Can believing “life is a game” make you happier and more successful?
it true that "life is a game"? Saying "life is a game" seems to encourage you to take life less seriously. But it can also make you take it more seriously by getting you more invested and interested -- the way any good game does. "Scoring points" of any kind has an interesting effect. As Pete Drucker is famous for saying, "What gets measured gets managed." Kids do better in school when it's treated as a game and scored: Via…
6 minutes
Top Experts Always Recommend These 4 Books
far I've done interviews with 22 experts on various fields from happiness, to expertise, to influence and irrationality. I've asked most of them which books they highly recommend. Which ones got mentioned most often? The Top Books Experts Recommend: Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion (3 times) Dan Pink's To Sell is Human (2 times) Adam Grant’s Give and Take (2 times) Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2 times) Books Experts Recommend - By Topic Leadership Gautam Mukunda, professor at Harvard Business School and…
3 minutes
How to easily increase willpower and improve self-control:
at's it take to increase willpower? Roy F. Baumeister is the Frances Eppes Professor of Psychology at Florida State University and author of the New York Times bestseller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. I spoke with him about how self-control works, what makes New Year's resolutions succeed and how to increase willpower. My conversation with Roy was over an hour long, so for brevity’s sake I’m only going to post edited highlights here. If you want the extended interview…
6 minutes
What Playboy Playmates can teach you about making accurate predictions
2006 ten Playboy Playmates were asked to make stock picks. Half the Playmates beat the S&P 500 while less than a third of professional money managers were able to. Via The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing: In 2006, Tradingmarkets, a company that helps people trade stocks, asked ten Playboy Playmates to select five stocks each. The idea was to see if they could beat the market. The winner was Deanna Brooks, Playmate of the…
3 minutes
Best of the month: What good stuff have you been missing out on?
bsp; In case you missed them, here are the best of the month: Brainstorming: 3 reasons why everything you know is wrong. "Don't be critical", "Generate lots of ideas" -- it all goes against the research. Here's what works. Read it here. How to network: 5 methods by top experts Everybody knows you're supposed to do it. Now learn the right way -- and how to get started. Read it here. "Nice guys finish last." Really? What…
1 min read
Fascinating research findings: 6 facts that will surprise you
come across a lot of fascinating research findings but here are a few tidbits I couldn't help but post. 1) On a first date, ladies? Measure his elbows. Via Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation: The idea that symmetry equals beauty has been rattling around pop culture for a few years, based on research from evolutionary biologists Steven Gangestad and Randy Thornhill. Their study began by measuring seven body points, such as elbows, and ended with the theory…
3 minutes
Behavior change: How do you get people to do the right thing?
at's a simple way to cause behavior change? Behavior change is not easy. But there's a great TED talk that shows a simple way to influence people to do the right thing. And it leverages a principle we can all use in our daily lives. Alex Laskey spoke about how we can use the psychology of behavior change to get people to reduce their energy consumption. Grad students hung signs on people's doorknobs, asking them to turn off their air-conditioning and…
2 minutes
Good old days: What can the modern world learn from older societies?
e good old days. Despite all the undeniable benefits recent centuries have brought, you may have a nagging feeling that we've lost something in the process. Jared Diamond (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning must-read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies) has a new book to reassure you you're not crazy. The World Until Yesterday answers the question "What can we learn from traditional societies?" looking at diet, family, child-rearing, religion, violence and more. What made the good old…
4 minutes
