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 Be Successful: 6 New Shortcuts Backed By Research
all want success. And we'd like it fast. But we can only work so long and so hard. The more-more-more ethos only goes so far. What to do? I decided to ask someone who knows about this stuff: Shane Snow. Shane's the bestselling author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. He did the research and looked at how people and companies achieve success quickly by trying new things, breaking the rules and taking shortcuts -- or, as Shane calls them, smartcuts.…
9 minutes
7 Ways You Can Easily Increase Your Willpower
general, people have an overly positive vision of themselves and their abilities. But what's the one thing surveys show most everyone will admit they have a problem with? Self-control. And who is most likely to give in to temptation? Ironically, it's the people who think they have the most willpower. Via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It: Research shows that people who think they have the most willpower are actually the…
6 minutes
Decision Making: The #1 Secret Of Astronauts, Samurai, Navy SEALs, and Psychopaths
all make a lot of bad decisions. With careers: More than half of teachers quit their jobs within four years. In fact, one study in Philadelphia schools found that a teacher was almost two times more likely to drop out than a student. In our jobs: A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves “completely certain” about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time. And in our personal lives: ...an estimated 61,535 tattoos were reversed in the United…
8 minutes
3 Ways Elephants And Neuroscience Can Help You Make Better Decisions
erything You Know About Neuroscience is Wrong Here's a fancy brain picture for you: Research says that's likely to make you think I know what I'm talking about -- even if I don't. Via The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us: In one clever experiment, David McCabe and Alan Castel had subjects read one of two descriptions of a fictitious research study. The text was identical, but one description was accompanied by a typical three-dimensional brain image with activated areas drawn…
5 minutes
Lessons From The Samurai: The Secret To Always Being At Your Best
ading a few books by samurai there was one thing I saw repeated again and again and again that surprised me. It has nothing to do with swords, fighting or strategy. Actually, quite the opposite when you think about it. What did so many of history's greatest warriors stress as key to success and optimal performance? "Being calm." And it wasn't one random samurai mentioning it off the cuff. We're talking about some of the greatest samurai who ever lived writing about…
5 minutes
8 Steps To Getting The Perfect Mentor For You
entors, mentors, mentors. Everyone's always talking about them but no one really seems to know how to get a good one. Thanks to the internet we have more information than ever -- but not any more wisdom. Contacting mentors is one of the things I think you should do every week.…
9 minutes
The Single Most Proven Way To Get Smarter And Happier
s, It's This Simple Many of the fixes for our problems aren't complex -- something that's clear in the things I recommend people do every day. What's a scientifically validated way to get smarter, happier, healthier and calmer? Stop reading this right now and go for a walk. It's that simple. Here's why. Exercise Powers The Body -- And The Mind They used to say you don't grow new brain cells. They were wrong. Via Spark: The Revolutionary New Science…
5 minutes
