Most Popular Editorials: Shifting from Star Performer to Star Manager

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Shifting from Star Performer to Star Manager You've always been a high achiever.top of your class, captain of your sports teams, star performer at work. Now, you're going to be managing a team of high-performers in a division of your company that everyone's buzzing about. You're confident that you can navigate this new challenge with characteristic success.You're pumped. You set clear goals for yourself and targets for the division. You're well aware that you'll need to rely on your emotional intelligence skills to understand and work through your new team's dynamics. You're focused on achieving your goals and getting results... but before long, you've got problems. Your team doesn't seem to be on board with your plan and they're not delivering. Worse, they seem to be shutting you out. In desperation, you go to a few trusted mentors who tell you: Continued here

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Being Special Isn't So Special There’s a paradox that is stumping psychologists right now and it’s this: Over the past 50 years, despite the standard of living rising dramatically in the western world, happiness has stayed level, while mental illnesses, anxiety disorders, narcissism, and depression have all gone up.When you study marketing, the first thing you learn is that fear sells. If you make a person feel inadequate or inferior, they will shut up and buy something in order to feel better. A capitalist system markets to everyone constantly, therefore it promotes a society where people constantly feel inadequate and inferior.It's funny, a lot of people who travel to the third-world claim that people are "happier" there. They often follow it up with some banal statement about materialism and how we'd all be so much happier if we knew how to live with less. Continued here

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Think You Have a Great Idea? Ask These 6 Questions to Gain Perspective. When you have an exciting new idea, it’s easy to focus on all its benefits and jump to action. But doing so can lead to failure. Your limited perspective may mean you’re not seeing potential hurdles — and you may be leaving other promising options unexplored.If you want the best ideas to flourish, you need to open your mind to different perspectives - from people beyond your team, whom you don't usually talk to - and ask open-ended questions. After presenting your idea, ask: What stands out to you, and what's missing? What would our critics say? Consider the failure of your idea: What would your premortem reveal? Consider other people outside the room and ask: What would someone on the frontlines say? Finally, put yourself in your competitors' shoes. What flaws or weaknesses in your idea would they celebrate if you were successful? Continued here

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Why Your Inner Circle Should Stay Small, and How to Shrink It We live in a time when “bigger is better” is the prevailing assumption when it comes to, well, just about anything. So it’s only natural for us to want to supersize our network of connections — both online and off — because the more people we know, the greater our chances of being exposed to opportunities that may lead to professional advancement, potential mentors, material success, and so on. But in fact, being what we call a “superconnector” has nothing to do with supersizing your network. Rather, it’s about surrounding yourself with a carefully curated group of people who you admire and respect and with whom you share common beliefs and values — people who will set the tone for the foundation of your larger network filled with people who provide value to one another. And that core group should be a lot smaller than you think. Continued here

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Coffee bad, red wine good? Top food myths busted Modern nutritional science is only a hundred years old, so it’s no surprise that we’re constantly bamboozled by new and competing information about what to put into our bodies – or that we sometimes cling to reassuringly straightforward food myths which may no longer be true. In a world where official dietary advice seems to change all the time, and online opinions are loud and often baseless, we ask eight food and drink experts to cut through the noise and tell it like it is. Continued here

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A Forecasting Model Used by the CIA Predicts a Surprising Turn in U.S.-China Relations Here’s some good news on the gloomy international scene: Tensions will ease significantly between the U.S. and China soon, as the Biden administration slashes consumer tariffs and Beijing welcomes the move, at least privately. Expect a new round of trade negotiations too. The thaw comes after U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen makes a big push for change, and as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, long dismissed as an also-ran, becomes a key player. President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping reluctantly go along. Continued here

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The Two Choices That Keep a Midlife Crisis at Bay The midlife-crisis phenomenon has taken on almost mythic proportions in the American psyche over the past century. The term was first coined by the Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques, who noticed a pattern in the lives of "great men" in history: Many of them lost productivity - and even died - in their mid-to-late-30s, which was midlife in past centuries. The idea entered the popular consciousness in the 1970s when the author Gail Sheehy wrote her mega.best seller Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. Sheehy argued that around the age of 40, both men and women tend to descend into a crisis about getting old, running out of time to meet their goals, and questioning life choices. She based her work on in-depth case interviews with 115 individuals, the most famous of whom was the auto entrepreneur John DeLorean. He went on to become infamous in 1982, when, at the age of 57, he was arrested for attempting to sell about 60 pounds of cocaine to undercover federal agents. Continued here

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Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention? Each time a high-profile mass shooting happens in America, a grieving and incredulous nation scrambles for answers. Who was this criminal and how could he (usually) have committed such a horrendous and inhumane act? A few details emerge about the individual’s troubled life and then everyone moves on.Three years ago, Jillian Peterson, an associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metro State University, decided to take a different approach. In their view, the failure to gain a more meaningful and evidence-based understanding of why mass shooters do what they do seemed a lost opportunity to stop the next one from happening. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, their research constructed a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces and places of worship since 1999.Peterson and Densley also compiled detailed life histories on 180 shooters, speaking to their spouses, parents, siblings, childhood friends, work colleagues and teachers. As for the gunmen themselves, most don't survive their carnage, but five who did talked to Peterson and Densely from prison, where they were serving life sentences. The researchers also found several people who planned a mass shooting but changed their mind.Their findings, also published in the 2021 book, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, reveal striking commonalities among the perpetrators of mass shootings and suggest a data-backed, mental health-based approach could identify and address the next mass shooter before he pulls the trigger - if only politicians are willing to actually engage in finding and funding targeted solutions. POLITICO talked to Peterson and Densely from their offices in St. Paul, Minn., about how our national understanding about mass shooters has to evolve, why using terms like "monster" is counterproductive, and why political talking points about mental health need to be followed up with concrete action. Continued here

