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Have you ever been at a party or on a blind date only to find yourself with nothing to say?

It’s an awkward feeling; still no one is stepping up to ride the room of silence.

Thankfully, you’ll never have to experience that situation again. Next time, all you’ll have to do is ask a question. And, thanks to One Hundred Questions, you’ll have plenty of material to work with.

The fine folks at The School of Life have created One Hundred Questions as a kind of conversation starter-kit. If you’re looking for an engaging or entertaining conversation, all you have to do is ask a question. With topics that span from work to travel, and death to sex, these cards will ease you into dialogue that will last all night. Or, they’ll prevent you from wasting your time, revealing relationship deal-breakers right off the bat.

Topics include:

• Personality & Emotions
• Sex & Relationships
• Family & Friendship
• Work & Money
• Travel, Culture & Taste
• Life & Death

One Hundred Questions | School of Life

Who said that there had to be an absolute answer for each and every question? 31 Questions That Will Change Your Life

The post 100 Questions for Better Conversations appeared first on Lifehack.

Are you a coffee addict, gossip, a snob, or a Europhile? You might not label yourself with one of these titles, but your coffee preference might tell the world that’s what you are.

So what does your coffee preference say about you? This infographic can answer that question. Of course, some of the tip offs are more obvious than others. For example, if you’re drinking chai instead of a coffee, you’re really a tea-drinker at heart and if you order an extra large with a dozen refills, you’re pretty obviously an addict.

On the other hand, it might not seem so immediately obvious that someone whose coffee preference is a white chocolate mocha is high maintenance until you actually stop and think about it.

As someone who drinks tea and can’t really stand coffee, I pretty much stay firmly in the “ex-tea drinker” category even when I do enjoy something with a touch of coffee. What about you, what is your coffee preference?

How do you decide on the best way to brew your coffee? Here are seven of the best coffee makers for a perfect cup of coffee: 7 Best Coffee Makers that Brew the Best Cup

The post What Do Your Coffee Preferences Say About You? appeared first on Lifehack.

Music has the power to affect our emotions in powerful ways and this is why it has long been known that working out to the right songs can give you the edge and help push you further in your workout. Lyrics can act as powerful affirmations and words of inspiration that can reaffirm your belief in your abilities and achieving your goals. Here are 30 of the best songs that will inspire, motivate and give you the power to go on:

30. “Eye Of The Tiger” by Survivor

“Went the distance, now I’m back on my feet, just a man and his will to survive.”

This speaks for itself; turn it up loud and stand tall!

29. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

“Don’t you know that there ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough…”

Don’t let any obstacles that get in your way hold you back.

28. “Jump” by Van Halen

“Go ahead and jump! Might as well jump!”

Pure motivation!

27. “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi

“I ain’t gonna be just a face in the crowd. I just wanna live life while I’m alive.”

Define who you are by how you live.

26. “International Love” by Pitbull feat. Chris Brown

This song’s great opening line “you can’t catch me boy” is perfect for stomping out the miles on the treadmill.

25. “When the Going Gets Tough” by Billy Ocean

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

This song is a classic for a great workout. Can you tough it out?

24. “We Will Rock You” by Queen

Start your session as you mean to go on with this thumper of an anthem.

23. “Firework” by Katy Perry

“‘Cause baby, you’re a firework. Come on, show ‘em what you’re worth. Make ‘em go, oh, oh, oh. As you shoot across the sky.”

22. “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen

“Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

This is the runners’ anthem.

21. “I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly

A song to truly inspire you to achieve your goals.

20. “Good Life” by OneRepublic

“Oh this has gotta be the good life. This has gotta be the good life. This could really be a good life, good life.”

Inspiring lyrics and an uplifting tune will keep you going.

19. “Walking On Sunshine” by Katrina And The Waves

“Hey, alright now, and don’t it feel good?! Hey yeah, oh yeah, and don’t it feel good?!”

More great lyrics with a uplifting tune to finish a session on.

18. “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC

The intensity of this epic rock song will make you feel invincible.

