This Is The Fun Way To Easily Improve Your Life, Backed By Research
u don't laugh enough. Yes, humor can improve your life. Not too surprising, you say? Here's the problem: you treat humor like a nice thing that happens, oh, whenever. But scientific research is showing giggles, guffaws and jokes are far too important to be left to chance. We're gonna learn the best ways to use humor to make you happier, healthier, more successful at work and even to improve your relationships. First, let's learn the neuroscience of why we laugh. Why are funny…
9 minutes
This Is The Best Way To Motivate Yourself To Exercise: 4 Proven Secrets
rkout motivation. You don't have any. You know exercise is good... and you still don’t do it. You're not alone. We all want a magic pill that makes us smarter, happier, and better looking. Good news is the magic pill is here. Bad news is it's exercise. Time to dump a bucket of solve on this problem and make you awesome. And we'll do it by listening to your favorite music, hanging out with friends and taking lessons from Seinfeld. Sound good?…
8 minutes
How To Be Creative: 6 Secrets Backed By Research
ether it's at work or in our free time, many of us would love to learn how to be creative. Coming up with great ideas and new perspectives is a blast. But "thinking different" is not something we really get taught in school. So how do you become an innovator? I called an expert to find out. Scott Barry Kaufman is the scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also the co-author of the…
7 minutes
How To Improve Your Writing: 5 Secrets From Hollywood
anks to the internet, people are reading and writing more than ever. But is it me, or does it seem like the quality of that writing has gotten worse? However, this can be a good thing. These days, solid writing really stands out. It can be a competitive advantage in anything you do. Want to know how to improve your writing? Or have you ever thought about crafting the next great novel or screenplay? Want to know how to write like a pro? Me, too. So I called…
11 minutes
A Special Forces Officer Teaches You 5 Secrets To Overcoming Adversity
fe can be really difficult sometimes. We all deal with it. But how do top performers overcome challenges? And what can we learn from them? I figured I'd call an expert. Who knows about overcoming adversity? Special Forces. So I called Mike Kenny. Mike's a Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel with 22 years of service under his belt. For most of his career he was an 18 Alpha (Special Forces Officer) and is currently the Special Operations Forces liaison to the School of Advanced Military Studies. Most…
11 minutes
How To Be Successful: 6 New Shortcuts Backed By Research
all want success. And we'd like it fast. But we can only work so long and so hard. The more-more-more ethos only goes so far. What to do? I decided to ask someone who knows about this stuff: Shane Snow. Shane's the bestselling author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. He did the research and looked at how people and companies achieve success quickly by trying new things, breaking the rules and taking shortcuts -- or, as Shane calls them, smartcuts.…
9 minutes
How Poor Planning And Being Impulsive Can Lead To Big Wins In Life
ve posted a ton of research about how conscientiousness may be the most important personality trait out there. What's conscientiousness? Having your act together. Neat and tidy. Organized and on time. Success, health, happy marriages -- they're all tied to it. Which can be really depressing because, frankly, I'm not all that conscientious. But this begs the question: are there benefits to not being conscientious? Yes, as a matter of fact, there are. My Spaghetti Abilities Are Unstoppable Peter Skillman created a design exercise called…
5 minutes
The System That All Creative Geniuses Use To Develop Their Ideas
ter Sims is the bestselling author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. It was one of the best books I read in 2012 and I’ve posted about it numerous times (here, here, here and here.) Peter and I discussed Pixar's secret to collaboration, the creative process shared by world class architects and comedians, and the single most important thing everyone needs to be doing to have breakthroughs of their own. My conversation with Peter was quite…
5 minutes