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The Differences between Happiness and Meaning in Life There can be substantial trade-offs between seeking happiness and seeking meaning in life.Happiness and meaning are strongly correlated with each other, and often feed off each other. The more meaning we find in life, the more happy we typically feel, and the more happy we feel, the more we often feel encouraged to pursue even greater meaning and purpose.But not always.An increasing body of research suggests that that there can be substantial trade-offs between seeking happiness and seeking meaning in life. Consider, for instance, the "parenthood paradox": parents often report that they are very happy they had children, but parents who are living with children usually score very low on measures of happiness. It seems that raising children can decrease happiness but increase meaning. Or consider revolutionaries, who often suffer through years of violence and discord for a larger purpose that can ultimately bring great satisfaction and meaning to their lives and the lives of others. Continued here

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How to use food to help your mood | Psyche Guides Depression and low mood are not separate from the rest of your bodily health: the right diet can help reduce your risk.The insufficiency and inaccessibility of our frontline depression treatments has led to a reassessment of our understanding of the mechanisms underlying depression. It has encouraged a move away from the 'serotonin hypothesis' (that reduced activity of serotonin in the brain is the cause of depression) and toward a focus on the interaction between the immune system, the brain and mental states. This field of research, called psychoneuroimmunology, is driving a revolution in the conceptualisation of depressive illness and, consequently, its treatments.The shift in focus also opens up potential new avenues for individual management of depressive symptoms; we might have more power than we thought to support our own brain health and recovery. Though there is no magic bullet, emerging and accumulating evidence indicates that modifiable features of our lifestyles that influence our immune systems - including nutrition - are important factors in our vulnerability to, severity of and recovery from depression. Knowing a little more about the relationship between nutrition, immunity and mood could enable people to stack the odds more in their favour. Continued here

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What to Say and Do When Your Employee Has Another Job Offer It’s normal to get a sinking feeling when one of your employees says, “I have something to tell you.” No manager wants to hear that someone on their team has another job offer in hand. But how should you actually respond to the news? Should you counteroffer? Or just accept that they’re moving on? And how can you tell if the employee is just bluffing to get a raise? Continued here

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How Ambitious Should You Be? Years ago, I was facilitating a board of directors' succession committee to select the company's next CEO. The slate was down to two candidates, each of whom had unique strengths and limitations. The committee chair offered a fascinating observation of them, saying, "One is too ambitious, and the other isn't ambitious enough." When I probed to better understand her concerns, she described a host of traits spanning each candidate's degree of self-interest, achievement orientation, self-awareness, and concern for others. In short, the candidate labeled "too ambitious" had been overly assertive about the financial growth of the company and the candidate labeled "not ambitious enough" had spoken too much about their family and personal interests. Continued here

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Stop Rambling in Meetings -- and Start Getting Your Message Across While it’s important to share your point of view in meetings, it’s critical to know when and how. You don’t want to monopolize the conversation. In this piece, the author offers practical tips for sharing the floor so that you can get your message across more effectively. First, take time to reflect after meetings. If you feel like you have been sharing too much, look back and consider who else contributed. Ask yourself honestly: “Did I talk over people?” Estimate how much of the meeting you were speaking. Also consider using other communication channels to share your ideas. For example, can you keep a running list of your brilliant insights on your computer so you’re better prepared to share them in the next meeting? Or, can you share ideas in a non-meeting setting — for example, in a follow-up email or an internal chat platform? It’s also helpful to give yourself a signal to pause and to practice compressing your thoughts. A trusted colleague or advisor can also provide insights into how you’re meeting your goal of talking less and listening more. Continued here

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If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Turns out its just chance. The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world's poorest 3.8 billion people.This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth? Continued here

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How to Spot -- and Develop -- High-Potential Talent in Your Organization Organizations typically look to past performance to identify future leaders. But an employee's track record doesn't tell you who might excel at things they haven't done before, nor does it identify early-career high potentials or people who haven't had equitable access to mentoring, sponsorship, development, and advancement opportunities. The authors have developed a model for predicting leadership potential that's grounded not in achievements but in three observable, measurable behaviors: cognitive quotient, drive quotient, and emotional quotient. They outline the telltale behaviors in each area, and explain how managers can coach employees to develop and refine their skills. Continued here

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How to Influence Your Prospect's Memory and Decisions A 2021 Bain & Co. survey found that 92% of global B2B buyers prefer virtual sales interactions - up 17 percentage points from its May 2020 survey. What's more, 79% of sellers espouse the effectiveness of virtual sales, compared with 54% in 2020.The data isn't surprising. Virtual selling is often cost-efficient and allows for more meetings with prospects. However, flexibility or cost-efficiency doesn't necessarily mean virtual communication is effective.What makes communication effective? As a cognitive neuroscientist, I propose looking at communication effectiveness from the angle of what your audience remembers after your interaction. After all, your audience will make decisions in your favor based on what they remember, not what they forget.Since memory influences decisions, you must ask yourself: What do I want my audience to remember? This question is more complex than it seems on the surface, because memory is multifaceted. There exist multiple pathways to making something memorable. In this article, you'll see one framework for creating memorable messages that influence decisions. Continued here

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Should we be eating three meals a day? It's likely you eat three meals a day – modern life is designed around this way of eating. We're told breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we're given lunch breaks at work, and then our social and family lives revolve around evening meals. But is this the healthiest way to eat?Intermittent fasting, where you restrict your food intake to an eight-hour window, is becoming a huge area of research."You could see a dramatic change just from a small delay in your first meal and advancing your last meal. Making this regular without changing anything else could have a big impact."But whatever changes you make, researchers agree that consistency is crucial."The body works in patterns," says Anderson. "We respond to the anticipation of being fed. One thing intermittent fasting does is it imposes a pattern, and our biological systems do well with a pattern." She says the body picks up on cues to anticipate our eating behaviours so it can best deal with the food when we eat it. Continued here

