₦airaland Forum

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” - Andrew Carnegie, billionaire industrialist

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” - Andrew Carnegie, billionaire industrialist

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” - Andrew Carnegie, billionaire industrialist

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” - Andrew Carnegie, billionaire industrialist

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president

“Buying real estate is not only the best way, the quickest way, the safest way, but the only way to become wealthy.” - Marshall Field, entrepreneur

“Buying real estate is not only the best way, the quickest way, the safest way, but the only way to become wealthy.” - Marshall Field, entrepreneur

“Buying real estate is not only the best way, the quickest way, the safest way, but the only way to become wealthy.” - Marshall Field, entrepreneur

How to Focus and Increase Your Attention Span
Let’s talk about how to overcome our tendency to multitask and focus on one thing at a time. Of the many options in front of you, how do you know what to focus on? How do you know where to direct your energy and attention? How do you determine the one thing that you should commit to doing?


Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy for Focused Attention
One of my favorite methods for focusing your attention on what matters and eliminating what doesn’t comes from the famous investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett uses a simple 3-step productivity strategy to help his employees determine their priorities and actions. You may find this method useful for making decisions and getting yourself to commit to doing one thing right away. Here’s how it works…

One day, Buffett asked his personal pilot to go through the 3-step exercise.

STEP 1: Buffett started by asking the pilot, named Mike Flint, to write down his top 25 career goals. So, Flint took some time and wrote them down. (Note: You could also complete this exercise with goals for a shorter timeline. For example, write down the top 25 things you want to accomplish this week.)

STEP 2: Then, Buffett asked Flint to review his list and circle his top 5 goals. Again, Flint took some time, made his way through the list, and eventually decided on his 5 most important goals.

STEP 3: At this point, Flint had two lists. The 5 items he had circled were List A, and the 20 items he had not circled were List B.

Flint confirmed that he would start working on his top 5 goals right away. And that’s when Buffett asked him about the second list, “And what about the ones you didn’t circle?”

Flint replied, “Well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them a dedicated effort.”

To which Buffett replied, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

I love Buffett’s method because it forces you to make hard decisions and eliminate things that might be good uses of time, but aren’t great uses of time. So often the tasks that derail our focus are ones that we can easily rationalize spending time on.

One goal

This is just one way to narrow your focus and eliminate distractions. I’ve covered many other methods before like The Ivy Lee Method and The Eisenhower Box. That said, no matter what method you use and no matter how committed you are, at some point your concentration and focus begin to fade. How can you increase your attention span and remain focused?

There are two simple steps you can take.

1.Measure Your Results
The first thing you can do is to measure your progress.

Focus often fades because of lack of feedback. Your brain has a natural desire to know whether or not you are making progress toward your goals, and it is impossible to know that without getting feedback. From a practical standpoint, this means that we need to measure our results.

We all have areas of life that we say are important to us, but that we aren’t measuring. That’s a shame because measurement maintains focus and concentration. The things we measure are the things we improve. It is only through numbers and clear tracking that we have any idea if we are getting better or worse.

When I measured how many pushups I did, I got stronger.
When I tracked my reading habit of 20 pages per day, I read more books.
When I recorded my values, I began living with more integrity.
The tasks I measured were the ones I remained focused on.

Unfortunately, we often avoid measuring because we are fearful of what the numbers will tell us about ourselves. The trick is to realize that measuring is not a judgment about who you are, it’s just feedback on where you are.

Measure to discover, to find out, to understand. Measure to get to know yourself better. Measure to see if you’re actually spending time on the things that are important to you. Measure because it will help you focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don’t.

2.Focus on the Process, Not the Event
The second thing you can do to maintain long-term focus is to concentrate on processes, not events. All too often, we see success as an event that can be achieved and completed.

