Reality Upgrade

This is a fascinating article from the Washington Post about hoarding. It is the story of a man (Michael S. Rosenwald) who’s extreme hoarding was beginning to ruin his marriage, so he went on a quest to understand why he feels compelled to hoard.

It is a rather long article, and is more of an autobiographical tale than a scientific study, but it is interesting to see the world from the point of view of someone who has a hard time getting rid of stuff. As he mentions in the article, we see people who are buried in their possessions on television, but it is rare to see it from the inside. Enjoy!

Jonas out.

Routines. They are easy to acquire, and hard to change.

Humans are creatures of habit, and there is nothing wrong with that. Habits make doing repetitive things easier, it makes complicated tasks easier to remember, and frees us up to think about other things while we take care of routine tasks.

But habits are only useful when they are good habits. This great article by Lifehacker suggests that you might want to review your habits, and think about whether or not they are serving you well. Could changing some of your routines make you happier?

Probably so.

For thousands of years, humans have lived the majority of their lives outdoors, only going inside to sleep if at all. Even then, windows were in scarce supply, so we lived in direct contact with the outside air almost all the time.

The first real air conditioner was invented in 1902, and ever since humans have been spending more and more time indoors. Especially if you work in an office, your only time outside at all might be walking from car to building and back.

It seems intuitive to some of us that spending all that time inside and away from nature is bad for your health, but this article from Discovery News adds even more evidence to the pile.

The article talks about the natural bacteria in the soil and air, which when we breathe them in (or eat them) have several major health benefits. Not only do they increase serotonin levels and decrease anxiety, they can also make us learn faster.

So your mother was right after all. Go outside, it’s good for you!

This is a great video about the surprising science of motivation by career analyst Dan Pink, thanks to one of my favorite websites, TED.

This video is only about 18 minutes long, and is a must for anyone who owns, manages, or ever plans on managing a business.

If you have any trouble playing the video, click here for the original on the TED website.

Difficulty getting to sleep can be one of the most frustrating things in the world.

With the busy lives that we all live these days, it is hard enough to find the time to get a good night’s sleep. When you finally do get the chance to go to bed, and your body won’t cooperate…well, let’s just say bad dreams would be better than no dreams at all.

The typical remedies of keeping a consistent sleep schedule, not drinking caffeine before bed, even having a glass of warm milk are all good, but new research shows that room temperature might play an even bigger role than anyone thought.

(continue reading…)

If work was fun, they wouldn’t have to pay you to do it, right?

A problem that almost everyone faces is working at something they enjoy…after all, we spend something like a third of our lives at work. Actually, we spend another third asleep, so we are really at work, or driving to work, or getting ready for work, for around half our lives.

Might as well make that time tolerable.

Bud Caddell over at WhatConsumesMe has come up with a nifty little ven diagram about how to be happy at work.

It is really rather simple, but it makes a lot of sense. After, all of us have things we love to do, things we can get paid to do, and things we do well. Trying to get all of those to overlap is the real trick.

So check out the full article here.

What makes us happy? Not happy in the I-just-got-some-chocolate temporary way, but really, truly happy in the long term. The kind of happy where you die at 87, with your great-grandchildren around you and think, “I had a good life, and wound not change anything.”

Is there some formula, some magic mix of psychology, upbringing, career, and love that lead to a good life?

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been trying to find out. (continue reading…)