Checklist: Are you doing these five things to be the best?
Realize it's not about natural talent. It's about hard work. We all know intelligence is important, creativity is important… but how much do these types of natural talent control really what you can achieve in life? In ~95% of cases, they don’t. Via Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: “After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all…
4 minutes
Matthew Polly: What happens when you drop out of Princeton to move to the Shaolin Temple and master Kung Fu?
ntil a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped…
11 minutes
Five Simple Things That Will Make Your Life Better
bsp; 1) Want to be happy? It's more about perspective than anything else. Write down three good things that happen to you every day. Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being: Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you…
3 minutes
Does Your Mind Wander? Here’s Why That Can Be Your Greatest Asset
ndering minds are associated with creativity. Popular wisdom tells you to live in the moment. Huh? So is it better to be unfocused or focused? Let's look at the research. The Upside of Mind Wandering You spend up to 8 minutes of every hour daydreaming. Your mind will probably wander for 13% of the time it takes you to read this post. Some of us spend 30-40% of our time daydreaming. Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the…
4 minutes
Live Without Regrets: These Are The Top 5 Career Regrets
live without regrets, first you need to know what the most common ones are. Over at Harvard Business Review, Daniel Gulati discusses his informal study of people's biggest regrets about their career. He talked to professionals who ranged in age and represented a variety of different industries but five ideas came up again and again: 1. I wish I hadn't taken the job for the money. "By far the biggest regret of all came from those who opted…
2 minutes
5 quick things you can do today to boost your creativity:
bsp; 1) Want to be more creative? Get happy. Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work: Our diary study revealed a definitive connection between positive emotion and creativity. We looked at specific emotions as well as overall mood (the aggregate of a person’s positive and negative emotions during the day). Overall, the more positive a person’s mood on a given day, the more creative thinking he did that day. Across all study participants, there was…
4 minutes
Why do you read 1000 things about change and never change?
owing isn't doing. I post a lot of stuff about getting better at things. A common response to my posts is "I know that." Knowing is great for watching Jeopardy. It's not nearly as good for life. So why is learning about improvement so easy and actually improving so damn hard? Most any change that requires a lot of consistent mental effort is going to fail because you spend most of the day on autopilot. Via Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The…
5 minutes
10 Videos Guaranteed To Inspire You
bsp; 1) How to be happier Harvard professor Shawn Achor is the author of the wonderful book The Happiness Advantage. 2) Is it better to come in first... or third? Malcolm Gladwell is the author of the bestsellers Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point. 3) Why do we lie? And why do we lie to ourselves? Great interview with Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves. 4) What’s it take to free…
2 minutes
