Night Owls vs. Morning People: Here’s Who Comes Out Ahead
eir personalities are definitely different: ...morning types are attracted to concrete information rather than abstract thinking and like to rely on logic rather than intuition. They tend to be introverted, self-controlled, and eager to make a good impression on others. In contrast, evening types have a far more creative outlook on life, are more prepared to take risks, are more independent and nonconforming, and are a little impulsive. Night owls are smarter. And male night owls do better with the…
1 min read
When you’re exhausted should you concentrate harder or just trust your gut?
with your gut: Recent studies showed that a period of unconscious thought can help when making complex decisions. Under some circumstances, unconscious thought improves decisions even more than conscious thought. Executive functioning depends on energy provided by glucose, and we know from previous research that the performance of various conscious processes deteriorates when energy is low. Unconscious processes require less energy and may operate unhampered when energy is low. Therefore, we propose that whereas low blood glucose levels impair…
1 min read
Here’s The Secret To Amazing Naps
re are 5 ways to improve your naps: If you're a morning person, the best time to nap is around 1 or 1:30PM. If you're a night owl, nap later, around 2:30 or 3PM. The best naps are under 45 mins or 90-120 mins. Anything in between is likely to give you that groggy feeling. Naps don't mean you're lazy: A NASA study showed that in-flight naps improved subsequent performance by 34% and overall alertness by 54%. To make sure…
1 min read
How To Be A Great Leader – 5 Insights From Research
udies have shown the traits that correlated most powerfully with CEO success as well as the most common failures of bad leaders. Avoid extremes of assertiveness or passivity. The best leaders are supportive, not controlling, even in the military. Find a balance between tough and nice. Your leadership style must adapt to the environment around you. Understand what things really motivate people. (No, not money.) What's the #1 motivator? Progress. Definitely progress. Want your employees to perform better? It can…
2 minutes
10000 hours: Is it true that 10K hours makes you an expert?
bsp; So is it true that 10000 hours makes you an expert? Yes and no. As Malcolm Gladwell discussed in his bestseller, "Outliers", to become an expert it takes 10000 hours (or approximately 10 years) of deliberate practice. But deliberate practice is a specifically defined term. It involves goal setting, quick feedback, and countless drills to improve skills with an eye on mastery. It is not "just showing up" and, plain and simple, it's not fun. Most people may do…
3 minutes
How much education did the greatest creative geniuses of all time need?
out college-dropout level. Via Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else: Dean Keith Simonton, a professor at the University of California at Davis, conducted a large-scale study of more than three hundred creative high achievers born between 1450 and 1850—Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Beethoven, Rembrandt, for example. He determined the amount of formal education each had received and measured each one’s level of eminence by the spaces devoted to them in an array of reference works.…
1 min read
Are you more creative when there’s a deadline approaching?
rvard's Teresa Amabile says no. (Hat tip: Jennifer Aaker) We found that on days of the most extreme time pressure, the professionals in our study were 45 percent less likely to come up with a new idea or solve a complex problem. Even worse, there's a kind of "pressure hangover," with lower creativity persisting for two days or more. And: So if you have to tackle a complex problem in a pressure-cooker situation -- hide somewhere with minimal distractions, like…
1 min read
This Is The Best Place To Get Creative Work Done
ristopher Shea at the WSJ covers new research: Just how hard do telecommuters work? It depends on the assignment: Employees get more boring work done in the office and more creative work at home. Researchers assigned two tasks to 125 participants. The first was rote and repetitive; the other involved coming up with as many unusual uses for ordinary objects as possible, a test often used by psychologists to measure creativity. About half the participants did the tasks in a…
1 min read
