Mind Hacks How-Tos

How To: Start Writing Things Down to Increase Your Learning Capability & Confidence

Journals are a great source of hilarity and embarrassment, detailing everything from your elementary school crushes to those super awkward middle school dances. While rereading your old hand-scrawled entries might make you cringe, that old journaling habit could benefit you as an adult.

How To: Spot an Undercover Narcissist

Humans in general are great at keeping things about themselves private, from feelings to personality traits. While smartphones and social networks are making these secrets more open, narcissists have and always will love being out in the open with everyone's attention on them.

How To: Trick Your Brain into Remembering What You Read

If you have a hard time remembering what you've just read on your iPad or Kindle, try changing the font next time. The typeface you use to read books, newspapers, and online articles is either hurting or helping your memory, and you'll be surprised which ones are killing your brain cells.

Study: You'll Remember More by Photographing Less

Thanks to the steady increase in quality of smartphone cameras, it's easier than ever to take amazing photos or video without thinking twice. If you've been to a concert in the last five years, you undoubtedly know what I mean. But it turns out that using your camera as a new set of eyes might actually be ruining your ability to remember events on your own, rather than helping you to hold on to the good times.

How To: Break Your Bad Habits Without Getting All Stressed Out

Old habits die hard. It may be a cliché, but it's undeniably true, especially when it comes to the bad ones. Nail-biting, fidgeting, and overspending can label you as someone who is obsessive-compulsive, overly nervous, and routinely stressed out, but you can make the break less painful with a few simple tweaks to your routine and by understanding how your habits work.

How To: Turn Your Movie Night into a Calorie-Burning "Workout" by Choosing Scarier Films

Merely fidgeting and shivering can burn calories, but now you can add trembling in fear to the list too. Just pop in a good horror movie and turn down the lights to burn off up to 200 calories. What would you rather do? Walk for over 30 minutes or watch a 90-minute scarefest?

How To: Have a Drink or Two at Work to Boost Your Creativity & Be More Productive

Boozing it up at work might have been okay back in the days of Mad Men, but today, employers prefer that their workers stay sober. What you and your bosses probably don't know is that a little drinking on the job can actually increase your creative capacity and problem-solving skills. Alcohol Can Enhance Your Creativity at Work

How To: Change Your Sleeping Position to Control the Type of Dreams You Have

If you're someone who frequently awakes in the middle of the night trembling in terror, you might want to consider swapping sides. According to research done at Yüzüncü Yil University, those who sleep on their left side experience more nightmares than those who sleep on their right.

How To: 10 Ways to Manipulate Irrational People & Get Your Way

It may seem impossible to win an argument against an irrational person, but it turns out the tried-and-true techniques that hostage negotiators use against hostage-takers work surprisingly well in everyday situations. You may not ever deal with a real hostage situation personally, but life is full of negotiations with unreasonable people, and those conversations don't always have to end in rage or disappointment. The mental techniques that professional hostage negotiators use can help both pa...

How To: Hold in Your Pee to Avoid Making Impulsive Decisions

While you may look ridiculous doing the potty dance and crossing your legs back and forth, holding it in can be worth the discomfort when you've got an important decision to make.

How To: Spot a Liar Through Text Messages

While text messaging has become one of the most frequent ways we communicate with our friends, the missing body language, tone of voice, and eye contact can make it difficult to tell when someone is being dishonest. That said, it's not impossible. There are a number of subtle hints you can train yourself to recognize that will to help you detect written lies hiding in your SMS and iMessages. Here's what you should look out for.

Slow Down: Speed Reading Apps May Be Damaging Your Reading Skills

Reading is no longer a leisure activity—it's an on-the-go activity that requires speed and less attention. That's why speed reading apps are growing in popularity. As smartphones and tablets increasingly take over the traditional book market, reading skills need to be adjusted accordingly, so you can cram in 5 pages in-between texts and emails.

How To: Get People to Trust You with Their Secrets

Prying into people's lives without them putting up their guard can be difficult, unless you can convince them that you already know them very well. Most people don't have many friends they can be honest with, and this can be exploited. Once they're convinced you already know their secrets, they'll start to fill you in on the little details.

Vision Hack: How Video Games Can Help Improve Poor Eyesight

If you're one of the lucky people who received the gift of terrible eyesight from your parents at a young age, chances are you ate an awful lot of carrots growing up. Though carrots are one of the top vision-boosting foods, they don't offer fast results.

Forget Advil: Cold, Hard Cash Is the Best Pain Relief

You know you've had a long day when you head home with a headache, back pain, and eyes so sore they feel like they might roll out of your head. Turns out your medicine cabinet isn't the only place you can find help—instead of popping painkillers, just open up your wallet for instant pain relief.

How To: Recognize the Tricks of a Salesman (And Overcome Them)

Have you ever fallen victim to a clever Jedi mind trick? Don't worry. It happens. There are evolutionary reasons as to why our brains sometimes give into the oldest tricks in the book. Fortunately, the more you understand the tricks of a salesman, the easier it is to avoid their gripping psychological influence. Clue #1: Too Much Specificity

How To: How Video Games Can Help You Increase Your Productivity at Work

Most days, getting through an eight-hour work shift is a struggle. There are a million places you'd rather be, and none of them include your desk. It's difficult to find the motivation to tackle the growing number of emails in your inbox when your mind is back at home, comfortable in front of your gaming system.

