Did you know that it takes seven minutes to concentrate on tasks? If we add an average of 150 mobile unlocks per day, imagine how much time we have left each day to focus on what matters. That gap between tasks is what researcher S. Leroy calls “attention residual” in…

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus) This is the formula to finish a quality job (or with the highest quality that you can deliver at that time). The formula for productivity appears in the book Deep work, by Cal Newport, to demonstrate that some workers are…

Writing takes a lot of work, but not everything goes to growth your audience. Writers often defend the discourse of passion, but we speak little of disappointment when we do not get results. Writing is hard work. If you don’t like it very much, any reasonable person would give up…

You are as unhappy as you wish because suffer it’s optional, and no one can harm you. At least that’s what Epictetus (50–120? AD) would tell you, the Stoic philosopher who lived more than 40 years as a slave in Rome. — Today, some cognitive psychologists reclaim Epictetus ideas to improve our mental health. After 2,000 years, some of them still seem novel and, above all, practical. Epictetus’s master, Epaphrodites (who became Nero’s secretary), have been so cruel that he caused Epictetutus a chronic limp. Epictetus, calm, said to him while he…

I thought Medium was showing me stats from my stories. I thought my last article was interesting enough to gain some pennies with it. But Medium shows stats for stories and responses. I’m new on Medium. I still hadn’t noticed that stats showed visits from the response, so I started…

Daniel Rojo was the most famous bank robber in Barcelona (Spain) in the 1980s. He robbed more than 300 bank branches in a 15-year criminal career. He stole his first bank when he was 16 years old. In the most successful robbery, he took almost 1 million euros. The police…

A bizarre analysis with Python that helped me improve my job as a journalist. — Around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 9, 2017, I received a call with the first commissioned report to be published on paper (TintaLibre). It was due 10 days later. I was very excited. I delivered it 3 days before the deadline because at 6:00 p.m. on that first Tuesday; I…

Hacia las 11:30 horas del martes 9 de agosto recibí una llamada con el primer reportaje por encargo para publicarse en papel. Debía entregarlo 10 días después. Lo entregué 3 días antes del límite porque a las 18:00 horas de aquel primer martes me puse a investigar el tema como…

Banca, cine, periodismo y el Mediterráneo. Se nos ha quedado una mañana perfecta para entrevistar a Joan Antoni Melé, el banquero ético que une en su discurso el dinero y la consciencia. Pronto el vídeo de la entrevista a Joan A. Melé en vidasajenas.es Originally published at www.javierodriguez.com on December 9, 2016.