One person/ multiple careers. Slash isn’t just a fancy word, but something we can incorporate in careers. Understanding the meaning of Slash Slash When we think about slash, what may first come up with might be the punctuation — “/”. But if we use the word “slash” to describe a person, the meaning of it extends to people with multiple occupational identities — an UI designer/ blogger, consultant/ career coach, or editor/ teacher.  Slash Career This also brings up a popular phrase — “slash career”, which means people make multiple income streams simultaneously. Having a slash career was initially popular among those creative workers, such as illustrators, but this became more mainstream especially with millennials and people in other traditional fields as well.  Benefits of slash career Many people might be skeptical about having a slash career. On the one hand, performing different jobs is considered a way to bring greater diversity and satisfaction in career life. On the other hand, it may also mean the lack of depth in one field and thus less chance to climb to the top. Personally, I think the benefits of having multiple careers simultaneously outweigh its demerits because it helps achieve fulfillment in

Understanding Mindfulness What is Mindfulness? Mindfulness simply means being in the present moment. It tells you to feel the flow of time by only paying attention to where you are, what you are doing, what is in your mind, and how you feel at this present moment. By channeling your concentration entirely towards your bodily sensations and inner experiences, it gets easier to calm yourself down and be closer to your inner selves. There are two key elements of mindfulness: awareness and acceptance. Awareness is to intentionally identify what is around you and what is inside you: i.e. wind blowing over your face, birds’ voices above the square, or random thoughts floating in your mind. Try to feel all of them with focused and alert consciousness. Acceptance is to let them be what they are, which means fully accepting everything you’ve noticed and felt at this moment without any judgements or avoidance.  A mindful living can then be considered as a moment-to-moment state of mind that helps gain control back over life and achieve greater happiness. It focuses your attention to the present, instead of looking backwards to the past or anticipating too much about the future. Mindfulness & Meditation

Special Offers for Students and Educators Gone through the “Sci-Fi movie” called 2020, life goes on and unfolds new challenges for us all, especially for those students and teachers who have just experienced not-so-efficient remote learning and for those who are new to the college this autumn. At this key stage, turning life into a new page and getting more focused on what’s happening next is obviously important.  TickTick is here to help you gain more control back over the new challenges in the coming school year, with the special educational discount for all qualifying students and faculties! There are up to three benefits that you can enjoy: 1. All enrolled students and educators are eligible for a 25% discount when upgrading to TickTick yearly premium. This is a long-lasting program. Learn how to apply. 2. From today to 30th of September, everyone who successfully upgraded to premium through our special offer for education, can get 3 extra one-month TickTick premium gift codes! This is for you to share with any of your schoolmates, colleagues or friends, which means they can enjoy the one-month TickTick premium service totally for free! 3. If any of your friends who used your codes

A couple of months ago, I saw a TV series called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, where a Japanese lady Konmari visited families to help them tidy their homes. The tiding process normally starts from clothes, books to sentimental items. A rule she’s given is only keeping what’s necessary and discarding those that don’t spark joy anymore. The basic concept embedded in the Konmari method is actually similar to minimalism. Minimalism is about living with less. This not only means getting rid of extra material possessions, like what they did in that TV series, but also includes reducing mental burdens, and decluttering other aspects of life, e.g. digital life. It’s a less-is-more mindset that gets you to reflect on the current state of your life and identify what is truly valuable. With a minimalist lifestyle, people can sort their life well to enjoy more peace and freedom. Getting rid of excessive material possessions Among all aspects of minimal living, what we could easily start with is probably the personal belongings. I know this may still sound like a big project, but here’s what I did: Observing The first thing I did was to examine how much stuff I actually own,

 ticktick.com What is OKRs? Drown in the jargon river where so many abbreviations represent different business management methods, the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) framework stands out due to its popularity among some household names, e.g.Google and Linkedin. Moving through Andy Grove, who first introduced Management by Objectives to Intel in the 1970s to now John Doerr, whose book – Measure What Matters – probes greater depth of OKRs in the workplace. How to embed the company’s purpose and values into everyday goal-setting and outcomes throughout the company’s workforce, is where OKRs come into play. The basic process of implementing the OKRs is: The company sets a goal (normally for the coming quarter), and lists some metrics that can be used to measure whether this goal is met. With the same practice, this process further goes to different teams and then down to individuals. Here’s an OKRs example displayed under Kanban View at TickTick: From the example above, we can clearly see Q3 OKRs are displayed and sub-divided in three levels: Company’s OKRs > Marketing Team’s OKRs > Jack’s OKRs in Marketing Team. *Key Result 1 of the company is the Objective of Marketing team, and KR1 of Marketing team is

