How to Live a Happy Life

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 Louis CK 

Yes, this guy knows the secret to happiness.

Louis CK? Scientific research? Jokes about rotary phones? Huh?

Buckle in, I’ll explain.

“Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy.”

Louis CK says that, then he drives it home with this anecdote:

I was on an airplane and there was internet – high speed internet – on the airplane. That’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane and they go, “Open up your laptops. You can go on the internet.”

And it’s fast and I’m watching youtube clips – it’s amazing – I’m in an airplane!

And then it breaks down. And they apologize, “The internet’s not working.” The guy next to me goes, “This is bullshit.”

Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago.

The world is changing quickly. To succeed in a world like this you need to adapt to all that change — and fast.

The problem is that while “adaptation” is a good thing, it’s also pretty much the same as “taking things for granted.”

Taking things for granted is the opposite of gratitude.

And gratitude is one of the few things that nearly all the research shows is part of how to live a happy life.

You want evidence? I’ve got gratitude studies for days:It will makeyou happier. It will improve your relationships.

Louis CK knows this. And your grandparents know this.

They tried to tell you. You didn’t listen.

“When I was a kid we didn’t have…”

Growing up you complained about something trivial and heard a version of this story from Grandpa:

When I was your age we didn’t have (fill in amazing modern thing). All we had was (really pathetic substitute that makes you feel guilty). We had to (short anecdote about how difficult life was that, frankly, you can’t relate to at all). And we were happy!

All this story did was make you roll your eyes.

Grandpa’s “we had to walk to school uphill, both ways” anecdote was a poor way of saying “show gratitude for what you have.” Don’t take it for granted.

And the research shows this is one of the reasons old people are happier.

An appreciation of remaining time leads older people to be more grateful for what they have, Carstensen and other researchers say. And being thankful is great for mental health. Studies by Robert A. Emmons, a psychology professor at UC Davis, show that people who focus on what they are grateful for have better emotional well-being, especially a positive mood, compared with people who focus on the negative or neutral information.

Research shows taking time to feel gratitude can prevent you from taking things for granted.

Via The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does:

Several studies support this notion, including one from our very own lab, which revealed that people who persist at appreciating a good turn in their lives are less likely to adapt to it…

So how do you work this into your busy life? It’s frighteningly easy.

The Technique

• Put a notepad and pen by the bed.
• Before you go to sleep each night, write down three things that happened that day which you’re thankful for.
• Then write a sentence about why each happened.

That’s it. Really. It takes a few minutes. And it works.

This technique has been proven again and again and again. Here it is, explained by its originator, University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman.

Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being:

Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well…Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. The odds are that you will be less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.

The military even teaches Seligman’s gratitude techniques to soldiers.

And it has worked for me.

I’ve Tried It Myself

Yes, it’s kinda silly. (And before anyone goes in my bedroom you better believe I hide that notepad.)

But after doing it for a few days it was obviously working.How did I know?

It’s really the simplest thing in the world: I was devoting more time to thinking about things that make me happy.

Yeah, you might do that occasionally too, but are you setting aside a time every day for it? Didn’t think so.

Research shows that savoring — really taking the time to appreciate good things — is one of the secrets of the happiest people.

Good things were just more accessible in my head because they were getting dedicated time every single night. It was like deliberate practice but for happiness.

More importantly, I started to see patterns. Some things were always on the list, like seeing friends.

It was easy to take this list of good things from the past and make it a to-do list for things I should try to schedule for the future.

I was basically teaching myself how to live a happy life.

Daniel Nettle jokingly refers to this as “Pleasant Activity Training” but research shows it works.

Via Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile:

This staggeringly complex technique consists of determining which activities are pleasant, and doing them more often.