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Why Your Goals Will Fail, and What You Can Do About It We make well-intentioned goals, with the false belief that we just lack commitment and motivation; that all we need is a good kick in the ass to get us going. This couldn't be farther from the truth, so please stop being so hard on yourself. There are better ways to achieve your full potential, with minimal headache.First, realize that the key to success at pretty much everything comes down to creating productive habits. A habit is defined as a behavior that happens almost involuntarily. I define "productive habits" as behavior that get you what you want in life automatically, without you really trying.But productive habits don't just appear out of thin air. They are created by assembling a chain of individual behaviors, like a string of pearls. These individual behaviors, over time, change our daily actions and in turn, our lives. Productive habits move us to our full potential, morph us into the people we want to become, and ultimately give us the life we want.There are three steps to forming productive habits: Continued here

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Americans are stepping off the ‘hamster wheel’ and redefining what success looks like It only took a few seconds for the idea to take hold.While listening to the radio on his way to work one day, Sam, a nurse, was struck by a question a couple of goofy drive-time radio DJs were kicking around: If you could do anything, what would you do? One host said he'd open a cheese shop in a sleepy town in upstate New York."It was a joke," says Sam, 40, who asked to be identified by his first name only to protect his job and privacy. But the idea has stuck with him for months now. He'd love to open his own little coffee or cheese shop, he says, envisioning hosting wine tastings on Saturday nights."I could sell my house, quit nursing, and go somewhere and just take a stab at this," he tells Fortune. "I feel ridiculous saying that. It was a joke on the radio. It shouldn't be my life plan." Continued here

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A Respected MIT Professor Said Your Success Will Be Determined By 3 Things. Here's How to Get Better at Each of Them Before he died, beloved MIT professor Patrick Winston regularly gave a fascinating and deeply compelling lecture to university students about the value of good communication. In his introduction, he drew attention to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which calls for court martial for any officer who sends a soldier into battle without a weapon.Winston says there ought to be a similar protection for students -- and I might add, that protection should be provided for entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners, too. Namely, that no one should go through life without being armed with the ability to properly communicate.Because, as Winston puts it: Continued here

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Why we need a new kind of education: Imagination Studies | Aeon Essays We need a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to the foundation of all knowledge Continued here

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The Art of Persuasion Hasn't Changed in 2,000 Years More than 2,000 years ago Aristotle outlined a formula on how to become a master of persuasion in his work Rhetoric. To successfully sell your next idea, try using these five rhetorical devices that he identified in your next speech or presentation: The first is egos or "character." In order for your audience to trust you, start your talk by establishing your credibility. Then, make a logical appeal to reason, or "logos." Use data, evidence, and facts to support your pitch. The third device, and perhaps the most important, is "pathos," or emotion. People are moved to action by how a speaker makes them feel. Aristotle believed the best way to transfer emotion from one person to another is through storytelling. The more personal your content is the more your audience will feel connected to you and your idea. Continued here

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Great Leaders Are Thoughtful and Deliberate, Not Impulsive and Reactive All leaders have two selves. There's the self we prefer to present to the world - the one that is run by our pre-frontal cortex and is measured, rational, and capable of making deliberate choices. And then there's the self, run by the amygdala, that is reactive and impulsive and often causes us to fail to meet our commitments or overreact in frustration. The antidote to reacting from the second self is to develop the capacity to observe your two selves in real time. You can start by noticing and labeling your negative emotions such as impatience, frustration, and anger - to get distance from them. Also, watch out for times when you feel you're digging in your heels. The absolute conviction that you're right and the compulsion to take action are both strong indicators that you're operating from that second self. Finally, it's important to ask yourself two key questions in challenging moments: "What else could be true here?" and "What is my responsibility in this?" Questioning your conclusions offsets confirmation bias and looking for your responsibility helps you focus on what you can change - your behavior. Continued here

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How to Quit Intensive Parenting Intensive parenting - the dominant model of modern American child-rearing - is a bit like smoking: The evidence shows that it's unhealthy, yet the addiction can be hard to kick. I'd like to suggest strategies that could help society quit overparenting, and they require parents, policy makers, and even the childless to pitch in. But first, we need to understand why intensive parenting - whereby mothers and fathers overextend their time and money curating their child's life in hopes of maximizing the child's future success - prevails. Continued here

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Want to work abroad? This salary calculator estimates what your job would pay in 38 countries Are you sick of living in the United States? Has being holed up in your apartment for the pandemic made you want to get as far from it as humanly possible - as in boarding a boat or plane, traveling across an ocean and a few continents, then staying indefinitely?That may be a common escapist fantasy, but the most seriously committed know it involves actual logistics research. First you need a job, but you also need to know what that job will buy you. You could be pairing coconut milk with caviar on the balcony of your beach-side tower, or scraping together coins for microwaveable beans in your basement sublet (like, well, lots of people must). It all depends on the money.Lucky for you, this salary calculator might help. Continued here

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5 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload If you have moments of feeling overwhelmed by your workload, start with some deep breathing and healthy self-talk, like saying to yourself, "Even though I have many things to do, I can only focus on the one thing I'm doing right now." Then start tracking your time to figure out how much you're really working, and and how you're spending your time. Your behavior will naturally shift in positive directions due to this monitoring. Third, check your assumptions with others - does your boss really expect an immediate reply? Does your colleague really need that report done today? Next, test your own assumptions about success requires: are they realistic? Finally, change your behavior. Changing your behavior is the best way to change your thoughts. For example, try flipping "When I'm less busy, I'll create some better systems" into "When I create better systems, I'll feel less busy." Continued here

