Tips to help you stop worrying

What has you up at night? The economy? The divided government? Jobs? Health care? Ebola?

According to an October 2014 Gallup poll, Americans worry about a lot of issues. Many of those things are outside of our control, and worrying just compounds the grief.

According to a study by the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, worrying can have long-term chronic health consequences, including cardiovascular disease.

How do you stop? While exercise is a commonly prescribed cure for easing your worries—it’s considered better than Xanax because it releases feel-good hormones—you don’t have to break a sweat to calm your fears.

Here are seven other actions you can take to take your mind off of your troubles:

1. CHANGE YOUR BEDTIME
If you like to stay up late at night, you might be feeding your inner worrier. Researchers at Binghamton University in New York found that people who go to bed very late and sleep for short amounts of time are more overwhelmed with negative thoughts than those who keep more regular sleeping hours. They tend to worry about the future and dwell over past events, and they have a higher risk of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"Making sure that sleep is obtained during the right time of day may be an inexpensive and easily disseminable intervention for individuals who are bothered by intrusive thoughts," said Jacob Nota, one of the study’s researchers.

2. SMELL A GRAPEFRUIT
Breathing in certain aromas can help reduce stress. In a study at James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, researchers tested the effect of pleasant-smelling essential oils by diffusing them in the central nurses station. Oncology nurses, who frequently suffer from work-related stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout, reported significant improvements in tension, worry, and demands over the course of the study.

One of the essential oils tested was grapefruit, which is refreshing and revitalizing, and helped boost the body’s feelings of energy and happiness.

3. BREATHE SLOWLY
Deep breathing, also called yoga breathing, is known to lower stress and anxiety. In his book Spontaneous Happiness: A New Path to Emotional Well-Being (Little, Brown & Company; 2013), Andrew Weil suggests using a technique he calls the "4-7-8 breath" as a calming practice and tool to use when you are feeling upset.

First, exhale completely through your mouth, then inhale through your nose for a count of four. Hold your breath for seven seconds, then exhale through your mouth for a count of eight. It’s not possible to breathe deeply and be anxious at the same time, says Weil. He recommends using the 4-7-8 breath technique at least twice a day or whenever you feel stressed.

4. EAT CHOCOLATE
While sweets can cause you to have a sugar high and crash, researchers have found that a little chocolate can be beneficial for worriers. According to a study published in the Journal of Proteome Research, dark chocolate can help calm your nerves. Participants who ate one and a half ounces of dark chocolate a day for two weeks had reduced levels of stress hormones.

5. ENGAGE IN FOREST THERAPY
Walking in the woods and listening to the sounds of nature can reduce stress. Called shinrin-yoku, which means "forest bath" in Japanese, the practice lowers stress hormone levels compared with walking in an urban area.

"Studies have confirmed that spending time within a forest setting can reduce psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility, while at the same time improving sleep, and increasing both vigor and a feeling of liveliness," write Eva Selhub and Alan Logan in their book Your Brain on Nature (Collins; 2013). "Japanese researchers found that 20 minutes of shinrin-yoku—compared with 20 minutes in an urban setting—altered cerebral blood flow in a manner that indicated a state of relaxation."

6. WRITE DOWN YOUR WORRIES
Getting your emotions down on paper sounds like it could fuel anxieties, but according to a University of Chicago study published in the journal Science, the activity has the opposite effect. Students who were prone to test anxiety were asked to write about their fears before an exam; those who journaled improved their test scores by nearly one grade point.

"It might be counterintuitive, but it’s almost as if you empty the fears out of your mind," Sian Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago, told U.S. News And World Report. "You reassess that situation so that you’re not as likely to worry about those situations because you’ve slain that beast."

7. TAKE UP KNITTING
Keeping your hands busy can help keep your mind off of worries. In a study at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, volunteers watched graphic footage of car wrecks. Participants who had been asked to type a repetitive pattern while viewing the film suffered fewer flashbacks later on. Verbal distractions, such as counting out loud, had no benefit.

Researchers discovered that keeping your hands and mind busy interferes with storing and encoding visual images, which explains why worry beads and knitting calm us down.

