Understanding how habits rule our lives

UNDERSTANDING HOW HABITS RULE OUR LIVES

IN AN EXCERPT FROM CHARLES DUHIGG’S THE POWER OF HABIT , THE JOURNALIST EXPLAINS HOW HABIT IS THE FOUNDATION FOR THE MOST SOPHISTICATED FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS ON EARTH–AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

BY CHARLES DUHIGG

I first became interested in the science of habits eight years ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad. The U.S. military, it occurred to me as I watched it in action, is one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history. Basic training teaches soldiers carefully designed habits for how to shoot, think, and communicate under fire. On the battlefield, every command that’s issued draws on behaviors practiced to the point of automation. Read more of this post

Stallone: from ‘Rocky’ start to living legend; The Hollywood star opens his heart on stage in London at a one-night-only event

January 17, 2014 6:48 pm

Sylvester Stallone at the Palladium

Stallone: from ‘Rocky’ start to living legend

The Hollywood star opens his heart on stage in London at a one-night-only event

By Antonia Quirke

After last year’s sellout An Evening With Al Pacino, now a for-one-night-only event with Sylvester Stallone. How is a dismal, rain-soaked London to cope? In the Palladium, champagne is being knocked back like lemon cordial by glamorous forty-something women and black T-shirted male action fans during a montage of famous Stallone moments projected on to the massive screen behind: Sly wearing a glistening mullet, Sly considering his wounds in a jungle, Sly yelling “nobody is gonna hit as hard as life!” Read more of this post

A truly great book needs no introduction; Today’s authors waste readers’ time with the clutter of ‘front matter’

January 17, 2014 5:39 pm

A truly great book needs no introduction

By Christopher Caldwell

Today’s authors waste readers’ time with the clutter of ‘front matter’

The other day, I started Alex Ferguson’s autobiography three times. Not that I was distracted or that the life story of the long-time Manchester United manager failed to hold my interest. One cannot help starting the book three times because the book actually starts three times. In his “introduction” Sir Alex describes how “several years ago I began gathering my thoughts for this book . . .” A few pages later is a “preface” in which he begins at the beginning, the 1980s, when he “walked through that tunnel and on to the pitch for my first home game . . .” But then in chapter 1, a few pages on, we learn that those were actually false starts, and that Sir Alex really wants to get the story rolling with his final match last May. (“If I needed a result to epitomise what Manchester United were about it came to me in Game No. 1,500 …”) Read more of this post

3 Brilliant Negotiating Tips I Learned From Steve Jobs

3 Brilliant Negotiating Tips I Learned From Steve Jobs

PETER COHAN, INC.
JAN. 17, 2014, 3:08 PM 32,894 4

In June 2007, when Apple’s first iPhone was sold, cell phones were already a big market. But by 2009, Apple ended up with 30 percent of it.

How did Jobs convince AT&T to give Apple a groundbreaking deal in exchange for the exclusive right to service the iPhone in the U.S.? When he worked at telecommunications consulting firm Adventis, Raj Aggarwal met with Jobs twice a week for several months. Read more of this post

In his new book titled There is Always a Choice, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono admits that he and his family had almost fallen victim to witchcraft

SBY says black magic haunts him, family.

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Sat, January 18 2014, 1:04 PM

In his new book, published Friday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono admits that he and his family had almost fallen victim to witchcraft. In the book, titled There is Always a Choice, Yudhoyono tells the story of  how he and First Lady Ani Yudhoyono had to fight dark clouds hovering inside their house in Cikeas, Bogor, West Java. Yudhoyono wrote that during one Sunday morning prior to the 2009 election, his wife was reading a magazine in the living room while he was busy in the library.
“Suddenly, my wife screamed and called to me. I ran into the room to find out what happened. It turned out that there was this thick dark cloud hovering beneath the ceiling, trying to enter my bedroom,” wrote Yudhoyono. “I then asked everybody to pray to seek Allah’s help. I closed the door to my room but left others wide open. The revolving clouds eventually headed out of my house.” “Alhamdulillah. Praise the Lord. My family was safe. The incident was like footage in a typical horror movie. But this really was happening. It was real,” he said in a chapter titled “Threat to the President can reach the level of assassination”. Yudhoyono said that there were other incidents that he believed could not be explained logically, but he preferred to keep them closed to the public.

