Nothing influences our lives more than place. Our surroundings affect our relationships, emotions, habits, even how long we'll live. So if we design places with care, purpose and the human experience in mind, we can nurture well-being, foster creativity and innovation, build stronger, more resilient communities.
People who slept fewer than six hours a night were 4.2 times more likely to catch a cold when exposed to the virus than those who slept more than seven hours. It didn't matter how old you were, your stress levels, whether you smoked, or any other factor the researchers could think of — sleep was the single most important factor in predicting susceptibility to the common cold.
When people are worried about not sleeping, they often do things that make the problem worse. They go to bed earlier, they cancel social engagements, they nap during the day, and they lie in bed tossing and turning. All of this is completely understandable, but it profoundly disrupts the body's ability to consolidate sleep.
When people feel anxious about sleep, they may start doing things like lying in bed for hours hoping to fall asleep, or napping during the day to compensate for lost sleep at night. These behaviors feel intuitive, but they often backfire — and can actually make insomnia worse over time.
People who sleep less than six hours a night are more likely to develop high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. They're more likely to be overweight, to develop type 2 diabetes, and to experience depression. They're even more likely to die younger.
Most people think that sleep problems are caused by our minds—by worry, anxiety, or stress. But researcher Colleen Carney has found that many chronic insomniacs actually have a 24-hour problem, not merely an overnight one. The real issue, she says, is what we do during the day to cope with our poor sleep.
Most people think of sleeplessness as a problem to be solved — a deficit to be corrected. But the anxiety we feel about not sleeping can itself become the thing that keeps us awake, transforming a single bad night into a chronic condition.
Most people think of sleep problems as a nighttime issue. But Burnett says the seeds of a bad night's sleep are often sown during the day. The way we live our waking hours — how much light we get, how much we move, what we eat and drink, how we manage stress — all of these things shape what happens when we finally lie down and close our eyes.
Most people, when they can't sleep, do the very things that make their insomnia worse. They lie in bed trying to sleep — which is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Most of us assume that negative experiences will harm us, and positive experiences will help us. But psychologists have found that bad experiences are often more instructive than good ones — we learn more from our failures than from our successes, and we grow more from adversity than from ease.
Rosa Parks doesn't suddenly decide to sit down on the bus one day. This was the result of an incredible amount of discipline. And that discipline was the result of an incredible amount of training.
Most people, when they think about helping others, focus on the cause—which issue matters most, which problem is most pressing. But researchers who study this question say that's actually the wrong place to start. They say you should focus first on your own strengths and passions, because that's what will sustain your commitment over the long haul.
What situational agency is is the power to control your circumstances to for example move temptations like a cell phone out of reach and out of sight. It is smarter not just to work on the behavior directly but in fact to change the situation that encourages that behavior.
I do see fun as a respit from this obsession with productivity but I also see this conflict where people will start doing something for fun and then this need for productivity is so deeply ingrained they'll turn it into a side hustle.
We tend to think of big life changes as responses to crises — job loss, divorce, illness. But sometimes people blow up their lives not because something went wrong, but because everything feels too comfortable, too predictable, too safe. The very stability they worked so hard to achieve starts to feel like a trap.
When we blow up our lives, we often tell ourselves we're seeking freedom or authenticity. But research suggests we may simply be running from discomfort — and that the new life we're chasing will eventually produce the same discomfort we were trying to escape.
Most people, when they feel the itch to blow up their lives, assume the discomfort is a signal that something is deeply wrong — that they need radical change. But sometimes the urge to flee is not a sign that your life needs to change; it's a sign that you need to change how you're living your life.
We think that making a big change will make us happy, but what we're really doing is escaping the discomfort of our current situation. And the new situation will eventually have its own discomforts, which we'll want to escape from as well.
Happiness is kind of nature's reinforcer. So if we can change our behavior in a way that actually makes us feel better, we are gonna be much more likely to stick with it.
Psychologist Anthony Klotz studies the "jolts" that shake us out of our routines, and how these moments can help us make more intentional decisions about the people we want to become.
Imagination is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. But if you don't use it, it gets weaker and your body will rely on something else to do it for you.