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Cat owners: Mind your moods

Babies "social reference" by checking out their parents' facial expressions and voice tones when they encounter a new or strange object or event in their environment — then base their own reactions on mom's or dad's. They look to their parents as they wonder: Is it OK to stay calm, or is it time to worry?

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Animal behavior research shows that dogs do this, too. It's not surprising, given how closely dogs are attuned to us — as they have been for many millennia. New research posted this month on the website of the journal Animal Cognition shows that cats may participate in social referencing also.

It's another blow for the stereotype of the aloof feline, the cat who lives among us with a whiff of disdain for his or her cohabitation with mere humans. Even one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, has just gone on record saying that cats are "egoistic" creatures.

It's a stereotype that I've challenged before — and this new study only goes to show that those of us who live with cats may be quite closely scrutinized for our responses and moods.

In the paper, "Social referencing and cat-human communication," author Isabella Merola and colleagues report what happened when 24 cats and their owners participated in an experiment at the University of Milan in Italy designed to match tests done by other researchers on dogs. The stimulus deployed was an electric fan with plastic green ribbons attached, set up in a room with a screen at one end that hid a video camera; the screen also acted as a barrier for the cats (though they could see behind it) and marked the only way out of the room.

"The aim," the authors state, "was to evaluate whether cats use the emotional information provided by their owners about a novel/unfamiliar object to guide their own behavior towards it."

Once the cats were allowed to explore the room, cat owners were asked first to regard the fan with neutral affect, then to respond either positively or negatively to it. In either case, the owner alternated gaze between the fan and the cat. In the positive group, owners used happy expressions and voice tones, and approached the fan; in the negative group, the expressions and voice tone were fearful, and the owners moved away from the fan.

More than three-quarters of the cats, 79 percent, looked between the owner and the fan when the owner was in the neutral phase at the start of the experiment. This percentage closely matched the results for dogs in a similar setup, and shows that cats, too, rely on us for emotional cues when faced with unfamiliarity.

Cats in the "negative owner" group were significantly more likely to alternate their gaze between the screen and the fan than cats in the positive group. "The screen was the only possible way out," the authors write, "and thus looking at the screen and then at the fan potentially suggests the cats were worried about the fan and wanted to get away from it." In addition, cats in the negative-owner group began moving earlier than their counterparts in the positive group, "potentially showing that they started looking for an escape route sooner."

Surrounded, as I am, by cats — our current census is five in the house, two in the yard and 11 in our large outdoor enclosure for former ferals — I was naturally intrigued by these findings. (None of my cats, by the way, would have qualified as participants for this study. To be selected, a cat had to be friendly with strangers; accustomed to traveling in a carrier at least twice a month; and savvy about changes in the environment, perhaps because he or she is used to holiday travel with human families. Either shy or homebound or both, my cats would have received a rejection slip.)

As I walk around my house and yard, are my cats intently watching and listening to me? A beribboned and startling fan won't magically appear in our midst, but how about when there's an unexpected thunder clap, loud knock at the door or barking dog bounding through the yard? Should I endeavor in these circumstances to be a role model for cat calm?

Earlier this week, I asked this question, by email, of the study's lead author, Isabella Merola, now at Lincoln University in England:

Should those of us who live with cats be more aware of the effect of our emotions (our voice tones, our facial expressions, our body postures) on our cats, do you think?

And she replied:

Of course we should (as a cat owner I include myself in this), in particular in a situation of uncertainty and in new situations (for example in new environments or in presence of new objects). Further studies are needed to better investigate this communication and the valence of voice vs. facial expression or body posture, but owners can surely help their cats with positive emotions in new situations.

There you have it, cat caretakers. (Here's a stereotype that is true: No way do we "own" our cats!) Social referencing, feline-style, may be important to our cats, at least cats of certain personalities. The mythically huge gap between cats and dogs just narrowed a little bit more.

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Mind tricks to get what you want

Study about how your name affects people's perception about you

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According to a new study, people are less likely to believe information if it comes from a person whose name is difficult for them to pronounce.

