I’ve been spending a lot of time researching how the brain works. And one thing is clear from the research–everyone should make it a priority to learn new things that are outside the comfort zone.

Learning something new is often frustrating, energy taxing, and even downright embarrassing. But it is by far the #1 way to improve your mind’s speed, accuracy, creativity and overall function

Thinking about this, I came upon an idea. I should learn how to juggle! I failed the juggling test in high school gym class (I even failed juggling with scarfs!) so this will be a good challenge for me. Plus juggling has all kinds of brain benefits like improving hand-eye coordination, reflexes, peripheral vision and motor skills.

To keep me honest and motivated I am going to livestream my juggling practices. If I am practicing my juggling, I will be livestreaming it.

Why not right?

The Importance of Learning New Things

Proficiency is more important than mastery. Learning how to play the piano, a new board game or a sport pretty well is all you need to gain cognitive benefits. It has been proven that during the learning process, after a certain point of proficiency, there are not major brain benefits like there was in the beginning.

Getting pretty good is all that matters. To gain the most brain benefits from learning you should achieve a level of proficiency that you feel good about and then try something new! New learning, no matter what it is, stimulates your brain and sharpens your mind in ways that benefit you far beyond the new skill you are learning.

New learning creates new neural pathways. New neural pathways accelerates critical thinking, creativity and the connection between ideas. You are the sum of your brain’s neural connections. And creating new connections is easy, just make an effort to learn something new everyday.

Learning is Uncomfortable

I used to believe and tell others “I don’t like to do things I am not good at.” I now realize that believing that statement has hindered my ability to be more creative, a better problem solver and critical thinker in my everyday life.

The brain is designed to see patterns, establish habits and conserve mental energy. This is why we tend to stick to what we know and avoid new things that are not critical for survival. This mindset creates a mind that is slower, less adaptable to change and rigid in its ways of thinking. It’s not apparent at first, but it happens over time, and leads to a path toward depression, anxiety and eventually alzheimer’s in old age.

Why Am I Doing This?

I owe it to my brain, my career and my future.

Livestreaming every second of my juggling practice will help me stick to it and make me accountable to more people than just myself. I hope you enjoy watching me struggle, fail, get a better with each practice time. I am excited to finally conquer something I thought I would never be able to do.

I don’t expect many views on these videos (they are painful and boring to watch as you can see below), but I am curious to record my progress and see how many hours it takes to get the basics down. Learning something new takes time and requires a bit of struggle and frustration that can feel defeating. I am not going to let myself give up until I can keep those damn balls in the air.

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I have been working with Barclaycard over the past few months on a new credit card that they launched earlier this year called the Barclaycard Ring. As part of our partnership, I’ve been using the credit card and taking part in the cardholder online community. I will also be writing a series of blog posts on the Barclaycard Ring Blog, which I hope you get a chance to read. In my first post, I share the struggle I went through in my 20’s trying to achieve financial stability.

Over the next few months, I will continue to share my experience as a cardholder on the Barclaycard Ring Blog. What I can say already is that the community aspect of the card has been amazing, and I feel it is the first truly social credit card. With the card comes a private cardholders-only community, transparency from the Barclaycard Ring team and support at every turn (which I have NEVER experienced with any of my other credit cards). What I’ve noticed the most about being a cardholder so far is that when I open my wallet and see it next to my other cards, I view it as a subtle reminder to be a better borrower, thoughtful spender and more conscious consumer.

You can check out my first blog post on their corporate blog, and I encourage you to read some of the other posts from the Barclaycard team. They do a great job informing consumers about financial news/trends and how it affects you (in easy to understand language). If you are ready to make the leap and want to sign up for the card, you can do so here. If you do sign up, I will be seeing you around in the private cardholder community. Until then, happy (and responsible) borrowing!

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The internet provides you with unlimited opportunity to share your life, stand out and tell your unique story. A year ago, I wrote a post about Boo, the dog who landed a book deal. Today, I read that Boo is the new doggie ambassador for Virgin America. This had me thinking about how the internet, and specifially social networking, has provided everyone with so much opportunity to not only share their story, but also make money and grow their careers from it.

