The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. That’s the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same [...]
Susan Cain
Generally brainstorming is inefficient and ineffective. The benefits, if any, tend to fall into the social category and not the creative one. New research suggests that with some tweaking we can improve the quality of ideas. but the process can be tweaked to produce more high quality ideas. Why does brainstorming suck? One reason is [...]
There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. Yet introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated. This 3 minute [...]
If you want to make your computer programmers and engineers more effective give them “privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption.” Via Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking: To find out, DeMarco and his colleague Timothy Lister devised a study called the Coding War [...]
You’ve probably been doing your job for a while. If you’re like most people, your performance has plateaued. Simply put, you’ve stopped getting better at what you do. Despite repetition, most people fail to become experts at what they do, no matter how many years they spend doing it. Experience does not equate to expertise. [...]
Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, with some advice on how to survive in an open office: I am very skeptical of open office plans. Research suggests they make people less productive and more hostile and anxious. If your office provides private spaces that you [...]
Indeed, after all these years of evidence that conventional brainstorming groups don’t work, they remain as popular as ever. Participants in brainstorming sessions usually believe that their group performed much better than it actually did, which points to a valuable reason for their continued popularity—group brainstorming makes people feel attached. A worthy goal, so long [...]
