#and this is a great deep dive on why 90% of the online ''criticism'' is just shallow internet circlejerk

[nattikay]

anyone looking for a full workday’s worth of background listening material? cuz this was great, very thorough👌

[alpha-incipiens]

Favourite music of the decade!

This is some of what I’d consider the most innovative, artistic and just great to listen to music from 2010-2019.

First a Lot of very good songs:

Crying - Premonitory dream

Arcade Fire - Normal person

Sufjan Stevens - I want to be well

Deerhunter - Sailing

Foster the People - Pumped up kicks

Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy problems

Grimes - Butterfly

Travis Scott - Butterfly effect

Future - March madness

Kanye West ft. Nicki Minaj et al - Monster

Juice Wrld - Won’t let go

Danny Brown - Downward spiral

Kendrick Lamar - Sing about me, I’m dying of thirst

Kate Tempest - Marshall Law

The Avalanches - Stepkids

Iglooghost - Bug thief

Vektroid - Yr heart

Ariel Pink - Little wig

Mac Demarco - Sherrill

Vektor - Charging the void

Jyocho - 太陽と暮らしてきた [family]

Panic! at the disco - Ready to go

The Wonder Years - An American religion

Oso oso - Wake up next to god

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - I can be afraid of anything

And my top 20(+2) albums:

Calling Rich gang’s style influential on trap would be like saying Nirvana may have had some impact on early-90s grunge. In 2019 with trap so omnipresent in popular music, hip hop or otherwise, through the impact of artists like Drake and Travis Scott it’s almost hard to remember when this was a niche genre - it was Rich gang that popularised its modern sound here. Birdman’s beats with their rattling hi-hats and deep bass could have been made 5 years later without arousing suspicion, while Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug deliver consistently entertaining flows and numerous bangers between them. Thugger, this being his first major project, steals the show with his yelpy and hilarious rapping style. This may have once been the defining sound of house parties in the Atlanta projects; now it can be heard blasting in the night from white people’s sound systems around the world.

Early 21p may have never aimed to be cool, to avoid a certain appearance of lameness, but they did have a knack for writing some really catchy pop with an optimistic message. To the devoted, the critics of Pilots’ apparent mishmash of nerdy rap, sentimental piano balladry and EDM production were just stuffy, wanting music to stay how it was back-in-the-day forever and unwilling to get with the times. This viewpoint is understandable when you approach this album openly and actually listen to Tyler Joseph’s lyrics about youthful anxiety and insecurity, delivered with real conviction and sincerity, actually recognise that disparate musical elements are all there for emotional punch. A few songs do underwhelm. But this is emo for post-emo Gen Z’s and it’s easy to see why to some it can be deeply affecting.

The musical ancestor to the ongoing and endless stream of ‘lo-fi hip hop beats’ youtube mixes, chillwave filled the same low-stress niche, and Dive released at the peak of the genre’s relevance. Tycho’s woozy, mellow sound prominently features rich acoustic and bass guitar melodies over warm synths, enhancing the music’s organic feel compared to that of purely digital producers in the genre. The experience of starting this album is like waking up in a soft bed, the cover’s gorgeous sunrise reddening the room’s walls, while a guitarist improvises somewhere on the Mediterranean streets outside. And it is indeed great to study or relax to!

Simple, minimal acoustic guitar and vocals. If you’ve got talent this type of music shows it, or else it doesn’t: perfect then for Ichiko Aoba. Her touch is light, her songs calm, meditative, in no rush to get anywhere. As if serenely watching a natural landscape, one can best understand and enjoy Aoba’s music in quiet and peaceful appreciation.

Through the incorporation of genres like shoegaze and alternative rock, Deafheaven managed to create a rare thing: a metal album that’s both heavy and accessible, needing no sacrifice of one for the other’s sake. Over these four main songs, there’s a sensation of being taken on an intense, atmospheric and even emotional journey, with the band stepping away from the negativity and misanthropy that dominates most metal. The vocals, closer to the confessionalism of screamo than classic black metal shrieks, express more sadness than they do aggression, and in respites between solid blaring walls of guitar and drums, calm pianos and gently strummed guitar passages set a pensive tone. This totally enveloping, flawlessly produced sound can take you away, like My Bloody Valentine’s best work, into a dream or trance.

By the late 2000s MCR had taken their thrones as the kings of a subculture formed from the coalition of goth, emo, scene and other assorted Hot Topic-donned kids, and earned a lifelong place in the hearts of many a depressed teenager. But after the generation-defining The Black Parade Gerard Way took off the white facepaint and skeleton costume, ditched the lyrics about corpse brides and vampires, and embraced an anthemic, purely pop punk sound. The silly story of Danger Days, set in a dystopian California where villainous corporations rule and only the Punks can stop them, serves as a kind of idealised setting for the all-out rebellion against authority and normality that so many fantasised about taking part in. The band’s electrifying performances are the most uplifting of their decade making music. For many diehards the upbeat sound here was a celebration that they’d made it through the most difficult years of their lives, and a spit in the face of those who’d done them wrong.

The teller of rural American tales, the indie legend, the teen-whisperer himself. John Darnielle, long past his early lo-fidelity home recordings and now backed by a full band, loses none of the heart his songs are famous for. The theme of the album, taken straight from John’s childhood when the pro wrestling on TV offered an escape from his abusive stepfather, is complemented by the country and Tex-Mex flavouring to the instrumentation. Some of the best lyrics in his long career infuse the stories of wrestlers with universal meaning - his characters try, fail, lose hope, reckon with their mediocrity, and when they step into the ring they’re up against all the adversity life can throw at them. John Darnielle’s saying that when that happens, you stand up and sock back.

Folk music was always a major part of the Scandinavian black metal scene during its peak years, so when American musicians began exploring the genre naturally they incorporated American styles of folk. The complex, oppressive and sometimes hellish compositions here, starkly contrasted with bluegrass that sounds straight from the campfire circle, give the impression of life in the uncharted woods of the American frontier, in the middle of a brutally cold winter. Almost unbelievably, one-man-band Austin Lunn plays every instrument on the album: multiple guitar parts, bass and drums as well as banjo, fiddle, and woodwinds.

Andy Stott seems to delight in making his music as unnerving, haunting, perhaps even scary, as possible. The female vocals these songs are built around become ghostly, echoing and overlapping themselves disorientingly. The percussion, audibly resembling metal clanging, rustling or rattling in the distance, is often left to stand for its own, creating a tense space it feels like something should be filling. UK-based club and dub music can be felt influencing the grimy almost-but-not-quite danceable rhythms here, but the lo-fi recording and menacing vibe makes this feel like a rave at some sort of dimly lit abandoned factory.

There’s so much Mad Max in this album you can just picture it being set to images of freights burning across the desert. True to its title, the nine songs on Nonagon Infinity roll into each other as if part of one big perpetual composition, with the end looping back seamlessly to the start and musical motifs cropping up both before and after the song they form the base of. With its fuzzy, raw sound, bluesy harmonica and wild whooping, the Gizz create a truly rollicking rock’n’roll experience. The band would go on to release 5 albums within twelve months a year later, but Nonagon shows these seven Australian madmen at the height of their powers.

Sometimes you just want to listen to fun, hyperactive pop. The spirit of 8-bit video game soundtracks and snappy pop punk come together to create a vividly digital world of sound that seems to celebrate the worldliness, connectivity and shiny neon colours of early 2010s internet culture and social media. The up-pitched vocals and general auditory mania recall firmly Online musical trends like nightcore and vocaloid, while the beats pulse away, compelling you to dance like this is a house party and the best playlist ever assembled is on. It demands to be listened to at night with headphones, in a room lit only by your laptop screen.

“You hate everyone. To you everyone’s either a moron, or a creep or a poser. Why do you suddenly care about their opinion of you?” “Because I’m shallow, okay?! … I want them to like me.”

The fact that that Malcolm In The Middle quote is sampled at the emotional climax of this record should give some idea to the absurdity that defines Brave Little Abacus. It’s not even the only sample from the show on here. And yet the passion and urgency so evident in Adam Demirjian’s lispy singing and the band’s nostalgia-inducing, even cozy, melodies are made to stir feelings. The tearjerker chords and guitar progressions are so distinctive of emo bands with that special US-midwest melancholia, and they are interspersed with warm ambiance and playful sound effects ripped from TV and video games, seemingly vintage throwbacks to a sunny childhood. Demirjian’s lyrics, yelled out as if through tears or in the middle of a panic attack, verge on word salad in their abstraction, but that’s not the point: you can feel his small town loneliness and sense the trips he’s spent lost on memory lane. The combined effect all adds to Just Got Back’s themes of adolescence and the trauma of leaving it. While legendary in certain internet communities for this album and their 2009 masterpiece Masked Dancers, the band remains obscure to wider audiences.

These Danish punks know how to convey emotion through their raw and dramatic songs. Elias Rønnenfelt’s vocal presence and charisma cannot be ignored: his husky voice drawls, at times breaks, gasps for breath, builds up the deeply impassioned, intense force behind his words. The band sounds free and wild, unrestrained by a tight adherence to tempo, often speeding up, slowing down or straying from the vocals within the same song, as if playing live. Instrumentally the command over loud and quiet, tension and release, accentuates the vocals in crafting the album’s pace. Horns and saloon pianos throughout give the feel of a performance in a smoky, underground blues bar, with Rønnenfelt swaying onstage as he howls the romantic, distraught, heartbroken lyrics he truly believes in.

At some point on first listening to Death Grips, a thought along the lines of “He really yells like this the whole way through, huh?” probably crosses the mind. When Exmilitary first appeared, quietly uploaded to the internet, the rapper’s name and identity unknown, another likely reaction among listeners might have been “What am I even listening to?” But perhaps more revolutionary than Death Grips’ incredibly aggressive sound and style might have been its foreshadowing of how over the next decade underground rap acts would explode into the mainstream through viral songs, online word of mouth and memes. It showed all you needed to come from nowhere to the top of the game was to seize attention, and it did that and far more. MC Ride’s intoxicatingly crass, intense rapping captures the energy of a mosh pit where injuries happen, the barrage of sensations of a coke high, while the eclectic mix of rock and glitchy electronics on the instrumentals is disorienting in the best way. If rap were rock and this was 1977, Death Grips would have just invented punk. Ride’s lyrics paint a confrontational, hyper-macho persona; unlike much hip hop braggadocio, the overwhelming impression given is that Ride truly does not care what anyone thinks. He just goes hard and does not stop. It’s music to punch the wall to.

Inspired by classic rock operas, this concept album represents some major ambition and innovation in musical storytelling. Delivered in frontman Damian Abraham’s gravelly shouted vocals, the complex lyrical narrative of the album follows a factory worker, an activist and their struggle against the omnipotent author (Abraham himself) who controls their fates. Featuring devices like unreliable narrators and fourth-wall breaking, it takes some serious reading into to untangle. But it’s the bright guitarwork, combining upbeat punk rock and indie to create some killer riffs, that gives the album its furious energy and cinematic proportions.

Joanna Newsom is enchanted by the past. Like 2006’s ambitious Ys, the music on Divers makes this evident with its invocation of Western classical and medieval music, throwing antiquated instruments like clavichords together with lush string orchestration, woodwinds, organs, folk guitar and Newsom’s signature harp. With her soulful, moving vocals leading the way, it’s hard not to imagine her as some kind of Renaissance-era country woman contemplating nature, love and mortality in the fields and the woods. As always Newsom proves herself a stunningly original and creative arranger with the sheer compositional intricacy and flow of these songs, and most of all the harmonious intertwining of singing and instrumental backing.

Burial’s music is born from the London night: the bustle of the streets, the faint sounds from distant raves, the buskers, the rain on bus windows. This EP’s dreamlike quality makes listening to it feel like taking a trip across the city well after midnight, watching the lights go by, with no idea where you hope to get to. Every single sound and effect on these two songs is so precisely chosen, from the shifting and shuffling beats, the swelling synths and wordless vocals that sound like a club from a different dimension, the ambient hiss and pop of a vinyl record. Musically this sound is drawn from UK-based scenes like 2-step and drum ‘n bass, but twisted into such a moody and abstracted form as to be nearly unrecognisable as dubstep. Just when this urban, dismal sound is at its most oppressive, heavenly soul singers or organs cut through like a ray of light in the dark.

There’s an imaginary rulebook of how construct music, how to properly make tempos and combinations of notes sound harmonious, and Gorguts have spent their career ripping it up and throwing it in the bin. On 1998’s seminal Obscura, their atonal experimentation sounded at times like random noises in random order. But listen closely to Obscura or Colored Sands, their return after a long hiatus, and the method behind the madness emerges. One mark of great death metal is that it’s impossible to predict what direction it will go even a few seconds in advance, and the band achieves this while presenting a heavy, slow, momentous sound. The density of inspired riffs, and the intricate balancing of loud and quiet, fast and slow paced throughout these songs are exceptional. In instrumental sections the guitars will echo out as if across a barren plane, then the song will build up to the momentum of a freight train. Behind the crashing and twisting walls of guitar the patterns of blast beat drumming are almost mathematical in nature. Luc Lemay’s harsh bellows sound like a warlord’s cry or a pure expression of rage to the void. It’s threatening, menacing, unapproachable, but it all makes sense in the end.