Again, it’s stupidly simple. But as Jennifer Aaker explained in my interview with her, people just don’t consistently do it on their own:

…people who spend more time on projects that energize them and with people who energize them tend to be happier. However, what is interesting is that there is often a gap between where people say they want to spend their time and how theyactually spend their time. For example, if you ask people to list the projects that energize (vs. deplete) them, and what people energize (vs. deplete) them, and then monitor how they actually spend their time, you find a large percentage know what projects and people energize them, but do not in fact spend much time on those projects and with those people.

You need the list. And then you need to get it on the calendar:

Taking an inventory about where you’re spending your time is revealing. And then once you identify the activities and people with whom you want to spend more time, calendaring your time thoughtfully becomes critical. When you put something on a calendar, you’re more likely to actually do that activity – partly because you’re less likely to have to make an active decision whether you should do it – because it’s already on your calendar.

Want to know how to live a happy life? Write down the three things every night. Give it a shot.

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What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

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By MARIA KONNIKOVAJDoes handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” saidStanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.

“And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.”

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.

By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was significantly weaker.

Dr. James attributes the differences to the messiness inherent in free-form handwriting: Not only must we first plan and execute the action in a way that is not required when we have a traceable outline, but we are also likely to produce a result that is highly variable.

That variability may itself be a learning tool. “When a kid produces a messy letter,” Dr. James said, “that might help him learn it.”

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A Day in the Life of Your Facebook Feed

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By Tim Herrera August 18, 2014

(Chris Ingraham/The Washington Post)
When you spend a day with something that knows you in ways you don’t know yourself, you learn that maybe you aren’t quite as interested in the things you think you are.

Here’s what I learned about myself: It seems I don’t much care about my hometown or the people in it, I’m far more interested in feminist blogs than I am in technology or sports, I’m still hung up on New York after moving away last spring, and I’m apparently very interested in the goings on of someone I worked with at Pizza Hut when I was 16.

What was the source of these revelatory, self-image-shifting facts? The same place you probably went when you got to work this morning: Facebook, which we can’t stop feeding, and obsessively tracks our every online movement.

Over the course of five or six hours on July 17, I pored over my News Feed, endlessly scrolling and refreshing until every piece of content that appeared was a repeat. I cataloged each post, totaling 1,417 status updates, photos, links, Likes, event RSVP’s and more, creating an assortment of everything Facebook thinks I care about.

But for all those link shares and wall posts, I still wasn’t sure exactly why I was seeing what I was seeing, or if I was even seeing what I wanted to see. (A Pizza Hut co-worker? Really?) So I went through my whole Facebook network – all of my 403 friends and the 157 Pages I Like – and recorded every single thing they posted on July 17.

Spoiler: My News Feed showed me only a fraction of my network’s total activity, most of what it showed me was old, and what I was shown was often jarringly unexpected.
Facebook says roughly one in seven people on the planet log in at least once a month. And yet, how News Feed works remains bafflingly opaque, like a secret box of technology, algorithms and magic that remains one of tech’s bigger mysteries. An entire consulting industry is built around trying to game it (think SEO for Google), and publishers invest enormous amounts of energy into succeeding on it, but as soon as people start to figure it out Facebook tweaks its secret recipe and everything goes out the window.
What we know is this: The more popular a piece of content posted in your network becomes, the more likely it is to spill into your News Feed; and the friends and Pages you interact most with are the ones you’ll see most frequently, according to Justin Lafferty, editor of InsideFacebook.com.

“Mark Zuckerberg wants News Feed to be like a newspaper,” he said. “The top stories are curated based on relevancy and the user’s connection to that page or friend,” he said, adding that like a printed newspaper or magazine, older stories can still be germane.

But beyond that, not much is known, and the further you dig into what Facebook thinks about you, the more odd things can get.

For example: I lived in Denver until I was 20 and still consider it home. Throughout my day on Facebook, I didn’t see a single story from The Denver Post, despite that Page posting 17 pieces of unique content. The same was true for Westword, a Denver alt-weekly I used to read religiously; a handful of local TV news stations I Like; and high school friends, acquaintances and even people I still consider close friends who live there. Do I not care about my home as much as I thought? Despite letting Facebook track me basically wherever and whenever it wants to, it still doesn’t think I’m interested in Denver or what goes on there?