61.5% of S’pore youth want to get out of S’pore

Survey: 61.5% of S’pore youth want to get out of S’pore

January 17th, 2014 |  Author: Editorial

Singapore Polytechnic (SP) released the findings of its Mass Media Research 2013 survey on Wednesday (15 Jan), which indicate that the top three aspirations of youth in Singapore are:

attain financial stability

strong family relationships

work-life balance

The Mass Media Research survey is an annual exercise that serves as a platform for SP’s Diploma in Media and Communication students to better understand current social issues and media trends. Past survey topics have included cyber-bullying, social media and citizen journalism. Read more of this post

Formula One Boss Bernie Ecclestone Cedes Powers; Tycoon Faces Trial in Germany on Charges of Bribery and Fraud

Formula One Boss Bernie Ecclestone Cedes Powers

Tycoon Faces Trial in Germany on Charges of Bribery and Fraud

WILLIAM BOSTON and JOSHUA ROBINSON

Updated Jan. 16, 2014 2:26 p.m. ETBERLIN— Bernie Ecclestone, the flamboyant tycoon who built Formula One racing into a global franchise, has stepped down from the racing circuit’s management board pending the outcome of a trial in Germany on charges of bribery and fraud. Read more of this post

Whitney Tilson Is Looking To Sell Value Investor Insight

Whitney Tilson Is Looking To Sell Value Investor Insight

by ValueWalk StaffJanuary 17, 2014
Value Investor Insight run by John Heins and Whitney Tilson is up for sale. See below for more details, which ValueWalk received via an email from Tilson.

As Value Investor Insight enters its 10^th year, my long-time partner and co-founder, John Heins, is contemplating a next stage of his career. This has prompted our contemplating a next stage in Value Investor Insight’s evolution as well. We’re exceedingly proud of VII (attached is our latest issue) and will ensure that it doesn’t miss a beat, but we’re starting to look for a partner or partners who might be interested in buying all or part of the business and taking over John’s full-time responsibility in running it. (My involvement in the day-to-day operation is almost nil, both because John does an exceptional job interviewing investors and producing the newsletter and because my energies are focused on being a money manager, not interviewing other ones!) The business is a beautiful, high-margin cash cow. If you or someone you know might have an interest in it, please let me know and I can give you further information.

Finding a mutual-fund manager who can beat the market is tough. Winners flame out. Losers revive. The resurgent losers flame out again

And the Next Star Fund Manager is …

We detail what makes one more likely to be a winner

JOE LIGHT

Updated Jan. 17, 2014 11:39 p.m. ET

Finding a mutual-fund manager who can beat the market is tough. Winners flame out. Losers revive. The resurgent losers flame out again. No wonder low-cost index-based exchange-traded funds and mutual funds—which seek only to mimic the return of a designated slice of the market—have eclipsed actively managed funds as the investment of choice for many people.

Read more of this post

Indian couple defy taboo in inter-caste love story

Indian couple defy taboo in inter-caste love story

Friday, January 17, 2014 – 03:02

AFP

NEW DELHI – When Tilakam, from one of India’s high social castes, married the love of her life in a simple ceremony 12 years ago, she feared outrage from relatives and ostracism. Read more of this post

Professor Puts Ideas in Practice as Reverse-Mortgage CEO

Professor Puts Ideas in Practice as Reverse-Mortgage CEO

Columbia Business School Professor Christopher Mayer says he’s so convinced that reverse mortgages can be a cornerstone of responsible retirement planning that he’s gone into the business.

The loans were criticized by regulators including the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after they were pitched to senior citizens needing quick cash under rules that allowed borrowers to take out and quickly spend most of their equity. Now, with new limits to curb up-front spending, they can help ensure retirees won’t outlive their assets, according to Mayer, who is teaching fewer classes at Columbia so he can be chief executive of a startup reverse-mortgage lender. Read more of this post

David Brooks Is Wrong About Inequality

David Brooks Is Wrong About Inequality

JOSH BARRO

JAN. 17, 2014, 4:24 PM 4,921 43

David Brooks has a column about inequality today and it’s wrong. But it’s wrong in a way that helps explain why conservatives have no idea how to talk about inequality.

Brooks offers two theories of what sort of problem inequality might be: That people at the top are accruing too much money, and that people at the bottom are getting left behind. Like most conservatives, he wants to focus on the second problem. Regarding the first, he attacks the “primitive zero-sum mentality” that holds “growing affluence for the rich must somehow be causing the immobility of the poor.” Read more of this post

Greed and Hustle Have Become Virtues: While many of us believe in honest work, we also see that wealth is mostly acquired via hustles and scams, and so we relate to stories that validate this

Why We Like to Watch Rich People

INTRODUCTION

Several Academy Award contenders like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “American Hustle” glorify white-collar criminals and scammers, and many reality TV shows embrace the wealthy, too. A new series, “#RichKids of Beverly Hills,” is the latest example of our enthusiasm for “ogling the filthy rich.” Why are we so obsessed with watching the antics of the 1 percent?

Greed and Hustle Have Become Virtues

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist who writes and speaks on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His most recent book is “Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated and Battling the Corporate Elite.”

