Mind Hacks Features

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: 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: 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: Having Just One Plant in Your Workspace Can Boost Your Overall Productivity

There are a number of ways to give your productivity a kicktstart, from taking a break from your distracting smartphone to just taking a break, plain and simple. Yet finding the motivation to start working doesn't require any effort at all—just a little bit of green.

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: 10 Resolution Ruiners & How to Avoid Them

The start of a new year is generally thought of as a chance to start over, a time to improve or "fix" things in your life. Yet most people who set stringent New Year's resolutions find themselves failing within weeks—or even days—of setting their lofty goals.

How To: Calm Your Fear of Public Speaking for Better Presentations

Sweaty palms, stuttered speech, and terror blackouts: if you're someone who absolutely despises speaking before audiences, you've probably experienced side effects like these. No matter how well prepared we are, or how familiar our audience is, giving a presentation can be an experience more terrifying than death, according to psychologists. Unfortunately, it's impossible to avoid public speeches, but you can make these events less frightening with a few simple hacks.

How To: Convince Others to Follow You Using Your Face

Are you a follower or a leader? No matter how you respond, we all know that leader is a more desirable position to hold. Great leaders typically share a few qualities—confidence, intelligence, and strength, to name a few—but one of the most intriguing is their appearance. With the right facial structure, and some well-rehearsed expressions, you can trick others into thinking you're leader material.

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: 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: Want to Appear Smarter? Stop Using Impressive Vocabulary

We've all been there: facing a lengthy, complex word that ignores the phonics we were taught in elementary school, unsure of not only its pronunciation, but also its meaning. These words, from autochthonous to esquamulose, are both terrifying and impressive. After all, if someone knows how to use them—and even say them—they must be quite smart. Yet before you begin stuffing every email and presentation with verbose prose, you might want to reconsider what others perceive to be intelligent.

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: 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: Ask These Questions to Improve Your Next Job Interview

Job interview success can be a difficult thing to measure. Is confidence a job-winning trait? Or were the interviewer's questions not answered as fully as they had hoped? Maybe you weren't sure how your big, happy smile went over with such a formal setting.

How To: Reading Fantasy Books Could Make You a Better Person

From parents and other family members to friends and peers, personalities are built by environment. Though people are important in the development of our own individual personality, there are other, different influences, including what you choose to read. The books you take the time to enjoy can make you nicer and more understanding, or leave you overall unchanged.

How To: Get Over Your End-of-Vacation, Back-to-Work Blues

The end of a weekend can be depressing knowing just how bad Monday morning will be when you get back to work, but that feeling is tenfold when coming back from a lengthy vacation with zero work responsibilities.

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.

How To: Succeed in Group Settings by Shutting Your Mouth

What type of person are you in group settings? Are you the social butterfly, eager to get to know everyone and interested in the people more than the setting? Or are you a wallflower, afraid to catch anyone's eye out of fear?

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

Dating by Profession: Retailers Don't Say No; Students Can't Get a Date

Are you a lawyer who's married to a computer programmer? Chances are you might not have even dated if you first met online.

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: 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: 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: Put Down Your Smartphone at Home to Increase Productivity at Work

We all know that opening our work emails at home is a bad habit. Yet reading and responding to emails every time your iPhone dings is worse than you might realize. Not only are you extending the workday, but you are also sacrificing your ability to perform on a daily basis.

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: 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.

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?

How To: Become a Better Worker by Taking More Breaks

I'll admit it: I've spent many eight-hour workdays stuck at my desk, staring at my computer as my breaks slip past unnoticed. I frequently tell myself I'll take one in a few more minutes—but somehow, the entire day will pass and I won't have taken a single break.

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: 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: 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?

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.

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: Reframe "But" to Share Criticism More Kindly

There's perhaps no statement more classic (and more annoying) than the "but" sentence. We've all heard it before: "I love you, but..."

How To: Tips for Tackling Your Dream Project

Brought to you by Brother International Corporation. Whether you are looking to complete a home improvement task, or you are hoping to start a new hobby, staying focused and energized during projects can be daunting. With emphasis on organization, planning, and creativity, we gathered together tips that will help you successfully tackle any project on your plate!