Here’s The Secret To Efficient, Fast Teamwork
might be to forget about trying to be fast at all and to just focus on being smooth. A Formula One pit crew -- a group that depends on efficient, fast teamwork -- found that they weren't at top speed when they concentrated on speed. It was when they emphasized functioning smoothly as a group that they made their best times. Via Oliver Burkeman's wonderful The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking: Bosses are more frequently persuaded,…
1 min read
The 10 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make In A Job Negotiation
Not Negotiating Via The Essentials of Job Negotiations: Proven Strategies for Getting What You Want: ...the overarching theme to successful job negotiations is to be respectful and reasonable at all times. Be sure to keep this guiding principle before you, and then jump in. There is some truth to the adage that you get half of what you ask for, and none of what you don't. 2) Not preparing effectively for the job negotiation Via The Essentials of Job Negotiations:…
3 minutes
Are psychopaths more likely to become criminals… or CEOs?
ny psychopathic traits are more common in business leaders than in mentally disturbed criminals. Via The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success: In 2005, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon of the University of Surrey conducted a survey to find out precisely what it was that made business leaders tick. What, they wanted to know, were the key facets of personality that separated those who turn left when boarding an airplane from those…
2 minutes
Flow: The #1 Secret To Enjoying Your Work
u want to be experiencing "flow." It's when you're so wrapped up in what you're doing that the world fades away: Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity... The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described... as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even…
3 minutes
Why do life-threatening situations make some people more calm?
e heart rates of the best bomb disposal experts actually drop when they're in the danger zone. Why? Confidence. Via The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success: Back in the 1980s, Harvard researcher Stanley Rachman found something similar with bomb-disposal operatives. What, Rachman wanted to know, separated the men from the boys in this high-risk, high-wire profession? All bomb-disposal operatives are good. Otherwise they’d be dead. But what did the stars have that the…
2 minutes
Are puppies the secret to productivity?
iewing cute images improved performance on tasks that required carefulness," researchers concluded. Via Bodyodd: "Viewing cute images improved performance on tasks that required carefulness," researchers concluded. Earlier experiments found that people did a better job playing the game Operation after viewing photos of puppies and kittens. Researchers speculated that the cute images made subjects more attuned to being careful because baby animals suggest vulnerability... This means anyone who has to do work that requires careful attention, such as copyediting or accounting, could benefit. And: So go…
1 min read
The Two Word Trick For Becoming More Creative
order to innovate in a way that is both practical and effective you need to make "little bets." What's a little bet? A small experiment that tests a theory. It's just big enough to give you the answer you need but not so big that it wastes too much precious time, money or resources. Rather than going all-in on the first idea you have and risk losing everything, a little bet allows you to break out of your comfort…
5 minutes
Why do we play?
y do we play? We play in order to learn: Via Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul: Play creates new neural connections and tests them. It creates an arena for social interaction and learning. It creates a low-risk format for finding and developing innate skills and talents. How does this work? When something is fun, it commands our full attention and provides an emotional reward, two things that are key to strengthening memory:…
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