Are you more creative when you’re forced to work?
Daniel Akst's book Temptation: Finding Self-Control in an Age of Excess I found this line to be curious: At least one study of blocked writers has found that they were more productive and more creative when they were essentially forced to write instead of scribbling only when the mood struck them. So I looked up the study and, yes, it's true, being forced to write made writers more productive and more creative: Data for 3 groups of 9 ‘blocked’…
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The Secret To Beating Procrastination, According To Research
procrastinate the most when we're in a bad mood and think we can improve it with something fun. When we're in a good mood or when we don't think we can improve how we feel we screw around a lot less. Via Temptation: Finding Self-Control in an Age of Excess: So procrastination is a mood-management technique, albeit (like eating or taking drugs) a shortsighted one. But we’re most prone to it when we think it will actually help. In…
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How much does jet lag affect performance?
amatically. By betting on west coast teams in every Monday Night Football game where they played east coast teams you'd beat the point spread 70% of the time. NFL teams that crossed three time zones for a game "were twice as likely to be beaten by a lower-ranked opponent in the tournament’s first round." On the flip side, competing while their body is at the peak of its circadian rhythm increased performance of long jumpers by 4%. "...in sports as…
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Research Says You Can Beat Your Cravings With These Two Words
en deciding whether to eat something that isn't necessarily nutritious, use the words "I don't" instead of "I can't." You're 8x more likely to be successful. Via LA Times: ...try a reframing exercise that seems to work for all sorts of yearnings. It's actually pretty easy: When deciding whether to eat something that isn't necessarily nutritious, use the words "I don't" instead of "I can't." What's the difference? "With 'I don't' you're choosing words that signal empowerment and determination rather…
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What are the top 3 ways to make an office happier and more productive?
eality mining" research by Ben Waber's team came up with three issues that can improve workplace satisfaction as well as increase productivity by up to 25%. 1) Team members with big networks thrive. People who sat at lunch tables with more friends were more productive: "We found that the people who sat at the larger tables had substantially higher performance," observes Waber. This is because they had created a much bigger network to tap into. Over the course of the…
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10 Things Your Hair Says About You, According To Research
ientific research has shown that: We can't be sure if blondes have more fun but they do make more money, raise more money and gentlemen do prefer them. Being well-groomed is correlated with better grades. Good grooming is associated with higher wages for men but not women. And if you're ugly and underpaid, guys, definitely shave. Women who remove their pubic hair have better sexual function. A number of factors go in to whether a girl is attracted to men…
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Are future creative geniuses unpopular in high school?
s. The deliberate practice that will one day make them famous alienates them from their peers in adolescence. Via Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking: ...the single-minded focus on what would turn out to be a lifelong passion, is typical for highly creative people. According to the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who between 1990 and 1995 studied the lives of ninety-one exceptionally creative people in the arts, sciences, business, and government, many of his subjects were on the social…
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Here’s The Secret To Loving Your Job, According To Research
ople whose jobs allowed them to use their signature strengths -- those qualities they were uniquely best at, the talents that set them apart from others -- were consistently happier: We hypothesized that the amount of positive experiences at work (job satisfaction, pleasure, engagement, meaning) is a function of the extent to which the situational circumstances at the workplace allow for the application of an individual’s signature character strengths. For the description of the individual a reliable and valid instrument…
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