On the other hand, women-oriented blogs such as Jezebel, Refinery29 and The Cut at times dominated my News Feed, with a whopping 40 posts between them appearing. The Verge, which I thought was among my favorite blogs, barely showed up.

And even as I was doing my experiment, I could see subtle shifts in what appeared, which, in turn, perhaps changes who Facebook thinks I am. Status updates from those same high school friends I hadn’t interacted with in years suddenly started popping up toward the end of the day. The same went for Pages I liked long ago and forgot about, and parties in New York I wasn’t invited to but saw close friends RSVP to.

The day had become an oddly pointed reminder of a past I don’t seem to care about, and a distressing collection of everything I’m missing out on today.
By midnight, after almost six hours of scrolling, refreshing and note-taking throughout the day, I had consumed 1,417 unique events. Posts from July 17 became rare as older posts crept in, and eventually everything I was seeing in my News Feed I had seen before. I had exhausted my well of Facebook content, I thought – a triumph! I had conquered Facebook!
Well, no: I wasn’t even close. After going back to record every single event that happened in my entire network on July 17, I saw that 2,593 pieces of new content had been produced. I saw 738 of them, or about 29%. The other 679 posts that appeared in my News Feed were old news by the time I saw them, sometimes by more than two days.

So that means that after doing everything possible to see all of the activity in my network, I saw less than third of it. Considering the average U.S. user spends around 40 minutes on Facebook per day – or about one-tenth of the time I spent in my News Feed – it’s easy to imagine that percentage dipping far, far below my 29%.

But that might be the point.

Greg Marra, a product manager on News Feed at Facebook, told me that it is fundamentally a reflection of the user and his or her interests.

“News Feed is made by you,” Marra said. “It tries to show the most interesting things possible for you, it’s a very personalized system,” he said, adding, “We try to let users take control.”

Marra said there are countless signals that tell Facebook what to pump into a person’s News Feed, including relationships with other users, the topic of content in a given link, how long a user spends reading a story he or she found though Facebook, if and how many times X user visits Y user’s profile, friends’ activity on a certain post, all of our previous activity and more.

“We learn based on what you’ve done in the past,” Marra said. “And we try to quickly learn about the things that you’re interested in.”

(Remember that Facebook’s learning can sometimes result in disastrous PR.)

So after a full day spent on Facebook, what was I left with? In the end, not much. A heap of work for myself to complete this story; a still-muddled understanding of how News Feed works; and a slightly different view of what I think I care about.

Fittingly enough: The final post I saw on my Endless Day of Facebook was a status update about a flash flood warning that was more than 40 hours old.

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How to Help an Underperformer

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• Amy Gallo

As a manager, you can’t accept underperformance. It’s frustrating, time-consuming, and it can demoralize the other people on your team. But what do you do about an employee who isn’t performing up to snuff? How do you help turn around the problematic behavior? And how long do you let it go on before you cut your losses?

What the Experts Say
Your company may have a prescribed way of handling an underperformer, but most of those recommended processes aren’t that useful, says Jean-François Manzoni, a professor of management at INSEAD and coauthor of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail. ”When you talk to senior executives, they’ll usually acknowledge that those don’t work,” he says. So chances are, it’s up to you as the manager to figure out what to do. “When people encounter an issue with underperformance, they really are on their own,” says Joseph Weintraub, a professor of management and organizational behavior at Babson College and coauthor of the book, The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business. Here’s how to stage a productive intervention.

