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WHAT WE LEARNED FROM SENDING 1,000 COLD EMAILS
Fast Company: Cold emails can be awful. And yet--we’ve formed valuable mentor relationships via cold email. As journalists, cold emails are often our only avenue for reaching important sources; in our businesses, cold emails are frequently how we make sales and drive growth. The point of cold email is typically to get something out of someone else. And yet, as Adam Grant finds in his 2013 book, Give and Take, “Givers” tend to be far more successful salespeople and engineers and entrepreneurs and humans than “Takers” who are out for themselves. So how does one reconcile the inherent “Taker” nature of cold email with the desire to be more successful (and make the world less crappy)?
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Are Angry People Also Angry Drivers? Not Necessarily
Whether you’re a driver, a pedestrian, or a cyclist, chances are you’ve had at least a few first-hand experiences with someone with an anger problem behind the wheel. Aggressive driving, which includes deliberately driving unsafely in order to punish or get even with someone, is a major road hazard. A study from the AAA Foundation looking at more than 10,000 road rage incidents found that altercations between angry drivers resulted in at least 218 murders and another 12,610 injury cases over the course of seven years.
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Remember Me: Personal Legacy and Global Warming
Later this month, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change will release its fifth and latest assessment of the scientific evidence regarding human interference in the world’s climate. Based on the working papers that have preceded this final synthesis, the IPCC will echo the alarms of earlier assessments—that global warming is unequivocal and unprecedented and extremely likely to have been caused by human activity. The report will call for new policies to mitigate climate change and the likelihood of severe and irreversible consequences.
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The Forgotten Art Of Doing Nothing
Lifehacker: Let's face it. We're all addicted to technology. Scuttling around, trying to do something productive every minute. We're also the first generation in the history of mankind with a plethora of apps and devices to help us maximize our productivity, and our potential. Thanks to my ever-handy smart phone, my brain 24x7 processing all the bits of information I feed into it, churning them into useful bits. Life is short. Time is money. Perhaps that's why we're all running around like crazy trying to squeeze the most out of our day. Possibly this is why we all constantly check our mails to stay on top of issues - last thing at night, and first thing when we get up in the morning.
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Precrastination: Worse Than Procrastination?
The Atlantic: Do you park in the first spot you see, even if it means a longer, grocery-laden walk back from the store later? When unloading the dishwasher, do you quickly shove all the Tupperware into a random cabinet, thereby getting the dishes-doing process over with faster—but also setting yourself up for a mini-avalanche of containers and lids?
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Why Saying Is Believing — The Science Of Self-Talk
NPR: From the self-affirmations of Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live to countless videos on YouTube, saying nice things to your reflection in the mirror is a self-help trope that's been around for decades, and seems most often aimed at women. The practice, we're told, can help us like ourselves and our bodies more, and even make us more successful — allow us to chase our dreams! Impressed, but skeptical, I took this self-talk idea to one of the country's leading researchers on body image to see if it's actually part of clinical practice. David Sarwer is a psychologist and clinical director at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania.
