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
This Is How To Have A Long Awesome Life
at happens when people eat right, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, and don’t smoke? They prevent 80% of heart attacks, 90% of type 2 diabetes, and significantly reduce the chance of cancer, dementia and pretty much every other bad thing you can think of. But we’re, uh, not very good at eating right. When Harvard researchers analyzed the average American diet, it scored a 48 out of a possible 110 in terms of health. Yeesh. Unfortunately, what we call “living…
10 minutes
The Lazy Way To An Awesome Life: 4 Secrets Backed By Research
lot of men were dying and nobody knew why. In the late 70’s, the CDC realized that a shocking number of Hmong immigrants, ages 25-45, were dying in their sleep. They would gasp for breath but before help could arrive, they were gone. Autopsies revealed nothing. Perplexed, epidemiologists started calling it “Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome.” SUNDS was killing more Hmong men than the top five causes of death combined. But someone had an idea. Oddly enough, she wasn’t…
8 minutes
The *Secret* Way To An Awesome Life: 4 Insights Backed By Research
ve got a secret. In fact, I’ve got 13 of them. So do you. That’s the average number of secrets people say they have when surveyed. Five of them are “complete secrets” – you’ve never told anybody. And eight more are “confided secrets” – you’ve told at least one other person but won’t be going public with it anytime soon. A study of 2000 people in the US revealed the most common types of secrets. 92% of the time secrets…
8 minutes
This Is How To Have A Long Awesome Life
ere’s a lot of pseudoscience out there offering fake answers on how to be healthier and happier. They’re like cubic zirconia; they only look real -- and typically have a Magic 8-Ball level of scientific effectiveness. On this blog I typically attack those things with Occam’s Razor – heck, I use all of Occam’s toilet kit. (I firmly believe the only time crystals heal you is when you’re sodium deficient.) But in researching my new book, Plays Well With Others,…
9 minutes
My New Book Is Coming Out. And I Need Your Help.
rprise! The guy who lives in your device writing blog posts has a new book coming out on May 10th. Almost 5 years to the day since the last one. (It’s been quite a while but I’m still faster than George R. R. Martin.) Plays Well With Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong will help you scientifically improve your relationships – not just love, but all your relationships including friendship and community.…
3 minutes
How To Be Resilient: 5 Steps To Success When Life Gets Hard
We always hear one thing about stress: it’s bad. I haven’t checked recently but I think that’s in the Constitution. Fortunately, stress is not that simple. Researchers asked 30,000 adults how much stress they felt in the past year – and whether or not they thought stress was a negative. Eight…
11 minutes
