Author posts
Mirroring: The Body Language of Love and Attraction
People naturally mimic each other's body language, so when you notice it happening to you, it may be a sign that you are personally or professionally compatible with the other person.
"Power Breath" Is Better Than Deep Breathing for Relaxing Mind and Body
Most people are familiar with the technique of taking deep inhalations to relax themselves, but one breathing technique is more effective at returning your body to a naturally calm and connected state.
Use the 'plus one' technique to make your friend's day a little better
Make personal connections more meaningful with people you already know and care about, and deepen your relationship with others who you're just getting to know.
Kill Cravings by Letting Video Games Hijack Your Visual Cortex
Here's a simple mind hack: If you've got a craving, let Tetris satiate it.
Predicting the Future Primes Your Brain for Learning
Every time that you make a prediction you get a little bomb of dopamine in the reward pathways of your brain. That dopamine helps you pay closer attention, to process information more effectively, and to be more engaged with what’s going.
Engage Your Team Through Gaming, with Jane McGonigal
In this lesson excerpt from Big Think Edge, video game designer Jane McGonigal walks you through the ways in which gaming can lead to positive outcomes in the workplace. By the end of it, you may just want to integrate gaming into your break space design or your next corporate retreat!
INNOVATION: Engage Your Team Through Gaming, with Jane McGonigal
Why are video gamers so obsessed? Because playing gives people a sense of purpose, and winning them makes them feel heroic. "There’s this kind of transfer of our confidence, of our creativity, of our ambition" from game-playing "to our real lives" says game designer Jane McGonigal. And there are organizational benefits as well: studies have shown that we’re more likely to cooperate with someone in our real lives after we’ve played a social game with them that involves a cooperative mission. In this lesson from Big Think Edge, McGonigal walks you through the ways in which gaming can lead to positive outcomes in the workplace. By the end of it, you may just want to integrate gaming into your break space design or your next corporate retreat!
Jane McGonigal, PhD, is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future and the author of The New York Times bestseller Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. McGonigal's newest book is titled SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient--Powered by the Science of Games. Her work has been featured in The Economist, Wired, and The New York Times and on MTV, CNN, and NPR. She has been called one of the top ten innovators to watch (BusinessWeek), one of the one hundred most creative people in business (Fast Company), and one of the fifty most important people in the gaming industry (Game Developers Magazine). Her TED talks on games have been viewed more than ten million times.
