“People who know what they are talking about dont need PowerPoint.” – Steve Jobs

With the massive global expansion of streaming platforms like Netflix – which had more than 154 million subscribers in over 190 countries in 2019 – this practice of marathon viewing of televised content has gradually become a “new ritual” for many viewers.

But not without a price.

Some people can find deep meaning in thin air. It’s a skill that demonstrates the peculiarity of the human brain and its inclination to find patterns in the noise, even when none exist. Albert Einstein put it best when he said:

“As beings of light we are local and non-local, time bound and timeless actuality and possibility.”

Actually, Einstein never said that. In fact, those strung-together buzzwords are categorized as “pseudo-profound bullshit” in the psychological literature.

In her modest studio in New Delhi, Niharika Rajput transforms simple materials like wire, epoxy, and paper into incredibly detailed sculptures that are exhibited or commissioned by wildlife organizations and art galleries around the world. Over the past five years, the Indian wildlife artist has built around a hundred species. In her creations, a hummingbird hovering in the air laps up nectar from a coneflower. Newborn bulbul chicks beg their mother for food. A male kingfisher offers fish to a female kingfisher, perched on a mossy piece of driftwood.

Use this powerful and disarming question to kill the small talk forever.

The way you tell a true story better is to fact check everything, which is not what the populists do. It’s really important, I feel, when we make these arguments to make sure that we’re aware of our own biases. People might argue with our statements or positions, but they can’t really argue with the numbers if you show the studies.

Knocking on wood may be a holdover from the pagan days of Europe, when tree spirits were believed to bring luck. saiful bahri 46/Shutterstock.com

PR agency Edelman has been measuring public trust in people and institutions for the past 20 years. Its latest survey, which polled more than 34,000 people in 28 countries, found that fear has eclipsed hope, no institution is seen as both competent and effective, and nobody has a vision for the future that a majority of people believe in.

Increasingly, however, psychologists are realising this is wrong. Experts like Tim Pychyl at Carleton University in Canada and his collaborator Fuschia Sirois at the University of Sheffield in the UK have proposed that procrastination is an issue with managing our emotions, not our time. The task we’re putting off is making us feel bad – perhaps it’s boring, too difficult or we’re worried about failing – and to make ourselves feel better in the moment, we start doing something else, like watching videos.

Few of us enjoy confrontation and arguments, which is why many people actively avoid them. Unfortunately, ignoring an issue or withdrawing all together can hurt your career. A productive disagreement not only has the power to improve your output at work; it’s an exercise you should welcome.

BJ Fogg is an experimental psychologist who founded the Stanford University Behavior Design Lab. Psychology Today quoted him as saying that tiny (micro) habits help you scale back bigger behaviors into really small behaviors. You then sequence them into your life where they can be easily accommodated. “These micro habits rely less on willpower and motivation and more on redesigning your life little by little, so over time, these small shifts create dramatic results,” he said. 

As someone who writes about parenting a lot and with the exact goal of helping to make all aspects of this monstrous, daunting task a little easier, I did a little double-take when I saw this headline in Today’s Parent: Does Parenting Even Matter? It better matter! Otherwise, why am I sitting here writing about potty…

It is often assumed that life wages a battle to the last against death. But is it possible, as you suggest, to come to terms with death?

10 Great Essays about Work:

Work Sucks by Kassandra Vee - People don’t need any convincing to hate their jobs—their jobs do that for them

The Real Future of Work by Danny Vinik - Forget automation. The workplace is already cracking up in profound ways, and Washington is sorely behind on dealing with it.

Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think by Arthur C. Brooks - Here’s how to make the most of it…

What Makes the Perfect Office? by Tim Harford - What if the ideal office isn’t the coolest or the most aesthetically visionary? 

Why Big Companies Squander Good Ideas by Tim Harford - Organisations from newspapers to oil majors to computing giants have persistently struggled to embrace new technological opportunities, or recognise new technological threats, even when the threats are mortal or the opportunities are golden…

A World Without Work by Derek Thompson - For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing? 

Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us? by Kevin Drum - Smart machines probably won’t kill us all—but they’ll definitely take our jobs, and sooner than you think

Your Fabulous Job Sucks by Clive Thompson - The studied hipness of new media is a fascinating and rather devious cultural illusion…

They’re Watching You at Work by Don Peck - What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of “people analytics” is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote

Phoning It In by Stanley Bing - She gave me this long and involved story about a huge slight that was inflicted on her operation by some other entity someplace, and I was looking out the window and thinking, whoa, look at that BMW Z8