Supritha S

As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest.

Well, here is one of the most robust findings from psychology research on how to actually follow through on your goals:Research has shown that you are 2x to 3x more likely to stick with your habits if you make a specific plan for when, where, and how you will perform the behavior. For example, in one study scientists asked people to fill out this... See more

Martin’s comedy career is an excellent example of the Goldilocks Rule in practice. Each year, he expanded his comedy routine—but only by a minute or two. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him... See more

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.

This is a very human impulse, I think — to assign culprits to things that go wrong. When the economy is sluggish, it’s always due to bad policies and the bad people who make them, rather than hideously complex market interactions that even economists don’t understand.

I think of these qualities as ten often-weak muscles each of us can strengthen during day-to-day life if we look for opportunities. The stronger these traits get, the less tricky your collisions become with certain recurring experiences that make life difficult: laziness, ill will, greed, egotism, and so on.

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures—like moving paperclips or hairpins or marbles—provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.

The process of human flight followed a similar path. We typically credit Orville and Wilbur Wright as the inventors of modern flight. However, we seldom discuss the aviation pioneers who preceded them like Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Langley, and Octave Chanute. The Wright brothers learned from and built upon the work of these people during their quest... See more