Google descriptions

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1

Prevent search engines from displaying DMOZ data in search results for your site

One source Google uses to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project. You can direct us not to use this as a source by adding a meta tag to your pages.

Create good meta descriptions

The description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.

• Make sure that every page on your site has a meta description. The HTML suggestions page in Webmaster Tools lists pages where Google has detected missing or problematic meta descriptions.


• Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.


• Include clearly tagged facts in the description. The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information—price, age, manufacturer—scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book.

  <meta name="Description" content="Author: A.N. Author, 
  Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, 
  Length: 784 pages">

  In this example, information is clearly tagged and separated.


• Programmatically generate descriptions. For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions can be impossible. In the latter case, however, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't give users a clear idea of the page's content, and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular snippet.


• Use quality descriptions. Finally, make sure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Because the meta descriptions aren't displayed in the pages the user sees, it's easy to let this content slide. But high-quality descriptions can be displayed in Google's search results, and can go a long way to improving the quality and quantity of your search tr

13th year of High School

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/10/high_schools_offer_a_fifth_year_of_high_school_13th_grade_is_a_great_idea.html

Actually, using state high school funding for a 5th year of high school at a community college and receive their high school diploma after the community college and get collage credit

Grit

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-angela-duckworth-success-grit-psychology-self-control-science-nginnovators/

Grit scales:

https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth/pages/research

"We validated it," Angela says. "We showed it predicted objective measures like graduating West Point's first summer [cadet basic training] and winning the National Spelling Bee. And then in all the studies we measured IQ and consistently found that IQ really is something else." Being a hardworking or self-controlled kid is not the same as being a smart kid. Angela and her team had parents rate their kids, had teachers rate their kids, and had kids take two different questionnaires and a delayed-gratification test ("Do you want a dollar today or two dollars in a week?"). They had them do a hypothetical delayed-gratification test with a large number of choices (two dollars today, seven in three months).

"When you average across all of those things, we found you can predict things like their grade point average startlingly well—much better, in fact, than IQ does—as well as changes in grades," Angela says, a finding described by like-minded Stanford colleague Carol Dweck, whom Angela thinks of as a role model, as "a landmark piece of work."

Decision Fatigue

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/productivity/2014/10/decision_fatigue_ego_depletion_how_to_make_better_decisions.2.html

Next, decrease your range of options. This may seem counterintuitive, since it requires making even more decisions. For instance, if you’re picking a restaurant for an important lunch meeting, first deciding on a certain part of town or type of cuisine can narrow your options. Like the participants in the jams study, you’re less likely to be paralyzed by choice if you have few options instead of dozens.

Once you’ve arrived at a decision, stick with it. Ignore the naysaying voice in your head asking if this is the mutual fund that will make you the most money in 15 years or if the route your GPS gave you is the most gas-efficient. Just accept that no decision is ever completely perfect, and remind yourself that it is the best you can do with the tools you have in the moment. Second-guessing yourself only requires making more decisions, which further depletes your cognitive resources. You might also end up happier; researchers have found that people who “satisfice, “or pick an option that meets requirements, are more content with their choices than people who try to pick the best option.

Changing your beliefs may actually make you more productive, too. Someresearchers believe that the notion of ego depletion is all in your head, and that rejecting the idea of self-control as a muscle can combat its effects. People who instead believe that self-control is an infinite resource are less likely to show effects of ego depletion—they actually show increased performance on self-control tests after completing boring, ego-draining tasks like crossing out e’s from a document. Even weirder, how you feel about free will also affects your productivity: The more strongly you believe in it, the more likely you are to enjoy making decisions and to be happy with your choices. My apologies, readers, but your best bet at boosting your productivity may actually be to disregard what you’ve learned in this article.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2691607/one-in-three-jobs-will-be-taken-by-software-or-robots-by-2025.html?google_editors_picks=true

 Gartner sees things like robots and drones replacing a third of all workers by 2025, and whether you want to believe it or not, is entirely your business.

Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind, said Sondergaard. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text.

This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner.

Following the Process

Following the process can be perceived as a negative phrase - more red tape.  Without well defined processes, a company will loose value through duplication of efforts (two similar processes that were created to achieve the same goal, duplicating the same power point presentation, etc), low quality (high variability), and wasted efforts (efforts which are considered waste in lean methodologies).  The Art is knowing when the situation does not fit the process.