Decide What is Essential For You, The Intimidation of Creativity, The Importance of Data-Driven Decisions

Welcome to The Smarter Brain, a curation of thought-provoking ideas and actionable reads to help you build better habits and become more productive.

Happy reading and happy new year - See you on Sunday!

Cheers,

The Smarter Brain Team

Estimated Reading Time: 2 mins

3 Ideas For Better Habits

1

The Power of Focusing on the Essentials

CEO and Essentialist, Greg Mckeown, on designing the life you want, through the elimination of distracting non-essentials.

"The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes the obstacles so the essential things have a clear, smooth passage."

Source: ​Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less ​ ​ ​2

The Association Between Creativity and Offensiveness

Designer and musician, Criss Jami, on the disagreement between creativity and conventional mediocrity.

“Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.”

Source: ​Killosophy​

​ ​3

Don't Make Decisions Without Looking at the Data

Engineer and leading management thinker, W. Edwards Deming, on the importance of knowing all the necessary information before jumping in.

“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”

Source: ​W. Edwards Deming​

Productivity Tools and Resources

4

Create Music With AI

​Soundraw​ is an AI music generator that lets you create royalty-free music according to your needs.

5

AI-Powered Research Note-Taking Tool

​Genei​ is a digital research assistant to help you with blogs, articles, and reports.

What We're Reading

​The 12 Week Year ​redefines your "year" to be 12 weeks long. In 12 weeks, there just isn't enough time to get complacent, and urgency increases and intensifies. The 12 Week Year creates focus and clarity on what matters most and a sense of urgency to do it now.

Brain Food

Today I Learned: We shake hands to show we're unarmed. (​Source​)

Science: A new study shows how the brain processes language - understanding sentences by combining words. (​Source​)

Have a productive week and a happy new year,

The Smarter Brain Team

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