The study was conducted with college undergrads in New Zealand and Canada. The students were first asked to rank the "pronounceability" of real names from 18 different languages. Then, the students were given a list of possibly real, possibly fake facts attributed to people with a range of invented names. The students were much more likely to believe that "Putali Angami" was truthful than "Yevgeni Dzherzhinsky," because, according to the study's participants, "Putali Angami" was easier to pronounce.

The study authors said the results show the way that our own subconscious opinions can affect not only who we believe, but who we hire for a job and who we decide to buy things from.

"The results from these experiments showed that people with easier to pronounce names were judged as more familiar, less risky and less dangerous than individuals with difficult to pronounce names," Matti Vuorre explained in Scientific American. Of course, he pointed out, "difficult to pronounce" depends totally on what your native language is. "So, who would you pick as your tandem skydiving partner, Bodo or Czeslaw? If you are anything like most English speaking people, you would be likely to prefer jumping out of the plane with Bodo. If, on the other hand, you find Polish easier to pronounce, you would probably choose to jump with Czeslaw."

In the United States, these subconscious beliefs about names sometimes seep into the workplace. Aseparate study conducted over several years in the United States, and published in 2013, showed that immigrants who "Americanized" their names were more likely to get jobs than ones who opted not to. They also ended up making more money.

There are major race and gender-related implications in deciding whose name is perceived to be more pronounceable. Some names fall in and out of fashion, and a celebrity with an uncommon name can make their moniker go mainstream — after all, a lot more Americans can pronounce "Schwarzenegger" or "Ejiofor" now than they could two decades ago.

The impact of gender was studied in a 2009 survey on female judges in South Carolina. Two professors from George Mason University found that female attorneys in the state were more likely to win judgeships if they had a gender-neutral or ambiguous name like Terry or Kelly than if they had a more traditionally feminine ones like Susan or Laurie. One of the professors who authored the study was so convinced of the power of gender-neutral names that he named his own daughter Collins.

And Vuorre, who has a somewhat hard-to-pronounce name himself, was hyperaware of these facts as he wrote his story: "As a recent immigrant to the United States, I wonder whether I should worry about the potential negative implications of my name on my future career success. At the very least, as Dr. Newman and her colleagues’ results suggest: People might find this article to be more credible if I had a different name. Or, as I like to think, you are less likely to go skydiving with me than you would be if my name was Brad Pitt."

"Brad Pitt" may be pretty easy to pronounce, but what happens to his children who have names like Zahara and Shiloh (as two of his kids do)? Something tells us they'll be just fine when it comes to the making-money department.

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How being a doctor became the most miserable profession

By the end of this year, it’s estimated that 300 physicians will commit suicide. While depression amongst physicians is not new—a few years back, it was named the second-most suicidal occupation—the level of sheer unhappiness amongst physicians is on the rise.

Simply put, being a doctor has become amiserable and humiliating undertaking. Indeed, many doctors feel that America has declared war on physicians—and both physicians and patients are the losers.

David Ramos/Getty

Not surprisingly, many doctors want out. Medical students opt for high-paying specialties so they can retire as quickly as possible. Physician MBA programs—that promise doctors a way into management—are flourishing. The website known as the Drop-Out-Club—which hooks doctors up with jobs at hedge funds and venture capital firms—has a solid following. In fact, physicians are so bummed out that 9 out of 10doctors would discourage anyone from entering the profession.

It’s hard for anyone outside the profession to understand just how rotten the job has become—and what bad news that is for America’s health care system. Perhaps that’s why author Malcolm Gladwell recently implied that to fix the healthcare crisis, the public needs to understand what it’s like to be a physician. Imagine, for things to get better for patients, they need to empathize with physicians—that’s a tall order in our noxious and decidedly un-empathetic times.

After all, the public sees ophthalmologists and radiologists making out like bandits and wonder why they should feel anything but scorn for such doctors—especially when Americans haven’t gotten a raise in decades. But being a primary care physician is not like being, say, a plastic surgeon—a profession that garners both respect and retirement savings. Given that primary care doctors do the work that no one else is willing to do, being a primary care physician is more like being a janitor—but without the social status or union protections.

