Absolutely, Radically, Incredible, Life Changing Links (so says Sam)!

During the course of my Internet, life I have come across a number of websites that have made a huge difference to my life and my thinking.  I thought that I would be nice enough to share these with the world.  Following is a brief description and a link to the websites that have made a radical difference in my life.  If I’ve forgotten any, I will likely update this post to keep them all in the one place.

Creativity and Self Improvement Links (Including productivity resources)
http://www.ted.com/ Fantastic videos on all manner of creativity and innovation, often with a technology focus.  Check our Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on how schools can kill creativity.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ The blog of Tim Ferriss.  Here you will find all manner of interesting ideas to improve (hack) your life.  Tim has spent most of his adult life experimenting with ways to improve efficiency in life in order to maximise personal gain from minimal input of effort.  Some topics include: weight-loss, muscle gain, learning languages in mere hours, and much more

http://www.wikipedia.org/ Source of much useful and interesting information

http://www.google.co.nz/ Self explanatory.  The entire suite of google software is incredibly useful and integrates nicely with other google components.  Productivity and efficiency is easily found via google “stuff”.  Fantastic google “stuff” includes:  Google Translate, Google Mail (gmail), Google Docs, Google Maps, YouTube, and more lately I’ve been using Google Reader to make one super blog.  Also, Blogger, of course (this site) for making my various blogs.

http://www.facebook.com/ Social networking in a very powerful and integrated way.  Also fantastic for building communities of people for marketing or just to share interests.

Physical Development and Health Links (Including parkour and martial arts)
http://stadion.com/ Stadion publishers.  Here’s their blurb: No-Nonsense Authority on Stretching and Flexibility, Mental Toughness, Strength, Speed, Power, Jumping Ability, Endurance, Coordination, Agility, and Technique for All Sports and Martial Arts, Sports Injuries, and Sports Nutrition

http://www.nzparkour.co.nz/ New Zealand’s online parkour community that I’ve been heavily involved in for the last four years.  

Christian Links
http://www.str.org/site/PageServer Stand to Reason, Equipping Christian Ambassadors with Knowledge, Wisdom, and Character.

http://carm.org/ Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry.  Matt Slick started up this website, full of answers for Christians who encounter challenges to the Christian faith.  Rational and reasonable answers to non-christian cult groups, atheists, and more.  This was particularly useful to me in my early walk.  

http://www.desiringgod.org/ The ministry of John Piper.  Many, many online resources and links to other reliable Christian sites.
http://www.e-sword.net/ Free bible study software. Fantastic and very powerful. This, or something like it, should be in every Christian's arsenal of bible study tools.

And...
Some sites that I’m experimenting with and can see the potential of:  Stumbleupon, Delicious.

I’m reconsidering using Twitter again as a bit of an experiment also.  I’m quite interested in developing myself as a writer.  The biggest obstacle in doing this is developing an audience in a moral way (non-spamming and non-annoying: subscribe, rate, embed!!!).  The best way to do this is to give something of value to that audience while in return getting their support and readership.  It can’t be done without building a positive community that passes around the “good stuff” by word of mouth (or the electronic equivalents, e.g. stumbleupon).  That is what has prompted the use of many of these websites, i.e. a way of getting the word out to people who might have an interest in what I have to offer.  Like-minded people who enjoy my take on life.

This will be an evolving page, so check back from time to time, recommend it to others who might find this useful, and please suggest any web sites or web tools that you think I might like to check out and/or add.

Thank you, and have a great week!

Sam

Carrots and Sticks, Where do they get you?

I check out the talks on www.ted.com once in a while, and have a browse through for something inspirational if I feel that I need a creative kick.  This is where I first saw the famous talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how schools kill creativity.  I still go back and watch it from time to time.

Earlier this week I came across this talk by Dan Pink (who used to write speeches for Al Gore).  The essence of it is that science has clearly shown that carrots and sticks (rewards and punishments) do not work for improving results and productivity when anything more complex than routine tasks are involved.  If you are a mindless worker doing a mindless job, then perhaps some external motivation might help give you the incentive to work faster.  When it comes to something even slightly complex that involves thinking about a solution, such as in most forms of learning, then rewards and punishment generate too much pressure.  This pressure results in anxiety and performance then decreases according to the level of anxiety.

What does work well for improving productivity and results are internal motivators such as satisfaction at a job well done and a sense of contributing to something meaningful.  I would add to Dan’s list something about basic needs being met, so that your mind is on the job rather than worrying about those needs.

That these internal motivators work is clear and obvious.  Google use this to give their employees 20% of time to do whatever they want and about half of their major innovations arise out of this “free time”.  Wikipedia is another example that Dan Pink uses, contrasting it’s success with Encarta.  Encarta was made using paid employees and wikipedia was made using the incentive to be a part of an incredibly useful project that would benefit many.  It is clear which was more successful, with Wikipedia being considered as more accurate than many text encyclopedias according to some!  The debate about the usefulness and accuracy of information from the Internet is mostly irrelevant because we should be savvy when it comes to interpreting knowledge anyway.  After all, everybody writes with a bias, even me!

So we can see that carrots and sticks get you nowhere.  I’m particularly concerned with their use in education and the immense pressure to perform that students are under.  I think that we would have a much more skilled and resilient bunch of people leaving high school if we just scrapped the external exams, took the pressure off, and let students learn by following their noses with teachers showing them how to develop their learning skills.