The creative person inside yourself

Are you one of those uncreative persons? Someone who wishes he or she was as full of ideas as others, someone who admires those who always come up with something new? You might do yourself terribly wrong.

Emoticons @ work: :-) or :-(?

We see emoticons in almost all modern media of communications: in emails, text messages, various chat services, even in surveys! Thus it is obvious that they find their way into business communication as well, even into letters of application. But how does their usage change the way applicants are perceived by recruiters and thus their chance of being offered a job?

The power of reframing

Why are pensioners happier than unemployed young people although they often share one characteristic: they have much time, but not much money? Why is it embarrassing to have an unemployed son in Manchester, but viewed as an accomplishment to have an unemployed son in Thailand? Why is google so much more successful than other portals? And what do all these questions have in common?

How to buy happiness

If you think money can’t buy happiness, you’re not spending it right. This is how Michael I. Norton, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard BusinessSchool, opens his TED Talk on how money CAN indeed buy happiness. However, it is important HOW you spend the money, he says.

A cup of coffee

Do you drink a cup of coffee to get going in the mornings, or one in the afternoon to stay awake? You might be doing the right thing, and Jamie Hale explains why.

Study – sleep – recall

Many of our readers will certainly remember the times when they were at university preparing for an important exam. The evening before the exam, they went through the contents again and again, trying to remember as much of it as possible and then went to bed, hoping to be able of recalling it all the next day. Maybe this was not the worst strategy.

Is free will an illusion?

This is the title of a series of articles on The Chronicle of Higher Education. The authors of the articles discuss recent research findings positing that we do not have a free will. What can science tell us about free will? And if we don’t have a free will, what happens to our understanding of morality, of personal accountability and accomplishment?