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Willpower & Self-Control

Harnessing the Science of Productivity to Be More Productive

Productivity Definition Productivity is a measure of efficiency of a person completing a task – the efficiency of converting inputs into useful outputs. For example, the efficiency of the work and decisions you make to complete your daily ticklist. More technically productivity can be defined by dividing output (e.g. completing a project) by the total costs incurred or resources  consumed (money, effort, psychological stress, etc) in a given period. Note that productivity isn’t the same as just working hard – it is a

Stroop N-Back, Interference Control and Emotion Regulation

In a study published last week (Oct 28, 2015) by Cohen and his colleagues in the journal Neuroimage, it has been shown that training on an implementation of HighIQPro’s ‘Stroop’ n-back game can  can reduce the brain’s emotional reactivity by changing the brain’s wiring to make it less responsive to threatening information. The principle of this brain training game is interference control.   What is interference control? When distracting information conflicts with the task requirements, as shown here there

The Framing Effect Bias: Improving Decision Making Skills For Cognitive Misers

A Cornell University study  reveals that U.S. intelligence agents are more likely to make irrational life-death decisions than college students, basing their decisions on the superficial wording of the information rather than the real facts and probabilities. It’s not just intelligence agents that make irrational decisions, it’s everyone to a greater or lesser degree. In critical situations our decision making skills can be very shaky, no matter how high we

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)

Here the 3-item CRT test for ‘cognitive reflection’ developed at Princeton. Average Carnegie Melon and Harvard undergraduate scores for this test range from 1.4-1.5 out of 3!

Self Control vs Instant Gratification

Neuroscientists at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf have found a useful application for our own decision making, helping us to overcome the lure of instant gratification.

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