17. “Enter Sandman” by Metallica

The powerful build-up and crashing guitar sounds will fire you up and get your adrenaline pumping through your body. There’ll be no stopping you with this awesome track playing.

16.  ”Bang A Drum” by Bon Jovi

“Well I’m gonna die believin’ each step that I take. Ain’t worth the ground that I walk on if we don’t walk it our way.”

15. “Get up Stand up” by Bob Marley

“Get up, stand up: don’t give up the fight!”

It’s not over yet. This is a perfect number for that midway point in your workout session.

14. “Break My Stride” by Matthew Wilder

“Nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh no, I got to keep on movin’.”

13. “We Are The Champions” by  Queen

“But it’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise. I consider it a challenge before the whole human race. And I ain’t gonna lose!”

12. “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor

This song is an inspirational anthem to help you believe in yourself and your ability.

11. “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath

Here’s a heavy metal classic with a title that defines you as weight training giant!

10. “Living On A Prayer” by Bon Jovi

“We gotta hold on ready or not, you live for the fight when its all that you’ve got.”

These are good lines to hear when you’re finding the going difficult.

9. “Gonna Fly Now (soundtrack to Rocky)” by Bill Conti

“Trying hard now, it’s so hard now, trying hard now. Getting strong now, won’t be long now, getting strong now, Gonna fly now.”

If it’s good enough for Rocky…

8. “Proud” by Heather Small 

“What have you done today to make you feel proud?”

Be proud of yourself and what you are achieving.

7. “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2

“I want to run. I want to hide. I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside.”

6. “Never Surrender” by Corey Hart

“With a little perseverance you can get things down. Without the blind adherence that has conquered some.”

5. “Beautiful Life” by Ace of Base

“You can do what you want, just seize the day.”

4. “I Feel Good” by James Brown

“I feel good.”

A great song to finish a workout session!

3. “Another One Bites The Dust” by Queen

As your final rep is completed, this song will inspire you to go for one more.

2. “Lose Yourself” by Eminem

The best self-motivating mantra of them all!

“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”

Listen to this and you can do anything you set your mind to.

1. “It’s A Beautiful Day” by U2

This song makes you feel that any day can be a good one after a good workout.

 

Music is an amazing thing. The right inspiring lyrics, or motivational songs can give you a kick in the backside: 30 Inspirational Songs that Keeps You Motivated for Life

The post 30 Best Workout Songs to Keep You Pumped appeared first on Lifehack.

By Leo Babauta

A trusted organization system that you actually use regularly can turn your day from one of chaos to one of focus, effectiveness and calm.

This is something I’ve learned through repeated failures, actually: when I become loose with my organized habits, my day becomes worse. It gets stressful and crazy, and I can’t focus on anything. Everything is on my head all the time, and I’m always worried that I’m missing something, that I should be doing something else.

But when I get my system down, and the habits are on track, things are smooth, I feel good about what I’m doing, and I’m much better able to let everything else go and focus on what’s in front of me, confident that everything else is in its place.

I’ll show you my system in a minute, but first let’s talk about what a good organizational system does and how it works.

Why Form the Habits of Organization

Several important reasons:

1. Stress: An excess of stress very negatively affects your health. If you have good habits in place to deal with all the stuff in your life, you stress out about everything less. You feel less worry that things are slipping through the cracks. You feel trust that you are OK working on what’s in front of you.
2. Effectiveness: If you are able to externalize all the things you’re worried about into a trusted system, you can better focus on the task in front of you. You can single-task, and be more effective at each task, because it’s getting your full focus.
3. Relationships: I’ve found relationships to be about the most important thing in my life, personal but also business. And the best way to build relationships is to be trustworthy. And the best way to be trustworthy is to keep your commitments. If you’re organized, you are more likely to keep your commitments. Organizaton is largely about managing your commitments.

