“If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere”

- Marilyn Monroe

Do you follow every rule in life, whether the rules are set by your employer, law, or your peers?

Most of the time people try to make new rules to make life easier for us – think about for example how dangerous traffic is in countries where rules are not obeyed. However, there are also some rules that most people obey even though the rules are based more on limiting beliefs than actual laws or facts.

Here are some rules and myths that are eagerly waiting for you to break them if you want to succeed in life:

1. You need a master’s degree or an MBA to become successful in business

Getting a respected degree from a university was probably an excellent choice about 40 years ago, when there was less competition and everyone who graduated was almost definitely going to get a decent job with a nice salary. You didn’t have to worry too much about getting fired – there was always a new job around the corner.

Times have changed, and now almost every second person has a master’s degree, so where’s competitive advantage now?

You must be the best of your class with a perfect job experience to get full benefit from your degree, so I am not sure if studying very hard for five years is the best bet for success anymore. At least you don’t need it in order to achieve great things in life.

Most of the successful entrepreneurs have skipped university almost completely and nothing has stopped them later in life. Talk about Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg for starters.

If you have a master’s degree like I do, good for you, and sincere congratulations. If you don’t have a degree, don’t let it bother you. Succeeding in life comes from giving value to other people, and you don’t need a degree for that.

2. You can only make money if you have money

Sure it is easier to start making money if you have something to invest, but it has never been easier than today to start your own business online without investing more than about ten dollars on domain and hosting and then start making money as an affiliate marketer. It will not necessarily be a quick or an easy road, but it doesn’t involve any risk.

You can also start a bigger business with a little bit more risk, no matter how much money you have got at the moment, if you just take your time and find a business angel or two to fund your start-up.

If your plan is good enough, there is always money to help you to get started. Most countries also have their own funding for start-up entrepreneurs, so not having money right now is a bad excuse for not starting to make money.

3. You need a degree from your own language or Journalism to start writing articles

No, you don’t need any degrees for that. Many successful writers have never studied writing, but they have just started to write because they love to write, and eventually they have become quite good at it. J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter books was an unemployed single mom with no degree from writing when she began to write her first book.

No one becomes a great author instantly, and it takes time and practice like anything in life to become really good in writing, but you have to start somewhere and a degree is not nearly as important as practice is.

If you have dreamed about writing articles or your own book, why don’t you just start today? It doesn’t matter where you are now, all that matters is that you do what you love and learn everyday by doing.

You have nothing to lose and everything to win.

4. Writing a book takes a long time

No, it doesn’t have to take a long time. If you decide to write just two pages every day, which only takes an hour or two if you are in a productive mood, you will write 120 pages in four months, which is enough to call it a book in my opinion.

If you make it your habit to write just a little bit every day, you can write three books a year without any huge effort. It’s really not that difficult or time consuming when you have the right habits. Most people spend easily two hours a day watching TV or just laying in their couch doing nothing, so only by using that time more wisely you can publish your own book in just a few months. I bet that will be more rewarding than the soap operas you missed.

5. You need to have X (you can put youth, talent, looks, time, money – almost anything here) to become a star

It often seems like all the people who have somehow made it and become a rock star, famous actor, blogger superstar, or successful entrepreneur are different from the rest of us, and it is easy to make excuses to make yourself believe that you don’t have enough something to become what you deep down would like to be.

Let me tell you that it is simply not true. The only thing you need is to believe 110% in the thing you want to become really good at, and then start giving value to people as much as you can. Persistence is the key here. Talent, looks, and knowing the right people can make it easier to succeed in certain things, but what matters the most is that you have the persistence.

Do you think that Madonna or Britney Spears are amazing singers? Bullshit. I heard Madonna live and I could almost sing better than her.

You should just never give up. Most people give up after four months because they could not get a break during that time. Most famous superstars would still be serving drinks in a bar without persistence. Give everything you’ve got to chase your own dream for ten years, and then think about something else. Then you can at least look back when you are old and say that you tried and didn’t give up.

You only regret the things you did not do.

6. Investing is too difficult for an average person

Too many people either keep their money in a bank account or “invest” it to different expensive funds that their bank recommends for them. Because you are reading this article, you have access to internet and there is nothing that should prevent you from finding out how you can invest your money wisely without too much risk.

First get an account for shares and other commodities, then buy different stock market indexes if you don’t know how to pick right stocks, and remember to buy them a little bit over time. It’s all about patience.

Now it is quite a good moment for making long-term investments because the stock markets have come quite a bit down from the all-time highs, but don’t expect to make huge profits in a short period – focus on the long run.

Remember not to focus on the price if you buy stocks, but rather on the fact that you are going to own a little piece of the company. If the company is a really good one and you paid a reasonable price for it, why would it matter if the price goes down in the short run?

7. Your doctor knows everything

Respecting authorities and believing anything they say is quite common.

Especially for many elderly people doctors are god-like creatures that know everything about human beings and their bodies, but did you know that doctors for example study only one course regarding nutrition in university (at least in my home country), so if you believe that they know what you should eat to be healthy, you might be wrong.

