivity Trick to Avoid Writer´s Block