Building a Trusted System

So what does a trusted system look like? Honestly, there are a million tools and combinations of tools you might use, but there are a few things that are important in building a trusted system:

• You find a place for everything — todos, passwords, appointments, repeating tasks, incoming info and requests, other info you need to store, documents, receipts.
• You actually use the system and put things where they belong, as soon as you can (see next section, for the habits).
• You recognize when things are sitting in your inbox or open browser tabs or computer desktop, and find a place for them.

With that said, here’s my current system (it changes over time) … just note that you don’t need to use my system, and there are lots of great tools for each type of item:

1. Incoming: Most of my incoming requests, tasks, info, and appointments come in through Gmail. Sometimes through other channels, but 90% of the time through Gmail. When I check Gmail, I try to take each thing out of Gmail and put it where it belongs — in one of the tools below.
2. Todos: Lately I’ve been using Trello. I stole this system from Ryan Carson of Treehouse: Create a tasks board in Trello, with lists for Most Important (my family, writing, reading, fitness, mindfulness), Today (includes appointments and tasks), Incoming (for things I haven’t placed yet), This Week (move tasks from here to Today each day), Later (move tasks from here to This Week as needed), Done (move things I finish here), and Waiting On (for things I’ve requested but haven’t received yet). Each morning I review this for 20 minutes, moving things as needed to the right places, so I know everything is in its place.
3. Other Work & Personal Info: I’ve been using Workflowy, which is a cool web app (with an iPhone app too) that allows you to store just about all the info in your life in one place. I used to put everything in Google Docs, but now I just dump it in Workflowy and it’s all together and searchable.
4. Passwords & secure info: I use 1Password, which not only stores (and generates) passwords, but bank info, credit cards, passport info, airline frequent flier numbers, and pretty much everything else I might need to remember.
5. Timed or repeating items: Google Calendar. Whenever I need to do something regularly, I create a recurring appointment in GCal. Reviewing my idea list (stored in Workflowy) twice a month, for example.
6. Receipts, financial docs, drafts, tickets: I’ve set up folders in Dropbox for these things — files which don’t fit into the other buckets.
7. Things to read later: If I have a tab open to read later, I put it into Instapaper, and open Instapaper when I have time to read.

That’s pretty much everything. What’s important is that everything has a place, and I know exactly where that place is.

Building the Organized Habits

Of course, it won’t be a trusted system unless you actually use it — there’s the rub. We often forget to use our system because we have old habits that don’t die easily.

Luckily, we can replace the old habits with better ones, with practice. It takes about a week of very conscious effort to do this, and after that it gets more and more automatic.

Here are the habits:

1. Create a place for everything. I showed how you might do that above, but find whatever tools work for you. The habit, though, is noticing when something is sitting in your inbox or in an open browser tab or somewhere else, not in its place. And then finding a place for it — sometimes that means consciously designating a new bucket just for that type of thing.
2. Don’t procrastinate — put it away immediately: The old habit is to put it off (procrastinate) to be put away later. No. That procrastination is what leads to the system falling apart. For one week, make a very conscious effort to not put this off, but instead to take a few seconds to put information, tasks, appointments and other such things right where they belong, right now. It doesn’t take long, but you have to be very conscious about it at first.
3. Don’t live in the inbox: We have a tendency to keep the inbox open, or to open it often. That means you’re constantly responding, instead of focusing. Instead, open the inbox, and one by one, put incoming items where they belong, and archive them in your inbox. You might not get to the bottom of the list, but you save yourself from having to contstantly look through the same things in your inbox over and over.
4. Review the system every morning: Make it a habit to review your task list and calendar every morning for 20 minutes (set a timer), so you know things are in their place. Move things from the Today list to Done, from This Week to Today, from Later to This Week, from Incoming to the appropriate list, and so on. Put calendar items on the Today list. Know where everything is. Then get out and start doing.

With these four habits, and a trusted system, you can now relax, and focus.

The Sea Change Get Organized Module

If you’d like help forming the habits of organization, in July we’ll be doing a new module in my Sea Change Program called Get Organized.

Sign up today to join us, and get a simple plan and some accountability.