How To Find Happiness In Today’s Hectic World
ying to find happiness in a world so busy and complicated can seem impossible. What's weird is that in so many ways our lives are objectively better than our grandparents' lives were. We have more... yet we often feel worse. Don't you wonder if life was happier when it was simpler? I do. Who has the explanation for this? And more importantly, who has answers on how to fix it? I don't. But I know someone who does. So I gave Barry Schwartz a call. He's…
10 minutes
7 Secrets Top Athletes Can Teach You About Being The Best At Anything
'd all like to be better at what is most important to us. Top athletes know the secrets to constant improvement but most of us don't hang out with gold medalists or top coaches and we're not familiar with the sports research. So I called a guy who is. David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. It's an excellent read whether you're a sports fan or not…
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 Motivated: 4 New Insights From Research
metimes there is not enough coffee in universe to get you going. How to be motivated is something we all struggle with at some time or another. Or, um, daily. Motivation is such a mystery. It's a feeling and we understand it so poorly it feels impossible to do anything about it. Is there anyone who can unravel the science of how motivation works and tell us what to do? Yes. Dan Pink wrote the book on motivation. Literally. He's…
10 minutes
How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 New Steps Backed By Research
don't wanna. I don't wanna. I don't wanna. It's awful and horrible. I hear it causes cancer. I'll do it when I feel better. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it when I'm taller. Procrastination plagues us all. We always think there will be more time tomorrow and research shows that's just not true. No, you won’t do better work by waiting. In fact, studies show leaving things unfinished makes you stupid. To be honest with you, dear reader, I…
11 minutes
How To Make Difficult Conversations Easy
meone is screaming in your face at the top of their lungs. Or ranting angrily and you can't get a word in edgewise. Or maybe they're sobbing so hard you can barely understand what they're saying. We've all been there. These situations don't happen a lot (thank god) but we all feel helpless when they do. And because they're rare we don't ever seem to get better at handling them. Problem is, these moments are often critical because they're usually with people…
9 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 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
