Psychology

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• Need willpower right now? Clench your fists, cross your arms, tense your muscles, and stand up straight. (Improving your posture can improve your self control.)

• Mental control is important too. A wandering mind is not a happy mind. Meditation can improve this. Just making too many decisions can leave you depleted and burned out. To reduce this, build good habits and automate behavior as much as possible.

• Want to eat less at a meal? Wear a tight shirt. Context is huge. Whether the friends eating with you are heavy, whether your waitress is heavy and how close food is to you all make a difference in how much you eat. On the other hand, going hungry will also reduce self-control because a lot of willpower is about sugar. Your mind plays all kinds of tricks on you when it comes to food. Skipping breakfast might lead to murder.

• All this willpower stuff feeling difficult? Lean back. Increasing willpower can be as easy as pretending you’re left-handed. Mere postponement can be the key to resisting temptation. Writing things down makes you more likely to do them.

• When we use bigger plates we almost inevitably eat more. When the color of the food contrasts with the color of the plate we almost always eat less. A mirror in the kitchen can help you eat less. The wider a variety of foods at a meal, the more we eat. Dining with friends makes you eat twice as much at restaurants.

• If you don’t want to eat that whole bag of chips or spend all that money, break the amount up into a number of smaller packages.

• Just a little bit of practice every day can increase your willpower. Saying “I’ll never do that again” makes you even more likely to do that again. Just monitoring your behavior can improve it. Penalizing yourself for bad behavior works. Think about the pride you’ll feel in conquering desire, not the shame that follows failure.

• Religion increases self-control but reduces ambition. Thinking about money can immediately increase self-control. Keep a reward in mind to resist temptation and stick to your goals.

• “Precommitment devices” are very powerful. So give a friend $500 and tell them to donate it to the Nazi party if you don’t follow through with your goals.

• Form “if-then” plans. Decide ahead of time how you will respond when willpower is taxed and you’ll be much more likely to default to that.

• We can lose control and overindulge when we think a good mood is fleeting or a bad mood will not go away. By focusing on why good feelings will last or why bad feelings will pass we can prevent poor decisions.

• “Consumers who respond to temptation with the words “I don’t” versus “I can’t” are more able to resist.” There are many good tricks to stop you from overspending while shopping.

• Know the secrets to achieving your goals, the things that really motivate us, and how to improve yourself. Know the three techniques the Army uses to instill mental toughness as well as the four methods the government used to increase Navy SEAL passing rates.

• Self-discipline is better than IQ at determining who will be successful. Exercising self-control in one area of life tends to improve all areas of life. Focus on greater self-compassion, not greater self-control to increase willpower. Friends that support you can be the key to radically changing your life. There are tricks to breaking bad habits forever.

• Don’t get cocky. Thinking you have great self-control leads to failure. Sometimes little temptations are harder to resist than bigger ones. (Email can be harder to resist than alcohol or cigarettes.)

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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"When we overcome one difficulty and one hardship, we can build on that when any other hardship comes along in life"

Answer by Eva Kor, Holocaust survivor and forgiveness advocate, on Quora.

I have faced some very tough times. When I was 10 years old, my twin sister and I were used in medical experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. He injected me with a deadly germ and a few days later he came to the sick barrack where I was sent. He never even examined me. He looked at my fever chart and declared, laughing sarcastically, “Too bad, she’s so young — she has only two weeks to live.” At that time I knew he was right — I was very ill. But I refused to die. I made a silent pledge: That I will prove Mengele wrong, that I will survive, and I will be reunited with Miriam.

For the next two weeks I was between life and death. I have only one memory — crawling on the barrack floor, because I no longer could walk. There was a faucet on the other end of the barrack. As I was crawling, I would fade in and out of consciousness. I just kept thinking, I must survive, I must survive. After two weeks, my fever broke and I immediately felt a lot stronger. It took me another 3 weeks before my fever chart showed normal and I was released from the barrack of the living dead and reunited with my twin sister Miriam. That event — surviving whatever I was injected with — serves to me as a very big source of strength.

When my son had cancer, I couldn’t get him to accept the fact that he had to fight for his life, that he had to make the choice to fight for his life. No one else could do it for him. I repeated to him the story of my survival in Auschwitz. He got mad at me and I just said, “Alex, when I was in Auschwitz, the doctors who were around me wanted me dead. I made the decision that I would live. Can you make that decision?” He got mad at me and hung up the phone — he wasn’t ready to deal with it. But he called me back two days later. Alex said, “Mom, I think I understand it. This is my Auschwitz. This is my struggle that I need to survive.” If the person who is suffering from cancer doesn’t even want to make the decision to live, no one can help them. My son is alive today.

