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
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
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
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
Here’s What Scientific Research Says Leads To A Merry Christmas
me people love the holidays, others think they're awful. What's the deal? People are happier during the Christmas season, even if they do feel more stress: …subjects are on the whole reasonably satisfied with their holiday experience, with 74.8% scoring above “neutral” in terms of their satisfaction. Subjects’ stress levels approach the midpoint of the scale, with 57.4% disagreeing that the holiday was stressful and 43.6% agreeing. The holiday experience involved substantially more PA than NA for most individuals, with 75.4% of the…
2 minutes
