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Knowing When A Task Is Going To End Makes Us Better At It – Research Digest

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Knowing When A Task Is Going To End Makes Us Better At It – Research Digest

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Deadlines, though stressful, can be a pretty good motivator. Knowing you have to submit some work by a particular date can make it easier to get things done; you simply have to get on with it. This also goes for non-professional deadlines - trying to get in shape by the time you run a specific race, for example, can be a lot more motivating than a more vague and nebulous desire to get fit.

But why is this the case? Maayan Katzir and colleagues at Tel Aviv University have investigated the phenomenon in a new paper, recently published in Cognition - and they suggest it may be down to how we conserve and use effort.

In an initial experiment, 64 undergraduate students were asked to perform a complex task, completing a series of trials in which they had to switch between four different activities: two Stroop tasks, in which participants were asked to name colours or read words, and two spatial tasks, in which they had to indicate the direction of arrows. In each trial, they also had to ignore distracting stimuli. Participants were told that those scoring in the top 25% on accuracy would receive a monetary reward.

Participants completed 10 blocks of 240 trials, making a total of 2400 trials. Importantly, one group was told that the experiment was split into blocks, and were given information about how many blocks of the total they had completed as they went along, while the other was not. Neither group received feedback on how well they were performing. After the third, sixth and ninth blocks, participants were also asked how tired, bored and energetic they felt, the answers to which were used to calculate a fatigue score.

Participants in the feedback condition - those who were aware of how far they had progressed through the experiment - had a higher level of performance, as measured by their speed and accuracy; this was particularly pronounced towards the end of the experiment, suggesting that knowing when a task is going to end does indeed make it easier to complete. Participants receiving feedback also spent less time taking breaks towards the end than their non-feedback peers, though they didn't report feeling any less fatigued.

A second experiment replicated the design of the first - except, this time, there were even more blocks. Participants were asked to complete twelve blocks of 240 trials, bringing the total to 2880. And as in the first experiment, feedback on progress had a positive impact on performance. Participants in the no feedback condition also reported feeling more fatigued - but only towards the end of the experiment. This group also spent more time on breaks than those aware of how many blocks they had left.

So why do we perform better when we know a task is going to end? Our desire to engage in more interesting activities may have something to do with it. If we're aware of the fact a tedious task is nearly finished, we also know that leisure activities are within our reach: remaining engaged in our task and taking fewer breaks means that those more tantalising opportunities are closer to hand.

It may also be to do with how much effort we allocate to particular activities, the team suggests. If we have no idea how much longer we're going to be engaging in a particular task, we're unlikely to put all of our energy into it; if we know the end is near, we feel more able to try our hardest without fear of running out of energy.

This could relate to how we conceptualise willpower, too: another recent study found that those who believe they possess a limited and finite amount of energy are less likely to motivate themselves to get to bed on time. So people who believe that our willpower is a limited resource may be particularly likely to try and conserve effort when they don't know how much longer a task will last.

Those in the feedback condition did indeed perform better than their counterparts - but that doesn't mean their performances were as high as they could be. It would be interesting to look at the timing of progress feedback - could introducing progress feedback only towards the end of a task push performance even higher?

What is clear, however, is that knowledge of how a task is progressing can have a significant impact both on how much effort you expend on it and how well you perform. So if you really want to get that boring bit of work out of the way? You may well benefit from setting yourself a deadline.

- Cognitive performance is enhanced if one knows when the task will end
Emily Reynolds (@rey_z) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest

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Knowing When A Task Is Going To End Makes Us Better At It

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Deadlines, though stressful, can be a pretty good motivator. Knowing you have to submit some work by a particular date can make it easier to get things done; you simply have to get on with it.

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High-schoolers need lots of sleep and food because they're growing fast.

Friends might become as important to teens as their family is.

High-schoolers begin developing more mature thinking skills and may start setting goals for the future.

This article is part of

A simple, step-by-step tool to help you figure out if the struggles you're seeing might be signs of a learning and thinking difference

In high school, kids' development really takes off. Just as with middle-schoolers, high-schoolers develop at widely varied rates. For the most part, tweens turn into high-schoolers who start looking more like adults while also building the skills to think about and plan for the future.

If you're unsure what to expect these years, look at the developmental milestones you can expect to see in a teen. But remember, not all kids develop at the same rate, so if your child isn't doing all of these things at the same time as other teens, don't panic.

The difference in growth between boys and girls is very noticeable at this age. And there's a big difference in physical milestones among individual kids, too. Boys are hitting the age at which they start to grow rapidly, while girls are just starting to slow down.

By the end of high school, many girls are likely to have grown as tall as they're going to be. Boys, on the other hand, often are still growing and gaining muscle strength.

Have a big appetite

Need more sleep and may be sleepy in school if it starts early

Have the visual-spatial coordination needed to help judge distance and speed and react quickly when learning to drive

Are more agile and coordinated, making it easier to do things like type on a keyboard or build complex projects (Some teens may be uncoordinated, though, because they're growing so quickly.)

In the mid- to late-teenage years, kids start thinking not just about their own lives, but also more about how the whole world works. But that change is a gradual process. It doesn't happen all at once. During high school, teens are likely to:

Show an increasing ability to reason, make educated guesses, and sort fact from fiction

Start thinking more abstractly, comparing what is to what could be

Think about and come up with ways to deal with hypothetical situations

Begin to set their own goals for the future; take other opinions into account but make their own decisions

Understand the consequences of actions, not just today, but also in far-reaching ways (For example, understanding that failing English isn't just a bummer-it can mean summer school, too.)

Develop a strong sense of right and wrong and make decisions based on following their conscience

Write with complexity about a variety of content areas (science, social studies, literature)

Use strategies to search for, use, and compare information from multiple sources

Use numbers in real-life situations (like calculating tax or a tip)

Social and Emotional Milestones

There are huge changes in social and emotional skills between ages 14 and 18. The emotional maturity of a high school freshman is very different from that of a graduating senior. Here's what you might see at different ages.

