Hot Mind Hacks How-Tos

How To: Break Bad News More Comfortably

Being the bearer of bad news is unpleasant; there's nothing more uncomfortable than offering up a spoonful of negativity. Whether you're a supervisor who spends a lot of time interviewing and rejecting candidates, or simply someone who has to say "no" to a friend, it's never fun to break bad news. But sharing unpleasant words or feedback with another person can become less of a burden with a few simple steps.

How To: 5 Reasons You Should Stop Sleeping In

Are you someone who always struggles to wake up in the morning, no matter how much you've slept? For most, the thought of getting out of bed any earlier sounds horrific. Yet dragging yourself out of bed and towards the coffee maker a few hours earlier each day can have benefits you've never realized. Here are six reasons that make a compelling case for ending our bad habit of sleeping a little too long.

How To: Use Scare Tactics to Increase Your Productivity & Accomplish More

Admit it: when nothing's at stake other than your boss's disapproval, you don't exactly feel the urge to get working. Finding the motivation to take on a task, whether at work or home, can be a constant struggle. Though working through your laziness might seem like the best course of action, a meaner method can make more of an impact on your productivity.

How To: Why You Learn More Watching Comedy Over Mainstream News

While CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC are valuable sources of information for what's going on in the world today, they may not be the best news stations to watch if you actually want to learn something. They, along with local news stations, are great at grabbing your attention, but if you truly want to learn something about recent events, you're tuning into the wrong channel.

How To: 5 Ways Learning a New Language Benefits Your Brain

Though many students spend four years of high school learning a foreign language, most of us probably retained very little. Chalk it up to the carelessness of youth, but chances are you've since been in situations or places that left you wishing you paid more attention in class or had continued practicing long after you graduated.

How To: Avoid Injury While Exercising

When exercising at a high intensity, you know to expect some level of pain. That can make it difficult to identify when your body gives you a warning sign of injury. If you pay close attention, however, you can tell the good hurt from the bad. I talked to Dr. Brian Parr again, professor at the Dept. of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of South Carolina Aiken, who explained which symptoms of exercise are normal and which are bad:

How To: Why You Shouldn't Stretch to Warm Up for Exercise or Sports

If you're like most people, you've stretched before a workout or playing sports. Doing so should help you get your muscles ready to work. While stretching is good for your muscles, you're wasting your time if it's the first thing you do. I talked to Dr. Brian Parr, professor at the Dept. of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of South Carolina Aiken, who explained this misconception and what you can do about it:

Expert Advice: Four Ways Nutritionists Maintain a Healthy Diet

Eating healthy poses a challenge nowadays with so many options that taste great but aren't really good for you. Nutritionists have made it their life's work to understand what actually does a body good. Here's how you can follow their example.

How To: 6 Ways Music Affects Your Productivity (For Better or Worse)

Complete silence or a non-stop Pandora playlist? People are often divided on what type of work environment they prefer. Whether you're a frequent loud music listener or you can't stand any kind of background noise, chances are you're pretty set in your ways.

Expert Advice: Four Ways Doctors Keep Themselves Healthy

Staying healthy is a progressive challenge we all face throughout our lives, and figuring out just how to do that can be a challenge when it's not your job. For doctors, however, it is. Here's how they keep themselves healthy day to day.

How To: 8 Reasons Why Getting Off Your Ass at Work Is So Important

If you've read any health news in the past year or so, you've probably been bombarded with headlines announcing that frequent sitters face certain death, even when you're just relaxing and watching TV at home.

Silence Is Golden: Why Keeping Quiet at Work Is Actually a Good Thing

Unless you're someone who's terrified of social situations, chances are you love to talk. But no matter how much you want to share you life story or take over the conversation, you shouldn't. Your socially awkward coworkers that keep their mouth shut might actually have a leg up on you at work, and here's why.

Sleep Hacks: 10 Ways to Take Back Control Over Your Sleeping Habits

Climbing into bed and shutting your eyes each night is heavenly—but waking up the next morning isn't. We all hate dragging ourselves out of the comfort of sleep and into the groggy, exhausting work day. Yet starting your day doesn't have to be awful if you know how to hack your sleep cycles and get the most out of your shut-eye.

How To: Cheering Sad Friends Up Might Not Be the Best Way to Help

Contrary to popular belief, taking someone's mind off their sadness and telling them to "cheer up" doesn't do much good. Misery loves company, and while it may be a tiresome cliché, there's actually some science behind it.

Productivity Tips: 10 Mind Hacks for Getting Things Done Better & Faster at Work

It may sound irrational, but I bet a lot of you actually avoid doing any work at work—but not on purpose. You might be simply struggling with motivation, or you might just be overdosing on the caffeine. Whatever the issue, getting focused takes lots of time and effort.

Shop Smarter: Use Influential Music to Control What & How Much You Purchase

For some, there's nothing more thrilling than carrying an armful of bags while wandering the mall; for others, there's nothing more annoying. No matter what category of shopper you fit into, the truth is that you aren't always in control of what you buy.

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: 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: 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.

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.

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.

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: 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.