Futuristic yet deeply retro, Blank Banshee’s music takes vaporwave beyond its roots in the pure consumerist parody of artists like Vektroid and James Ferraro and makes it actually sound amazing. Songs are built out of a single vocal snippet processed beyond recognition, new agey synthesisers, Windows XP-era computer noises, hilariously out of place instruments, all set to the 808 bass and hi-hats of hip-hop style beats. The genre’s pioneers intentionally sucked the soul from their music using samples pulled from 70s and 80s elevators, infomercials and corporate lounges - here the throwback seems to be to the early 2000s childhood of the internet, and the influence of a time when email and forums were revolutionary can be felt. The effect of this insanity is an album that whirls by like a techno-psychedelic haze: the atmosphere of dark trap beats places you squarely in a 2013 studio one moment, the next you’re surrounded by relaxing midi pianos and humming that a temple of new age practitioners would meditate to. Still, at some point when listening to this album, perhaps when the ridiculous steel drums kick in near the end, you realise that this is all to some degree a joke, and a funny one. It’s hard to overstate what an entertaining half-hour this thing is.

While 2012’s Good Kid, m.a.a.d City presented a movie in album form of Kendrick’s childhood and early adult years, TPAB’s journey is one of personal growth, introspection, and nuanced examination of the state of race in post-Ferguson America. It’s simultaneously the Zeitgeist for the US in 2015 and a soul-search in the therapist’s office. Sounding deeply vulnerable, he openly discusses depression, alcoholism, religion and feelings of helplessness. The White House and associated gangstas on the cover give some idea to the album’s political themes, with Lamar contrasting Obama’s presidency to the political powerlessness and lifelong ghetto entrapment of millions of black Americans. Everything I’ve written about the lyrics here really only scratches the surface because the words here are substantive, complex and dense with meaning. Near enough every bar can be analysed for multiple meanings and interpretations, essays can and have been written on the overall work, anything less does not do justice. The musical versatility on display is astounding: the album acts as an extravaganza of African-American music, from smooth west coast G-funk to east coast grit, neo-soul and rock to beat poetry, and most of all jazz. Like an expertly laid character arc the record progresses through its ideas in such a way that they’re all impactful, with the slurred rapping imitating a depressed drunken stupor followed later by exuberant, defiant cries of “I love myself!”, the white-hot rage against police brutality balanced by the hopeful mantra: “do you hear me, do you feel me, we gon be alright”. Perhaps the most culturally significant album of the 2010s and an essential piece of the hip-hop canon.

This harrowing hour chronicles the struggles and everyday tragedy of a series of characters and their relationship with the city they live in, narratively driven by some outstandingly poetic lyrics. Jordan Dreyer’s wordy tales despair at the poverty, gang violence and urban decay in the band’s native Grand Rapids, Michigan, an almost childlike open-hearted naivete in his words as he empathises with the broken and alienated people in these songs. There’s no jaded sneer or sly lesson to be learned as he sings about the child killed by a stray bullet or the homebird left alone after all their friends move away, just genuine second-hand sadness and a dream that compassion and community will eventually heal the pain. Taking elements from bands like At the Drive-In’s fusion of punk and progressive, and mewithoutyou’s shout-sung vocals, La Dispute hones its sound to a razor edge to put fierce instrumental power behind the lyrics. Not an easy listen, but a sharply written songbook and a perfect execution on its concept.

Around 2008, Joanna Newsom met comedian Andy Samberg. Within a year, their relationship was becoming the basis upon which the poetry of Have One on Me was spun. Newsom’s lyrics, exploring her relationship with her future-husband, nature, death, spirituality, are above all else loving. Through her warm and vibrant voice, at times an operatic trill and in others deeply soulful, she expresses the joy of love for another, the peace and earthly connection of her beloved pastoral lifestyle, deeply affecting melancholy and grief. Contemplative, artful, genuine or expressive: every lyric in every sweet melody is used to offer her ruminations on life or overflowings of passion.

More so than her previous and next albums, the feel of the album is of not just a folkloric past but also the present day, with drums, substantial brass and string arrangements, and even electric guitar anchoring the sound to Newsom’s real, not imaginary, life in the 21st century. Yet songs here with moods or settings evoking simpler lifestyles and the women living them in 1800s California or the Brontës’ English moors still have a universal relevance. Whether rooted in past of present, the instrumental variety of these compositions, from classical solo piano, grand orchestral arrangements led by harp, to the twang of country guitars or intricate vocal harmonising, makes it apparent that this is the work of a master songwriter in full command of well over a dozen talented musicians. Ultimately, what makes this my favourite album of the decade is that, very simply, it is one stunningly beautiful song after another, all collated into a cohesive 2-hour portrait of Newsom’s soul.

[how-to-survive-depression]

How to Survive Depression

A mental state in which a person has feelings of great unhappiness and hopelessness. It is a common medical disorder, where the individual experiences sadness and feeling of hopelessness, for most of the day, on most days. Those with the disorder often find they no longer enjoy activities they used to find pleasurable. Students are much more likely to have depression than any other group of adults. Here’s the reason why :University students are a special group of people that are enduring a critical transitory period in which they are going from adolescence to adulthood and can be one of the most stressful times in a person’s life. As a reaction to this stress, some students get depressed. They find that they cannot get themselves together. They may cry all of the time, skip classes, or isolate themselves without realizing they are depressed. Previous studies reported that depression in university students is noted around the world and the prevalence seems to be increasing.Surveys have found, that more than 300 million people suffer from depression, out of which up to 90% are college students. During college, students experience many “firsts” including new lifestyle, friends, new culture and experiences. Students may struggle if they can’t manage these firsts. If they aren’t prepared to cope, they can become easily susceptible to depression and anxiety.

HOW TO DIAGNOSE DEPRESSION

One way depression is measured by healthcare professionals is through psychometric testing. A good example of this is the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). It’s a 21 item self –report measure, that assess attitudes and symptoms of depression.

How to Survive

1. Self Care with routine life 

You have to try not to let your depression make you stop everything. if you’re depressed and not leaving your house but trying to keep a little bit of a normal routine will help you. Try to maintain whatever level of daily activities you can right now and get up, take a shower and put on clean clothes. Wherever you are in your journey try to raise your base level of functioning a little bit.

Push yourself every day to do a little more than you did yesterday. Getting a little momentum going every day can help you start moving towards recovery. Drinking water and eating is essential to your recovery. If you don’t have an appetite try to make yourself eat a little bit at a time. Try to stay away from junk food and eat healthy throughout the day. Try and do some basic things to take care of yourself.Brush your teeth, comb your hair and wash your face. If this is the minimum amount of functioning you can do right now that’s OK but you need to try and take care of yourself the best that you can.You can get through this day, just focus on one thing at a time.Try and do some activities that you actually enjoy. Watch a favorite movie, spend time with a positive friend or go for a walk. Do whatever it is you need to do to take care of yourself.

2.Engage

See if you can get your mind off of your depression and engage in something even if it is just for a few minutes at a time. Trying to focus on anything when you’re depressed can be difficult.Try putting on your favorite movie and see if it can distract you for a little while. If you’re up for reading books, read a good one. Sometimes diving into a good book can help give me a new perspective when I’m stuck inside my own head.

If you’re not feeling up for reading a book then listen your favorite music.

3. Reach Out

Tell a friend or family member that you are struggling. If you don’t have anyone in your personal life you can call your friend over the phone. It can be hard to reach out for help when you’re struggling because there is so much stigma around mental health and depression. The truth is lots of people are coping with depression. There is no shame in talking about what you are struggling with and reaching out for help.

4. Go to the Damn Therapist

Seek professional help. I have a whole blog post about going to the therapist here.If you are struggling to function you need to seek professional help. I’ve been depressed and miserable too but things got better for me and I know they can get better for you too. If you don’t want to see someone face to face then take some online consultancy. Online therapy isn’t for everyone but it might be worth trying to see if it is for you. 

5. Gratitude

Writing down five things you are thankful for will direct your brain towards something positive.There have been lots of studies done that show practicing gratitude can help manage depression. Basically, when you take the time to feel thankful you also give your brain a dose of Oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine.

(Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland, a pea-sized structure at the base of the brain. It's sometimes known as the "cuddle hormone" or the "love hormone," because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially.)

These chemicals can help alleviate symptoms of depression over time.Set some triggers up throughout the day that will remind you to take a moment and feel thankful for the blessings in your life. You could do it every time you put your key in the ignition of your car, whenever you reach for your phone or while you brush your teeth.The idea is to start making it a habit during your day so you start practice feeling the feeling of gratitude in your body throughout the day.

6. Affirmations

Find something that really resonates with you and say it in your mind or out loud when you need encouragement.Write it down and put it on the refrigerator, your bathroom mirror and next to your bed. I like to set my affirmation for the day as an alarm on my phone. I think it’s a nice reminder in the middle of the day. If you need some inspiration you can find it below.

Here are some affirmations to try:

1. Your discomfort won’t last forever.

2. You are resilient. You are a silent warrior.

3. You are okay where you are right now.

4. I Am OK With Where I Am Right Now

5. I am turning into someone who stays strong no matter what

7. Move

Going outside and getting a little bit of exercise will help you. Make a cheer up a playlist you can listen to. Try just walking to the end of your street if you can’t go far.Just do a little bit, it’s OK.

8. Train your brain

You should be just as kind and compassionate to yourself as you would be to your best friend.Addressing negative self-talk can help you find some relief. When you are thinking nasty thoughts about yourself try to catch yourself and redirect your thoughts. If you wouldn’t say the things you are telling yourself in your head to a stranger you need to work on changing your thought process. 

9. Do Things You Used To Enjoy

It can be really difficult to make yourself do the things you used to enjoy when you’re feeling depressed. However, doing the activities that you used to enjoy can help your recovery.Make a list of activities you would do if you weren’t depressed and start making yourself do at least once a week. Giving up all of the things that used to make you feel good will probably just make your depression get worse and worse.Want to remember this? Post this survival guide to your wall.

Hope it will help you. Wish you all the best and a quick recovery.

Regards, 

DEEP TALKS

[margaretbeagle]

Content Curation For Education: Benefits, Tips, and Use Cases You Need For Success

We’ve witnessed a massive shift in the way teaching and learning takes place in the last decade.

Knowledge and information used to be a limited, protected resource. For teachers and students alike, textbooks and libraries have been the only source of learning and development. In other words, options for finding new content to research, analyze, and learn from has conventionally been limited.

Luckily, online content and many formats it comes in have completely transformed that. More than ever before, educators and students can expand and deepen their curiosity on a topic in the matter of hours—wherever they’re located.

However, this comes with a downside: there is a lot of content to sort through. According to IBM, 90% of all data has been created in the last two years. Here’s what happens in just one minute on the internet, as of 2019:

This can be overwhelming. Instead of bringing more value, going through hundreds of articles, research papers, videos, podcasts, interviews, and news reports can actually distract you from your goal and actually repel you from the idea of using online content for education.

This is where content curation comes in. In this guide, we’ll show you how content curation is a great fit for educational projects, both if you’re a teacher and a student.

Why content curation works so well for educational projects

Simply put, content curation is the process of sorting through content and presenting it in a meaningful, organized way around a specific theme or category. To learn more about the essentials of content marketing, check out our resources on:

Content curation benefits and formats

Content curation strategy

5 mistakes in content curation

Let’s dive into reasons why education can greatly benefit from curated content.

Curated content is instantly useful and practical

Unlike the process of searching for the right books and research papers (which can mean hours in the library for just one great resource), content curation provides immediate access to deep insights.

When you curate highly valuable content, you enable yourself and your peers to make more sense of a certain topic, make better decisions, and develop critical thinking.

Curated content emphasizes collaborative learning and ongoing conversations

This benefit is simple: when there’s a central, online place for the best content on a topic you’re currently covering in class, everyone can contribute with their thoughts and insights.

Similar to a social media post that lets people comment on it, a great content curation platform will make it easy for the whole class to participate in meaningful discussions.

Curated content makes learning mobile

Many books and other standard academic resources are now available digitally. However, you still need to know exactly what you’re looking for or have access to a library, which can be a struggle.

Content curation makes the most relevant insights accessible anywhere, anytime. You could be in your home, office, on a train, or anywhere else—as long as you have an internet connection, you’re good to go.

Curated content surfaces trends you otherwise wouldn’t notice

Another benefit of content curation is that it helps you monitor your field of expertise in real time. That’s difficult if you’re only relying on textbooks and curriculums that have been around for a few years.

With curated content, you can identify new methodologies, approaches to certain challenges, emerging strategies, and other up-and-coming trends.

Curated content helps teachers keep examples relevant and current

One of the best ways students can learn is to see what they’ve learned in real world situations.

Content curation enables educators to create and maintain custom learning hubs. These hubs packed with relevant, current examples help students to deepen their understanding of the topic.

For example, let’s say you’re leading a marketing strategy course. While your curriculum and textbooks are the foundation, you can expand your students’ knowledge with a learning hub packed with:

Presentations from leading marketing speakers

Best product positioning examples, categorized by industry

Articles that analyze marketing strategies of Fortune 500 companies

Examples of marketing strategies from fastest-growing startups

While the foundation of what you’re teaching will remain the same at its core, the examples and practical applications of it will always evolve. Content curation allows you to remain up to date with supporting materials for your students.