Can recognize personal strengths and challenges

Are embarrassed by family and parents

Strive to be independent

Are eager to be accepted by peers and to have friends

May seem self-centered, impulsive, or moody

Don't want to talk as much; are argumentative

May appreciate siblings more than parents

Narrow down to a few close friends and may start dating

Analyze their own feelings and try to find the cause of them

Start relating to family better; begin to see parents as real people

Develop a better sense of who they are and what positive things they can contribute to friendships and other relationships

Spend a lot of time with friends

Are able to voice emotions (both negative and positive) and try to find solutions to conflicts

High-schoolers hone their reasoning skills and learn to find solutions to problems.

By the end of high school, teens typically can appreciate the positive things about themselves.

If you have concerns about how your child is doing, talk to your child and figure out next steps together.

About the Author

About the Author

worked as a classroom teacher and as an early intervention specialist for 10 years. She is the author of Amanda Morin The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education. Two of her children have learning differences.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Molly Algermissen, PhD is an associate professor of medical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and clinical director of PROMISE.

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High-schoolers need lots of sleep and food because they're growing fast. Friends might become as important to teens as their family is. High-schoolers begin developing more mature thinking skills and may start setting goals for the future.

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With Your Smartphone, Fear is Never Far Away - Behavioral Scientist

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With Your Smartphone, Fear is Never Far Away - Behavioral Scientist

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Ancient Man might have liked a smartphone. Before homo became sapien, our cave-dwelling ancestor would have wanted to know whether a storm was coming or if his friends had spotted a herd of predators nearby. But, lacking such a forecasting tool, he honed (over millennia) a particular part of his brain to cope with sudden fear: the amygdala.

For millions of years, this almond-shaped glob developed inside our ancestors' brains, preparing them to spring into action at a moment's notice. Life was mostly slow and local, albeit nasty, brutish and short.

Medieval Man seems so much more modern than that Ancient Man, if you focus only on the clothes, the wheel, and the iron tools. But, if you compare their amygdalae, the thousands of years between them didn't make much difference. From caves to thatched roofs to gunpowder, that part of us hadn't really changed much. And it didn't need to: information was still slow, life was still short and violent (albeit less so). So the amygdala continued to work well at responding to fear.

In fact, it's so simple it bears a close resemblance to those of other, less-developed animals.

"The [human] amygdala works basically the same as [in] a monkey and a rat," says Abigail Marsh, author of The Fear Factor and an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University.

At the relative tail end of those million-plus years in development, right as our history is starting to pick up the pace, this ancient tool is about to be assaulted by...the printing press. Then comes the telegraph and newspapers. And then, in a huge and relatively very recent leap, the radio.

In a blink of an evolutionary eye, radio and television then give way to smartphones-all of the world's threats in your hand, all the time.

"Before radio, if you got scary news, it would be with your daily newspaper, or you got it over the neighbor's fence," says Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology and author of the Culture of Fear. "Now you are suddenly able to get news and all sorts of information much more often."

In a blink of an evolutionary eye, radio and television then give way to smartphones-all of the world's threats in your hand, all the time.

The amygdala is trained to weigh threats, but the threat set available to Ancient Man and Medieval Man was limited to threats that could harm him. Asking the same part of the brain to process information about distant threats-and keep them distant-might be too much to ask, especially if the media can make it seem so real.

"The smartphone, especially, more than pretty much any other technology that existed before, is constant," Glassner says. "For many people, at least, notifications come and updates come pretty much nonstop. It's a very far cry from picking up the daily paper," let alone the town square.

"[The] modern world is clearly nothing like the world that developed our fear response," adds Marsh. "We are no longer getting information that is representative of the actual world because we're learning about the world from all these unnatural resources. Our brain is coming up with heuristics about how likely events are. It's not built to take information from social media [and mass media]."

Marsh says the availability heuristic helps us make it all seem scarier, because we're not equipped to provide ourselves with the appropriate denominators for frightening statistics. A handy example for most of us is plane crashes. You probably know someone who is scared of flying, but unfortunately, throwing statistics at them about how rarely planes crash (especially in U.S. commercial aviation) doesn't tend to work. By one estimate, more than a thousand people died in the year after the Sept. 11 attacks because they chose to drive versus flying. That's letting a single horrific act blot out the ability to calculate odds properly.

Same goes for child abductions. The media and the parents in their audience only focus on the single abduction they hear about and fail to put an (admittedly, awful) event in its statistically relevant context. For example, has the number of abductions gone down over time or has the rate gone down as the population has grown? What infinitesimally small proportion are committed by strangers?

Ironically, some of us like to be scared. Horror movies are reliably profitable. But switching from fiction to non-fiction might be a line we're not built to cross.

"For the news industry, the competition for attention is very, very high," says Glassner, who's also a retired editor with ABC News. "The two things that are tried and true for gaining attention are sex and fear. They work very effectively if you know what you're doing. Sex is a more complicated topic. It works differently in different age groups. Fear is very consistent. We are wired for it and we become more susceptible over time."

Combine that with the availability heuristic-the very thing that makes it easy to imagine unlikely risks-and you have fear in overdrive. The smartphone for the amygdala is like a drug addict with customized hits arriving in his hand 24/7.

The consequences of this show up throughout our civic life. Fear of crime, even though it's mostly declining, contorts how cities and states spend money and reinforces social division. Globalization is a complex dynamic with myriad impacts but using fear of globalization to stoke nativism so that a country leaves a multi-national partnership (i.e. Brexit) is a net negative for that community. Last year's election in the United States, whichever candidate you preferred, showed how powerful fear could be in rallying citizenry in unhealthy ways. And think of those who marched in Charlottesville, Va., last year chanting "blood and soil." In a crowded marketplace for ideas, appealing to someone's fear is exploiting a tool built for a different task, and modern technology is a force multiplier.

In a crowded marketplace for ideas, appealing to someone's fear is exploiting a tool built for a different task, and modern technology is a force multiplier.

"If I'm trying to gain attention, fear is a very effective tool," says Glassner. "Media is a carrier. For politics, the competition is for attention and pulling voters or supporters in and keeping them becomes more intense with each of those technologies. The same is true for marketers."