The fact that I have overcome so much adversity in my life helps me to have hope during tough times. I believe if I could survive Auschwitz, if I could survive crawling on the barrack floor between life and death, I could probably survive anything. Basically that is the way we gain confidence in our ability. When we overcome one difficulty and one hardship, we can build on that when any other hardship comes along in life. I also like the fact that people who hear me speak can tune in and feel inspired. They see that I could do it, and they realize they can overcome whatever they are trying to overcome too. That is helpful to realize, that maybe each of us can help others overcome by sharing our stories.

You can also look for ideas on YouTube and the Internet for people who have overcome tough times. You will find a story that fits your situation. Then when you are inspired, DO something. Make a commitment to yourself. Make a promise and keep it close by. If you get off track, don’t feel guilty — we all do it. Just get right back on it.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What gives you hope during tough times?

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• Studies have shown the traits that correlated most powerfully with CEO success as well as the most common failures of bad leaders. Avoid extremes of assertiveness or passivity. The best leaders are supportive, not controlling, even in the military. Find a balance between tough and nice. Your leadership style must adapt to the environment around you.

• Understand what things really motivate people. (No, not money.) What’s the #1 motivator? Progress. Definitely progress. Want your employees to perform better? It can be as easy as believing they are smarter than average and having high expectations. (Expecting people to be selfish can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Money and feedback work best as incentives when combined with acknowledgement of an employee’s accomplishments. You can give a quick boost to employee motvation by reminding people why their job is important. When all else fails, yes, nagging works.

• Teams are smart because of social skills, not IQ. The best predictor of team success in the workplace is how the team members feel about each other. The words your employees choose can tell you how they feel about the group. When it comes to team trust, it’s true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. (The reason most people leave their jobs is because of a lack of trust.) A historical narrative inspires team morale. Don’t be afraid to touch each other. Might want to learn some tricks to creating a place where people are kind to each other. A difficult initiation might not be a bad idea. Dave Packard (of Hewlett Packard) has some great tips on building a solid work environment.

• You have a vested interest in whether your employees are happy. Happy employees are more productive. (Happier employees bring companies better returns.) And your employees will be happier if you let them know their job has meaning. You can reduce employee stress by making clear what is expected of them.

• To be perceived as a leader, speak first and speak often. You can learn to be more charismatic. When you have to communicate bad news, monitor your body language. Face to face contact is important; communicating via email can turn you into a jerk. Saying “thank you” is vital. Don’t reprimand in public. You can learn a lot from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. You need to be positive for employees to be at their best.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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Why you might want to get it out of eyesight

Even if you go all day without touching your cell phone once, just having it visible nearby may distract you from complex tasks, according to new research in the journal Social Psychology.

In the first part of the study, which looked at a group of more than 50 college students, participants were asked to complete different motor tasks with the study leader’s cell phone visible. In the second, participants completed motor tasks with their own cell phones visible. Performance on complex tasks suffered in both conditions when compared to control groups with no visible cell phone.

The sight of a cell phone reminds people of the “broader social community” they can access via texting and the internet, says study author Bill Thornton.

MORE: Why People Text And Drive Even When They Know It’s Dangerous

“With the presence of the phone, you’re wondering what those people are doing,” says Thornton, a University of Southern Maine professor. “Even if it’s just mental, your focus is not on the task at hand, whether it be trying to write an article, get this spreadsheet set up, or just socializing; your mind is elsewhere.”

While performance on complex tasks suffered, the presence of cell phones did little to keep people from successfully finishing easy tasks. Thornton says the same applies to texting while driving.

“You could probably text and drive somewhat safely if you’re on a straight road, and there’s no traffic, and you take your time,” says Thornton. Of course, those conditions rarely exist.

The study builds on previous research that suggests that having your cell phone out reduces the quality of social interaction, even if you don’t engage with your phone. Having the phone out stifled “interpersonal closeness and trust” and kept study participants from feeling empathy for one another, a 2012 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found.

“Mobile communication devices such as phones may, by their mere presence, paradoxically hold the potential to facilitate as well as to disrupt human bonding and intimacy,” it concluded.

Cell phones play a significant role in today’s social engagement, but Thornton nonetheless suggests that people just put the device away for awhile. “I’m not sure how many people’s text messages are that important,” he said. “Unless you’re an advisor to the president and we have a national emergency, you can wait an hour to get a text.”

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

We know how most people spend their time. What can research tell us about the best way to spend our time?

• Maybe you’re a night owl. You don’t want to get out of bed. There’s a way to get out of that habit. And it’s important because your mood in the morning affects your entire day.

• Is it Monday? Don’t worry, it won’t be as bad as you think. (On the other hand, Fridays aren’t that great, either.)

• There are many reasons why a shower in the morning makes you feel so good and it might even make you more creative.

• Don’t skip breakfast, it can lead to murder. Then again maybe starving is better for your health. Have some coffee — here’s everything you need to know about it, including the best way to use it.

• Commuting makes everyone miserable. Try to avoid traffic or get a job closer to home, if possible.

