Is there an easy way to help you follow through on your goals?
eep on it: Remembering to execute deferred goals (prospective memory) is a ubiquitous memory challenge, and one that is often not successfully accomplished. Could sleeping after goal encoding promote later execution? We evaluated this possibility by instructing participants to execute a prospective memory goal after a short delay (20 min), a 12-hr wake delay, or a 12-hr sleep delay. Goal execution declined after the 12-hr wake delay relative to the short delay. In contrast, goal execution was relatively preserved after…
2 minutes
Here’s How You Can Increase Your Attention Span In Just A Few Days
ditate: Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method comes from…
1 min read
What’s a quick and easy way to boost cognitive performance?
ink a Red Bull: There has been a dramatic rise in the consumption of glucose energy drinks (e.g., Amp, Monster, and Red Bull) in the past decade, particularly among high school and college students. However, little laboratory research has examined the acute objective and subjective effects of energy drinks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of a glucose energy drink (Red Bull) on cognitive functioning. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to one of five…
2 minutes
How to beat procrastination quickly:
a Merlin Mann: My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your…
1 min read
Should you wear red if you’re an athlete?
ve posted before about whether the color red has magic powers. Of course, I don't really believe it has magic powers but it does seem to have interesting effects in a number of areas, including sports. Almost universally, red means stop. Red means danger. Red means hot. And analyzing the results in the 2004 Olympics, researchers have found that red also means dominance. Athletes wearing red prevailed more often than those wearing blue, especially in hand-to-hand sports like wrestling. Source…
2 minutes
Here’s What Really Motivates You
learned a lot from Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. For any job that requires thought, creativity or problem-solving, Pink doesn't recommend a focus on concrete rewards and punishments. He feels there are three elements we must provide to workers in this category: (1) Autonomy—"the desire to direct our own lives;" (2) Mastery—"the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters; and" (3) Purpose—"the yearning to do what we do in the…
5 minutes
Is artwork of higher quality when we’re not paid to create it?
a Daniel Pink's very interesting book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Teresa Amabile, the Harvard Business School professor and one of the world’s leading researchers on creativity, has frequently tested the effects of contingent rewards on the creative process. In one study, she and two colleagues recruited twenty-three professional artists from the United States who had produced both commissioned and noncommissioned artwork. They asked the artists to randomly select ten commissioned works and ten noncommissioned works. Then Amabile and…
2 minutes
What improves performance more: envy or admiration?
ur studies tested the hypothesis that the emotion of benign envy, but not the emotions of admiration or malicious envy, motivates people to improve themselves. Studies 1 to 3 found that only benign envy was related to the motivation to study more (Study 1) and to actual performance on the Remote Associates Task (which measures intelligence and creativity; Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 found that an upward social comparison triggered benign envy and subsequent better performance only when people…
1 min read
