Life is hard and we all have problems.
But hey, look on the bright side – this article has three science-based tips to help you live your life smarter, and it's free!
Any or all of these three tips could end up making a difference in your life.
If you like these tips, share this article with your family and friends to help them live smarter too. Enjoy!
1. Take the interview as soon as possible
If you win an interview, schedule it for the morning.
In this study, the hypothesis was presented as an example:“An interviewer who has already strongly recommended three candidates on a given day may be hesitant to do the same for a fourth candidate.”
Information gathered from more than 9,000 MBA interviews supported this hypothesis. And thanks to ancillary studies, alternative explanations have been shown to be “unlikely.” Simply put, they found that early successful interviewees “ruined the party” for later interviewees.
This makes sense because of how interviewers expect an even distribution of applicants. When interviewing six people, the interviewer can expect two great candidates, two good, one average, and one guy with a fake resume. So when an interviewer initially encounters three excellent candidates in a row, they may unknowingly frame the remaining candidates in a more negative light to confirm their expectation bias.
Life Tip: Since this passes the test of common sense and a study based on 9,000 interviews confirms it, there is clearly a “best time” to be interviewed, and that is as soon as possible. Woe to you who sleeps!
2. Eat or drink sugar for more willpower
Picture this:On his first triathlon, a biker is very tired, so he grabs his energy drink or gel pack to replenish his carbs. It only restores his physical energy reserves, right? No! Science suggests it also replenishes your willpower to continue the race.
One of the earliest examples of the mind needing and consuming energy dates back to 1898, when scientist JC Welsh gave people a mental task and told them to push on a dynamometer, which measured the amount of force they were able to perform. He found that almost all mental tasks reduced their peak physical strength by 50%! One could argue that the lack of focus on the push is what got them “weakened”. Fair enough, but it will be hard to argue that after looking at this next study.
Roy Baumeister, a doctoral professor at Florida State University, is THE guy you want to talk to to understand willpower. He says:“In a study in my lab, we invited some students to eat freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and asked others to resist the cookies and munch on radishes instead. Then we gave them impossible-to-solve geometric puzzles. The students who ate the cookies worked on the puzzles for an average of 20 minutes. But students who resisted the tempting cookies gave up after an average of eight minutes. (source)
Personally, I love eating raw radishes. They have a delicious kick! But anyway, this study demonstrates that willpower is a resource that diminishes with use. Students who resisted the cookies the first time gave in to the math problem much sooner than those who ate the cookies. Kids, show your mom this article and tell her you need a cookie because "it's the only way I'll have the willpower to do my math homework." Sorry mom, it's a simple science.
So what about after using willpower? For people who ate radishes, was their willpower gone for the day, or could it be restored and how?
“My former student Matthew Gailliot, PhD, and I discovered the role of glucose in self-control, more or less by accident. Baumesiter says:“While testing a different theory, we came across the finding that people who got food showed improvements in self-control afterwards – regardless of whether they enjoyed the food or not. food. This led us to several years of work aimed at discovering how glucose is linked to self-control. (source)
He goes on to say, “replenishing glucose, even just with a glass of lemonade, improves self-control performance.”
Food is the answer to all your willpower issues, it seems. Actually, no, willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened, as Baumeister mentions in the same interview. But for short-term willpower boosts, yes, food that becomes glucose energy is the way to restore it.
That's a cruel irony for those trying to limit their calorie intake, isn't it? The only way to strengthen their willpower to resist the consumption of extra calories is to consume calories. . Doh!
But moderation and food choice are key. Apples and candy bars both give you a healthy dose of sugar, but the overall effect is very different, as apples are much lower in calories, lower on the glycemic index, and higher in nutrients.
Apples: 19g of sugar, 90 total calories + 25+ essential vitamins and minerals for health (most ranging from 1-5% DV) + anti-inflammatory polyphenols
Snickers Bar: 27g sugar, 250 total calories + 4% DV calcium and 2% or less iron, vitamin A and vitamin C
Now the problem here, and the reason why an apple might not be the best emergency willpower choice, is that it could consume even more willpower to choose an apple over a bar of snickers (like the radish/biscuit example). Not only that, but apples will give you a “slow and steady” glucose boost while candy bars will deliver glucose faster. The rate at which food becomes glucose energy is defined by its glycemic index.
About the glycemic index
The glycemic index measures how and how quickly food is converted into glucose energy (your body's main source of fuel). Pure glucose is the base measurement at 100 because the body does not need to convert it and it becomes usable energy very quickly. Most fruits and vegetables have a low glycemic index. Apples, for example, have a glycemic index of 35, compared to a Snickers bar's glycemic index of 68.
This is a key difference between most fruits and vegetables and processed sugary foods. The sugar in most fruits and vegetables — aside from their other health benefits — is converted into energy by the body relatively slowly over time. However, sugary candies and other "simple carbs" like white bread raise your blood sugar quickly and then bring it down. It's those crashes that make you extremely likely to give in to temptation, whatever your temptation.