Gaslighting 101: How to Turn People's Own Thoughts Against Them

This is evil and it destroys people. Let's just get that out of the way. Nonetheless, suppose you need to make someone distrust their own memory and perception of reality. Suppose you want someone to believe in you more than they believe in themselves.

How To: Access Someone's Thoughts Using Only Their Eye Movements

Look away from this screen and try to remember the sound of your childhood hero's voice. Did you do it? Do it again, and this time pay attention to your eyes.

How To: 10 Surefire Ways to Spot a Liar (And Tell Better Lies Yourself)

Seeing that you probably can't go ten minutes without lying (according to this study), you're probably interested in becoming a better liar. The best way to do so is to learn what makes a bad liar, and then do the opposite.

How To: Improve Your Mood by Typing with Your Right Hand Only

I have an embarrassing habit: I type with six fingers. Just as your grandma pecks at the keyboard with her two index fingers, I rely solely on my index, middle, and thumb fingers only. But it's not as slow as you think, and I'm not the only one out there that does it.

How To: Reprogram Your Brain to Stop Phantom Phone Vibrations

Phantom phone vibrations. You might feel them in the pocket of your jeans, or when your handbag is on your shoulder—even when you're holding your phone in your hand. When you do, you immediately wake it up to see who texted or what app just had an update—but there are no alerts.

How To: Make People Like You (Even if They Hate You)

Someone does't really like you. I don't know who or where they are, but they exist. If you want to change that, simply ask them to do you a favor.

How To: Earn Someone's Trust Without Ever Saying a Word

There's more to earning someone's trust than simply shaking their hand, especially if you're not particularly trustworthy. Your body language doesn't reveal your thoughts, it reveals your intentions, and sometimes intentions are better left unrevealed. Psychopaths, take note...

Wrong Isn't Always Bad: How to Trick Yourself into Pronouncing Difficult Words Correctly

Erudite. Barbiturate. Cacophony. Denouement. Okay, that last word is technically French, but words like these make the average person sweat, and it turns out that the key to learning how to pronounce them once and for all just might be getting them wrong.

How To: Brainstorming Is Draining Your Brain: Go Solo for More Productive Thinking

How many times have you heard someone utter the phrase, "Now, let's break into groups"? From classroom discussions to workplace think tanks, gathering into groups to generate ideas is common practice. These forced get-togethers are intended to encourage creativity and unique thought, but they can actually do the opposite. More often than not, group brainstorming is annoying rather than encouraging, and these group sessions can actually be detrimental to your productivity. Getting together har...

How To: Use Your "Wrong Hand" to Relieve Anger

Since picking up your first crayon, chances are you've had a favorite, or dominant, hand. That hand gets you through the day, taking care of everything from writing to eating. If you've ever been forced to rely on your "wrong hand", you know how uncomfortable and unwieldy it feels.

Body Language 101: How to Hold Your Beer & Body to Look & Feel More Confident

Walking into a bar or crowded dinner party can be intimidating. Being surrounded by a bunch of people you're unfamiliar with or trying to impress the smokeshow at the bar is no easy task...for most of us.

How To: Hate Math? These Mental Tricks Will Have You Multiplying Faster Than Einstein Ever Could!

2 + 2 = 4. That's about as much math as I can handle without a calculator on a daily basis. I literally hate doing math more than anything in life, mostly because I'm not good at it—and I hate doing things I'm not good at.

How To: Eat Like a Martial Arts Master and Increase Your Willpower

Deep in the crevasses of the Songshan mountain range, an Indian dhyana master established the first Shaolin Monastery in 477 AD, seeking to spread the relatively new teachings of Buddha at the time. This monastery then bred the Shaolin monks, who are now popular for their incredible feats with Chinese martial arts, particularly with Shaolin Kung Fu.

How To: Use Background Noise to Stop Procrastinating and Increase Your Creative Productivity

Have you ever tried to do work in a completely silent room? Not only is it nearly impossible, but it also makes me feel like I am doing something wrong. The headline might seem counterintuitive, but it really does work. Background noise is a friend to those looking to concentrate. Music is usually my go-to when I am trying to get a bunch of work done and want to be super productive. It's kind of like a poor man's Adderall. But many people, myself included, can become distracted by lyrics, esp...

How To: The Number One Way to Persuade Anyone to Do Practically Anything You Want

The art of persuasion is a very crucial characteristic that anyone can learn, and it has countless benefits. Whether it's at work, home, or in social situations, the ability to be veritably persuasive can have an unheralded impact on your daily life.

How To: Take the Perfect Nap

When that midday fatigue starts hitting you, sometimes the best solution is to just give in to sleep and nap it off. But how long should you sleep? Nap for too long and you often wake up feeling even worse than before, and it could be hours before you finally feel fully awake. Australian researchers conducted a study that back up this idea. They found that not only is a very short nap perfectly fine for recharging your brain, but that longer sleep sessions can cause a period of impaired alert...

How To: David Lynch's Hair as the World's Greatest Masterpieces (+ How to Meditate)

San Francisco writer Jimmy Chen over at HTMLGIANT cleverly composited the beloved filmmaker/artist/furniture designer/transcendental meditation expert David Lynch next to the likes of Cy Twombly, Vincent Van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, Roy Lichtenstein, Claude Monet and Katsushika Hokusai.