Don’t ignore the problem
Too often these issues go unaddressed.  ”Most performance problems aren’t dealt with directly,” says Weintraub. “More often, instead of taking action, the manager will transfer the person somewhere else or let him stay put without doing anything.” This is the wrong approach. Never allow underperformance to fester on your team. It’s rare that these situations resolve themselves. It’ll just get worse. You’ll become more and more irritated and that’s going to show and make the person uncomfortable,” says Manzoni. If you have an issue, take steps toward solving it as soon as possible.

Consider what’s causing the problem
Is the person a poor fit for the job? Does she lack the necessary skills? Or is she just misunderstanding expectations? There is very often a mismatch between what managers and employees think is important when it comes to performance, Weintraub explains. It’s critical to consider the role you might be playing in the problem. “You may have contributed to the negative situation,” says Manzoni. “After all, it’s rare that it’s all the subordinate’s fault just as it’s rare that it’s all the boss’s.” Don’t focus exclusively on what the underperformer needs to do to remedy the situation — think about what changes you can make as well.

Ask others what you might be missing
Before you act, make sure to look at the problem objectively. You might talk to the person’s previous boss or someone who’s worked with him, or conduct a 360 review. When approaching other people, though, do it carefully and confidentially. Manzoni suggests you might say something like: “I’m worried that my frustration may be clouding my judgment. All I can see are the mistakes he’s making. I want to make an honest effort to see what I’m missing.” Look for evidence that might prove your assumptions wrong.

Talk to the underperformer
Once you’ve checked in with others, talk to the employee directly. Explain exactly what you’re observing, how the team’s work is affected, and make clear that you want to help. Manzoni suggests the conversation go something like this: “I’m seeing issues with your performance. I believe that you can do better and I know that I may be contributing to the problem. So how do we get out of this? How do we improve?” It’s important to engage the person in brainstorming solutions. “Ask them to come up with ideas,” says Weintraub. Don’t expect an immediate response though. The person may need time to digest your feedback and come back later with some proposals.

Confirm whether the person is coachable
You can’t coach someone who doesn’t agree that they need help. In the initial conversation — and throughout the intervention — it’s critical that the employee acknowledge the problem. “If someone says, ‘I am who I am’ or implies that they’re not going to change, then you’ve got to make a decision whether you can live with the issue and at what cost,” says Weintraub. On the other hand, if you see a willingness to change and a genuine interest in improving, chances are you can work together to turn things around.

Make a plan
Create a concrete plan for what both you and the employee are going to do differently, agreeing on measurable actions so you can mark progress. You should also ask what resources the employee needs to accomplish those goals. You don’t want her to make promises she can’t meet. Then, give her time. “Everyone needs time to change and maybe learn or acquire new skills,” says Weintraub.

Regularly monitor their progress
It may seem obvious, but unfortunately, many managers fail to follow up. Ask the person to check in with you regularly, or set up a time and date in the future to check progress. It may be helpful to ask the employee if he has someone that he’d like you to enlist in the effort. Weintraub suggests you ask: “Is there anyone you trust who can provide me with feedback about how well you’re doing in making these changes?” Doing this sends a positive message: “It says I want this to work and I want you to feel comfortable; I’m not going to sneak around your back.”

Respect confidentiality
Along the way, it’s important to keep what’s happening confidential — while also letting others know you’re working on the underperformance problem. Manzoni admits that this is a tricky line to tow. Don’t discuss the specific details with others, he says. But you might tell them something like: “Bill and I are working together on his output and lately we’ve had good discussions. I need your help in being as positive and supportive as you can.”

If there isn’t improvement, take action
If things don’t get better, change the tenor of the discussion. “At some point you leave coaching and get into the consequences speech. You might say, ‘Let me be very clear that this is the third time this has happened and since your behavior hasn’t changed, I need to explain the consequences,’” says Weintraub. Disciplinary actions, particularly letting someone go, shouldn’t be taken lightly. “When you fire somebody, it not only affects that person, but also you, the firm, and everybody around you,” says Manzoni.

