Worry is a natural emotion that occurs when we feel threatened. However, many of our worries are unfounded, sapping our energy and deflecting our attention from life’s real problems. In a recent New York Times article, Boston author David Ropeik makes the case that most of us don't know how to worry. Although we often underestimate how risky something really is, we are even more likely to overestimate the dangers of taking actions that would actually help us. In other words, when it comes to evaluating the risk-benefit ratio of our actions, we do a pretty poor job. This is because, Ropeik argues, our brains are wired to worry first and think second. This quote from the work of NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux sums it up in a nutshell: “connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.”
Meditation & Resisting Urges→
/Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance. If you can resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You can be more intentional about what you say and how you say it. You can think about the outcome of your actions before following through on them.Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. It's probably the single most important skill for our growth and development.
As it turns out, that's one of the things meditation teaches us. It's also one of the hardest to learn.
Peter Bregman, writing for Harvard Business Review, encourages us to take the time to meditate. Not unlike working out, finding the time to meditate actually increases productivity by teaching us how to better think and react to those thoughts.
Revisiting Oliver Burkeman on why everything takes longer than you think→
/It would be good to find a way around the planning fallacy, since never finishing your to-do list is a joyless way to live, and underestimating task-times means constantly rushing to finish things. (I speak as an expert.) How, though? Intuitively, it feels sensible to work out in detail what your projects involve, to break them into chunks and estimate how long each part will take. But the problem with unforeseen delays is you can't foresee them, no matter how finely detailed your planning. And so, writes Eliezer Yudkowsky on the Oxford University blog OvercomingBias.com, the unlikely trick is to plan in less detail: avoid considering the specifics and simply ask yourself how long it's taken to do roughly similar things before. "You'll get back an answer that sounds hideously long, and clearly reflects no understanding of the special reasons why this task will take less time," he writes. "This answer is true. Deal with it."
In a 2008 column for The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman wrote about the planning fallacy and Douglas Hofstadter's Law. I was reminded of the column because during the past few weeks I've had many conversations with co-workers and interns about producing and project managing. During those conversations I've tried to emphasize the fact that planning is merely guidelines and the key to being the person responsible for making things happen is to adapt very quickly. In the coming week's I'll be exploring more on the subject of planning, projects, to-do lists and deadlines. In a way I'll be thinking by writing as I attempt to codify the working habits and not so mild obsessions that drive how I produce.
Rethinking Sleep
/One of the first signs that the emphasis on a straight eight-hour sleep had outlived its usefulness arose in the early 1990s, thanks to a history professor at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch, who spent hours investigating the history of the night and began to notice strange references to sleep. A character in the “Canterbury Tales,” for instance, decides to go back to bed after her “firste sleep.” A doctor in England wrote that the time between the “first sleep” and the “second sleep” was the best time for study and reflection. And one 16th-century French physician concluded that laborers were able to conceive more children because they waited until after their “first sleep” to make love. Professor Ekirch soon learned that he wasn’t the only one who was on to the historical existence of alternate sleep cycles. In a fluke of history, Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist then working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. Without the illumination and distraction from light bulbs, televisions or computers, the subjects slept through the night, at least at first. But, after a while, Dr. Wehr noticed that subjects began to wake up a little after midnight, lie awake for a couple of hours, and then drift back to sleep again, in the same pattern of segmented sleep that Professor Ekirch saw referenced in historical records and early works of literature.
I learn from David K. Randall, writing for The New York Times, that I'm not really suffering from insomnia. I am simply not naming my sleep patterns correctly. If instead of thinking of it as insomnia getting in the way of sleep and thought of it as the break before my second sleep I'll probably feel less stress about it. Do you actually know anyone that gets 8 hours of sleep?
Creativity Researcher Teresa Amabile Explains The Unexpected Benefits Of Tracking Daily Progress
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It turns out that taking just five minutes a day to document your work progress and feelings can have a powerful impact. After analyzing over 238 diaries from happy workers, Teresa Amabile, at the 99u Conference, shares key takeaways for staying motivated at work, including the importance of measuring progress, documenting challenges, and taking time to reflect.
Teresa Amabile is a professor and director of research at Harvard Business School, and coauthor of The Progress Principle. A psychologist, Teresa studies how everyday work life can influence people and their performance. Her research encompasses creativity, productivity, innovation, and inner work life — the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivation that people experience as they react to events at work.