Most Popular Editorials: Beyond Silicon Valley: The six cities building the future of the global tech industry

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Beyond Silicon Valley: The six cities building the future of the global tech industry The legends of Silicon Valley are well known. HP, born in a garage. Steve Jobs, the domineering icon who reshaped industries. Mark Zuckerberg, whose social media platform engages 2.8 billion monthly active users around the world. Their successes, and many others', fed back into the myth of Silicon Valley, boosting its reputation as the place to be if you had a smart idea and wanted to make it in tech. Silicon Valley remains the world;s predominant technology hub. The scale of its economic power is unprecedented in the history of global technology, or any industry for that matter. But its grip on superiority has been steadily slipping. Around the world, tech hubs, modeled after Silicon Valley, are emerging. Talent in California is exorbitantly expensive, venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road are increasingly willing to look beyond an 80-kilometer circle for investments, and visa regulations are forcing companies to rethink their operations. Rest of World is taking a deeper look at six tech hubs from around the world that have been growing in power and prominence in recent years. Some have been called the "Silicon Valley of ..." their respective countries, but to compare them directly does them an injustice. Each has its own story and a set of unique factors behind its rise. What they all do carry is a measure of the Silicon Valley myth: The idea that, if you want to make it in tech, you need to be there. Continued here

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What a brief jog can do for your brain If you have 15 minutes to spare, do not sit and chill. Instead, a new study says, you should go out for a quick, light jog. It will leave you feeling more energetic than resting, which will lift your spirits and in turn make your thinking more effective. Light exercise does more to boost cognitive function than relaxing for the same amount of time. And the reason appears to be that movement lifts mood and leaves people feeling more energized than doing nothing, according to psychologists from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France. A "brief bout of moderate intensity exercise can improve the efficiency of certain cognitive processes through increases in feelings of energy," they write in the November issue of Acta Psychologica. Continued here

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I'm Often Wide Awake at 3 A.M. How Do I Get Back to Sleep? Sleep experts offer advice on sleeping soundly through the night.It's normal to wake up a few times during the night, as the brain cycles through various stages of deeper and lighter sleep. Older people also often have to get out of bed to use the bathroom one or two times during the night. Waking up at night is usually harmless. Most people have no trouble falling back asleep and may not even remember their nighttime awakenings the next morning. But if you frequently wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself struggling to fall back asleep, there could be an underlying problem. If this occurs at least three times a week over a period of at least three months, it could be chronic insomnia, said Dr. Kannan Ramar, a sleep medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Two of the primary drivers of insomnia are stress and anxiety. Continued here

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What the "Creator Economy" Promises - and What It Actually Does A lattice of new platforms and tools purports to empower online creators. In reality, it's turning digital content into gig work. In contrast with ad-based arrangements, creators can get paid by their individual viewers, who might buy subscriptions, send tips, or crowdfund new projects.The influencer is a fading stock character of the Internet's commedia dell'arte. Often a conventionally attractive white woman, she shows off her aspirational life style via social-media channels. She accrues a large following, and then makes a living by getting companies to sponsor the content of her glamorous life. The cliche of the influencer emerged, during the twenty-tens, from multimedia-rich platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, where the goal was to forge as curated and polished an image as possible. Influencers were social-media users as celebrities, with much of the vanity and purposelessness that the comparison implies. By now, the connotations of being an influencer are mostly negative - edited selfies, vapid captions, faux relatability, staged private-jet photos, and unmarked sponsorships. Accordingly, social-media platforms are embracing a new buzzword as a successor: "creator." Continued here

