This post is by Ali Luke ofMaybe you’re working at a day job which isn’t really “you”. You’re doing it for the money, until something better comes along.Or maybe you enjoy your work. You’re in a career you love, or you work for yourself. Even so, you still have days when you just want to stay in bed.Even mundane, low-paid jobs have their good moments.

• Christiaan Huygens Facts

It’s just a matter of finding them. So rather than daydreaming (yet again) about quitting, here are fifteen ways to enjoy your work a bit more. Focus on youIf you’re not taking care of yourself, you’ll find your motivation dropping towards rock-bottom.

Sometimes, enjoying your work means making sure that the rest of life is going strong. Get enough sleep. If you’re regularly feeling tired and groggy, you’ll be struggling to get through your work at all – let alone enjoy it. Try shutting down the computer at 9pm, and reading a book for the rest of the evening; you’ll find it much easier to drop off. Avoid excessive drinking.

If you’re feeling bored or stressed at work, it might be tempting to head straight to the bar every evening – but a hangover isn’t going to make you feel any better the next morning. Improve your work space. Is your desk cluttered? Is your office drab and uninspiring? Just tidying up, and perhaps finding some nice wall art, will give you a much nicer working environment. Think positively. Sure, maybe it’s just a “day job” and you’d rather be at home writing your novel.

• Christiaan Huygens FRS was a Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time.
• EL RELOJ DE PNDULO DE CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (1656) 3. EL RELOJ DE PNDULO DE CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS. Christiaan Huygens fue un extraordinario matemtico, Fsico y astrnomo holands nacido en La Haya el 14 de Abril de 1629. Como astrnomo construy telescopios de gran perfeccin y descubri con ellos las fases del anillo de Saturno y el primero de sus satlites.

But referring to work as “cubical hell” or to yourself as a “wage-slave” is only going to make you feel worse. Get enough downtime. That probably doesn’t mean napping on the job – but if you run your own business or work long hours for an employer, make sure you’re taking enough time to rest and recharging.Focus on someone elseSometimes, it’s much easier to find motivation for your work when you start thinking about the people who you can help.

They might be clients, colleagues or even your boss. Go the extra mile.

Perhaps a customer emails and asks for help. You could just point them towards the online documentation – but, from their email, you suspect they’ll struggle to find the information that they need. Take an extra five minutes to guide them through it. Say “thank you”. If you’re in charge of a team, or have subordinates reporting to you, remember that a “thank you” can mean a lot more than a paycheck. It also helps you to get into a more appreciative mindset. Think about who you’re helping.

The pendulum clock invented by Christian Huygens in 1658 became the world's standard timekeeper, used in homes and offices for 270 years, and achieved.

In almost any job, you’re helping someone. Perhaps you fix bugs in software. It might seem dull at times – but by solving those problems, you’re making sure that the software’s users have a great experience.

Christiaan Huygens Facts

Give a colleague a hand. Maybe you’re bored at work because you don’t have enough to do.

It’s pretty likely that someone else in the office is feeling under pressure and would love some help. What could you do to make their day easier?. Get to know people. If you don’t like your job much, you might feel that you have nothing in common with your workmates. Maybe they’re all a lot older (or younger) than you, or they seem boring. Give them a chance – they might turn out to be a lot more fun than you think.Focus on Your WorkWhen your work is going badly, it’s going to be almost impossible to stay positive about your job. You’ll enjoy it more when you feel on top of things.

Here’s how:. Delegate properly. Hand over tasks which you don’t need to be doing, and give your colleague full responsibility – don’t micromanage. If you work for yourself, consider hiring someone to take on the jobs which you find difficult or tedious. Do your toughest work first. Have you ever put something off for weeks, and found that the longer you put it off, the harder it was to get started?

By tackling the “tough” things (whatever you feel resistance to), you’ll make the rest of your day seem easy. Don’t go straight to your inbox.