While it may be painful to fire someone, it may be the best option for your team. “It’s disheartening if you see the person next to you not performing,” says Weintraub. Manzoni elaborates: “The person you’re asking to leave is only one of the stakeholders. The people left behind are the more important ones . . . When people feel the process is fair, they’re willing to accept a negative outcome.”

Praise and reward positive change
Of course if the person makes positive changes, say so. Make clear that you’re noticing the developments and reward him accordingly. “At some point, if the non-performer has improved, be sure to take them off the death spiral. You want a team that can make mistakes and learn from them,” says Weintraub.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Take action as soon as possible­ — the sooner you intervene the better
• Consider how you might be contributing to the performance issues
• Make a concrete, measurable plan for improvement

Don’t:

• Forget to follow up — monitor their progress regularly
• Waste your time trying to coach someone who is unwilling to admit that there’s an issue
• Talk about specific performance issues with others on the team

Case study#1: Be ready to invest time
Allie Rogovin managed a five-person team at Teach for America when she brought in Max* as a recruiting coordinator. The job had two main responsibilities: completing administrative duties that supported the recruiting team and managing special projects. Allie recognized that the administrative component wasn’t that exciting. “So I let him know that the better and faster he completed these tasks, the more time he’d have for the fun projects,” she says. But before long, Max was struggling with the core part of his role. “I realized a couple months into the job he wasn’t getting his administrative duties done in time,” she says.

Allie started by giving Max an action plan template. She asked him to take 20 minutes at the end of each day to enter and prioritize all of his tasks . She then reviewed his list every evening and gave him input on how he might shuffle his priorities for the next day. They also started meeting three times a week instead of just once a week.

“He was a very valuable team member and I knew he could do a good job. That made me want to invest time in working with him,” she says. She continued meeting with Max regularly and reviewing his priorities for three months. “I didn’t think it was going to be that long but I wanted to see that he was building new habits,” says Allie. Max still occasionally missed deadlines but he was showing definite signs of improvement. “We tweaked the plan along the way and he eventually got into the swing of things,” she says.

“I frankly wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t see huge potential in him,” says Allie.

Case study #2: Make clear what needs to change
Bill Wright*, a business developer at a residential building company, hired a new project manager last summer. We’ll call him Jack. Right from the start, Bill saw performance issues. One of Jack’s primary responsibilities was to develop small projects. That meant defining the scope of the project, talking with homeowners, negotiating with subcontractors, and coordinating with design professionals. “He was taking too long to get things done. What should’ve taken days, was taking three to four weeks,” Bill says. This was problematic for many reasons: “I was supposed to be billing his time to the client but I couldn’t bill for the amount of time he was putting in. Plus I had disgruntled homeowners who were wondering why things were taking so long.”

Bill met with Jack weekly to review the current workload, prioritize tasks, and resolve any issues. “I wanted to help him move things forward but eventually I got so frustrated that I started to take projects over,” Bill says. At Jack’s 90-day review, Bill had a frank conversation with his employee about the consequences of not being able to turn around his performance. “When I asked what he needed, Jack said that he wanted more than an hour of my time each week to get more input on his work. I said I was happy to do that and asked him to go ahead and schedule a regular meeting time,” Bill says. But Jack never followed up or put any additional time on Bill’s calendar.

“It was very clear that it wasn’t working out. There were never signs of any progress.” That’s when Bill sat Jack down and made it clear that his job was on the line. Again, there was no change in behavior, so several weeks later, he let Jack go. “I look back on it and realize I made a bad hire. I recently hired his replacement and it’s like night and day. He already gets the job.”

*Not their real names

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Amy Gallo

The Best Kept Secret of Customer Service

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By Carolyn Kopprasch

In most industries, including the tech world, “support” is a piteous word.

Posts like this one, while written in jest, enforce the stereotype that working in support essentially sucks. We are known for getting abused by ranting, angry customers. We can’t take a day off, because the emails never stop flowing in. We must just be doing this to get trained with the company, right?