If you buy and read ten books regarding nutrition and health, you are probably better off to give nutritional advice to other people than average doctor.

8. Scientifically researched things are facts

Science is only as good as the people who are behind the studies.

I have seen the academic world and I know that people there are not super-humans, but rather just like the rest of us. There are clever people in every field of science, but they are still only humans who can make mistakes and be biased towards something.

If a researcher or a lab gets funding from some source, it unfortunately is possible that the results are favorable for that particular source of funding, no matter how idealistic you would like to be.

It is possible to get different results from a particular data set, not to mention about how different data collection methods affect your results.

The main point is: Always believe in common sense and your own empiric observations more than authorities and scientific research.

Do you know some other rules or myths in life that one should break in order to succeed? Leave a comment and let me know.

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“Live with your whole being all the days of your life.  Your reward will be true happiness”

- Rebecca Thomas Shane

One of the best questions you can ask yourself if you are looking for a new direction in your life is “what would I do if I would get enough money each month without doing anything?”

What are the things in your life you love to do – things that make you feel good and make you forget time?

Every one of us has a lot of things we like to do without getting paid for doing them, so if you are not sure what to do with your life and you are bored with your present job, you can’t spend your time better than making a list of those things.

For me the list looks something like this:

- I would spend every Winter somewhere where it’s warm
- I would help other people to find meaning in their lives
- I would take photographs, draw, and paint
- I would play different sports and exercise almost every day

After you have made the list of those things (it can be much longer than mine), you can start to think about all the possibilities in life to earn a living by doing those things. Usually your mind is quite limited and does not let you fully see all the possibilities in your life, but don’t let it limit you this time.

List all the jobs and business ideas that come to your mind that have something to do with the things you would do even for free.

In my case those could be something like:

- Travel guide
- Author
- Artist
- Photographer
- Teacher
- Running my own gym
- Starting an online business

This list should be much longer than the first one, because you shouldn’t be too picky at this point – just list as many possible ways to earn living doing something similar to your passions as possible without thinking too much.

Is someone else making your life decisions for you?

I used to let quite odd things to affect my decisions in life in the past, such as how much money I could earn in a particular job or how respected the job would be. I think most people do that either consciously or unconsciously, but that’s the best way to not find the job, career or business that you would be truly passionate about.

If you hate waking up every morning knowing that you have to go to work that you don’t really like, what’s the use of getting a little bit more money to spend on something you don’t really need?

You can also ask your friends what you are good at – they usually have a little bit different perspective from yours and they can help you to realize some obvious things about your strengths.

After you have a clear vision of your strengths and passions in life, the most difficult part of finding a new direction in your life is done. It’s never easy, but you can jump into the unknown when you know that you always have your passions guiding you, no matter what your situation is.

Today is a perfect day for making the change

If you don’t like your job and your daily life, you can begin changing your life already today. Don’t quit your day job right away, but start doing those things you love to do, just a little bit every day. Sing, draw, help other people – whatever it is you love to do.

You can also start to look at new job opportunities and think about business ideas where you could use your strengths and follow your passions, and make a living at the same time.

Sometimes you must do something really unconventional with your life to be happy and quit doing what your neighbors or friends do.

This is your life, and you only live once. Live your own life, not someone else’s.

Follow your passions and you will not regret anything when you are old, and forget about money as long as you have enough of it to give you shelter and food.

Happiness, success, and even money come to those who overcome their fears and have enough courage to spend their days doing the things they love the most. How could you become really good at something otherwise?

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“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”

- Dagobert D. Runes

I’ve been traveling quite a lot during my adulthood, and one thing I have learned is that it is very difficult to sleep in planes nowadays because the space between seat rows is optimized and there’s really no extra space for your legs or to bend the seat backwards to a sleeping position (if someone is sitting right behind you).

I’m flying to Slovenia very soon for a little vacation, so I thought this kind of little tip for getting three seats from one plane would be nice right now.

Usually the planes are not fully booked, and there are empty rows of three seats somewhere in the plane. It really doesn’t matter where you sit on the plane, because your ticket is not checked after you hop on the plane, unless you are sitting on someone else’s seat.

Often the problem is that you just don’t know in advance where the empty seats are.

I have used this simple trick many times to find out easily where the empty seat rows are, so I want to share it with you readers now even if you become my competitors for the empty rows.

Be the Last One to Enter the Plane

When you have arrived at the boarding gate and the boarding starts, don’t rush to the line, but just sit, wait, and let other people stand in the line. You will not reach your destination any faster if you are the first one to get into the plane.

After EVERYONE else has entered the plane, and you are absolutely sure that you are the last one, you can calmly show your boarding pass and passport to the official in the counter.

Now you can walk slowly into the plane, and you should see other passengers putting their hand baggage on the shelves. If you have been slow enough, you should see where the empty rows are, as you are the last one to enter the plane.

