Waiting until the last minute isn’t a healthy or productive way to produce your best stuff. Musician Dan Deacon has a unique take on creativity: draw your inspiration from boredom.
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In a long-term study of nearly 10,000 individuals, a team of scientists at Cambridge University found that sleeping more than eight hours per night correlates with a higher risk of stroke.
Children live and perceive the world very much in the moment. This is the sort of mindset desired by those who practice mindfulness.
Ever feel like you can’t control your impulse to check your phone or Facebook? The author of a book all about conquering bad habits offers advice for controlling these types of urges.
By consciously taking specific actions — from seeking out role models to reevaluating how we think about failure — we can train our mind to behave more confidently.
History curriculum needs to place a keen focus on decision-making and scrutiny, not just rote memorization of names and dates.
Mergers, promotions, retirements, acquisitions, firings: there are plenty of reasons why the names and faces above you on the organizational change might change. In each case, find where you fit in the new structure and make sure the new leadership notices.
In a 1977 interview with Glenn O’Brien for the marijuana lifestyle magazine High Times, O’Brien asked Andy Warhol if his teachers recognized his early “natural talent.” “Something like that,” Warhol responded with his characteristic unconventionality, “unnatural talent.” Warhol’s “unnatural talent” quip alluded not only to his mass-produced, machine-like paintings of soup cans and silk screen portraits, but also to his sexual orientation — the “unnatural” life of a homosexual. Just as Warhol turned that verbal double play, art scholar Michael Maizels tries to touch those two bases of Warhol’s art in “Doing It Yourself: Machines, Masturbation, and Andy Warhol” in the Fall 2014 issue of Art Journal. For Maizels, the way that Warhol made art reflected the way Warhol lived his life as a homosexual male in late 20th century America. When we look at Warhol’s art, Maizels suggests, we should see not just a critique of commercialized society and its art, but also a critique of that same society’s sexual tolerance.
The snobbery wars have erupted over photos of a sometimes blue-black, sometimes white-gold dress.
Will you explode, freeze, or boil? Advice on how to maximize your life. “A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces […]
Slapping on mascara to get those luscious lashes wasn’t nature’s intention. Your lashes serve a purpose, and their length shouldn’t be tampered with.
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
“If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future.”
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) v Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, a case involving a Muslim woman whose headscarf, or hijab, disqualified […]
Introduction to the Optimized Brain, with Steven Kotler Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. Steven Kotler […]
A groundbreaking study suggests you probably could.
Perspective-taking describes the ability to see things from another’s point of view and it’s an important skill to teach children early on.
Confidence is cultivated outside one’s comfort zone. This is why immersive artistic activity is such a boost to one’s confidence.
A brief explanation of today’s big net neutrality news and why the decision excites some while troubling others.
Individuals who cheat in life quickly ignore the fact that their success is fraudulent, believing instead that their own abilities will carry them to even greater heights.
A San Francisco startup (what else?) is looking to make the home-buying process much simpler, leveraging data to find a fair market price as soon as a house is listed.
In 1995, I published They Don’t Get It, Do They? Closing the Communication Gap Between Women and Men after writing “The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk” — a […]
Dr. Travis Bradberry argues why your day at the office would do better without that cup of joe — it’s killing your performance.
In this Big Think+ preview, Dr. Tony Coles introduces the concept of “service leadership” first developed in 1970 by Robert K. Greenleaf.
Another world orbits the Sun once a year at the same distance as our planet. “The moon was like this awesome, romantic, mysterious thing, hanging up there in the sky […]
When conducting a pragmatic assessment of the economic value of ideas, The Innovator’s Hypothesis author Michael Schrage was shocked to find that “good ideas” don’t make much money.
What does it mean to be confident? Author and broadcaster Claire Shipman explains what surprised her most when researching confidence in both professional and nonprofessional contexts.
Uber drivers don’t have taxi licenses and do not pay taxes on the income earned.
Moral sciences are back. Natural laws of ethics, envisioned early in the Enlightenment, can now be objectively studied. Game Theory is reteaching scientists and “rationalists” old wisdoms, while suggesting a “Golden Punishment Rule,” and a Naturalistic Fallacy reform (via “negative telos”).
An Italian doctor is blazing a trail toward the first human head transplant, capitalizing on new medical techniques that can keep a patient alive during the operation.