• You’re at the office. Don’t procrastinate. Here’s a ritual to start the day off right. Do important things first if you want to hear “yes” from people. You can be a productivity dynamo with the right tips.

• During the day it might be good to know how to set goals, be a great leader, improve teamwork, give an awesome presentation, and deal with lousy meetings. And here‘s how to get through the work day without killing anyone. Need to do creative work? Do it at home.

• Have lunch or you’ll be cranky — even if you don’t realize it.

• Any way to sneak a nap in here? Naps increase learning, aid decision-making and purge negative emotions. Here’s how to make them amazing.

• (Is it the weekend? We know what activities best help you recover from the workweek and what makes the weekend fun. Most important, spend time with friends and family.)

• Do not just plop down in front of the TV. In the long term it will make you miserable. Wasting time on the internet might mean you’re not getting enough sleep.

• Between 6-8PM is the best time to hit the gym. (Your body temp is at its highest and this is the peak time for strength and flexibility.) I don’t need to tell you that exercise is good for you but it might get you a raise and you might be surprised to find out that looking at porn, action movies and superheroes beforehand might improve your workout.

• Now might be a good time to work on a hobby or build that skill you’ve been working on (gotta get to 10,000 hours somehow) Reading is great but it might be better if you did all your reading for the year in two weeks, actually.

• The best thing to do to increase happiness is spend time with friends and family. Having a better social life can be worth as much as an additional $131,232 a year in terms of life satisfaction.

• Between 10PM and 1AM is the best time for sex because skin sensitivity is at its highest.

• Didn’t get enough done today? Feel strapped for time? You might want to consider volunteering. Ironically, giving away time makes you feel like you have more of it.

• Exhausted? Oddly enough this might be a good time to get some creative work done. Or are you wide awake? Larks and night owls have different strengths and weaknesses.

• These tips might help you get to sleep. And you should make time for the proper amount of sleep — you can’t get away with less. No, you can’t. Missing an hour can take points off your IQ and make it harder to be happy.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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Dr. Dean Parker is a clinical psychologist who specializes in relationship counseling, mood and anxiety disorders, addictions, sex therapy, and domestic violence.

Instead of condemning Ray or blaming Janay, we should support the Rices' decision for what it is—optimism, and a chance to change their union for the better

Ray and Janay Rice are like many couples who walk through my door: apparently happy, in love, but in crisis with little knowledge as to why. The terrible image of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée in the face on an elevator is seared into the public consciousness. But where others see Ray Rice, Josh Brolin, and Chris Brown as potentially chronic abusers, psychologists rely on our clinical training and work to suspend judgment in order to help people like the Rices. Based on what I’ve seen in TV interviews and read in the news, I’d be cautiously optimistic about healing the couple.

The Rices claim that the incident on the elevator was isolated, the only incidence of violence in their relationship, which would put them in a category of what psychologist Michael Johnson calls Common Couple Violence—the most infrequently occurring and treatable form of intimate violence, by his scale. And they wouldn’t be very unique in this country, according to Couples Therapy for Domestic Violence (2011), in which Sandra M. Stith, PhD, claims that 65% of couples who seek marriage counseling “have had at least one prior violent episode.” A public health study from 2007 estimates that 24% of relationships experience violence, about half of which is reciprocal (the CDC breaks down domestic violence into reciprocal and non-reciprocal categories, but not by degree or occurrence). If you take into account that half of couples in therapy recover, according to one study—many others see higher success rates—then it’s safe to say many couples are able to overcome violence in their relationships.

According to Janay Rice’s own recent account, Ray met Janay Palmer in high school, and the two had a long friendship which developed into an intimate relationship during Ray’s time at Rutgers. Janay moved to Baltimore to be with Ray and to complete her education at Towson University. She lived in a separate apartment as a strong, independent woman, from a loving, intact family. There is a stereotype that women who are abused are weak and dependent, but many are the opposite. These women stand strong in opposition to their partners, who may at times be unreasonable. A husband/boyfriend can be taught that, in fact, this strength is a positive trait and to relish the fact that a strong woman is attracted to him. But often, abuse by a male comes from a feeling of inadequacy about his own masculinity. Having been a clinical psychologist for 30 years, and having seen more than 10,000 patients, it’s easy to see how being a batterer masks some men’s insecurity and sense of victimhood. There is no one personality that fits all batterers, but this element I’ve seen in at least half of my domestic cases over the years. And, in my experience, couples for whom the act of violence is isolated can respond well to counseling, decreasing the likelihood of future violence.

Janay has said that Ray was drawn to her family, particularly his future father-in-law, as his own father was murdered when Ray was only one year old. He had no male role model, no sense of how problems are solved in a long-term relationship, no understanding of what a healthy relationship looked like. Often, men who abuse women come from problematic childhoods. In the context of counseling, a man can come to understand how historical dynamics have affected his current relationship and that feelings can be sorted out rather than acted out.

