Marty Nemko's Blog, page 334

Low-Stress, High-Payoff Multitasking

Multitasking is often criticized, yet done right, the benefits can well outweigh the liabilities. I discuss how in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Should Your Child Take a Gap Year?

Malia Obama is taking a "gap year" before becoming a freshman at Harvard.
Should your child should take one? And, if so, how can s/he make the most of it? 

I address those questions in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Do You Know How to Control Your Weight?

So many people, including me, struggle to control our weight.

I don't often enough follow these tips or I wouldn't be 20 pounds overweight. But as someone who has spent a lifetime battling the problem including vigorous daily exercise, and know I could easily be 50 pounds overweight if I didn't use the following tactics, I thought I'd list them in my PsychologyToday.com article today, so you can do a self-assessment inventory to see if there's anything you want to change.

Do You Know How to Get a Great Education? Advice for preschool through graduate school.

More than ever, we view education s the magic pill.

As individuals, we continue to place faith and lots of dollars into getting that degree, or third degree, in hopes that will levitate us from the stack of applications for a good job.

As parents, we spend heavily on our kids' education. We may move to an expensive area so our kids can get "good" public schools. We may even spring for private school and college, which today costs an inconceivable amount of money. A child paying sticker price at well-regarded private schools K-16 costs--when all is added in--almost a million dollars: $30,000 a year x 12 and $70,000 a year x 4.  And that assumes s/he'll graduate in four years. 45.5% don't, even if given six years. And that's just to get to the bachelor's degree. And that's just for one child. Sure, there may be financial aid, but much of that is loan. That has to be paid back, with interest.

As a society, at least publicly, we tout education as the magic pill, the best hope for closing the achievement gap and for enabling the U.S. to compete in the global economy, notably with China. So the U.S. spends #1 in the world per capita on education even though, year after year, among developed nations, the U.S. scores near the bottom. 

And although colleges' PR machines tout US higher education as the finest in the world, dispassionate research finds remarkably little average student growth in college in, for example, writing, critical thinking, and now, yes in employment. 

It is an unpopular yet ever more evident truth that how we end up may well be more a function of socioeconomic status  and peers than any difference between School A and School B, let alone teaching tactic A vs tactic B. Yet, even if data doesn't support the power of education, we somehow deeply believe that all those years, all that money, all that effort on education has to make an important difference.

So let's assume that education matters and that it's worth our effort to try to optimize it for ourselves and for our children.

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer my best shot on how to do so from preschool through graduate school.

Do You Know How to be Married?: A self-assessment inventory

Yes, sometimes I think the institution of marriage is obsolete. Social and economic changes have reduced the need. 

And I can't even say that if I were starting over, I'd marry. But I did and while the marriage has never been made in heaven, it's worked pretty well here on earth. And we've been together for 43 years now, three years "living in sin" and 40 official years.

In today's PsychologyToday.com article, using the format I've used in some recent articles---the self-assessment inventory--I offer my thoughts on how to make marriage work.

Lessons for All of Us from a Sports Psychologist

After conducting today’s The Eminents interview with sports psychologist John F. Murray, I’ve come away feeling that his advice applies not just to athletes but to most people who want to improve their mental performance.  

Here's the link to the interview on PsychologyToday.com.

Follow Your Dream?

I write my PsychologyToday.com article today as an antidote to the incessant polllyanism I see and read in the media.

These anecdotes about people who followed their dream are true. I've just  changed irrelevant details to protect my clients' anonymity.

Getting Teachers to Pay Attention to Your Bright or Gifted Child

All kids deserve appropriate schooling. Too often, bright kids don't get it.   My recent interview with Edward Amend on helping unhappy intellectually gifted kids received many page views and Facebook Likes, so for my PsychologyToday.com article today, I decided to create the following post.

It adapts the text of a whiteboard video I created for teachers: "Six Ways to Meet Bright and Gifted Kids' Needs Without Much Extra Work."

Organizing and Time Management from the Inside Out: An interview with Julie Morgenstern

Most of us wish we were better organized and could manage our time better. To help, in today’s Psychology Today The Eminents interview,  I talked with Julie Morgenstern.

Do You Know How to Be Motivated? A Self-Assessment

This is the third in my PsychologyToday.com three-part series of self-assessment inventories, "Do You Know How to Be..." 

Part I is  Do You Know How to be Resilient?

Part 2 is: Do You Know How to Be Practical?

Here is Part 3: Do You Know How to be Motivated?

I