What you need to know about content curation in education

Content curation isn’t as simple as doing a Google search on your topic and adding anything you come across to your curated topic.

An excellent content curator is someone who can:

Find the most relevant material for the topic

See patterns and trends

Identify groupings and contexts for the topic

Navigate the complexity of available information

This applies both to educators and students who are curating content (we’ll get into specific use cases in the next section).

To curate content for educational projects successfully, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Focus on quality over quantity; plenty of mediocre content won’t be more useful than a few carefully selected pieces

Curate content regularly, not just as a one-and-done task

Know who you’re curating for

Curate content that helps contextualize information and connect the dots

Content can come in form of website pages, blog posts, PDFs, news articles, research papers, social media posts, video and audio of any length—don’t neglect any of it if it’s valuable

Use cases of content curation for education

Wondering how you can put the above insights into practice? We’ve listed our favorite use cases for curated content in educational projects below. We’ve also noted which ones are applicable to students, and which are aimed at educators.

Side note: If you want to take any of the use cases and apply them to your own work or studies, you’ll need a content curation platform that’s equally flexible and easy to use. Scoop.it is exactly that, with the possibility to:

Build multiple topic pages

Add your own insights to everything you curate

Have others comment on a piece of content and share it

Embed your curated content elsewhere and integrate with dozens of services using Zapier

Manage permissions and roles so that the right people can access the right content

Want to see a real-life example of an education hub on Scoop.it? Check out Geography Education (with over 2 million views so far!):

Let’s dive into some great use cases you can implement right away.

Host your lesson resources

Who can curate this way: Educators

Sure, you can always simply provide your students with a printed list of resources they can look for in their own time.

But a better way to do this is to provide them with just one link: the one that hosts all of these resources, readily available in a single click. You’ll increase the chances of your students actually consuming that content.

Lesson resources can include written, audio, and video content; speeches, checklists, slide decks, templates, tutorials, and much more.

Curate a weekly/monthly reading list

Who can curate this way: Educators

Another way to approach the creation of resources for your lessons is to build an ever-evolving reading list.

Depending on the frequency of your lessons, you can update this on a regular basis, with newly curated content related to the specific subtopics you’re covering in the next lesson (or the ones you’ve covered in the most recent lesson).

You can have all of these lists hosted on a single page (in Scoop.it, it’s called a topic page), or you can build a separate one for each of your lessons.

If you want to ensure your students actually go through this list in time, you can:

Add a note with the approximate reading time for each item on the list

Add your insight on who will find each item most appealing (especially if you present the same lessons to different groups of students simultaneously)

Make sure you’re not adding too much content each week/month, but enough to keep your students curious and engaged

Host your student projects and associated resources

Who can curate this way: Students

Student projects are typically written, linear documents that present your idea and your approach to solving a problem.

A hub packed with curated content lets you enrich that idea. It lets you play with opportunities and helps your teacher, as well as your fellow students, to visualize your project and make it come to life.

Create your digital portfolio

Who can curate this way: Students

When you’re about to enter the workforce, you need a way to not only demonstrate your skills, but to set yourself apart from other candidates you’re competing with. Without any work experience, it can be a real challenge to showcase your skillset.

This is where a curated online portfolio can help. You can use a content curation platform to present:

The projects you worked on as a students

Your insights and notes on projects and reports from relevant companies or people

Your thought process around crucial topics and challenges in your field of expertise

Going this extra mile to present what you’re good at and what you’ve worked on during your years in education will help you leave a great impression on potential employers.

Wrapping up

Thanks to content curation, you can stand out in your educational journey as a student, and in your career as a teacher.

With the internet at your disposal, you can enrich any topic, lesson, and curriculum thanks to the rich, extensive, valuable content other people and companies have created. It would be a waste not to make the most of that.

Take one of the use cases we’ve outlined in this guide to start curating the most relevant content on your topic of expertise and studies. You will become an indispensable resource for your industry. It will set you apart and help you lay the groundwork for a successful, fulfilled career.

The post Content Curation For Education: Benefits, Tips, and Use Cases You Need For Success appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

Content Curation For Education: Benefits, Tips, and Use Cases You Need For Success published first on https://improfitninja.weebly.com/

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Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon is a Familiar Choice

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Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon focuses on the "Dance of Dragons" civil war between Targaryens. We consider why HBO picked it.

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As you’ve likely heard by now, Jane Goldman’s Game of Thrones prequel, tentatively titled “The Long Night,” is dead, and Ryan Condal’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, is going straight to series. Long live the Game of Thrones prequel. This news was met with much fanfare by WarnerMedia, who made it the crown jewel of its HBO Max presentation. The series, which is getting a full 10-episode order out of the gate, will pull liberally from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood and dive deep into the history of House Targaryen.

These tidings have traveled across the internet faster than news of Jon Snow’s true parentage. And yet, what it means is only beginning to be grasped, as is perhaps why HBO elected this to be its first Game of Thrones spinoff to see airwaves and streaming after putting at least six pilot pitches into development. What news has thus far been unspooled about House of the Dragon suggests it will be based on the origins of House Targaryen, as well as the beginning of its decline, as chronicled in Fire & Blood. But here’s the rub: Fire & Blood is not really a narrative, or at least it’s not a singular one like the five published books in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series.

Published in 2018, Fire & Blood is actually a history compendium of the beginning of Targaryen rule in Westeros. Acting like a historical text of half the known history of the Targaryens—as it ends roughly 150 years before the events of Game of Thrones—Fire & Blood chronicles several generations of Targaryen monarchy, beginning with Aegon the Conqueror’s conquest of what became the Seven Kingdoms and ending in the aftermath of “The Dance of Dragons” civil war a hundred years later.

While the series will be pulling from the whole book, it is apparently the Dance of Dragons that House of the Dragon will specifically mine for characters and storylines. This is a wise choice, as adapting Fire & Blood straight would mean each season might focus on a different generation or era. Also building to the Targaryen civil war, and then reveling in the carnage for subsequent seasons, returns to what global audiences generally agreed on was their favorite aspects of Game of Thrones: political intrigue, massive battles, and dragons.

Historically remembered as the “Dance of Dragons,” that Targaryen civil war lasted three years and pitted Aegon II against his half-sister Rhaenyra for the Iron Throne after the death of their father, Viserys I. Rhaenyra was the lone child of Viserys to survive to adulthood after his first marriage, and she was named his successor. But upon becoming a widower, Viserys remarried and had several more children, including a son named Aegon. Sure enough, lords plotted against Rhaenyra after Viserys’ death, as did Aegon’s own family which sought to put him on the throne.

This led to dueling coronations and a civil war that bears much similarity to an English civil war known as “the Anarchy.” That spanned more than a decade in the 12th century after King Henry I, the son of William the Conqueror, died without a living son. He named his daughter Mathilda heir, yet his nephew Stephan claimed the throne with the support of many lords, eventually leading to Mathilda—who by this time was a married empress in the Germanic lands—to invade England and attempt to claim the throne for herself and her son. The resulting anarchy is the alleged reason Henry VIII worried centuries later about not having a male heir, though a perfectly healthy daughter, and broke with the Catholic Church to secure his first divorce.

It is certainly a setup rich with dramatic palace intrigue and filled with a variety of characters who died by murder, execution, and on the battlefield. It also may look a lot like the “War of the Five Kings” that formed the backbone of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, which in hindsight appear the strongest in the series’ whole run. And its familiarity may be the point.

read more: Game of Thrones - Queen in the North Has Historic Roots

When Jane Goldman’s The Long Night was announced, it promised a major departure from what we understand Westeros to be. Set in the expansive era known as the “Age of Heroes,” there was massive wiggle room for Goldman to go her own way, given our knowledge of those distant times are intentionally vague and likely embellished by folklore in Martin’s universe. It was a time when Children of the Forest still walked in evergreen land with earthly feet, and when the Starks had yet to legitimize their claim over the whole North by building the mysterious Wall that kept White Walkers out. Westeros wasn’t seven kingdoms but hundreds; the Lannisters and Tyrells were but paupers in kingdoms ruled by the Gardeners and Casterlys; if the Targaryens did exist, they were but one family of many great houses and dragon riders in Old Valyria, an ancient Roman-like city far advanced beyond Westeros; and the series promised to explore Sothoryos, the mysterious African-like continent in Martin’s world that is said to have creatures we’d consider dinosaurs roaming plains.

In short, it would’ve been a very different show from Game of Thrones and explored corners of Martin’s universe that even he has barely mapped out. It was the chance to do something extreme with the material. Now we can only speculate as to why that pilot died and House of the Dragon went straight to series, and there were apparently rumors of a troubled production on The Long Night pilot, however you cannot help but wonder if it offered such a drastic departure from what we know that HBO decided to opt for something closer to home.

When House of the Dragon was first reported on last September, it was suggested it would be focused on a period 300 years ago, which would’ve been specifically the Targaryen conquest of Westeros. It is apt to avoid that direction considering there is little dramatic tension in an army with dragons smiting one legion of foes after another. Also if audiences were turned off by the Game of Thrones ending that saw series icon Daenerys raze King’s Landing, how would they feel about a series revolving around such Targaryen slaughter?

Instead HBO wisely opted for a period of civil unrest where both armies have dragons. They also are leaning into Daenerys Targaryen’s aforementioned iconography. Achieving an almost impossible thing in the age of Peak TV and streaming, Game of Thrones captured the imagination of the world with its grand cinematic visions of medieval warfare, and with the moral ambiguity of real historic-like figures vying for power by any means necessary. But to many viewers, it is probably fair to say that the mental image Game of Thrones leaves behind is that of Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen sitting proud on the back of a dragon, delivering Valyrian gibberish to enraptured armies with sun or snow drifting through her platinum hair. It was, in fact, the inversion of this image where the speeches became fascist, and the carnage her dragons unleashed was no longer fun, that infuriated many about the final two episodes of Game of Thrones.

HBO has now opted to have an entire series dominated by not one fair-haired Targaryen warrior, but nearly a half dozen of them. There will be dragons, burning armies, and we haven’t even gotten to the incest! If you thought Jon and Dany was creepy, watch out for Targaryens in their prime…

Yet, without seeing either series, it feels a bit like a missed opportunity to really explore new corners of Martin’s vast world. His vision extends beyond the civil wars of Westeros and includes cities of shadow with Lovecraftian deities and whole continents yet unexplored. Even among the Westerosi civil wars, the Blackfyre rebellions of about 90 years after House of the Dragon’s setting had a unique quality. Closer to Martin making a high-fantasy, medieval riff on the attitudes and tensions erupting during the American Civil War, the war between the “red” and “black” dragons, and the Lost Cause legacy they left behind, is quite different from the wars we saw on Game of Thrones. However, those rebellions were missing dragons…

House of the Dragon has every opportunity to be amazing, and as a fan of this world and Game of Thrones—yes, even after the last season—I am certainly rooting for it to be just that. But in the age of intellectual property convergence, it is fair to hope that this isn’t a dance we’ve done before. 

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

David Crow is the Film Section Editor at Den of Geek. He’s also a member of the Online Film Critics Society. Read more of his work here. You can follow him on Twitter @DCrowsNest.

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Books

David Crow

Oct 30, 2019

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Game of Thrones

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[playeroneplayertwo]

Editorial: ‘Til the Money Runs Out

(Unless otherwise clarified, all prices are MSRP, or manufacture standard retail price)

The subjectivity evident in any critical analysis of a book, movie, or board game is–I would hope–obvious. Value, however, feels far less subjective. 

How much someone is willing to pay for something varies greatly depending on the person, not only based on what we’re talking about, but also how much money that person has. With that out of the way, let’s talk about a sticky wicket in the hobby of board gaming: value.

It wasn’t long ago that this idea felt less nebulous, with value often coming down to the argument of collectable games vs non-collectable games. Things are a little different now. Collectable card games (CCGs), expandable games/living card games (LCGs), legacy games, campaign games, mystery games, and consumable games have gone a long way in complicating a once-simple(ish?) idea. These days, everyone has an idea of what’s a good value, and what’s not. Lots of people have axes to grind against games deemed “of poor value.” I’ll try not to fall into such a black and white box.

When I originally thought about writing about value, my main angle was simple: Magic (1993) vs an LCG, like Android: Netrunner (2012) or Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (2011). As a former fan of Magic transformed into an avid LCG fan, I bristled at the less than rosy coverage most LCGs received from the gaming community, in regards to value specifically. I knew firsthand how expensive a collectable game like Magic could cost. With a 15-card Magic booster pack costing $3.99, and a booster box of 36 booster packs coming in usually around $100, it gets expensive quickly. Individual cards can be bought online for anywhere from 10¢ to $50+, this is a deep hole that is hungry and ready to eat you alive.

For anyone who has not played a collectable game, it is set apart from LCGs by randomness. A collectable game is purchased in packs of randomized cards, so oftentimes you will purchase a pack and get nothing you want or need. This happens far more than you would believe. LCGs/expandable card games are unique because they are available in fixed, non-randomized sets, whether that be small expansion packs of larger deluxe expansions. The rub is that these will cost more. For example, the typical small expansion pack for an LCG is typically $14.99, but you know exactly what you receive in that expansion, and additionally you’ll receive multiple copies of each card–something that never happens in collectable packs.

