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The Psychology of Messiness: How Disorder Can Make You More Creative
Inc.: There's a general assumption--in homes, in workplaces--that neatness corresponds to productivity. It begins in elementary school, with the annual rite of buying school supplies. You have the intent of staying organized, subject by subject, throughout the year. In adulthood, the habit continues. Every December, you buy an annual planner or calendar. It's as if you're buying a fresh white set of intentions. Moleskine notebooks beckon dreamers at every register.
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Can comedy bring about real political change?
Slate: A few years ago, Palestinians turned on their televisions and watched Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announce, at long last, a peace deal with Israel—that is, Mahmoud Abbas the 13th, at a time 500 years in the future. The satire was the work of Watan ala Watar, Palestine’s first-ever televised political satire show. A few years ago, in the course of researching our book, we visited the West Bank and met the comedians behind Watan ala Watar, Arabic for Homeland on a String. The trio had enjoyed a surprising amount of editorial freedom since they hit the airwaves in 2009, especially considering their weekly 15-minute show ran on state-run television.
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How to Become Productively Generous
LinkedIn: In Western culture, many people define success narrowly as money and power. In her uplifting book Thrive, Arianna Huffington argues that this leaves us sitting on a two-legged stool, which will tip over if we don’t add a third leg. She makes a passionate case, supported by science, for expanding our definition of what it means to succeed. One of her new metrics is giving: a truly rewarding life involves contributing to and caring for others. I love this message. It’s a powerful call for us to become more generous and compassionate. Unfortunately, when people answer this call, they sacrifice their own success.
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Consequences When African-American Boys Are Seen As Older
NPR: But first, we're going to take a closer look at some new research about the way some boys are viewed by adults. This work was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And it found that African-American boys as young as 10 years old were significantly less likely to be viewed as children than their white peers. The report suggests that this could have serious implications for the way African-American boys are viewed by the criminal justice system and by society as a whole. The title of that report is "The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children." Phillip Atiba Goff is that one of the lead authors of that research.
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Hey GM, Denial is Not the Answer
TIME: When it comes to delivering bad news, the learning curve for most corporations is like the terrain of Kansas—which is to say no curve at all. Take General Motors. It was in 2001 that GM got its first inkling that problems with its ignition switches could cause a car to shut off while in operation—never a good thing. More evidence surfaced in 2005 and beyond, but it was only this year that the company came clean and recalled 2.6 million vehicles—getting deservedly blowtorched not just for their design failures but for their slipperiness. So not exactly nimble. GM is not alone.
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Gratitude is good for your wealth
CBS News: Market pundits have long lamented the devastating impact that impatience has on your wealth. Whether it's chasing the performance of last year's hot funds, overspending on credit cards, or simply going for the immediate gratification that comes from spending today what you should have saved for tomorrow, literally hundreds of academic research papers say the same thing. The impatient individual costs himself a fortune. On the other hand, investors who have the personal discipline to start saving young and leave their investments alone, end up rich. But what makes one investor patient and another impatient? The old school answer was willpower.