So what was the cauldron of rage that would set off such a violent attack? The Rices were new parents, struggling with caring for their baby. Ray was not on hand to change diapers; rather he was more inclined to be with his friends, and less so to communicate and support his future wife. He had no preexisting vision of how to be a father, and plenty of rage about his own fatherless childhood. They entered premarital counseling at Janay’s request to address these matters. This set of dynamics is not unusual for young couples. Proper parenting skills as well as techniques for communication can be easily taught and modeled by a professional.

The Atlantic City getaway was a break for both. According to Janay, they had been squabbling a bit over parenting responsibilities and the loss of emotional intimacy. At an Atlantic City hotel, they went out to dinner with friends and drank too much. Janay’s frustrations with the relationship and Ray’s rage came out.

Prior to getting on the elevator that night, Ray was looking at his phone, Janay was annoyed and tried to grab the phone, Ray spit at her, she slapped him, he punched her. Poor communication, objectionable actions, coupled with violent behaviors from both partners magnify conflict.

The Rices have continued counseling at a Christian center and say they no longer drink hard liquor. They also say that Ray still tends to isolate and Janay wants to talk about their issues immediately. Men generally like to problem-solve on their own, while women choose to share their feelings to resolve their disagreements. Couples counseling is the treatment of choice for these kinds of relationships. There are of course many couples for whom domestic violence is a repetitive, vicious cycle. I would not recommend counseling for such couples, nor would it likely be successful.

But people shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility that Ray and Janay Rice can fix their marriage. For non-celebrity couples, destroying a man’s career and throwing him in prison rarely result in a positive outcome. Some abusers come out of prison and continue to abuse. Why? Rarely is treatment provided in that setting. The Rices’ efforts in counseling should be seen as optimistic and potentially healing, which is why we should support couples who pursue treatment instead of condemning them as hopeless.

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

We all want success. And we’d like it fast. But we can only work so long and so hard. The more-more-more ethos only goes so far. What to do?

I decided to ask someone who knows about this stuff: Shane Snow.

Shane’s the bestselling author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success.

He did the research and looked at how people and companies achieve success quickly by trying new things, breaking the rules and taking shortcuts — or, as Shane calls them, smartcuts.

What’s a consistent theme throughout the book? Lateral thinking. The secret to succeeding faster isn’t working more, it’s working different.

Here’s Shane:

Lateral Thinking is the process of solving problems via different angles than you might expect. It doesn’t happen when you do more of the same thing. So just simply working harder may not accomplish a goal like rethinking the approach you’re taking. Lateral thinking is about getting in the mindset of breaking the rules that aren’t really rules; they’re just the way things have been conventionally done in the past.

The book is loaded with proven, counterintuitive strategies to help you get better faster. Shane and I talked about six of them.

Okay, you know the drill — let’s break them down.

1) Forget “Paying Your Dues”

If paying your dues was essential, there would be no child prodigies or Zuckerberg billionaires.

Looking at the research, Shane realized the best US Presidents had the least experience in politics. Here’s Shane:

The best presidents of the United States actually have less time in politics than the worst presidents of the United States. In all sorts of industries, what you see is that the fastest risers and the most successful are often not the ones with the most experience. What the patterns show is that people who tend to switch tracks, switch from different ladders or different careers, or even different jumps quickly, end up amassing more skills and more flexibility and more of this critical, lateral thinking that allows them to make breakthroughs and surpass their peers a lot faster than others.

And this lines up with the research of Harvard professor Gautam Mukunda: it’s the renegade outliers who make the big changes.

Often when people talk about the importance of paying dues, they’re afraid of failure or afraid of breaking rules.

Playing it safe can help you do “pretty good” — but it’s rarely the way to get to the very top or to get there fast.

(For more on what the most successful people have in common, click here.)

So you don’t have to suffer for years before you can take your shot. But you do need to learn. Where’s the best place to get help?

2) Find Your Yoda Outside The Office

The research Shane initially looked at said mentors don’t help you get ahead. And Shane reacted the same way I did…

Mr. Miyagi didn’t help? Morpheus didn’t help? Yoda was useless? HERESY.

So Shane dug deeper. Turns out formal mentorship didn’t work. That guy they assign to guide you at the office? Zero effect on your career.

But the mentors you seek out on your own? Boom. They take you to the next level in a big way. But what’s the difference between the two?

Mentors need to care about you.

Here’s Shane:

In great mentorship relationships the mentor doesn’t just care about the thing that you’re learning, they care about how your life goes. They are with you for the long haul. They are willing to say, “No,” and to tell you what you’re doing is wrong. Those kinds of relationships yield outsized results in terms of future salaries and happiness.

And caring goes both ways.