This distinction alone is worth a deeper dive, but we’ll only gloss over it briefly. Head to head LCGs or expandable games (like the now OP Android: Netrunner, Legend of the Five Rings (2017), Doomtown: Reloaded (2014), or Game of Thrones: The Card Game (2015)) offer a large pool of cards with a fixed distribution. You would conceivably be able to buy the core set for one of these ($40), plus perhaps four small expansions ($60 total), which puts you in at $100. For $100, you could buy a booster box of Magic cards and maybe build two strong decks, if you’re looking to have a satisfying experience. The randomness will throw a wrench in here, because you could theoretically get enough good cards for more than two solid decks; you could also get mostly junk.

Reviewers often balk at the LCG model, because while it appears to solve the money-pit aspect of CCGs, they are still not cheap. That being said, for people who are merely interested in the game–but not deck construction, LCG core sets offer plenty of introductory level gaming to help you discern whether you actually like a game or not. If you do, and you know what you like about the game (eg factions or mechanics), the set expansion packs allow you to build up where you want. Why buy an expansion pack for a faction you don’t like or don’t play? You don’t have to!

The cooperative LCGs are a different story. They, too, have the $15 expansion packs, but in addition to cards you’ll add to your pool for deck construction, you’ll also get quests to play against, essentially a typical “expansion” that brings in additional content beyond merely deck construction.

Whether it be cooperative or head-to-head, LCGs are expensive, but unlike CCGs, LCGs have simultaneously removed both the excitement of the blind buy as well as the frustration of the bad buy. Granted, in the small box expansions, you’ll still be getting cards you don’t need or don’t want, but at the very least, you will be getting at least a few cards you know you want (if not, uh... why did you buy it? Do your homework!).

As a player of both Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (2016), I would argue that the best value for me in LCGs probably lies in the cooperative line. By giving players both quests to pursue as well as player cards tailored to those specific quests, these small packs never feel incomplete. And, I would argue, getting a core box of Arkham Horror or Lord of the Rings is a great value as an introduction to satisfying, well-supported systems.

Beyond card games, the water actually gets far muddier when you expand what you’re talking about. Legacy games and escape room games (which is a term I’ll use to encompass both consumable games and “mystery” games that, once solved, can’t really be replayed satisfactorily) have managed to blur the lines in terms of value considerably. Let’s start with legacy games.

A legacy game is a game that evolves the more you play it, and with the exception of Charterstone (2017), most legacy games cannot be played beyond the completion of their main narrative arch. For example, Pandemic Legacy (season one or two) leads the players through a series of games that add up to a long-form narrative. As the games unfold, the rules of Pandemic will change, as will the cards, board, and other components, making the last game wholly unique from the first. However, once completed, you can’t play it again. You may as well recycle your game. Charterstone, Stonemaier Games’ take on the legacy game, at least leaves you with what amounts to a custom-designed worker placement game that is replayable. Legacy games can be played anywhere from 10-20 times before you complete the story. That being said, because they have so many components, they are usually quite expensive: Pandemic Legacy (2015/2017), $70; Charterstone (2017), $70; Betrayal Legacy (2018), $75; Rise of Queensdale (2018), $80; and the peril-plagued SeaFall (2016), $80.

After looking at these numbers, take a minute and compare them to the LCG/CCG numbers above. Yes, they are cheaper, but they also have a limited lifespan. Is a legacy game worth $70-$80 if you can only play it 12 times? That’s about $7 per play, cheaper than (or at least comparable to) a movie ticket for a good night spent gaming. Seems like a decent deal, right?

What about consumable or “mystery” games? In this case, I’m looking at you Exit (2016), Unlock (2017), and T.I.M.E. Stories (2015). Other games will fall into this category too (further escape room games or a host of Sherlock Holmes or similar mystery-type games, like Consulting Detective (1981) or Chronicles of Crime (2018)), but these three games are hyper present in the hobby today. Both Exit and Unlock retail for $15, but they will each offer a one-time experience only. Unlock games are mystery-based, so once you’ve worked your way through, they essentially can’t be replayed because the answers will all be known. As for Exit, this is probably one of the more controversial because it is literally consumable. At the end of a game of Exit, that $15 game you bought is now destroyed. Cards are cut, the book is written on or torn up, maybe event the box is destroyed. Unlike Unlock, you can’t even trade it to someone who has not yet played it. Each set of Unlock and Exit is unique, offering lots of new games, but it’s a flat $15 each time you play. Still cheaper than a night at the movies.

Which brings us to T.I.M.E. Stories (2015). T.I.M.E Stories is essentially a board game version of Unlock: card-based and entrenched in a branching narrative with puzzles. You’ll play one set of T.I.M.E. Stories maybe three times, at most, before it’s completed and cannot be replayed. The core box ($50) sets you up with the components and one mystery. Additional mysteries are available in modular expansions for $25 each. At its heart, T.I.M.E. Stories is most analogous to a BluRay player, with each expansion being a new BluRay you pop in to watch. In the long run, it’s also the most expensive of the bunch.

So what’s the point of all this? Board games are expensive, but you know that. Your average big box board game (ie not a traditionally labeled “filler game”) runs anywhere from $30-$60 MSRP. 

Ah, but who pays MSRP these days? you’ve been muttering this whole time.

Who’s paying MSRP? Well, if you’re looking to support your brick and mortar local game stores, you should be. Yes, this is a tough case to make, because money is money. It’s hard to rationalize spending $90 on Scythe (2016) to support your local store when you can buy it online for $52. I can try to make my best possible case for spending that extra $40, but like I said, it’s a tough sell. $40 is a whole other game. I’d like to say I only shop local, but it’s simply not true. This hobby is expensive, and while I buy local when I can, more often than not I buy online from brick and mortar places like Cool Stuff Inc or Miniature Market. It’s worth making a case for buying local, though. Do you like having a local store? If you want to keep having a local store, shop there. Support them. Give them your money when you can. It’s hard out there for brick and mortar stores. And please, don’t expect a brick and mortar store to sell at online prices. I don’t want to have to explain profit margins; in almost all cases it’s just not feasible.

In the long run, what does this all mean? I could throw my opinions at you endlessly about how I think T.I.M.E. Stories is, for Player Two and I, not worth it, or about how Exit is worth it, or legacy games don’t work for us, but that’s not what I’m here for ultimately. I guess I’d like people to ease up on LCGs, and maybe think twice about those hot hot big box legacy games, or remember to pass on their Unlock games to friends or families to get extra miles out of those small boxes. The breadth of the hobby is wide, and it is getting wider every year. Ultimately, you need to decide what you’re willing to invest, and in this case I don’t just mean you money, but also your time. Which of these games will you get your time value out of? If you buy a legacy game with shoddy mechanics, it will fail you on value across the board, because you won’t even finish it. LCGs or CCGs will offer you–theoretically–endless play, but if you don’t like the game enough, or it’s not nuanced enough to sustain those theoretical infinite plays, what’s the point?

The best advice I can give new gamers is to start small. Do your homework on small box games first. There’s a reason that in our first episode recommended gateway game was Oh My Goods! (2015). It’s a quality game that teaches new players a lot about engine building euros, it’s got decent replayability, it’s got two expansions, and it’s only $15. If you are new to the hobby, figure out what you like. Don’t run out and buy Lords of Hellas (2018), Batman: Gotham City Chronicles (2019), or Gloomhaven (2017) on a lark, because you’ll be unloading tons of money on something you may loath.

There’s nothing wrong with starting small. Trust me, in the long run, it will save you a lot of time and money.

[mariemary1]

Why Brands are Turning to Spotify as the Next Big Social Platform

There are so many social networks to choose from today: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest. Maybe YouTube? Maybe Reddit?

We’d love to let you in on a secret one that’s flying under the radar.

Spotify!

We’ve spent time digging into the rise of Spotify as a social media platform, used by today’s hottest brands. The results have been fascinating. We believe that Spotify is fast becoming a core platform for engaging with customers — through paid ads of course, but also through an organic presence. We’d love to tell you how these brands are doing it.

A huge bonus – some of what we’re going share is easy to set up and free to experiment with!

Keep reading to see how the music streaming giant can drive your brand forward and present some unique and exciting opportunities to connect with your audience.

Where Spotify fits in today’s social media landscape

If you were to look at a chart of the online communities of the greatest size and reach, how do you think that chart might look?

Typically, the “biggest” social networks that come to mind are the ones that are top of mind for all of us: Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, which have billions of users.

Beyond those sites are some other familiar names:

Twitter and Reddit, which have over 300 million users

LinkedIn, which is nearing the 300-million mark

Pinterest and Snapchat, which are right near 250 million each.

There’s another community that is right on the heels of these social media giants.

Spotify has 217 million users as of April 2019, and if you were to include Spotify in the list of top social networks, it would fit snugly within the top 20 worldwide.

What’s useful to see here is that many brands and businesses want to be where their customers are. And with user counts like these, it’s obvious there are customers here!

We’re beginning to see, more and more, that the standard definitions for “social networks” are expanding. Brands these days are looking for places to reach their audience and connect. Spotify is clearly one of those places.

The music streaming service has been around since 2008, and it’s been a hidden treasure for marketers for several years now thanks to its deep audience insights. Slowly but surely, Spotify has been gaining critical mass as a must-consider location for brands to be. The website Distilled wrote about the Spotify trends in August of 2018. Many other websites have covered the advertising potential of the platform.

From our research, this trend will only continue to grow.

The way we see it, there are three pillars for brands when it comes to their presence on Spotify.

Playlists

Paid ads

Podcasting

1. Spotify Playlists

Find organic distribution through branded, social playlists

Do you have a guess at how many Spotify playlists there are?

There are over two billion!

Now, don’t let that number scare you off.

Just because there are billions of playlists doesn’t mean that yours won’t get noticed. We’ll get into some distribution methods in a moment, but first let me share another fascinating stat with you:

One-third of all listening time on Spotify is spent on user-generated playlists. That equates to eight hours a week of listening. So clearly there is a lot of demand for playlists on Spotify!

What’s also great about playlists as a brand strategy is that they are easy to set up and free to experiment with … two of a marketers’ favorite attributes.

The barrier for entry is incredibly doable. Just as you create playlists for your personal Spotify listening, you can do the same for your brand. Let’s first walk you through how it works, then we’ll dive into some of the finer details about this strategy.

How to:

To get started, create a new Spotify account for your brand.

And as you would with any new social profile, fill it out completely with your brand name and logo. Some brands do a custom logo for Spotify, featuring different colors or music-related imagery.

Then, start creating your first playlists.

There are several ways to about this. Some brands organize their songs around themes, whether it’s a certain mood or feeling or perhaps a trending topic or event. For instance, McDonald’s has playlists for football and the Oscars.

Gymshark — an athletic apparel brand — partners with influencers to create branded playlists. Each playlist is inspired by the influencer’s music choices and is pitched as a training playlist. They’re quite popular, too. The Steven Cook playlist has 95,000 followers.

When it comes to choosing songs, Spotify recommends a few helpful guidelines to lessen your risk and avoid any implicit endorsement of artists.

Put at least 20 tracks on your playlist. The more tracks you have, the better. Variety counts, too.

No single artist should appear more than once on your playlist

Don’t include artists you might think would be opposed to your brand.

For the design of your playlist, you can use emoji in the title to make it stand out. You can also upload a custom cover photo to the playlist. This can only be done by downloading the desktop app; it can’t be done on mobile or on the web app.

The only considerations for your photo are that the file needs to be a JPEG and the file size can’t be more than four megabytes. You’ll also want to use a square aspect ratio. We like to use an 800-pixel by 800-pixel image, just as we do for Instagram.

How do you get people to find out about your Spotify playlists?

Fortunately, Spotify is quite well integrated into the other social networks, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter especially. There are a couple different ways you can get your playlist distributed here.

First, you can rely on your own promotion.

You can link to your playlist on any social channels to drive your audience to Spotify. For instance, you can link directly from your website footer or add a Spotify icon to the other social icons in your email signatures.

Another way to get the word out is to encourage participation.

Some brands create collaborative playlists that all Spotify users can add to. These crowdsourced lists make for a great content in a tweet or Instagram post.

The other way to go about distribution is with Viral promotion.

Playlists themselves are quite shareable as well. When a user likes a song or if they like an entire playlist, they can share them easily to major social networks. Instagram Stories has a direct connection to Spotify so that you can add your latest song directly to your Stories.

And one final playlist note: Keep your playlist updated by adding and removing songs regularly. Each time your playlist changes, the followers of that playlist will be notified.

2. Spotify ads

Experiment with targeted advertising, starting at $250 per campaign

There are a couple big advantages of going with Spotify for ads.

First, they are a younger ad network so you’re likely to get more bang for your buck. This has been true of all ad platforms initially: Facebook several years ago, Instagram Stories and Pinterest recently, and Spotify now. Putting your advertising dollars on younger ad networks is one of our favorite tips for maximizing ad spend.

Second, Spotify has a deeeeeep amount of analytics.

They understand their user’s listening behaviors to an incredible degree, and this allows for advertisers to create some really compelling audiences and storytelling. Consider these stats they have on how Millennials use Spotify:

68% of streams happen on mobile.

Millennial listeners are 64% more likely to buy brands they see advertised.

Millennials stream on repeat more than they stream on random, and they’re 90% more likely to have the latest tech products.

And there’s these stats about how Tech Early Adopters stream on Spotify

They’re almost 900% more likely to stream on a gaming console than the average listener.

