10000 hours: Is it true that 10K hours makes you an expert?
bsp; So is it true that 10000 hours makes you an expert? Yes and no. As Malcolm Gladwell discussed in his bestseller, "Outliers", to become an expert it takes 10000 hours (or approximately 10 years) of deliberate practice. But deliberate practice is a specifically defined term. It involves goal setting, quick feedback, and countless drills to improve skills with an eye on mastery. It is not "just showing up" and, plain and simple, it's not fun. Most people may do…
3 minutes
How much education did the greatest creative geniuses of all time need?
out college-dropout level. Via Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else: Dean Keith Simonton, a professor at the University of California at Davis, conducted a large-scale study of more than three hundred creative high achievers born between 1450 and 1850—Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Beethoven, Rembrandt, for example. He determined the amount of formal education each had received and measured each one’s level of eminence by the spaces devoted to them in an array of reference works.…
1 min read
Are you more creative when there’s a deadline approaching?
rvard's Teresa Amabile says no. (Hat tip: Jennifer Aaker) We found that on days of the most extreme time pressure, the professionals in our study were 45 percent less likely to come up with a new idea or solve a complex problem. Even worse, there's a kind of "pressure hangover," with lower creativity persisting for two days or more. And: So if you have to tackle a complex problem in a pressure-cooker situation -- hide somewhere with minimal distractions, like…
1 min read
This Is The Best Place To Get Creative Work Done
ristopher Shea at the WSJ covers new research: Just how hard do telecommuters work? It depends on the assignment: Employees get more boring work done in the office and more creative work at home. Researchers assigned two tasks to 125 participants. The first was rote and repetitive; the other involved coming up with as many unusual uses for ordinary objects as possible, a test often used by psychologists to measure creativity. About half the participants did the tasks in a…
1 min read
The Key To Being Liked And Being More Influential
e key to being liked and being more influential is similarity. You like names better when they are similar to yours. You even prefer brands that merely share your initials. Birthdays are easier to remember when they are closer to yours. You even prefer people who move the way you do. Demonstrating that you have something in common with someone else makes them more likely to help you. Salesmen deliberately fake little similarities in order to influence you and connect…
2 minutes
5 ways to improve teamwork:
e most creative teams are a mix of old friends and new blood. Teams benefit from a mix of women and men. What makes teams smart is social skills, not IQ. Women generally have keener emotional intelligence and are a valuable asset to a group of males. 5-to-1 is the magic ratio. The most successful teams had 5 positive interactions for every negative one. This is also the same ratio that made for happy marriages. It's true that a team…
1 min read
5 ways to improve all those awful meetings at the office:
etings can be unbearable. We average 5.6 hours each week in meetings and 69 percent of us feel they aren't productive. (Studies show the only people who enjoy them are people who don't actually like getting work done.) Bored? Doodle. It actually increases your ability to pay attention. Want to accomplish just as much in significantly less time? Hold your meetings standing up. To be more influential sit in the middle and repeat your ideas. Tuesdays at 3PM is the…
1 min read
Watching TV Increases Empathy
s. Via an excellent piece by Jonathan Gottschall in the Boston Globe: As the psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.” For example, studies reliably show that when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, “Modern Family”), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction. And it's not just TV. It's fiction, in…
2 minutes
