Mindframe

When you think about Seinfeld, it's likely you think of his perpetually rerun TV show by the same name. His comedy was built on seemingly offhand observations, which came off as effortless but belied an incredible amount of hard work. Love it or hate it, Seinfeld's sitcom "about nothing" reportedly managed to earn him a cool 267 million dollars in 1998 alone, according to James Clear—and it turned him into an icon. Bee Movie aside, his name still carries a certain cachet. For instance, perhaps you've heard of the Seinfeld Productivity Program? James Clear quotes software developer and aspiring comedian Brad Isaac about a chance encounter in a comedy club, wherein Isaac had a chance to ask advice from the comedy legend and future animated bee himself: He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and han...

Taraxacum is not some newly found dinosaur. It is the scientific name for the pesky weed commonly called the dandelion. The dandelion industry is a billion dollar business—not growing them, eradicating them. This despite the fact that they are rich in vitamins, A, B, C, D and important minerals like zinc, potassium and iron. If that weren’t enough, a dandelion plant yields a beautiful bright yellow flower. Despite the battle waged by the chemical conglomerates, each spring the dandelion sprouts up defiantly, sunny little weedy disposition intact, as if to say, “I’m still here!” Which, of course, brings us to the weed in your brain commonly called procrastination. We all grow it. It’s estimated that 20% of us are habitual hardcore procrastinators. Procrastination can be broadly defined as putting off until tomorrow what you know you should be doing today. Countless books on time management give you instructions that usually include the following: Make a difficult task A1 on ...

“Oh, the thigh bone’s connected to the leg bone and the leg bone’s connected to the…” You probably learned some version of this  classic spiritual “Dry Bones” in grade school. It’s a clever way to teach basic skeletal anatomy. Author and songwriter James Weldon Johnson was actually referring to the prophesy in Ezekiel 37:1-14, but for our secular purposes, the point is that all of your bones connect to create a structure that serves as the functional foundation for everything you do. Chiropractors build their entire livelihood on this vary concept. You throw your back out of joint and it effects your lifting power in a dramatic way. It’s amazing how the simple act of reaching for a bag of groceries in your trunk can compromise your skeletal system and jeopardize your ability to live a normal life for weeks afterwards. Like the skeletal system, we tend to think about diet, exercise and sleep as three separate systems, each vital to the success of the body. But there is an...

Hoarders are an interesting lot.  Some contend that it’s a form of mental illness: the compulsive need to hold onto a wide variety of items—or occasionally, animals— far exceeding their possible utility. There are the classic cases, the houses reduced to a series of claustrophobic tunnels through floor-to-ceiling piles of magazines, broken televisions, commemorative lunch-boxes, and so on. And once those pathways close up with the overflow, the logical move? Rent a storage unit. The explosion of storage units across the county seems to only be rivaled by new nail salons and Starbucks. I’m not suggesting that storage units are only frequented by hoarders, but undoubtedly it does allow a hoarder a kind of unlimited opportunity to continue their calling. To the non-hoarder, this behavior seems unfathomable. Why would anyone collect so much stuff that they’re clearly never going use? I don’t pretend to answer that question. But what if the hoarders among us aren’t really out...

Are you sleep-deprived? If you’re a working adult in America, I can probably answer the question for you: yes. Or at least, statistically, you have an 80% chance, according to a January 11 New York Times piece by Maria Konnikova. On the fence about whether or not you qualify? Well, do you constantly feel tired during the day, or do you often find yourself falling asleep within five minutes of lying down? Chances are you’re not an efficient sleeper; you’re just not sleeping enough. That’s not just murder on your coffee budget, it’s bad news if you’re planning on learning anything. According to a 2011 UC Berkeley study, sleep is an essential part of holding onto memories. That's when bursts of brain waves called “sleep spindles” network up to shift fact-based info from the hippocampus, which has limited storage, to the more long-term storage of the prefrontal cortex. The more spindles, the more learning is enabled. Unfortunately, these spindles are much more active during t...