You don’t have to care about the seat number that is written on your boarding pass, but you can just go to sit on the empty three seat row, if there is such left.

Just ask a pillow and a blanket from a flight attendant, pick off your shoes, fasten your seat belt loosely, and lay down to enjoy the three-seat-bed you have just got for yourself. Remember to pay also attention to other passengers’ envious glares before you fall to sleep.

Earplugs will make your sleep even better, so I suggest you take them with you to the flight.

I have used this trick many times, and it has enabled me to sleep very well during long flights. I don’t usually like to sit on the plane for a long time, because it makes me feel tired and exhausted, but when I can use the flight for sleeping, it can be quite relaxing and I can wake up rested and be ready to enjoy what waits for me in the destination.

Too bad the flight to Slovenia lasts only 2,5 hours, so there’s no need to sleep on the plane, but it’s always nicer if you have more space anyway.

If you like this article, you can thank me by sharing it with your friends for example in Twitter, Facebook, and Digg. Thank You!

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”

- Benjamin Franklin

Fear of failures is one of the biggest drivers behind most people’s actions. It makes them to always look for situations where they know the possibility of failure is minimal. In other words, they miss most opportunities of their lives.

What if I told you that there is no such thing as a failure?

That is how I genuinely see the world nowadays.

Everyone in this world has their own experiences and a unique perception of everything around them. The concept of failure is a man-made thing and every person sees the idea of failure differently.

People who choose to see even the smallest setbacks in life as big failures often end up being afraid of doing anything that forces them to step just a little bit out of their comfort zone, whereas people who see failures as great learning opportunities and as a possibility to develop more confidence and strength, are ready to take whatever life gives to them and always willing to challenge themselves.

While some people only see a failure, others will find the lesson in it, and while some people just focus on the pain, others will focus on the strength that just increased when something unexpected occurred.

The first way of looking at things is negative, self-destructive and limiting, while the latter one is positive, builds self-confidence and opens up new opportunities in life. It is up to you to make the decision how you want to see the little things we all have in our lives.

Do you want to have failures or great lessons in your life?

Who invented failure?

Failure is like the Loch Ness Monster.

It only exists as long as you believe in it. Just like any myth, it is a self-created phenomenon and does not exist until we create it with our thoughts, beliefs and behavior. When you decide to put the label “failure” on some event in your life, you decide to put yourself into a destructive state at the same moment, and you then let your body and emotions react accordingly.

When you choose to see the same experience as a growth opportunity and a good lesson, you put yourself into much more powerful state, and keep your mind and heart in a positive and solution-focused place.

I don’t know about you, but at least I want to live in a reality that is not filled with negative things and failures.

The time is always right for making the change

Like everyone else, I have had my share of problems in my life – I have tried some new things and failed miserably (that’s how I used to see things back then), and I have trusted people that were only there as long as they could benefit from my company.

No matter how good a person you are, life will not always be easy, but it is definitely worth it to start taking the steps to the right direction.

It doesn’t matter where you are at the moment. What matters is where you are going and that you have the will to grow mentally, evolve, and adapt to whatever life brings on your way. Your life is going to be full of positivity and great things if you choose so. The same applies to negative things.

The decision is yours, and it’s never too late to change.

Start today.

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“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.”

- Kin Hubbard

Many people don’t have a lot of extra money and they use pretty much everything they get and a bit more (taking short term loans like pikavippi or pikalaina from www.pikavippi.fm or www.vippisivut.com, which is not wise). Okay, the fact is that we are not going to get our money with us when we die, but I think it’s much less stressful to always have enough money on your bank account to take a break from your day job and go traveling for six months, for example.

I thought it would be useful to list a few tips that can help you to save money quickly. It doesn’t really matter what your salary is – if you just live by your means and decide to save money, it is more than possible to save enough money during the next few months to have a break and spend a few months abroad, if that’s your dream.

At least it is mine, so let’s get to the seven great tips for saving money quickly:

1. Spend Less

Oh my.

I know it is hard.

It sounds so easy but there are always new gadgets (for guys) and shoes (for girls) to buy, so what should you do in order to really spend less?

First you have to know where your money goes. Collect your receipts and bills for one month and find it out. When you know where you spend your money, start reviewing your spending habits and try to find ways of getting rid of unnecessary costs.

Do you really need to be on the phone with your best friend three times a day, or could you talk via Skype or actually meet more often?

How about the Cappuccino you buy every day during the lunch break? 4 dollars a day equals 1460 dollars per year!

Do you really need to have newspapers and magazine delivered to your home? At least I don’t want to pay for something I can read online or at work. You can also use library instead of buying books or music.

There are literally hundreds of ways to save a little money, and when you count them all together, it’s not little money you are saving, but a lot of money that you can use for something that is truly important for you.

2. Budget

If you don’t have a budget, it’s quite difficult to know where your money goes. Every company must have a budget to limit spending, and so do you.

Count how much you have money coming in and then count how much money is going out. After that you should be able to decide how much you want to save each month and stick to it.