Unfortunately, things are only getting worse for most doctors, especially those who still accept health insurance. Just processing the insurance forms costs $58 for every patient encounter, according to Dr. Stephen Schimpff, an internist and former CEO of University of Maryland Medical Center who is writing a book about the crisis in primary care. To make ends meet, physicians have had to increase the number of patients they see. The end result is that the average face-to-face clinic visit lasts about 12 minutes.

Neither patients nor doctors are happy about that. What worries many doctors, however, is that the Affordable Care Act has codified this broken system into law. While forcing everyone to buy health insurance, ACA might have mandated a uniform or streamlined claims procedure that would have gone a long way to improving access to care. As Malcolm Gladwell noted, “You don’t train someone for all of those years in [medicine]… and then have them run a claims processing operation for insurance companies.”

In fact, difficulty dealing with insurers has caused many physicians to close their practices and become employees. But for patients, seeing an employed doctor doesn’t give them more time with the doctor—since employed physicians also have high patient loads. “A panel size of 2,000 to 2,500 patients is too many,” says Dr. Schimpff. That’s the number of patients primary care doctors typically are forced to carry—and that means seeing 24 or more patients a day, and often these patients have 10 or more medical problems. As any seasoned physician knows, this is do-able, but it’s certainly not optimal.

Most patients have experienced the rushed clinic visit—and that’s where the breakdown in good medical care starts. “Doctors who are in a rush, don’t have the time to listen,” says Dr. Schimpff. “Often, patients get referred to specialists when the problem can be solved in the office visit.” It’s true that specialist referrals areon the rise, but the time crunch also causes doctors to rely on guidelines instead of personally tailoring medical care. Unfortunately, mindlessly following guidelines can result in bad outcomes.

Yet physicians have to go along, constantly trying to improve their “productivity” and patient satisfaction scores—or risk losing their jobs. Industry leaders are fixated on patient satisfaction, despite the fact that high scores are correlated with worse outcomes and higher costs. Indeed, trying to please whatever patient comes along destroys the integrity of our work. It’s a fact that doctors acquiesce to patient demands—for narcotics, X-rays, doctor’s notes—despite what survey advocates claim. And now that Medicare payments will be tied to patient satisfaction—this problem will get worse. Doctors need to have the ability to say no. If not, when patients go to see the doctor, they won’t actually have a physician—they’ll have a hostage.

But the primary care doctor doesn’t have the political power to say no to anything—so the “to-do” list continues to lengthen. A stunning and unmanageable number of forms—often illegible—show up daily on a physician’s desk needing to be signed. Reams of lab results, refill requests, emails, and callbacks pop up continually on the computer screen. Calls to plead with insurance companies are peppered throughout the day. Every decision carries with it an implied threat of malpractice litigation. Failing to attend to these things brings prompt disciplining or patient complaint. And mercilessly, all of these tasks have to be done on the exhausted doctor’s personal time.

Almost comically, the response of medical leadership—their solution— is to call for more physician testing. In fact, the American Board of Internal Medicine(ABIM)—in its own act of hostage-taking—has decided that in addition to being tested every ten years, doctors must comply with new, costly, "two year milestones." For many physicians, if they don't comply be the end of this month, the ABIM will advertise the doctor's "lack of compliance" on their website.


In an era when nurse practitioners and physician assistants have shown that they can provide excellent primary care, it’s nonsensical to raise the barriers for physicians to participate. In an era when you can call up guidelines on your smartphone, demanding more physician testing is a ludicrous and self-serving response.

It is tone deaf. It is punitive. It is wrong. And practicing doctors can’t do a damn thing about it. No wonder doctors are suicidal. No wonder young doctors want nothing to do with primary care.

But what is a bit of a wonder is how things got this bad.

Certainly, the relentlessly negative press coverage of physicians sets the tone. “There’s a media narrative that blames physicians for things the doctor has no control over,” says Kevin Pho, MD, an internist with a popular blog where physicians often vent their frustrations. Indeed, in the popular press recently doctors have been held responsible for everything from the wheelchair-unfriendly furniture to lab fees for pap smears.