When we think of addiction, we might think of the heroin junkie lying on a dirty mattress with a needle in his arm, or a sweaty rockstar snorting a line of coke right after some mega concert. We are probably less likely to think about ourselves. But when it comes to hijacking the brain’s reward system, none of us are entirely clean. In an article from Experience Life entitled “This is Your Body on Soda: the effects of drinking one of America’s most cherished refreshments”, a 12 ounce can of soda takes on an ominous tone.  The average soft drink packs about 10 teaspoons of sugar per can. Stack this up against the American Heart Association’s daily guidelines: 6 teaspoons for women and 9 for men. The effects of pop on your system go something like this: about twenty minutes after you chugged that can, a blood-sugar spike overwhelms your liver’s ability to process the glucose load. What your liver can’t process is converted into fat. And as the article points out, “There’s p...

There is a famous Arabic proverb where a camel loaded beyond capacity collapses after a single straw too many, hence, ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back.’ The idea is a basic one: a small, seemingly inconsequential, event ends up having profound effects. Exactly one hundred Fridays ago, I began posting on this blog. In my writing and research, I have been struck by one reoccurring theme: the simplicity and elegance of the single increment, the power of potentiality unleashed through a minute action. “A journey of a 1000 miles must begin with the first step.” This quote is sometimes attributed to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, but the concept also resonates in Daniel Coyle’s talent code, Anders Ericsson’s 10,000 hours rule, and BJ Fogg's tiny habit. It’s the compounding effect of building on a single decision, and that crucial first step overcomes inertia for creating a new habit. The process is understood: practice builds repetition, which in turn builds habit. Hab...

As you stand in the check-out line this holiday season, you may find yourself wondering why two minutes in a loud, crowded store can feel like an hour, or why an hour of relaxing with a good book can flit by in what feels like seconds. Why are we so bad as a species at tracking lengths of time? In neuroscience, the prevailing strategy for understanding the "why" of any brain behavior is to think of it in terms of evolutionary advantage. What was life like back when humans were just starting to become humans? A lot of seemingly negative or unhelpful traits make sense in this context. There is a school of thought that the species might have benefited from some members of the tribe having ADHD, for instance. A dose of extra alertness or hyperactivity might hobble a desk worker, but it can be a godsend if you're hunting antelope. So why are our internal clocks so terrible? To a people consumed by foraging, hunting, and gathering, the passing of 90 seconds or an hour wa...

The 10,000 hour rule helped to make Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers a smashing success. Gladwell got the idea from the work done by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University. Ericsson’s research showed it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to be considered a master of any given subject.  From Bill Gates to violinist Itzak Perlman to Michael Jordon, 10,000 hours of focused practice is necessary to reach expert status. But what if you don’t want to be an expert? What if you have no aspirations to play the violin or the Knicks at Madison Square Garden? What if you just want to bang away at an instrument or play a couple of pick-up games without embarrassing yourself with your jumpshot?  Josh Kaufman’s The first 20 hours: how to learn anything fast might be the book for you. Kaufman’s idea is that if you follow the right principles, 20 hours of dedicated practice will get you one step closer to fulfilling your bucket list of thi...

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in Vinci, April 15 th , 1452.   In his lifetime, he painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper . He was a sculptor, musician, engineer, scientist and inventor. His sketchpads were filled with designs for helicopters, tanks, parachutes, paddleboats, bicycles, and even a repeating rifle. By the time he died sixty-seven years later, he was considered to be one of the greatest minds of his century. Today there is plenty of support for the idea that Da Vinci might be, in fact, the greatest mind of all time. So what was it about Da Vinci’s brain that made him so unique?   Michael J. Gelb, writer, lecturer and Da Vinci scholar, believes he knows the answer. In How to Think like Leonardo Da Vinci, Gelb suggests that the Maestro followed seven principles that are part of the secret to his success. Gelb summarizes the principles like this: “Curiostia—An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning. Dimos...