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Hire like Google? For most companies, that’s a bad idea.
Los Angeles Times: Laszlo Bock, the head of human resources at Google, made quite a splash with his announcement last year that the technology firm has changed the way it hires people. Gone are the brainteaser-style interview questions that so many candidates abhorred. But also gone, it would seem, is any concern with discovering how smart applicants really are. "GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless.... We found that they don't predict anything," Bock told the New York Times.
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Give Yourself the Option of Doing Nothing
Inc.: Should you write that blog post or tackle your budget mess? Go for a run or take that spin class? Make that sales call or work on your presentation? The daily life of a business owner is filled with questions like these. But what if you could make it more likely that you would stick with whichever option you chose simply by reframing the question slightly? A recent study from a pair of marketing professors out of Wharton and Georgia State University that will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that such a thing is actually possible.
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Mindfulness: Is it a fad or a powerful life-changing coping skill? A look at the science.
The Washington Post: Imagine this scenario: You come home from work tired and frazzled, and your little kids are running wild. Perhaps this doesn’t require much imagination. People in such situations might find solace in a popular meditative practice called mindfulness. With mindfulness, you train your mind to focus on the present and respond with reason before emotion. It’s about taking a pause and guiding yourself to become “aware enough in the moment so that before you react, you’re aware of how you’re responding to a situation,” says Ronald Epstein, a professor of family medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.
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How to learn better at any age
The Boston Globe: PEOPLE COMMONLY BELIEVE that if you expose yourself to something enough times — say, a textbook passage or a set of terms from biology class — you can burn it into memory. Not so. Many teachers believe that if they can make learning easier and faster, the learning will be better. Much research turns this belief on its head: When learning is harder, it’s stronger and lasts longer. It’s widely believed by teachers, trainers, and coaches that the most effective way to master a new skill is to give it dogged, single-minded focus, practicing over and over until you’ve got it down.
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Principles of Learnings
Why do men dominate the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics? Should there be single-sex schooling? What is intelligence? How do people learn? Always evident in her writing about thought and knowledge, cognitive psychologist Diane F. Halpern’s answers to apparently straightforward questions like these are far from simple, yet they are clear. Halpern’s research has yielded many principles of learning, such as the importance of formative assessment to learning, and she has designed and implemented programs for — among other areas — undergraduate education in psychology, critical thinking, spatial thinking, and even automated tutoring.
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Theology, Taboos, and Creative Thinking
During the 1976 presidential campaign, then-candidate Jimmy Carter famously told Playboy magazine: “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” Carter’s unguarded remarks were published in the November issue, just days before the election, and they caused a broad public uproar. The campaign was already concerned about the appeal of Carter’s Southern Baptist faith, and some believed this candor would tip the balance to the Republican incumbent Gerald Ford. It didn’t. Carter went on to squeak out a victory, and became the country’s 39th president. But the Playboy interview put evangelical Christianity in the national spotlight.