In “Monday Menagerie” I share the most interesting articles I’ve seen around the interwebnets. This week: why diversity leads to better decision making, 9 rules for building a successful business, and the value of improving the quality, not quantity, or your working hours.
Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable — and That’s Why They Perform Better by David Rock, Heidi Grant Halvorson, and Jacqui Grey
” There’s a common bias that psychologists call the fluency heuristic: We prefer information that is processed more easily, or fluently, judging it to be truer or more beautiful. The effect partially explains that we gain greater appreciation of songs or paintings when they become familiar because they’re more easily processed…the information becomes more familiar without much effort, and so they feel that they’re learning. But in a 2011 study students performed better on a test after studying the text once and then trying to recall as much as they could, a strenuous task, than they did by repeatedly going over the text, even though they predicted that rereading was the key to learning. Similarly, confronting opinions you disagree with might not seem like the quickest path to getting things done, but working in groups can be like studying (or exercising): no pain, no gain.”
Peter Diamandis’s 9 Rules For Building A Successful Business by Tim Ferriss and Peter Diamandis
“I’m often struck by the ability of a single individual to change the world.
Think Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Richard Branson, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, to name a few. They each started with no money or technological advantage, just passion and perseverance.
Ultimately, three things make anything possible: People, technology, and money. If you have the right people and enough money, you can create the technology — that’s called innovation. If you have the right people and the right technology, you can attract the funding — that’s called venture capital.
But money and technology alone, without the persistent and passionate human mind driving you forward, will never change the world.”
Improve the Quality of Your Work Hours, Not Their Length, to Get More Done by Eric Ravenscraft
” We’ve seen before that working more hours doesn’t necessarily mean you’re more productive. However, if you can concentrate the work you do to the times when you’re at your best, you can get a lot done and then use the rest of your time to really relax, instead of idly picking up a minute or two on Facebook here or there. It might not work for everyone, but if you have a flexible schedule and a bit of determination, it could work for you.”
Leave a Reply