UPDATED JANUARY 16, 2014, 8:48 PM

The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending and decadence can be an escape from the unpleasant reality of our own constant money worries. Read more of this post

Forget annual reports. Go to the canteen for what makes a company tick

Forget annual reports. Go to the canteen for what makes a company tick

Jan 11th 2014 | From the print edition

Leverage: The CEO’s Guide to Corporate Culture. By John Childress. Principia Associates; 353 pages; $24. Buy from Amazon.com

IN JULY 2012 the treasury committee of Britain’s House of Commons summoned the boss of Barclays, Bob Diamond, to face the music. Barclays had been caught taking part in an industry-wide conspiracy to fix Libor, a benchmark interest rate, and the members of parliament wanted to know what was going on. Why had friendly high-street banks been transformed into financial casinos? And why did scandals keep piling upon scandals despite outrage from the public and promises to mend their ways from banking CEOs? Much of the answer, according to both Mr Diamond and his interrogators, lay in a phrase that was used more than 50 times during the hearing: “corporate culture”. Read more of this post

This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Pull An All-Nighter

This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Pull An All-Nighter

LINETTE LOPEZ

JAN. 16, 2014, 10:52 AM 72,508 4

There’s been a lot of talk on Wall Street lately about the grueling hours that junior staff, interns, and analysts, have to work in order to get ahead. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan have all announced that they’ll start encouraging their young employees to take more time off. It’s an effort to improve their quality of life so they don’t jump ship for other companies in and out of the financial space once they’ve been trained. It could be hard to make this new policy stick, because on Wall Street, the all-nighter is almost a rite of passage. Read more of this post

The dark side: Founder’s blues; Are startups just for workaholics? Ask founders why they put up with the hardships, and they reply with predictable enthusiasm. But beneath this fervour there is often a world of uncertainty. In essence, a founder’s job is to create something out of nothing

The dark side: Founder’s blues; Are startups just for workaholic white male lumpen-preneurs?

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

A YEAR AGO Jody Sherman shot himself. His online shop, Ecomom, which sold eco-friendly and health products for children, was running out of cash. A few weeks later the business closed its virtual doors. A new owner relaunched it in June. Read more of this post

Why Top Graduates Still Want To Work 90-Hour Weeks On Wall Street

Why Top Graduates Still Want To Work 90-Hour Weeks On Wall Street

MAX NISEN

JAN. 16, 2014, 7:10 PM 3,657 4

A lot of people seem to think that Wall Street is losing its hold on top graduates.

The thinking, outlined in a recent article in The New York Times, is that the falling prestige of Wall Street means that banks are having to compete for talent with other industries, the perk- and stock-option-laden tech sector in particular. That banks are reevaluating their internship programs and curbing famously long weekend hours is cited as more evidence for the trend. Read more of this post

Tales from an overworked City

January 16, 2014 4:44 pm

Tales from an overworked City

By Emma Jacobs

During an internship at Goldman Sachs, one undergraduate, who prefers not to be named, learnt a great deal about banking – and himself. “I know that I can work 15 to 20-hour days without collapsing,” he says, although he admits to nodding off in the toilet a couple of times. Such stamina “is a useful skill to have”, the student reflects. Read more of this post

Lui Becomes Asia’s Richest Person With Six Macau Casinos

5 December 2013

How sleep makes your mind more creative

Tom Stafford

It’s a tried and tested technique used by writers and poets, but can psychology explain why first moments after waking can be among our most imaginative?

It is 6.06am and I’m typing this in my pyjamas. I awoke at 6.04am, walked from the bedroom to the study, switched on my computer and got to work immediately. This is unusual behaviour for me. However, it’s a tried and tested technique for enhancing creativity, long used by writers, poets and others, including the inventor Benjamin Franklin. And psychology research appears to back this up, providing an explanation for why we might be at our most creative when our minds are still emerging from the realm of sleep. Read more of this post

How To Win Over Customers: Lessons From 8 Rock-Star Brands

How To Win Over Customers: Lessons From 8 Rock-Star Brands

ZIBA EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL O’CONNOR, WHO HAS WORKED WITH COMPANIES SUCH AS HEINZ, INTEL, AND PROCTOR & GAMBLE, LOOKS BACK AT SOME OF THE MOST INNOVATIVE BRANDS OF 2013, AND OFFERS A GLIMPSE OF WHAT BRANDS WILL NEED TO SUCCEED IN 2014.