If you don’t feel a bond with your mentor and you don’t open up, you won’t get the most from them. You need to care about them too. Here’s Shane:

An organic mentorship is built around friendship and vulnerability. You need to be open about what you’re scared about and what you’re going through. Good mentors don’t just guide your practice, they guide your journey. This is the thing that you see in Star Wars and in the Karate Kid.

Forget the silly “mentor” that work or school assigned to you. Hitch a ride to the Dagobah system. Go “wax on, wax off” an old Japanese man’s cars.

Find a teacher who you care about and who cares about you and you’re not just on your way to a great career, you’re on your way to a primo life.

(For more on how to find the perfect mentor for you, click here.)

So informal mentors can really make a difference. How else can you keep improving? The answer might surprise you…

3) Watching Others Fail Helps You Succeed

Not making others fail, mind you. But seeing others screw up helps you learn.

It’s a shortcut to getting around a little known cognitive bias Shane discovered in his research.

When surgeons tried to learn a new procedure, which ones improved the most? The ones who saw others make mistakes.

Here’s Shane:

Surgeons who did successful surgeries tended to continue to improve, but surgeons that sucked at the surgery got even worse. And if you saw your buddy succeed at a surgery, it didn’t help you at all. But, paradoxically, if you saw your buddy fail at a surgery, you actually got better.

Huh? So unless you’re good from day one the only way to get better was to watch other people fail? Why?

Because your brain is trying to stop you from feeling bad about yourself. So it lies to you.

When you screw up, you make excuses. “Not my fault. Sun was in my eyes.” When you see someone else do well, you say, “Well, of course, I’d do it just like that.”

But when you see someone else bomb you say “Whoa, better not do that.” Here’s Shane:

If you are a heart surgeon and your patient dies on the operating table, you’re gonna say, “Oh, the patient was in bad shape. Oh, there wasn’t enough time. Oh, it was hard to see. The incision wasn’t very clean…” You blame your failures on things that are outside your control. But by watching a surgery you are less personally invested in you are able to be objective. “Oh, they did that wrong. Note to self. I shouldn’t do that.”

It’s one of the fundamental differences between the beginner and the expert mindset. Beginners need encouragement so they don’t quit.

But experts love negative feedback. That’s the secret to how you keep improving. Here’s Shane:

Experts have gotten to a place where they don’t take it personally and they can take the negative feedback as feedback on the activity rather than on them as a person. And that’s what you should do.

Turn failure into feedback and then turn feedback into actionable steps.

(For more on how to have an expert mindset, click here.)

Mentors, watching others fail… so you’re learning a lot. But what if you’re just too late?

4) Forget First Movers. Be A Fast Follower.

“I had that idea but they beat me to it.” Ever said that? Okay, you’re now officially a whiner. Because you were dead wrong.

You were actually in the better spot. Research shows the guy who starts second is more likely to win.

Via Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success:

…Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis of the University of Southern California, published a study in 1993 to see if historical evidence backed the claim that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched what happened to 500 brands in 50 product categories, from toothpaste to video recorders to fax machines to chewing gum. Startlingly, the research showed that 47% of the first movers failed. Only about half the companies that started selling a product first remained the market leader five years later, and only 11 percent of first movers remained market leaders over the long term. By contrast, early leaders — companies that took control of a product’s market share after the first movers pioneered them — had only an 8 percent failure rate. Fifty-three percent of the time in the Golder and Teller study, an early leader became the market leader in a category.

When you’re first you have to waste a lot of time and energy figuring out best practices. When you’re second, you can just play “follow the leader.”

Dan Coyle said the two most important words when it comes to getting better are “reach” and “stare.”

• Reach: Keep trying to get better.
• Stare: Study and emulate those who are better than you.

You’re not too late. You’re right on time.

(For more on the attitude that produces success, click here.)

So timing isn’t as big a deal as you thought and you can learn from those who came before you. But what about when you need original ideas?

5) Want To Be More Creative? Add Constraints.

When you have limitations you can’t take the easy route. Constraints force you to think. And often, unless forced, we don’t think much at all.

When challenged, we have to be original.

Via Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success:

Constraints make the haiku one of the world’s most moving poetic forms. They give us boundaries that direct our focus and allow us to be more creative. This is, coincidentally, why tiny startup companies frequently come up with breakthrough ideas. They start with so few resources that they’re forced to come up with simplifying solutions.

One of the most insightful DVD commentaries I’ve ever heard was Robert Rodriguez discussing his movie, El Mariachi.

He made a 90 minute film with only 7000 dollars. Such an incomprehensibly small budget forced him to rethink every part of filmmaking.

He didn’t have a dolly so he attached the camera to a wheelchair.

The critics loved his editing but the only reason he cut the film like that was because his cheap recording equipment would lose sync during long shots.

You don’t need the freedom to be creative. You need the constraints.

(To learn the four principles that will take you to breakthrough creativity, click here.)

