This Is How To Survive Disaster: 6 Secrets From Research
u woke up expecting another weekend of binge-watching Netflix and arguing with strangers on the internet. Instead, you were greeted by a massive earthquake. Or a flood. Hurricane. Zombie apocalypse. Or your Roomba stopped humping the sofa leg and led an AI overthrow of humanity. One thing is for certain: you’re not ready for this. Yesterday your biggest fear was sending a text to your boss and having "meeting" autocorrected to "mating." Now you gotta find water and locate food?…
10 minutes
This Is How To Get Unstuck: 5 Secrets From Research
ere are moments in life that make you say, “And just how did I end up here?” You feel neck-deep in a quagmire of “stuck.” Not only has your desired future not arrived, it might not even seem possible anymore. You wish deus ex machina was really a thing. And feeling stuck isn’t even the scariest part. What’s scary is getting used to it. Whether it’s career, relationships or big picture life goals, we all get to a point where…
9 minutes
How To Be Resilient: 5 Steps To Success When Life Gets Hard
all have to deal with frazzled, harried, extremely stressed-out people… some of whom are unfortunately ourselves. There are days where it feels like life is going to grab you by one ankle and one wrist and just wishbone you. These are the moments in any job, project, or career where you want to quit. I discussed the issue of quitting in my first book but today we’re gonna focus on the not-quitting option: resilience. We hear this issue get…
9 minutes
This Is How To Deal With Pain: 4 Powerful Secrets From Research
ere’s a case in the medical literature of a butcher who slipped while working and got his arm caught on a meat hook. Yeah, ouch. The pain was bright, attention-grabbing, impressive, and very good at what it does – it was the Beyoncé of pain. He was in agony. Then he realized the hook only caught his sleeve. Didn’t even penetrate the skin. And the pain went away. Weird, right? Here’s another one -- and at the risk of sounding…
8 minutes
New Neuroscience Reveals 6 Secrets That Will Increase Your Attention Span
’ve all wondered about it. You’re not crazy: yes, our attention spans really are declining. In 2004, people averaged 150 seconds on a computer screen before switching to a different screen. In 2012, that dropped to 75 seconds. Studies from 2016 to 2021 showed it had dropped again to somewhere between 44 to 50 seconds. And that’s an average. So half the time it’s shorter than that. Yes, I know, now you want a t-shirt that says, “I Read Eric’s…
9 minutes
New Neuroscience Reveals 8 Secrets That Will Make Your Memory Stronger
memory consists of 70 percent lines from Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes and 30 percent embarrassing moments. Why? I have no idea. Often, memory seems to make no sense. But here’s the thing: a lot of what we think we know about how memory works is wrong. First off, it’s not a perfect video recording of what happened. Memories are a lot more like Legos, assembled and reassembled each time, and rarely in the same way twice. And memory isn’t…
8 minutes
This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome
just don’t take humor that seriously. Yeah, it makes us happier, but its effects are much, much more profound than you might guess. People who use humor to cope with stress have better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, experience less pain during dental work and live longer. Surgery patients who watched comedies needed 60% less pain medication. Heck, even anticipating humor has been shown to reduce stress. Humor improves your relationships. Surveys say it’s the second…
10 minutes
These 5 Things Will Make You Smarter
hn von Neumann could multiply two eight-digit numbers together in his head – when he was six-years old. At 22 he was helping to develop what would become quantum mechanics. His off-the-charts mathematical ability made the Manhattan Project a success. He all but invented game theory. (Ever hear the term “zero-sum”? He coined the phrase.) And building on work by Alan Turing and Kurt Godel he laid the groundwork for the computer you’re using. Students could barely keep up with…
9 minutes