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How to Unlearn a Disease Medicine's latest cure is forgetting you're sick.My father, a neurologist, once had a patient who was tormented, in the most visceral sense, by a poem. Philip was 12 years old and a student at a prestigious boarding school in Princeton, New Jersey. One of his assignments was to recite Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. By the day of the presentation, he had rehearsed the poem dozens of times and could recall it with ease. But this time, as he stood before his classmates, something strange happened. Each time he delivered the poem's famous haunting refrain - "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore' " - the right side of his mouth quivered. The tremor intensified until, about halfway through the recitation, he fell to the floor in convulsions, having lost all control of his body, including bladder and bowels, in front of an audience of merciless adolescents. His first seizure. When my father heard this story, he decided to try an experiment. During Philip's initial visit, he handed the boy a copy of The Raven and asked him to read it aloud. Again, at each utterance of the raven's gloomy prophecy, Philip stuttered. His teeth clenched and his lips pulled sideward as though he were disagreeing with something that had been said. My father took the poem away before Philip had a full-blown fit. He wrote a note to the boy's teacher excusing him from ever having to recite another piece of writing. His brain, my father explained, had begun to associate certain language patterns with the onset of a seizure. Continued here

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Moderna's Next Act Is Using mRNA vs. Flu, Zika, HIV, and Cancer The biotech has reached a $100 billion market cap. But after Covid, the challenges get even bigger.A year ago, Moderna Inc. was an unprofitable company with no marketed products and a promising but totally unproven technology. None of its experimental drugs and vaccines had ever completed a large-scale trial. Experts were divided on how well the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine it was about to enter in a Phase III trial would stack up against older, more established vaccine technologies. This year, Moderna could deliver 1 billion doses of its Covid shot and bring in $19 billion in revenue. It's become the rare biotech to hit the big time without being gobbled up by, or splitting profits with, a larger, more established company. Its market value - which hit $100 billion for the first time on July 14th - exceeds that of stalwarts such as Bayer AG, the German inventor of aspirin, and biotech peers such as Biogen Inc., founded three decades prior. Continued here

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Escape Artist Harry Houdini Was an Ingenious Inventor, He Just Didn't Want Anybody to Know More than just a magician, Houdini was also an actor, aviator, amateur historian, and businessman.It was January 27, 1908, at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis and Harry Houdini was about to debut his first theatrical performance. The great master of illusion stepped inside of an over-size milk can, sloshing gallons of water on to the stage. Houdini was about to do something that looked like a really bad idea. The can had already been poked, prodded and turned upside down to prove to the audience that there was no hole beneath the stage. Houdini was handcuffed with his hands in front of him. His hair was parted down the middle and he wore a grave expression on his face. His blue bathing suit revealed an exceptional physique. Holding his breath, he squeezed his entire body into the water-filled can as the lid was attached and locked from the outside with six padlocks. A cabinet was wheeled around the can to hide it from view. Continued here

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Why disagreement is vital to advancing human understanding Disagreements can be unpleasant, even offensive, but they are vital to human reason. Without them we remain in the darkIn the town of Dayton, Ohio, at the end of the 19th century, locals were used to the sound of quarrels spilling out from the room above the bicycle store on West Third Street. The brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright opened the shop in 1892, shortly before they became obsessed with the problem of manned flight. Downstairs, they fixed and sold bicycles. Upstairs, they argued about flying machines. Charles Taylor, who worked on the shop floor of the Wright Cycle Company, described the room above as ‘frightened with argument’. He recalled: 'The boys were working out a lot of theory in those days, and occasionally they would get into terrific arguments. They'd shout at each other something terrible. I don't think they really got mad, but they sure got awfully hot.' We're so familiar with the fact that the Wright brothers invented the aeroplane that the miraculous nature of their achievement goes unheralded. Wilbur and Orville were not scientists or qualified engineers. They didn't attend university and they weren't attached to any corporation. In fact, before their breakthrough, they'd accomplished little of note. So, just how did they come to solve one of the greatest engineering puzzles in history? Their success owes a lot to their talent for productive argument. Continued here

