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Traits of the ‘Get It Done’ Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Robert J. Sternberg has written 40 books and at least 1,400 articles and chapters over a career in which he has juggled jobs as professor, provost, and president of the American Psychological Association. As a psychologist who has studied the way people accomplish goals and stay motivated, he probably has a better insight than most other prolific scholars into what it takes to get things done when distractions tug and self-doubt creeps in. He's one of several experts The Chronicle asked for tips on the traits and habits of people who are particularly effective at accomplishing their goals in academe.
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To boost memory, shut your eyes and relax
Examiner: Forget brain-training exercises, 12-hour shifts and those long, uninterrupted, caffeine-fueled study binges. When you really need new information to sink in, you can’t skimp on taking breaks, new research suggests. That’s the message from a soon-to-be-published study by psychologists and neuroscientists at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, who asked a small group of normally aging elderly men and women to recall as many details as possible from two stories they were told. Following one of the stories (but not always the same one for all the participants), the men and women were instructed to relax, take a brief break and close their eyes for 10 minutes in a dark room.
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Anche il riposo è utile al cervello (Rest is also useful to the brain)
Corriere della Serra: Sempre di corsa, presi da mille impegni, senza mai un attimo per noi stessi. È la vita degli adulti ma anche, purtroppo, quella di tantissimi bambini sballottati fra scuola, corsi sportivi, lezioni di musica e via dicendo. Ma tutto questo può far male al cervello: lo segnalano alcuni psicologi californiani che, in un numero della rivista Perspectives on Psychological Science, tessono le lodi dei sogni a occhi aperti. Perché, dicono, in quei momenti il cervello non sta poltrendo, anzi: si sta esercitando nella dimenticata, ma utilissima, arte dell'introspezione.
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Smiling Could Help With Stress: Study
Huffington Post: If you're feeling stressed, maybe the best thing you can do is crack a smile. New research shows that smiling -- and especially genuine smiling (where your eyes and mouth muscles are engaged) -- may play a part in lowering heart rate after you've done something stressful. The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science. "The next time you are stuck in traffic or are experiencing some other type of stress, you might try to hold your face in a smile for a moment," study researcher Sarah Pressman, of the University of Kansas, said in a statement.
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Why you should grin and bear life’s problems – it’s good for the heart
Daily Mail: Grinning and bearing it gets us through many of life’s tricky situations. But researchers have found smiling really does help reduce stress – and boost the health of the heart. A study from the University of Kansas investigated the potential benefits of smiling by looking at how different types of smiling, and the awareness of smiling, affects a person's ability to recover from episodes of stress. Study author Tara Kraft said: 'Age old adages, such as ‘grin and bear it’ have suggested smiling to be not only an important nonverbal indicator of happiness but also wishfully promotes smiling as a panacea for life’s stressful events.
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Raising Successful Children
The New York Times: PHRASES like “tiger mom” and “helicopter parent” have made their way into everyday language. But does overparenting hurt, or help? While parents who are clearly and embarrassingly inappropriate come in for ridicule, many of us find ourselves drawn to the idea that with just a bit more parental elbow grease, we might turn out children with great talents and assured futures. Is there really anything wrong with a kind of “overparenting lite”? Parental involvement has a long and rich history of being studied.