They’re 41% more likely to listen to music that feels defiant.

Early Adopters stream what they like more than they stream new finds, and they’re twice as likely to be brand conscious.

So if you’re thinking about getting into ads on Spotify, here’s what to know:

1. Understand the different ad formats.

Spotify offers audio, video, and display ads. You can fully create and manage your own audio ads through the Spotify Ad Studio. For video and display ads, you can get in touch with the Spotify team through the Spotify for Brands website.

Depending on your budget, you may end up going with one or more of these three ad formats. Initially, when starting out in the Spotify Ad Studio, you can run audio ads beginning at a minimum $250 budget.

Spotify has found that a mixture of ad formats works best. For example, mixing audio and display results in a 24 percent increase in ad recall for those formats.

2. Get to know the different ad segments

You can customize your ad for a host of different settings … Your options include: location, age, gender, platform, and whether you want to advertise across all Spotify music or just in certain genres or on certain playlists.

3. Focus on the experience of your listener.

We mentioned earlier that a variety of ad formats can be helpful. So, too, can a variety of targeting. Spotify is unique among other ads in that it has a strong storytelling element to its data. You can tell what kind of mood a listener may be in, based on previous songs. You may even be able to tell what they’re doing … for instance, if they’re listening to a workout playlist on mobile, chances are that they’re at the gym.

3. Podcasts on Spotify

Create a branded podcast to take advantage of the Spotify platform and Spotify search

(Did you know: Buffer’s Science of Social Media podcast is on Spotify?)

Spotify has made a major investment in podcasts on its platform.

You’ve probably noticed that more and more podcasts are popping up in the Discover tab and elsewhere in the interface. It’s for good reason. Last year, Spotify pledged to invest $500 million in podcasting.

Based on radio industry data, we believe it is a safe assumption that, over time, more than 20% of all Spotify listening will be non-music content.

We’ve already seen some of these investments being made public. Spotify acquired Gimlet Media, a podcast network, and Anchor, a podcasting app, spending hundreds of millions on the acquisitions.

Spotify is clearly making podcasts a priority from here on out.

So what can brands do to take advantage?

Step one is to make sure that your podcast is available on Spotify.

There are a few simple ways to do this.

For our podcast, like I mentioned, we use Anchor to handle all the distribution. Other tools like SimpleCast do this as well. You upload your podcast to Anchor, and they ensure it is published to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other major podcast services.

Alternatively, you can manually add your podcast to Spotify by going to podcasters.spotify.com. From there, you’ll be asked to enter your podcast’s RSS feed and to enter information about your podcast.

Once your podcast is set up with Spotify, you can start thinking about distribution.

We’ve got a couple quick tips for you when it comes to distribution:

First, you can share your podcast to social media just like you would any other favorite music track. We tried this tactic with sharing our Science of Social Media episodes to Instagram Stories, and it works like a charm.

Second, you can capture some Spotify SEO opportunities. No one’s really talking about Spotify SEO yet, but it’s certainly worth considering when you’re coming up with headlines and titles for podcast episodes.

You’ve probably heard that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine next to Google. Well, Spotify’s userbase makes it a large search engine as well. You can make the most of it by being strategic with the naming of your podcasts.

Recap

To recap, we’ve seen brands take advantage of Spotify’s social features in three key ways:

First, with brand playlists.

Second, with targeted advertising.

And third, with podcasts.

We’d love to hear how the platform performs for your brand!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Heather-Mae on Twitter

Dave on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank Why Brands are Turning to Spotify as the Next Big Social Platform for first publishing this post.

[archiveofprolbems]

Island Mentality by Alice Bucknell

This report about Ed Fornieles’ recent workshop  What Will It Be Like When We Buy An Island (on the blockchain)? is published in partnership with DAOWO, a series that brings together artists, musicians, technologists, engineers, and theorists to consider how blockchains might be used to enable a critical, sustainable and empowered culture. The series is organized by Ruth Catlow and Ben Vickers in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut London and the State Machines programme. Its title is inspired by a paper by artist, hacker and writer Rob Myers called DAOWO – Decentralised Autonomous Organisation With Others.

Imagine an island not far off the coast of French Polynesia, floating quietly while it absorbs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in crypto capital. Idyllic animatronic palms made of stainless steel manufactured in Germany and coated in organic coconut husk waft gently in the breeze, while an underwater generator noiselessly converts salt water to a drinkable resource. A backdrop of impossibly green hills glimmer with solar panels coated in a thin layer of hyper-absorbent algae, courtesy of a Swedish start-up whose CEO lives in a villa nestled into the landscape. Welcome to the future of Seasteading.

A few years ago, when British artist Ed Fornieles began researching the social dynamics of the blockchain and cryptocurrency, this sort of scene was an ecstatic fantasy conjured up by what’s generally perceived as the delirious imagination of the rich and bored; of opportunistic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and a pack of wily investors on the hunt for the next lucrative buzz.  “Now it’s become our present reality, and it’s not so funny,” says Fornieles of the burgeoning crypto society. We’re gathered in the Goethe-Institut London on a drizzling afternoon in March, and Fornieles, embodying the role of a digital coach and dramaturge, is introducing the concept of live action role play, LARPing for short, to a motley group of around two dozen participants including students, artists, techies, architects, and–unbeknownst to all–IRL Seasteaders in disguise.

Convened in collaboration with Ruth Catlow, co-founder of online research platform and gallery Furtherfield and Ben Vickers, CTO of the Serpentine Galleries, the workshop, titled What Will It Be Like When We Buy An Island (on the blockchain)?, is the fifth installment of DAOWO(Decentralized Autonomous Organization With Others): a series bringing together artists, writers, curators, technologists, and engineers to investigate the production of new blockchain technologies and their socio-political implications. It’s also an effort “explore the hazards of formalizing the idea of ‘doing good on the blockchain’,” according to Fornieles.

Participants are sorted into four groups, or islands, adopting the personas of crypto-millionaires and billionaires in order to configure a speculative society upon the Seasteading frontier. The LARP is organized into four sessions, including a period of self-actualization, where the committee members of each island settle upon an operating structure for their crypto-community; a four-year throwback, where the group reflects upon the success of their fledgling island’s socio-political structure and makes any necessary adjustments, and finally a fifty-year “truth and reconciliation” process followed immediately by a super convention, where each island proudly presents its success story – or laments its struggles – to the broader international Seasteading community.

In order to introduce different practical challenges and ethical quandaries, Fornieles throws two Seasteading communities on artificial islands and two pre-existent (and potentially already inhabited) islands into the mix. While Seasteading technically excludes such “organic” islands, the idea of “mining cryptocurrency in paradise” has mutated into colonizing real communities ravaged by natural disaster, as many critics including Naomi Klein and Nellie Bowles of the New York Times have noted about Puerto Rico. He’s also established a dozen roles for participants to assign themselves: from Ministers of Religion and Education, to Island Architect, Mayor, and Chief Technology Officers, in order to jump-start the camaraderie (or anarchy). “For first time role players, there’s a tendency to be the sociopath you always wanted to be,” cautions Vickers in the warm-up introduction. “Please try to suppress this desire.” Otherwise, it’s game on, and immediately after we separate into groups, all kinds of strategic and ideological questions emerge: Do we want a central government, or is it best to leave politics to algorithms? Should we convene a Church of Something, or are we all too woke for religion? Do we need a justice system, a formal corrective center, or a Sims-like human rating system to self-regulate behaviour? Maybe we can just vote people on and off the island?

I’m relieved to be sorted into an artificial island established by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, therefore bypassing what plenty of cultural theorists, including Klein,1 have pointed out as the immediate and unmistakable stench of neocolonialism. We’re given a name, “The Pilgrims,” and a socio-political disposition: as “Modern Libertarians,” we’re supposed to be a “free-thinking community that believes the only way to create an honest, new, distinct way of living is to set sail and create a new network.” Filled with neoliberal buzzwords like innovation, entrepreneurialism, and disruption, Pilgrim Island is the paragon of Seasteading ideology. Oh, and we’re really into wearing all-black hi-tech athleisure. Seriously–it’s the stuff of neoliberal dreams.

But without a pre-existing ethical quandary to mediate, the need to immediately establish an ideological commons stays airborne. The island’s socio-political landscape ricochets between one participant’s idealized utopia and another. Still, whether by defaulting to their actual areas of expertise or diving head-first into a full-fledged crytpo-billionaire alter persona (I suspect the former), the founding committee of my island quickly jumps on their self-assigned roles. I note with interest as the player to my right, a small, sassy woman sporting a bowler hat, a markedly “business casual” blazer, and big, blinged-out hoop earrings, promptly elects herself mayor without much resistance from the rest of the group. Almost as if by reflex, she launches into a compelling speech that touts the glory of the hands-off and unregulated economy of Seasteading; the imminent intellectual and financial capital to be gleaned from the “limitless potential of high-tech islands based on real life values.”

Things quickly slip off the deep end. Less than twenty minutes in, the island’s architect has gone on a minimalist-inspired rampage, apparently inspired by a very jovial spiritual pilgrimage with his “good friend” Elon Musk to Vegas. Conjuring a Panopticon2-like self-corrective facility-cum-worship center in the middle of the island known as the PayPal Meditation Center, the architect introduces an elaborate system of self-enacted punishment for residents involving a penny-by-penny payment for one’s sins fulfilled by the obsolete performance of extracting Real Money from an ATM (the horror!). Meanwhile, the Minister of Religion is busy ordaining a Thiel-inspired sect that ties spirituality to physical health, brandishing a harsh, zero-tolerance approach to dissenters.

She colludes with the Minister of Agriculture to debut an all-seeing pineapple that simultaneously provides sustenance to Pilgrim Island’s speculative inhabitants while also monitoring their spiritual commitment. The Minister of Education crafts a secret p2p anarchist boot camp on the Northwestern coast of the island, for the self-conscious younger generation eager to find deeper meaning in this brave new digital world. For a reason that still escapes me, Peter Thiel is then involved in a tragic water-taxi accident that ends in the ultimate demise of he and his partner. A referendum is held for a new leader amidst the for-profit utopian soul-searching…

As for myself? In order to preserve proper journalistic objectivity (obviously), I’ve self-identified as a ghost (more specifically, the ghost of reason). This works great at first, but when we hit the four-year benchmark, I learn the Minister of Religion has been voted off the island, a movement initiated by the Energy Manager and Local Representative. As the spiritual attachment, I also get the boot; we’re shipped off to a neighbouring island called Blue Frontiers that’s likewise self-fabricated, and also exhibits the same weakness of a spiritual void. With an algorithmic overlord, the (not-so) speculative island is situated after the unfortunate ravaging of French Polynesia by an unavoidable natural disaster: A narrative that oddly parallels that of Puerto Rico. Fast forward 50 years into the future, I am welcomed to join them in a painful process of reflection.

We quickly learn that an existential ennui due to lack of faith and purpose amongst the island’s population has led to a mass suicide. “There have been lots of residents killing themselves, but our technology is so good, can it really be that bad?” asks the island’s hands-off Mayor, who apparently doesn’t believe in building. Having fired the Architect early on (“We’ve all enjoyed the beach, why pollute it with architecture?”), whose algorithmic approval rating sits at a measly 32%, the Mayor proceeds to gloat over his 90% approval rating, while the Chief Technology Officer also curiously boasts a sky-high rating of 96%. Suddenly, Pioneer Island’s schizophrenic governance starts to look pretty good.

Minutes later I find myself at the mid-century International Seasteading Convention, where I am exposed to the triumphs and tribulations of our near-present Seasteading future. Alt-right acceleration gives way to a hyper-libertarian group named Sol declaring allegiance to a new religion steered by Crypto-Christ that touts a new hedonistic world order, completed by furnishing its children with sex robots.  An Anarcho-communist community has catapulted its Mayor and Minister of Education to a new planet, and tout the great success of introducing an emotional currency to the island’s residents while skirting around the issue of a veganism-inspired massacre. “We’re leaving a very beautiful piece of archaeology for other nations to learn from,” the Mayor proudly asserts from her new life across the galaxy.

An animatronic tear rolls down my cheek as I hear the recent struggles of Pioneer Island. With their reputation system based on the blockchain overloaded by a sea of new residents, their dwindling natural resources (“We have plenty of crypto, but no food or water”) leads to an appeal from the rest of the bitcoin billionaires to lend a helping digital hand. Still, the Mayor remains unshaken, once again delivering a solid speech that praises the blockchain mantra of “pioneering small, self-organized projects that lead to independence,”; of “never aiming for total cohesion and never following democracy,” but instead “generating local, self-sufficient systems” in order to achieve success.

Curiosity takes over, and I approach the brilliant spokeswoman after the workshop winds up in order to uncover her background. Turns out she’s none other than Nathalie Mezza-Garcia, the self-termed “Seavangelesse” and research strong-arm of Blue Frontiers. Currently pursuing a PhD that investigates the politics and sociology of Seasteading at the University of Warwick, Mezza-Garcia was recruited by the Blue Frontiers team in 2017. Now, with the company just months from unveiling to the public its island off the coast of French Polynesia [after this report was filed, the island nation pulled out of the deal –Ed.], she’s keen to spread the message amongst the masses and change some minds. Naturally, we go for a drink.