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Can gravity batteries solve our energy storage problems? There is a riddle at the heart of the renewable energy revolution. When the wind blows, the sun shines, and the waves roll, there is abundant green power to be generated. But when skies darken and conditions are calm, what do we do?The answer, today, is to ramp up conventional power production, supplying the grid by burning fossil fuels. It is a 20th Century solution to a 21st Century problem - one that sits in sharp contrast with plans for carbon neutrality.A cleaner future will mean focusing on ever-larger lithium-ion batteries, some energy experts say. Others argue that green hydrogen is the world's best hope. And then there are those placing their bets not on chemistry, but the limitless force that surrounds us all: gravity. Continued here

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Does turmeric's reputation translate into real health benefits? While Kamal Patel was probing through the reams of user data on examine.com - a website that calls itself "the internet's largest database of nutrition and supplement research" - before a planned revamp later this year, he discovered that the most searched-for supplement on the website was curcumin, a distinctive yellow-orange chemical that is extracted from the rhizomes of turmeric, a tall plant in the ginger family, native to Asia.Clinical trials show that curcumin, present in the spice, may help fight osteoarthritis and other diseases, but there's a catch -- bioavailability, or how to get it into the blood Continued here

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The countries resisting remote work In some places, remote work just isn't as culturally sanctioned, hasn't been embraced by society or never caught on due to technological or logistical barriers. So, while many countries march head-first into a work-from-anywhere future, workers in locations including France or Japan are often returning to the office full-time, rejecting the notion that a five-day in-person work week is a relic of the past. Continued here

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Exactly how to think about every skill you've ever built and showcase it in a job search Transferable skills come from life and career experiences, but they can become part of your personal brand with a little bit of framing.What does it take to be a successful candidate? A college degree? Won't hurt. Prior job-related experience? Still a big talent pool to beat there. Not too long ago, hiring managers placed a precedent on soft skills when hiring talent. In fact, a 2019 study found that 92% of talent professionals and hiring managers agree that candidates with strong soft skills are increasingly important. Before this, employers focused primarily on a candidate's ability to contribute hard skills such as how well they can write, code, use Microsoft Suite, etc.Now employers and hiring managers are looking for well-rounded candidates. Not only do they want the candidate to be an excellent accountant, but they also want that individual to demonstrate solid communications skills. Furthermore, after surviving a pandemic, employers are eager to hear about a candidate's life and career skills, among other transferable skills.What are transferable skills? Continued here

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The dark side of social media influencing Do you follow influencers on social media? Do you always check their posts? Do you find you're spending too much time or becoming obsessed with checking influencers' accounts? And when you can't check in, do you feel disconnected or lost?If you answered yes to all of these questions, you may have whats known as "problematic engagement" with social media influencers.But don't blame yourself too much. Continued here

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Markets haven't acted like this since 1981 -- and here's how that played out You have to go all the way back to 1981 when stocks, bonds, inflation-protected bonds and industrial metals were all slumping simultaneously.The S&P 500 index SPX, -0.81% has retreated 18% this year, the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF IEF, +0.86% has dropped 10%, the iShares TIPS Bond ETF TIP, +0.54% has dropped 8%, and the Invesco DB Base Metals Fund DBB, -0.91% has eased 1%.Then, as now, the Federal Reserve was hiking interest rates to quell inflation.:Just like today, the world's central banks were obsessed with 'breaking the back' of inflation, which, like a monster in a horror movie, kept appearing to die before coming back with second and third winds," says Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist for BCA Research's Counterpoint. "Just like today, the central banks were desperate to repair their badly damaged credibility in managing the economy.""And just like today, central bankers hoped that they could pilot the economy to a 'soft landing', though whether they genuinely believed that is another story," he added. Continued here

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How 15 minutes of mental health hygiene can change your whole day Carving out 15 minutes in an already busy day can sound like a chore, but a clinical psychologist says it's a small investment that can make the rest of your day easier and happier. He explains how to create and implement a mental health hygiene routine. Continued here

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When clinging to old hopes gets in the way of healing and growth | Aeon Essays is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice and adjunct clinical faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. His writing has appeared in the journals Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Revista de la Sociedad Peruana de Psicoanálisis. He lives in Chicago. Continued here

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A psychotherapist shares the 3 exercises she uses every day to 'stop obsessing about the future' Stress is a natural response to uncertainty, and it's normal to find yourself worrying about future events every now and then.But excessive thoughts about the future can be a sign of anticipatory anxiety - a fear of unpredictable future events, which is sometimes a symptom of anxiety disorders. This is something I often see in my patients. If left untreated, severe anxiety can cause trouble sleeping, headaches, chronic pain and depression.Even as a psychotherapist who helps other people cope with stress, I've found myself in a cycle of unproductive worrying. Here are three strategies I use every day to cope with or stop obsessing about the future: Continued here

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How to Build Strong Business Relationships — Remotely Just prior to the pandemic, the authors interviewed 82 managers from four regions of the world about how they decide to trust new business partners. During the height of the pandemic in November and December 2020, they re-interviewed 21 of those managers and asked them how the pandemic was affecting their ability to develop new business relationships. They found that their cultural differences were still active. However, their common experience with having to meet virtually had generated a consensus: It’s almost impossible to build the kind of trusting relationships that were sustaining their businesses through the pandemic when only able to meet virtually. The authors discuss the specific challenges managers have faced in building business relationships virtually, then offer four pieces of expert advice for how to overcome them. Continued here

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The secret science behind the power of small talk Creating conversations is how we create relationships, so where would our conversations at work, networking events, or elsewhere be without small talk? Would we have found our best friend, special someone, or valued business partner? Without the light banter between Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider and Ken Jennings on the quiz show, would we even have known that Schneider powered up with self “pep talks” while listening to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” before each game? Continued here

