Interruption Management

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Major Disruption: A Hacked Password - Interruption Management

Using any of the 25 most popular passwords of 2014 is highly risky. A hacked password equals no breathing space. Instead make up something more complex, with random letters and numbers, such as ij6ko40d1. Or use an acronym and numbers known only to you, such a mwdSin12 ("my wonderful dog Skippy is now 12").

These are a hackers delight:
      1. 123456 (Rank unchanged from 2013)
    2. password (Unchanged)
      3. 12345 (Up 17)
      4. 12345678 (Down 1)
      5. qwerty (Down 1)

      6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
      7. 1234 (Up 9)
      8. baseball (New)
      9. dragon (New)
    10. football (New)

    11. 1234567 (Down 4)
    12. monkey (Up 5)
    13. letmein (Up 1)
    14. abc123 (Down 9)
    15. 111111 (Down 8)

    16.mustang (New)
    17. access (New)
    18. shadow (Unchanged)
    19. master (New)
    20. michael (New)

    21. superman (New)
    22. 696969 (New)
    23. 123123 (Down 12)
    24. batman (New)
    25. trustno1 (Down 1)

Labels: disrupt, hack, password, risk

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Power of Focus - Interruption Management

Notes from the Power of Focus by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt

    People who are busy all the time will never get anywhere in life if they lack focus. For such a short word focus packs power.

     *    Steam rising from a boiling pot is unfocused. Steam surging through a turbine engine will propel vehicles. Light from a flame is unfocused. Light from a laser beam is so highly focused that it will cut steel.

     *    The unfocused in business or career may do well, but frequently wonder if they are living up to their potential. They promise themselves that someday it will be different. They stay busy doing things that seem urgent, but as time passes they don’t seem to get far. They may have good products or services but haven’t found ways to turn them into integrated systems that can bring large contracts or bigger deals.

     *    Focus on personal identity – in 25 words or less who are you as a person without using your name, address, age, gender, education credentials, social status, position, religious affiliation or nationality.

    What do you value most?
    What one thing do you worry about most?
    What one thing do you talk about most?
    Which of your talents have you developed most fully and rely on most often?
    What challenges do you find most appealing?
    What are you most proud of?
    What would you like to have done differently?
    What are the three keys to your personal identity?

         *    Focus on professional purpose – in 12 words or less exactly what do you do?

    What is your guiding or controlling area in life?
    What is your strategy for implementing that idea?
    How would your staff describe your professional purpose?
    What are your three greatest strengths and how are you capitalizing on them?

     *    Focus on your career vision – are you a calculated risk taker?

    How does what you do all day square with how you see yourself?
    What is your most vital role?
    What is your secondary role?
    What role do you want to play?
    What is your career mission?
    How do you know when you are accomplishing it?

     *    Focus on your market – what is your unique niche in the market place?
    What do you do better than anybody else?
    Who are your customers and what do they need given what you do better than anyone else?
    What is their perception of value?
    And of you?

     *    Focus on your products – as an insider to your market, how can you capitalize on what you do to leverage to your differential advantage the unique customer needs?

     *    Once you achieve focus in the five key areas, amazing things happen. You can constantly redirect your time, energy, talent, expertise and money from areas of low yield to high yield. You can systematically develop your most productive strengths and compensate for your most costly weaknesses.

    You can quality the results that you expect and measure your performance hourly, daily, weekly and annually. You can identify obstacles, problems and attack them effectively. You can identify the most productive ideas and go after the greatest opportunities. You can communicate clearly and persuasively with people who can help you achieve your goals. You can approach nearly every opportunity with complete confidence. You have a whole lot more fun at everything that you do.

    When you are in focus your life takes on new clarity. You mind focuses, your thoughts, feelings and actions to form a clear picture of who you are and where you are going. When you are focused you go far.

Labels: clarity, focus, goal, identity, obstacle, power, problem, productive, vision

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Monday, February 02, 2015

You Can Handle It! - Interruption Management

Matthew Blakeslee writing for Discover a few years back wrote, "If old dogs haven’t been able to learn new maybe that’s because no one has known how to teach them properly. Until quite recently orthodox neuroscience held that only the brains of young children are resilient, malleable, and morphable—in a word, plastic."

"This neuroplasticity, as it is called, seems to fade steadily as the brain congeals into its fixed adult configuration. Infants can sustain massive brain damage, up to the loss of an entire cerebral hemisphere, and still develop into nearly normal adults; any adult who loses half the brain, by contrast, is a goner. Adults can’t learn to speak new languages without an accent, can’t take up piano in their fifties then go on to play Carnegie Hall, and often suffer strokes that lead to permanent paralysis or cognitive deficiencies. The mature brain, scientists concluded, can only decline."

"It turns out this theory is not just wrong, it is spectacularly wrong. Two books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, $24.95) by science journalist Sharon Begley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psychiatrist Norman Doidge, offer masterfully guided tours through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research. Each has its own style and emphasis; both are excellent.".

Labels: aging, brain, education, learning, neuroplasticity, neuroscience

Friday, January 30, 2015

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Monday, January 12, 2015

Pervasive Attention Deficit Disorder - Interruption Management

Sadly, we've reached the point where a typical person in society today has some symptoms of attention deficit disorder, culturally induced. The rising decibel level in public spaces, as documented over the last 25 years, all but confirms that we have tolerated a perpetually higher level of noise. Added to that, there is no end to the messages that bombard us each day. From billboards, to bus panels, to ads over urinals, at all times, and in all places, someone is vying for our attention.

E-mail, the Internet, and mobile devices have exacerbated the problem, but even people who are not online and not wired are subject to cultural attention deficit disorder, because our culture's level of message bombardment is exceedingly high.

Retrieve a person from a primitive society, someone who has never been exposed to television or telephones, or, if you could, retrieve someone from 1915, and today’s information bombardment would have immediate impact, and such visitors to our culture might experience near-instant nervous breakdown.

Labels: A.D.D., attention, bombard, disorder, messages, mobile, noise, overwhelm, pervasive