Who Is Boo

Well obviously, Boo is a cute dog. But the real credit has to be given to his owner (who Boo refers to as “the human”). She started a Facebook page for the little pooch, posting regular updates (as many crazy-loving animal owners do). Giving credit where credit is due, Boo is adorable. However, none of Boo’s success would have happended if it was not for the fact that his mother took to the internet to share him with “the world” (it is in quotes, because at the time it was likely a few friends and family).

Leverage Your Unique Life and Experiences

The moral of this story is, put yourself out there. You do not have to own a cute dog or have something totally remarkeable to share. Remember that there are hidden opportunities around every corner, and if you are honest, transparent and willing to step outside your comfort zone at times, it can be incredibly rewarding. Don’t be afraid, be fearless!

Experiement, Be Creative and Fearless

I was a bartender after graduating from college. No idea what I wanted to do with my life. By day I studied emerging social channels, by night I slung drinks behind the bar. For me, as strange as it is, my fans/followers emerged from my daily Flickr photos from my desk at my first real job in NYC. I took the photos because it was fun, I posted them because, well, why not. This was before the trend of daily photo sharing, but I certainly wasn’t the only person doing it. I’ve sinced moved on from the daily photos and over the years have found new ways to share my story. It doesn’t need to be a picture of yourself, but it is important that it is personal and unique.

What can you share with the world? Your daily doodles on scrap paper. Your walk home from work. A chat with your awesome grandma. There has to be something in your life that you love and you can share with others in the most genuine and ingenious way possible. People want to connect with other people. What may seem mundane to you, is facinating to others. Always remember that. Go forth and share with the world. Who knows where it will take you.

And, most importantly, don’t worry about the haters out there. Haters are gonna hate, but you are not alone. A requirement to being transparent online, is being fearless. And remember, if someone is criticising you, you are probably onto something.

Moral of the story: Be creative, be yourself and share it with the rest of us!

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I have been working hard lately on streamlining my workflow and increasing my productivity and creative output. Now that I am my own boss working from home, I have found it incredibly hard to stay on task and focused. I’ve realized my online habits are working against me and keeping me from getting the important things done. The talk below by Tony Schwartz: The Myths of the Overworked Creative has been very helpful in guiding me towards a more productive and sustainable workday. I hope it serves as a piece of inspiration for you too!

In the spirit of inspiring a more productive workday, I’ve shared below a gallery of my favorite desktop backgrounds from MinimalWall. Download a your favorites and make them your backround to remind yourself everyday to focus on what’s important and ship your work!

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Months back I spent almost an entire weekend hacking my Outlook email inbox to auto-archive itself. My reason for doing this is because I would constantly hear the wonders and benefits of maintaining “inbox zero,” but I could never seem to achieve it on a daily basis. To me, having to manually file every email after I had read or responded to it was an annoying task and interruptive to my email workflow during a busy day. Once I figured out how Outlook Rules worked I set up an if this then that type of automated system using Rules, where after I had read an email I could hit a shortkey and it would be auto-filed into a designated folder.

This first requires categorizing your contacts into groups and then using Rules to associate groups with folders. For example, when someone I had categorized in my contacts as “Marketing Team” emailed me it would come into my inbox and, after I had read it or responded to it, I would hit ALT+A and the email would automatically be pulled from my inbox and filed in the “Marketing Team” folder. The Rules setup to achieve this looks something like:

IF

1. Sender is in Group Category “Marketing Team”
2. Message is Marked as Read

THEN

1. Move email to “Marketing Team” folder

I did leave the corporate world a few weeks back to start my own consultancy and since then have moved from Outlook to Gmail to manage my inbox, however I wanted to share the Presi I created below to help other Outlook users understand the Rules technique. If you take the upfront time to categorize your contacts and set up Rules, you will find yourself with an email system that is automatically organized to fit your needs, easy to search and much easier to manage.

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In April I went to a pre-screening of Transcendent Man, not knowing what to expect or how it would changes my beliefs on what the future will bring.

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Right now I’m sitting at the table in my living room and writing this post thinking OMG!