So, what can be done? We regulate how you can use sex in entertainment and advertising. Why not fear?

Glassner says that's probably a non-starter. "It's hard for me to imagine in the U.S. how we would confront fear as we do sex. Restricting speech here has been possible where there has been moral consensus. There is one around sex."

That leaves us with professional or cultural norms, which are hard to break, especially as culture forms around economic necessity. The notions that crime is either an audience-grabber or a public service are conventional wisdom in newsrooms. But I suspect they both grew out of the economic truth that crime reliably delivers a compelling story at low cost (ergo "if it bleeds, it leads"). Experts suggest newsrooms would benefit from showing less crime, but acknowledge that it takes hard work and intuition.

Then there's terrorism, another kind of crime but one that operates at a global scale and brings with it a political component, so journalists use those dynamics to rationalize arguably excessive coverage, as Indira Lakshmanan argued earlier this year. She makes the point that the nature of the coverage-say, if it's just endless loops of people fleeing the scene of a bombing-might even help terrorism spread by doing the terrorist's job of scaring the citizenry.

Glassner and Marsh both have advice that the news media could embrace voluntarily and actually further their mission.

"Always make sure people have a denominator. And a chronological metric," says Marsh. Pointing to Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, Marsh notes that violence has been steadily dropping over time, yet the perception is that it's up. Simply zooming out to the proper context level, in every piece of reporting, should help allay fear, while still doing good journalism. As Glassner says, "To propagate the notion that crime is rampant when it's going down is no less irresponsible than propagating false claims about a medicine, which [journalists] would never do."

What can smartphone makers do? First, a little offense. "Just change the algorithms a little bit," says Marsh. "Force stories that are good up the rankings." Then, consider a little defense. Perhaps a filter for fearful content.

That, of course, raises the question of where to draw the line between stories that generate "good" fear (lead paint, climate change) and stories that generate "bad" fear ("plane safety" or "child abductions"). Both Ancient and Modern Man have forever struggled to draw the line between the two, even though their survival often depended on it. Rising to this challenge would be a great victory for technologists.

Of course, you could always just limit your intake. With great power to connect comes great responsibility to occasionally disconnect.

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With Your Smartphone, Fear is Never Far Away - Behavioral Scientist

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Ancient Man might have liked a smartphone. Before homo became sapien, our cave-dwelling ancestor would have wanted to know whether a storm was coming or if his friends had spotted a herd of predators nearby. But, lacking such a forecasting tool, he honed (over millennia) a particular part of his brain to cope with sudden fear: the amygdala.

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To Achieve Your Goals, Lump and Slice - By Lee Anne Fennell - Behavioral Scientist

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To Achieve Your Goals, Lump and Slice - By Lee Anne Fennell - Behavioral Scientist

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To Achieve Your Goals, Lump and Slice - By Lee Anne Fennell - Behavioral Scientist

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Humans are remarkably sensitive to how we bundle and divide tasks and choices. We can use that quirk to help realize our aspirations.

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31 Important Things You Should Say No to For a Happier Life

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31 Important Things You Should Say No to For a Happier Life

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Say no to...

10. Reading things you don't enjoy

Seriously, you don't have to finish everything you start. The author won't know. Stop reading bad books - there's too much great stuff out there.
How to say no to reading things you don't enjoy: Nonfiction:

Set your intention before reading the book. If you don't see value within the first 30 minutes... skip it.

Read the back cover, intro, and table of contents. Jump to the sections you're most interested in.

Fiction:

Recognize that if the book can't hook you in the first 30 to 60 minutes, chances are it never will.

Don't force yourself to finish a book from a series just because you hope the next one will be better. It probably won't.

Additional resources:
11. Completing useless things

Prioritize your tasks, and only do the ones that matter.
How to say no to completing useless things:

Reflect regularly on your priorities.

Know what is useless.

Additional resources:
12. Tap-on-the-shoulder interruptions

A report from the workplace-research firm Udemy found that the biggest factor reducing productivity is tap-on-the-shoulder interruptions.

"Noisy, interruption-prone offices make employees unmotivated, stressed, and frustrated."
- Udemy

How to say no to tap-on-the-shoulder interruptions:

With your colleagues, set rules for when it is and isn't okay to interrupt you. (For example, if I'm wearing my over-ear headphones, my colleagues know to leave me alone.)

Ask your manager to work remotely on some days.

Do your core work before or after most people are at the office.

Additional resources:
13. Responding to messages ad hoc

Set blocks of times to answer messages.

"Emails get reaction. Phone calls start conversations."
- Simon Sinek

How to say no to responding to messages ad hoc:

Specify blocks of time in your week to reply to messages. (I do this at 2 p.m. every day.)

Don't leave your email client displayed on your computer.

Turn off non-important notifications on your phone.

Don't dual screen for tasks that don't require two screens (most don't).

Additional resources:
14. Doing things you can delegate

Find your superpower and delegate the stuff that's outside of it.

"As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you must also understand the art of delegation."
- Richard Branson

How to say no to doing things you can delegate:

Recognize what needs to be delegated (see Quadrant 3 of the Eisenhower Matrix).

You know someone who can do it better and faster? Delegate to them. Return the favor later.

Consider this question: What would you be doing if your time was worth $1,000 an hour?

Additional resources:
15. Overly long meetings

In meetings, bring people back on track or leave. It seems rude, but in the long run, people will thank you for it.

"Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing."
- Miles Davis

How to say no to overly long meetings: Additional resources:

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31 Important Things You Should Say No to For a Happier Life

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Say no to... Seriously, you don't have to finish everything you start. The author won't know. Stop reading bad books - there's too much great stuff out there. How to say no to reading things you don't enjoy: Nonfiction: Set your intention before reading the book.

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Organizing Tips | 10 Ideas to Help Get Your Child Organized

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Organizing Tips | 10 Ideas to Help Get Your Child Organized

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Reviewed by

Ginny Osewalt is a dually certified elementary and special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience in general education, inclusion, resource room, and self-contained settings.

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10 Tips to Help Get Your Child Organized

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Reviewed by Ginny Osewalt is a dually certified elementary and special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience in general education, inclusion, resource room, and self-contained settings.

