3 Reasons Your Relationship With Food Is Totally Crazy
bsp; 1) You ignore the importance of context You ate more because you were hungry? Maybe, but you're probably not giving nearly enough credit to how context affects you. I've posted many times about how context is far more influential than you think. From Paul Bloom's How Pleasure Works: Protein bars taste worse if they are described as "soy protein" Orange juice tastes better if it is bright orange. Yogurt and ice cream are more flavorful if described as "full fat"…
6 minutes
Why do we play?
y do we play? We play in order to learn: Via Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul: Play creates new neural connections and tests them. It creates an arena for social interaction and learning. It creates a low-risk format for finding and developing innate skills and talents. How does this work? When something is fun, it commands our full attention and provides an emotional reward, two things that are key to strengthening memory:…
4 minutes
What are the secrets of improving learning and memory?
ve already posted a research round-up on becoming an expert at anything. That was focused on the big picture of how to master something over a period of years. This time let's get less macro and focus more on the nitty-gritty of what you need to do when you sit down, roll up your sleeves and try to learn something new. Yeah, It's Gonna Take Effort No, I'm not going to lecture you like Grandpa about the virtues of…
3 minutes
What’s the best way to learn from a book?
n't keep reading it over and over. Read it and write a one page summary. Via Daniel Coyle's excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: Research shows that people who (wrote a summary) remember 50 percent more material over the long term than people who follow (repeatedly read). This is because of one of deep practice’s most fundamental rules: Learning is reaching. Passively reading a book— a relatively effortless process, letting the words wash…
1 min read
How good are the best?
high complexity jobs like professional and sales roles, the top 10% produce 80% more than average and 700% more than the bottom 10%. Via 80,000 hours (hat tip - Andy McKenzie): ...how much do different employees typically differ in output? There have been many studies looking at this very question, across a wide range of jobs, which are summarised in a meta-study by Hunter, Schmidt and Judiesch (6). Output is measured in a variety of ways. For salespeople, it’s the…
2 minutes
How To Change Bad Habits Into Good Habits: 5 Steps From Research
onically, studies show saying "I'll never do that again" makes you even more likely to do that again. About 40% of the actions we perform in a day are habits. So we're on autopilot almost half the time. Let's round up the research on bad habits and good habits and learn the best way to turn one into the other. Awareness The first step is awareness. That cigarette doesn't magically appear in your mouth. Noticing yourself acting habitually is…
2 minutes
What can we learn about expert performance from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound?
e key to expert performance in any scenario is having done it before -- or the closest thing to that. Via Daniel Coyle's excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: When U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 mounted its May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, it prepared by constructing full-scale replicas of the compound in North Carolina and Nevada, and rehearsing for three weeks. Dozens of times the SEALs simulated the operation. Dozens…
1 min read
3 Things The Greatest Generals Of History Can Teach You About Strategy
Don't do what your enemy is prepared for. Frontal assaults against prepared defenses are stupid. Via How Great Generals Win: From the beginning of organized warfare, frontal attacks against prepared defenses have usually failed, a fact written large in military history for all generals to see... great generals strike where they are least expected against opposition that is weak and disorganized. Almost all successful attacks have hit enemies from the rear, from the flank, or anywhere it is not…
3 minutes