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Where the internet went wrong – and how we can reboot it It is now quite ordinary to denounce the internet as a weapon of mass surveillance and disinformation, and a cause of our anxiety, narcissism and political polarisation. Many of us find ourselves in the alienating position of using (even relying on) technology companies we distrust and hate, knowing that they are bad for us and for society, but somehow being unable or unwilling to escape. Besides big energy providers and Big Pharma, there are no other businesses towards whom we feel such animosity and such dependence simultaneously. Twitter is colloquially referred to by many of its users as "the hell-site".What makes the internet especially difficult to oppose or escape is that it's not always clear what "the internet" even is. Continued here

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How Hormone Therapies Are Transforming Aging Every wonder why old rich guys are looking a little more muscular these days?Shivin Devgon just couldn't shake that sluggish feeling. Toward the end of 2021, the San Diego software engineer thought his health was on the right track. He exercised regularly and was able to perform well at work. Still, he lacked energy, and his mood always felt off."I would feel tired a lot of the time," Devgon told GQ. "I wouldn't feel happy. I would just feel kind of dead." Continued here

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The Radical Act of Letting Things Hurt: How (Not) to Help a Friend in Sorrow Why our instinctive efforts to salve another's sadness tend to only deepen their helpless anguish and broaden the abyss between us and them - and what to do instead."Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted," Elizabeth Gilbert reflected in the wake of losing the love of her life. "Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love." Continued here

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The Power Of Single-Tasking How to focus on one thing at a time so you can achieve more in a stress-free way.You can achieve almost anything in life... As long as you focus on achieving one thing at a time. It's a time-tested strategy that's been shared by many successful people.Gary Keller and Jay Papasan even wrote a whole book about this simple idea. But don't let the simplicity of this idea fool you. It's one of the hardest things to implement in your life. Continued here

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"Ten years ago this was science fiction": the rise of weedkilling robots The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food system.In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.This field doesn't belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.He began using two robots last year to weed his 12-hectare (30-acre) crop. The robots - which are nearly three metres long, weigh 4,300kg (9,500lb), and resemble a small car - clamber slowly across a field, scanning beneath them for weeds which they then target with laser bursts."For microseconds you watch these reddish color bursts. You see the weed, it lights up as the laser hits, and it's just gone," said Myers. "Ten years ago this was science fiction." Other than engine sounds, the robots are almost silent and each one can destroy 100,000 weeds an hour, according to Carbon Robotics, the company that makes them. Continued here

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Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on the Most Important Skill Job Seekers Need Today With 700,000 employees around the world (it hired 200,000 just in the past 18 months), Accenture realizes the imperative of coming up with new ways to recruit, retain, and delight talent. CEO Julie Sweet talks about many of the company’s initiatives, including Accenture’s ambitious effort to onboard each and every one of its new hires in the metaverse. Sweet is clearly passionate about the talent challenge, and managing it effectively is a big part of Accenture’s growth strategy. Sweet has been CEO of the company since 2019 and became its chair last year. She brought a legal background to the job, having served as Accenture’s general counsel and, before that, as a partner at the prestigious law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Continued here

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Switching Jobs? Here’s How to Make Sure You Won’t Regret It. No one wants to feel regret after taking a new job. And yet, it’s something that happens often. In this piece, the author outlines steps you can take to avoid a painful career misstep: 1) Before you begin to think through your decision, outline your career goals and criteria for acceptance, laying out a roadmap for how you will evaluate each element. 2) During your interview, ask exploratory questions about employee engagement, growth potential, expectations, metrics, challenges faced, and how long people historically stay in their roles. 3) Beware of your cognitive biases as you try to make a decision. 4) And finally, before accepting an offer, make it a priority to network with employees who work for the company you’re interested in joining, and get their view of what it’s really like on the inside. Continued here

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These are the storytelling lessons I learned from Steve Jobs Every product should have a story, a narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer's problems. A good product story has three elements:- It appeals to people's rational and emotional sides. - It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple. - It reminds people of the problem that's being solved - it focuses on the "why."The story of your product, your company, and your vision should drive everything you do. Continued here

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8 Healthy Lunches Under 500 Calories That Aren't Salads | Livestrong.com If you're looking to shed a few pounds, your meal options may suddenly feel limited. Chances are you think you're confined to bland eats and boring midday meals. Not so. We're here to prove that there's no need to eat a salad for lunch every day if you're trying to lose weight. Yes, really. Continued here

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How to think about free will | Psyche Guides Are you reading this as a result of your own free choice? It certainly seems as though you are. After all, surely you could have read something else, or done something completely different. We feel that we are free, the originators of our own choices, not just conduits through which the chain of cause and effect flows. But think about it a little more and this ‘voluntarist’ conception of free will starts to look untenable. Continued here

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4 Reasons Talented Employees Don’t Reach Their Potential If you think you’re under-performing at work, you’re probably right, because few individuals are 100% motivated throughout sustained periods at work. In fact, even if you think that you are performing to the best of your capabilities, you’re probably wrong, as there is generally little overlap between what people think of their performance, and how they actually perform. The truth is that most people don’t try their best after they’ve been on the job for more than six months. The are four common reasons for this:  1.) Poor fit. Talent is mainly personality in the right place. 2.) Disengagement, often due to poor leadership. The antidotes to this are finding time to be curious and learn, connecting with colleagues, and talking to your boss about the fact that you’re disengaged. 3.) Organizational politics. It’s naïve to think that you can let your talents speak for themselves. In fact, the more talented you are, the more enemies you will make — particularly in toxic and political organizations. 4.) Personal circumstances. No matter how engaged and talented someone is, personal drawbacks and setbacks will often interfere with their career success. In short, you can always assume that your talents are necessary, but not sufficient to excel and impress at work. Optimizing your job so that it fits with your interests, beliefs, and broader life activities, and being alert to the invisible social forces that govern the dynamics of organizations, will ultimately help you perform to the best of your capabilities. Continued here