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How to Achieve Sustainable Remote Work Companies must move away from surveillance and visible busyness, and toward defined outcomes and trust.In 2004, Best Buy was facing a problem at its corporate headquarters, in Minneapolis-St. Paul: job-hopping. The issue of how to retain valuable employees has always vexed the business world, but the concern was amplified at Best Buy because it wasn't the only major retailer based in the Twin Cities. Just miles north on Interstate 35, the Target Corporation occupied two-thirds of a fifty-one-story skyscraper, and other consumer-focussed companies - such as 3M, General Mills, and Dairy Queen - also had offices in the region. The result was an intense competition for experienced hires, who could shop their talents at multiple firms without having to change where they lived. It was in this context that Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, two human-resources employees at Best Buy, came up with an ambitious experiment. Ressler designed work-life programs for the company, and Thompson was a "change manager" who helped guide Best Buy through large-scale organizational shifts. Ressler told Thompson that she wanted to test her intuition that what people really craved, more than increased compensation or generous benefits, was autonomy over when, where, and how they worked. Traditionally, companies sought to enhance employee autonomy with flex-time programs, but Ressler and Thompson came to believe that these weren't nearly sufficient. "We soon understood that people don't want 'flexibility,' " Thompson said recently, when I interviewed her about this period. "Here's what they want: complete control over their time." Continued here

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Handful of cities driving urban greenhouse gas emissions - study Just 25 big cities - almost all of them in China - accounted for more than half of the climate-warming gases pumped out by a sample of 167 urban hubs around the world, an analysis of emissions trends showed on Monday. In per capita terms, however, emissions from cities in the richest parts of the world are still generally higher than those from urban centres in developing countries, researchers found in the study published in the open access journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. The study compared greenhouse gas emissions reported by 167 cities in 53 countries, and found that 23 Chinese cities - among them Shanghai, Beijing and Handan - along with Moscow and Tokyo accounted for 52% of the total. Continued here

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How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure People are quick to blame themselves for failure. But not doing something because you're afraid to get started isn't going to help you grow. Here are four strategies to help you get over the hump. Start by redefining what failure means to you. If you define failure as the discrepancy between what you hope to achieve (such as getting a job offer) and what you might achieve (learning from the experience), you can focus on what you learned, which helps you recalibrate for future challenges. It's also important to set approach goals instead of avoidance goals: focus on what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid. Creating a "fear list" can also help. This is a list of what may not happen as a result of your fear - the cost of inaction. And finally, focus on learning. The chips aren't always going to fall where you want them to - but if you expect that reality going into an event, you can be prepared to wring the most value out of whatever outcome. Continued here

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Cuba protests: Three key issues that explain the rare unrest Cuba has been plunged into turmoil by the largest protests against its Communist government in decades. Thousands took to the streets in towns and cities across the island shouting "freedom" and "down with the dictatorship" on Sunday. Protests are rarely seen on the Caribbean island, where opposition to the government is stifled. "We are not afraid. We want change, we do not want any more dictatorship," one protester in San Antonio told the BBC. So what have been the main drivers of these protests? Continued here

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What Kind of Burnt Out Are You? (And Why It Matters) Different types of burnout require different solutions.By now, many of us are burnt out. In addition to the stresses about our health and safety, we've had to worry about job losses, changes in working conditions, as well as juggling family and work in a way that is even more exhausting than the usual. (And the usual wasn't all that great either.) When you're burnt out, recovery can seem almost impossible. Unfortunately, burnout is one of those conditions that can take far longer to recover from than to develop, while the solutions for burnout are often hit-or-miss. In order to recover, it's important to think about the source and type of your burnout, as that will make a difference in what you need. "Exhaustion alone is never burnout," said Kira Schabram, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who researches burnout. In addition to mental or physical exhaustion, burnout also consists of cynicism, which is often a sense of alienation from others, as well a reduced sense of efficacy, such as feeling helpless or incompetent. "Burnout is a combination of these three," Schabram said. Continued here

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How the Word 'Influencer' Lost All Meaning Are we all influencers now? Or do we just need new terms to describe online people with personal brands who sell products and themselves? This woman was influencing me across social media platforms for the best part of a decade. She once influenced me to buy a Fitbit that I never used. I watched her relationship form and marriage crumble and was influenced to feel a great deal of sympathy for her. I saw her decorate her house in meticulous detail, reminding me that I too wanted to one day buy a property, and influencing me to feel shameful about the fact I can’t (and to also make a mental note that I need a Smeg fridge). Then she posted a video like many others have - women in particular - about "influencer" being a shameful word and that she didn't want to associate with it. What a curious thing to say, I thought, when I couldn't think of a better word to describe her. Continued here

