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To Keep Your Office Resolutions, Start Small
The New York Times: Q. It’s two weeks into the new year, and you can already see your work-related resolutions start to fall by the wayside. This happens every year, so why do you keep setting these kinds of goals? A. We live in a very goal-oriented culture. And we are accustomed to setting goals for the new year in the belief that they help us move forward in big and small ways, says E.J. Masicampo, an assistant psychology professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., who studies goals and goal planning. “Goals can be extremely effective, depending on how people set and approach them,” he says.
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How To Make Better New Year’s Resolutions
Slate: It’s that season again, when we resolve to accomplish a list of goals in the coming year. Not infrequently, these are the goals that we were resolved to accomplish during the preceding year. If you were to ask Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir or Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan for a better New Year’s strategy, they’d likely suggest that the best resolution you can make is to do fewer things in 2013. The researchers argue that when busy people get busier, it leads to ignored deadlines, a cluttered desk, and a vicious cycle of falling further and further behind.
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What’s the best way to learn? Psychologists tackle studying techniques
CBS News: What's the best way to study for a test? A new study says taking practice tests and engaging in distributed practice -- which means sticking to a schedule of spreading out your studying over time -- work the best. Surprisingly, the methods that were least effective when it came to getting a good grade on the big test were: summarization, highlighting, keyword mnemonics, creating imagery for text and re-reading. "I was shocked that some strategies that students use a lot -- such as re-reading and highlighting -- seem to provide minimal benefits to their learning and performance," study author Dr.
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Mourning and Memory: A Paradoxical Grief
The Huffington Post: I once witnessed, up close and painfully, the grief of a man who had lost his wife of 50 years. A period of emotional disruption is normal in such circumstances, but this widower's suffering just went on and on for years. The present was joyless for him, and the future was hopeless -- non-existent, really. He seemed stuck in the past, among his memories of his departed wife and his yearning was agonizing to watch. This endless bereavement eventually took his life. I didn't know the clinical terminology at the time, but I've since learned that there is a name for such disordered mourning.
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Why Exercise May Do A Teenage Mind Good
NPR: It's well known that routine physical activity benefits both body and mind. And there are no age limits. Both children and adults can reap big benefits. Now a study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores whether certain factors may help to explain the value of daily physical activity for adolescents' mental health. Researchers from the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands looked at two possible explanations for the link between exercise and good mental health. One was positive self image and the other was winning friends. They surveyed 7,000 Dutch students, ages 11 to 16.
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Want That Promotion? Practice Your Job.
The Wall Street Journal: As the new year approaches – and with it the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans–we’ve identified 10 strategies for advancing your career in 2013. (Read them all here.) From recovering from an office blunder to learning why it doesn’t pay to be Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy, this ten-point plan offers daily tips on what to do and how to do it. Mike J. is a venture capitalist who works on Silicon Valley’s famed Sand Hill Road. He’s good at his job–rising from intern to principal in only two years. His secret? An Excel spreadsheet he uses to track how he spends every hour of his workday.