Well, I’d like to offer a slightly different view into the world of customer service.

While we do occasionally bear the brunt of unhappy customers and receive unkind words, those experiences are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the patient, smart, grateful and human emails that usually flow in. I recognize that I’m spoiled by my Buffer users, but I’ve experienced this same trend in all previous customer service jobs.

Engineers may get a lot of the glory in the industry. But they also spend most of their customer interactions on the hardest, fringe, or bug-related cases. Our chief hackers often help the Happiness team figure out the trickiest ones, and sometimes they speak  with the most irate customers who have been passed around a few times without an answer. The Happiness team, on the other hand, is spoiled by spending every day teaching our awesome users how to use Buffer in the best way possible.

The best kept secret in support is that we actually get all of the glory. Each time one of those “Thank you so much!” emails comes in, the Warm Fuzzies swarm.

At Buffer, we use Hively to invite customers to share how we’re doing. They can leave comments and rate us using faces ranging from happy to unhappy. (For more on the customer service efforts at Buffer, including our Hively stats, check out a recent Happiness Report.)

Admittedly, the “unhappies” sting a lot. Joel, the founder of Buffer, recently likened the feeling to “being punched in the gut.” It feels a bit like being told “you are bad at your job.” That hurts.

However, Hively also encourages people to give kind and honest feedback that they might not otherwise have shared.

Here’s a recent comment left for me by Mike Gilroy (@mike_gilroy), re-printed with his permission:

“Carolyn was brilliant! She answered my questions and gave me all the information I needed in a polite and friendly manner. It’s not often you come across an excellent product combined with excellent customer service, but Buffer provides exactly that. Credit to Carolyn and the entire Buffer team. Keep it up!”

Did I mention the Warm Fuzzies part of the job?

So the next time you’re feeling sorry for those whose job titles include the word support, customer service, or even “Happiness Hero,” take a second look at the pep in our step. We may have received an email like that today. Or 10.

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I have no idea what I am doing

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By Joel Gascoigne

During the journey of building Buffer, I’ve had some truly fantastic moments. I’ve reached some defining milestones. New doors have opened for me, and it has been great.

Looking back to when I started Buffer, even though I had learned a lot from my past startup experiences, I truly didn’t know what I was doing and I approached everything with that mindset. I was out there to learn and I knew that the only way I was going to progress was to adopt a very open mind.

I’m writing this post because when I stray away from this mindset, I lose out as a result.

When success can lead you down the wrong path

I’ve been lucky enough to receive some great press and praise for Buffer. In addition to this, I’ve had some of my blog posts featured in great newsletters and some blogs I truly admire, and I’ve also had the opportunity to speak a few times about how I’ve achieved some success with Buffer.

This form of others directly or indirectly appreciating what I was doing, and a few reaching out to ask me for advice, set me off on a path which I can now say in hindsight is not where I want to be. I love to help others, and I will always do my best to share my own experience, but as soon as I took appreciation as a signal that I knew what I was doing, I had taken a wrong step.

Believing that I knew what I was doing

The key turning point was when I started to believe that I knew what I was doing. I let the comments, the kind congratulations and the small successes affect my mind. I actually thought I knew what I was doing.

As soon as I believed that I knew what I was doing, without realising it, the style of my writing and communication in general started to change slightly. I became naturally drawn to instructive comments and advice where I would have previously communicated simply based on my own experiences.

The biggest mistake: I became less open-minded

It was with this new instructive style that made me realise I had lost my open-mindedness. After a few people asked for my advice, I was starting to treat everything in a way in which I needed to have a definite answer.

That’s when I looked back to the early days of Buffer. At that time, the only way I was going to get somewhere was to be completely open-minded, take every opportunity to learn and make the most of every conversation. This was how I progressed, and it really worked. It felt amazing.