Here are some common examples:

Many people see health as an event: “If I just lose 20 pounds, then I’ll be in shape.”
Many people see entrepreneurship as an event: “If we could get our business featured in the New York Times, then we’d be set.”
Many people see art as an event: “If I could just get my work featured in a bigger gallery, then I’d have the credibility I need.”
Those are just a few of the many ways that we categorize success as a single event. But if you look at the people who stay focused on their goals, you start to realize that it’s not the events or the results that make them different. It’s the commitment to the process. They fall in love with the daily practice, not the individual event.

What’s funny, of course, is that this focus on the process is what will allow you to enjoy the results anyway.

If you want to be a great writer, then having a best-selling book is wonderful. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of writing.
If you want the world to know about your business, then it would be great to be featured in Forbes magazine. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of marketing.
If you want to be in the best shape of your life, then losing 20 pounds might be necessary. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of eating healthy and exercising consistently.
If you want to become significantly better at anything, you have to fall in love with the process of doing it. You have to fall in love with building the identity of someone who does the work, rather than merely dreaming about the results that you want.
Focusing on outcomes and goals is our natural tendency, but focusing on processes leads to more results over the long-run.

Concentration and Focus Mind-Hacks
Even after you’ve learned to love the process and know how to stay focused on your goals, the day-to-day implementation of those goals can still be messy. Let’s talk about some additional ways to improve concentration and make sure you’re giving each task your focused attention.

How to Improve Concentration
Here are few additional ways to improve your focus and get started on what matters.

Choose an anchor task. One of the major improvements I’ve made recently is to assign one (and only one) priority to each work day. Although I plan to complete other tasks during the day, my priority task is the one non-negotiable thing that must get done. I call this my “anchor task” because it is the mainstay that holds the rest of my day in place. The power of choosing one priority is that it naturally guides your behavior by forcing you to organize your life around that responsibility.

Manage your energy, not your time. If a task requires your full attention, then schedule it for a time of day when you have the energy needed to focus. For example, I have noticed that my creative energy is highest in the morning. That’s when I’m fresh. That’s when I do my best writing. That’s when I make the best strategic decisions about my business. So, what do I do? I schedule creative tasks for the morning. All other business tasks are taken care of in the afternoon. This includes doing interviews, responding to emails, phone calls and Skype chats, data analysis and number crunching. Nearly every productivity strategy obsesses over managing your time better, but time is useless if you don’t have the energy you need to complete the task you are working on.

Never check email before noon. Focus is about eliminating distractions. Email can be one of the biggest distractions of all. If I don’t check email at the beginning of the day, then I am able to spend the morning pursuing my own agenda rather than reacting to everybody else’s agenda. That’s a huge win because I’m not wasting mental energy thinking about all the messages in my inbox. I realize that waiting until the afternoon isn’t feasible for many people, but I’d like to offer a challenge. Can you wait until 10AM? What about 9AM? 8:30AM? The exact cutoff time doesn’t matter. The point is to carve out time during your morning when you can focus on what is most important to you without letting the rest of the world dictate your mental state.

Leave your phone in another room. I usually don’t see my phone for the first few hours of the day. It is much easier to do focused work when you don’t have any text messages, phone calls, or alerts interrupting your focus.

Work in full screen mode. Whenever I use an application on my computer, I use full screen mode. If I’m reading an article on the web, my browser takes up the whole screen. If I’m writing in Evernote, I’m working in full screen mode. If I’m editing a picture in Photoshop, it is the only thing I can see. I have set up my desktop so that the menu bar disappears automatically. When I am working, I can’t see the time, the icons of other applications, or any other distractions on the screen. It’s funny how big of a difference this makes for my focus and concentration. If you can see an icon on your screen, then you will be reminded to click on it occasionally. However, if you remove the visual cue, then the urge to be distracted subsides in a few minutes.