If you have counted that it is possible for you to save 500 dollars a month, you should have a savings account and automated payment after each salary, so that the amount you want to save is deducted from your main account right after you get your salary. If you never see it, it’s more difficult to spend it.

3. Buy used

More than often a used item is as good as a brand new one, but costs heck of a lot less. Especially when it comes to cars (OK, you shouldn’t buy a car at all if you care about your money), and electronic equipment, a used item is a lot cheaper but the condition can still be perfect.

If you really need to buy something, search eBay and other similar sites online to find great deals for used items. It’s almost the same as you would get a 50% discount for every item you buy. How great would that be?

4. Buy bulk

Can you shop and buy in bulk? When you prepare your meals in advance, prepare more food when you cook (use your fridge), and buy generics, you can save a lot of money.

Also, when you spot a good discount offer for some product that you use a lot, and that is easy to preserve for a long time, such as orange juice or UHT milk, you should buy a lot of it at once and fill your cupboards with it.

Remember always to check the price by looking at price per weight unit or volume unit – not per product.

5. Do price research

Especially when you are buying something more expensive, do a lot of price research before you buy. It only takes you a while but can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on what you are buying.

It’s so much easier to save 100 dollars when you buy a new bike, for example, than it is to earn 100 dollars by working. Saved money is worth as much as earned money is.

6. Get rid of debt

Debt is one of the biggest scams that most people don’t realize. Compounding interest rate can either work for you or against you. It works for you when you save money and invest it for example in stocks, and it works against you when you have debt.

If you don’t have enough cash to buy something, then you probably should save first – otherwise you are paying a big premium just because you are not patient enough.
Mortgage is in my opinion the only reasonable debt, but even then you should try to keep the amount of debt as small as possible, and try to buy the apartment when prices are not in a bubble.

7. Eat in rather than out

It’s so easy to go to a restaurant, where someone else prepares the food for you and all you have to do is sit, eat, and pay, but eating out regularly can be one of the biggest expenses in your life. Good restaurants are quite expensive, and average restaurants often can’t always compete with a good, affordable home made meal.

Be wise and prepare your food yourself. You can make it your hobby and a little daily challenge to prepare an amazing and delicious meal that doesn’t cost much.

If you liked this article, you can thank me by sharing it with your friends for example in Twitter, Facebook, and Digg. Thank You!

“Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.”

- Victor Hugo

Genetics have a lot to do with your potential IQ, but intelligence is not only about the ability to understand and learn new things – the more you know about things the more intelligent you appear to be and the easier it is for you to master things.

You can become more intelligent by certain habits that most intelligent people have, and although our genetics may set us some limits, we are often not even close to those limits, and by training regularly it is quite easy to become a faster learner, and reason and understand things quicker, which on the other hand will help us in many aspects of life, such as work, business, and social life.

Here are the top 5 habits that intelligent people have:

1. Teach Other People

It really is true that by teaching other people you will learn much faster than in any other way.

When you have to explain something to other people, you first have to actually understand the whole idea you are trying to teach, and then you also have to use your reasoning skills to be able to explain it in a simple way, so that other people are able to learn it.

Even if you don’t have the possibility to teach other people directly, you can use the same idea by writing an abstract every time you are trying to learn something.

The easiest way of becoming an expert in something and honing your intelligence is to start writing a blog about a subject that you love. You will learn new things faster than you ever could imagine – not only by writing and teaching your readers, but also because creating a website is full of small obstacles that need your intelligence and reasoning skills to be conquered.

2. Read

Reading is a good way of making you more intelligent, because you get a lot of new information by reading that helps you to understand different concepts and increases your learning capacity.

Like every bodybuilder has to train in order to make their muscles grow, our brains need exercise to become more intelligent as well, and focused reading is one of the best ways of brain training.

It would be quite difficult to get new ideas, if there were no possibility to pick other people’s brain by reading their writings. It doesn’t matter if you are reading a book, magazine, or a blog, as long as you are challenging your mind and learning new things.

3. Learn by Doing

It seems like the only way of actually understanding a subject is by getting into action and learning by doing.

When you read about something, your own view of the world affects how you understand the things you are trying to learn, and only by doing things yourself it is possible to know how things really work.

You can read a thousand books about sailing, but if you have never sailed, you will not know much about sailing.

Doing new things hones your intelligence by setting small obstacles ahead of you all the time that you must pass in order to succeed. Those are the best learning opportunities and are equally important for your intelligence than a good weight training session is for your muscles.

4. Focus on One Thing

The way our society works makes those people appear more intelligent who have mastered one thing very well.

I don’t particularly like this idea, because I think it is quite rewarding to learn many subjects reasonably well, but fact is that mastery of a subject is highly rewarded in our society.

If you want to appear more intelligent by becoming an expert in something, it requires that you become almost obsessed about that one thing for a long time, and focus almost only on that, being persistent all the time and not giving up before you know everything about that particular subject.