So creativity comes from limitations but your goals, well, they need to go in the total opposite direction…

6) “It’s Easier To Make Something 10 Times Better Than To Make Something 10% Better”

That line is from Astro Teller, head of Google X. Those are the guys who build driverless cars and other supercool stuff.

When you try to make something 10% better, your brain is burdened with all the baggage that came before. You have no room to maneuver.

When you say 10 times better, you have to reinvent the whole process. It makes you think big. You toss out the old rules and start fresh. Here’s Shane:

If you’re aiming for 10% improvement you are going to work within the conventional bounds of what normally happens in your product or industry. If you say that this has to be 10 times better, then it forces you to get down to the first principle of what is most essential. This is a way to force reinvention, which is really what innovation is.

And when you dream big, people want to join you. The media wants to talk about you. Venture capitalists want to throw money at you. Ambition is a force multiplier. Here’s Shane:

If you’re working on a business that has small potential, it’s going to be hard to recruit really great talent for it. But if your mission is to get humans to Mars it’s easier to attract the world’s greatest rocket scientists. So it’s rallying the support, and not just from employees and investors, which you need if you’re doing something big, but also from customers and from press and the universe that needs to conspire around you in order to make you successful.

And, perhaps most importantly, when you think 10x instead of 10%, you behave differently.

Research shows when you set bolder, more audacious goals you work harder than when you’re reasonable. Here’s Shane:

Subconsciously, we actually push ourselves harder when we’re going after bigger, loftier, harder goals. Research shows people who set higher goals end up outperforming their peers or themselves because they push themselves harder or because they force themselves to find more creative, alternative, unconventional solutions to problems.

So dream big. No, even bigger.

(For everything you need to know about setting and achieving your goals, click here.)

These are some great ideas. Let’s round them up and finish with the one thing you absolutely need to remember.

Sum Up

Here are Shane’s tools for achieving bigger, faster success:

1. Forget “Paying Your Dues”
2. Find Your Yoda Outside The Office
3. Watching Others Fail Helps You Succeed
4. Forget First Movers. Be A Fast Follower.
5. Want To Be More Creative? Add Constraints.
6. “It’s Easier To Make Something 10 Times Better Than To Make Something 10% Better”

That’s a lot to remember. So if you forget everything you just read, what’s the one thing you need to keep in mind? I asked Shane that and here’s what he said:

The mistake that all of us make is we don’t step back enough to ask, “Why are we doing things this way?” In fact, we should first be asking ourselves, “Why are we doing this in the first place?” But certainly ask, “Why are we doing it this way?” Often the answer is, “Because that’s the way people have always done it in the past” — and that’s a problem if you want to make more rapid progress or if you want to get off the plateau that you’re on.

So look around today at the things that are important and ask why you’re doing them that way.

Is there a better way? A way that’s quicker, more effective, and more fun?

More often than not, I’ll bet you there is.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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Jeffrey Kluger is Editor at Large for TIME.

The human brain forgets much more than it remembers, and that has an impact on history, criminal justice and more

Here’s a difficult one, history buffs: Who was Harry Truman? I know, I know, I told you it would be tough, but think hard: Some famous general? Maybe a physicist?

If you guessed U.S. president, good for you! And if you also knew that Truman was the one who came right after Roosevelt (Franklin, that is) and right before Eisenhower, go to the head of the class.

OK, so maybe remembering Truman isn’t such a big deal. But here’s the thing: By 2040, according to a new study just published in Science, only 26% of college students will remember to include his name if they are asked to make a list of all U.S. Presidents, regardless of order.

That finding, which is less a function of historical illiteracy than of the mysterious ways the human brain works, reveals a lot about the perishability of memory. And that, in turn, has implications for contemporary dramas like the Ferguson tragedy, the Bill Cosby mess and the very underpinnings of the criminal justice system.

The Science study, conducted by a pair of psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis, was actually four studies that took place over 40 years—in 1974, 1991, 2009 and 2014. In the first three, the investigators asked groups of then-college students to list all of the presidents in the order in which they served, and also to list as many of them as they could by name regardless of where they fell in history.

In all three groups over all three eras, the results were remarkably similar. As a rule, 100% of respondents knew the president currently serving, and virtually all knew the prior one or two. Performance then fell off with each previous presidency. Roughly 75% of students in 1974 placed FDR in the right spot, for example. Fewer than 20% of Millennials—born much later—could do that. In all groups, the historical trail would go effectively cold one or two presidents before the subjects’ birth—falling into single digits.

There were exceptions. The Founding Father presidents, particularly the first three—George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—scored high in all groups. As did Abraham Lincoln and his two immediate successors, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant. As for the Tylers and Taylors and Fillmores? Forget about them—which most people did. The pattern held again in a single larger survey conducted in 2014, with a mixed-age sample group that included Boomers, Gen X’ers and Millennials, all performing true to their own eras.