Remove all tasks that could distract from early morning focus. I love doing the most important thing first each day because the urgencies of the day have not crept in yet. I have gone a little far in this regard in that I have even pushed my first meal off until about noon each day. I have been intermittent fasting for three years now (here are some lessons learned), which means that I typically eat most of my meals between 12PM and 8PM. The result is that I get some additional time in the morning to do focused work rather than cook breakfast.

Regardless of what strategy you use, just remember that anytime you find the world distracting you, all you need to do is commit to one thing. In the beginning, you don’t even have to succeed. You just need to get started.

How to Focus and Increase Your Attention Span
Let’s talk about how to overcome our tendency to multitask and focus on one thing at a time. Of the many options in front of you, how do you know what to focus on? How do you know where to direct your energy and attention? How do you determine the one thing that you should commit to doing?


Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy for Focused Attention
One of my favorite methods for focusing your attention on what matters and eliminating what doesn’t comes from the famous investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett uses a simple 3-step productivity strategy to help his employees determine their priorities and actions. You may find this method useful for making decisions and getting yourself to commit to doing one thing right away. Here’s how it works…

One day, Buffett asked his personal pilot to go through the 3-step exercise.

STEP 1: Buffett started by asking the pilot, named Mike Flint, to write down his top 25 career goals. So, Flint took some time and wrote them down. (Note: You could also complete this exercise with goals for a shorter timeline. For example, write down the top 25 things you want to accomplish this week.)

STEP 2: Then, Buffett asked Flint to review his list and circle his top 5 goals. Again, Flint took some time, made his way through the list, and eventually decided on his 5 most important goals.

STEP 3: At this point, Flint had two lists. The 5 items he had circled were List A, and the 20 items he had not circled were List B.

Flint confirmed that he would start working on his top 5 goals right away. And that’s when Buffett asked him about the second list, “And what about the ones you didn’t circle?”

Flint replied, “Well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them a dedicated effort.”

To which Buffett replied, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

I love Buffett’s method because it forces you to make hard decisions and eliminate things that might be good uses of time, but aren’t great uses of time. So often the tasks that derail our focus are ones that we can easily rationalize spending time on.

One goal

This is just one way to narrow your focus and eliminate distractions. I’ve covered many other methods before like The Ivy Lee Method and The Eisenhower Box. That said, no matter what method you use and no matter how committed you are, at some point your concentration and focus begin to fade. How can you increase your attention span and remain focused?

There are two simple steps you can take.

1.Measure Your Results
The first thing you can do is to measure your progress.

Focus often fades because of lack of feedback. Your brain has a natural desire to know whether or not you are making progress toward your goals, and it is impossible to know that without getting feedback. From a practical standpoint, this means that we need to measure our results.

We all have areas of life that we say are important to us, but that we aren’t measuring. That’s a shame because measurement maintains focus and concentration. The things we measure are the things we improve. It is only through numbers and clear tracking that we have any idea if we are getting better or worse.

When I measured how many pushups I did, I got stronger.
When I tracked my reading habit of 20 pages per day, I read more books.
When I recorded my values, I began living with more integrity.
The tasks I measured were the ones I remained focused on.

Unfortunately, we often avoid measuring because we are fearful of what the numbers will tell us about ourselves. The trick is to realize that measuring is not a judgment about who you are, it’s just feedback on where you are.

Measure to discover, to find out, to understand. Measure to get to know yourself better. Measure to see if you’re actually spending time on the things that are important to you. Measure because it will help you focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don’t.

2.Focus on the Process, Not the Event
The second thing you can do to maintain long-term focus is to concentrate on processes, not events. All too often, we see success as an event that can be achieved and completed.

Here are some common examples:

Many people see health as an event: “If I just lose 20 pounds, then I’ll be in shape.”
Many people see entrepreneurship as an event: “If we could get our business featured in the New York Times, then we’d be set.”
Many people see art as an event: “If I could just get my work featured in a bigger gallery, then I’d have the credibility I need.”
Those are just a few of the many ways that we categorize success as a single event. But if you look at the people who stay focused on their goals, you start to realize that it’s not the events or the results that make them different. It’s the commitment to the process. They fall in love with the daily practice, not the individual event.

