Here's a really fun lecture by psychologist Dan Gilbert of Stumbling on Happiness
Time and time again research on gaining or losing romantic partners, passing or failing exams, winning or losing elections has found they have little effect on our long-term happiness. In fact, Gilbert quotes a recent study finding that almost anything that happened more than three months ago has no effect on our current levels of happiness.
Entertainingly, Dan Gilbert proposes the following secrets of happiness:
- Accrue wealth, power and prestige then lose it.
- Spend as much of your life in prison as you possibly can.
- Make someone else really, really rich.
- Never, ever join the Beatles
Find out what he's on about in this video of a presentation he gave at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference.
» Check out why too much choice is bad for us.
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The science of creativity
As Pablo Picasso once pointed out, all children are creative; the challenge is to remain creative into adulthood.
Unfortunately public education systems around the world seem designed to crush creativity in favour of rote learning and test passing. As the years pass a fear of being wrong takes over from our natural creative tendencies.
Unlike mathematics, languages or the humanities, we are rarely taught about creativity, despite its importance to our lives. Yet the information is out there, waiting to be used.
If you would like to be more creative at work and at home—and that has to be most of us—the insights in this ebook will be useful.
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