One of the bigger lessons I got from reading Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism, was the importance of scheduling your leisure time. Scheduling time for hobbies may sound unnecessary. Aren’t those the things you do for fun? Yet, I would...

  It can seem like an almost childish mistake, but a surprising number of adults confuse left from right and scientists are only just starting to understand why. When British brain surgeon Henry Marsh sat down beside his patient’s bed...

The idea is not to turn failure into success, per se, but to be open to what our failures have to teach us about who we are and who we aim to be. There may be a “success” inside the...

For most of my adult life, exercise was an ordeal. Even mild workouts felt grueling and I left the gym in a fouler mood than when I’d arrived. The very idea of the runner’s high seemed like a cruel joke...

After months in pandemic solitary without connecting to any other living thing, I felt that my body would explode. With no one around, I felt stymied. But then, I thought of a clever ruse. I’d call my brother and tell...

In the beginning While the internet had been in existence for some time, it was around the year 2000 that it became globally available to the world. Right around that time I found myself calling into play the sentience of...

We all want to feel inner peace. We look for it throughout our entire lives, as being at peace allows us to dream and to actually follow those dreams. When we are at peace with ourselves, we are more understanding...

    Artist Statement: Hi, I’m Anne Fairley. I’m an international award-winning artist from Scotland. I studied art at college back in 2002, and have been painting on and off since then. My choice of medium is encaustic wax, and...

  When the U.S. tried to rid its cities and rural towns of coyotes starting around the 19th century, the effort backfired. While coyote control programs — involving chemical poisons, steel traps and paid bounties — did in fact kill...

  In the 1950s, scholars worried that, thanks to technological innovations, Americans wouldn’t know what to do with all of their leisure time. Yet today, as sociologist Juliet Schor notes, Americans are overworked, putting in more hours than at any...

In 1905, the 26-year-old Albert Einstein proposed something quite outrageous: that light could be both wave or particle. This idea is just as weird as it sounds. How could something be two things that are so different? A particle is...

Brian was just a kid when he first saw the movie Good Will Hunting and wasn’t thinking about therapy or his mental health. The 29-year-old engineer was mostly just fascinated by stories about repressed geniuses and Matt Damon’s background story...

What happens when you close down a city street to cars? More people do non-driving things, like walking, biking, strolling, skating and frolicking in the space normally reserved for motor vehicles. Car-free advocates would say that as greenhouse gas emissions...

The data are stark: the typical American diet is shortening the lives of many Americans. Diet-related deaths outrank deaths from smoking, and about half of U.S. deaths from heart disease – nearly 900 deaths a day – are linked to...

We think we want to be happy. Yet many of us are actually working toward some other end, according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Kahneman contends that happiness and satisfaction are distinct. Happiness...

            Artist Statement: Roland Nissan   I’m an urban sketcher and painter working primarily around London and the Southeast of England. I concentrate on buildings and street scenes. Since I use my sketchbooks as a...

A few months ago, I was introduced over email to a consultant, who I’ll call Brad. The person who made the introduction thought Brad would make a good contributor to Harvard Business Review, where I work as an editor. I receive...

In Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan, Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, explores a range of fascinating subjects, including how emotions influence decisions and the often-thorny matter of understanding the perspectives...