Mindframe

One thing's for sure: Americans love their coffee. According to the National Coffee Association, we drink an average of 3.1 cups a day and spend a total of 40 billion dollars every year on it. We depend on our caffeine, for that boost in the morning or for an after-lunch second wind. What you might not know is that the buzz you feel after slamming a latte is not actually the caffeine. Adenosine, the circadian rhythm hormone that helps usher in sleep, starts as a slow trickle when you wake up in the morning and slowly builds in your system so that by nightfall, you're ready for a little shut-eye. Caffeine is adenosine's doppelgänger, essentially mimicking its shape and grabbing up all the adenosine receptors when it hits your brain. Once the adenosine supply is cut off, the naturally occurring stimulants dopamine and glutamate act like a couple of kids with mom and dad on vacation, which is to say: it's party time. That surge of energy is just your dopamine and...

A "typical" circadian rhythm is probably an oxymoron; we all run a little differently. Still, each of us operates off a master clock. The precise times vary depending on when you wake up and go to sleep, but certain events happen in predictable intervals. For a rough idea of what that clock looks like, James Clear, on his aptly named James Clear Blog , suggests we imagine an adult who wakes up at 6 am and goes to bed around 10 pm. At 6 am, light streams through your window, prompting your brain to release a shot of the hormone cortisol to wake you up. Not fully online yet, you might supplement that cortisol with a little friendly caffeine, in the form of a steaming cup of joe. By seven, adenosine, the hormone designed to sedate you for nighttime rest, is no longer present in your bloodstream. The message is clear: there's a brand new day waiting for you. Around nine, your sex hormone peaks. (Of course, what you do with that information is up to you.) By ten, yo...

What makes a good salesperson? Well, people on the internet certainly have some ideas. You only need to do a quick Google search for "sales attributes" to find countless articles of the top X characteristics of a sales pro. It's maybe worth noting that there's surprisingly little overlap from list to list. The above word cloud aggregated ten lists of must-have sales qualities. See all the words in small font? Those are the terms that only appeared once. In other words, nobody seems to be able to agree on just what these supposed must-haves are. You would not know this by talking to most selling consultants. Hire a consultant to fix your slumping salesforce, and chances are good they will bring in their own list. They'll point out how any salesforce will follow the classic bell curve, and they'll take great pains to prove that the top of the curve sellers are those who best embody the ultimate sales traits. The key, they'll say, is to let your overac...