What’s funny, of course, is that this focus on the process is what will allow you to enjoy the results anyway.

If you want to be a great writer, then having a best-selling book is wonderful. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of writing.
If you want the world to know about your business, then it would be great to be featured in Forbes magazine. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of marketing.
If you want to be in the best shape of your life, then losing 20 pounds might be necessary. But the only way to reach that result is to fall in love with the process of eating healthy and exercising consistently.
If you want to become significantly better at anything, you have to fall in love with the process of doing it. You have to fall in love with building the identity of someone who does the work, rather than merely dreaming about the results that you want.
Focusing on outcomes and goals is our natural tendency, but focusing on processes leads to more results over the long-run.

Concentration and Focus Mind-Hacks
Even after you’ve learned to love the process and know how to stay focused on your goals, the day-to-day implementation of those goals can still be messy. Let’s talk about some additional ways to improve concentration and make sure you’re giving each task your focused attention.

How to Improve Concentration
Here are few additional ways to improve your focus and get started on what matters.

Choose an anchor task. One of the major improvements I’ve made recently is to assign one (and only one) priority to each work day. Although I plan to complete other tasks during the day, my priority task is the one non-negotiable thing that must get done. I call this my “anchor task” because it is the mainstay that holds the rest of my day in place. The power of choosing one priority is that it naturally guides your behavior by forcing you to organize your life around that responsibility.

Manage your energy, not your time. If a task requires your full attention, then schedule it for a time of day when you have the energy needed to focus. For example, I have noticed that my creative energy is highest in the morning. That’s when I’m fresh. That’s when I do my best writing. That’s when I make the best strategic decisions about my business. So, what do I do? I schedule creative tasks for the morning. All other business tasks are taken care of in the afternoon. This includes doing interviews, responding to emails, phone calls and Skype chats, data analysis and number crunching. Nearly every productivity strategy obsesses over managing your time better, but time is useless if you don’t have the energy you need to complete the task you are working on.

Never check email before noon. Focus is about eliminating distractions. Email can be one of the biggest distractions of all. If I don’t check email at the beginning of the day, then I am able to spend the morning pursuing my own agenda rather than reacting to everybody else’s agenda. That’s a huge win because I’m not wasting mental energy thinking about all the messages in my inbox. I realize that waiting until the afternoon isn’t feasible for many people, but I’d like to offer a challenge. Can you wait until 10AM? What about 9AM? 8:30AM? The exact cutoff time doesn’t matter. The point is to carve out time during your morning when you can focus on what is most important to you without letting the rest of the world dictate your mental state.

Leave your phone in another room. I usually don’t see my phone for the first few hours of the day. It is much easier to do focused work when you don’t have any text messages, phone calls, or alerts interrupting your focus.

Work in full screen mode. Whenever I use an application on my computer, I use full screen mode. If I’m reading an article on the web, my browser takes up the whole screen. If I’m writing in Evernote, I’m working in full screen mode. If I’m editing a picture in Photoshop, it is the only thing I can see. I have set up my desktop so that the menu bar disappears automatically. When I am working, I can’t see the time, the icons of other applications, or any other distractions on the screen. It’s funny how big of a difference this makes for my focus and concentration. If you can see an icon on your screen, then you will be reminded to click on it occasionally. However, if you remove the visual cue, then the urge to be distracted subsides in a few minutes.

Remove all tasks that could distract from early morning focus. I love doing the most important thing first each day because the urgencies of the day have not crept in yet. I have gone a little far in this regard in that I have even pushed my first meal off until about noon each day. I have been intermittent fasting for three years now (here are some lessons learned), which means that I typically eat most of my meals between 12PM and 8PM. The result is that I get some additional time in the morning to do focused work rather than cook breakfast.