In one book, everybody can change. In 300 pages, every character that you've met has become a new character by the end. And so, what might you do in 30 days, let alone 30 years? This is incredible. You get a snapshot of your potential every time you read a novel.
Most of us think the key to a better relationship is finding the right partner. But Eli Finkel says the more important question is how to be the right partner — how to bring more of yourself to your relationship, and to cultivate the conditions that allow love to flourish.
I find if I'm not at the desk working in the morning, the every hour I'm waiting to get started is substantially decreasing the quality of what I bring to the table.
Most people think the key to a good relationship is finding the right person. But research suggests that what matters more is being the right person — that the skills and habits we bring to our relationships matter enormously.
Most people think the key to a better relationship is finding the right partner. But research suggests the more important question is whether you are the right partner — whether you have developed the skills and habits that help relationships thrive.
We've systematically removed everything that makes play what it is. The spontaneity, the freedom, the wonder, from all parts of adult life and replaced it with efficiency and achievement. And in doing so, we're losing the very survival skills that we need the most right now.
Most of us think we know how to learn from our mistakes. We tell ourselves we'll do better next time, or we replay the failure in our minds, hoping the sting of embarrassment will motivate us to change. But research suggests these common responses are often the least effective ways to grow from our errors — and in some cases, they can actually make things worse.
People who have high standards for themselves can be especially hard on themselves when they make mistakes. And they spiral into self-criticism, which doesn't help them improve. What helps people improve is thinking of themselves compassionately — the way you might think of a good friend who has made a mistake.
Most people think of mistakes as unfortunate detours on the path to success. But researcher Karen Sokal-Gutierrez has found that the relationship between error and learning is more intimate than that — that mistakes aren't just inevitable, they're essential. Without them, we don't just learn more slowly; in some ways, we don't learn at all.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or rationalize why the mistake wasn't really their fault. Both responses are understandable, but neither helps you do better in the future.
Most of us think we know how to learn from our mistakes. We feel bad about them, we try to understand what went wrong, and we vow to do better. But researchers who study the science of errors say that what we think helps us learn from our mistakes often doesn't work — and some of the things we think are unhelpful actually do work.
Most of us think we learn from our mistakes, but researchers have found that people often fail to extract useful lessons from their failures. Instead, we focus on the pain of the mistake itself, and quickly move on — which means we're doomed to repeat it.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or try to forget about it as quickly as possible. But research suggests there's a third option that's far more effective: approaching your errors with curiosity rather than judgment.
Most of us think about mistakes the way we think about embarrassing moments — we want to put them behind us as quickly as possible. But researchers who study learning say this is precisely the wrong approach. The moments just after making a mistake, it turns out, are among the most powerful opportunities for the brain to encode new information.
Most of us think of failure as something to move past as quickly as possible — something to hide or explain away. But researchers have found that the people who benefit most from their mistakes are those who do the opposite: they slow down, sit with the discomfort, and try to understand exactly what went wrong and why.
Most people think the best response to a mistake is to move on quickly — to put it behind them and not dwell on it. But research suggests that this instinct can actually prevent us from learning. The most effective way to learn from failure isn't to forget it — it's to engage with it carefully and deliberately.
Most people, when they make a mistake, do one of two things: They beat themselves up, or they rationalize away the mistake and blame other people. Neither approach actually helps you learn and do better in the future.
If you want to get nutrients into people, the most efficient way isn't to change the food that they eat, but instead to improve the daily food that they already rely on.
You think your brain's made for thinking, but it's not. It's made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible because thinking is like energetically costly. And so left to your own devices, your brain goes for convenience, like doing things you've done before, not working too hard, all these things. So it's only if you block that proclivity for convenience that you can actually do hard things.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up excessively or they dismiss it entirely. Neither of these responses is actually useful. The sweet spot is to be like a good mentor to yourself — to acknowledge that you made a mistake, to understand why, and then to move forward.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or they get defensive and they deny that they made a mistake at all. Both of those responses are understandable — but both make it harder to actually learn from what went wrong.
Most of us have had the experience of being in a new place and noticing things we'd never seen before — a gorgeous mural on the side of a building, a family of ducks in a pond, the way light filters through leaves. But over time, as a place becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. We go on autopilot. The same thing can happen with people.
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Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
