Photo Credit: Son Neo Kaku via Compfight cc
Quote of the day
The decisions that we expect we will make based on our finely developed plans are often different from how we actually behave. We get sidetracked.
Three different sets of forces influence our decisions in ways we commonly fail to anticipate:
- Forces from within ourselves.
- Forces from our relationships with others,
- Forces from the outside world.
~FRANCESCA GINO, author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
- This Is The #1 Ritual You Need To Do Every Day, Barking up the wrong tree | Tweet
You read a lot on the internet about rituals that can help you be better in the morning or leap over tall building with a single bound. Maybe some celebrity does this one or that one. Yeah, wonderful. But what’s a simple solution customized for you — yes, you — that can make your happy moments happier, can help you overcome grief, increase your performance at work, and even stop procrastinating?
- Are you interesting?, Seth’s Blog | Tweet
More interesting than you realize.
Related books:
HAPPINESS
- What really makes you a happy person? The Creativity Post | Tweet
The experts say we only control 40 percent of our happiness. Are they right?
Related book:
CREATIVITY
A machine for ideas exists, Creative Something | Tweet
I was just sitting here wondering what it would feel like to plug into an “idea machine.”
Related book:
THE BRAIN
YOU can increase the size of your muscles by pumping iron and improve your stamina with aerobic training. Can you get smarter by exercising — or altering — your brain?
Related book:
PSYCHOLOGY
- Your job is literally ‘killing’ you, The Washington Post | Tweet
People often like to groan about how their job is “killing” them. Tragically, for some groups of people in the U.S., that statement appears to be true.
- What is social anxiety? The Atlantic | Tweet
In the age of the digital hermit, a psychologist explains what it means to avoid other people—and what to do about it.
Imagine that you have just become a new parent. Overwhelmed and exhausted, your performance at work is suffering. You desperately want to work from home part-time to devote more attention to your family. One of your supervisors had children while climbing the corporate ladder, while the other hasn’t. Which supervisor is more likely to embrace your request?
- The Bad Things That Happen When People Can’t Deal With Ambiguous Situations, Science of Us | Tweet
Just about everyone dislikes the feeling of not knowing the answer to an important question about what’s going to happen in the future. Generally speaking, waiting to hear whether you’ll get an important job, or to find out about a loved one’s diagnosis after a medical test, is a uniquely anxiety-provoking experience.
Related books:
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
- It Is Impossible to Stop Comparing Yourself to Your Peers, Science of Us | Tweet
They say comparison is the thief of joy, and this, as it turns out, is one cliché that has a raft of empirical evidence backing it up. But there is another truth about social comparison.
Related book:
RELATIONSHIPS
How Friendships Change in Adulthood, The Atlantic | Tweet
“We need to catch up soon!”
Related book:
FOOD
WHEN marketing researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School rigged shopping carts at a major East Coast supermarket with motion-tracking radio-frequency tags, they unwittingly stumbled on a metaphor for our path through the aisles of life.
“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising,” wrote Gertrude Stein, “and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.” Sigh.
Related book:
SCIENCE
People Don’t Actually Want Equality, The Atlantic | Tweet
They want fairness.
Does scientific research drive innovation? Not very often, argues Matt Ridley: Technological evolution has a momentum of its own, and it has little to do with the abstractions of the lab
Related book:
MARKETING
The other element of guerilla marketing, Seth’s Blog | Tweet
The first element is the guts to do things without money or bureaucratic approval. The guerrilla marketer doesn’t wait for a policy, or a developed industry or a line to form. She steps up and speaks up.
Related book:
ECONOMICS
In the span of nearly 5 years, Uber has gone from a limited launch in San Francisco to offering rides in more than 300 cities worldwide. In China alone, despite existing in a legal gray zone, the company claims it arranges 1 million rides per day. That means 35 Chinese people hop into an Uber there every time you blink.
- The Economics of Male Birth Control, Priceonomics | Tweet
When it comes to reversible birth control, there are a lot of options out there for women: pills, rings, intra uterine devices, patches, implants. Men, on the other hand, are still limited to the same two contraceptive techniques they’ve been using for centuries: condoms and withdrawal. The question is, why?
BUSINESS
Working From Home: Awesome or Awful?, The Atlantic | Tweet
Telecommuting can increase employee satisfaction and decrease turnover. It can also be lonely.
Related book:
