Most Popular Editorials: Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked: Here's How to Stay Sharp

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Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked: Here's How to Stay Sharp Having a hard time focusing lately? You're not alone. Research shows interruptions occur about every twelve minutes in the workplace, and every three minutes in university settings. In an age of constant digital interruptions, it is no wonder you're having trouble ignoring distractions. In their new book, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World, Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist, and Dr. Larry Rosen, a psychologist, explain how our ability to pay attention works and what we can do to stay focused. It turns out, attention isn't as simple as it seems. In fact, paying attention involves two separate functions: "enhancement" (our ability to focus on things that matter) and "suppression" (our ability to ignore the things that don’t). Interestingly, enhancement and suppression are not opposites, they are distinct processes in the brain. Continued here

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Bruce Lee on Self-Actualization and the Crucial Difference Between Pride and Self-Esteem "The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.""Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner value with things in the world around you," Anna Deavere Smith wrote in her invaluable advice to young artists. But how does one master the intricacies of that integration? That's what legendary Chinese-American martial artist, philosopher, and filmmaker Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940 - July 20, 1973) explores in one of the pieces collected in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life (public library) - the invaluable compendium of his never-before-published private letters, notes, essays, and poems that also gave us the origin of his famous metaphor for resilience. Continued here

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The Brain-Changing Magic of New Experiences The psychological reasons why novelty - from visiting new places to socializing - makes us happier and healthier people.Early on in the pandemic, when I spent most of my days confined to my apartment, I noticed something strange start to happen. Even the most mundane new experiences made me feel genuinely elated. When the trees bloomed in spring, they looked psychedelic. Seeing the sun glint on a nearby lake was as pleasurably disorienting as peering into a kaleidoscope. Taking a walk to a different neighborhood I had never explored might as well have been a trip to Marrakesh. Before this, I would not describe myself as a person who enjoyed "the simple pleasures." Previous springtimes were not spent thinking fuck yeah, look at that tree! whenever I saw a cool tree. I had historically chased down constant newness out of abject fear of boredom. So when comparatively minor experiences that otherwise wouldn't have registered made me exhilarated, I wanted to know exactly what was going on in my brain - and how I could make that feeling last. Continued here

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Accidental Billionaires: How Seven Academics Who Didn't Want To Make A Cent Are Now Worth Billions Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and his cofounders weren't interested in starting a business, and even less interested in making a profit on the tech. Eight years later, at least three are billionaires.Inside a 13th-floor boardroom in downtown San Francisco, the atmosphere was tense. It was November 2015, and Databricks, a two-year-old software company started by a group of seven Berkeley researchers, was long on buzz but short on revenue. The directors awkwardly broached subjects that had been rehashed time and again. The startup had been trying to raise funds for five months, but venture capitalists were keeping it at arm’s length, wary of its paltry sales. Seeing no other option, NEA partner Pete Sonsini, an existing investor, raised his hand to save the company with an emergency $30 million injection. Continued here

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Which processed foods are better than natural? Processed food conjures up images of unhealthy meals and snacks that have been mass-produced in factories. But can our intervention actually make some foods better for us?The language used to describe the foods we eat can have a huge effect on how we perceive them: "organic", "artisan", "homemade" and "handpicked" foods sound slightly more tempting than the prosaic "tinned", "rehydrated" or "freeze-dried". Another adjective that can whet our appetites is "natural", while we tend to associate "processed" food with long lists of ingredients we can't pronounce. But when it comes to our health - is natural always better than processed? Actually, naturalness doesn't automatically mean a food is healthy, says Christina Sadler, manager at the European Food Information Council and researcher at the University of Surrey. In fact, natural foods can contain toxins, and minimal processing can in fact make them safer. Kidney beans, for instance, contain lectins, which can cause vomiting and diarrhoea. They're removed by soaking the beans in water overnight and then cooking them in boiling water. Continued here

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Self-knowledge is a super power - if it's not an illusion It seems we know a lot about the contents of our own minds. We know, for instance, that we want our friends and family to be healthy, that we intend to pay this month's electricity bill, that we believe Myanmar was formerly called Burma, or that we're experiencing a particular sensation, such as pain. Philosophers have a term for such (alleged) knowledge of facts about our own minds: self-knowledge. Dating back at least to René Descartes in the 17th century, it has seemed to a number of philosophers that not only do we possess self-knowledge, but that there's also something special about the nature of some of the self-knowledge we possess. We can begin to see why by investigating our knowledge of other people's minds. Continued here

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Don't Approach Life Like a Picky Eater Try new things. Not too much. Mostly experiences. Many parents of young children struggle to introduce new foods into their kids’ diets. About half of American children are picky eaters by the age of two; they are, in the vernacular of nutritionists, "food neophobic." Our pediatrician once told me that one of our sons, who was a fussy eater, would need to try a new food at least six times before the taste would no longer fill him with fear and loathing. My wife and I wanted to fight our son's food neophobia for some practical, nutritional reasons, but more fundamentally, we wanted him to eat adventurously so he could enjoy this part of life. Openness to a wide variety of tastes and smells enhances the pleasure of eating. This is an instance of a larger truth: Openness to a wide variety of life experiences, from visiting interesting places to considering unusual political views, brings happiness. "Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible," Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet, "will himself sound the depths of his own being." Continued here

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Why Misinformation Is About Who You Trust, Not What You Think Two philosophers of science diagnose our age of fake news. "I can't see them. Therefore they're not real." From which century was this quote drawn? Not a medieval one. The utterance emerged in February 2019 from Fox & Friends presenter Pete Hegseth, who was referring to ... germs. The former Princeton University undergraduate and Afghanistan counterinsurgency instructor said, to the mirth of his co-hosts, that he hadn't washed his hands in a decade. Naturally this germ of misinformation went viral on social media. The next day, as serendipity would have it, the authors of The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread - philosophers of science Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall - sat down with Nautilus. In their book, O'Connor and Weatherall, both professors at the University of California, Irvine, illustrate mathematical models of how information spreads - and how consensus on truth or falsity manages or fails to take hold - in society, but particularly in social networks of scientists. The coathors argue "we cannot understand changes in our political situation by focusing only on individuals. We also need to understand how our networks of social interaction have changed, and why those changes have affected our ability, as a group, to form reliable beliefs." Continued here

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My 88-Year-Old Grandfather's Approach to Habit-Forming My grandpa recently turned 88 years old. When I gave him a call on his birthday, he was as energetic as ever. I know he's a disciplined man who relies on very strict routines. But I realized I never asked him about his habit-forming process. He's been doing the same things for all of his adult life. Back then, there were no books and blogs on habits. For example, he's been going to bed and waking up at the same time for ages. Another thing he does is going for a daily walk. And he recently got a stationary bike that he also uses every day. One of the things I've been writing about for years is that you don't need to look at scientific research on habits to figure out what to do. If you have a healthy grandparent or elderly family member, just look at what they do. You'll see the patterns. Look at the good things they do and copy them. That’s what I've been doing with my grandfather as well. So asked him, "Gramps, I know your habits are really important to you. How did you go about forming your habits?" Here's his process. Continued here

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How Perfectionists Can Learn to Delegate and Relinquish Some Control As anyone who has led a team knows, being an effective manager involves more than making sure work gets done and goals are met. But for perfectionists, those aspects of the job can be especially challenging - because the only way to guarantee that everything is up to their standards is to do it (or at least carefully check it) themselves. In other words, some perfectionists may have difficulty delegating, and, as a result, find themselves overextended and possibly on the brink of burnout. This is a problem that Melody Wilding - an executive coach and licensed social worker - addresses regularly with her clients. Based on her experience, she has developed some strategies to help perfectionists learn how to delegate (and then actually go through with it). She recently shared some of these tips in an article for Fast Company. Here's what to know. Continued here

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Malcolm Gladwell Says Post-Pandemic World Will Be 'a Much Better Place' Expect fewer hierarchies and more hope, the Outliers author saysMalcolm Gladwell believes that the post-Covid world will be a much better and more hopeful place than it was before the pandemic. He explained his reasoning in a thought-provoking talk at last month's virtual Adobe Summit. Gladwell is best known for his bestsellers Outliers and The Tipping Point, and recently published The Bomber Mafia about World War II. He began by noting that "only a fool makes predictions, especially about the future," and that his vision of what's coming could turn out to be wrong. But, he said, "I thought it would be interesting at least to give this one a shot." Gladwell began by talking about the difference between hierarchies and networks. For example, he said, Martin Luther King's campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama was organized as a hierarchy. King was very much in command and planned the campaign very carefully. Compare that with last summer's Black Lives Matter protests, which Gladwell said was a network. The BLM movement has a collective of leaders instead of just one, and those leaders weren't necessarily front and center, nor were they commanding the troops. Unlike King's well disciplined marchers who followed precise instructions, BLM protesters were asked to remain peaceful and given guidelines for staying safe, but could express themselves however they chose. The hierarchy has a long history; the network is a more modern arrangement, he said. Continued here

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2020 Was the Year of Lost Friendships Reflecting on relationships that fizzled, fractured and broke during the pandemic.I was always skeptical of the adage, "You can probably count your true friends on one hand." That blunt sum felt impossibly restrictive to someone who prides herself on having formed and maintained many meaningful friendships. And then in 2020, my world became drastically smaller. Everyone's did in various unexpected ways. Last year wasn't only a period of self-isolating, social distancing, and seeing less of our loved ones; it also culminated in a number of ended friendships. However they played out - in the form of intentional breakups, passive dissolutions, or conscious "unfriendings" - last year's stressors were an almost undeniable factor in these demises. Continued here

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Research Shows People Become Increasingly Unhappy Until Age 47.2. Here's How to Minimize the Negative Effect of the 'Happiness Curve' 'While middle age "misery" reaches its low point in our late 40s, still: There are definitely ways to minimize the effect of a global phenomenon.If you're 30 years old and feel less happy than you did when you were 20, science says you're not alone. If you're 40 years old and feel less happy than when you were 30, science says you're also not alone. And if you're 47.2 years old and feel less happy than you did when you were 40, recent research says you're definitely not alone. Why? Research conducted by Dartmouth professor David Blanchflower on hundreds of thousands of people in 132 countries shows that people around the world experience an inverted, U-shaped "happiness curve." Starting at age 18, your happiness level begins to decrease, reaching peak unhappiness at 47.2 in developed countries and 48.2 in developing countries. The good news is that happiness levels then gradually increase. Continued here

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The Biggest Wastes of Time We Regret When We Get Older We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren't spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy. Continued here

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The Big Benefits of Employee Ownership Research shows it can reduce inequality and improve productivity.Inequality in the U.S. has been getting worse for decades: The richest 1% own a majority of all business wealth, and the top 10% own more than 90%. It has become clear that companies need to address the problem. One place to start is by expanding employees' ownership stakes in companies, giving workers a path to building wealth. There’s incentive for companies, too: Businesses with 30% or more employee ownership are more productive, grow faster, and are less likely to go out of business than their counterparts. Continued here

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How to stop sabotaging yourself at work If you've ever been on the cusp of achieving something big, then done something dumb to screw it up, you might be engaging in workplace self-sabotage. It's finally happening. You're about to get that big promotion. You're on the cusp of landing that enormous client. There's interest in your book proposal. Then, you miss a big deadline, make a preventable mistake, or otherwise do something that could undermine all of your hard work. If you've ever been on the cusp of achieving something big, then done something dumb to screw it up, you might be engaging in workplace self-sabotage. "Unfortunately, it's extremely common," says organizational psychologist Laura Gallaher, founder and CEO of Gallaher Edge, a leadership and behavioral science consulting firm. "Another way I look at self-sabotage is people getting in their own way." The triggers for undermining our own hard work aren't always obvious, but there are some ways to recognize and stop the behaviors. Here are some things to keep in mind: Continued here

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An Economist's Rule for Making Tough Life Decisions "Whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change."Changing your life is a big deal. It takes a lot of work and emotional energy. And it's often very difficult to predict if a dramatic turn will actually make us happier and more fulfilled, or if it will be the biggest mistake ever and we'll shrivel up into little raisins of regret. So we waffle over whether or not to quit a job, change careers, start a business, or go back to school, weighing endless pros and cons. In behavioral economics, this phenomenon is known as status quo bias. People are generally predisposed to favor sticking with their current circumstances, whatever they may be, instead of taking a risk and bushwhacking their way toward a different life. That's an instinct we should fight against, according to the findings of a new study by Steven Levitt, University of Chicago economist and Freakonomics co-author, published in Oxford University's Review of Economic Studies. Continued here

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Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications Fewer babies' cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore. Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces - pushing toward more deaths than births - seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time. Continued here

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The 25 Best Educational Podcasts For Learning What You Missed In School Most folks love learning, regardless of whether or not school is "their thing." Sometimes it's just a matter of finding the right teacher for your learning style—or maybe even the right medium. For auditory learners, podcasts can be excellent vehicles for processing knowledge that'd be less digestible in more visual mediums like video or even the written word. The American education systems tends to fail students in myriad ways, requiring continual education after the fact to learn the truth behind what we were taught in history, art, science, language, literature, and math. Privileged gatekeepers deciding who and what gets taught can result in the denial of diverse voices and perspectives. Podcasts radically shift the dynamics around who gets to teach, and who gets to learn. A lot of the most beloved and popular shows, like Radiolab and Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, basically boil down to what you wish your science or history class had been like in the first place. Many others, like 1619 and You're Wrong About, aim to correct the misinformation in many accepted cultural narratives from both our near and distant pasts. Now, obviously, podcasts can't replace a world-class, bonafide, IRL, teacher-to-student relationship. But they can teach us more than a few vital lessons. Here are a few of our most educational favorites. Continued here

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The Mental Benefits of Being Terrible at Something And what happens to your brain when you finally nail itYou've probably heard of the 80/20 rule before: once you've learned or figured out the first 80 percent of something, the effort it will take to learn the last 20 percent might not be worth it - because the last 20 percent is almost always the hardest. The 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto principle, applies to both physical and cognitive pursuits. For example, it's usually easier to go from running nine-minute miles to six-minute miles than it is to go from running six-minute miles to five-minute miles; it's easier to get proficient at chess than to become an international grand master. The 80/20 rule is interesting to consider, but it can also be misleading. That's because both the early and the late stages of skill acquisition feature unique benefits despite their varied difficulties. Continued here

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What Bosses Really Think of Remote Workers People who work from home get fewer raises and promotions. But there might be a way to avoid the remote-work penalty.America's CEOs have a message for people who love working from home: Your happy days are numbered. Remote work is "suboptimal," Jonathan Wasserstrum, the CEO of the New York commercial-real-estate company SquareFoot, told me. "I believe that work is better when most of the people are in the office most of the time together," he said. As if to prove his point, at that moment our phone connection grew fuzzy, prompting him to sarcastically add, "Oh, because remote is so great, right?" What really gets Wasserstrum's goat is when people say no one should come into the office, because that would be more fair to the people who don't want to come into the office. He said that although he wouldn't fire someone for asking to work remotely full-time, SquareFoot is a real-estate company. "If somebody didn't believe in the value of an office at least one day a week, they probably shouldn't be at the company anyway," he said. At a recent Wall Street Journal conference, WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani cheered cubicle life even louder, saying that the most "engaged" workers are those who want to work from the office most of the time. "People are happier when they come to work," he added confidently. Continued here

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Managing Oneself : How to build on your strengths Throughout history, people had little need to manage their careers - they were born into their stations in life or, in the recent past, they relied on their companies to chart their career paths. But times have drastically changed. Today we must all learn to manage ourselves. What does that mean? As Peter Drucker tells us in this seminal article first published in 1999, it means we have to learn to develop ourselves. We have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution to our organizations and communities. And we have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do. It may seem obvious that people achieve results by doing what they are good at and by working in ways that fit their abilities. But, Drucker says, very few people actually know - let alone take advantage of - their fundamental strengths. He challenges each of us to ask ourselves: What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values? Where do I belong? What should my contribution be? Don't try to change yourself, Drucker cautions. Instead, concentrate on improving the skills you have and accepting assignments that are tailored to your individual way of working. If you do that, you can transform yourself from an ordinary worker into an outstanding performer. Today's successful careers are not planned out in advance. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they have asked themselves those questions and have rigorously assessed their unique characteristics. This article challenges readers to take responsibility for managing their futures, both in and out of the office. Continued here

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Does Birth Order Really Determine Personality? Here's What the Research Says One Friday afternoon at a party, I'm sitting next to a mother of two. Her baby is only a couple of weeks old. They'd taken a long time, she tells me, to come up with a name for their second child. After all, they'd already used their favorite name: it had gone to their first. On the scale of a human life, it's small-fry, but as a metaphor I find it significant. I think of the proverbs we have around second times - second choice, second place, second fiddle, eternal second. I think of Buzz Aldrin, always in the shadow of the one who went before him, out there on the moon. I think of my sister and my son: both second children. Continued here

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A Career Detour Doesn't Have to Compromise Your Long-Term Goals Short-term situations can require shifts in our careers: If you have lost your job, you need to earn income. If in-person schooling isn't available, someone has to stay home with the kids and supervise virtual learning. And if you're the primary caregiver to a family member, you need to secure flexibility for responsibilities at home. Choosing to prioritize these immediate concerns over a longer career goals - while painful - may be necessary. But a temporary departure from your professional goals doesn't mean all is lost. You can still have control over your career arc by using four strategies. First, reframe the situation; even if you're not advancing at work, you're still advancing in other areas at home. Second, find learning opportunities to develop new skills in your current role. Third, push back against standard options. And finally, use small amounts of time toward your goals - even if it's only three minutes at a time. Continued here

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Here's Why So Many People Intend to Die With Money in the Bank There's a school of thought that you should spend down all your assets in retirement and "bounce the check to the undertaker," as Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, our publisher, likes to say. But not many Americans subscribe to that school of thought. A fascinating survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute explores how people feel about spending in retirement. It doesn't fit with finance theory. "There's just something we're not getting quite right in understanding how people navigate retirement," Lori Lucas, the president and chief executive officer of EBRI, said March 24 in announcing the results. Only 14.1% of respondents think they'll spend down all their assets. 57% plan to grow their assets in retirement, leave them untouched, or spend down only a little. Continued here

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Inside the Dirty Business of Hit Songwriting Sixty-four years ago, as Elvis Presley's career reached its supernova stage, the 21-year-old singer's team hit on a strategy that enabled him to profit from songwriting without actually writing songs. His management and music publisher had added Presley's name to the credits on a couple of his early hits, but the singer wasn't comfortable with the practice and frequently told interviewers that he had "never written a song in my life." Instead, as recounted in Peter Guralnick's authoritative biography "Last Train to Memphis," his team set up an arrangement whereby the King skipped the credit but received one-third of the songwriting royalties for each song he released, no matter who wrote it. Continued here

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The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make Nearly 200 years ago, Dhaka muslin was the most valuable fabric on the planet. Then it was lost altogether. How did this happen? And can we bring it back?In late 18th-Century Europe, a new fashion led to an international scandal. In fact, an entire social class was accused of appearing in public naked. The culprit was Dhaka muslin, a precious fabric imported from the city of the same name in what is now Bangladesh, then in Bengal. It was not like the muslin of today. Made via an elaborate, 16-step process with a rare cotton that only grew along the banks of the holy Meghna river, the cloth was considered one of the great treasures of the age. It had a truly global patronage, stretching back thousands of years - deemed worthy of clothing statues of goddesses in ancient Greece, countless emperors from distant lands, and generations of local Mughal royalty. There were many different types, but the finest were honoured with evocative names conjured up by imperial poets, such as "baft-hawa", literally "woven air". Continued here

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Is rewatching old TV good for the soul? With the amount of new shows to choose from reaching overwhelming levels, increasingly audiences are choosing to rewatch their favourite series instead. David Renshaw explores why.Over the past year, when staying at home has been government mandated in many parts of the world, it has fortunately never been easier to find something new to watch on TV. Whether it is a talking-point reality series, a beloved and twisty crime thriller, or whatever new comedy or drama Netflix and Amazon with their multi-billion dollar budgets have added to the content abyss, viewers are spoiled for choice on the small screen. There are entire websites to help you navigate what's on all the different streaming platforms, while social media can often be indecipherable to those who haven't caught the latest episode of their favourite show. Why, then, with so much fresh content, is there a growing trend for people brushing aside the glowing reviews and friends' recommendations and deciding to hit "repeat" on the shows they have watched time and time again? Continued here

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The Competencies and Constraints That Determine Leadership Success As a leader, you may sense the heavy mantle of work to be done, employees to motivate, bosses to impress, organisational culture to manoeuvre. Most leadership theories place all these burdens squarely on your shoulders: How you handle them all is entirely up to you. Concepts such as transparent leadership neglect external factors. Although leaders may be highly talented individuals, they are constrained by their environment and their own internal conditions. Rather than making leaders solely responsible for their own effectiveness, we can allow a balance between managerial competences and the many constraints that limit leaders. With bounded leadership, we look past the leader's characteristics and consider the many constraints they encounter at the individual, team, organisational and stakeholder levels. Continued here

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The Key to Find Time for Learning When I was in my twenties, finding time for learning was easy. Committing to doing the work could be hard, but there was always spare time. Now, as a father and business owner, I can relate to the struggle to find time to learn things. My to-learn list is long and ever-growing. I have dozens of unread books in my library. I have a tab in my browser saving courses I want to watch. I have many new skills I'd like to learn and dozens more I want to maintain and master. But, at the end of the week, there may only be few hours to learn. How do you fit it in? Below I'd like to articulate the strategies that have helped me find time to learn more things. Continued here

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How the space program created a culture of learning from failure In space, every failure could equal disaster. On Earth, they were priceless gifts.The Apollo lunar module was a special spaceship in many ways. It was the first - and still the only - crewed spaceship designed just to be used in space. That's why it looks so spindly and gawky. It never had to fly through the atmosphere, so it could be designed with almost pure utility, without the sleekness and protection required to account for atmospheric friction or drag. But that special quality of the lunar module created a really huge problem: It couldn't be flight-tested before use. The first time each lunar module got a shakedown flight was the moment it was being used in space. It also meant that the astronauts flying the lunar module could only ever learn to fly it using simulators (also designed by people who had never flown lunar modules). Continued here

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The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn't know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break. Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech and one of the few in the world who also studies infectious diseases. To her, the new coronavirus looked as if it could hang in the air, infecting anyone who breathed in enough of it. For people indoors, that posed a considerable risk. But the WHO didn't seem to have caught on. Continued here

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Two types of growth Anything you try to improve will have a growth curve. Imagine you ran everyday and you tracked your speed to finish a 5-mile course. Smoothing out the noise, over enough time you’d probably get a graph like this: Here, improvement works on a logarithmic scale. As you get better, it gets harder and harder to improve. Elite athletes expend enormous effort to shave seconds off their best times. Novice athletes can shave minutes with just a little practice. Logarithmic growth is the first type of growth. This is where you see a lot of progress in the beginning, but continuing progress is more difficult. Now imagine a different graph. This time you've built a new website you update regularly and you're measuring subscribers. This graph would likely look very different: Continued here

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The Clock-Out Cure: For those who can afford it, quitting has become the ultimate form of self-care My quitting fantasies became most vivid in December. It was the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a time when, historically, little work gets accomplished anyway. Here's how I imagined my resignation: I would wait for that familiar feeling to set in, the one in which I'd sooner be swallowed into the Earth's core than complete one more routine work task. Then, instead of doing it, I'd simply ... not. I would not answer the email. Not send my ideas for the pitch meeting. I'd tell my editor, "You know what, actually? Today's my last day." Then I'd sign out of Slack, forever. But, of course, I never did. The next day would be better, I told myself, and even if it wasn't, reality proved unignorable: My wife, like millions of other Americans, had lost her job in the pandemic. I was responsible for both our livelihood and our health insurance. I was grateful to have kept my job, one of the few constants in an otherwise turbulent year; at the same time, I couldn't help but feel I was running out of labor to give, especially as I watched my social-media feeds light up with reports of other professionals clocking out for good. Mayors, academics, journalists, financial analysts, even pastors - all of them, it seemed, were quitting their jobs. Some announced they were leaving for new fields; others had no next steps in mind except to sleep and read and spend time with family. But the reason they gave was the same: Continued here

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New Harvard Research: To Be Successful, Chase Your Purpose, Not Your Passion New studies shows purpose gives you resilience, and that's what will get you ahead."Follow your passion" is one of the most frequently repeated bits of work advice. It's also one of the most frequently criticized, and for good reason. Experts suggest that, for most of us, hard work makes us passionate for a field rather than the other way around. We develop passion for what we do over time, rather than starting out with a clear, defined passion for a particular career path. But if passion is a trailing indicator that you've found the right field for you, that still leaves those at the start of their careers with a tough question: If you don't follow your passion, how do you choose a career? Continued here

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Earn, Save, Invest: 3 Rich Habits for Life While I love Jamie Dimon's one-two punch of save & invest, I also believe that increasing your earnings potential is a way to build wealth faster. While I don't think it's necessary to destroy your mental well-being by continuously chasing more money, I do think it's natural to earn more over your lifetime. I believe that a person can only earn more by learning more. The more we learn, the more value we can provide to other people and organizations. And that's how we earn more. Now, does that mean you need to set unrealistic goals like, "I want to make a million dollars a year"? No. The problem with our society is that we get fixated on random figures. Continued here

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Identify -- and Hire -- Lifelong Learners The most pertinent question one can ask of a current or future employee may just be: How do you learn? Lifelong learning is now roundly considered to be an economic imperative, and job candidates or employees who consider, update, and improve their skills will be the high performers, especially over the longer term. Pressing ourselves on the question of how we learn brings a hard, pragmatic edge to the important but nebulous notion of growth mindset. The world and the workplace have changed considerably in the past year. The skills we need to function and flourish have correspondingly changed, and so we need to bring them into a smarter, sharper focus to know what they are and to seek them out proactively, persistently, and methodically. Continued here

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How Einstein Learned Physics Einstein was a student long before he became a celebrity. There is a lot to glean from his education and unique approach to learning. While the story about Einstein being an early dullard is certainly false, it's not the case that he was universally regarded as a genius, either. In college, Einstein often struggled in math, getting 5s and 6s (out of a possible 6) in physics, but getting only 4s in most of his math courses (barely a passing grade). His mathematics professor, and future collaborator, Hermann Minkowski called him a "lazy dog" and physics professor, Jean Pernet, even flunked Einstein with a score of 1 in an experimental physics course. At the end of college, Einstein had the dubious distinction of graduating as the second-to-worst student in the class. Continued here

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How to work with someone who isn't emotionally intelligent If you ever worked with someone who is volatile, temperamental, moody, or simply grumpy, you will understand the difficulties. Here are ways to cope.Few psychological traits have been celebrated more during the past 20 years than emotional intelligence (EQ). Loosely defined, it's the ability to keep your own emotions under control, as well as read and influence other people's emotions. Ever since Daniel Goleman wrote a best-selling book on the topic (popularizing earlier research by two Yale psychologists), organizations are placing increasing importance on EQ when hiring and developing employees and managers. Sadly, many managers have low EQ, which is a common cause of anxiety and stress for their employees. If you ever worked for someone who is volatile, temperamental, moody, or simply grumpy, you will understand the difficulties of putting up with a low EQ boss. Even if organizations make progress in developing EQ in their managers, you are always going to have to learn how to deal with low EQ individuals, including, at times, a boss. No amount of coaching can turn someone with chronic anger management problems, severe empathy deficits, and lack of social skills, into Oprah Winfrey or the Dalai Lama. Continued here

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Hustle culture is burning us out. Here are 3 more productive ways to achieve success Burnout can stop ambition dead in its tracks, and a year of stay-at-home directives probably hasn't helped. Here is a simple tool kit to help build resilience and meet goals. Few career perspectives have permeated mainstream culture in the last 20 years more than hustle. The idea that it's both fashionable and lucrative to pursue multiple income streams, rake in that coin, and project the image that you're a go-getter. Once a derogatory business term, hustle is now an aspiration, a means to have what you want in life, and a way to reclaim control over your destiny. In recent years, however, hustle is now being seen as the villain, the toxic origin point of rising levels of burnout. Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has bemoaned the rise of "hustle porn," and an essay from Anne Helen Petersen in BuzzFeed News reported how burnout became ubiquitous seemingly overnight. Burnout can stop ambition dead in its tracks, and a year of stay-at-home directives probably hasn't helped. Continued here