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About the Author

Andrew M.I. Lee, JD, is an editor and former attorney who strives to help people understand complex legal, education, and parenting issues.

Reviewed by

Bob Cunningham, EdM, serves as executive director of learning development at Understood.

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Download: Picture Schedules for Daily Routines

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About the Author Andrew M.I. Lee, JD, is an editor and former attorney who strives to help people understand complex legal, education, and parenting issues. Reviewed by Bob Cunningham, EdM, serves as executive director of learning development at Understood.

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At Primal 7, we are on a mission to make exercise safe, simple, and accessible to everyone-no matter how old, injured, overweight, or discouraged. No confusion. No intimidation.

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Five Ways to Talk with Your Kids So They Feel Loved

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Five Ways to Talk with Your Kids So They Feel Loved

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"I don't recognize you." This was the first thought I had when my daughter was born. She didn't look like me (at first), and I soon learned that she didn't act like me, either.

I was a quiet and content baby, or so I'd been told; my daughter was anything but. On our first night home, she cried for hours while my husband and I tried everything we could to calm her, from rocking to singing to feeding to changing her. Eventually she did soothe, but my daughter was letting us know, loudly and clearly, that she was her own person. We had to set aside our expectations for who we thought she would be to see who she actually was and would become.

Although we were too exhausted to think about it at the time, our daughter's cries were helping us get to know her. The way we responded also helped her get to know us.

Whether an infant cries continually or hardly at all, it's important to recognize that their cries (and their smiles and coos, too) serve an important purpose-they are the tools a baby has to communicate. A cry might say: "I'm hungry," "I'm uncomfortable and need to be changed," "I want you to hold me," or "I'm tired, but I can't sleep." A smile might say: "I'm full and content" or "I love it when you hold me."

Starting when children are young, the way we interact with them helps shape how they respond to us and to other people in their lives. In my new book, Creating Compassionate Kids: Essential Conversations to Have With Young Children, I write about the importance of caring conversations that help kids grow into the compassionate, resilient people we hope they will be. By paying attention to their cues and responding, we let our children know they are loved for who they are, help them learn to trust the adults in their lives, teach them skills to manage big emotions and challenges, and encourage them to approach others with compassion.

Although how we talk with children and the topics we choose to talk about may change over time, there are certain conversations that are important to have again and again at any age. Here are five examples.

1. You are loved for who you are and who you will become

"I don't like it when you hit your brother, but I still love you."

"You used to love this song, but you don't anymore. It's fun to see how who you are and what you like changes as you get older!"

Letting the children in your life know that they are loved for who they are now and who they will become helps create a trusting relationship, also called a secure attachment. Build your relationship by spending dedicated time with your child doing something they choose, paying attention to their likes and interests. During these moments, put aside other distractions, including household chores and electronic devices. It can be tempting (and sometimes necessary) to multitask, but it is also important to show your child that you are focused on them.

Children who have secure attachments tend to have higher self-esteem and better self-control, stronger critical thinking skills, and better academic performance than children who don't. They're also more likely to have stronger social skills than their peers, as well as greater empathy and compassion.

2. Your feelings help your parents and caregivers know what you need

"I hear you crying and I wonder what you are asking for right now. I'm going to try holding you in a different way to see if that helps."

"When I'm sleepy, I get pretty cranky. I'm wondering if you are feeling sleepy right now."

Although you might prefer it when your child is in a good mood (when they are easy to get along with and fun to be around), children have unpleasant feelings like sadness, disappointment, frustration, anger, and fear, too. These feelings are often expressed through crying, temper tantrums, and challenging behaviors. Our feelings serve a purpose and let us know when a child needs something. By paying attention to a child's feelings, we show them that how they feel matters to us and that they can count on us to do our best to address their needs.

When your child's feelings challenge you, ask yourself:

Are the expectations I have for my child reasonable and realistic?

Have I taught my child what to do and not just what not to do? If not, what skills need more practice?

How are my child's feelings affecting them right now? Even if I think they should know this skill, is my child too upset or tired to think clearly?

How are my feelings affecting the way I respond to my child?

3. There are different ways to express your feelings

"It's okay to feel frustrated, but I don't like it when you scream like that. You can use words and say, 'I'm frustrated!' You can show your feelings by stomping your feet over here or squeezing this pillow instead."

"Sometimes when I'm sad, I like to tell someone how I feel and have a hug. Other times I want to sit quietly by myself for a while. What do you think would help you right now?"

It's helpful for an infant to cry and scream when they are hurt or upset, but as children get older, we don't want them to express their feelings in this way anymore. As children's brains mature and their vocabulary grows, they play a more active role in choosing how to express their feelings.

Talk with your child about your family's emotion rules. How do you want the children and adults in your family to show different emotions when they arise? You can also use storybooks to help your child see that everyone has feelings. Reading together offers a chance to talk about the challenging feelings that different characters have and to practice problem solving outside of emotionally charged moments.

Teaching children how to express their emotions in new ways takes time, practice, role modeling, and lots of repetition.

4. Everyone is a learner and making mistakes is part of learning

"You tied your shoe! It was really hard at first, but you kept working on it and now you learned to do it all by yourself!"

"Sometimes I get frustrated when I can't do something on the first try. I have to remind myself that learning something new takes practice. Have you ever had to practice something to learn how to do it?"

Through conversations, parents impact how children learn as well as what children learn. When children struggle to do something, this can feel frustrating, which may lead to them trying harder or giving up. Parents can help children turn challenging moments into learning opportunities by highlighting their effort and sharing the message that learning something new takes time, problem solving, perseverance, and patience. Children with this mindset tend to outperform those who believe that their abilities must come naturally (i.e., either they have it or they don't).

5. Your parents and caregivers are trying to be the best parents they can be

"I'm not sure what to do right now, but I'm trying my best to listen and figure out what you need."

"I'm sorry that I yelled at you earlier. I shouldn't have done that. Maybe we could talk together about what we could do differently tomorrow to help our morning go more smoothly."

