Mind Hacks Features
How To: The Scientific Methods for Boosting Your Willpower
Willpower is a pretty significant word. It's the difference between sticking with a clean eating diet and diving face-first into a plate of brownies. It's what drags you out of bed on Monday mornings and into work rather than letting you stay snuggled under the covers asleep. And, most importantly, it's the kick in the butt we all require to both accomplish goals and make changes.
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.
How To: 8 Reasons Why You Should Be Playing Even More Video Games
Although your friends might roll their eyes every time you talk about playing Clash of Clans, Call of Duty, or Candy Crush Saga, your excessive gaming habits might actually be making you healthier than everyone else.
How To: 5 Ways You're Making Yourself Dumber
No one wants to appear stupid. Whether you rely on lengthy, complicated vocabulary to show your smarts, or enjoy highlighting your speedy mental math skills, everyone prefers emphasizing intelligence over hiding it.
How To: Science Says You're Taking Too Many Showers (Are You?)
My morning just doesn't start without a cup of coffee and an incredibly hot shower. There's nothing better than sloughing off sleep with a dose of warm, cleansing water. Except, as scientists are pointing out, our habit of showering daily isn't exactly the healthiest choice. Though it feels great, if you have a shower-a-day habit like I do, you're showering all wrong.
How To: Make Your Lies Undetectable in Email & Text Messages
Developing an imperceptible lie is difficult, especially when you're lying right to someone's face. Thanks to smartphones, getting people to trust you is now easier than ever. You can craft a lie in seconds and hit send, all without ever seeing their untrusting faces.
How To: Achieve Your Goals by Changing Your Password
Finding the motivation to make a change can be tricky. It's difficult to resist the urge to procrastinate, or even give up when goals seem distant and difficult. If you wish you could stick to your New Year's resolutions, or maybe even just commit to pursuing smaller goals, you might want to consider making a small change to start: just create a new password.
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: 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: 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.
How To: Ace Every Essay Assignment with Less Substance, More Fluff
Essay writing is the bane of most students' educational existence. Whether you're a college student tired of slaving away over 30-plus page research papers or a high school student just trying to get through AP Language, chances are you'd love to find a way to cut down on all the writing. Before you spend hours googling facts and figures to cram into your next paper, work smarter by cutting down on content.
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: 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:
How To: 5 Reasons You Shouldn't Trust TV Doctors
With the countless daytime talk shows starring and featuring doctors, nurses, and other medical specialists, discovering new ways to live a healthy life is just a remote click away. Although their shows might draw you in with incredible facts and mind-blowing secrets to weight loss success, it's important to take each televised recommendation with a bit of suspicion—most of these familiar faces aren't exactly telling the truth.
How To: A Sports Psychologist's Guide to the Perfect Workout Playlist
The right music can spur you to pick up the pace during an intense workout, pep you up before you hit the treadmill or walking path, and even encourage you to lift for just a few extra reps. Although we all have our favorite workout playlists, scientists have discovered what it is, exactly, that makes you workout harder when certain songs begin.
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.
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.
How To: Hone Your BS Detector
Can you tell when your friends are serving up a bunch of BS, or are you constantly oblivious, unsure if they're spinning a valid story? With so many ways to lie and fake information floating around, it can be impossible to tell what's the truth from what's complete BS. Here's how to sort through what you hear and find the real truth.
Slow Down: Too Much Productivity Can Be a Bad Thing
Our workdays are typically filled with one thought: get as much completed as possible. Whether you face an inbox filled with tasks or just a project or two, both our bosses and our inner workhorses encourage us to knock out as many tasks as we can each day. But is being super-productive the best course of action for our minds and our employers?
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.
How To: Spot a Heavy Drinker with Eye Contact
Did you know that your face shows others how much alcohol you drink? Whether you've never had a sip of booze with those around you or you're known as the party animal of the group, the genes that shape your appearance also show others just how much you enjoy liquor. Pinpointing the big drinker in any setting is easy to determine: you just need to make eye contact.
