We were in the audience, your closest colleagues and devoted associates, who worked hard and faithfully for the same goal that you desired, Youngner began. Do you remember whom you mentioned and whom...
We prefer the regular photos of our friends, because that’s how we’re used to seeing them, but we like the inverted photos of ourselves, because that’s how we see ourselves when we look in the mirror....
To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand.
Three decades of research show that receiving support from colleagues is a robust antidote to burnout.
This is called the Sarick Effect, named after the social scientist Leslie Sarick. In both situations, Griscom was presenting ideas to people who had more power than he had, and trying to convince them...
This doesn’t feel like I’m persuading you. As Aronson explains, you’ve been convinced by someone you already like and trust: Yourself.
They’re constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas. The
Teaching at any level on any subject is the most rewarding thing you can do, Inman told Thompson. I just love to see the expression on the face of a student who gets it for the first time. Just watchi...
Setting high expectations is so important, Skender says. You have to push people, make them stretch and do more than they think possible.
Overall, the evidence suggests that liking continues to increase as people are exposed to an idea between ten and twenty times, with additional exposure still useful for more complex ideas. Interestin...
Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a free choice. Lincoln wasn’t born with an original personality. Taking on controversy wasn’t programmed into his DNA; it was an act of conscious will. As the g...
One of the best things about developing that credibility was if I wanted to try something that was fairly strange, people would be willing to at least give it a shot at the table read, Meyer reflects....
But when I looked at the evidence, I was dismayed to discover that even today, speaking while female remains notoriously difficult. Across
Along with providing time to generate novel ideas, procrastination has another benefit: it keeps us open to improvisation. When we plan well in advance, we often stick to the structure we’ve created,...
Above all, I want to demonstrate that success doesn’t have to come at someone else’s expense. In
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. —attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
We tend to privilege the lone genius who generates ideas that enthrall us, or change our world. According to research by a trio of Stanford psychologists, Americans see independence as a symbol of str...
Today, we have compelling evidence that interest precedes the development of talent. It turns out that motivation is the reason that people develop talent in the first place.
The mere exposure effect has been replicated many times—the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavor, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it.
Strong ties provide bonds, but weak ties serve as bridges: they provide more efficient access to new information. Our strong ties tend to travel in the same social circles and know about the same oppo...