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How Pandemic Life Mimicked Pioneer Times
In the spring of 2020, faced with a deadly pandemic and instructions to stay at home, a remarkable number of Americans began baking bread. They planted vegetable gardens. They took up DIY home repair. They sat down for dinner with the same few family members—every single night. For anyone who was not an essential worker, the experience felt like a return to pioneer days. According to two studies published this year, in many ways, we really did reverse the clock. American activities, values and relationships began to resemble those found in small, isolated villages where life is a struggle and illness and death lurk outside the door.
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Awe Makes You Feel Better. Here’s a Surprising Way to Find It.
This summer, Beverly Wax had an experience that filled her with awe. It wasn’t a gorgeous sunset, a sweeping mountain vista or the sound of waves gently lapping on a beach that got to her. It was the sight of her son Justin, 35 years old, lugging an 80-pound portable air conditioner up three flights of stairs to her Boston-area condo. Ms. Wax’s central air conditioning had conked out the day before—in the middle of a 90-plus degree heat wave. She’d mentioned to her son that she was having trouble finding someone to come fix it quickly. He’d shown up with the new unit as a surprise.
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The Real Meaning of Freedom at Work
As the Covid-19 pandemic moves into a new phase, many companies have started insisting that we come back to the office full-time. In response, people are quitting their jobs in droves. Flexibility is now the fastest-rising job priority in the U.S., according to a poll of more than 5,000 LinkedIn members. More than half of Americans want their next job to be self-employed—some as entrepreneurs, others as freelancers in the gig economy or content curators in the creator economy. When Covid untethered us from our offices, many people experienced new forms of flexibility, and the taste of freedom left us hungry for more. We started rethinking what we wanted out of work.
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You’re a Different Person When You Travel. Here’s Why, and How to Transform Yourself at Home.
Every so often, I pack a bag for a solo trip that lasts as long as I can manage. The lifelong habit has weathered career changes, a pandemic and marriage. “Where is your husband?” people ask. “Why are you here alone?” “He’s at home,” I say, perhaps while splashing through leech-filled mudholes in Borneo. “Because I like traveling by myself.” I’m after more than sightseeing. Family, home and work are magnetic poles in my life; at times, I need to consult my personal compass away from the strong pull that they exert. When I leave familiar things behind, I look at the world with fresh eyes. Strange foods become new favorites. Curiosity surges. I am a different person when I travel. ...
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People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much
Your social life has a biological limit: 150. That’s the number—Dunbar’s number, proposed by the British psychologist Robin Dunbar three decades ago—of people with whom you can have meaningful relationships. What makes a relationship meaningful? Dunbar gave The New York Times a shorthand answer: “those people you know well enough to greet without feeling awkward if you ran into them in an airport lounge”—a take that may accidentally reveal the substantial spoils of having produced a predominant psychological theory. The construct encompasses multiple “layers” of intimacy in relationships.
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Does Knowing Your Learning Style Help You Learn Better? Science Says No
Do you consider yourself a visual learner or a verbal learner? Perhaps you’re neither and instead you absorb information best by reading texts and taking notes on what you’ve understood. No matter which mode of instruction you prefer, you probably rely on techniques that suit your individual learning style. Although there are more than 70 different learning style frameworks, the most prominent one is the VARK model. Introduced by Neil Fleming in 1987, it categorizes learners into four main types: visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic.
