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December 8, 2018 - December 29, 2019
falling into defensive mode impacts the intellect more severely than previously suspected. She found that exposure to even fairly mild negative stress can significantly reduce the amount of activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, where most of the deliberate system’s work gets done.
One reason that shared humor is powerful is that it tends to make us feel more connected to other people.
who has investigated the phenomenon of curiosity, has found that merely getting answers to questions visibly activates the reward system
“We would never say, ‘This person is a great worker. He’s drunk all the time!’ Yet we continue to celebrate people who sacrifice sleep.”
Research shows that even a single session of aerobic exercise immediately improves our intellectual performance, giving us faster information processing and reaction time, more effective planning, better short-term memory performance, and more self-control.
So when you’re looking at your aims for the day, don’t just set yourself task completion goals. Set at least one or two goals for your own behavior, and make them as specific as you possibly can, to magnify your chances of having the day you intended.
large group of students at the University of Rochester to track the effects of different types of personal goals on the students’ grades, they found that avoidance goals (“I want to avoid doing poorly”) depressed performance about the same amount as approach goals (“I want to do well”) improved it.2
if we instead frame our goals as wonderful things that we want more of, it’s easier for us to stay in discovery mode—even if we’re doing something challenging. And by keeping us in a more open-minded, intelligent state of mind, that improves our chances of success.
In fact, extrinsic and intrinsic goals work so differently that they’re processed in different parts of our brain. Requests from other people activate brain areas strongly associated with self-control and self-discipline; by contrast, goals we set for ourselves engage areas associated with our desires and needs.4 They feel like things we want, rather than things we have to do.
the science tells us that we’re more likely to get something done if we take a moment to think about why it matters to us personally.
it’s usually better to break your big audacious goals into a series of small step-by-step goals that are within your reach. That way, the neurochemicals in your reward system will motivate you to continue, rather than dousing you with de-energizing feelings of disappointment.
“I have a spreadsheet that lists the projects I’m working on, and for each one I’ve identified the very next thing to do on each of them. So I always know the small next step that I need to take. I’ve found that if you break one goal down into three smaller ones, it feels more doable and you get three times the pleasure of scratching them off the to-do list.”
people are far more likely to achieve their goals if they think hard about both the outcome they want and the obstacles they’re facing, and plan for both.
people doing two tasks simultaneously took up to 30 percent longer and made twice as many errors as those who completed the same tasks in sequence—findings that have been replicated time and again by other scientists.
In fact, habitual multitaskers have been found to take longer to switch between tasks than occasional multitaskers—perhaps because they’ve lost the knack of focusing for any length of time.
And ironically, research suggests that people who are most confident of their ability to multitask are in fact the worst at it.8
Studies have also shown that people make poorer purchasing decisions when they’re tired, whether they’re shopping in a mall or buying a new car.2 They’re also less likely to make the right ethical decisions or follow safety regulations.
Researchers are finding that when we allow our brains to take a break from a task, they appear to do important work in encoding and consolidating the information that we’ve just absorbed—and this reflection time results in enhanced learning and insight.
the highest performers typically work in focused blocks of ninety minutes, with breaks in between.
the planning fallacy.1 This describes the fact that we typically expect tasks to take less time than they actually do, because we base our estimates on one standout memory—our best past experience—rather than the average time it’s taken us to do similar tasks in the past. (That’s one of the brain’s common automatic shortcuts, to rely on a single example rather than bothering to calculate an average across multiple data points.)
I use a technique called ‘triangular breathing,’ where you breathe in for a count of three, then breathe out for a count of three, then pause for a count of three. By slowing your heart rate, you’re sending a signal to your brain that the threat has passed, so it reduces the other signals of stress.”
people do less well at solving anagrams and logic problems when they’re aware of another activity that’s yet to be completed.2 There’s even a term for this phenomenon: the “Zeigarnik effect,”
Develop a habit of immediately getting worries and work-in-progress thoughts out of your head and down on “paper”—whether real paper or the electronic version—so that your brain no longer has to expend energy on remembering them.
What’s the smallest first step you can take to move things forward?
there’s an argument for “automating” a few of your less weighty everyday decisions, by setting up simple rules that require no thinking. It can create head space for thoughts that matter more.