Regardless of what strategy you use, just remember that anytime you find the world distracting you, all you need to do is commit to one thing. In the beginning, you don’t even have to succeed. You just need to get started.

illicit:
Nice one

Cheers

benjanjo1:
This is the time to invest in alternative building technology. Our reliance on cement for construction has proven to be unsustainable. There are other materials that can be used to erect durable and strong buildings. And I hear that some of these materials are even cheaper! I think those with the know how should begin to popularize the usage of such alternatives.

"Alternative building" refers to construction methods that differ from mainstream modern architecture. They often use natural building materials, with a strong emphasis on sustainable design. Recently, popular housing materials, such as treated lumber, synthetic insulation and certain paints (to name a few) have been exposed as harmful to both the environment and the inhabitants of the houses. There is no dispute over this issue; anyone who cares to ask will find that treated lumber releases the preservatives and poisons which it was soaked in over a predictable period of time. This is where alternative construction comes in.

While green buildings most often include high technology as part of their design, alternative buildings more often depend on traditional designs (reflecting wisdom which has evolved over many generations) and creative use of locally available materials and limited resources. Indeed, some would say that "alternative building" is quite an odd phrase, considering that the strategies used to conserve energy and materials have been documented for millennia in some cases. Practices such as adobe, wattle and daub, mud-brick, rammed earth, earth bag and straw bale housing construction is alive and well. In many instances the houses are less expensive to build and maintain, healthier to live in and more sturdy and reliable than those made from "conventional" materials.

Much of the trouble with acceptance in the mainstream comes from advertising. If a company knows that the average customer is perfectly capable of building their own house of readily available materials for a fraction of the market price, then that company must convince unaware consumers that the "alternative" option simply doesn't exist. Of course, with many of these same companies sitting on planning boards, alternative construction has been given quite an unfavorable reputation in some localities.

Alternative building methods involve Eco and Green Developments which are designed to minimize energy requirements.

Sustainable buildings use materials which have a low environmental impact, eliminate sewage and wastewater pollution issues, protect the natural environment. They also promote the health and wellbeing, both physical and mental, of the occupants and those living and working close to the development.

Alternative Eco Friendly Housing should encompass all of the following:

Environmental Issues: Conservation of the sites natural resources, both plant, animal and mineral. Siting of the building for minimum heat loss through wind and shade and maximum heat gain from solar, high levels of insulation, maximising natural lighting, energy efficient appliances, sewage disposal and lighting systems.

Water and Wastewater: Rainwater harvesting, water efficient appliances, minimizing and attenuating surface water run-off to prevent flooding and pollution. Sustainable solutions for the disposal of sewage, e.g. Sewage Treatment Plant Sustainable Filter Systems.

Transport: Public transport access, close to shops, leisure facilities and work, home offices to reduce commuting.

Materials: use of long-life sustainable materials with a low environmental impact avoiding those from non-renewable and non-sustainable sources, use of locally produced materials, use of recycled materials.

Health and wellbeing: use of non-toxic materials during all stages of the build and all areas of the building, natural daylighting, freedom from noise and pollution, green spaces, non-obtrusive design which flows into the surroundings.

Affordability and adaptability: affordable ownership, flexibility of design to adapt to the changing requirements of the occupants and future owners.

Yayoi Kusama
Kusama is one of the most famous artists working today. Her huge popularity stems from her mirrored “Infinity Rooms” that have proved irresistible for Instagram users, but her career stretches back over six decades. Starting as a child, the Japanese artist began to suffer from hallucinations that manifested as flashes of light or auras, as well as fields of dots and flowers that talked to her. These experiences have provided the inspiration for her work, including the aforementioned rooms along with paintings, sculptures and installations that employ vivid, phantasmagorical patterns of polka dots and other motifs.

.

In 1955, Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California, when a ten-year-old boy walked in and asked for a job. Labor laws were loose back then and the boy managed to land a position selling guidebooks for $0.50 apiece.

