Stop Making Plans: How Goal-Setting Limits Rather Than Begets Our Happiness and Success

Stop Making Plans: How Goal-Setting Limits Rather Than Begets Our Happiness and Success

“The job – as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy – of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it,” Dani Shapiro wrote in her beautiful meditation on the perils of plans. But while embracing uncertainty may be the cure for our epidemic of anxiety and the root of the creative spirit, it remains an art enormously challenging and uneasy-making for the human psyche. Instead, we try to abate the discomfort of uncertainty by making long-term plans and obsessing over everyday to-do lists. Read more of this post

The Psychology of Trust in Life, Learning, and Love

The Psychology of Trust in Life, Learning, and Love

“When you trust people to help you, they often do,” Amanda Palmer asserted in her beautiful meditation onthe art of asking without shame. But what does it really mean to “trust,” and perhaps more importantly, how can we live with the potential heartbreak that lurks in the gap between “often” and “always”? That’s precisely what psychologist David DeSteno, director of Northeastern University’s Social Emotions Lab, explores in The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More (public library). Read more of this post

Breakpoint — Bigger is Not Better

Breakpoint — Bigger is Not Better

February 3, 2014 by Shane Parrish

Jeff Stibel

“What is missing—what everyone is missing—is that the unit of measure for progress isn’t size, it’s time.”

Jeff Stibel’s book Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain is an interesting read. The book is about “understanding what happens after a breakpoint. Breakpoints can’t and shouldn’t be avoided, but they can be identified.” Read more of this post

Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the G.D.P.

Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the G.D.P.

FEB. 1, 2014

By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN

January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year’s resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken. Read more of this post

Shane Parrish’s answer to What are the advantages of reading novels?

Shane Parrish‘s answer to:

Books: What are the advantages of reading novels?

I find many people reading novels like Notebook, P.S. I Love You, Two States, Three Mistakes of my Life etc etc..
What are their advantages that people find out time to read them even in this busy world?
What is the impact on their psychology (incl. brain, memory, IQ etc.) ? Read more of this post

Talent Is Persistence: “I wish the earlier me understood work and practice more. Just the repeated concerted effort to get better at things. I wish I didn’t have the notions of talent and genius I had back then.”

Talent Is Persistence

February 7, 2014 by Shane Parrish

A fantastic interview with filmmaker Kirby Ferguson.

This part hit me.

What would your advice be to the 20-year-old version of you, who’s just starting their career?

I wish I had Everything Is A Remix when I was younger. I wish I knew that you can just start copying other people’s stuff and fiddling with it, and putting stuff into it, and just sort of build from there. It’s okay to be primitive. That’s a perfectly fine way to start making things. Read more of this post

Barry Ritholtz’s motto: ‘Fresh mistakes, every year’

My motto: ‘Fresh mistakes, every year’

By Barry Ritholtz, 

“More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.”

— Ray Dalio, Bridgewater

Once Again, It Is The Time Of Year When I Look Back At The Various Investing, Trading And Other Mistakes I’ve Made. (Last Year’s Version Is Here; Prior Years Can Be Foundhere). Read more of this post

America, The Startup: How European Settlers Launched The Most Entrepreneurial Economy In The World

America, The Startup: How European Settlers Launched The Most Entrepreneurial Economy In The World

ROB WILE

FEB. 1, 2014, 9:24 AM 10,934 18

EMAIL  MORE

Starting a new business is hard.

Building a new industry is even harder. Especially when it’s on the other side of the world.

For nearly a century, exploration of the Americas had been carried out under royal patronage. Whatever spoils were brought back belonged to the crown. Read more of this post

You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users

You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users

Posted 22 hours ago by Nir Eyal (@nireyal)

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products, a new book by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover.

Earlier this month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone unveiled his mysterious startup Jelly. The question-and-answer app was met with a mix of criticism and head scratching. Tech-watchers asked if the world really needed another Q&A service. Skeptics questioned how it would compete with existing solutions and pointed to the rocky history of previous products like Mahalo Answers, Formspring, and Aardvark. Read more of this post

Jet Li shares secret to how he won his wife’s heart; “She had many suitors, and I happen to be the least remarkable. Being good at martial arts did not help at all.”