Do you really need to open your emails at 8.30am? Most people will be happy to wait a few hours for a reply. Get on with your important tasks before tackling emails – it’ll make your whole day go more smoothly.

Give it your best. If you habitually do as little work as you can get away with, you’re probably not going to feel much sense of satisfaction. Put some effort in, however routine the task, and at least you’ll know that you did a good job (even if no-one else notices). Concentrate. All the distractions and interruptions in a typical office can eat up hours of valuable work time. Close Facebook and Twitter, turn off the new email notifications, and get on with your work – your day will go much more smoothly, and you’ll have a sense of accomplishment at the end of it all.What are your favorite ways to make work more enjoyable?

Share them with us in the comments!Ali Luke works for herself as a writer and writing coach. Over on her blog, she has two resource-packed posts for new freelancers and entrepreneurs:. I’d like to give my two cents here because, although many people refer to me as a “dating coach” (whatever that means), I give a whole lot of self help advice and I have a dayjob next to my coaching activities. Anyways, it all boils down to me working 60 hrs a week.What I find is that, once you know what you would like to do AFTER what you’re doing right now? You not only create a clearer image for yourself of what it is you truly want, but it also gives you opportunities to learn on the job.Example: the main way for me to communicate my advice is my blog, my dayjob is doing the marketing for a company, so I try and learn as much as possible about blog marketing and all related activities whenever I get the chance.The result: I learn about what I need for the big exit. So don’t stop at “how the hell do I get out of here”, but think in terms of what your next step will be, and how you can use your current time to learn everything you can for making that next step an easy one AND for making it happen.

.Christiaan Huygens (; Dutch: ( );: Hugenius; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch, and, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the. In physics, Huygens made groundbreaking contributions in and, while as an astronomer he is chiefly known for his studies of the and the discovery of its moon. As an inventor, he improved the design of the telescope with the invention of the.

His most famous invention, however, was the invention of the in 1656, which was a breakthrough in timekeeping and became the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. Because he was the first to use mathematical formulae to describe the laws of physics, Huygens has been called the first and the founder of.In 1659, Huygens was the first to derive the now standard formula for the in his work De vi centrifuga. The formula played a central role in. Huygens was also the first to formulate the correct laws of in his work De motu corporum ex percussione, but his findings were not published until 1703, after his death.

In the field of optics, he is best known for his, which he proposed in 1678 and described in 1690 in his, which is regarded as the first mathematical theory of light. His theory was initially rejected in favor of 's, until adopted Huygens' principle in 1818 and showed that it could explain the rectilinear propagation and diffraction effects of light. Today this principle is known as the.Huygens invented the in 1656, which he patented the following year. In addition to this invention, his research in resulted in an extensive analysis of the in his 1673 book, which is regarded as one of the most important 17th-century works in mechanics. While the first part of the book contains descriptions of clock designs, most of the book is an analysis of pendulum motion and a theory of. In 1655, Huygens began grinding lenses with his brother Constantijn in order to build telescopes to conduct astronomical research. He designed a 50-power with which he discovered that the was 'a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic.'

It was with this telescope that he also discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan. He eventually developed in 1662 what is now called the, a telescope with two lenses, which diminished the amount of.As a mathematician, Huygens was a pioneer on and wrote his first treatise on in 1657 with the work Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck., who was the private tutor of Huygens, translated the work as De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ('On Reasoning in Games of Chance'). The work is a systematic treatise on probability and deals with and in particular the. The modern concept of probability grew out of the use of expectation values by Huygens and (who encouraged him to write the work).The last years of Huygens's life, who never married, were characterized by loneliness and depression. As a, he did not believe in an supreme being and did not accept the Christian faith of his upbringing. Although Huygens did not believe in such a supernatural being, he did hypothesize on the possibility of in his Cosmotheoros, which was published shortly before his death in 1695.

