Get Better Sleep: 5 Powerful New Tips From Research
er have trouble getting to sleep? Or staying asleep? Or you get plenty of shut-eye but you're not refreshed? Everyone wants to get better sleep. But sleep trouble is incredibly common. And feeling tired the next day isn't the half of it. By not getting enough sleep you're reducing your IQ. Via Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School: Take an A student used to scoring in the top 10 percent of virtually anything she does.…
8 minutes
How To Conquer Fear, Backed By Research
ar is... really scary, actually. Research shows being afraid you're going to lose your job can be worse than actually losing your job: “…perceived job insecurity ranks as one of the most important factors in employees’ well-being and can be even more harmful than actual job loss with subsequent unemployment.” In a number of surveys, fear of speaking in public ranks higher than fear of death. Jerry Seinfeld interpreted this as meaning that at a funeral, more people would rather be in the…
8 minutes
How To Improve Self-Esteem: A New Secret From Research
seems we all want to know how to improve self-esteem these days. Life can be hard. And who is usually hardest on you? Yourself. There's that negative voice in your head criticizing you. And sometimes you can't shut it up. So the answer is to boost your self-esteem, right? We've seen an explosion of this kind of thinking lately, that self-esteem is the answer to everything. But it's had some negative effects on the world too -- like an epidemic of…
6 minutes
How To Get Organized: 2 Solutions From Philosophy And Kindergarten
ing disorganized causes huge problems. Via Organizing from the Inside Out: • Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items, according to the American Demographics Society. • The Wall reported that the average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year searching for missing information in messy desks and files. • Cleaning professionals say that getting rid of excess clutter would eliminate 40 percent of the housework in an average home (National Soap and Detergent Association).…
7 minutes
A Navy SEAL Explains 8 Secrets To Grit And Resilience
metimes you just want to quit. You know you shouldn't but nothing seems better than crawling back into bed and hiding under the covers. (I am there right now, actually, with my laptop.) The emerging science of grit and resilience is teaching us a lot about why some people redouble their efforts when the rest of us are heading for the door. Research is great, but it's always nice to talk to someone who's been there firsthand, and to see how…
12 minutes
How To Be Like Sherlock Holmes: 4 Insights From Research
uldn't it be great to be able to just look at someone and tell what they're really like? Sherlock Holmes does this all the time and it's incredibly cool. Check out this clip from the BBC show Sherlock. Of course, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and nobody can read people quite that well. We can all get better at it, though. But where do you learn a skill like that? And I mean for real -- methods backed by science. So…
7 minutes
How To Eat Healthy: 5 Easy New Tips From Research
u know you should eat healthier. But it's not easy. Temptation is all around and willpower, well, isn't. The solution is in making better choices. Psychology. But most of the answers we hear aren't legit. So I called a guy who knows the real deal: Brian Wansink. He leads food psychology research at Cornell University and the White House chose him to revise US dietary guidelines. He has a great website and is author of two smart books on the subject of tricking yourself into…
7 minutes
How To Get In Shape Using Psychology: 6 New Tricks From Research
y is there an obesity epidemic? It's not because we eat the wrong things or we lack exercise. Research shows that, plain and simple, most of us just eat too much: Reported consumption increased by 268 calories for men and 143 calories for women between the two surveys. This increase is more than enough to explain the increase in steady-state weight... The available evidence suggests that calories expended have not changed significantly since 1980, while calories consumed have risen markedly. That's hardly shocking.…
11 minutes