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Most Managers Don’t Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn. Are you successful at coaching your employees? Many executives are unable to correctly answer this question, because they think they’re coaching when they’re actually just telling their employees what to do. This behavior is often reinforced by their peers, and is hardly an effective way to motivate people and help them grow. Instead, research suggests, coaching leaders in how to be coaches can pay dividends, but only if you start by defining “coaching” and give ample room for self-reflection and feedback. Continued here

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Hedonism is overrated -- to make the best of life there must be pain, says this Yale professor The simplest theory of human nature is hedonism- we pursue pleasure and comfort. Suffering and pain are, by their very nature, to be avoided. The spirit of this view is nicely captured in The Epic of Gilgamesh: "Let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night... For such is the destiny of men." And also by the Canadian rock band Trooper: "We're here for a good time / Not a long time / So have a good time / The sun can't shine every day." Why would we ever choose to suffer? Sometimes, as a hedonist would tell you, it's for the sake of tangible goals. Pain can distract us from our anxieties and even help us transcend the self. Choosing to suffer can serve social goals - it can display how tough we are or serve as a cry for help. Unpleasant emotions, such as fear and sadness, are part of play and fantasy and can provide moral satisfaction. And effort and struggle and difficulty can, in the right contexts, lead to the joys of mastery and flow.But there's more. Continued here

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Bullying: why most people do nothing when they witness it – and how to take action Imagine that you are at work, and you witness a colleague repeatedly bullying another colleague. What would you do? While many of us like to think that we would interfere to stop it, surveys show that most employees who witness bullying situations, known as bystanders, do not respond in ways that would help the victim.Instead, up to 60% of employees in some places report doing nothing when witnessing bullying. But why is this the case and what consequences does it have? Our recent research gives important clues. Continued here

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Why It’s So Hard to Scale a Great Idea Why do some products, companies, and social programs thrive as they grow while others peter out?  According to the author, there are five causes: 1) False positives, or inaccurately interpreting a piece of evidence or data; 2) Biased representativeness of population, or not making sure your samples reflect the larger population at scale; 3) Non-negotiables that can’t grow or be replicated; 4) Negative spillovers, or unintended outcomes; and 5) Cost traps. Here, he explains and offers examples of each cause, as well as how to anticipate or avoid them. Continued here

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'Buy now, pay later' sends TikTok generation spiraling into debt You may have seen some of these names - Klarna, Sezzle, Zip (formerly Quadpay), Afterpay and Affirm - pop up as you shop online, presenting an easier, more seamless alternative to having to type out your credit card information again and again. With a few clicks and a small down payment, you'll have what you ordered on hand - all you need to do now is complete your four payments.The services, also known as point-of-sale loans, are heavily marketed by influencers and brands on TikTok and Instagram. They giddily display their "hauls" from the most popular brands, not just normalizing debt, but actually glamorizing it — and selling it as a way for trend-conscious young people to have all the coolest consumer goods, whether they have the cash on hand or not. Continued here

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A longevity expert says you can extend your life span if you eat more carbs and less protein and fast every 3 months If you want to live as long as possible, you may want to cut back on protein, eat more carbs, and fast regularly, sometimes for days at a time, an article published on Thursday in the journal Cell suggests.The researchers describe an optimal diet for a longer life span as relying on primarily plant-based carbohydrates like legumes, whole grains, and vegetables, with about 30% of daily calories from healthy fats like nuts, olive oil, and some dark chocolate and fish.They also advise avoiding red meat and processed meat, as well as refined grains and added sugars, and consuming minimal white meats like poultry. Recent research suggests that swapping out processed foods and meat for more whole foods and plants could add as many as 10 years to your life. Continued here

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What the Best Presenters Do Differently Our minds are wired for story. We think in narrative and enjoy consuming content in story form. So understanding the difference between presenting and storytelling is critical to a leader’s ability to engage an audience and move them to action. Unfortunately, presentation software often gets in the way. Slides should be designed to complement a story, not to replace the storyteller. The author presents five storytelling strategies to help you stand out the next time you give a presentation. Continued here

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Effective Leaders Decide About Deciding | Nancy Duarte Every leader should design and communicate how they want to make decisions. Making it clear what you care about, what you need to know about, and what you're tasking others to move on will help minimize confusion about who should be making which decisions. It also helps clarify when you as the leader can be kept out of a decision, when you should be pulled in, and how requests for your feedback should be communicated.I've learned this the hard way. Because I'm passionate about multiple facets of my company, my executives were getting confused at times about why I was inserting myself into a conversation. Sometimes, it was simply my excitement, and other times, it was from a place of concern. Sometimes, I didn't see how their execution of a strategy lined up with what I saw in my mind's eye. This made my executives blurry about what they had the power to act on and when they needed to loop me in - in part because I wasn't clear on those things myself. Decisions would stall. Frustrations would run high. Continued here

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The Forgotten Stage of Human Progress What if we invented a technology to save the planet - and the world refused to use it?This haunting hypothetical first popped into my head when I was reading about Paxlovid, the antiviral drug developed by Pfizer. If taken within a few days of infection with COVID-19, Paxlovid reduces a vulnerable adult's chance of death or hospitalization by 90 percent. Two months ago, the White House promised to make it widely available to Americans. But today, the pills are still hard to find, and many doctors don't know to prescribe them.The pandemic offers more examples of life-saving inventions going largely unused. Unlike Paxlovid, COVID vaccines are known to every doctor; they are entirely free and easily available. But here, too, invention alone hasn't been enough. COVID is the leading cause of death for middle-aged Americans, and the mRNA vaccines reduce the risk of death by about 90 percent. And yet approximately one-third of Americans ages 35 to 49 say they'll never take it.My hypothetical concern applies even more literally to energy. What if I told you that scientists had figured out a way to produce affordable electricity that was 99 percent safer and cleaner than coal or oil, and that this breakthrough produced even fewer emissions per gigawatt-hour than solar or wind? That's incredible, you might say. We have to build this thing everywhere! The breakthrough I'm talking about is 70 years old: Continued here

