What makes for a good life?
the 1940's the Grant Study began at Harvard, following a cohort of young men for their entire lives in an effort to determine what predicts health and well-being. George Valliant took over shepherding the study in 1966. He recently published a book on its findings and how it affected him personally: Triumphs of Experience. Dan Slater has a piece in the Daily Beast about it. Here are some highlights: To avid consumers of modern happiness literature, some of Vaillant’s conclusions will…
2 minutes
What do great workplaces, making friends, networking, dealing with kidnappers and being happy all have in common?
l are done well by focusing on other people: Get out of your head and into theirs. Great Work Environments Bob Sutton reviewed Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company and called out “Dave Packard’s 11 Simple Rules” as guidelines for building an excellent work environment. What was #1? 1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must…
3 minutes
5 Secrets To Using Your Time Wisely
Schedule things that make you happy You often schedule things that are "important", but what about the things that make you happy? Activities on your calendar are more likely to be the things you do. So be as good about scheduling the personal as the professional. From my interview with Stanford happiness researcher Jennifer Aaker: ...people who spend more time on projects that energize them and with people who energize them tend to be happier. However, what is interesting…
4 minutes
These 5 Things Will Make You Smarter
bsp; 1) Get rid of the distractions You can't multitask. Via Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School: To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously. All those buzzing text messages and email chimes can reduce mental ability by an average of 10 IQ points. For men, it’s about three times the effect of smoking marijuana. Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining…
4 minutes
These Six Things Will Bring You A Great Night’s Sleep
bsp; Your Worst Enemy Is Probably You Stop cheating yourself. You can't cut corners on sleep and not have it affect you: ...by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk. Being tired actually makes it harder to be happy. Via NurtureShock: Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the…
3 minutes
5 New Secrets To Achieving Your Goals, Backed By Research
al setting is one of the four techniques the military used to increase Navy SEAL passing rates from 25% to 33%. Studies have also shown it makes you happier. So what are five steps to achieving your goals? 1) Shut Up Keep them secret. Talking about big goals rewards yourself ahead of time and makes you less likely to follow through. Via Daniel Coyle’s excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: While it’s natural and oh so tempting…
4 minutes
Here Are 3 Awesome Secrets To Happier Memories, Backed By Research
u can't trust your memory. Memory is fluid. Every time you recall something you're essentially rewriting it in your head. Yet you're prone to stubbornly trusting this copy of a copy of a copy -- even if it no longer resembles the original: Robert Burton describes an experiment in his book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Not, which everyone with a strong opinion should read. Immediately after the Challenger explosion in 1986, the psychologist Ulric Neisser asked…
4 minutes
The Secret To Telling If Your Life Is On Track
bsp; Sir Ray Avery, entrepreneur and author of Rebel With A Cause, says it's as easy as counting your days. “When you’re born, you’re born with 30,000 days. That’s it. The best strategic planning I can give to you is to think about that.” He's 65. So he's "got about 5,625 days to live." Then he just works backward to plan. Via Techcrunch (HT: 99U): “For me, I can reverse engineer my life to achieve much more than you guys. Every…
1 min read
