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Put Down the Broom: Tidying Up Can Hamper Creativity
Wired: IF CLUTTER DRIVES you nuts, you’re in good company. There’s been a burst of excitement recently about neatness, propelled by The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo’s best-selling guide that urges us to toss out anything that doesn’t “spark joy.” If we can succeed at decluttering, Kondo says, we will feel pure bliss. “The lives of those who tidy thoroughly and completely,” she writes, “in a single shot, are without exception dramatically altered.” As the biggest neatnik and picker-upper in my casually messy family, I thrill to this idea. ... This is particularly true at work.
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Innovators May Be Non-Conformists, But They Are Not Risk-Takers
Smithsonian: Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, had a hit on his hands with his first book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, a look at how generosity can drive professional success. With his second book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, published earlier this month, he questions conventional wisdom about what makes a successful innovator. Over the course of his research, which involved studying and interviewing innovators in different fields, reading up on the history of creative thinkers and analyzing various social science studies, he reached a number of surprising findings.
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Quick Thinking and Feeling Healthy Predict Longer Life
Suffering from chronic medical conditions and engaging in unhealthy behaviors are known risk factors for early death, but findings from a longitudinal study of over 6,000 adults suggests that certain psychological factors may be even stronger predictors of how long we’ll live. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
The New York Times: Like most 25-year-olds, Julia Rozovsky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She had worked at a consulting firm, but it wasn’t a good match. Then she became a researcher for two professors at Harvard, which was interesting but lonely. Maybe a big corporation would be a better fit. Or perhaps a fast-growing start-up. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to find a job that was more social. ‘‘I wanted to be part of a community, part of something people were building together,’’ she told me. She thought about various opportunities — Internet companies, a Ph.D. program — but nothing seemed exactly right.
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Want To Make Better Predictions?
NPR: We constantly make predictions about the unknown, at scales both large and small. Which presidential candidates will win each party's nomination? Which stocks will go up in the next six months — and which down? Should I have a second child? Will I really enjoy the chocolate chip pancakes most, or should I order the pumpkin waffles instead? When it comes to geopolitical decisions, most of us aren't very good.
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Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage Linked to Self-Interest
Why do opponents of same-sex marriage really oppose it? A study concludes that many people believe gay men and women are more sexually promiscuous than heterosexuals, which they may fear could threaten their own marriages.