5. Be Open-Minded

Quite often people stick to their own thoughts and ideas about life, hang out with people that are like-minded and look the same, and listen to music genres that they are familiar with.

In my opinion, this kind of closed-mindedness and sticking to old habits prevents you from becoming more intelligent, because doing the things we have already done for a long time isn’t particularly challenging to our brains.

Instead of that, do something new today:

• Try to meet one new person (the kind of guy you usually wouldn’t want to get to know)
• Listen to songs that other people say are good but that are from genres you don’t usually like
• Go to somewhere you haven’t been before
• Watch a new movie you thought you would hate
• Read an argument about something that is completely opposite with your ideas and try to find out if you were wrong

Being open-minded will also open up new opportunities in the long run that you will never find if you are too scared of challenging yourself mentally. That is probably even more important and useful than becoming a little bit more intelligent.

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“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

- Aaron Siskind

Photography is one of my biggest passions, and one good photo can make me happy even after many years, when I find it again on my computer.

I have been taking photos for a long time, but it has taken me some time to figure out how the professional photographers can make their photos look so intriguing, vivid, and… well, professional.

The most important thing is of course composition and the idea you have in the picture, but there are lots of other small things that make some photos really stand out.

Knowing how to use your equipment, for example if you have an SLR camera is really important, but in this article I am only going to focus on the simplest post processing techniques, because post processing was one of the most difficult things to figure out for me, and I am still learning it all the time.

Here’s a photo straight from my camera (you can click all the images in this article to see them in a bigger size):

Figure 1

This photo of Angkor Wat is taken in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The temples of Angkor were built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, and they represent one of humankind’s most astonishing and enduring architectural achievements. There were more then 100 temples in Angkor Wat, and the view was nothing short of spectacular during the sunrise.

The photo is now just OK, and there are quite many things to do in order to make it look much better. I personally use Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Capture One –image editing software to work with my photos, but there are other options as well, such as Paint Shop Pro, and other smaller and still handy programs.

Here are the steps I took to enhance the original image in Photoshop:

1. Straighten the horizon and crop the picture

If the horizon is not straight, it usually gives an amateurish look for the picture, so you have to make sure first that your horizon is straight.

Cropping the photo is the second thing you should do, in order to only include in the picture everything that really belongs there and make the photo more precise and artistic.

Here’s how you can both straighten the horizon and crop the picture with one tool in Photoshop:

• In Photoshop, click “c” or select the crop tool from the toolbox.
• Drag out a crop marquee. You don’t have to care about the overall size, but position one horizontal edge near the horizon line (see figure 2). The line does not have to be the horizon – it can be anything that should be perfectly horizontal, such as a roofline of a building or a fence.
  

  Figure 2

• Move the cursor to just outside the marquee near a corner. Your cursor icon will now become a double-pointing curved arrow indicating that you can rotate the whole marquee
• Rotate and move the marquee so that one edge follows a horizon line.
• Now you should have one edge aligned with the horizon, so you can reposition all four edges to match the exact crop area (figure 3).
  

  Figure 3

• Click right button of your mouse and select “crop”. Now you have a picture that is both cropped and has a straight horizon (figure 4).
  

  Figure 4

Next thing I always do is to make sure that the image is sharp. If you are using longer exposure with your camera (in a darker environment without a flash), a tripod is very good thing to have, otherwise the images easily become blurred.

2. Sharpen the image

First zoom closer to an area in the image where you can see the details (figure 5), and then click:

Filter – Sharpen – Sharpen / Sharpen Edges

Figure 5

In this photo, I decided to sharpen only the edges, because there is a big dark area in the middle of the picture that has edges that need to be sharpened a little bit, but there’s no reason to sharpen the sky or the pond in front of the temple.

If you are not satisfied with the results, you can click “Sharpen More” from the same place, but usually there’s no reason to sharpen the image too much – it will just start to look weird if the original image wasn’t sharp enough to begin with.

3. Enhance contrast

Enhancing the contrast of an image makes it look more dynamic. There’s no reason to go overboard with contrast either, unless you want to make very unrealistic, but artistic images.

When you add more contrast to a photo, the darker areas become darker, and lighter areas lighter.

Click Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Brightness/Contrast

A new dialog box “New Layer” opens – just click “OK”.

Now a new menu opens where you can adjust both brightness and contrast of your image (figure 6).

In this photo I wanted to make the silhouette of the temple quite dark, so that the details of it cannot be seen, but only the nice black shadow is visible, so I adjusted the contrast to +100.

Figure 6

You should also adjust brightness at the same time, if the photo is too dark or bright in general.

4. Enhance saturation

Brighter and more vivid colors look usually nice to human eye, so it is often good to enhance the saturation of an image a little bit:

Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Hue/Saturation

Another dialog box will open. Just click OK and you should have an adjustment box like in figure 7:

I enhanced the saturation by +27, to make the photo look a little bit more colorful without going too much overboard.

Now the image is cropped and straightened, and the contrast and saturation are enhanced a little bit (Figure 8). It still looks quite natural, so if you don’t want to have unrealistic images, those adjustments should be enough.