Friday was my last day as VP of Marketing at Manilla, and today marks the first day of my new adventure. I’ve left the full-time employee with benefits world to start two initiatives:

1. my own marketing consultancy helping brands with digital and social strategy, and
2. launching WorkHacks, a startup business that aligns with one of my true passions- lifehacking and productivity

With the experience of helping build and launch a  startup (Manilla), and with the incredible support of friends, family and mentors, I find myself thinking about this new life and what I am going to make of it.

I’ve wanted to make this leap to career independence for a few years now, but I lacked the strength, confidence and guts to pull the trigger. I finally found it within myself to believe in my own potential and, as I sit here contemplating what my to-do list for today should be, I have to embrace the excitement, fear and uncertainty I feel. I’ve jumped into the great unknown, where my fate no longer rests on meeting the expectations of my job title, but rather my ability to sell, (over)deliver and scale great work as a consultant and bring my vision for WorkHacks to life.

The realization that I am now my own CEO, boss and direct report is overwhelming and a bit terrifying. Since I joined the workforce with my first job at 16 years old, I’ve been taught to take direction, do what I’m told and always try to overdeliver on my bosses expectations to make them look good to their boss and prove my value. That imposed structure is gone and it’s my responsibility to set the business objectives and goals and of course deliver against them everyday.

Big challenges lie ahead as I work to pave my own path, but I’m guided by a determination to shape my own future and destiny. I can’t even express how excited I am to have woken up in this new world. Up, up and away…

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Is this true for you? It is for me. I dread listening to voicemails, seriously dread it. Send me a text message or email and I will read your message almost instantly, versus a voicemail where it's often days after your message before I remember to listen to it. The plain truth is, if you send me a text or email I will likely be reading your message within the hour. Leave me a voicemail, and I will likely be leaving it for later. 

For a long time, my voicemail message read– Hello, you have reached Julia Roy. Feel free to leave a message, but for a quicker response send a text. Nobody listened, still leaving me voice messages I would put off and often forget about. So I enabled Google voice on my mobile, which didn't really help much. Google transcribed messages were 90% of the time delivered to me as total gibberish that I could not make any sense of. GVoice did make me feel like I "got" the message, even if the transcription gave me hardly any understanding of what the voicemail actually said. During my usage of GVoice, I rarely went to go listen to the actual voicemail.

Do these feelings toward voicemail make any sense? When someone calls instead of sending an email, the message content could likely be importance and even urgent. I should make a better effort to check my voice messages, but instead I almost always put it off. Right or wrong, irresponsible or not, I continue to neglect incoming phone calls and messages like the plague. For a girl who–in high school and college loved spending hours on the phone chatting with girlfriends, boyfriends and family–now avoids the phone to no avail, makes me realize voice-to-voice communication is dead for me.

For those friends and family too far away to meetup in person–let's Skype! For those new business call pitches–let's GoToMeeting! Anyone else out there feel the same way? 

("Why I Check my Voicemail" Infographic found on digg.)

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Forbes, 14 Power Women to Follow on Twitter (2010)

Vanity Fair, America’s Tweethearts (2010)

Top Rank, Women that Rock Social Media (2010)

Huffington Post, 16 Tech Titans on Twitter (2010)

Ignite, Women Bloggers You Should be Reading (2010)

Forbes, Best Branded Women on Twitter (2010)

Twitter Grader, Top Twitter Users Ranked #1,212 out of 3,602,429 (2009)

Constructive Grumpiness, Top 30 Under 30 Tweeters (2009)

Things Marketing People Love, Taking Pictures of Themselves at Work (2009)

The Society for Geek Advancement, I am a Geek [Video] (2009)

The Trades, Interview: Julia Roy – Digital Queen (2009)

Huffington Post, Hottest Girls on Twitter Ranked #9 of 10 (2009)

Twestival Ebay Auction, Auctioned off a Date with Myself Raising $1,549 for charity: water (2009)

The Adrants Ad Guy, Bright Ones: Julia Roy Lives the Digital Lifestyle (2008)

Adverlab, The Shortest PR Pitch Placement featuring my unique outreach strategy (2008)

Awesomeology, Real Girl Julia Roy (2008)

Trendhunter, Dig a Tech Girl Voted one of the Top Girls in Technology (2007)

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