The things that make us care about goods, services, and brands are shifting. It used to be that a successful brand conveyed authority and reliability (think General Motors or IBM); now it’s all about empathy. Technology used to attract us through specs and features; today it has to enable an experience. Even our perception of what makes a product valuable has shifted, to the point where a brand-new sound system or a dress like the one on the magazine cover is actually less desirable than something with a strong story attached. That can take many forms: a revived speaker from the ‘80s, a box of mystery items curated by a favorite brand, or an outfit chosen with the help of a trusted expert. It’s these stories–coupled with basic functionality that’s absolutely dialed in–that win people over in the long run. Here, we look at the innovation stories of eight key brands and reveal what, exactly, they got right in 2013–and what you can learn from them in 2014. Read more of this post

Home help: The government wants you to have a comfortable (and cheap) death

Home help: The government wants you to have a comfortable (and cheap) death

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

DEATH comes to all, but some are more sure of its timing, and can make plans. Kate Granger, a 32-year-old doctor suffering from an incurable form of sarcoma, has “very strong ambitions” for her last hours. She plans to avoid hospital emergency departments and die at her parents’ house—music playing, candles glowing, family by her side. Read more of this post

5 Morning Rituals That Will Keep You Productive All Day

5 Morning Rituals That Will Keep You Productive All Day

JAMES REINHART, ENTREPRENEUR
JAN. 15, 2014, 3:30 PM 129,078 16

Most of us work long hours: 40, 50 or even 60 hours each week. But chances are, given distractions like online entertainment, office snacking habits and ill-designed time management, we’re only churning out high-quality work a portion of each day. Read more of this post

Bankers and lawyers are on an unhealthy treadmill; While long hours are not worth the effort, those able to effect change do not care

January 15, 2014 6:56 pm

Bankers and lawyers are on an unhealthy treadmill

By John Gapper

While long hours are not worth the effort, those able to effect change do not care

For years, getting a job at a Wall Street bank, a Magic Circle law firm or a blue-chip management consultancy was a route to a very rewarding career in return for an awful lot of work. Lately, the bargain has lost some of its appeal to the best and the brightest. Read more of this post

Believe in your dream and choose investing partners who share your vision

Updated: Tuesday January 14, 2014 MYT 7:54:46 AM

Believe in your dream and choose investing partners who share your vision

BY JEANISHA WAN

After I wrote the article about not giving up (Star MetroBiz, Oct 22, 2013), a number of people wrote to me echoing similar sentiments and suggested meeting up to continue to spur and inspire each other in our journey of entrepreneurship. And so we did. A small group of us met up several weeks ago and I was encouraged by their stories. Read more of this post

Australian scientists microchip bees to map movements, halt diseases

Australian scientists microchip bees to map movements, halt diseases

Wed, Jan 15 2014

By Thuy Ong

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian scientists are gluing tiny sensors onto thousands of honey bees to track their movements in a trial aimed at halting the spread of diseases that have wiped out populations in the northern hemisphere. Read more of this post

Business communities: All together now; What entrepreneurial ecosystems need to flourish

Business communities: All together now; What entrepreneurial ecosystems need to flourish

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

BLOCK 71 HAS long been slated for demolition. A look at the tenant list for the seven-storey industrial building on Singapore’s Ayer Rajah Crescent helps explain why it is still standing: nearly 100 startups live there officially and perhaps as many again informally. Their often strange monikers are interspersed with the more conventional names of venture-capital firms, accelerators and the like. Read more of this post

Build it and they may come: Management schools are on a building spree. That is a risk for some

Build it and they may come: Management schools are on a building spree. That is a risk for some

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

BUSINESS-SCHOOL students are a pampered bunch. Scholars sipping a glass of red in the posh rooftop bar of Oxford’s Saïd Business School could be forgiven for thinking they had wandered into the nearby Randolph Hotel by mistake. Stanford students can view an impressive modern-art collection housed in its own museum. Harvard Business School MBAs can book a masseuse to relieve the stress of a hard day slaving over case studies. Read more of this post

Come home, son! Guangzhou mom buys front page of Melbourne paper

Come home, son! Guangzhou mom buys front page of Melbourne paper

Staff Reporter 2014-01-17

A Chinese mother bought the entire front page of the Chinese Melbourne Daily to urge her son to come home from Australia for the upcoming Lunar New Year, promising that she will not pressure him to get married this time. “(I) have called you several times and you did not take my calls. Maybe the only way to get my message to you is here. Mom and Dad will not pressure you to get married ever again. Please come back home for New Year! Love, Mom,” read the front page ad in the Chinese-language newspaper on Jan. 14. L)

Read more of this post

Business strategy and technology: The Big Bang Theory; How to identify threats—and then see them off promptly

Business strategy and technology: The Big Bang Theory; How to identify threats—and then see them off promptly

Jan 11th 2014 | From the print edition; Ya Kun ko[o?

Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation. By Larry Downes and Paul Nunes. Portfolio; 278 pages; $29.95 and £14.99. Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

FOR years Sleep HealthCenters, an American company that ran clinics at which people with sleep disorders could stay overnight to have their ailments diagnosed, grew nicely and steadily. But in 2012 its dream business turned sour as folk began using cheap, wearable devices that let experts monitor them while they snoozed in the comfort of their homes. Sleep HealthCenters closed some of its facilities as its revenue fell, but its fortunes faded rapidly and the following year it threw in the towel. Read more of this post