“The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies” – Harvard Business Review, August 19, 2015
The bottom line: The “overwork story” is one of diminishing returns—keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work less well on tasks that are increasingly meaningless. There’s a large body of research suggesting that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. Not only does it not seem to result in more output, but considerable evidence shows that overwork harms both employees and the companies they work for. Read More
“How Stressful Work Environments Hurt Workers’ Health” – The New York Times, August 25, 2015
A new study from Harvard and Stanford researchers finds that workplace stress is about as dangerous to one’s health as secondhand smoke. (Note: The links and related articles listed contain a lot of interesting data and are worth investigating.) Read More
“Can People Change?” – Greater Good, August 25, 2015
In Matthieu Ricard’s new book Altruism, the biochemist-turned-Buddhist-monk (and “happiest man in the world”!) takes on the notion that humans have a fixed nature. He affirms that we can change because the brain and body evolve continuously. Both neuroplasticity (the fact that the brain changes constantly when an individual is exposed to new situations) and epigenetics (the process through which the environment modifies the expression of our genes) provide evidence that we can retrain our brains and change some of our genetic traits. Read More
The 2015 “World Happiness Report” Is Released – August 2015
The World Happiness Report is written by some of today’s most prominent economists and neuroscientists. It’s a testimony to the fact that happiness is now considered a proper measure of social progress and a goal of public policy. A rapidly increasing number of national and local governments are using happiness data and research in their search for policies that enable people to live better lives. The report’s summary reads in minutes, but the entire report is worth the five to six hours it would take to read in its entirety! Read More
“Does Exercise Change Your Brain? – The New York Times, September 2, 2015
We intuitively sense that exercise may be good for the brain, but no medical studies have firmly proved the cause and effect yet. This new research, however, seems to support the idea that exercise makes a difference in aging brains. Read More
