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Why We Should Embrace Boredom

Five takeaways:

  1. Many studies show that the constant tide of information and “pings” from our phones and devices tend to detract from the brain’s capacity for focused and creative thought.
  2. In a country where 87% of teenagers have smartphones, young people are particularly susceptible to habit-forming and dependency-forming relationships with their phones.
  3. A study by the Academy of Management Discoveries showed that when one group was kept bored/unstimulated and another given an intensive task to perform, when asked to perform a subsequent task of making up a hypothetical excuse for lateness, the group that had been left bored/unstimulated showed far more creativity in their answers.
  4. The Child Mind Institute notes that boredom can help children learn flexibility, problem-solving, and planning.
  5. Like many habits, embracing boredom can be tough at first. But resisting the urge to grab your phone the second you feel bored can reopen your perception to so much more in-depth, trenchant insight about the world./li>

From Erica Pandey for Axios
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This site may contain links to articles or other information that may be contained on a third-party website. Advisory Services Network, LLC and MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors are not responsible for and do not control, adopt, or endorse any content contained on any third party website. The information and material contained in linked articles is of a general nature and is intended for educational purposes only. Links to articles do not constitute a recommendation or a solicitation or offer of the purchase or sale of securities.

The Magic of a Little Danger

Five takeaways:

  1. Opening with the example of the yearly Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, Brooks argues that the decision to expose yourself to real danger (“not roller coasters or haunted houses”) will push you out of your comfort zone, and make you feel more alive.
  2. However, Brooks reminds readers that a clear distinction must be made between bravery and recklessness– and notes that the former can be key to injecting one’s life with happiness.
  3. Brooks offers three tips for the injecting your life with the right kind of danger:
    • “Find your bulls to run with” – Your idea of danger will be different from the person next to you. Think about the things you’ve been putting off or feel like you can’t do that might be possible, with a dose of bravery. Danger is not always physical– you may fear moving to a new city, or of going back to school. You need to identify where your danger lies and pursue it.
    • “Envision bravery– but not recklessness” – When facing danger, make sure you assess risk as clearly as you can. If your fear is rock climbing, Brooks notes, you should not go ahead and climb El Capitan. But in many cases, clear assessment of risk will make you realize that the chance of catastrophe is much lower than it initially seems.
    • “Make a Sensible Plan and Follow it” – Research shows that happiness and impulsivity are incompatible. When you decide on a course of action for taking a risk, make a clear plan of action that takes different eventualities into consideration.
  4. Brooks notes that while physical danger does not keep him up at night, switching careers used to. When he quit his career as a musician, he confronted feelings of incompetence, and doing so made him infinitely more comfortable making a career change later on. He knew he could do it because he’d learned a new profession before.
  5. Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Look for ways in your life to triumph over fear and danger, and, Brooks says, you will find your best self waiting on the other side.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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This site may contain links to articles or other information that may be contained on a third-party website. Advisory Services Network, LLC and MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors are not responsible for and do not control, adopt, or endorse any content contained on any third party website. The information and material contained in linked articles is of a general nature and is intended for educational purposes only. Links to articles do not constitute a recommendation or a solicitation or offer of the purchase or sale of securities.

Young adults today are more perfectionist and report more pressure from their parents than previous generations

Five takeaways:

  1. New research shows that young adults are showing a higher propensity for perfectionism as they deal with increases in critical parenting and higher parental expectation.
  2. The study’s authors noted that society increasingly encourages competition and individualism, which might push parents to place greater pressure on their children’s success. A perfectionist mindset would be a logical next step for a child seeking parental validation.
  3. The study differentiates between “self-oriented perfectionism” and “socially prescribed perfectionism,” which is more common and more powerful– it arises from social cues like parental or peer pressure and is correlated to societal/cultural trends.
  4. One of the study’s authors noted that “Parents are not to blame,” as the pressure they are putting on their children is more so an anxious reaction to “a hyper-competitive world with ferocious academic pressures, runaway inequality, and technological innovations like social media that propagate unrealistic ideals of how we should appear and perform.”
  5. Various market/financial factors are contributing to another fact that will weigh upon young and early-career workers: that young people will need to work far harder than their parents, and earn much more, just to attain the same standard of living. This adds to the mental health burden.

From Beth Ellwood for PsyPost
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This site may contain links to articles or other information that may be contained on a third-party website. Advisory Services Network, LLC and MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors are not responsible for and do not control, adopt, or endorse any content contained on any third party website. The information and material contained in linked articles is of a general nature and is intended for educational purposes only. Links to articles do not constitute a recommendation or a solicitation or offer of the purchase or sale of securities.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Clutter

Five takeaways:

  1. If you have to move things around to accomplish a task in your home or at your office or you feel overwhelmed by all the “things” in your home– you are likely over cluttered. And the effect on your life can be profoundly negative.
  2. A study published in Current Psychology showed that procrastination was tied directly with one’s clutter and that both led directly to raised levels of cortisol– the stress hormone.
  3. Why does clutter elicit such a strong physiological reaction? Experts think that it is tied to the classic representation of how a home should look and function. Think of the classic, bucolic, single family home of the 1950s. A disorderly home fails to live up to such an expectation.
  4. A main tactic for decluttering, suggested by Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, is to avoid touching the object when considering whether to keep it. Have a family member or friend ask you “do you need this?” as touching an object increases the chance you will remember your attachment to it.
  5. Another important tactic involves making a conscious effort to acquire less. Keeping objects out of the house is paramount. Once they get in they enter the home they become easier to get attached to.

From Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi at The New York Times:
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Note: You will need a free account with The New York Times to view this article. At the time of this posting The Times offers 20 free free article views per month.

This site may contain links to articles or other information that may be contained on a third-party website. Advisory Services Network, LLC and MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors are not responsible for and do not control, adopt, or endorse any content contained on any third party website. The information and material contained in linked articles is of a general nature and is intended for educational purposes only. Links to articles do not constitute a recommendation or a solicitation or offer of the purchase or sale of securities.
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