The Minimalist » Blog Archive » Income distribution vs. happiness. Americans generally have more spending power now than 50 years ago, across almost all income levels.
But the perception is that lower income families are losing ground. Of course, some are, but generally, pretty much all of us can buy more and better stuff than we ever could in the past. In 1909, many things we consider absolute necessities didn’t even exist. So why the perception of slipping back? The answer is that income distribution is indeed diverging. Chart from the Afferent Input blog. A Brief History of the To-Do List and the Psychology of Its Success. By Maria Popova On reconciling the fussy with the fuzzy, or what Benjamin Franklin has to do with Drew Carey.
“The list is the origin of culture,” Umberto Eco famously proclaimed. (Leonardo da Vinci, John Lennon, and Woody Guthrie would have all agreed.) But the list, it turns out, might also be the origin of both our highest happiness and our dreariest dissatisfaction. So argue New York Times science writer John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. These anecdotes and pieces of cultural mythology are interwoven with ample psychology experiments from the past century and, ultimately, distilled into insight on how to make the to-list a tool of fulfillment rather than frustration.
Franklin, for instance, demonstrated one of the greatest pitfalls of the to-do list: trying to do too much at once, letting different goals come into conflict with one another: Franklin tried a divide-and-conquer approach. 101 Simple Truths We Often Forget. Post written by: Marc Chernoff Email It‘s not where we stand but in what direction we are moving.
Sometimes we find ourselves running in place, struggling to get ahead simply because we forget to address some of the simple truths that govern our potential to make progress. So here’s a quick reminder: The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean you’re growing. Photo by: Alexander Steinhof. Gossip is basically only thing holding society together, says science. Prosocial gossip is so barely gossip.
Isn't it more like a news report? If I know someone's being cheated, is there any way I can inform them of this that you can't apply the definition of gossip to? I mean, we're talking first-hand witness report here, of something directly relevant to the hearer's wellbeing in some form or another. By the time you've satisfied the requirement for "prosocial" you've largely departed from the common understanding of the word, and you might as well call it something else or always use the modifier, because it's going to be confusing.
However, I note lower on the page there seems to be the implication that "bitch" is a term with some gender associations, so who knows? 8 ways that money can buy happiness. Can you use hostage negotiation techniques to improve your life at work and at home. The Science Behind a Bad Mood and What You Can Do About It. Can Passion and Security Coexist? Reflections on Cronenberg’s "A Dangerous Method"
30 Very Funny Books. It's a dreary day, so I thought I'd indulge myself and come up with a list of my favorite comedies.
A caveat, however: this is not a fancy English-professor-y list of the finest, most exquisitely crafted, most erudite or intellectually sophisticated works on paper in the language. This is a list of the books that make me laugh until my mascara starts to run. These are books to read over your first cup of coffee or just before you go to sleep . Remember: a day you've laughed is day you haven't wasted--even if you didn't get out of bed. Some days you need a jump-start to get to the funny parts of life. Beyond Brainstorming.
Creativity is an idea-shaping process.
Ideas themselves are a source of other ideas—and a useful strategy to remember something is to associate it with other ideas. One method of catalyzing the processes of creativity and memory is Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping technique. The story of the self. Memory is our past and future.
"Keep Giving Them You, Until You Is What They Want" The 11 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2011. By Maria Popova What it means to be human, how pronouns are secretly shaping our lives, and why we believe.
After the year’s best children’s books, art and design books, photography books, science books, history books, and food books, the 2011 best-of series continues with the most compelling, provocative and thought-provoking psychology and philosophy books featured here this year. We spend most of our lives going around believing we are rational, logical beings who make carefully weighted decisions based on objective facts in stable circumstances. Of course, as both a growing body of research and our own retrospective experience demonstrate, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
For the past three years, David McRaney’s cheekily titled yet infinitely intelligent You Are Not So Smart has been one of my favorite smart blogs, tirelessly debunking the many ways in which our minds play tricks on us and the false interpretations we have of those trickeries. Originally featured in November.