“If someone like me who basically lives and breathes Seasteading 24/7 can get so much wrong, it’s no wonder the general conception of Seasteading is so far from the truth,” says Mezza-Garcia. “The biggest mistake people make is laminating the ‘evil billionaire’ narrative onto the whole enterprise.” Still in the midst of her research, Mezza-Garcia has nothing but admiration for the wealthy patrons of Seasteading. Rather than using the enterprise merely as a tool to acquire more capital, Seasteading companies like Blue Frontiers are more interested in the limitless social, political, and ideological benefits awaiting this post-human frontier, she argues. “It’s a step into a world where we all have more decisions.”

As for the regular members of society who can’t afford their own slice of animatronic paradise on the enlightened blockchain, hotel accommodation will soon be available on Blue Frontiers’ islands. For now, role-playing is a valuable exercise for warming up a heterogeneous batch of the general public to the idea, so they can form their own opinions. For Mezza-Garcia, What Will It Be Like When We Buy An Island (on the blockchain)? is the first time she’s seen artists – “instead of libertarians or blockchain people” – engage with the principle ideas of Seasteading in a direct, open, and low-stakes way; many attendants of the workshop voiced a similar sentiment (but thought another round or two of role-playing would help them with the trickier bits–like avoiding vegan anarchy, or summoning a Bitcoin Jesus).

As the once-distant dream of Seasteading is eclipsed by its imminent reality, the potential of role playing as an educational strategy emerges on both ends of the chain – but the takeaway is by no means consistent. Eager to make the operations of Blue Frontiers accessible to a broader audience, Mezza-Garcia celebrates activities like this as a potential source of new recruits. She even intends integrate LARPing into Blue Frontiers board meetings to encourage a top-down empathy with non-billionaires of the blockchain. Yet the results of the workshop–in which speculative future Seasteading communities are ravaged by a despairing lack of faith, suicides, and massacres–paints an entirely different story: One that becomes increasingly problematic when one considers the flawless criminal, mental, and physical health records Blue Frontiers’ selection process requires, alongside the obvious economic factors.

For a community keen to “enrich the poor, cure the sick, and liberate humanity,” according to Blue Frontiers’ co-founder Joe Quirk, their operating logic seems to reinforce many of the social stigmas and power structures already responsible for much of the suffering and inequality within contemporary society. Rather than offering any single narrative or conclusion, LARPing underscores these divergent visions of Seasteading’s (failed) utopia just before the ship sets sail.

All illustrations by Maz Hemming.

[1] In a piece published on The Intercept on March 20, Klein blasted Bitcoin as “the most wasteful possible use of energy”, characterizing leading cryptocurrency figures as opportunistic “Puertotopians” keen to capitalize on the hurricane-ravaged island of Puerto Rico. Klein also equates the “wealthy libertarian manifesto” of Seasteading to the colonizing powers of the new world that seized once-free nations and converted their indigenous inhabitants into slaves.

[2]  Though conceived by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century, the idea of the panopticon was popularized by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish. Says Foucault of the Panopticon’s unlucky captive: “He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication.” Remote island or bustling city center, the Panopticon’s relevance has resurfaced in the realm of the digital; see Thomas McMullan’s 2016 piece in The Guardian about the relevance of Panopticonism amid the cross-fire of data capture and digital surveillance.

Source: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2018/jun/14/island-mentality/

[lindyhunt]

13 Free Personality Tests You Can Take Online Today

Personality tests are a great way to explore different aspects of who you are, and uncover layers you perhaps hadn’t recognized about yourself before. Being truly self-aware is hard -- while they might not be always 100% accurate, personality tests work well as a starting point for self-discovery by providing results you might not have concluded on your own.

There are hundreds of personality tests out there -- some label you with a general personality type, while others delve into your best potential career paths. Some challenge you to look at ink blots, while others ask you detailed multiple choice questions.

While many of these tests are unreliable and don’t offer any real scientific validation, others can provide potentially astute, psychologically-based insight into your behaviors, ambitions, and temperament in times of conflict.

In fact, some online personality tests are thought-provoking indicators into why you make decisions, who you work well with, and how to modify your attitude towards people whose personalities clash with yours. In both your work and personal life, this information can be invaluable.

When you’ve got some downtime and want to explore aspects of who you are, or get some guidance on potential career paths, take a look at the best free online personality tests we’ve compiled. Whether you’re interested in general information about your personality, or emotional intelligence-related insight, you’re bound to learn something.

Free Myers-Brigg Personality Tests

Myers-Briggs is a widely respected and popular personality assessment tool -- first used in the 1940s, the test was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. Initially inspired by Jung’s personality theory, the Myers-Briggs test conveniently separates people into 16 categories of personalities, providing each person with a four-letter acronym.

The following four tests are broad-stroke indicators of who you are, using inspiration from Myers-Briggs. Among other things, the tests cover your communication styles, your strengths and weaknesses, your desires and ambitions, how you see the world, and how people perceive you.

If you’ve never taken a test based off Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological traits, or Myers-Briggs’ 16 categories of personalities, I’d suggest you take at least one of these. You’ll be surprised by the accuracy of some of the statements, and more importantly, you could gain insight into how your behavior is perceived by others, helping you improve both professional and personal relationships.

1. 16 Personalities

16 Personalities covers five broad personality aspects: mind, energy, nature, tactics and identity. The test is based on Carl Gustav Jung’s study of psychological traits (e.g. extroversion vs. introversion) and the Myers-Briggs test, two popular personality theories meant to determine an extensive overview of who you are. Among other things, the test will cover how you communicate and relate to others -- both professionally and personally -- what you value and strive for, and how you make decisions. 16 Personalities has been taken over 126 million times, and is available in 30 languages.

2. Personality Perfect

Similar to 16 Personalities, Personality Perfect is also based on Jung’s and Myers-Briggs’ personality theories, and uses four broad categories -- extraversion vs. introversion, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling, and judging and perceiving -- to compile a four-letter abbreviation of your personality type (e.g. “INFP”). The test provides a broad overview of how you connect with others, how you behave, and, perhaps most surprising, how you’re likely seen by others.

  3. Human Metrics

If you’ve ever wondered which famous personalities share your personality type, you’re in luck -- Human Metrics shows you that information, along with your four-letter personality type (again, based off Jung and Myers-Briggs theories). With this test, you’ll get information about which career paths are most suitable for your personality type. If you’re having trouble choosing a career path or doubting the one you’ve chosen, maybe this test can help you figure it out.

  4. TestColor

Test Color, a test validated by a team of clinical psychologists, psychoanalysts and mathematicians, asks you just two questions: “Click on the colors you like most,” and “Click on the colors you like least.” Test Color tells you about your emotional intelligence, your creativity and imagination, your social skills, and your work style, including organization and management styles. I found it to be surprisingly accurate: in two questions, it nailed how I communicate with others and how I act in group settings.

Free Disc Personality Tests

The DISC assessment determines where you lie on four DISC factors: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance. DISC is one of the most popular and authoritative career assessments out there, and many companies encourage their employees to take it.

Undoubtedly, personality affects our career ambitions, as well as how we perform in different workplace environments. If you’re particularly extraverted, maybe you’ve chosen a career path that enables you to work daily with large groups of people. If you have certain communication styles that rely on passivity and emotion, perhaps your boss’s direct statements sometimes offend you.

Arming yourself with a sense of self-awareness could help you find your optimal career path, foster better work relationships, and mitigate work conflict more effectively. Here are four career-focused tests to help you achieve higher work satisfaction.

1. 123 Test

123 Test provides a free DISC assessment. The results, in both graph and text form, tell you how your personality fits into your work environment, who you work well with, who you might have conflict with, how you perceive other’s behaviors, and how other’s perceive yours. The test helps you understand how your own personality biases you towards certain colleagues (i.e. your personality might take another coworker’s comments offensively, while the coworker just believes in being direct), which could strengthen your work relationships.

  2. TestQ.com

This tests asks 38 multiple-choice questions to analyze your skills, working style, and even your ideal employer. TestQ, developed by top PhDs, offers you insight into your strengths and weaknesses, and even suggests careers best suited for your personality. If you’re happy with your current career track, the test provides suggestions for specific skills you could learn to get ahead in your career.

3. Interpersonal Skills assessment

Having well-developed interpersonal skills is critical to forming deep and meaningful personal and professional relationships. Interpersonal Skills assesses your listening skills, verbal communication skills, ability to work in teams, and emotional intelligence. Better yet, the test identifies areas of weakness and provides tactical advice on how to improve those skills.

4. Sokanu

Major companies including General Assembly, NYU, and Redfin use Sokanu, a career assessment tool that tests you on your personality, background, interests, and goals to determine an ideal career path. After you take the test, it provides you multiple matches, which you can sort through to explore different careers and workplaces before choosing an ideal match.

Free Emotional Intelligence Tests

Psychology Today defines emotional intelligence as, “the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others.” Arguably, having emotional intelligence is the most important factor in dealing with conflict and communicating with others.

It’s undeniable that emotional intelligence is important -- in fact, research has shown success is 80-90% attributable to emotional intelligence (EI), and only 10-20% to your IQ.

In the workplace, whether you’re around coworkers in the midst of a stressful project, or dealing with a tough performance review from your boss, it’s critical you know how to both identify and handle your own emotions; it’s equally important you know how to read other people’s emotions, and manage them appropriately.

So let’s dive in. Below are four emotional intelligence tests to help you recognize your level of emotional intelligence, and also how to improve it.

1. Berkeley Emotional Intelligence

This test, designed by Berkeley, shows you 20 pictures and asks you to recognize the facial expression on each person’s face. It’s easy, quick, and fun, and an informative way to learn how well you read other people’s emotions -- which is a critical skill for assessing and mitigating conflict.

2. VeryWellMind

If you don’t have the time for anything more in-depth, this test only asks you 10 quick questions before delivering your results. It’s admittedly not medical or scientific by any means, but does offer other articles depending on your scor: if you score low, for example, VeryWellMind.com includes a link to another one of their articles, “Emotions and Types of Emotional Responses.”

3. Empathy Quotient

Unlike the tests above, this one is designed to clinically assess you -- the test was developed by Simon Baron-Cohen at the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge, and uses the same emotional measurements mental health professionals use to diagnose social impairment. It’s a 60-item questionnaire and is suitable to measure “temperamental empathy” in adults.

[trendingnewsb]

10 Brain Training Hacks to Increase Your IQ, Focus and Creativity

Becoming smarter is what a lot of people look for. While joining brain training programmes is an option to increase your IQ, focus and creativity, it can be quite expensive. Luckily there are plenty of free brain training hacks you can learn to make your brain smarter.

In this article, I’m going to introduce to you 10 free brain training hacks that will boost your brain performance and make you smarter.

The importance of brain training

The fundamental building block in the brain is the neuron. By learning ways to enhance the building block, we open a new frontier for understanding the power of our brain. Author of Brain Building: Exercising Yourself Smarter by Marilyn vos Savant remarked,

“Building your brain power will open a new frontier beyond which lies an understanding that seems nearly incalculable.”

So, what’s the point?

We can improve our brain power and intelligence through certain brain training exercises.

You might be wondering:

In our busy life, how can I find time to do this?

The answer is simple and it’s not that difficult.

Brain training is simply cognitive training using exercises to improve your brain power. By improving your brain power, you will find that your IQ, focus, and creative skills will increase as well.

Let’s take a look at how you can improve your brain power through brain training.

Brain training hacks that will make you smarter

Here are 10 brain training hacks you can use now to make you smarter tomorrow:

Hack #1. Learn by teaching

In Mindhacker, Ron and Marty Hale-Evans argue that we should learn by teaching.

“Before you can teach an idea, you must understand it. Therefore, teaching situations can be proving grounds for your own knowledge. Accelerate your learning of a subject by agreeing to teach it.” – Ron and Marty Hale-Evans

How to make this work:

Dive deep into a concept by breaking it apart (analysis) and putting it back together (synthesis).

Find a way to teach the content. If you have the appropriate education, try teaching an online course. If not, try teaching a new idea through places such as Udemy.

Use innovative systems thinking tools to conduct analysis and synthesis and to teach your course. Read my other article to find out how you can explain ideas clearer to others: How to Explain Things Better and Make Others Understand Your Ideas Easily

Hack #2. Learn by writing

One of my favorite methods for learning and increasing intelligence is writing. By writing or blogging on a new topic, I force myself to break apart concepts. I then piece them back together by writing about them.

How to make this work:

Start writing for a blog (i.e. Lifehack.org) or start your own. A great place to start writing is on Medium.com.

Dive deep into a concept by breaking it apart (analysis) and putting it back together (synthesis).

Write about the content you are learning and pay close attention to the feedback you receive once published.

Hack #3. Physical exercise

Physical exercise will not only improve your body, but it will also improve your brain power. Neurogenesis is the birth of new neurons in our brain. Exercise increases the levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which supports neurogenesis.

How to make this work:

Start an exercise routine. Read my article This 24 Hour Workout Will Leave You Thinking, Looking And Feeling So Good for more ideas on how to start one.

Change your diet. Eliminate refined sugars and start taking vitamins to improve the functioning of your brain.

Hack #4. Listen to audiobooks

My favorite hack to use along with physical exercise is audiobooks. I am always plugged into an audiobook. While exercising, driving, cutting my grass, chores, and just about any other activity.

