Allen J. Hall

Materials Science & Engineering, Productivity, and Life

Motivation

Posts dealing with life-motivations.

Benjamin Zander on a life of Abundance

The more I hear Benjamin Zander (Wikipedia) speak, the more I realize how he can lead a group of people to make beautiful music (Boston Philharmonic). To start your Monday off right, I strongly suggest you watch this lecture of Zander’s at Pop Tech this year.

If you’ve ever played an instrument before, you definitely need to watch this video. We get to see Zander teach a young Cellist how to play a piece by Bach, and at the same time learn why the Abundance Mentality is critical to our own playing (work). He explains mostly by showing in this talk: you’ll notice his own abundance of joy come out throughout his discussion, and in his responses to the difficulty of helping this clearly gifted student get more out of his playing.


@ Yahoo! Video

Can’t forget the hat-tip to Tango at DesignVerb (a great blog!)

For more of Zander’s discussion on Classical Music with heart, see his TED talk given in February of this year.

SMS Spam - 83960

This post is not exactly the status quo for this blog, but I wanted to share with you two things. First, that there are some wonderful companies out there that are very helpful. Second, that sometimes spammers do anything they can to spam.

I’ve been receiving a few SMS messages from number 83960 that were pretty much junk, nothing useful there at all, and I wasn’t sure what was going on. Perhaps it’s a company I recently decided to try out (beta software for phone productivity applications), or perhaps it’s a spammer. My bet right now is a spammer.

This is a tale of amazing customer service, and what the real skinny on 83960 is… (read more by clicking through below)

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Happiness and Meditation (quick one for Michele)…

This is a quick post for Michele. A sort of aggregated post. I’ll have to add more in the future regarding where this comes from. Essentially, I’ve been intrigued in the past few years by the work going in conjunction with the Mind and Life institute. This institute is trying to bring about collaboration between Buddhist practitioners and Science Researchers. I myself am not Buddhist, but appreciate some of their intellectual pursuits.

Mattieu Ricard getting his EEG

In particular, I came across the work of Matthieu Ricard (who’s called the Happiest Man On Earth- what a title… must have serious responsibilities!). Videos for you after the link…
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Some thoughts on Productivity: my history and interests…

I find myself in the strange position of starting a new blog on a new site.  More professionally focused, less fluff if possible, to the point, more easily read; all these things come to mind when I think about what I’m wanting to do here.  Ultimately, it’s all about content and helping others with similar interests find possible solutions to what they are working through.  Having already discussed many items regarding productivity in the past, I’m finding I may be covering old ground anew.  But, I finally have a home here, and so I have to sweep away the cobwebs, polish the floor, find my furniture, and get things started.  This, an opportunity to start fresh, and tell you my thoughts on productivity approaches, and what has worked for me, and how I (like everyone) struggle with various aspects of pushing myself to success. (Read about the two books that have influenced my thoughts on productivity the most after the jump…)
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Making today a good day.

(written on Saturday)

Last night’s shindig has me quite tired today.  I think I haven’t slept too well, and yet there was so much to do, I couldn’t let myself waste the whole day.  The sun is shining outside like it hasn’t in ages.  Chel and I headed out to snag this summer’s plants (mostly flowers and a few tomatoes etc.).  A much previously discussed and needed chore.

Today, even though I had lack of sleep, I found it to be a joy, not a chore.  Starting last night I put out a recipe for blueberry pancakes, prepped the blueberries, and prepared for the AM.  We finally actually made pancakes together (America’s Test Kitchen BlueBerry Pancakes).  They hit the spot completely- wonderful batter, melted butter and a hearty helping of Maple Syrup.  I decided to forgo putting them all together before eating, so we ate standing up beside the griddle.  It was uncouth, for sure, but it was exactly what was needed after poor sleep.  The smile shaped up on Chel’s face after that (guess sugar in the AM is a good thing), and we planned our day- Farmer’s Market, then to FS to pick up flowers.

That’s what we did, and the smile on her face picking out various plants for the containers on the back porch told me that despite my extreme tiredness, it was more than worth the struggle to have her in a great mood.  We accidentally got the owner with our questions about planting, etc., and she was more than kind paying attention to us with our silly questions.  I apologized for taking her time up with small things and she said: “Well, that’s what got me here today… helping folks like you enjoy planting.”  (paraphrased)

So, now it’s off to snag some soil and mix up the cool new polyacrilamide crystals into it to help the direct-sunlight containers.  That reminds me, I need to do a bit of research on polyacrilamides- wondering if they’re just drying out hydrogels and selling them dry…

Sorry for the mundane post, but I figured a story would be better for the first go than another Hello World.  ;)

I hope to have a lot more useful items up on the blog soon.  Thank you for stopping in for a quick read!

-Allen

ps- Today was a day I realized that some days you can Make good days just by your choices in actions and care for others.  Sure, I could have stayed in bed, but I now have a happy gal on my hands, and just that is helping my own day totally rock.  [Not to mention our back porch is looking excellent!]

A Quick Introduction...

I'm a graduate student (PhD Candidate) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I've studied and researched in two fields of Materials Science and Engineering (Polymers and Semiconductors). My interests are as diverse as my musical tastes and I usually have my hand in some crazy project during my free time. I'm available for consulting and have access to a world-renown materials research user-facility supported by the D.O.E. If you would like to know more, please contact me.

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