Quote of the day
Since enemies engage our energies of anger and fear, our main weapons against them are wisdom, tolerance, compassion, and love. Wisdom helps us become fearless by understanding the natural safety of truly deep reality. Tolerance helps us to not lose our wisdom in anger and hatred. Compassion expands our wisdom, forestalling the urge to create enemies.
~ROBERT THURMAN and SHARON SALZBERG, authors of Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier
CREATIVITY
Creating the ideal cognitive conditions for creativity [The Myths of Creativity
], Creative Something | Tweet
To spark new ideas: first get your brain into a relaxed state, then give it a complex task to solve. Science helps us to explain why this approach to ideation works.
THE BRAIN
Rich people are less sad–but they aren’t any happier than the rest of us [You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap)
, FastCoexist | Tweet
Life is a little less miserable when you can throw money at your problems.
PSYCHOLOGY
Revenge causes psychological harm to the avenger [Love Your Enemies
], Big Think | Tweet
When our relationships and behavior are shaped by a desire for satisfaction against a specific person or event, he says, we fall into the same traps as someone seeking outright revenge.
HEALTH
10 million wisdom teeth are removed each year. That might be way too many, Vox | Tweet
Wisdom teeth, also called the third molars, are four teeth that grow at the very back of each corner of the mouth. For most people, they start to grow in between ages 17 and 25. They’re thought to crowd out other teeth or cause tooth decay, which is why many dentists and oral surgeons think it’s better to just nip those problems in the bud and take them out as a preventative measure. But there’s a serious debate between dentists and oral surgeons: should they preemptively remove someone’s wisdom teeth if the patient doesn’t have any symptoms?
RELATIONSHIPS
Everybody else is cheating, right? Not necessarily, Science of Relationships | Tweet
Most people believe that infidelity is a very bad thing, yet a majority of people admit they have cheated on a romantic partner. In fact, studies have shown that about 75 percent of men and 68 percent of women have cheated at some point in a relationship.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Will there really be an Uber for everything? [Uberpreneurs
], TechCrunch | Tweet
Tens of millions of riders around the globe love this service so much it has become its own verb. And at a $40 billion valuation, it’s no wonder that it has become cliché to describe other on demand mobile services (ODMS) as the “Uber for X”. Any offline service that can be reserved, or delivered to you physically, or transmitted to you virtually through your smartphone seems to have a startup or several trying to become the Uber for that particular vertical.
CAREERS
Degrees don’t matter anymore, skills do [40 Alternatives to College
], Quartz | Tweet
If I were to make a nomination for the most destructive belief in our culture, it would be the belief that some people are born smart and others are born dumb. This belief is not only badly off target as a shorthand description of reality, it is the source of many social pathologies and lost opportunities.
BUSINESS
Everything you need to know about becoming a better listener [Own the Room
], HBR | Tweet
It all starts with actually caring what other people have to say, argues Christine Riordan, Provost and professor of management at the University of Kentucky. Listening with empathy consists of three specific sets of behaviors. First, there’s the actual intake of information — recognizing the verbal and nonverbal cues the other person is emitting. Then there’s processing, which is where we make sense of what the other person is saying. Finally, there’s responding. This is where you validate what they’ve said — and note that validating doesn’t mean you have to agree with it — by nodding, playing back what you heard, or otherwise acknowledging that you’re picking up what they’re putting down.
WRITING
The 5 secrets of choosing the right setting for your story’s climax [Structuring Your Novel
], Helping Writers Become Authors | Tweet
When you plan your story’s climax, the first thing to come to mind might not be the setting. Too often, the climactic setting is an afterthought. The action, after all, is what’s most important–not where it takes place. But setting can make or break any scene in your story, and this is nowhere more true than in your story’s climax.
Pacing: Space out the tension, Darcy Pattison | Tweet
Tension on every page is the mantra for fiction writers. But what if your tension is spread unevenly throughout the story? That may be fine, because stories need a natural rhythm, an ebb and flow of action, thoughts, dialogue and reflection (inner dialogue). Some scenes may be crammed with small actions, while others pace steadily through the setting. Sometimes, though, I find that I’ve packed a scene with too many MAJOR revelations or actions, creating a top-heavy scene; that scene is usually matched by another scene that lacks enough tension.