He speculated that extraterrestrial life was possible on planets similar to Earth and wrote that the availability of water in liquid form was a necessity for life. Christiaan Huygens. Cut from the following the painting of by, between 1684 and 1687.Christiaan Huygens was born on 14 April 1629 in, into a rich and influential Dutch family, the second son of.

Christiaan was named after his paternal grandfather. His mother was.

She died in 1637, shortly after the birth of Huygens' sister. The couple had five children: (1628), Christiaan (1629), (1631), Philips (1632) and Suzanna (1637).Constantijn Huygens was a diplomat and advisor to the, and also a poet and musician. His friends included,.

Huygens was educated at home until turning sixteen years old. He liked to play with miniatures of and other machines. His father gave him a liberal education: he studied languages and music, history and, and, but also, and.In 1644 Huygens had as his mathematical tutor, who set the 15-year-old a demanding reading list on contemporary science. Descartes was impressed by his skills in geometry.

Student years His father sent Huygens to study law and mathematics at the, where he studied from May 1645 to March 1647. Was an academic at Leiden from 1646, and also a private tutor to Huygens and his elder brother, replacing Stampioen on the advice of Descartes. Van Schooten brought his mathematical education up to date, in particular introducing him to the work of on.After two years, from March 1647, Huygens continued his studies at the newly founded, in, where his father was a: the change occurred because of a duel between his brother Lodewijk and another student. Constantijn Huygens was closely involved in the new College, which lasted only to 1669; the rector was. Christiaan Huygens lived at the home of the jurist Johann Henryk Dauber, and had mathematics classes with the English lecturer.

He completed his studies in August 1649. He then had a stint as a diplomat on a mission with. It took him to, then. He took off for Denmark, visited and, and hoped to cross the to visit Descartes in. It was not to be.While his father Constantijn had wished his son Christiaan to be a diplomat, it also was not to be. In political terms, the that began in 1650 meant that the House of Orange was not in power, removing Constantijn's influence.

Further, he realised that his son had no interest in such a career. Early correspondence. CorrespondanceHuygens generally wrote in French or Latin. While still a college student at Leiden he began a correspondence with the intelligencer, who died quite soon afterwards in 1648.

Mersenne wrote to Constantijn on his son's talent for mathematics, and flatteringly compared him to (3 January 1647). The letters show the early interests of Huygens in mathematics. In October 1646 there is the, and the demonstration that a is not a. In 1647/8 they cover the claim of to; rectification of the ellipse; projectiles, and the.

Some of Mersenne's concerns at the time, such as the (he sent 's treatise on the curve), the, and the, were matters Huygens only took seriously towards the end of the 17th century. Mersenne had also written on musical theory. Huygens preferred; he innovated in, which was not itself a new idea but known to, using logarithms to investigate it further and show its close relation to the meantone system.In 1654, Huygens returned to his father's house in The Hague, and was able to devote himself entirely to research. The family had another house, not far away at, and he spent time there during the summer. His scholarly life did not allow him to escape bouts of depression. The in a manuscript of Huygens.Huygens studied from a theoretical point of view in 1652–3, obtaining results that remained unpublished until (1669). His aim was to understand.

He began grinding his own lenses in 1655, collaborating with his brother Constantijn. He designed in 1662 what is now called the, with two lenses, as a telescope ocular. Lenses were also a common interest through which Huygens could meet socially in the 1660s with, who ground them professionally.

They had rather different outlooks on science, Spinoza being the more committed Cartesian, and some of their discussion survives in correspondence. He encountered the work of, another lens grinder, in the field of which interested his father.Huygens wrote the first treatise on, De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ('On Reasoning in Games of Chance', 1657). He had been told of recent work in the field by Fermat, and two years earlier, in Paris. Frans van Schooten translated the original Dutch manuscript 'Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Geluck' into Latin and published it in his Exercitationum mathematicarum. It deals with, in particular the. Huygens took as intuitive his appeals to concepts of a 'fair game' and equitable contract, and used them to set up a theory of.

