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What Athletes See
The Atlantic: Consider two very different basketball players. The Los Angeles Clippers star DeAndre Jordan, one of the strongest, quickest players in the NBA, nevertheless made only 39 percent of his free throws last year. Then there’s his teammate, Jamal Crawford—not as fast or as strong as Jordan, but he makes 90 percent of the shots he takes from the foul line, a rate that’s among the best in the league. ... Some evidence indicates that the quiet-eye technique stimulates the dorsal area of the brain, which regulates focused, goal-directed attention.
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The lessons I learned trying to teach my child generosity
The Washington Post: My second-born son Oliver has a serious affinity for stuffed animals. He takes such tender care of them, wrapping them in blankets when it is chilly, hauling them around on errands, baby-talking them when he thinks no one else is listening, lining them up just so next to his bed, and tucking them lovingly in every single night. That is why, when my oldest son Milo walked past a gift shop when we were out one day just the two of us, I was touched when he noted how much his brother would love the little stuffed gray fox in the window. I took him by the hand and turned him around, giddy with the thought of the lesson in store.
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Teaching Peace in Elementary School
The New York Times: FOR years, there has been a steady stream of headlines about the soaring mental health needs of college students and their struggles with anxiety and lack of resilience. Now, a growing number of educators are trying to bolster emotional competency not on college campuses, but where they believe it will have the greatest impact: in elementary schools. ... “It’s not just about how you feel, but how are you going to solve a problem, whether it’s an academic problem or a peer problem or a relationship problem with a parent,” said Mark T. Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology at Pennsylvania State University. ...
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Why the Drive Home Really Does Feel Shorter
An unexpectedly long drive in one direction can create an illusion that the drive home is shorter, even when the time spent travelling is exactly the same. Visit Page
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Even Women Think Men Are More Creative
Harvard Business Review: The Research: Devon Proudfoot, a PhD candidate at Duke, and her colleagues Aaron Kay and Christy Koval performed several studies of gender bias and creativity. In one, subjects rated how central certain personality characteristics were to creativity. The results showed that both men and women associated creativity with stereotypically “masculine” traits—independence, daring—more than with “feminine” traits, such as cooperativeness and sensitivity. In another study the researchers asked subjects to evaluate a house design but varied the gender of the architect. Both men and women rated creativity higher when told that the architect was a man.
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The Unexpected Charm of Facebook Memories
New York Magazine: Recently, Facebook resurfaced an old photo of mine, taken in 2009. Really, it is an unremarkable photo, just me and three friends sitting around playing video games. And yet I couldn’t stop looking at it: my friend’s old apartment, another friend’s old haircut, the Asics in which I ran my first half-marathon. Every boring detail in this ostensibly boring photo was captivating. ...