Within a year, he had transitioned to Disney’s magic shop, where he learned tricks from the older employees. He experimented with jokes and tried out simple routines on visitors. Soon he discovered that what he loved was not performing magic but performing in general. He set his sights on becoming a comedian.

Beginning in his teenage years, he started performing in little clubs around Los Angeles. The crowds were small and his act was short. He was rarely on stage for more than five minutes. Most of the people in the crowd were too busy drinking or talking with friends to pay attention. One night, he literally delivered his stand-up routine to an empty club.

It wasn’t glamorous work, but there was no doubt he was getting better. His first routines would only last one or two minutes. By high school, his material had expanded to include a five-minute act and, a few years later, a ten-minute show. At nineteen, he was performing weekly for twenty minutes at a time. He had to read three poems during the show just to make the routine long enough, but his skills continued to progress.

He spent another decade experimenting, adjusting, and practicing. He took a job as a television writer and, gradually, he was able to land his own appearances on talk shows. By the mid-1970s, he had worked his way into being a regular guest on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.

Finally, after nearly fifteen years of work, the young man rose to fame. He toured sixty cities in sixty-three days. Then seventy-two cities in eighty days. Then eighty-five cities in ninety days. He had 18,695 people attend one show in Ohio. Another 45,000 tickets were sold for his three-day show in New York. He catapulted to the top of his genre and became one of the most successful comedians of his time.

His name is Steve Martin.

How to Stay Motivated
I recently finished Steve Martin’s wonderful autobiography, Born Standing Up.

Martin’s story offers a fascinating perspective on what it takes to stick with habits for the long run. Comedy is not for the timid. It is hard to imagine a situation that would strike fear into the hearts of more people than performing alone on stage and failing to get a single laugh. And yet Steve Martin faced this fear every week for eighteen years. In his words, “10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years as a wild success.”

Why is it that some people, like Martin, stick with their habits—whether practicing jokes or drawing cartoons or playing guitar—while most of us struggle to stay motivated? How do we design habits that pull us in rather than ones that fade away? Scientists have been studying this question for many years. While there is still much to learn, one of the most consistent findings is that the way to maintain motivation and achieve peak levels of desire is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.”

The Goldilocks Rule
The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. If you love tennis and try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. It’s too easy. You’ll win every point. In contrast, if you play a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will quickly lose motivation because the match is too difficult.

Now consider playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few. You have a good chance of winning, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. This is a challenge of just manageable difficulty and it is a prime example of the Goldilocks Rule.

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

Martin’s comedy career is an excellent example of the Goldilocks Rule in practice. Each year, he expanded his comedy routine—but only by a minute or two. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard.


Measure Your Progress
If you want to learn how to stay motivated to reach your goals, then there is a second piece of the motivation puzzle that is crucial to understand. It has to do with achieving that perfect blend of hard work and happiness.

Working on challenges of an optimal level of difficulty has been found to not only be motivating, but also to be a major source of happiness. As psychologist Gilbert Brim put it, “One of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy.”

This blend of happiness and peak performance is sometimes referred to as flow, which is what athletes and performers experience when they are “in the zone.” Flow is the mental state you experience when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away.

In order to reach this state of peak performance, however, you not only need to work on challenges at the right degree of difficulty, but also measure your immediate progress. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains, one of the keys to reaching a flow state is that “you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step.”

Seeing yourself make progress in the moment is incredibly motivating. Steve Martin would tell a joke and immediately know if it worked based on the laughter of the crowd. Imagine how addicting it would be to create a roar of laughter. The rush of positive feedback Martin experienced from one great joke would probably be enough to overpower his fears and inspire him to work for weeks.

In other areas of life, measurement looks different but is just as critical for achieving a blend of motivation and happiness. In tennis, you get immediate feedback based on whether or not you win the point. Regardless of how it is measured, the human brain needs some way to visualize our progress if we are to maintain motivation. We need to be able to see our wins.

