Eric Barker's Blog, page 3

New Neuroscience Reveals 3 Secrets That Will Make You Happier

Why can’t we just be happy all the time?

From a neuroscience perspective, the best answer is probably “because of habituation.”

It’s the insidious process by which the extraordinary becomes the utterly banal, the miraculous the miserably mundane. Sadly, our brains are hardwired for buzzkill, ensuring that no matter how amazing something is, we’ll eventually end up taking it for granted.

You finally get that thing you’ve wanted for months, maybe even years — a new car, a promotion, a date with ...

How To Be Successful: 4 Secrets Backed By Research

These days the world strongly associates success with youth. The cultural narrative goes something like this: if you didn’t create a world-changing algorithm in your dorm room before you could legally drink, then why are you even trying?

Don’t get me wrong, the world loves a good late bloomer story — but only in retrospect.

If you’re a potential late bloomer, chances are you’ve already spent enough time listening to your own voice drone on in your head like a sad audiobook of unmet potential. ...

New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Secrets That Will Make Your Teenager Motivated

Trying to motivate a teenager is like trying to push a boulder up a hill, except the boulder has a phone and keeps telling you that it will roll itself up the hill later, just give it a minute.

So you remind them. They need to do their homework or their chores. This will get you The Teenage Sigh. This is no ordinary sigh. This is a long, theatrical exhale so weighty it could be used to measure atmospheric pressure. It is a carefully engineered emotional payload designed to make you feel like t...

New Neuroscience Reveals 6 Secrets That Will Make You More Productive

Some days it feels impossible to get anything done at the office. (There’s a reason Susan in marketing has a voodoo doll of everyone, neatly labeled, in her desk drawer.)

What can we do about it? Well, neuroscience — yeah, that thing you vaguely remember hearing about in a TED Talk you half-watched — has some answers to our office productivity problems. With a few simple tweaks, we can take a miserable workday from “soul-crushing marathon of existential despair” to “hey, this isn’t so bad.”

So...

How to Be Healthier Without Really Trying

You’ll take roughly 670 million breaths in your lifetime. But we don’t think about breathing much. It’s only when something goes wrong — like when you’re choking on a chicken nugget — that you suddenly realize breathing isn’t as optional as it appears. At least with eating, you can skip a few meals. But with breathing, you slack off for even two minutes, and suddenly everyone’s calling an ambulance.

Here’s the thing: most of us have been breathing wrong. Seriously. Breathing’s one of those thi...

New Research Reveals 8 Secrets That Will Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed

New Year’s resolutions: the annual ritual of declaring war on your own bad habits while simultaneously proving that you, in fact, are your own worst enemy.

“I’m going to learn Spanish, quit caffeine, organize my closet, and become someone who hits the gym every morning!”

Aaaaand a few days later, it’s all on fire.

New Year’s resolutions failing doesn’t even seem like an accident anymore; it feels as much a part of the tradition as resolutions in the first place. The worst part is how quickly i...

This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome

“Carpe diem.” It’s the battle cry of motivational posters, Pinterest boards, and that one friend who just declared bankruptcy for the third time.

It’s one of the oldest philosophical slogans around, first stated by Horace in 23 BCE. The poem he wrote it in, “Ode XI”, is only eight lines long but, hoo boy, has it had legs. Look around and you still see versions of it everywhere – from “Dead Poets Society” to Nike (“Just Do It”), to #YOLO.

But honestly: Seize the day? Buddy, I’m usually just try...

New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Secrets That Will Make You Lose Weight

Eating. It’s the most basic human need, right up there with breathing and arguing on the internet. But we all tend to overdo it, especially around the holidays, when the phrase “biting off more than you can chew” is not a metaphor but a brutal, self-inflicted reality.

Now if the weight gain arrived immediately, we’d change our habits. But there’s that sinister lag. It’s only weeks or months later that you notice. Your belt becomes less an accessory and more of a tourniquet. And there’s no deny...

How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 Secrets From Research

Procrastination. The bane of productivity, the thief of time, the reason why you’re currently reading this instead of doing that thing we both know you need to do.

In the world of procrastination, time ceases to exist in its linear form. Hours stretch like taffy in a carnival booth, and you find yourself doing things you never knew you had an interest in. Suddenly, you develop an intense interest in organizing your spice rack. Did you know paprika comes in four different varieties? You do now....

How To Have A Happy Retirement: 4 Secrets From Research

Retirement. The mythical Promised Land where every day is a Saturday. No more punching the clock, no more staff meetings, no more pretending to be interested in Sharon’s photos from her third trip to Dollywood.

Retirement is often presented like a montage from a pharmaceutical ad: biking through scenic parks with a face radiating pure joy, like you just swallowed a bottle of sunshine.

And it can be like that. For a little while. Um, in the beginning, at least…

In year 1 of retirement, healthy ...