https://lifehacker.com/the-complex-relationship-between-happiness-and-motivati-1623287744
Happy people are more productive.
Happiness and positive interactions can have a great impact on daily productivity in the office.
In the end, motivation and productivity don't depend as much on happiness as they do on positive thinking. Positive thinking will keep you glued to the task at hand when the going gets hard, and anticipation of success is likely to bring about success.
The speaker highlights that the very survival of the human race hinges on our ability to surround ourselves with people who share our beliefs and values. When such a community exists, trust emerges, which is presented as a distinctly human feeling, not merely a measure of reliability. Being reliable, by consistently fulfilling promises, does not automatically equate to being trusted; true trust arises from a sense of common values and beliefs. This environment of mutual trust empowers individuals to confidently take risks, experiment (which inherently involves failure), and explore, secure in the knowledge that their community will support them, watch their back, and help them if they fall. An illustrative example is the preference for trusting a local, inexperienced 16-year-old babysitter over an experienced 32-year-old stranger, underscoring that community and shared belief often outweigh perceived competence when it comes to entrusting our most valuable possessions. Ultimately, organisations, communities, and nations are all fundamentally defined by a common set of values and beliefs.
This video introduces a framework called the "Golden Circle" which explains how inspiring leaders and organizations communicate and operate. It delves into the biological reasons why starting with "Why" is crucial for driving behavior and fostering loyalty.
In this talk, Simon Sinek reveals the hidden dynamics that inspire leadership and trust. In biological terms, leaders get the first pick of food and other spoils, but at a cost. When danger is present, the group expects the leader to mitigate all threats even at the expense of their personal well-being. Understanding this deep-seated expectation is the key difference between someone who is just an "authority" versus a true "leader."
http://lifehacker.com/six-communication-tricks-that-will-get-your-kids-to-coo-511069168
Contrary to popular belief, asking nicely, inviting, and working together to find a solution to a problem doesn’t teach children to be more defiant or disobedient, instead, by doing these things you’re laying a foundation of trust and teamwork that your kids will soon learn to rely on.
When your child refuses to leave the park, can you find a way to make getting to the car more fun? Maybe you’ll pretend you’re firefighters and you have to jump into the firetruck to go put out the fire.
Your child heard you the first time, and by repeating yourself, you’re simply training her to stop listening and wait for you to get frustrated before she acts.
Hyperdecanting: Better Wine in a Minute, You Impatient Philistine
Former Microsoft CTO and master chef Nathan Myhrvold suggests a method he calls "hyperdecanting". Sounds fancy and high-tech, right? It's basically shorthand for "put your wine in a blender for a minute and it'll taste better".
10 Things That Good Bosses Do - CBS News
Pay people what they're worth, not what you can get away with. What you lose in expense you gain back several-fold in performance. Take the time to share your experiences and insights. Labels like mentor and coach are overused. Let's be specific here. Employees learn from those generous enough to share their experiences and insights. They don't need a best friend or a shoulder to cry on. Tell it to employees straight, even when it's bad news. To me, the single most important thing any boss can do is to man up and tell it to people straight. No BS, no sugarcoating, especially when it's bad news or corrective feedback. Manage up ... effectively. Good bosses keep management off employee's backs. Most people don't get this, but the most important aspect of that is giving management what they need to do their jobs. That's what keeps management away. Take the heat and share the praise. It takes courage to take the heat and humility to share the praise. That comes naturally to great bosses; the rest of us have to pick it up as we go.
Fun with the Anthropic Principle - Cedric's blog
One day, someone called Steve sends you an email in which he predicts that tomorrow, team A will win against team B. You don’t think much of that email and you delete it. The next day, you learn that indeed, team A won. A few days later, you receive another email from Steve which, again, makes a prediction for the result of an upcoming game. And again, the prediction turns out to be correct. After a while, you have received ten emails from Steve, each of which accurately predicted a game outcome. You start being quite shocked and excited. What are the odds that this person would randomly guess correctly ten matches? 1 over 2^10 (1024), about 0.1%. That’s quite remarkable. In his next email, Steve says “I hope that by now, I convinced you that I can guess the future. Here is the deal: send me $10,000, I’ll bet them on the next match and we’ll split the profits”. Do you send the money?
Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.
Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.
Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up.
Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.
One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder.
All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder. A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he's not on the receiving end this time, participates in
the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he's attacking the new monkey.
One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced.
Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.
This is how any company's policies get Established.
Lifehacker - Clean Your Keyboard with a Hair Dryer
When you don't have compressed air, clear tape, Post-It notes, or even white paper handy, Inc magazine suggests that a standard hair dryer can remove built-up dirt on and under your keys.
FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » How the failure of Lehman Bros is like SARS, and swine flu
How the failure of Lehman Bros is like SARS, and swine flu
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Apr 28 12:18.
It’s not great timing, given the the outbreak of swine flu, but it is, nevertheless, the theme of the latest publication from the Bank of England.
From a transcript of a speech (with charts) by Andrew Haldane, executive director of the BoE’s Financial Stability unit:
On 16 November 2002, the first official case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was recorded in Guangdong Province, China. Panic ensued. Uncertainty about its causes and contagious consequences brought many neighbouring economies across Asia to a standstill. Hotel occupancy rates in Hong Kong fell from over 80% to less than 15%, while among Beijing’s 5-star hotels occupancy rates fell below 2%.
Media and modern communications fed this frenzy and transmitted it across borders. In North America, parents kept their children from school in Toronto, longshoreman refused to unload a ship in Tacoma due to concerns about its crew and there was a boycott of large numbers of Chinese restaurants across the United States. Dr David Baltimore, Nobel prize winner in medicine, commented: “People clearly have reacted to it with a level of fear that is incommensurate with the size of the problem”.