Fri, 07 Feb 2014

Jet Li shares secret to how he won his wife’s heart

He may be an accomplished martial artist on the big screen, but in real life, Jet Li struggled for years to perfect the art of courtship.

Recently, the superstar opened up about his marriage and shared the practical promise that won him the hand of his wife, Miss Asia Pageant winner Nina Li, reported Yesky.com via Jaynestars. Read more of this post

Lost in Clinical Translation: What happens when doctors can’t communicate clearly?

FEBRUARY 8, 2014, 2:30 PM  1 Comment

Lost in Clinical Translation

By THERESA BROWN

A classic “Far Side” cartoon shows a man talking forcefully to his dog. The man says: “Okay, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage!” But the dog hears only: “Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Ginger …”

As a nurse, I often worry that patients’ comprehension of doctors and nurses is equally limited — except what the patient hears from us is: “Blah blah blah Heart Attack blah blah blah Cancer.” Read more of this post

Saundra Pelletier, on Embracing ‘Organized Chaos’; “I love organized chaos,” says the C.E.O. of WomanCare Global. “We’re willing to roll and turn and twist and evolve, but some people don’t like that.”

Saundra Pelletier, on Embracing ‘Organized Chaos’

FEB. 8, 2014

Corner Office

By ADAM BRYANT

This interview with Saundra Pelletier, chief executive of WomanCare Global, a nonprofit provider of health care products, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Ms. Pelletier is also C.E.O. of Evofem Inc., a biotechnology company. Read more of this post

On the Trail of a Scent: A perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances says it can take from three months to seven years to develop a perfume

On the Trail of a Scent

By PATRICIA R. OLSENFEB. 8, 2014

Mr. Gaurin says it can take from three months to seven years to develop a perfume. Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Pascal Gaurin, 44, is a perfumer atInternational Flavors & Fragrances in New York. Read more of this post

How Many Hours Of Minimum Wage Work It Takes To Buy A Beer Around The World

How Many Hours Of Minimum Wage Work It Takes To Buy A Beer Around The World

CHARISMA MADARANG, FOODBEAST
FEB. 8, 2014, 8:37 AM 1,373 3

Ever find yourself sitting at your desk, calculating what a day’s work will get you in beers? Of course you have. Gathering data on the average price of a domestic draft beer in different countries and the minimum monthly wage in different parts of the world, Quartz was able to create a comprehensive beer index. Read more of this post

5 Reasons ‘The LEGO Movie’ Is Going To Crush The Box Office This Weekend

5 Reasons ‘The LEGO Movie’ Is Going To Crush The Box Office This Weekend

KIRSTEN ACUNA

FEB. 5, 2014, 12:51 PM 7,151 3

If you have a kid, you’re probably taking them to see “The LEGO Movie” this weekend.

That’s a good bet since the Warner Bros. film based on the brick toys is expected to have a huge opening.

An overwhelming amount of reviews for the film extremely positive. (It currently stands at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.) Box office estimates are tracking the film to bring in north of $60 million.*  Read more of this post

5 Tough Lessons I Learned At Coding School: You have to possess the ambition to brave the stormy sea, and the patience to sand every splinter off the ship’s deck, only to see those same splinters reappear the next morning

5 Tough Lessons I Learned At Coding School

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY, THE WEEK
FEB. 8, 2014, 10:00 AM 2,135 4

In all likelihood, you shouldn’t learn to code. That is, you should ignore all the tech industry hype-men and silly futurists who say that everyone should learn to create their own software, or that coding is the only way to be free in “the digital age.” Don’t listen when President Obama promotes these fallacies. It’s nonsense. Read more of this post

Search for a Market Niche, and You Might Find a Crowd; For entrepreneurs, an overlooked target market may open broader doors to succ

Search for a Market Niche, and You Might Find a Crowd

By JENNA WORTHAMFEB. 8, 2014

Entrepreneurs have a term for outsized problems they want to tackle or bigger-than-life bets they want to make: “moon shots.” Examples include Google’s driverless cars and Amazon’s delivery-by-drone. Tristan Walker decided that his moon shot would be revolutionizing the skin-care and beauty-product industry for African-Americans. Read more of this post