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Moguls, Deals And Patagonia Vests: A Look Inside 'Summer Camp For Billionaires' It sounds like your typical summer camp: a week of tennis, long hikes and whitewater rafting in an idyllic setting. Except in this particular summer camp, in Sun Valley, Idaho, participants are set to arrive in private jets, and in between all the leisure activities, they may just plot some of the biggest deals in media and tech. Welcome to what's known as "summer camp for billionaires." This week, the top executives at the biggest and most influential companies in tech and media, including Apple's Tim Cook and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, will get together at the Sun Valley Resort, a getaway that dates back to 1936, in a tiny town by the Sawtooth Mountains. It was suspended last year because of the pandemic. But this year, these top moguls are traveling again to Sun Valley for an annual weeklong gathering organized by a boutique investment firm called Allen & Company that is known as intensely private. The firm doesn't have a website, and, of course, it didn't respond to NPR's request for an interview. Continued here

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How to gain more from your reading There’s more to words than meets the eye. Deepen your appreciation of literature through the art of slow, attentive reading.Have you ever wondered how some people see so much in what they read - whether they're reading novels or stories, poems or plays, essays or memoirs, or something entirely different? One of the pleasures of reading literature well is the satisfaction of being tuned in to what a literary work shows and suggests - and to how it does those things. You probably already enjoy the ways that literary works entertain you, instruct you, move you. Recognising and understanding how they accomplish these things will enable you to deepen your appreciation still further and gain even more reward. Continued here

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Don't Buy the Wrong Marketing Tech Instead, take these three steps.The number of vendors offering marketing tech is exploding, but too many companies take a "bottom-up" approach to purchasing it: Rather than starting with the objective of solving a problem, they begin with what is being sold to them. As a result they waste money on hoarding data they don't need and on "shiny new objects" - tools that seem dazzling but don't provide real insights or work with a firm's other technologies. The solution? Follow the three D's: Deconstruct the customer journey into key phases and choose objectives for each, decompose the marketing strategy for the objectives into tactics, and then design how the technologies supporting those tactics will function as a system, looking for gaps and redundancies. Continued here

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Here's exactly how to tell your boss you're planning to leave the company Quitting your job can seem as painful and awkward as a romantic breakup. Depending on your relationship with your boss, you might envision them breaking down in tears, or blowing up in a fiery rage when you finally tell them, "It's over." Fortunately, you have a lot of control over the situation, meaning you can keep it classy and professional. Continued here

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How Midsize Companies Can Use Data to Compete with Digital Giants The pandemic has changed the business environment dramatically, both for B2C and B2B companies. Consumer behavior has shifted from in-store to online, and to a significant extent, it will not shift back. The flood of home deliveries has bankrupted scores of firms who traditionally relied on in-person interactions, with midsize companies (with limited resources) hit especially hard. In the B2B markets, buyer behavior has shifted just as dramatically. Electronic orders have displaced sales calls in many companies; one industrial distributor, for example, has seen its digital business climb steadily, now reaching over 60%. The digital giants have benefited from this shift and have grown in size and capability. Wayfair, for example, is rapidly taking over huge swaths of the furniture market, and Amazon is relocating its local distribution facilities to enable two-hour deliveries of its various products. All companies have to adjust - but in particular, midsize ones, who are very vulnerable but also potentially very agile. Continued here

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Lies and honest mistakes Our crisis of public knowledge is an ethical crisis. Rewarding 'truthfulness' above 'truth' is a step towards a solutionThe other day, I told a friend that Knoxville is the capital of Tennessee. Five seconds and a blur of fingers later, he said: 'No, it's Nashville.' My statement was obviously not true. But since I sincerely believed in the accuracy of what I was saying, I was nonetheless being truthful. I was mistaken, not mendacious. This distinction between truth and truthfulness is vital, but in danger of being lost in debates over 'post-truth' politics and 'fake news'. Most of us probably inadvertently share trivial untruths quite frequently. Nowadays, there's almost always somebody, smartphone in hand, ready to set us straight. If it really matters, we'll likely take the trouble to check our facts. The stakes of getting it wrong are much higher for the institutions of media, academia or government. So they try hard - or at least should try hard - to get things right. My Knoxville mistake wouldn't have made it into The New York Times, unless several factcheckers and copy-editors in the editorial process were negligent. But even honest journalists and careful scholars will sometimes get things wrong. Honest mistakes are made. Once flagged, these errors will be immediately corrected and acknowledged; there might be some hard questions asked about process failures, too. But there's a very big difference between an error and a lie - and between 'fake news' and 'false news'. A fake is always false, and was intended to be. But a falsehood is not always a fake; it could simply be a mistake. Continued here

