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Luck and being lucky is a funny concept. Nobody is born naturally more lucky than anyone else. Those people who are always in the right place at the right time and get the big breaks in their careers largely make their own luck, whether they are aware of it or not. Compared to something like winning a lottery, which is pure chance, with luck you have the ability to influence it and increase those chances of being lucky. Read the rest of the article for three tips on how to do just that (no lucky leprechauns included).

Welcome to the latest post in my series looking at how to boost your creativity. In the first part I covered the basic rules for being creative, while in the second part I looked at inspirational locations you can visit to get those creative juices flowing. However, as someone recently pointed out, all these tips helped to encourage existing creative thought, but they didn’t help you to think creatively in the first place. With that in mind, in this post I want to address that issue and cover what attitudes you need to adopt if you want to find that necessary spark.

You did a poor presentation and your boss is giving you an hard time, your friends have all deserted you, and your marriage is on the rocks. Well that’s what it feels like anyway. In reality, most things are rarely as bad as they seem. We often let such things as our emotions or our pride effect our view on life and this can make dealing with the problem or coming to terms with it that much harder. The answer is to gain a little perspective, but that’s not always easy to do. However, it is one of the most important life skills you can learn so in this post I want to provide my thoughts and experiences on it.

Over the last month I have been experimenting with having one big weekly project. My first week involved doing a media fast and this week I have been attempting to go to the gym for five days in a row. The purpose of this is to break old, bad habits (procrastinating over going to the gym, wasting too much time watching TV and listening to music, etc.) and replace them with more positive ones. Spending seven days focusing on this is a good timeframe to use – not too short that you don’t get any benefits from it and not too long that you start to lose motivation and interest. If you are interested in trying something similar and having your own weekly project, I’ve compiled a few key points to consider.

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To-do lists are such a common productivity tool but lists don’t have to be restricted to just stuff that you need or want to do. For instance, GTD encourages you to break down your next actions into lists defined by contexts, which are essentially to-do lists but grouped by when or where you”re likely to do them. Imagine you are sat at the computer and can immediately pick out those tasks that you can do right at your desk while ignoring the rest. I’ve created all sorts of different lists for different purposes, including a done list.