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Your personality is linked to risk of dementia and cognitive decline Picture two individuals. The first is highly organized, with excellent self-discipline and an extensive collection of post-it notes. The second is a bit more frazzled, worried, and emotionally unstable. Now, let’s turn time forward to view our subjects in their upper 70s. If you had to guess, which person do you think might be suffering from cognitive decline — maybe even dementia? Continued here

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Vacuuming carbon from the air could help stop climate change. Not everyone agrees Some of the biggest companies in the world, including Facebook and Google, are planning to spend almost $1 billion on a new climate change strategy.It's not renewable energy or planting trees. It's pulling carbon dioxide emissions right out of the air.The world has moved so slowly over the last 40 years to rein in greenhouse gases that scientists are now finding that cutting the use of fossil fuels alone may not be enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The world is on track for increasingly destructive heat waves, floods and storms. That means heat-trapping gases may also need to be pulled out of the atmosphere.It's known as "carbon dioxide removal." Continued here

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As Your Team Gets Bigger, Your Leadership Style Has to Adapt When Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s vice president of design, first began managing a team, it consisted of just  a handful of people. And then it doubled. Every few years, it doubled again. At each of these points, Zhuo felt like she had an entirely different job. While the core principles of management stayed the same, the day-to-day changed significantly. People often ask her what’s different about her job now than when she started. Looking back, she describes the five most striking contrasts between managing small and large teams: You Shift from Direct to Indirect Management, People Treat You Differently, You Context Shift All Day Long, You Learn to Pick Your Battles, and People-Centric Skills Matter Most. Continued here

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Has your motivation to work declined? Maybe your values have shifted I was talking to a colleague the other day, and she said that between the pandemic and a few life events over the past few years, she just isn’t as professionally ambitious any more. She has lots of things she would like to accomplish—they just aren’t related to work. Another colleague has elected to reduce her work hours in order to spend more time with her children. These conversations echoed several I have had over the past few years where I have watched friends and colleagues change jobs or shift their emphasis from professional advancement to public service, personal satisfaction, or family engagement.Many of these shifts reflect a change in people's underlying values. Psychologists like Shalom Schwartz have studied systems of values. Values determine what people think is important, which in turn influences motivation. Here are a few examples: Continued here

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Where Management Should End and Leadership Should Start Can you guess how many books on leadership exist? My last count, which was a few years ago, was more than 257,000. Any idea what would happen if you were to read them all? My guess is you would be more confused about what leadership is than when you started.To make things more complicated, most people don't know (in practice) where management stops and leadership starts. How do I know this? We ask that very question when we work with clients and rarely do people know, and our clients are senior leaders and executives in big and small companies.Don't misunderstand the intent of this topic. It's easy to assume that you need to choose: either be a leader or a manager.That's simply not the case.  Continued here

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How to become a better listener, according to science High-quality listening is an underrated ability. How well and frequently you listen to others is a better predictor of your leadership potential than your actual intelligence or personality. As a recent review shows, good listeners tend to perform better at work, and to report higher level of wellbeing, as well as more meaningful and fulfilling relationships. We tend to trust them more, and they tend to be seen as curious, empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Continued here

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Honey, let's track the kids: the rise of parental surveillance At 4pm on a Friday afternoon in June 2019, Macy Smith, then 17 years old, was driving alone in a white hatchback near Pilot Mountain in North Carolina. The road twisted through a thick forest and a torrential summer storm lashed down. Macy lost control on a corner and the car hydroplaned, hurtling through the trees and flipping over three times before settling in a ravine. She was flung into the back seat and the vehicle pinned her left arm to the ground. Continued here

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5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently New research suggests that the highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success. The findings offer important clues on ways any organization can foster greater connectedness — even within a remote or hybrid work setting — to engineer higher-performing teams. Doing so takes more than simply hiring the right people and arming them with the right tools to do their work. It requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop. The authors present five key characteristics of high-performing teams, all of which highlight the vital role of close connection among colleagues as a driver of team performance. Continued here

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Microplastics are in our bodies. How much do they harm us? A few years ago, as microplastics began turning up in the guts of fish and shellfish, the concern was focused on the safety of seafood. Shellfish were a particular worry, because in their case, unlike fish, we eat the entire animal—stomach, microplastics and all. In 2017, Belgian scientists announced that seafood lovers could consume up to 11,000 plastic particles a year by eating mussels, a favorite dish in that country. Continued here

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Preparing to Tell Your Boss “I Quit” Telling your boss that you’re leaving is one the hardest workplace conversations you can have, and it’s difficult to predict how they’ll respond in the moment. The authors outline five possible reactions and how to respond in each case: if your boss gets angry, if they badmouth your new opportunity, if they make a threat, if they try to guilt trip you, or if they counteroffer. By reviewing these scenarios and strategizing in advance, you can greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll be able to handle their reaction — whatever it may be — with thoughtfulness and grace. Continued here

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The Great Resignation is becoming a "great midlife crisis" With prices soaring and analysts predicting a recession on the horizon, it might not seem like the best time to quit your job. But that’s not keeping American workers, especially older, more tenured ones, from doing so. Continued here