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Antarctica Is Warming. Are Invasive Species on the Way? Algae, crustaceans, and other types of organisms can hitchhike into new ecosystems under the hulls of ships. Most seaports today harbor a variety of inconspicuous, disastrous, and often spineless shipboard stowaways. Clusters of mussels, filaments of algae, or cliques of crustaceans that travel the world wedged under ship hulls can devastate ocean ecosystems (and cost billions) when the invaders breed in new environments and outcompete the locals. Thanks to Antarctica's frigid isolation, the encircling Southern Ocean has been an exception so far. But with the Antarctic region now warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, and maritime traffic there on the rise, a team of biologists began investigating an unsettling scenario: could the icy waters soon change enough for a foreign species to flourish there and wreak havoc on the Southern Ocean's "near-pristine marine ecosystems?" Continued here

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Lambda variant: Here's what we know so far about the WHO’s new 'variant of interest' The new variant, C.37, appears to have originated in Peru back in December 2020, and now makes up over 80% of COVID-19 cases there.While many people are increasingly becoming concerned with the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant, there is another emerging variant that is now worrying scientists and public health organizations all over the world. This variant of COVID-19 is known as lambda. Here's what you need to know about it:What is the lambda variant? It's the latest variant of COVID-19. Early data suggests lambda may be more transmissible than other variants and may also be able to evade vaccines to a degree - though it's important to note that none of these findings have been peer reviewed yet. In late June, the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled lambda a "variant of interest." How is a "variant of interest" different from a "variant of concern?" Continued here

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4 Habits That Will Help You and Your Business Bounce Back Into Top Shape What will help you bounce back in business will also help you recharge and upgrade your health.Some call it "Covid pounds." Others label it the "quarantine 15." And some refer to it as the "pandemic pounds." Regardless of the name, we are emotionally and physically under duress. According to an American Psychological Association (APA) survey of more than 3,000 people - released a year to the day since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic - 61 percent of American adults reported undesired weight gain or loss since the coronavirus outbreak. Continued here

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7 Tricky Work Situations, and How to Respond to Them You know the moment: a mood-veering, thought-steering, pressure-packed interaction with a colleague, boss, or client when the right thing to say is stuck in a verbal traffic jam between your brain and your mouth. This analysis paralysis occurs when your brain suddenly becomes overtaxed by worry or pressure. Consequently, you find yourself unable to respond to a mental, psychological, or emotional challenge, and you fail to execute in the critical moment. Many people experience this at work. But there are seven key phrases you can use, tailored to specific situations. You can keep them in your back pocket for when these kinds of moments happen, route your response with them, and redirect the situation to regain control. Continued here

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I create presentations at Microsoft. Here's how I avoid "Death by PowerPoint" Five tips from a pro for getting your message across in a way that's clear, comprehensible - and maybe even enjoyable. I never expected to make a career out of building executive presentations. When I went to college in the mid-1990s, I was a fine art major, much to my parents' concern. But it was that same love for visual storytelling that led to what I do today. For the more than ten years, I have worked on the Experience Design Team at Microsoft, supporting executives across the company, from product leaders to CEO Satya Nadella - and I live in PowerPoint. At this level, sometimes delivering a slide deck is like being part of a live television broadcast. The events can play out on a global stage with high stakes. There are often hundreds in attendance and thousands more watching via webcast. The production crew are wearing headsets and calling the action. The music comes up, the lights come on, and your presenter takes the stage. It's always a thrill to see the audience respond. But behind the scenes, what really captivates me about this work is the strategy and storytelling that goes into it. Continued here