Imagine your child as a teenager coming to you and saying, "I was thinking about last night. When I got mad and yelled, I shouldn't have done that. I'm really sorry. I was so upset when you wouldn't let me take the car that I just lost it." Teenagers (or children) don't become comfortable sharing and reflecting on their words and behaviors overnight, but role modeling from the important adults in their lives can help them learn.

We all have moments that we feel are parenting successes and others that we feel are parenting failures. It's important to remember that the struggles you have as a parent may be the same kind of struggles that your child has, too. Learning from you that making mistakes is okay and then seeing you work on learning and growing as a person will show your child how to do the same.

If you talk with your children about what you are working on, why it is hard, and what you are doing to improve, you can give your children ideas for strategies that they can use themselves. No matter how you feel about yourself as a role model, you are one of the most important role models in your child's eyes.

As I found with my own daughter, parents and caregivers have the opportunity to learn from children as they learn from us. We can use compassionate conversations to show them that we recognize and love them for who they are as we also get to know and recognize who we are as parents.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Five Ways to Talk with Your Kids So They Feel Loved

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"I don't recognize you." This was the first thought I had when my daughter was born. She didn't look like me (at first), and I soon learned that she didn't act like me, either. I was a quiet and content baby, or so I'd been told; my daughter was anything but.

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In Defense of the Super Low-Key Workout – Elemental

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In Defense of the Super Low-Key Workout – Elemental

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And yes, even slow, boring, inefficient workouts are good for you

As a millennial with much-higher-than-the-national-average student debt, I spent years managing feelings of disappointment, fear, stress, and even stretches of depression by engaging in intense exercise. I would run six quick miles at least three days a week, rapidly lift weights in as many boot camp classes as I could fit in, and zoom through vinyasas in hot yoga. Moving fast was a form of avoidance that still made me feel accomplished.

Eventually, I was forced to slow down when my knee, shoulder, and back muscles started flaring up. If I wanted to continue exercising, I had to stop jumping and sprinting and start walking, jogging, and practicing yoga in mild-temperature rooms.

It was an irritating comedown, but eventually, I began to understand that slow exercise - or what I think of as movement that doesn't focus on speed, but on a mix of physical integrity and meditation - isn't a compromise; it's part of an entirely different way of moving through the world. Even though I'm now fit enough to engage in intense exercise again - and I do - it's the slow stuff that helps me tolerate the bad feelings I'd typically try to push away.

If you can get in a workout that will chisel away at your body and make you look and feel amazing, why would you spend hours taking a walk?

But intense exercise is what's in. Lightly jogging through the park or swimming an unhurried breaststroke are activities that seem steeped in the luxury of having the time to do them, while the rest of upwardly mobile America is trying to be as efficient and productive as possible with high-intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) classes and marathon training rigorously penciled in between commitments and obligations. If you can get in a workout that will chisel away at your body and make you look and feel amazing, why would you spend hours taking a walk?

Today, there are many fitness classes available to people hoping to be worked to the bone. I often scroll through reviews on ClassPass and find complaints that a yoga class, of all things, was "too slow" and didn't allow the reviewer to "work up a sweat." These are westernized, New York City-based yoga classes we're talking about, often with background music and Pilates moves worked in. Even then, some students say they end up terribly bored.

Scientific studies about exercise have found that moderation is key. But how can people be expected to moderate their fitness when the rest of contemporary life is a nonstop, jacked-up grind?

P articularly in the U.S., the concept of exercise separates moving from living. If we can just get the minutes in, with as much activity packed in as possible, we can optimize ourselves for the modern age.

Katy Bowman, a biomechanist and creator of something called the Nutritious Movement approach  - a fusion of biomechanics, physiology, and kinesiology that treats movement as a form of nourishment that should be fully integrated into your lifestyle - believes that much of what Americans conceive as intense exercise is "the natural balance to almost total sedentarism."

"We are so undernourished in many ways - diet, movement, nature, community, rest - that most of what we do to 'optimize' is really just getting us to a baseline of well-being," says Bowman.

We often conflate efficiency with effectiveness - especially when it comes to our bodies. This can be troublesome when vanity is thrown into the mix. Over the past few years, the fitness industry has rebranded the ideal, telling women (and men) that they don't have to be thin, but strong. CrossFit, for example, now prominently features women in its promotional materials. But anytime exercise is turned into a race for results, health easily loses out to image.

Alyssa Dodson, an instructor of structural integration  - an alternative medicine practice that focuses on reorganizing the body's connective tissues through intensive bodywork - and former dancer for the Martha Graham Company, sees the marketing of athletic physiques to regular people to be misleading. "[Non-professionals are] not going to get the body they see onstage unless they do eight to 10 hours of that work," she says. "And that's not necessarily healthy. We were all injured."

Yoga, on the other hand, is a mind-body exercise that's not meant to be chiefly about physical results (though you very well may see them), but about contemplation and integration. Traditional yoga practices center around pranayama - the control of your breath - and meditation. As with meditation, during yoga people may find themselves distracted by an anxious thought, the sound of birds chirping, car horns honking, or a loud conversation down the hall as the instructor's voice coos in the background. The idea is to bring yourself back to practice with your breath.

But in capitalist America, what people commonly understand to be yoga - even if it's slow - is movement that is challenging, with holds and stretches that require reserves of strength and flexibility that you're meant to acquire over years of practice.

Trainers often encourage regular exercisers to stay in shape by continually increasing the intensity of their workouts over short periods. The idea is to avoid stasis by always being on the road to improvement. In this context, everyone's "goal" bodies are always at a distance; we work them out and hope they obey.

I get the sense - from people reporting boredom in yoga classes to the fervor with which everyone and their cousin is signing up for a marathon  - that many of us privileged enough to punctuate our work schedules with exercise are working our bodies into submission. If you "smash" that extreme physical goal or achieve a strong, svelte physique, maybe you'll feel empowered, refreshed, and able to lead a more productive life. But often, one of the major problems in any overburdened person's life is time itself - the perceived or real lack of it, the stress that often comes as a result, and the illness that may follow from stress. For me, the constant expectation of productivity only exacerbates this cycle.

Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, PhD, a Harvard researcher in neuroscience, biological rhythms, and sleep, has been studying the effects of yoga and meditation on physical and psychological health for nearly two decades. His studies have shown that mind-body exercise - which includes practices like tai chi and qigong - can help people better tolerate stress, which in turn can lead to increased productivity.

The common notion of productivity in our society has little to do with the world in which that productivity takes place.

"You have to work at both levels," Khalsa says, using poverty-related stress as an example. "You have to work at the systems level, where you're changing the underlying societal weaknesses that generate the possibility of poverty. But at the same time, you have to work at the level of improving people's functionality to cope with life effectively."

It makes sense that some (or many) people need to be productive because it's a matter of life and death, like, say, doctors and nurses. And more scientific studies are showing that mind-body exercise can help us manage those circumstances more successfully. But the meted-out rhythms of slow exercise are often more about attention than measurable results: To become adept at any form of movement, you have to become closely acquainted with what you're unable to accomplish. Uneven breathing and the tightness of your muscles may be signs to adjust your position or pose. Hopefully, you can bring that same attention to those you care for - including yourself - before you bring it to your company's bottom line.

In the introduction to How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Bay Area writer and artist Jenny Odell proposes an alternative to the goal of achieving productivity in every facet of life through the idea of "resistance-in-place." She writes:

To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system[...] It means embracing and trying to inhabit somewhat fuzzier or blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of nonverbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goal. It means recognizing and celebrating a form of the self that changes over time, exceeds algorithmic description, and whose identity doesn't always stop at the boundary of the individual.

That is to say, the common notion of productivity in our society has little to do with the world in which that productivity takes place, but rather, with the capitalist forces that seek to shape this world as well as our bodies. Odell argues that if we begin to recognize different ideas - "of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of nonverbal communication" - we can begin to collectively resist those forces.

Bowman believes that even people who don't have the time or physical ability level to exercise can still integrate this kind of movement into daily life: "Start with your habitat on the smallest level. Wear clothes and shoes that allow you to move and bend and twist comfortably at all times," she says. "Walk for some of your errands or meetings."

In the best cases, slow movement isn't a retreat into the privileged self, but a challenge to the pervasive and potentially harmful idea that we need to achieve productivity at all costs. Our bodies, even if they are not shaped to efficiency, are a part of this world all the same. Instead of embracing slow exercise to further self-regulate, or to lay out a path to individual success, perhaps we can move in a way that focuses our attention - not only inward, but out.

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And yes, even slow, boring, inefficient workouts are good for you As a millennial with much-higher-than-the-national-average student debt, I spent years managing feelings of disappointment, fear, stress, and even stretches of depression by engaging in intense exercise.

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Want to Learn a New Skill Faster? Take Short Breaks, Early And Often (Secrets From New Research)

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Want to Learn a New Skill Faster? Take Short Breaks, Early And Often (Secrets From New Research)

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A better approach to learn and master absolutely anything

Learning new skills is one of the best ways to upgrade your life and career.

Top performers prioritise skill acquisition to get more done.

Lifelong learning is mandatory if you want to achieve anything worthwhile.

It's rewarding but for many people, indecision, intimidation, and frustration are the key barriers to their growth.

It's easy to get discouraged when you're trying to learn a new skill.

But learning something new doesn't have to suck. Almost anyone can learn anything - with the right technique. Better learning approaches can make the process enjoyable.

The key to rapid skill acquisition isn't complicated.

But it takes time.

The good news is, you don't need to be an expert - you just need to practice enough to get the results you want.

The benefits of learning something new are enormous, especially for your working memory.

"..skill mastery is associated with increased activity in areas not engaged in skill performance, and this shift can be detected in the large-scale networks of the brain," explains Cornell University.

"In addition to making existing synapses more robust, learning causes the brain to grow larger, says Scientific American. Just like other muscles, your brain strengthens itself over time as you learn new things.

Learning new things also makes you happier. Research has found dopamine is closely linked to the learning process.

Whether you aim to learn new technology, another language, or improve a skill you already know, using the best approaches can help you learn better, and faster.

Applying the best learning style changes everything.

Think about things you have learned recently and how you originally learned them. How did you learn and how long did it take you?

And most importantly, do you still remember?

Taking breaks early and often is critical to learning as practice

Downtime is crucial to retaining anything you choose to learn.

Break-time is an important component of any serious learning session.

According to recent research, taking short breaks, early and often, can help you learn things better and even improve your retention rate.

"Everyone thinks you need to 'practice, practice, practice' when learning something new. Instead, we found that resting, early and often, maybe just as critical to learning as practice," said Leonardo G. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator at NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Better breaks help the brain solidify, memories during the rest periods.

"I noticed that participants' brain waves seemed to change much more during the rest periods than during the typing sessions," said Marlene Bönstrup, M.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cohen's lab.

Whatever you choose to learn over time, it's important to optimise the timing of rest intervals for better results.

In general, the longer you want to retain the knowledge, the longer your study break should be, says a study by Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, and Rohrer.

"..students who took a one-day break did the best when tested after ten days, whereas those who took a whole month did best after six months. Thus, it appears that cramming all our studying into one session actually diminishes long-term learning."

You can significantly improve your skill acquisition by taking intentional long breaks in between sessions.

To take breaks on purpose, learn in short bursts

When you begin to pick up a new skill or learn anything new, it's easy to binge-learn and obsessively work on it over time.

But spreading out learning, also known as distributed practice, with better breaks between sessions is known to be a better approach to learning.

"Breaks are important to minimise interference. When your hippocampus is forced to store many new (and often similar) patterns in a short space of time, it can get them jumbled up," writes David Cox of The Guardian.

Distributed practice works really well if you lead a busy life.

So, instead of trying to learn that new language quickly, give yourself a lot of time overall, and break the process into small chunks throughout the day.

Experts at the Louisiana State University's Center for Academic Success recommends 30-50 minutes sessions.

"Anything less than 30 is just not enough, but anything more than 50 is too much information for your brain to take in at one time," says learning strategies graduate assistant Ellen Dunn.

Slow and steady learning has proven to work better for the brain as it changes and consolidates the new information.

