What motivates us more than most anything else?
ogress. I've posted about this before. In his excellent blog Mind Hacks, Vaughan Bell points out that we don't even need to make real progress -- the illusion of progress is enough to light that fire: I just came across a fantastic study published in the Journal of Marketing Research which shows that we can be convinced to shift into a higher gear of work and spending, even when the perception of progress is a complete illusion. And: They did an experiment where they gave some…
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What’s a good way to trick yourself into getting work done?
xtronet offers a good tip and I've used this successfully myself: I tell myself that I will merely write down the steps needed to complete the task. Just a rough draft, at first, and that’s it. Maybe just 3 steps. I then add more steps, breaking the 3 steps into smaller sub-tasks. I then add some details, and thoughts, notes of things that I shouldn’t forget when doing this task. I just think the task through and write everything down. After a…
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How much of office gossip is true?
a Dimensions of Nursing Management: The informal communication network -- i.e. the grapevine -- is an inherent part of the organization. This network helps employees to make sense about the world around them and in this way it provides a relief from emotional stress. If left unguarded, the grapevine can become an organization's worst enemy, but when it is managed properly it can significantly increase the productivity and job satisfaction of employees (Simmons 1985L 39). The grapevine's communication does not…
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Can asking questions help you accomplish those things you procrastinate doing?
a Eurekalert: Can you help you? Recent research by University of Illinois Professor Dolores Albarracin and Visiting Assistant Professor Ibrahim Senay, along with Kenji Noguchi, Assistant Professor at Southern Mississippi University, has shown that those who ask themselves whether they will perform a task generally do better than those who tell themselves that they will. And: Albarracin's team tested this kind of motivation in 50 study participants, encouraging them explicitly to either spend a minute wondering whether they would complete…
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Does the Socratic method really help people learn?
cratic questioning, a cornerstone of CBT, is as equally useful in coaching to raise awareness, promote reflection and improve problem-solving thinking. Padesky’s (Socratic questioning: Changing minds or guiding discovery? 1993) bifurcation of Socratic questioning, changing minds versus guiding discovery, is commented upon. The characteristics of good Socratic questions are enumerated, the pitfalls of experienced coaches’ over-reliance on intuition to guide their questioning is discussed and how continuing deliberate practice through, for example, providing the logical basis for sequencing questions can correct…
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Are attractive people more selfish?
a Elsevier: New research suggests that people with symmetrical facial features tend to be selfish and are less likely to cooperate with others. Facial symmetry is believed to have a large hand in how people perceive aesthetic beauty and physical attractiveness. The study, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology and compiled by Edinburgh University researchers, claims that attractive people are not only selfish by nature, but also more self-sufficient. They are less likely to ask for help, which kind of…
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Is it better to start off with ambitious goals or conservative goals?
a Eurekalert: Consumers who set ambitious goals have a greater level of satisfaction compared to those who set conservative goals, according to a recently published paper by the Cecile K. Cho, a University of California, Riverside assistant marketing professor. Cho and her co-author and Gita Venkataramani Johar, a professor at Columbia University, set up two experiments to compare people who set ambitious goals to those who set conservative goals. They focused on situations in which goals were achieved, and measured…
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What are the first words you should say in a negotiation?
mething very similar to what the guy on the other side of the table just said: We hypothesized that in online, virtual formats, negotiators receive better outcomes when mimicking their counterpart's language; furthermore, we predicted that this strategy would be more effective when occurring early in the negotiation rather than at the end, and should also be effective across both independent and interdependent cultures. Results from two experiments supported these hypotheses. Experiment 1 was conducted in Thailand and demonstrated that…
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