But rather than telling you exactly what to do, I want you to understand these factors. Then you may realize, "So last week when I started the sugar packet binge, that's why I could resist cigarettes for a while, but my blood sugar crashed and I smoked 17 packs. Ah, that makes sense. Since willpower is limited, it is very useful to know how to manage it so that you can live the way you would like to live.
Life Tip: For willpower, which we know requires glucose, try to maintain a regular but sufficient supply of glucose with your diet. If weight loss is your goal and you need the willpower to resist food, hopefully you can hold off the junk food, but if you can't, moderation is key. Try eating an apple or a banana instead. Or if you need a quick blood sugar boost, a potato is a healthier alternative that has a very high glycemic index. No, not fries. But can I have one? Oh, I mean no! No fries!
If you don't mind a few extra calories and a little unhealthy sugar, now you know exactly what a glass of lemonade can do for your willpower. But at the same time, a steady stream of glucose is better than raising and lowering your blood sugar like a roller coaster. Eating fruits and vegetables will help keep your blood sugar levels more stable, energy, and willpower.
Surprise surprise, huh? Another article recommends that you eat fruits and vegetables. 🙂
3. To increase creativity, reduce your options
People tend to think that creativity “opens the mind to all possibilities”. It's wrong. Rather, creativity is “closing your mind to most possibilities”.
For example, let's say you want to create an original story. You let your mind wander from pirates to murder mysteries to coming-of-age stories to James Bond. But where does that get you?
When your mind is wide open to all the possibilities, you can't focus well on any of them, and this lack of focus thwarts creativity. Eventually, you will need to choose something specific and continue to focus until true creativity can be achieved.
Maybe you choose a pirate story, then decide that your pirate is an ancient magician who uses magic to intimidate people (similar to Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, who allegedly used to put fire at the ends of her hair for intimidation purposes). If that's not creative enough, hone your focus further to enrich your characters and their world.
Creativity is in depth, not breadth
Harry Potter is a "child wizard who must defeat an evil wizard." It doesn't sound very creative, but JK Rowling took this broad idea and dug deeper and deeper until she had created a totally unique and creative world.
Concentration breeds creativity. You don't need more ideas, you need to go further with fewer ideas. Science agrees.
Knitting is a hobby that allows for immense creativity, and the researchers set out to see how the number of yarn options affected the creative output of knitters. Their hypothesis? “We proposed that a moderate rather than a broad choice of creative inputs encourages experienced consumers to focus more effectively on a few creative paths rather than many. (source)
After making a scarf, the knitters self-rated their creativity on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most creative. Those with a wide choice of yarns gave their scarves an average creativity score of 5.09, while those with a moderate choice gave an average score of 4.55. That's it, more choices make us more creative. Actually no. It just goes to show that more choice makes people more creative, but as we'll see, feelings aren't always right!
What they did next was bring in two creative knitting experts to judge the scarves. Not knowing which scarves were made by whom and with what materials, these judges were asked to rate the scarves for creativity based on their professional opinion. While knitters self-rated their scarves on a 7-point scale, these experts used a 10-point scale (not sure why), with 1 being “not at all creative” and 10 being “extremely creative.”
Scarves made from many yarn choice options received an average rating of 5.56. But scarves made from fewer yarn choices had a much higher average score of 7.67. It should be noted that these results were from the scarves of experienced knitters (inexperienced knitters got equal scores regardless of how many choices they had).
This is just one of many examples of how creativity is gained through focus, and more options seem better, but ultimately make creativity worse. And to verify these results yourself, take a look at the scarves in this study. On the left are scarves made from extended yarn choices, and on the right are scarves made from a moderate amount of yarn choices.
I would say it is pretty clear which scarves are the most creative. What do you think?
Life tip: When it comes to creativity, fewer options bring more creativity. For any project, narrow down your number of inputs by choosing a few good ones to work with, then continue to refine your goal. Don't let the lure of "every possibility" freeze your creative focus.
Studies like these are very useful in life because they reveal universal human traits, like how we favor those we interview first, or how we can consume sugar to resist temptation, or how we we are more creative when we limit our options. If you're interested in this kind of science, but aren't one to read boring studies, you might want to subscribe to Deep Existence. I share science in an entertaining way and you won't want to miss the book I'm writing on habits.
At Deep Existence, we focus on focus. A boost of creativity as we have learned here is one of the many benefits of focus. If you decide to sign up for my “Focus Tuesday” newsletter, I will send you my eBook and 40 exclusive desktop wallpapers for free. If you are interested, you can get everything here. Join the growing number of us doing our best to stay focused in a distracted world.
Cheers,
Stephen Guise
Lifestyle choices are important. Do you know the answer to this question? Are your lifestyle choices killing you? Be sure to read these 8 simple rules to live long and strong.
Photo credit :Robin Ducker