"..changes in the brain allow for faster, stronger signalling between neurons as the brain gains new skills. But the best way to speed up those signals is to introduce new information to our noggins - slowly," explains Hadley Bergstrom, a neuroscientist.

Learning in short burst allows links between neurons to steadily strengthen.

Closing thoughts

The next time you choose to learn how to play an instrument, code, paint, learn new technology, draw, or learn a new language, give yourself enough time to make real progress that lasts.

Decide what you want, choose to learn in short bursts, make it easy to practice, and plan your breaks on purpose. To improve your retention rate, share what you learn with others.

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Want to Learn a New Skill Faster? Take Short Breaks, Early And Often (Secrets From New Research)

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Learning new skills is one of the best ways to upgrade your life and career. Top performers prioritise skill acquisition to get more done. Lifelong learning is mandatory if you want to achieve anything worthwhile. It's rewarding but for many people, indecision, intimidation, and frustration are the key barriers to their growth.

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Are You Hitting Your Limit, or Getting Stronger? The Power of Reinterpreting Mental Effort - Behavioral Scientist

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Are You Hitting Your Limit, or Getting Stronger? The Power of Reinterpreting Mental Effort - Behavioral Scientist

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Listen to your elders, they say. Well, I wasn't sure what to think when as a seven-year-old I sat in the kitchen and listened to my grandpa. On the table in front of us was a big bag of assorted candy. He polished them all off, piece after piece. "Does Mom know about this?" I sat there wondering. As though sensing my disbelief, he explained with a slightly defensive but definitive tone, "I have a sweet tooth." I was perplexed. Was a sweet tooth something you "had"? Was it permanent? Did I have one?

Years later, I realized my grandfather was performing a kind of mental gymnastics to attribute his indulgence to an inherent part of his identity. Eating copious sugary snacks was easier to justify that way. He likely thought to himself, I've always liked sweets. That's just who I am. So why bother even trying to resist?

The implication here was that any effort he could exert to resist the candy, or curb his temptation, would be futile. Without even realizing it, his interpretation of effort-as a signal of reaching his personal self-regulation limit-led him to eat every piece of candy. And he isn't alone. A powerful determinant of self-regulation-our ability to do the things we know we should do-is how we interpret effort.

A powerful determinant of self-regulation-our ability to do the things we know we should do-is how we interpret effort.

The ways we interpret effort can differ subtly. For example, Sirisha may view the experience of effort as a sign that she has hit her limit (like my grandpa), while Courtney may interpret a similar experience of effort as a sign that she's developing her ability to self-regulate. In other words, she's strengthening her self-discipline. The variations in these interpretations may have meaningful consequences for these two women. One may be more likely to quit, while the other one keeps on trying.

Doing the things we know we ought to do often requires effort. So how can we interpret it in a way that will help us persevere?

My colleagues and I recently conducted several studies suggesting that a growth mindset of self-regulation is a promising tool for enhancing perseverance, particularly in contexts that require sustained effort. Although extensive research has examined the effects of a growth mindset in other contexts, like how we view intelligence, surprisingly little research has examined this mindset in the context of self-regulation.

In our research, we hypothesized that this particular mindset would increase individuals' persistence on challenging tasks, partially because of how it would affect the way they viewed the effort exerted to complete these tasks.

In one study, we examined the effects of a growth mindset of self-regulation on effort and perseverance in an intensive intervention design. We randomly assigned 75 participants to one of two 6-week courses that either covered how to develop a growth mindset of self-regulation or taught interpersonal strategies to enhance relationships (the control group). Relative to the control condition, the growth mindset of self-regulation course led participants to persist for longer when trying to solve challenging puzzles. This was partially driven by a change in their appraisal of mental effort. Those who learned about a growth mindset began to view their mental effort as a sign of expansion rather than a sign of hitting their limit, which inspired them to persevere. Using an experience sampling method where participants were pinged with questions on their phones several times per day, these participants also reported noticing more opportunities for self-control in daily life, and an overall increase in successfully resisting everyday temptations.

A growth mindset of self-regulation is a promising tool for enhancing perseverance, particularly in contexts that require sustained effort.

In a separate study, we substantially condensed the intervention and randomly assigned 112 participants to read an article either describing self-regulation as an innate skill that was largely immutable (fixed mindset) or as a trainable skill that strengthens with practice (growth mindset). The articles were created by our research team but were presented as having been drawn from the popular magazine Scientific American, to increase their persuasiveness. Compared to those in the fixed mindset condition, participants who learned about a growth mindset of self-regulation persisted on challenging puzzles for longer, and this effect was driven by appraisals of effort-specifically, the belief that effortful self-control is a useful process for developing an underlying ability to persevere.

We then wondered whether this mindset would affect the degree to which individuals opt in for challenging, effortful tasks. To examine this, we randomly assigned participants to read about a growth or fixed mindset of self-regulation and then, in a paradigm called the Demand Selection Task, measured how often each individual chose easy or challenging math problems. Across two studies, participants who had just read about a growth mindset of self-regulation were more likely to opt in for challenging subtraction problems compared to their fixed mindset counterparts. These studies suggest that our beliefs about self-regulation may not only influence our persistence on the challenging tasks put in front of us but they may also motivate us to seek out challenge.

This research calls into question a long-held explanation for self-regulatory failure. In the 1990s, Roy Baumeister and colleagues began to profoundly shape the way scientists and the general public viewed the topic. They proposed that all forms of self-regulation, whether it be exercising rather than watching television or staying calm when aggravated, rely on a shared, limited resource. Therefore, engaging in any kind of self-regulatory behavior "depletes" a general capacity of resources, making any subsequent attempts more difficult, at least in the short term. That is, resisting tempting cookies would consumes one's limited capacity of self-regulatory resources, and could make it more difficult to then manage one's emotions, even though this type of control involves a completely different domain. In accord, previous interventions that aimed to improve self-regulation have often focused on ways to conserve or increase one's finite capacity.

This research calls into question a long-held explanation for self-regulatory failure.

