If you’re having a hard time concentrating on a specific task try out the pomodoro technique and this tool called Focus Booster .

Let me know how it works out for you.

If you’re like me, you are probably a bit ignorant of the political and economic troubles in other countries. It stems from the fact that we have it pretty good here in the U.S.A. We have drive-thrus, clean drinking water, government bailouts. Life is [relatively] good here and many of us hardly take the time to enlighten ourself with current events. No I’m not talking about getting your news and latest hollywood gossip from TMZ.com. I’m talking the BIG picture. World news. Seriously though, we complain about traffic on the highway and flights being delayed, yet there are people in third-world countries dying of hunger.

Basically we need to shut fu*k up.

If you’re not like me then you probably have strong ties outside of the country. Perhaps you were born and raised outside of the US and still have family living overseas. You’re an immigrant and certain global affairs affect you directly because you’ve lived it before or you know people living it now.

I am totally guilty of not paying attention to news in other countries- which is totally a bad thing. Issues oversears can have a huge impact on our lives here in the US. As if I haven’t admitted enough of my ignorance, I constantly try to convince myself to broaden my world view by tuning into international news. The only problem is, when I happen to do this, it’s kinda like tuning into a movie half way through. The movie also happens to be really complex, with lots of characters, and a very deep plot. It’s also originally in a different language and the subtitles have undergone a decent-at-best translation. World issues are never simple and this problem quickly turns me off.

Just yesterday I made my browser’s homepage the nytimes world section. If I read the headlines at the very least, I can somewhat keep up.

So, what tips do you have for staying current? Favorite news sites? RSS Feeds? Books?

I have found that retaining complex information has always been really difficult. I usually end up drawing pictures, writing things down, and creating my own acronyms just to remember simple bits of information. The really impressive individuals are those who are able to ‘retain’ the data quickly and can regurgitate the data back in the drop of a hat. I have always been in awe (and a bit jealous) of people who are able to remember seemingly meaningless information.

It makes total logical sense to me that if you are given a bit of information, it enters your brain like a bank, and you can ask a teller to retrieve that bit of information at any point. Often enough, however, bank robbers pull a heist and make you forget information because it is literally stolen from you. The goal is to identify the bank robbers and reinforce your security so this tragic occurrence doesn’t happen again.

Over the next few months, I will be trying out different techniques involving memory enhancement, information retention, and time-management. I’ll be sure to post tips and tricks as I discover them myself. If you have any of your own, please feel free to comment down below.

Now, whatever you do, don’t scroll back up. As a quick test to yourself … how many “O”s are in the title of this blog post. Again, Don’t scroll up and cheat now!! Did ya get it?

I’m sure this guy probably would …

I really like this new theme I’m using for this blog. The stock pictures above are even of my “hometown”. Even though that’s awesome, I’m looking for some images to stick up there. If anyone has any fitting artwork that my fit the bill please let me know!

I’m working on some new entries … stay tuned!