How to make this work:

Purchase wireless running headphones.

Sign up for a free app connected to your local library e.g. OverDrive. Checkout audiobooks through this free app.

Purchase audiobooks at a discount through Audible.com. If you are unable to find your audiobook free through OverDrive, purchase the books here.

Download the app (or a similar app) Natural Reader, which is a free text to speech online app allowing you to convert text to audio. Essentially, you can convert an online article, a pdf, a word document, and similar files to an audio.

Step #5. After you have listened to an audiobook for a while, try bumping up the speed of the book.

Hack #5. Read smarter

Start reading books faster and smarter. There are certain ways you should read a book. Some books should be read faster than others.

How to make this work:

Skim the book first. Start with the title page, the inside of the cover, the table of contents, then the back of the book.

Identify the author’s main theme (and main points within the book). Ask yourself the question “why” throughout the book. For example, “Why is the author arguing this point?”.

Throughout the book and at the conclusion of the book, ask yourself three questions: – What? What happened in the book? – So What? What was the key takeaway? – Now What? What can you do with this new information?

Hack #6. Reason backward

Maurice Ashley, Chess Grandmaster, discussed the importance of retrograde analysis or reasoning backward in the following Ted Talk:

Let’s look at an example of reasoning backward.

Read the following sentence:

After reading this sentence, you will realize that the the brain doesn’t recognize a second ‘the’.

Now read the sentence again. Did you notice that you missed the second ‘the’?

Our mind is logical and proceeds forward, so we don’t see the second ‘the’; however, if we read the sentence backwards we will always catch it.

“What is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward.” – Sherlock Homes, A Study in Scarlet

Hack #7. Quick and easy math tricks

Let’s examine some quick and easy math hacks that should be (but are not) taught in school.

Easily multiply any two-digit number by eleven:

32 x 11

Simply add the first two digits: 3 + 2 = 5

Place the 5 between the 3 and the 2 and you have your answer: 352

32 x 11 = 352

ii. Easily add two digit numbers:

84 + 57

Add 84 + 50 = 134

Then add 134 + 7 = 141

84 + 57 = 141

iii. Easily subtract three digit numbers:

645 – 372

Take 645 – 400 = 245

Then add 28 (or 20 then add 8) as 400 – 372 = 28

245 + 20 = 265 + 8 = 273

645 – 372 = 273

iv. Multiplication guestimation

Another powerful trick is multiplication guesstimation.

88 x 54 is approximately 90 x 50 = 4500

This is much easier to multiple as 9 x 5 = 45

The correct answer is: 88 x 54 = 4752

For more math tricks like this, I recommend the book Secrets of Mental Math by Arthur Benjamin and Michael Shermer.

Hack #8. Think – Try – Learn

In Mindhacker, Ron and Marty Hale-Evans discuss a powerful tactic called Think – Try – Learn.

Think: Theorize, Predict, Plan

Try: Test, Observe, Record, Play

Learn: Analyze, Define Meaning, Change, Grow

The following is an example of this method from Alphapunk.com:

Hack #9. Brain training apps

Elevate and Lumosity are brain training programs designed to improve our focus, speaking ability, processing speed, memory, math skills, and much more.

Both programs come packed with more than 40 games and puzzles designed to improve our critical thinking and cognitive skills.

A comparison of the two apps can be found here:[1]

Elevate

Pros: Personal tracking, has the feel of a mobile game, available on iOS and Android, and app of the year for 2014

Cons: Poor graphics and only comes in English

Lumosity

Pros: Fun and good memory improvement games, strong brand recognition, progress tracking, available on ios, android and pc, and used in over 180 countries

Cons: Expensive, repetitive, and have issues with iOS/Android app synch with desktop

Hack #10. Learn a new language

Learning a new language is one of the most powerful ways to improve your intelligence and cognitive capacity.

I recently came across a fantastic new app called Chineasy Cards. This program makes learning Chinese both fun and aesthetically pleasing. The design principles are stronger than any other language app I have previously came across. I highly recommend this app if you are interested in learning Chinese.

Brain training is powerful

Brain training is a powerful (yet simple) way to improve your brain power, IQ, creative thinking, and critical thinking skills.

As Marilyn vos Savan said,

“The mind can stretch. It can be strengthened, toned, and conditioned to perform miracles for you.” – Marilyn vos Savant

By using these 10 easy brain training hacks, you will find that you have the basic building blocks to increase your brain power.

Reference

[1]^Exploring Life’s Mysteries: Best Brain Training Apps: Elevate vs Lumosity vs BrainHQ vs FitBrains

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The post 10 Brain Training Hacks to Increase Your IQ, Focus and Creativity appeared first on Lifehack.

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31 Sensational Reasons to Join The Free Online 2018 Food Revolution Summit Today!

See 31 reasons why you and everyone who cares about their health and the health of the world should join the Food Revolution Summit 2018.

The 7th annual Food Revolution Summit is happening from April 28th to May 6th. And it’s going to change — possibly even save — many lives. This global, online event features high-quality, up-to-date expert interviews and has touched more than 800,000 people. Could you be next?

Imagine not only living but thriving into your 80s, 90s, and beyond. Imagine having abundant energy and a clear, healthy brain and feeling great now and every day as you age. Imagine knowing simple steps and powerful foods to prevent needless disease and suffering.

This reality can be yours. See why it’s time for you and everyone to join the Food Revolution Summit 2018 — an educational journey in using food as medicine for people and the world.

31 Reasons to Join the 2018 Food Revolution Summit

In case you don’t know: The Food Revolution Summit is a 9-day, online event hosted by father-and-son team John and Ocean Robbins and put on by the Food Revolution Network, an online education and advocacy organization working for “healthy, ethical, sustainable food for all.”

Each day of the Summit, you’ll get to hear three approximately 45-minute interviews broadcast at 11 am, 12 am, and 1 pm Eastern time.

When you join, you’ll discover up-to-date research, tips, and tools from 24 of the top food and health experts in the world. This is information you can put to use to change your life and the world for the better.

Here are 31 reasons to join this virtual event today:

Reason #1: We need a food revolution more than ever. And the revolution needs you!

More people today are chronically ill than at any time in history. And when it comes to food and health, the stakes are rising exponentially.

In fact, in the U.S., we’re spending three-quarters of our healthcare dollars on managing chronic disease in the U.S. And tens of millions of people are getting sick and dying from preventable diseases.

People are suffering from strokes before the age of 45. Teenagers are getting type 2 diabetes. And by age 10, nearly all kids have fatty streaks in their arteries. Our food has become toxic. Pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, GMOs, and harmful, untested chemicals are rampant. Almost 30% of people in the world are obese or overweight. Yet 20 million people are facing starvation.

The world needs more people to rise up, take a stand, and demand change. The 2018 Food Revolution Summit is a fabulous opportunity to get informed and empowered to help shift the course of food history.

Reason #2: You won’t hear these powerful, penetrating interviews anywhere else.

During the Food Revolution Summit 2018, we’ll bring together 24 of the top food and health experts and thought-leaders on the planet in a focused and well-organized way.

These are food revolution leaders who are working to improve and shape the future of our food. You’ll get exclusive access to critical, all-new, up-to-date information you won’t get on the mainstream news or anywhere else all in one place.

Reason #3: Get inspired, motivated, and empowered like never before!

If you’re looking for inspiration and motivation to take charge of your life and your health and feel hopeful about the world, this is the event you need to attend.

We hear from many people who tell us that the Food Revolution Summit is their favorite online summit — and not only that, they say it’s the best, most informative summit they’ve ever attended because it’s not only packed with useful information and paradigm-shifting perspectives; it’s also full of heart.

Last year, Marjorie R. told us: “This summit has been inspiring. Thank you for bringing it to us. I am learning a lot from all of you and especially enjoy the truth, respect, and love that so clearly comes through in these conversations.”

Ready to join now?

You can learn more and join the 2018 Food Revolution Summit here.

Reason #4: It’s totally free!

You can participate in the whole Summit — 9 days, 24 experts, 25 interviews  — for no cost to you.

And you can invite your friends and family and your networks to join you on this unique journey for free.

Reason #5: You can experience the Food Revolution Summit from anywhere you want when it’s convenient for you.

When you join the 2018 Food Revolution Summit, you can easily tune in and listen to the interviews when they are broadcast and on replay from anywhere you want. Indeed, people join this global event from almost every country on Earth.

Listen from your home or while you go to the gym or run errands. Or you can listen while you chat with the Summit community on the broadcast page. Enjoy all the interviews or as many as you want.

And if you’re not able to catch the presentations when they broadcast (maybe you’ll be at work or have other plans) — don’t worry! You can experience the day’s interviews on replay for 21 hours. This means you have the freedom to watch on your own time.

Reason #6: Learn about many facets of health from stellar speakers all in one event!

From GMOs and brain health to weight loss, detoxing, and food safety, this online event covers an abundance of information from a variety of speakers and gives you proven, trustworthy advice on food for your body and soul, and your planet.

This year, speakers include doctors Joel Fuhrman, Neal Barnard, Dean Ornish, and Michael Greger. As well as powerful food revolutionaries, such as Vani Hari, Kris Carr, Vandana Shiva, Chris Wark, and many more.

Ember B. told us: “Year after year, this is the most valuable collection of current information to get truly empowered in your food choices to achieve radical health.”

See the whole incredible speaker lineup and join the Summit here.

Reason #7: Experience the incredible interviewing skills and wisdom of food revolution leader John Robbins.

John Robbins, who guides the interviews, is a food movement leader and one of the world’s leading spokespersons on healthy food for a sustainable world.

He’s the award-winning, 2-million-copy author of multiple bestselling books, including Diet for A New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Your Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth.

During the Summit, he interviews all the food and health experts. He’s able to engage each speaker in a totally unique way. We hear from many people who are amazed at his interviewing style.

For example, last year, Khadijah N. told us: “John is a brilliant interviewer, the best I have heard on a summit.”

What makes John’s interviewing so special? Before the interviews happen, John spends months selecting the experts and researching each speaker — reading their books, watching their videos, and getting to know them and their work.

During the conversations with the experts, he doesn’t only touch on surface topics. He’s able to dive deep and draw out unique and compelling information. And he weaves threads of unity among diverse but related views.

John’s vast knowledge of food, the food industry, and nutrition studies, along with his heartfelt wisdom, combines for an experience that pulls you in, takes you on a journey, and leaves you feeling inspired and ready to change your life and the world.

Reason #8: Enjoy the insightful takeaways and enthusiastic energy of food revolution leader Ocean Robbins.

Ocean Robbins is the son of John Robbins. He’s the CEO of the Food Revolution Network. And he’s an internationally acclaimed speaker and facilitator who has spoken in person to more than 250,000 people from 65+ nations.

Between interviews, Ocean shares his top takeaways, answers questions from the community, gives away prizes, and highlights what’s coming next. He brings to the Summit a contagious enthusiasm, a deep level of consciousness, and an impressive knowledge of food and health.

Last year, Carolyn Y. told us: “Ocean is always so kind, caring, and informative.”

Reason #9: See why it’s possible to take your health in your hands — no matter your age.

You don’t need to only depend on doctors and your genes to determine your health and your fate. The Food Revolution Summit will show you that you have the power to shape what your future looks like.

And you can take an active role in your health whether you’re 20 or 80. As Ocean says, “It is never too late to step into a healthier life.”

The Summit doesn’t only tell you taking charge of your health is possible; this event shows you how. For example, you’ll learn how Chris Wark beat stage III cancer and gain lessons you can use in your life — whether you or anyone you love have cancer or not.

Ready to join the 2018 Food Revolution Summit?

Take charge of your health and join the Summit here.

Reason #10: Get simple, proven healthy eating tips you can start using right away.

Knowing how to eat for your health and deciding what foods to eat can be confusing and overwhelming. Misinformation and conflicting advice are everywhere on social media and in the news.

But during the 2018 Food Revolution Summit, you’ll learn specific steps and delicious foods you can start using in your life immediately and for the rest of your life.

And you’ll learn why these steps and these foods are proven to improve your health from doctors and medical experts you can trust.

Reason #11: Learn how to take steps to prevent (and even reverse!) some of the top deadly diseases of our times — and thrive.

As Ocean says:

“If you eat the standard American diet, you’re going to get the standard American diseases. Studies show that what we’re eating is the leading cause of obesity, heart disease, cancer, dementia, autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes.”

During the 2018 Food Revolution Summit, you’ll get the latest breaking news updates about what science is saying about the power of food to heal.

Reason #12: Learn life-changing information you can use to help other people and the world.

If you want to be a positive influence on the people you love and help others improve their health and their lives, you can use the knowledge you gain from the Summit to help others and the world.

Reason #13: Be part of an incredible 300,000+ community — and no longer feel alone.

When you join the Summit, you’ll instantly become part of a community. Each day of the Summit, you’ll feel a little stronger.

You’ll hear stories and tips from others. And you’ll no longer feel like you’re the only one who wants to live differently or cares about our future and the planet.

Masumi Y. said: “Your summit has opened my eyes, mind, heart, and body little bit by little bit every day.”

Reason #14: Learn life-changing, eye-opening information — whether you know a lot or a little about food and health.

The Food Revolution Summit brings together all kinds of people. From doctors and health professionals to parents and activists, everyone is welcome.