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How to Write a Resume That Stands Out It can be hard to know how to make your resume stand out. Start by accepting that it's going to take some time and effort. Don't try to sit down and knock it out in an hour - you're carefully crafting a marketing document. Open strong with a summary of your expertise. Use an accomplishments section after the opener to link your experience to the job requirements. You don't want to waste space upfront on irrelevant job experience. It's okay to be selective about what employment, achievements, and skills you include; after all, you should tailor your resume for each position. Give concrete examples of your expertise, quantifying your accomplishments with numbers where you can. Seek input from a mentor or friend who can review it and give you feedback. Lastly, create a personable LinkedIn profile to complement your resume. Continued here

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Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.Social media has drastically restructured the way we communicate in an incredibly short period of time. We can discover, "Like," click on, and share information faster than ever before, guided by algorithms most of us don't quite understand. And while some social scientists, journalists, and activists have been raising concerns about how this is affecting our democracy, mental health, and relationships, we haven't seen biologists and ecologists weighing in as much. That's changed with a new paper published in the prestigious science journal PNAS earlier this month, titled "Stewardship of global collective behavior." Seventeen researchers who specialize in widely different fields, from climate science to philosophy, make the case that academics should treat the study of technology's large-scale impact on society as a "crisis discipline." A crisis discipline is a field in which scientists across different fields work quickly to address an urgent societal problem - like how conservation biology tries to protect endangered species or climate science research aims to stop global warming. Continued here

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Over 50? Never Do These Exercises, Say Top Experts There's no such thing as "bad" exercises. But if you're over 50, consider avoiding these ones. Let's get this out of the way first: It's certainly within the realm of possibility that you're over 50 years-old, you're super fit and active, and you're supremely capable of doing all of the exercises on this list. After all, in the case of fitness, there is no one-size-fits-all list of no-nos that literally everyone on the planet should avoid. "Personally, I am of the belief that there is no such thing as bad exercises, only poor execution, and poor programming," says Jake Harcoff, MS, CSCS, TSAC-f, CISSN, a certified kinesiologist based in Canada. He's right, of course, and if you seek out quality personal training - and you work hard - there's a good chance that no exercise is off-limits for you. That being said, if you're the average person who is over 50 - someone for whom optimal fitness isn't necessarily his or her top priority in life, and who may struggle at times to get to the gym - top personal trainers and doctors will definitely tell you that there are certain types of exercise and even certain specific exercise moves that you should avoid. Continued here

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Entrepreneurs and the Truth They often bend it. But don't demonize them - the problem is systemic.In the early days of Vice Media, cofounder Shane Smith sent a few copies of the Montreal-based start-up's fledgling publication to a record store in Miami and a skate shop in Los Angeles so that the company could tell advertisers its readership was distributed across North America - an act befitting the monicker "Bullshitter Shane," reportedly bestowed on him by a friend and colleague. Such chicanery is too common in the start-up world. The norms of entrepreneurship encourage founders to be hustlers and evangelists for their companies. Indeed, legendary founders are celebrated for their ability to inspire others, even if that means stretching the truth. Consider Steve Jobs, the quintessential start-up pitchman. Early Apple employees describe him as able to "convince anyone of practically anything." In the words of engineer Andy Hertzfeld, Jobs had a "reality distortion field, a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand." That's a vital skill for founders, who must persuade their audiences to temporarily suspend disbelief and see the opportunity the entrepreneur sees: a world that could be but is not now. However, reality distortion is a slippery slope. Enthusiasm can lead to exaggeration, exaggeration to falsity, and falsity to fraud. This descent is embodied in Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and Jobs devotee who allegedly deceived investors and customers by marketing bogus blood tests. Continued here