A new start: a beginner’s mind

So the truth is: I have no idea what I am doing. I am taking a leaf from Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen. I am going to let go of being an expert:

“We are all experts. Experts in our job, in raising children, in crossing the road, in signing our name. It’s difficult to let go of being an expert. Because it means confessing that we really know nothing. What we know belongs to the past. Whereas this moment now is new and offers its unique challenges. If I let go of being an expert, I can listen to others with an open mind. Then I can find that even a beginner has something to teach me.”

The counter point

This is a challenging subject, because I think it is just as easy to be stalled by “I don’t know” as it is to let “I know” cause you to become less open-minded. I now think there is a middle ground I want to strive for, which is having a curious and inquisitive mind whilst still acting when I don’t know what the outcome will be.

Have you ever felt like your knowledge or experience could cause you to stop being open-minded and learning? I’d really love to hear about your experiences on this topic.

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Quote of the Day

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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7 key lessons from Business Adventures, Bill Gates’s favorite business book

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Forty-three. It’s a little young for an American president and a bit old for a pop idol. As it turns out, however, it’s a great age for a business book.

Since Bill Gates blogged about his admiration for the John Brooks bookBusiness Adventures, it has been reshelved at the top of the Amazon and NYT bestseller lists. Business Adventures isn’t new, but it’s beloved by business tycoons like Gates and Warren Buffet for the evergreen lessons it contains.

Business Adventures details 12 critical moments in American industry, including the rise of Xerox and Piggly Wiggly, the Ford Edsel fiasco, and the GE and Texas Gulf Sulphur scandals. Perhaps above all, Business Adventures teaches lessons about people – how they act, what makes them thrive and flounder, and what devilry they’re likely to get up to if left to their own devices. Business Adventures’ lessons are about human nature in the context of business, and though technologies and best practices change, people never do.

Penned by a long-time New Yorker contributor, one of the main strengths of Business Adventures is its wonderful prose and stories. In his blog, Gates writes:

“Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters, and show how things went for them… Unlike a lot of today’s business writers, Brooks didn’t boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success.”

We agree that the 12 case studies that comprise Business Adventures resist summary. But if you’re in it for the key lessons from Business Adventures rather than the book’s elegant prose, we’ve rounded up a few for you here.

1. A lesson from the 1962 Flash Crash:

At their core, humans are basically emotional, irrational beings. Over the course of only three days, fear and panic led the stock market to plummet $20 billion only to boomerang back up a day later. Facts are a lot less compelling than the dictates of the lizard brain.

2. A lesson from the Ford Edsel fiasco:

Pay close attention to your market. Customers’ wishes can change very quickly and it’s important to keep a finger on the collective pulse. When Ford wasn’t looking, mid-sized dropped off of their buying radar.

3. A lesson from the federal income tax system:

Sometimes, the best solution is to scrap it. Over the years, the US tax system became so convoluted, corrupt, and loophole laden that it now encourages inefficiency. The only real recourse would be a do-over.

4. A lesson from the Texas Gulf case of 1959:

Just as people are inherently irrational, you can also count on them to be pretty self serving, too. In summary: when Texas Gulf executives found out about mineral-rich ground the company had just struck, they slowly began buying up stock shares and telling their families to follow suit – all the while denying the find to the public. Thus, insider trading laws were born.

5. A lesson from Xerox’s rollercoaster success:

Never trust a rapid success. Nobody expected copy machines to take off when Xerox launched its product in 1959, but by 1964, revenue was so good that the company could afford to drop $4 million to support the UN. By 1965, however, Xerox was in trouble: while they’d been busy philanthropizing, competitors had caught up fast.

6. A lesson from Piggly Wiggly’s investment debacle:

Revenge isn’t actually so sweet – and it certainly doesn’t pay. To teach them a lesson, incensed Piggly Wiggly owner Clarence Saunders sought to buy back all of his stock from tricksy prospectors. What he got instead was near bankruptcy.

