Does your boss really do anything at all?
bsp; As cynical as we may be about the people in charge, many bosses are extremely productive. The best leaders make a difference largely through teaching skills but also through motivation. Via Jordan Weissmann at The Atlantic: And as it turned out, some bosses achieved much better results than others. Mathematically, taking a boss in the 10th percentile of productivity and replacing them with a supervisor in the 90th percentile was the rough equivalent of adding an extra worker to…
1 min read
Are starving artists happier?
bsp; Performance and visual artists have above average job satisfaction. Via Sciencemag.org (Hat Tip: Karla) Artists have higher job satisfaction than the rest of us, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Cultural Economics. Researchers analyzed job data in Germany, which included information on how fulfilled people felt in their current positions. On a scale of 1 to 10, artists—those whose principal occupation involves performance or visual art—ranked their job satisfaction at 7.32 to 7.67 on…
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Is interest in porn seasonal?
bsp; Via Megan Garber at The Atlantic: According to a paper just published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Internet pornography -- like so many storms, like so much kale -- is seasonal. Porn's peak seasons? Winter and late summer... what they found was a defined cycle featuring clear peaks and valleys -- recurring at discernible six-month intervals... The researchers also ran a control group consisting of Google searches for non-sexual terms. And those terms demonstrated no such cyclical pattern. And…
1 min read
Can love help you quit smoking?
bsp; Looking at a picture of a romantic partner reduces cigarette cravings. Via Kevin Lewis at Boston.com: Love is often said to be like a drug, and new research suggests that it might actually be a good substitute. Heavy-smoking young men who reported being in a loving relationship but who had abstained from smoking for at least eight hours had their brains scanned in an MRI machine while viewing images of their female partner or a female acquaintance, alongside an…
1 min read
Does ambition predict success?
s: Ambition is a commonly mentioned but poorly understood concept in social science research. We sought to contribute to understanding of the concept by developing and testing a model in which ambition is a middle-level trait (Cantor, 1990)—predicted by more distal characteristics but, due to its teleological nature, more proximally situated to predict career success. A 7-decade longitudinal sample of 717 high-ability individuals from the Terman life-cycle study (Terman, Sears, Cronbach, & Sears, 1989) was used in the current study.…
1 min read
Can loving superheroes make you physically stronger?
n who identify with superheroes are physically stronger after seeing images of them. Via Pacific Standard: What’s more, those who identified with a particular superhero, and saw the muscular version of the character, exhibited greater strength on the hand-grip test than their fellow devotees who either (a) viewed the non-muscular image, or (b) viewed the muscular image of the alternate hero. Seeing the figure they identify with as strapping inspired them to their own feat of strength. Join 45K+ readers.…
1 min read
How long does it take to achieve basic competency at any skill?
viously, it can vary widely due to a number of factors but in general eight weeks seems to be the magic number. Via Daniel Coyle's excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: When it comes to growing new skills, eight weeks seems to be an important threshold. It’s the length of many top-level training programs around the world, from the Navy SEALs’ physical-conditioning program to the Meadowmount School of Music program to the clinics…
1 min read
What’s the easiest way to increase learning and improve skills?
bsp; Take naps. Via Daniel Coyle's excellent book The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills: Napping is common in talent hotbeds, and features both anecdotal and scientific justification. The anecdotal: Albert Einstein was good at physics, and he was really good at his daily post-lunch twenty-minute snooze. Other famous nappers include Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and John D. Rockefeller. Spend time with any professional athletic team,…
1 min read