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Einstein wasn't a "lone genius" after all Perhaps the biggest myth in all of science is that of the lone genius. Someone, somewhere, with a towering intellect but no formal training wades into a field and can immediately see things that no one else has ever seen before. With just a little bit of hard work, they find solutions to puzzles that have stymied the greatest minds prior to them. And perhaps, if you had the good fortune of coming into a field just like that, you could make those great breakthroughs that the world’s greatest professionals had all missed. Continued here

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‘Workcations’ Aren’t an Escape. They’re Practice. Mikaela Miller had never pictured herself stuck in an office, but, perhaps as with many people, it happened anyway. In her 20s she chose a career in biomedical-data analysis—a deskbound job certainly, but one she hoped she could perform from anywhere. Instead, after grad school she found herself commuting to a cubicle in Kansas City, hoarding her vacation time to take an annual two-week international trip. “I had to save all year to do that,” she told me. “I’d work Christmas Eve, or the day after Thanksgiving.” Into her 30s, her life got more sedentary, more routine. Continued here

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Covid hasn't given up all its secrets. Here are 6 mysteries experts hope to unravel For a formidable adversary with plenty of secrets up its sleeve, the coronavirus presented one bright bull’s-eye for the world’s response. Scientists, in record time, developed vaccines based on the virus’s spike protein that in turn have saved millions of lives.Yet more than two years after SARS-CoV-2 appeared, as documented deaths in the U.S. near 1 million and estimated global deaths reach as high as 18 million, there are still many mysteries about the virus and the pandemic it caused. They range from the technical - what role do autoantibodies play in long Covid? Can a pan-coronavirus vaccine actually be developed? - to the philosophical, such as how can we rebuild trust in our institutions and each other? Debate still festers, too, over the virus's origins, despite recent studies adding evidence that it spilled over from wildlife. Continued here

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Why Being Anti-Science Is Now Part Of Many Rural Americans’ Identity And why that will make communication around the next crisis so much more challenging.People in rural areas hold old, well-known anxieties about scientists, particularly when the scientists come from the government. Kristin Lunz Trujillo, a postdoctoral researcher with the COVID States Project, said this anxiety stemmed from an attitude that pits rural, hands-on knowledge against the kind of knowledge obtained from institutions like universities or government bureaucracies - a kind of anti-establishment view that extends to scientists. Continued here

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These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads From pulling carbon dioxide out of the air to turning water into fuel, innovators are developing new technologies and pairing existing ones to help slow global warming. Continued here

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How 15 minutes of mental health hygiene can change your whole day Carving out 15 minutes in an already busy day can sound like a chore, but a clinical psychologist says it's a small investment that can make the rest of your day easier and happier. He explains how to create and implement a mental health hygiene routine. Continued here

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Stanford Neuroscientist: How to Train Your Self-Control So You Don't Mess Up Your Life Some of those missteps were probably due to spectacular miscalculations. Maybe you thought the market for that product was bigger, or that potential romantic partner saner. Others may be caused by clear personal weakness. You know you should quit your safe job to run your startup full time but just can't face your mom. But how many weren't due to any decision at all really? You just drifted one mindless potato chip or time-wasting Instagram scroll at a time into a life that doesn't match your aspirations?  Continued here

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Remote Work Should Be (Mostly) Asynchronous The pandemic accelerated many trends, from streaming, e-commerce, and food delivery platforms to the widespread adoption of remote work. But instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to improve how we work, most organizations simply took their offices online, along with the bad habits that permeated them. A move to a better way of working remotely is desperately needed. If your digital transformation is going to be successful, you need to give your employees the right tools and systems to work in a digital, distributed, virtual environment. However, digital tools are only as effective as how effectively you use them, and alignment between managers and employees on remote work best practices will be critical to the success of any digital transformation initiative. Continued here

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When and How to Respond to Microaggressions Microagressions are defined as verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group.   For Black people, they are ubiquitous across daily work and life. You can respond in one of three ways:  let it go, call it out immediately, bring it up at a later date. Here’s a framework for deciding which path is right for the situation and how to handle the conversation if you choose to have one. First, discern what matters to you. Second, disarm the person who committed the microaggression; explain that you want to have an uncomfortable conversation. Third, challenge them to clarify their statement or action, then focus them on the negative impact it had. Finally, decide how you want to let the incident affect you. Continued here

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Diseases of the Will: Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Talented from Achieving Greatness "Principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds," Van Gogh wrote to his brother in a beautiful letter about talking vs. doing and the human pursuit of greatness. "The great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together." But what stands between the impulse for greatness and the doing of the "little things" out of which success is woven? Continued here

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The 6 Best Mobility Exercises for Longevity | Well+Good “Many older adults isolate and become sedentary, which is why they have trouble walking and moving when the time comes,” explains Brittany Ferri, PhD, CPRP, an occupational therapist at Medical Solutions Barcelona. “The best way to keep your motion is by practicing, meaning walking, exercising, stretching, and doing anything that keeps you active.”In particular, mobility exercises can be an essential component to increasing longevity and quality of life, especially for older adults. These are the moves that target the range of motion in our joints (not to be confused with flexibility, which is about increasing length in our muscles). Having greater mobility helps to prevent falls, promote balance and coordination, and maintain independence later into life by allowing us to function better in everyday activities. Continued here

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4 Ways Busy People Sabotage Themselves When we’re chronically busy and stressed, we can fall into self-sabotaging behaviors. Four common traps are, first, to keep ploughing away when she should take a step back and prioritize. Second, we overlook simple solutions because stress has created tunnel vision. A third common trap is to avoid setting up systems that would help us save time in the long run. Finally, we might find ourselves using avoid-and-escape coping mechanisms, which can take sneaky forms, such as escaping into low-level tasks that can be easily accomplished rather than tackling the big, scary stressful tasks we know we should. Continued here