Almost none of this had to do with any one President’s historical relevance—apart from the Founding Fathers and Lincoln. James Polk’s enormously consequential, one-term presidency is far less recalled than, say, Jimmy Carter’s much less successful four-year stint. Instead, our memory is personal, a thing of the moment, and deeply fallible—and that means trouble.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Ferguson drama is the mix of wildly different stories eyewitnesses presented to the grand jury, with Michael Brown portrayed as anything from anger-crazed aggressor to supine victim. Some witnesses may have been led by prosecutors, some may have simply been making things up, but at least some were surely doing their best, trying to remember the details of a lethal scene as it unfolded in a few vivid seconds.

If forensic psychology has shown anything, it’s that every single expectation or bias a witness brings to an experience—to say nothing of all of the noise and press and controversy that may follow—can contaminate recall until it’s little more reliable than that of someone who wan’t there at all.

Something less deadly—if no less ugly—applies in the Bill Cosby case. In an otherwise reasonable piece in the Nov. 25 Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker cautions against a collective rush to judgment and reminds readers that under the American legal system, Cosby is not a rapist, but an alleged rapist; and his victims, similarly, are as yet only alleged victims. Fair enough; that’s what the criminal justice rules say. But then, there’s this:

“…we have formed our opinions… only on the memories of the women, most of whom say they were drugged at the time. Some of them have conceded that their recollections are foggy—which, of course they would be, after decades and under pharmaceutically induced circumstances, allegedly.”

In other words, if Cosby did drug them, then perhaps we must throw their testimony out of court because, um, Cosby drugged them. Talk about the (alleged) criminal making hay on his crime. And yet, when it comes to the science of memory, that’s an argument that could work before a judge.

Finally, too, there is the unseemly business of Ray Rice. Virtually nobody who knows what he did has forgotten it—which is what happens when you’re a massively strong athlete and you cold-cock a woman. But it was the complete elevator video actually showing the blow, as opposed to the earlier one in which Rice was seen merely dragging the unconscious body of his soon-to-be-wife out into a hotel hallway, that spelled his end—at least until his lifetime NFL ban was overturned on Nov. 28. Knowing what happened is very different from seeing what happened—and once you saw the savagery of Rice’s blow, you could never unsee it.

When it comes to presidents, the fallibility of memory can help. In the years immediately following Richard Nixon’s resignation, it was a lot harder to appreciate his manifest triumphs—the Clean Air Act, the opening to China—than it is now. George W. Bush is enjoying his own small historical rebound, with his AIDS in Africa initiative and his compassionate attempt at immigration reform looking better and better in the rear-view mirror—despite the still-recent debacles of his Presidency.

We do ourselves a disservice if we hold historical grudges against even our most flawed presidents; but we do just as much harm if we allow ourselves to forget why ill-planned land wars in countries like Iraq or cheap break-ins at places like the Watergate are so morally criminal. Forget the sequence of the Presidents if you must, but do remember their deeds.

How to conquer your inner 6-year-old

I meant to write this piece two weeks ago. I created a Word document and fully intended to start banging away on my Mac. But I had to contact some experts for advice, and that can be time-consuming, so I decided it might be better to push the story to the side for a day, and tackle something a little easier. The next day, unfortunately, I kind of had a brain freeze—that happens sometimes—so I figured I’d put it off for another day, when I had a little more mojo. Thing was, I wasn’t all that inspired the following day either. And then my allergies kicked in, I popped a Benadryl, and…well you get the picture, right?

So here it is, a week and change later, and I’m finally rolling up my sleeves to work on this story about—wait for it—procrastination.

Embarrassed? You betcha. But while I may not be proud of my “there’s always later” mentality, I’m hardly alone here. In fact, research shows that that as many as 20% of us are chronic procrastinators.

You know who you are: Visa bills fall by the wayside. Income tax returns get to Uncle Sam a couple weeks late. And let’s not even get into Christmas Eve crunch-time shopping (wonder if CVS is going bring back that cute chocolate fondue fountain this year?).

But before you start getting all guilt-trippy, know this: Procrastination isn’t about slacking off or lacking the intention to work; it’s not a time-management problem, either. More to the point, it’s about self-regulation, or the lack thereof. “It’s that six-year-old inside each of us saying, I don’t want to! I don’t feel like it!” says Timothy Pychyl, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and the author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle ($9, amazon.com).

You see, we fully intend to get to the matter at hand, only…later. For this reason, as strange as it may seem, many procrastinators tend to be highly impulsive. Or as Pychl puts it: “The pleasure of now trumps all the future stuff. We discount future rewards for sooner rewards—even if they’re not aligned with our goals.”

The irony here, according to Dan Gustavson, a researcher of cognitive psychology and behavioral genetics at University of Colorado, Boulder, is that procrastination rarely makes us all that happy. “There’s a feeling of growing pressure because you’re only delaying the inevitable,” says Gustavson. “You understand that putting off the task is only going to hurt you in the long run. But you do it anyway.”