In 1662 sent Huygens 's, and in time Huygens and his brother Lodewijk worked on.On 3 May 1661, Huygens observed the planet transit over the Sun, using the telescope of instrument maker in London, together with astronomer and Reeve. Streete then debated the published record of the transit of, a controversy mediated. Huygens passed to Hevelius a manuscript of on the, which thereby was printed for the first time in 1662.

In that year Huygens, who played the, took an interest in music, and 's theories on it; he showed very little concern to publish his theories on, some of which were lost for centuries. The of London elected him a Fellow in 1663. In France The was the form the old Mersenne circle took after the mid-1650s. Huygens took part in its debates, and supported its 'dissident' faction who favoured experimental demonstration to curtail fruitless discussion, and opposed amateurish attitudes. During 1663 he made what was his third visit to Paris; the Montmor Academy closed down, and Huygens took the chance to advocate a more programme in science. In 1666 he moved to Paris and earned a position at 's new.In Paris Huygens had an important patron and correspondent in. However, his relationship with the Academy was not always easy, and in 1670 Huygens, seriously ill, chose to carry out a donation of his papers to the Royal Society in London, should he die.

Then the took place (1672–8). England's part in it (1672–4) is thought to have damaged his relationship with the Royal Society. For the Royal Society lacked the urbanity to handle the situation, in 1673. Christiaan Huygens, relief by, around 1670?was assistant to Huygens from 1671. One of their projects, which did not bear fruit directly, was the. Papin moved to England in 1678, and continued to work in this area.

Using the (completed in 1672), Huygens made further astronomical observations. In 1678 he introduced to French scientists such as and.It was in Paris, also, that Huygens met the young diplomat, there in 1672 on a vain mission to meet, the French Foreign Minister. At this time Leibniz was working on a, and he moved on to London in early 1673 with diplomats from; but from March 1673 Leibniz was tutored in mathematics by Huygens.

Huygens taught him; an extensive correspondence ensued, in which Huygens showed reluctance to accept the advantages of. Later life Huygens moved back to in 1681 after suffering serious depressive illness. In 1684, he published Astroscopia Compendiaria on his new tubeless. He attempted to return to France in 1685 but the precluded this move. His father died in 1687, and he inherited Hofwijck, which he made his home the following year. Home to Christiaan Huygens from 1688On his third visit to England, in 1689, Huygens met on 12 June. They spoke about, and subsequently corresponded about resisted motion.Huygens observed the acoustical phenomenon now known as in 1693.

He died in The Hague on 8 July 1695, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the there, as was his father before him.Huygens never married. Work in natural philosophy Huygens has been called the leading European natural philosopher between Descartes and Newton. He adhered to the tenets of the of his time. In particular he sought explanations of the that avoided.In common with and, Huygens adhered to what has been called, more explicitly, 'experimentally oriented corpuscular-mechanical' natural philosophy.

In the analysis of the this appears as a mainstream position, at least from the founding of the Royal Society to the emergence of Newton, and was sometimes labelled 'Baconian', while not being or identifying with the views of in a simple-minded way. After his first visit to England in 1661, when he attended a meeting of the in April and learned directly about Boyle's experiments, Huygens spent time in late 1661 and early 1662 replicating the work. It proved a long process, brought to the surface an experimental issue ('anomalous suspension') and the theoretical issue of, and ended in July 1663 as Huygens became a Fellow of the Royal Society. It has been said that Huygens finally accepted Boyle's view of the void, as against the Cartesian denial of it; and also (in ) that the trailed off messily.Newton's influence on was mediated by Huygens, who assured Locke that Newton's mathematics was sound, leading to Locke's acceptance of a 'corpuscular-mechanical' physics. Laws of motion, impact and gravitation The general approach of the mechanical philosophers was to postulate theories of the kind now called 'contact action'. Huygens adopted this method, but not without seeing its difficulties and failures. Leibniz, his student in Paris, abandoned the theory.

