Mise en place (pronounced mee-zon-plas) is a French culinary term which means “putting in place”, and which denotes that you should plan and prepare for a task before you start working on it. Mise en place is most often used in a culinary context, where it signifies that you should prepare all the necessary …
Read moreMise en Place: How to Be More Efficient in the Kitchen and in Life
The illusion of transparency is a cognitive bias that causes people to believe that their thoughts and emotions are more apparent to others than is actually the case. For example, the illusion of transparency can cause people who feel nervous about public speaking to overestimate the degree to which their nervousness is noticed by …
Read moreThe Illusion of Transparency: Why You’re Not as Obvious as You Think You Are
“Sailboat racing offers the chance to observe an interesting reversal of a ‘follow the leader’ strategy… The leader imitates the follower even when the follower is clearly pursuing a poor strategy. Why? Because in sailboat racing (unlike ballroom dancing) close doesn’t count; only winning matters. If you have the lead, the surest way to …
Read moreFollow the Follower: A Lesson in Strategy from Sailboat Racing
Handwriting is one of those skills that you generally learn as a kid, and then never try to actively improve as you grow up. However, being able to write faster has some significant benefits, which are especially important for people who often need to write things by hand, such as university students. These benefits …
Expanding your vocabulary is an important but difficult aspect of learning a new language. One way to make it easier is to use color-coding techniques, which can facilitate the vocabulary acquisition process. In the following article, you will learn why color-coding improves your memorization abilities, and see how you can implement it in your …
Read moreUse Color-Coding Techniques to Learn Vocabulary More Effectively
It’s hard to set your emotions aside when you’re faced with a difficult decision. This is problematic, since our emotions often cause us to make the wrong decision in important areas of life, including in our relationships, our finances, and our health. In general, most people find that setting these emotions aside can be …
Read moreSelf-Distancing: What It Is and How You Can Use It to Make Better Decisions