By looking at brain scans, the researchers confirmed that talking about their own likes and dislikes activated the volunteers’ neural reward systems, while speculating about the likes and dislikes of other people failed to have the same effect.1 So if we show some real curiosity about other people, they’re going to find it rewarding to talk to us.
as soon as we get a sense that the other person is similar to us in some way—politics, background, interests—we begin to relax, and subconsciously treat them as a potential ally. Scientists describe this as seeing someone as part of our in-group. And this small shift in social calculus has major effects on our interactions. First off, we’re no longer in defensive mode, which makes us altogether more charming to be around. Research has also found that seeing someone as part of our in-group means we’re immediately more likely to feel empathy for that person’s pain, or share in the joy of his or
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Here are some suggestions for rapidly creating an in-group feeling with someone you’re talking to: Find a shared interest. Look out for anything that signals interests or preferences that resonate with your own, however small they are. Music, gadgets, clothing, and hobbies are all fair game. Be willing to comment or ask about it, and to share your own experience. Highlight a common goal. This creates a deeper connection, because it usually signals shared values. To elicit shared goals, ask, “What matters most to you in this?” and “What do we both hope to achieve?” Talk about a common
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less than an hour of reciprocal disclosure is enough to create remarkable closeness between strangers.
So when you’re walking into a tense conversation or you feel the atmosphere sharpening around you, recognize that you can be a subliminal force for good in the room.
we make big assumptions about other people’s personalities and capabilities based on very limited observations. When we find ourselves labeling someone as dumb, lazy, or annoying, it should raise a red flag.
“I presume most people are trying to do a good job. I think that’s a way of taking control of a situation, to decide to attribute good intentions to someone. If you treat apparently difficult people as if they’re coming from a good place, you see more of the good things they do.
There is a silver bullet, and it’s this: show them some appreciation. Telling someone that you recognize the efforts they’re making—or indeed sharing any kind of compliment—speaks to many fundamental human needs, by helping people feel more competent, valued, and fairly treated. That’s a recipe for cutting the tension quite quickly.
when you acknowledge what someone’s feeling, their brain will stop trying to telegraph their needs and fears quite so frantically.
But psychologists have shown that autonomy is one of the most fundamental motivating forces in life.2 Give someone space and responsibility, and they feel competent and respected; take it away, and their enthusiasm collapses.
Their work shows that fair offers activated people’s reward systems, while unfair offers required people to engage their brain’s self-control circuitry to overcome their annoyance and swallow the unfairness.6 In other words, people’s brains had to divert some precious deliberate system capacity to staying calm in the face of the injustice. (And that’s when there’s just $2 at stake.) The bottom line? Ensuring that colleagues feel that workplace decisions are fair not only keeps their reward systems happy, but leaves people with more mental energy to focus on other things.
the Einstellung effect, where having an existing solution in mind makes it harder for us to see a radically different but better way to solve our problem.
being asked a question (rather than being told to do something) leaves us feeling more in control, less defensive, and consequently more open to new ideas.
Studies have found that shifting attention from a complex problem to another task for just two, three, or four minutes can help people make better decisions when they return to the problem.
First, we need to intend to come back to the task at hand.5 Otherwise, our brain will assume it’s not necessary to continue processing the information at a subconscious level;
If we don’t consciously engage our deliberate system, our automatic system will quietly take control and rush us to the easiest answer available.
Warren Buffett has spoken admiringly of Charles Darwin’s determination to overcome confirmation bias, saying: “Now, there was a smart man, who did just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Charles Darwin used to say that whenever he ran into something that contradicted a conclusion he cherished, he was obliged to write the new finding down within thirty minutes. Otherwise his mind would work to reject the discordant information, much as the body rejects transplants.
Another shortcut we take is to assume that if something is easy to understand and remember, it’s probably correct. (Behavioral scientists describe this as a preference for processing fluency.)
Alfred P. Sloan, once the CEO of General Motors, and a leader who knew groupthink when he saw it. When addressing a group that seemed happily aligned on the right thing to do, he said: “I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here…. Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting, to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
Just thinking about “shoulds” can set us on edge, by making us feel constrained and obligated. The resulting negative tone shifts us a little toward defensive mode, impairing our ability to think expansively and creatively about options. The word “could,” however, primes us with a sense of possibility, autonomy, and choice. By keeping us in discovery mode, it encourages us to summon our wisest, most insightful selves.
People’s brains form stronger associations around a new piece of information when it includes emotion as well as facts;
we all remember information more readily when it’s “socially encoded”—that is, if it’s linked to stories about real people’s motivations and feelings.
Another study found that people trusted aphorisms when they rhymed; less so when they didn’t.
Other research suggests that people tend to believe statements they find easy to remember, whether they’re true or not.
Why is a picture worth a thousand words (or so)? Because a huge part of the brain specializes in visual processing. So if you’re able to use an image, you get more of your audience’s brainpower engaged in chewing over your message.