Seeing the universe this way made the theory of collisions central to physics. The requirements of the mechanical philosophy, in the view of Huygens, were stringent. Matter in motion made up the universe, and only explanations in those terms could be truly intelligible. While he was influenced by the approach, he was less doctrinaire. He studied in the 1650s but delayed publication for over a decade. Horologium oscillatorium sive de motu pendulorum, 1673, by Christiaan HuygensHuygens designed more accurate than were available at the time. In 1656, inspired by earlier research into by, he invented the, which was a breakthrough in timekeeping and became the most accurate timekeeper for the next 275 years until the 1930s.

Huygens contracted the construction of his clock designs to in The Hague, who built the clock. The pendulum clock was much more accurate than the existing clocks and was immediately popular, quickly spreading over Europe. However Huygens did not make much money from his invention. Refused him any French rights, Simon Douw of copied the design in 1658, and also, in London. The oldest known Huygens-style pendulum clock is dated 1657 and can be seen at the in.Huygens motivation for inventing the pendulum clock was to create an accurate that could be used to find by during sea voyages.

However the clock proved unsuccessful as a marine timekeeper because the rocking motion of the ship disturbed the motion of the pendulum. In 1660 Lodewijk Huygens made a trial on a voyage to Spain, and reported that heavy weather made the clock useless. Elbowed into the field in 1662, and Huygens called in Sir Robert Moray and the Royal Society to mediate and preserve some of his rights.

Trials continued into the 1660s, the best news coming from a Royal Navy captain operating against the Dutch possessions in 1664. Doubts that Holmes reported the results of the trial accurately, and expressed his doubts at the time: The said master i.e. The captain of Holmes' ship affirmed, that the vulgar reckoning proved as near as that of the watches, which the clocks, added he, had varied from one another unequally, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, to 4, 6, 7, 3, 5 minutes; as also that they had been corrected by the usual account. One for the French Academy on an expedition to ended badly. Suggested correction for the. By the time of the expedition of 1686 to the, Huygens was able to supply the correction retrospectively.

Pendulums. Spring-driven pendulum clock, designed by Huygens, built by instrument maker (1657), and a copy of the Horologium Oscillatorium.,In 1673 Huygens published, his major work on and horology. It had been observed by and others that pendulums are not quite: their period depends on their width of swing, with wide swings taking slightly longer than narrow swings.Huygens analyzed this problem by finding the curve down which a mass will slide under the influence of gravity in the same amount of time, regardless of its starting point; the so-called. By geometrical methods which were an early use of, he showed it to be a cycloid, rather than the circular arc of a pendulum's bob, and therefore that pendulums are not isochronous. He also solved a problem posed by Mersenne: how to calculate the period of a pendulum made of an arbitrarily-shaped swinging rigid body. This involved discovering the and its reciprocal relationship with the pivot point. In the same work, he analysed the, consisting of a weight on a cord moving in a circle, using the concept of centrifugal force.

Huygens' explanation for the aspects of Saturn, Systema Saturnium, 1659.Such springs were essential in modern watches with a detached because they can be adjusted for. Watches in the time of Huygens and Hooke, however, employed the very undetached. It interfered with the isochronal properties of any form of balance spring, spiral or otherwise.In February 2006, a long-lost copy of Hooke's handwritten notes from several decades of meetings was discovered in a cupboard in, England. The balance-spring priority controversy appears, by the evidence contained in those notes, to be settled in favour of Hooke's claim.In 1675, Huygens patented a. The watches which were made in Paris from c. 1675 and following the Huygens plan are notable for lacking a for equalizing the mainspring torque. The implication is that Huygens thought that his spiral spring would isochronise the balance, in the same way that he thought that the cycloidally shaped suspension curbs on his clocks would isochronise the pendulum.Astronomy.

VoorburgNamed after Huygens Science. The: The lander for the Saturnian moon Titan, part of the mission to Saturn. A., a mountain on the Moon., a package. A two element designed by him.