Figure 8

However, if you want to give the image some additional wow-factor, you can follow the next steps.

For the additional steps I have used a program called Capture One by a company called Phase One. There are probably many different ways of getting the same results, but as I only know how to use this program to get the results I want, that’s what I’m going to show you next.

Actually it is quite easy to do all the steps I have shown you already in Capture One as well, but I wanted to show the basic steps in Photoshop, as I think many people already have that program compared to other photo editing software.

When you have saved the image as a .JPG in Photoshop, you can open it in Capture One.

5. Add clarity

First, I’ll add a little bit more clarity, which is a nice filter in Capture One. You can access that adjustment in “Details”, which is the orange icon in figure 9, that looks like a magnifying glass.

I put the amount of clarity to 50, it enhances the contrast and details a little bit more compared to the contrast adjustment in Photoshop.

Figure 9

6. Change color balance

This will make your photo look unrealistic, but if it doesn’t matter, you can play with it and create amazing scenes for example from quite ordinary sunset or sunrise pictures
.
I changed the color balance in Capture One from the color menu (three orange circles in figure 10), and moved the small ball in the bigger colorful ball under color balance submenu towards pink.

It changes the look of the picture completely, but I like it a lot. It is a matter of taste how you want to change the color balance (if you want to change it at all).

Figure 10

7. Add vignetting

The last step I usually do is to add vignetting. It is a tool that imitates some lenses that people use in SLR cameras, making the edges of the image darker. I like the mood that it brings to the image. You can find the vignetting tool under the lens menu.

I put the vignetting amount to -3,20EV in Capture One, as you can see in figure 11, and voilà, the image is ready for publishing!

Figure 11

Here’s the final picture – you can click it to see it in bigger size:

Figure 12

Final words

Editing images of human beings usually requires a little bit different kind of retouching, for example by making the skin smoother and adding different glowing effects to make the image more intriguing and to make the person in the picture look more beautiful or handsome. I’ll write about that in some other post.

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“There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.”

- Author unknown

Waking up early is almost impossible for me.

Getting a cat would probably be a solution, but as I don’t want to go that far, I hope that there are other solutions that work as well.

I need quite a lot sleep, at least 8 or 9 hours to feel normal, and 9 to 10 hours of sleep to wake up without an alarm clock. Some people enjoy going to sleep early and waking up early, too, but I often like to do different things in the evening and prolong going to sleep, which of course makes it harder to wake up in the morning.

If you are on a vacation, it doesn’t necessarily matter when you wake up, but I have noticed that waking up early makes me feel better (if I have slept enough) and it is then easy to get more things done during the day and still be able to catch a little bit sunshine after the workday is over.

I am not working for anyone else than myself at the moment, so no one is expecting me to wake up in the morning, which gives me the full responsibility to take control of my own sleeping patterns. It is both good and a bad thing.

For me, tips like “just wake up the same time every morning and go to sleep when you feel tired” don’t work at all.

The alarm clock doesn’t wake me up, because it is possible for me to shut it down, even though I would have set on 15 different alarms to make it more difficult to shut them down in the morning, one each minute, for fifteen minutes total (I really tried that).

Neither works putting the alarm clock somewhere where I have to walk in order to put it off – I can then easily return to the bed and continue sleeping.

I thought I was a hopeless case until I came up with these ideas:

1. Ditch your blanket

Have you made your bed to be as comfortable as possible, with just right kind of mattress, soft pillows, and warm blankets?
I have certainly done that mistake.

Bed is supposed to be just a place to get the necessary rest – not a place where you want to spend your days. Remove the blankets for one week and see what happens. If you feel cold, put more clothes on.

2. Sleep in the sofa

Getting rid of blankets helps sometimes, but if that’s not enough, you can try sleeping on the sofa. I tried that two days ago and it worked tremendously well – I woke up at 9:40 AM, which is five minutes before my alarm was going to set off. If that time sounds late, remember that I normally wake up at around 11:30 AM.

I could get a decent rest on the sofa, but it wasn’t too comfortable, so I didn’t feel any urge to continue sleeping when I woke up for the first time.

3. Open your curtains

I have used this tip earlier as well, and it helps a little bit, as light helps our body to function correctly and release the hormones that are needed to waking up. I open the curtains before I go to sleep so that in the morning the light will come in and make it much easier to wake up, and a little bit uncomfortable to continue sleeping when the sun is shining through the windows.

In Finland, where I live, the problem is that during the summer the sun is shining almost all the time, but in the winter the day is only a few hours long.
When it’s dark all the time, I use wake up light to help me wake up. It’s a basic lamp with a bright light that you can program to wake you up naturally when you want. It works quite well.

4. Tips for going to sleep earlier

One thing that makes it much harder to wake up in the morning is going to sleep too late. Sometimes I just listen to music or surf online in the night, although I wouldn’t have anything important to do. It’s actually a complete waste of time.