7. A lesson from the Bretton Woods Conference of ‘64:

A small group of determined individuals can prevail against a bigger, stronger foe. When a collective of savvy prospectors believed Britain couldn’t keep up the currency exchange rates, they started betting against the pound in the market. Despite odds (and a strong central bank alliance against them) they won.

We’ve skipped any mention of five of the other case studies here, but you can read all of the blinks from Business Adventures in the Blinkist library. For some clever, elegant writing, check out John Brooks’s full book.

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Value is always free

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By: Brett Henley

Don’t ask for permission, earn it.

EVERY creator/artist/passion seeker has more than words to offer in return for attention.

Somewhere in the gears and guts of this rat race to the top of Mt. Success, free gets tangled and confined to numerical value, to ones and zeros, to the melody of monetary exchange.

At least until you look at the opportunity cost of free.

Here, free and priceless begin to understand each other. Here, a different path emerges.

Give freely of your knowledge, of your expertise and of your time, and the cost of ignoring opportunities that knock will far outweigh the cost of not charging for your knowledge, your expertise or your time.

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Here’s the Magic Number That Leads to Happiness

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By Eric Barker

Getty Images

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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A ratio of 3 to 1.

Via Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain: How to Retrain Your Brain to Overcome Pessimism and Achieve a More Positive Outlook:

Psychologist Barbara Frederickson is an expert on flourishing and has been an advocate of finding ways to bring more positive emotions into our lives. In her research she discovered a critical 3 to 1 ratio, indicating that we need to have three positive emotions for every negative one in order to thrive.

And:

Frederickson has found out that if we really want to prosper, we shouldn’t try to eliminate negative emotions, rather, we should work on keeping the ratio at three positive for every one negative. Most of us, she has found, have two positive experiences for every negative. This gets us by, but it is effectively languishing.

How many people are at 3 to 1? Around 20%.

Frederickson and Losada pinpointed such “flourishing” mental health in 45 people from a survey of 188 university students. Forty-five out of 188 (23 percent) may seem very few, but several surveys have shown that only about 20 percent of Americans are flourishing in this sense.

Is your spider-sense tingling? If you’re a regular reader it should be: we’ve seen similar patterns with ratios and happiness before. While 3 to 1 keeps you happy, 5 to 1 keeps relationships smooth.

Via The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature:

It turned out that the fifteen high-performance teams averaged 5.6 positive interactions for every negative one. The nineteen low-performance teams racked up a positive/negative ratio of just .363. That is, they had about three negative interactions for every positive one…

And:

What’s even scarier is that Losada’s five-to-one ratio also appears to be essential when you get home and try to muster the energy for a successful marriage. John Gottmann at the University of Washington has found that couples with a ratio of fewer than five positive interactions for every negative one are destined for divorce.

This may be hard-wired. It’s seen in other primates:

Curiously, the magic number also seems to have a close parallel in the ratio of positive behaviors…and negative behaviors…among monkeys and apes. Thus the five-to-one ratio begins to look suspiciously like a basic primate need.

The specific ratio for different relationships varies, with the overall pattern indicating the more distant the relationship, the more good you need for every bad. A full chart is here.

Just as well we’ve also seen in the past that it usually benefits us more to focus on increasing the good vs trying to eliminate the bad.

With friends:

The best way to maximize happiness when having meals with friends is for one person to take a turn each time paying for everyone’s dinner. It’s a big hit but it results in many more “free” meals for everyone, boosting happiness.

In relationships:

Divorce may have less to do with an increase in conflict and more to do with a decrease in positive feelings. It’s a better strategy for couples to increase fun moments together rather than trying to eliminate the bad times.

Improving yourself:

As Pete Drucker said: “In identifying opportunities for improvement, don’t waste time cultivating skill areas where you have little competence. Instead, concentrate on—and build on—your strengths.”

When it comes to happiness, frequency beats intensity.

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