Of course, not all procrastinating is about giving in to temptation. Some procrastinators are actually perfectionists. Basically, these are people who are so worried about living up to the standards of others that they freeze in their tracks—say, tweaking and re-tweaking term papers. Or, as Pychyl puts it: “You address your fear of putting yourself on the line by delaying your actions.”

HEALTH.COM: 10 Health Trends That Just Waste Your Time

But while dancing around deadlines may not seem all that serious, putting things off over time can have serious repercussions that far go beyond ticking off your boss or college professor. Let’s face it: shelving a string of exercise classes or delaying an appointment with your MD or dentist can have serous consequences for your health. “Simply put,” says Pychyl, “the sooner you take care of a health problem, the better the outcome tends to be.” And the stress that procrastination creates isn’t all that great for your health either.

Message received. But how do you break free from the “I’ll deal with it later” habit? Check out these stay-with-it strategies.

Do away with distractions

In a world of iPhones, Kindles, and other kinds of techie temptations, distractions have multiplied—not surprising, since everything is just a quick click away. You might tell yourself, It’ll take only a minute to check these messages, but 10 minutes later, you’re still at it. What’s more, many of us secretly welcome interruptions (whether they’re of the tech or human kind) because they take us away from whatever it is we’re working on.

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But check this out: A study done at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, found that the average worker is interrupted every three minutes—that’s almost 20 times per hour. Even worse, research shows that you don’t immediately return to what you were doing before you were interrupted; it takes about 23 minutes to get back on track. So before digging into any task or assignment, try closing yourself off from anything that can possibly divert your attention. Turn off your phone, and stow away that candy jar on your desk that just encourages chatty co-workers to stop by and shoot the breeze.

Say “hi” to Future You

Usually we don’t feel all that bummed about temporarily blowing off an assignment because we trick ourselves into thinking that we’ll be more in the mood (and feel more inspired) later—which, let’s face it, is pretty wishful thinking. So maybe it’s time you became acquainted with your “future self” (you know, the one who is going to be seriously stressed out tomorrow, when she has to deal with all that work with a rapidly approaching deadline). “Most of the time, we think of our future self as a stranger, someone we’re not all that connected with. But it’s important to acknowledge how your present self affects your future self,” says Pychyl. “Take a few seconds to really think about how much better you’ll feel in the days and weeks ahead if you roll up your sleeves now.”

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Get specific

Broad, general goals—like, I’m going to hit the gym tomorrow, for sure—don’t mean a whole lot. Being more precise (as in, I’m going to set aside 45 minutes at 7:30 to hit the gym) makes it easier to stay on track, says Gustavson. Another trick: Make it damn near impossible to ignore the task at hand. “If you want to exercise when you get home from work,” says Pychl, “make sure your workout clothes are near the door, so you can practically trip over them when you come home.”

Just do it

Intimidated by a big task? Try this trick: Just tell yourself, You know, I’ll just work on it for five minutes, then stop. Funny thing is, once you actually dig in, you’ll most likely realize it’s not all that difficult or stressful as you thought—and keep right on going. Or as Pychyl puts it: “Just spin the pedals and remind yourself that you can get off the bike at any time. Before you know it, you’ll be deep into whatever it is you’ve been dreading.” Another trick: Separate your goal into manageable chunks to be done throughout the day or week. “After all,” says Gustovson, “a complex task isn’t just one thing—it’s a lot of little things.”

Hit the ground running

If you’ve got a task you just dread, do it in the a.m., says Pychyl: “Mark Twain once had a great line: If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. What that means: Most difficult tasks take willpower, and willpower is a limited resource that is quickly exhausted—a muscle that can tire easily. So the trick is to engage that muscle when it’s still fresh.”

HEALTH.COM: 16 Unexpected Ways to Add Years to Your Life

This article originally appeared on Health.com.

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

No, you won’t do better work by procrastinating. And you will not have more time next week. In fact, leaving things unfinished makes you stupid. Here’s what works:

• Make specific plans. Just setting a date and a time when you’re going to do something makes you more likely to follow through. Or write down the steps necessary to do the work.

• Use short, painless dashes of effort. Just have at it for five minutes and feel free to watch the clock. Chances are you’ll realize it’s not so bad.

• Rewarding yourself for doing things you don’t want to do can be a powerful motivator.

• Use “precommitment devices” to make sure you follow through. Stickk is a good one.

• Asking yourself whether you intend on doing something is a more powerful motivator than telling yourself you will do it.

• Understand the secrets to willpower, breaking bad habits, productivity, and achieving goals.

• Forgive yourself when you do procrastinate to prevent a vicious circle. Hey, even procrastination researchers have a sense of humor about it.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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