If you’ve attended these Food Revolution Summits in the past, you’re sure to discover new, useful information. You might even learn something that changes your life — or the life of someone you love!

Donna C. said: “I am amazed how much new information can be gathered in one additional year. Just when I believe I have the full picture, you surprise me with another great insight.”

Do you want to discover new useful information about health?

Join the Food Revolution Summit to get exclusive access to top food and health experts.

Reason #15: Get real answers to critical food questions — so you can cut through the confusion and make healthy choices.

One of the top things we hear from people is that they’re confused about important food issues. It can be difficult figuring out which foods are best for your health. And not knowing the truth can be dangerous to your health.

If you want to get past the hype and discover what data says about protein, sugar, carbs, weight, dairy, and other important food topics, this is the event to get the truth about the most pressing food questions in understandable, actionable ways.

Joni D. said about the Food Revolution Summit: “Everything just rings true. The messages from the Summit simplify, educate, and motivate.”

Reason #16: Discover simple, affordable foods that will supercharge your health, help you perform at your best, and add life to your years.

The foods discussed during the Food Revolution Summit aren’t exotic, unusual foods. These are foods you can find and consume every day.

Reason #17: Get quick, easy, healthy recipes you can make every day of the Summit and beyond.

Each day, you’ll get a new revolutionary recipe, which often includes foods mentioned during the Summit.

In addition, each plant-powered, nutrient-dense recipe is easy to prepare in under 30 minutes or less, giving you a variety of delicious, healthy eating options you’ll love.

The Summit is happening soon!

Join now to claim your spot.

Reason #18: Learn how beating cancer is achievable (in many cases) and how you can prevent and fight cancer … with food.

More than 12 million people worldwide get cancer each year. But according to the latest research, you can do a lot to defeat cancer and protect yourself and your cells with the right food.

Reason #19: Learn how to keep your brain healthy at every age and avoid mental decline — yes, it is possible!

Half the people in the U.S. who reach the age of 85 will have Alzheimer’s.

But brain fog, loss of memory, confusion, and disorientation aren’t normal results of aging. You’ll learn how you can optimize your brain’s health now and as you age.

Reason #20: Learn hidden dangers in our food supply and how you can protect yourself and your family.

Did you know? The governmental agencies that determine if a food additive is safe have ties to the industry that created the additives — how can that be fair?

Speaker Vani Hari has devoted her life to calling out food companies for unhealthy ingredients and educating consumers about foods to eat and avoid. Her interview will help you take control of what you’re eating and clean up your diet to improve your health.

Reason #21: Learn information Monsanto and other big agribusiness companies don’t want you to know.

Concerning GMOs, pesticides, and chemicals in the food we eat, a lot has been hidden to keep consumers unaware of the risks and dangers.

But you’ll be shocked and empowered when you find out what speaker Carey Gillam has uncovered. She’s a veteran journalist, researcher, writer, and author of the new book Whitewash – The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science.

The time for change is now!

Join 300,000 people worldwide for the 2018 Food Revolution Summit.

Reason #22: Learn why the end of heart disease — the #1 leading killer in the U.S. — is possible.

Speaker Joel Kahn, MD, a leading cardiologist, will tell you how we can save millions of lives and end the heart disease epidemic forever — with food!

Reason #23: Learn new discoveries about brain and gut health that could FINALLY solve your health struggles.

Science is showing us that brain health and brain diseases are determined by what’s going on in the gut. Speaker David Perlmutter will tell you all about the gut-brain connection and proven ways to protect your brain.

Reason #24: Learn the truth about dairy the dairy industry doesn’t want you to know.

Do we need dairy to get calcium and for good health like so many people believe or have we been fooled by industry messages?

From speaker Neal Barnard, MD, you’ll learn the truth about dairy, what makes it so addictive, and how to create positive change for you and those you love.

Reason #25: Learn about weight loss from a neuroscientist who has helped people in 100+ countries release 400,000 excess pounds.

From speaker Susan Peirce Thompson, PhD — an expert in the psychology of eating — you’ll find out the real reason why brains block weight loss and how to train your brain to love what’s good for you.

Reason #26: Learn the (real) truth about protein.

From Kathy Freston, the author of Clean Protein: The Revolution that Will Reshape Your Body, Boost Your Energy—and Save Our Planet, you’ll find out how much protein you actually need, where to get it, and why it matters.

Reason #27: Ask your questions and get answers.

John and Ocean will answer many questions from the community during the Summit, so your question might be answered live.

To take part in the FREE Food Revolution Summit 2018, you do have to register!

Register here now.

Reason #28: Learn the truth about the biggest food myths.

Speaker Anna Lappé is a bestselling author and an advocate for food sustainability and justice. Anna will debunk some of the most devastating food myths of our times. And she’ll discuss critically important topics, such as climate change, industrial agriculture, and organic food.

Reason #29: Learn ways we can improve the restaurant industry and fight against sexual harassment.

From speaker Saru Jayaraman, an attorney, author, and activist dedicated to improving wages and working conditions for restaurant workers, you’ll be shocked by the extent of the sexual harassment in the food industry — and empowered to discover what you can do about it. If change is going to happen, we all need to take part!

Reason #30: Learn how the answer to feeding the world is healthy, sustainable food.

Speaker Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned physicist and a champion for environmental sanity. Vandana will expose the dangerous myths surrounding global food production. And she’ll offer a compelling vision for how we can sustainably feed a thriving humanity.

Reason #31: You won’t feel like you’re missing out when all your friends and family are experiencing this amazing event without you!

What are you waiting for? Join the Food Revolution Summit 2018 now to claim your spot before this revolutionary, life-changing event begins.

And if you have questions, ask them below in the comments or email us at support@foodrevolution.org.

Are you inspired? If so, please share this article now because we need your help to spread this important information to as many people around the world as possible. Let’s make change happen, together!

#FoodRevolution #GetEmpowered

[Read More ...] https://foodrevolution.org/blog/food-revolution-summit-2018/

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10 Brain Training Hacks to Increase Your IQ, Focus and Creativity

Becoming smarter is what a lot of people look for. While joining brain training programmes is an option to increase your IQ, focus and creativity, it can be quite expensive. Luckily there are plenty of free brain training hacks you can learn to make your brain smarter.

In this article, I’m going to introduce to you 10 free brain training hacks that will boost your brain performance and make you smarter.

The importance of brain training

The fundamental building block in the brain is the neuron. By learning ways to enhance the building block, we open a new frontier for understanding the power of our brain. Author of Brain Building: Exercising Yourself Smarter by Marilyn vos Savant remarked,

“Building your brain power will open a new frontier beyond which lies an understanding that seems nearly incalculable.”

So, what’s the point?

We can improve our brain power and intelligence through certain brain training exercises.

You might be wondering:

In our busy life, how can I find time to do this?

The answer is simple and it’s not that difficult.

Brain training is simply cognitive training using exercises to improve your brain power. By improving your brain power, you will find that your IQ, focus, and creative skills will increase as well.

Let’s take a look at how you can improve your brain power through brain training.

Brain training hacks that will make you smarter

Here are 10 brain training hacks you can use now to make you smarter tomorrow:

Hack #1. Learn by teaching

In Mindhacker, Ron and Marty Hale-Evans argue that we should learn by teaching.

“Before you can teach an idea, you must understand it. Therefore, teaching situations can be proving grounds for your own knowledge. Accelerate your learning of a subject by agreeing to teach it.” – Ron and Marty Hale-Evans

How to make this work:

Dive deep into a concept by breaking it apart (analysis) and putting it back together (synthesis).

Find a way to teach the content. If you have the appropriate education, try teaching an online course. If not, try teaching a new idea through places such as Udemy.

Use innovative systems thinking tools to conduct analysis and synthesis and to teach your course. Read my other article to find out how you can explain ideas clearer to others: How to Explain Things Better and Make Others Understand Your Ideas Easily

Hack #2. Learn by writing

One of my favorite methods for learning and increasing intelligence is writing. By writing or blogging on a new topic, I force myself to break apart concepts. I then piece them back together by writing about them.

How to make this work:

Start writing for a blog (i.e. Lifehack.org) or start your own. A great place to start writing is on Medium.com.

Dive deep into a concept by breaking it apart (analysis) and putting it back together (synthesis).

Write about the content you are learning and pay close attention to the feedback you receive once published.

Hack #3. Physical exercise

Physical exercise will not only improve your body, but it will also improve your brain power. Neurogenesis is the birth of new neurons in our brain. Exercise increases the levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which supports neurogenesis.

How to make this work:

Start an exercise routine. Read my article This 24 Hour Workout Will Leave You Thinking, Looking And Feeling So Good for more ideas on how to start one.

Change your diet. Eliminate refined sugars and start taking vitamins to improve the functioning of your brain.

Hack #4. Listen to audiobooks

My favorite hack to use along with physical exercise is audiobooks. I am always plugged into an audiobook. While exercising, driving, cutting my grass, chores, and just about any other activity.

How to make this work:

Purchase wireless running headphones.

Sign up for a free app connected to your local library e.g. OverDrive. Checkout audiobooks through this free app.

Purchase audiobooks at a discount through Audible.com. If you are unable to find your audiobook free through OverDrive, purchase the books here.

Download the app (or a similar app) Natural Reader, which is a free text to speech online app allowing you to convert text to audio. Essentially, you can convert an online article, a pdf, a word document, and similar files to an audio.

Step #5. After you have listened to an audiobook for a while, try bumping up the speed of the book.

Hack #5. Read smarter

Start reading books faster and smarter. There are certain ways you should read a book. Some books should be read faster than others.

How to make this work:

Skim the book first. Start with the title page, the inside of the cover, the table of contents, then the back of the book.

Identify the author’s main theme (and main points within the book). Ask yourself the question “why” throughout the book. For example, “Why is the author arguing this point?”.

Throughout the book and at the conclusion of the book, ask yourself three questions: – What? What happened in the book? – So What? What was the key takeaway? – Now What? What can you do with this new information?

Hack #6. Reason backward

Maurice Ashley, Chess Grandmaster, discussed the importance of retrograde analysis or reasoning backward in the following Ted Talk:

Let’s look at an example of reasoning backward.

Read the following sentence:

After reading this sentence, you will realize that the the brain doesn’t recognize a second ‘the’.

Now read the sentence again. Did you notice that you missed the second ‘the’?

Our mind is logical and proceeds forward, so we don’t see the second ‘the’; however, if we read the sentence backwards we will always catch it.

“What is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward.” – Sherlock Homes, A Study in Scarlet

Hack #7. Quick and easy math tricks

Let’s examine some quick and easy math hacks that should be (but are not) taught in school.

Easily multiply any two-digit number by eleven:

32 x 11

Simply add the first two digits: 3 + 2 = 5

Place the 5 between the 3 and the 2 and you have your answer: 352

32 x 11 = 352

ii. Easily add two digit numbers:

84 + 57

Add 84 + 50 = 134

Then add 134 + 7 = 141

84 + 57 = 141

iii. Easily subtract three digit numbers:

645 – 372

Take 645 – 400 = 245

Then add 28 (or 20 then add 8) as 400 – 372 = 28

245 + 20 = 265 + 8 = 273

645 – 372 = 273

iv. Multiplication guestimation

Another powerful trick is multiplication guesstimation.

88 x 54 is approximately 90 x 50 = 4500

This is much easier to multiple as 9 x 5 = 45

The correct answer is: 88 x 54 = 4752

For more math tricks like this, I recommend the book Secrets of Mental Math by Arthur Benjamin and Michael Shermer.

Hack #8. Think – Try – Learn

In Mindhacker, Ron and Marty Hale-Evans discuss a powerful tactic called Think – Try – Learn.

Think: Theorize, Predict, Plan

Try: Test, Observe, Record, Play

Learn: Analyze, Define Meaning, Change, Grow

The following is an example of this method from Alphapunk.com:

Hack #9. Brain training apps

Elevate and Lumosity are brain training programs designed to improve our focus, speaking ability, processing speed, memory, math skills, and much more.

Both programs come packed with more than 40 games and puzzles designed to improve our critical thinking and cognitive skills.

A comparison of the two apps can be found here:[1]

Elevate

Pros: Personal tracking, has the feel of a mobile game, available on iOS and Android, and app of the year for 2014

Cons: Poor graphics and only comes in English

Lumosity

Pros: Fun and good memory improvement games, strong brand recognition, progress tracking, available on ios, android and pc, and used in over 180 countries

Cons: Expensive, repetitive, and have issues with iOS/Android app synch with desktop

Hack #10. Learn a new language

Learning a new language is one of the most powerful ways to improve your intelligence and cognitive capacity.

I recently came across a fantastic new app called Chineasy Cards. This program makes learning Chinese both fun and aesthetically pleasing. The design principles are stronger than any other language app I have previously came across. I highly recommend this app if you are interested in learning Chinese.

Brain training is powerful

Brain training is a powerful (yet simple) way to improve your brain power, IQ, creative thinking, and critical thinking skills.

As Marilyn vos Savan said,

“The mind can stretch. It can be strengthened, toned, and conditioned to perform miracles for you.” – Marilyn vos Savant

By using these 10 easy brain training hacks, you will find that you have the basic building blocks to increase your brain power.

Reference

[1]^Exploring Life’s Mysteries: Best Brain Training Apps: Elevate vs Lumosity vs BrainHQ vs FitBrains

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