How To: The 15-Minute Trick to Boosting Your Memory & Being More Productive
From day to day, it can be difficult to remember everything that's required of you. I tend to forget exactly where it is I'm supposed to be during my busiest moments, and it's even easier to delete each day's events out of your brain when there's so much else that dominates your mind. Yet taking the time to remember exactly what it is that happens during each of our days can be a vital part of our memory—and with nothing more than 15 minutes, we can strengthen our brains and remember more tha...
How To: Quiet an Overthinking Mind
We all carry a bit of anxiety around with us. Is our boss still annoyed because we could barely stay awake in yesterday's pre-dawn meeting? Will our friend hate us forever because we forgot to call them back two weeks ago? Whatever worries pop up in your mind, whether they're monumental or insignificant, it can be hard to quiet those nagging voices, but you can shut down your nonstop mind with a bit of relaxation, distraction, and action.
How To: 10 Desk Hacks That'll Help You Get More Done at Work
There are many hacks for increasing productivity, but so many depend on tricking your own mind or behavior. When it comes to motivation in the workplace, though, sometimes the space within which you work dictates how you behave and the work you produce. So if you want to increase your ability to get more done in a single workday while doing a better job, consider changing your surroundings in the following ways.
How To: Weightlifting Can Improve Your Memory, but Lazy People Can Do These 5 Things Instead
It's no secret that exercise is good for you, but you may be surprised to know that a good workout can actually boost your memory, too. They key to giving your body and your brain muscles a good workout is by adding more weight and pushing hard for an extra 20 minutes.
How To: Pet Peeves Have Benefits? 5 Annoying Things That Are Actually Good to Hate
What's your top pet peeve? Open-mouthed chewing? Nail biting and knuckle cracking? The sound of silverware scraping? Or perhaps it's a bigger behavior, like leaving the toilet seat up?
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.
How To: Use Reminders to Help Rather Than Annoy
When you're expecting an important call or text, it's pretty annoying to hear or feel your phone go off just to find out it was your reminders app telling you that you need to buy more contact lenses. Not quite as annoying as phantom phone vibrations, but it's up there.
How To: Improve Your Mood to Increase Brain Power
We've all heard the cliches: always look at the glass as half full; a smile can change your entire day; and there's always a silver lining.
How To: Attention All Neat Freaks—A Messy Desk Can Actually Make You More Productive at Work
When it's time to get down to work, a clean, organized workstation is key to accomplishing tasks and being more productive. Or, so we thought.
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: Control Your Buying Impulses by Window Shopping
Shopping: you either love it or hate it. With a tight budget, shopping can become a huge headache for even the biggest shopaholic. We've all been there, and we've all given in to our impulses and bought something we probably shouldn't have. Yet strolling through the mall doesn't have to require a strong will to keep your credit card from entering a downward spiral. You just need to keep your hands to yourself.
How To: Work Less & Get More Accomplished
From our work life to our home life, we have an awful lot of projects, tasks, and activities that require more productivity than play. After working for an entire day in the office, no one wants to face even more that needs to be done at home.
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: 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.
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.
DIY Pain Relief: 7 Weird Ways to Reduce Aches & Soothe Burns
No one ever wants to experience pain, whether it's as small as a stubbed toe or as great as recovering from surgery. Yet so much of our lives causes pain, lasting or brief in its form. With a few mental tricks and unusual home remedies, you can relieve some of the most common aches and ailments that arise painlessly.
How To: Like the Way You Smell? You're Making Yourself More Attractive
Each morning, we spend a significant portion of our time staring into the mirror. From choosing clothes and accessories to perfecting our hair, we try to make ourselves attractive. Yet catching others' attention doesn't have to rely on preening and primping. There's some truth to the maxim of beauty in confidence—all you need to make yourself more attractive is spray on your favorite scent.
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: 4 Reasons Why Talking to Yourself Is Anything but Crazy
Admit it: you've been caught muttering to yourself under your breath in very public places. Maybe you've gotten stares while wandering the grocery store talking to yourself out loud. If you're like me, you might even talk yourself through various tasks, giving the atmosphere a little background noise.