The problem is that it is difficult to shut the computer down if you have been sitting on it for a few hours and you have nothing better to do except sleeping, and you are too tired to work.

I don’t like sleeping in the evening; I just like to sleep in the morning, so I obviously had to come up with a solution to being able to get to bed (or sofa) earlier somehow.

The solution for me was to figure out ways of making it fun to go to bed.

It’s easier to shut the computer down if I decide to watch TV for a while or read a book in my bed. If I am already lying on the bed, it’s easy to fall asleep quite fast, so that’s the way I can trick my mind to shut down the computer earlier, which on the other hand makes it easier to go to sleep earlier.

If the problem is that you don’t feel tired at all, you should try melatonin capsules. They are natural sleep hormones that are sold in many places without a recipe. Unlike some sleeping pills, they don’t make you feel groggy in the morning.

Extra tip for changing your sleeping pattern quickly

If you have been traveling in another time zone or if your sleeping pattern is so awry that it is difficult to change it, you can try this method:

Skip one night completely.

Don’t go to sleep at all for one night, and refuse to go to sleep until the next night. If it’s difficult to stay awake, drink coffee or make yourself busy for the whole day to help you avoid sleeping.

Now you should be quite tired in the evening, which makes it easier to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier as well.

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“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”

- Henry David Thoreau

I just love time management techniques.

The reason for that is not that I would like to be the most efficient person in the world and become a workaholic who works efficiently for 12 hours a day, but rather the fact that with a right kind of time management you can achieve the same things in two hours that most people spend eight hours a day for.

Imagine that your workday would last only two or three hours, and you could then relax for the rest of the day without any stress regarding things that are still undone. It is all possible if you skip all the irrelevant things and focus only on the most crucial things as effectively as you can.

Unfortunately in a regular job you are not always rewarded for being efficient – usually your boss just gives you more work when you have finished everything. Maybe a good technique at a workplace is to finish the crucial things quickly, but tell the boss that you are still working on whatever you are supposed to get done, so that you will not be punished with additional tasks.

However, here are the biggest mistakes that people make with time management – avoid these and you will have more time for yourself:

1. Forgetting to prioritize your to do list

Often people realize that it is necessary to have a to do list, but if you don’t arrange the tasks into a particular order, you will very easily end up doing irrelevant tasks the whole day, such as replying to e-mails, or making useless phone calls.

Instead of having a long to do list, always remember to pick from two to six absolutely crucial tasks every day into a top priority list, in which you have the most important tasks in the correct order. Then, don’t go to number two before you have completed the most important task – task number one on your top priority list.

Your complete to do list should be just a way to remember everything you can do, but not a list of equally important tasks that helps you to avoid doing the most important things you should do.

2. Multi-tasking

Especially if you are a guy, don’t try to do five things at the same time. Some girls can multi-task fifteen things at the same time and sometimes even get those things done, but for the less beautiful gender it is impossible.

Our brains are not in the most effective state when you are not focused on one thing only. Momentum is very important for being effective, and you only gain momentum when you focus on one thing for long enough.

You can use multi-tasking for the low-importance activities, such as listening to music or an educational mp3 while you are driving a car or doing something physical, but in other cases you should definitely complete one task without any distractions before moving to the next.

3. Distractions

This is usually my biggest obstacle.

There are millions of potential distractions in the world, but we have the ability to shut down most of them if we really want to.

OK, I admit, when I was working for others, I really didn’t have the internal motivation to finish the tasks efficiently, so I was usually happy when I had some kind of excuse to not actually work.

If your computer keeps on popping up notifications of unused items on your desktop or new e-mails, find out how to disable those notifications. It is perfectly okay to not reply every e-mail in two minutes. If you are trying to finish a really important task, you should switch of your phone and instant messaging services completely.

Make also sure that your working environment is free from interruptions. If you have a door in your office room, keep it closed when you are doing something important, even though you should be accessible the other times.

If the working environment is noisy, buy earplugs and use them. For some people, soothing music helps to concentrate, but for me personally, the best thing for productivity is the absolute silence that can be achieved with earplugs.

4. E-mails

E-mails are kind of included in the last point, but I want to stress the fact that you should really think about how e-mails affect your time management.
Do you start your day by checking your e-mails?

If yes, you are taking a big risk of losing the whole day doing irrelevant tasks. Like I said, it is perfectly fine to reply to e-mails a little bit later, so always start your day by finishing the most important task of the day before doing anything else. After you have finished the most crucial tasks, you can reward yourself with something fun.

Some people also check their e-mails continuously during the day, which is very time consuming, and interrupts all the time what you are working on. One to three times per day is enough.

5. Facebook

Like e-mails, Facebook is part of point number three, but it is becoming so big a distraction that it deserves more attention.

I know quite well how fun it is to stalk other people in Facebook, so I know it is not easy to stay away from it, but instead of starting your day with Facebook, make it your reward to see what’s happened on Facebook after you have done what you must do.