In contrast, the present findings support a growing body of literature that challenges this theory by showing that people's beliefs shape their self-regulation. For example, Veronika Job and colleagues have examined what they call a non-limited theory of willpower, the belief that self-regulation is self-sustaining rather than depleting. Across many studies, this belief about willpower has had implications for how people interpret and respond to experiences of effort.

Although our two theories are similar, they are also distinct. Job's theory is about whether self-regulation produces feelings of "momentum" that facilitate goal pursuit once it has begun. In contrast, a growth mindset focuses on the malleability and expansion of overall abilities for self-regulation as a function of practice and effort over time. Jobs's willpower theory operates on a shorter timescale than a growth mindset, and a growth mindset places a stronger emphasis on the value-and necessity-of effort for achieving growth. Together, these lines of work indicate that underlying beliefs can significantly change how we appraise the meaning of our effort and, consequently, how we allocate it.

This strategy of developing a growth mindset of self-regulation may be useful for those of us who have a tendency to justify behaviors that we know aren't good for us, particularly by telling ourselves, That's just part of who I am. Maybe you know someone who believes it's nearly impossible to get to the gym, or perhaps someone who believes their compulsive tendency to check social media is just part of who they are. These fixed mindsets likely affect how they perceive the effort required to curb the habits they hope to overcome.

A growth mindset of self-regulation is a change of perspective that helps you recognize how every individual act of restraint is a step toward a greater capacity for self-regulation. Your effort becomes a sign of progress.

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Are You Hitting Your Limit, or Getting Stronger? The Power of Reinterpreting Mental Effort - Behavioral Scientist

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Listen to your elders, they say. Well, I wasn't sure what to think when as a seven-year-old I sat in the kitchen and listened to my grandpa. On the table in front of us was a big bag of assorted candy. He polished them all off, piece after piece.

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Trait Neuroticism As “Mental Noise” – Neurotic People Have Noisier, More Chaotic Minds, Say Researchers – Research Digest

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Trait Neuroticism As “Mental Noise” – Neurotic People Have Noisier, More Chaotic Minds, Say Researchers – Research Digest

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By Christian Jarrett

Of the main personality traits, Neuroticism (characterised by emotional instability and lack of resilience) is probably the one with the least going for it. High scorers on this trait are impulsive, tend to worry a lot, and they struggle with low moods and short tempers. Thanks to personality research, we know a lot about what lies in store for people who score high on Neuroticism, such as increased risk of mental health problems and relationship turmoil. But as Robert Klein and Michael Robinson note in their new paper in Journal of Personality we know a lot less about the psychological processes that underlie the trait. From an emotional perspective, neurotic people are said to be more sensitive to threat and punishment, but what about the cognitive side? Across four studies, Klein and Robinson present evidence consistent with what they call the mental noise hypothesis - "neurotic people have noisier, more chaotic mental control systems", they write.

The four studies involved hundreds of undergrad students, who filled out personality questionnaires and then took part in a simple tracking task, in which they had to use a computer mouse or joystick to track a horizontally moving on-screen target with their cursor as accurately as possible. Each tracking trial, of which there were up to 60 per person, lasted between 30 seconds or as little as 5 seconds.

The researchers were able to examine participants' tracking accuracy with high temporal precision, using the task to assess "micro-momentary disconnections between the mind and its control of the external environment". Given the shortness of the trials, plus the fact the task did not require storing or manipulating information in working memory, and that there was no need to adjust to different instructions, Klein and Robinson said it was too simple and easy to be considered an "executive function" task (involving more complex mental processes) and was instead best characterised as a "form of mindfulness task that requires intention, attention and awareness concerning a simple activity".

Notably, previous research has found an inverse correlation between trait Neuroticism and trait Mindfulness - neurotic folk are often so fretful and distracted with worry about the past and future that they find it difficult to be in the present. However, according to past findings, this distracted state doesn't manifest in lower IQ or worse job performance. This paradox may be explained by neurotic people compensating by investing more effort than average, the researchers suggested (after all, anxiety-prone people would hate to fail or underperform). Part of the rationale for the tracking task, then, was that it would be so simple that performance would not vary with greater effort - in a sense providing the researchers with a pure measure of their participants' mental control, or what you could think of as their levels of mental noise.

True to their predictions, the researchers found that across all the studies, higher scorers in Neuroticism were less accurate at tracking the on-screen targets. Also, the link between Neuroticism and poorer performance was consistent, being no greater during earlier or later trials (discounting the influence of factors like fatigue). "A task with excellent temporal resolution appears to possess considerable value in documenting the sorts of lapses and slips thought to be somewhat endemic to neurotic forms of self-regulation", the researchers said. In contrast, the other main personality traits, such as Extraversion and Conscientiousness, were not associated with performance.

The researchers also blasted the participants with annoying loud white noise at periodic intervals, to see if this had a greater adverse effect on more neurotic participants. Although the noise blasts impaired performance (affecting accuracy for about a second), the degree of impairment wasn't any greater for more neurotic people. This may be because the distraction of the noise was so immediate and unavoidable that personality differences were not relevant.

In the final study, after completing the tracking task, participants were also asked to keep a two-week daily diary of their feelings of distress and nervousness, as well as any daily stressors, such as feeling like they had too much to do. Poorer performance on the tracking task correlated with more frequent daily experiences of negative emotional states, regardless of any actual stressors. Klein and Robinson said this was consistent with their task being a kind of implicit personality measure: "even brief lapses of attention can reflect the sorts of processes that give rise to longer term affective consequences," they said.

If the researchers are correct in their characterisation of Neuroticism - and we need more studies with more diverse participant samples to test their theory - it could open up avenues for interventions to increase emotional stability, for example through training to increase mental control and so reduce mental noise.

- Neuroticism as mental noise: Evidence from a continuous tracking task

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Trait Neuroticism As "Mental Noise" - Neurotic People Have Noisier, More Chaotic Minds, Say Researchers

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By Christian Jarrett Of the main personality traits, Neuroticism (characterised by emotional instability and lack of resilience) is probably the one with the least going for it. High scorers on this trait are impulsive, tend to worry a lot, and they struggle with low moods and short tempers.