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Why it's OK to let friendships fade out We've fallen out of touch with friends and acquaintances. It may feel awkward, but you don't actually have to rekindle every relationship you once had.If you're vaccinated and heading back into the world, you may realise something: there are a lot of people you haven't spoken to in a year and a half. Then you realise something else: you may want to keep it that way. More of us are starting to pick back up the strands of our pre-pandemic social lives. As we figure out who the first people we want to meet up with are, we're recognising there are friendships from the 'before times' we didn't keep up during lockdown - and aren't particularly excited to re-ignite now that we can. Should we feel bad about not caring for these relationships? While people have known for years that friendships are unquestionably good for your health, experts say it's only natural for acquaintances and even friends to fall by the wayside as time goes on - and it's nothing to feel guilty about. If you really do miss someone, you can always reach back out. But if you feel obliged, or like doing so is emotional labour, take that as a sign you can cut that person loose. Continued here

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A Neuroscientist Explains Exactly How Awesome Exercise Is for Your Brain An expert explains all the amazing things that happen in your brain when you work up a sweat.Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey spoke at MIT Media Lab's Advancing Wellbeing Seminar Series, he explained that "a bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin." It's a memorable turn of phrase. It's also backed up by a ton of science. Ratey went on to lay out convincing evidence that exercise makes us smarter, happier, and less stressed. But in that talk Ratey doesn't explain exactly how exercise leads to all these impressive benefits (his book, however, delves deeply into the subject). If you're the curious type who likes to know exactly what's going on in your skull when you hit the gym or jogging path, then a new Quartz article by Wayne State University psychiatrist and neuroscientist Arash Javanbakht offers an easily digestible introduction to the science, however. Continued here

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These Are The Four Drivers Of Workaholism People are driven to overwork for different reasons, but they all lead to the same bad outcomes.When I tell people that I study workaholism for a living, I'm usually bombarded by suggestions of subjects I could do a case study on. It seems that everyone can think of at least one person in their lives that they'd label a workaholic - or, perhaps, they identify as a workaholic themselves. The definition of workaholism has expanded over the years to include motivational, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components - but understanding why you're overworking can help you unlock ways to deal with it. A BRIEF TAXONOMY OF WORKAHOLISM These are a few of the leading causes of overwork: Continued here

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Don't Forget How to Be Alone Embrace whatever pandemic solitude remains - and, in the future, re-create itI recently found myself standing alone on the Arctic tundra, over 100 miles from civilization. I spent a month up there reporting portions of my new book, The Comfort Crisis. There was no human around me for miles and miles. There were also no people "with" me through TV, podcasts, social media, email, or text messages. The realization that I was in a rare state of supreme solitude was both unnerving and freeing. Unnerving because the frozen ground was littered with grizzly poop and if the weather were to change - and did often and quick out there - I'd be stranded for days. Freeing because without anyone else around I was completely unbeholden to any societal standards or needing to mold myself to the will of anyone but me. I was uncomfortable but untethered. The social narrative of how a man at 30-something should look, act, and carry himself didn't hold up when I removed society from the story. Continued here

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Combating Burnout as a Single Working Parent Alison Griffin, a senior vice president at Whiteboard Advisors, a social impact consulting firm, and a single mother of two boys, knows the exact moment when she hit the wall during the pandemic and felt burned out. Griffin felt her company was committed to supporting parents, and single parents like her: They embraced flexibility. Griffin had been working remotely for years from Colorado for the Washington, DC-based firm. They provided parents additional funds to cover childcare during the pandemic. They cover 100% of employee health costs. But even with support, the pandemic, quarantine, and school and childcare closures made what is challenging for single parents close to impossible. For months, like so many other parents of young children navigating Covid-19, Griffin had been getting up at 5 AM and throwing on sweats to start working on an East-coast schedule. She'd make her boys breakfast while on conference calls, with her laptop on the kitchen counter and her airpods in. She'd be going nonstop - monitoring her kids' online schooling when she could - until about 5 or 6 PM. Then she'd root around in the fridge for something for dinner, more often than not resorting to grilled cheese sandwiches because she hadn't had time to buy groceries. She'd return to the emails that threatened to overwhelm her inbox once her kids were in bed and realize she hadn't made it to the post office, hadn't picked up prescriptions, hadn't bought milk for cereal in the morning, and was too exhausted to do anything about it. Continued here