You might instantly recall the Lego blocks that we used to build a house when we were kids. Similarly, if we split 24 hours/1440 minutes of a day into blocks, how we spend the time is how we pile up these blocks in order the house to be built.   What is Time Blocking  Time Blocking is a time management method that helps us get more done in the finite time by cutting a day into many chunks and each chunk is dedicated to a certain task. Some of the world’s most productive people, from Elon Musk to Bill Gates to Cal Newport (Author of Deep Work) have combined their to-do lists with this important method: Time Blocking. A Russian entomologist Alexander Aleksandrovich Lyubishchev, kept recording the expenditure of his time, for 56 years in a row, in order to stay in control of his time. This comes with higher necessity in today’s society since 24-hour-a-day remains unchanged, while daily information explodes in the modern workplace. How Time Blocking works From the face value, this technique seems just a walk in the park. In what way can it really benefit us? * It reduces context switching and mental energy loss

Ever since the last time we released Kanban on Mac, Windows and Web, we’ve heard it multiple times for Kanban on mobile. Now, it’s all happening! This article will walk you through how to make the best use of Kanban View at TickTick mobile versions to visualize and streamline your workflow! What is Kanban? Some of you may never heard of Kanban or not be very familiar with what it is, but I suppose you’ve all ever seen a whiteboard with many sticky notes placed under different sections. That is exactly what Kanban is! In a simple term, Kanban is a project management method to help you visualize your workflow. It was first used by line-workers in Toyota’s factory. They’ve found a visual card showing what needs to be done and when, has helped a lot with the process of production. It has then been wide-spread and used by many others in other industries as well. TickTick embraced Kanban and made it available on desktop versions not so long ago. Now, we’ve brought it to mobile versions, in order to help you manage your projects anywhere and anytime! Step-by-step guide of using Kanban  1. Where to find Kanban on your smart

Everything You Need to Know about Procrastination Understanding procrastination Usually, we think of procrastination as a bad habit, but this might not be the case. Research by Burka and Yuen, authors of Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now, have found that procrastination is not a bad habit, but a psychological syndrome caused by one’s fear. In other words, procrastination is not purely a problem of time management. Instead, it concerns people’s inner fears, expectations, doubts and pressures.  There might be some people, like myself before, who’d always leave their tasks to the very last minute before the deadlines and look forward to a suddenly-bursted extraordinary performance, or a very best luck ever. Some even say the closer the DDLs are, the more productive they are. So, is the deadline really a force to drive us forward in a positive way? My answer is negative, although from the surface it may seem harmless to some people, and can to some extent be converted to motivator. However, deep inside, procrastination brings more harms than good for most of us. Consequence of procrastination 1. On top of all the damages caused by procrastination: mental sufferings. Even though relaxing first brings

How to avoid productivity pitfalls of remote work at COVID-19 crisis Editor: Lizzy – A new comer to remote work  An unexpected COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global rollout of working from home for the last month(s) and some maybe for now too, whether it’s out of personal choices or out of no choices 😂 Although this may be no difference for those who’ve already been used to remote work, like some freelancers. However, for those newcomers to this, like myself, it really could be a complete disaster. Not just the change of workplace, it’s the change of everything: work schedules, collaborative methods, work environment, and more importantly the state of mind. Being at home naturally makes me feel like doing nothing but binge watching Netflix.  I know some of you might experience the same as me. Some others may likewise be struggling with the smell of bread floating up from the kitchen, or unexpected shouts from their kids/parents, while at work.  To prevent these factors from sabotaging the productivity of working at home, here in the following is what I do in this long combat. These six tips so far have made my working-from-home days more productive, organized