Two Steps to Motivation
If we want to break down the mystery of how to stay motivated for the long-term, we could simply say:

1.Stick to The Goldilocks Rule and work on tasks of just manageable difficulty.
2.Measure your progress and receive immediate feedback whenever possible.

Wanting to improve your life is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress, and repeat the process.

written by James Clear

LadySarah:
You were indecently dressed abi no be wetin men dey tell victims of rape.

Look at the rubbish he is wearing.

hehe

In January 2020, Chikezie Nnabuike, a manager at a private firm in Lagos, started building a house away from where he resides presently. Because of the COVID-19 lockdown work slowed on the building project being supervised by an engineer who was his roommate in the university.

He did not, however, give up on his plan to complete the building in 18 months, in which case he expected to finish the walling and roofing aspects of the building, latest, by the end of the second quarter of 2021. But that has turned out to be a dream deferred.


The house, today, is not yet 60 percent completed, meaning that he is still a tenant and will remain so for as long as only God knows when. The rising prices of building materials, particularly cement and iron rods, have, in the past six months, risen to a point where all building projections no longer make sense.

“I started out this project on a budget for the entire building. Now, I have not gone very far with the project, but I have already surpassed the budget because it is as if building materials are rising every day,” Nnabuike told our correspondent last Thursday.

“I have suspended that project, for now, because I can no longer keep pace with price increases, especially cement and iron rods, which I was told were needed for beams and columns. Besides the project, I have a family to feed. Even feeding does not come easy these days and so I have had to re-order my priorities, he said.

Nnabuike is not an isolated case. There are countless others like him out there and what this means is that homeownership for all of them remains a daydream. They have to continue as tenants where they are, enduring landlords’ arbitrary increases in rents and adding to the housing deficit.


In October 2020, a 50kg bag of cement was selling for between N2,400 and N2,500 in many states of the federation. But in November of the same year, the price of the commodity started rising and has increased to N3,800, depending on the brand and the location.

“In the last 24 hours, the price of cement has gone up from N3,450 to N3,800 and it will still go up. We are, therefore, rushing to get more that can take us for a while,” Kunle Adeyemi, CEO, Sterling Homes, confirmed to our correspondent in Lagos.


According to Adeyemi, at the current price, it means that cement price within the first quarter of this year has moved over 70 percent and it is so bad that some dealers are hoarding the commodity because they are sure the price will still go up further.

So many reasons have been adduced for the soaring price of cement. One of the major reasons is the scarcity of the product which, unfortunately, has to do with rising insecurity in the country, supply monopoly and also cost of inputs, which has also gone up considerably.

“Producers do not supply the commodity to some parts of the country because of insecurity. They fear attacks by kidnappers, bandits and other insurgents. Again, the roads are so bad that the suppliers avoid them, leading to scarcity and rise in the price of the product,” Adeyemi noted.

There is about a 40 percent cement supply gap, according to Dangote Group, the largest producer of the commodity with over 60 percent share of the market. Devakumar Edwin, Dangote Group executive director, strategy, portfolio development and capital projects, was quoted recently as saying that manufacturers were working to close the gap.

Edwin attributed the increase in demand to increase in construction activities as investors considered the industry good to hedge against falling local currency. Edwin, who spoke at an event in Lagos, insisted that their ex-depot price had not changed but that some retailers had taken advantage of the supply gap to increase their prices.

He also mentioned devaluation of the naira and the increase in Value Added Tax as reasons for the increase in the cost of critical components such as gas, gypsum, bags and machine spare parts.

The implication of these price increases is far-reaching. “The dream of an average Nigeria to own a home is now very slim. For us as developers, it is a huge challenge because we already have the prices of houses that are still being built. We cannot deliver at that price anymore,” Adeyemi said.