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13 Hard to Learn Skills That Will Help You Succeed These skills require a big time commitment to acquire but will pay off in the long run.The best things in life may be free, but that doesn't mean they won't take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire. That's especially the case when it comes to learning important life skills. To ascertain which talents are worth the investment, one Quora reader posed the question: "What are the hardest and most useful skills to learn?" We've highlighted our favorite takeaways, as well as a few other skills we thought were important. 1. Mastering your sleep Continued here

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What Kind of Happiness Do People Value Most? Sure, everyone wants to be happy. But what kind of happiness do people tend to want? Is it happiness experienced moment-to-moment? Or is it a broader, remembered happiness, as in being able to look back and remember a time as happy? Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, described this distinction as "being happy in your life" versus "being happy about your life." The two don't always go hand in hand. Researchers asked thousands of Americans (ages 18 to 81) about their preference between experienced and remembered happiness. They found that people's preferences between experienced and remembered happiness differ according to the amount of time they're considering - and that this can vary by culture. Continued here

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Why learning on the job is more important than ever (and 5 ways to do it better) As many parts of the world reopen for business, we shouldn't expect workplaces to look exactly as they did before the pandemic. Many companies have announced that workers can continue working from anywhere permanently. Meanwhile, some employees are eager to return to the office, while others are opting for something in between: working remotely while gathering in person for meetings or special events. In this hybrid work environment, employees are looking for ways to develop their skills and careers in order to thrive in a changing landscape. Managers want to engage and retain their teams, no matter where they're based. And companies need to go digital fast while bringing their workforce along. Hybrid work demands that companies find fresh ways to help employees build the skills they need to succeed. Continued here

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The Game-Changing Tweaks That Helped One Insomniac Sleep Again Insomnia will have you trying anything in the quest for a good night's sleep. For journalist and author Kate Mikhail, no amount of eye masks, ear plugs, baths, sleep supplements or lavender oil could help her get a decent eight hours. "I had trouble getting to sleep on and off for decades" she tells HuffPost UK. "I had to have prescription sleeping pills as back-up for those nights when I was still wide awake and increasingly anxious around 3am, knowing I had to get up not that much later." Mikhail would stress about not being able to sleep, which would turn into a vicious cycle the following day when it was time to hit the hay. "The worry and stress about not being able to sleep triggers our inbuilt fight or flight reaction," she explains, "and we can't relax into sleep when this is ramped up, due to the stay-awake hormones being released." Continued here

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Brainstorming Is Dumb Studies show it produces fewer good ideas than when people think on their own. Thankfully, there's a better way to work in groups. If you work in an office, your boss has probably forced you into a brainstorming session or two (or 12). Brainstorming, after all, is supposedly a killer way to come up with ideas, and businesses want to take advantage of all that collective creativity. But it turns out that brainstorming is actually a terrible technique - in fact, people generate fewer good ideas when they brainstorm together than when they work alone. Thankfully, there's a better way: a technique called brainwriting (think brainstorming, but with a pen and paper and less chitchat). And in a new study, researchers tested out variations of this method to understand exactly how to help people come up with their best ideas. Continued here

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What's So Special About Founders? Americans have an obsession with business founders and what sets them apart. Is it vision, drive, or insight that helps them turn industries upside down and conjure billions of dollars? Is it how they run meetings or make decisions? Is it because they eat vegan, take cold showers, and meditate? Founders occupy a cultural space that combines celebrity, guru, futurist eccentric, and occasionally comic book villain. And why not? Jeff Bezos changed both how we shop and how the internet operates. Elon Musk can cause a meme currency to skyrocket with a single tweet. Mark Zuckerberg can sway public discourse and elections. Bezos and Musk are in a literal space race! If you could figure out just what differentiates them from the rest of us, you could become - or at least invest in - the next superstar founder. For exactly that reason, myths about founders are powerful. They act as a filter for who gets the capital to start companies and a model for those trying to replicate phenomenal success. But although many investors have honed the art of the judgment call, it turns out that popular notions of what a promising entrepreneur looks and acts like are often wrong. Those notions can have major consequences. Continued here