One good tip is to remove most of the notifications that are sent to your e-mail daily. They get your attention quite easily, and make it difficult to not check them out in more detail. Some people even have told that they have spent whole days only on Facebook, which is quite extreme.

Stay out of Facebook when you have to work, and at least disable the Facebook chat unless you really are willing to spend a few hours trying to tame the chats with friends that pop up continuously.

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“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”

- St. Augustine

One of my biggest passions in life is traveling. Seeing new countries with their own distinctive culture, sceneries, people, smells, and foods always expands my mind and helps me to see the world through different perspective.

The longest trip I have done was about three years ago and lasted for almost four months. I flew first to Australia, traveled from Sydney to Darwin by car, seeing all the cities and towns in between, fell in love with sailing and diving in Great Barrier Reef, surfing in Bondi Beach, the starry night in the middle of the Outback, the crocodiles in Darwin, and all the amazing fellow travelers and friendly Australians I met during the trip.

After Australia I surfed in Bali and saw some of the most beautiful sceneries I’ve ever seen in Gili Islands in Indonesia, experienced the crazy amount of scooters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, relaxed by laying one day on a tractor tube in one of the most beautiful rivers in Laos, saw what one of the most horrific genocides in the history of humankind had done for really cool and relaxed Cambodia, learned what traffic jam really means in Bangkok, Thailand, and finally smuggled some bubblegum to Singapore before heading back home.

For many people like me, traveling is almost like a drug. When you get used to seeing new places in the world and experiencing new things, it is quite hard to stop. But why should you? I think there’s nothing negative in experiencing new things, if you forget the lowered motivation for supporting the rat race after seeing how happy many people abroad are without many material possessions or fierce competition.

Whether you are going to travel for a longer period of time or just visiting another country for a few days, here are some basic tips that have helped me to make the most of my travels:

1. Do Some Research

If you don’t know yet where you would like to go, you should do comprehensive research of all the possible places you would be interested of going to, and how much it costs to travel there.

Read travel blogs, skim through travel websites and their forums, and ask your friends.

According to my own experience, the most popular and most touristy spots are not the ones that give you the most satisfaction. Some people appreciate the feeling of safety and ease of going to a place where everyone else goes, too, but let me tell you, it is really not that more dangerous in less known places either.

I was a little bit hesitant at first about traveling to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but I was only surprised by how easy it was to travel there, and nothing scary happened during the travels. I felt as safe there as in any place in the world, and probably the bigger cities in the Western world are more dangerous anyway.

My next destination later this summer will be Croatia, where I am planning to rent a car and drive around the neighbor countries, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Montenegro. The distances are so short compared to my home country, Finland, so there’s no reason to stick to one spot for a long time.

One of the coolest things to help making traveling decisions is the Street View in Google Maps. You can stroll through the cities everywhere in the world in 3d mode and see how the place you’re going to visit actually looks like. Use that to find some nice places, although it doesn’t cover the whole world – yet.

2. Book Cheap Flights

Finding cheap flights has never been easier. Try typing “cheap flights” into Google and see what happens. Usually the airlines sell cheapest tickets long time before the actual departure, so if you can book your flight long time in advance, you should definitely do it.

Some of the best offers in my opinion for longer travels are the round the world tickets that include multiple stops you can select with flexible dates. They cost like $1000 – $2000  at the cheapest, which is not that much if you consider how easily 1000 dollars can be spent to just one short trip.

Another option is to book the whole trip right before the departure, because some companies sell cheap flights with accommodation just before the departure. However, the choice is usually quite limited at that point, and they usually include only the touristiest spots.

I use mostly the following sites for booking my flights:

www.ebookers.com
www.supersaver.com
www.edreams.com

3. Buy a Travel Guide

Don’t get cheap on this point. Spending $15 on a guide like Lonely Planet helps so much in finding hostels, hotels, restaurants, and the most interesting places to see, wherever you are going. When you have a travel guide for your destination, there’s really no need to book a hotel or a hostel in advance – you can just pick a nice accommodation from the book one by one when you get there and call them to ask if they have spare rooms.

Just find a cheap flight and a travel guide, and you’re ready to go.

The travel guide usually has information about visas, vaccinations, and other things that you must take care of when traveling to a particular country, so read the guide before you travel anywhere.

4. Make Backup Plans and Be Flexible

One of the best things in traveling is the sense of total freedom. I want to take it as easy as possible all the time, and never have plans that could not be changed. If I enjoy one place particularly much, I will prolong my stay there, and if some city puts me off, I will not spend a whole week there even though that would have been my plan earlier.

It makes everything much easier if you have already figured out a few places you might want to go to, so that you already know your backup plans when one spot is not what you expected.

5. Stick to a Budget

It’s not cool to spend a vacation worrying about having no money left. Count in advance how much you have money to spend during your travels per day, and then refuse to spend more. Don’t make the budget too tight though – there are always some expenses that you can’t predict.

If you are able to stick to your budget, you can sometimes splurge and buy something really nice for yourself. It feels better to buy something expensive when you are not spending too much money all the time.

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