Continuing, he said, “I foresee doom because some developers may be forced to compromise on quality and standards of houses they put on the market. They may go for sub-standard materials in a bid to meet up with supply and that simply foretells housing collapse and construction failure.”

He canvassed the government’s intervention through what he called price control policy that will effectively regulate the price of the commodity, saying the government should also break the monopoly in the supply of the product which, he reasoned, was part of the causes of the product scarcity.

culled from businessdaydotng

“Buy on the fringe and wait. Buy land near a growing city! Buy real estate when other people want to sell. Hold what you buy!” - John Jacob Astor, real estate and business mogul

For reasons bothering on rising urbanization, congestion and public health, stakeholders in the Nigerian built environment say it is urgent today to start space designing space that will ensure future livable cities.

Cities are growing in leaps and bounds across Sub-Saharan Africa with Nigeria as the epicenter of growth. This is as a result of growing population and uncontrolled rural-urban migration, creating problems that portend danger for cities and urban communities.


Public health and the design of cities are inseparably interwoven, according to the stakeholders. The way communities are built has a profound effect on people’s physical and mental health.

The stakeholders reasoned that healthy communities ensure residents benefit from access to education, housing, jobs, the ability to live without fear of violence, freedom from environmental hazards and a meaningful built environment, hence the need for planned and well-designed cities.

Designing space means cities are built to inspire. The stakeholders noted that in the world’s most livable cities, arts and culture blend with business, retail, entertainment and residential districts to create desirable places to live, work and play.

These stakeholders gathered in Lagos for the 2021 edition of the Lagos Architects Forum (LAF) hosted by the Lagos branch of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) with the theme, ‘City Of Lagos: The Next 25 Years’.


It is expected that Lagos population will hit 50 million from the present 20 million in the next 25 years and, if truly the future belongs to the cities, according to Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Lagos State governor, the managers of the sprawling city have a lot on their hands to bother about.

The governor revealed at the forum that the state had developed a 2050 master plan that required proper planning to ensure that it is scalable enough to drive the vision of 2050.


But Toyin Ayinde, President of Nigerian Institute of Town Planners, was of the view that any plan for Lagos should be sufficient enough to cater for the city which, according to him, has gone beyond being a megacity to a metacity.

“The term metacity was coined in 2006 by the UN-Habitat when the term megacity – designated as cities of over 10 million people became inadequate. A metacity is defined as massive sprawling conurbations of more than 20 million people,” he explained.

Ayinde stated that the city of Lagos, in the next 25 years, would probably be harbouring 40 million people or more and, therefore, the urgent questions to ask the managers of the city-state include “on which land would those 40 million people reside”?

“Where would they work? What sort of transportation systems would connect people and places? Would every square millimeter be occupied with bungalow and low rise buildings or would we need to go high rise only so that we can make more land available for landscaping and open spaces?” he asked.

Oba Abdulwasiu Omogbolahan Lawal, Abisogun 11, the Oniru of Iruland, offered useful insights, noting that the world was undergoing massive urbanization at unprecedented rate and Africa was not left out.

The Oba cited a World Bank report which says more than half the world’s people live in cities and over 90 percent of urban growth is occurring in the developing world, adding an estimated 70 million new residents to urban areas each year.

“Lagos is one of the few in the world in a phenomenon called hyper-urbanisation, with its attendant problems including micro and macro slum developments, crippling traffic congestion, poor waste collection and management amongst others,” he noted.

As part of great lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Oba said there was need for awareness on good public health, safer infrastructure and more open space.

“A city is all about fostering connectivity; at the heart of it is access, how people are connected to their immediate environment to green spaces and public spaces that enable cultural and civic engagements. As designers, more efforts have to be put into making places for people beyond their homes and work,” he advised.

The Oba noted that increased connectivity reduces the tensions between groups in communities, establishes a sense of belonging and makes communities more dynamic and vibrant, adding that not to mention designing healthy communities is to pretend that the pandemic did not expose some of the shortcomings in the design of the built environment.