The meme is that doctors are getting away with something and need constant training, watching and regulating. With this in mind, it’s almost a reflex for policy makers to pile on the regulations. Regulating the physician is an easy sell because it is a fantasy—a Freudian fever dream—the wish to diminish, punish and control a disappointing parent, give him a report card, and tell him to wash his hands.

To be sure many people with good intentions are working toward solving the healthcare crisis. But the answers they’ve come up with are driving up costs and driving out doctors. Maybe it’s too much to ask for empathy, and maybe physician lives don’t matter to most people.

But for America’s health to be safeguarded, the wellbeing of America’s caretakers is going to have to start mattering to someone.

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Psychologists reveal the dangerous side of "selfies"

AP

According to psychiatrist Dr. David Veal, seflies are more dangerous than you think ... far more dangerous.

"Two out of three of all the patients who come to see me with Body Dysmorphic Disorder since the rise of camera phones have a compulsion to repeatedly take selfies.

"Cognitive behavioural therapy is used to help a patient to recognise the reasons for his or her compulsive behaviour and then to learn how to moderate it," he told the Sunday Mirror.

Veal points to an extreme case, patient Danny Bowman, who allegedly spent up to 10 hours a day taking hundreds of selfies in a futile attempt to capture the perfect photo. He stopped attending school, lost "two stone" (around 28 pounds), stayed in his house for six months and fought with his parents. Eventually he tried to commit suicide.

"Danny's case is particularly extreme," said Veal. "But this is a serious problem. It's not a vanity issue. It's a mental health one which has an extremely high suicide rate."

Bowman was treated for OCD, technology addiction and Body Dysmorphic Disorder — a chronic mental health condition in which the sufferer obsesses over perceived flaws with their body.

Dr. Veal told the Sunday Mirror that "The common treatment is where a patient gradually learns to go for longer periods of time without satisfying the urge to take a photograph, along with therapy to address the root cause of the problem."

"This can be anything from low self esteem to problems with bullying in the past."

This is real: According to TIME, psychiatrists are beginning to consider a compulsion to take selfies "as a serious mental health problem."

A study titled "Tagger's Delight? Disclosure and liking behaviour in Facebook: the effects of sharing photographs amongst multiple known social circles" from three business schools in Europe found that people who post more selfies have more shallow relationships with people. Professors asked 508 Facebook users with an average age of 24 to rank how close they felt to friends, coworkers and relatives who also happened to be on the site. Then, they compared that data to the number of selfies the test subjects had posted.

The conclusion? "Increased frequency of sharing photographs of the self, regardless of the type of target sharing the photographs, is related to a decrease in intimacy" in personal relationships, wrote the authors.

According to Birmingham Business School professor and lead author Dr. David Houghton, "People, other than very close friends and relatives, don't seem to relate well to those who constantly share photos of themselves. It's worth remembering that the information we post to our 'friends' on Facebook, actually gets viewed by lots of different categories of people: partners; friends; family; colleagues and acquaintances; and each group seems to take a different view of the information shared."

So, seflies: narcissistic and correlated with a decrease in the intimacy of personal relationships. But dangerous seems like a stretch. Maybe the self-absorbed take more selfies, or those with fewer intimate relationships post them as a way of attracting attention. In cases like Bowman's, obsessive selfie-taking can be a symptom of pre-existing issues with self-esteem or more serious psychological disorders. And writes San Jose Mercury-News' Jessica Yadegaran, "psychologists say that in moderation, selfies are a feel-good and often creative way, particularly for teens, to chronicle their lives and emotions and express their personalities."

Clinical psychologist Lucie Hemmen says that "There's a continuum of health and authenticity in what you shoot and post. A secure, mature person is going to post selfies that are spontaneous and not overly engineered or edited, and they're going to do it less often. A more insecure person is going to post staged or sexualized photos, and they're going to do it so much that they become consumed by it and the comments they receive."

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How to get someone to tell the truth

"Cross your heart and hope to die." It sounds childish, but asking someone to place a hand on his heart while answering your questions could result in more truthful answers, finds a new study from Poland.


Because your mind associates the gesture with morality and forthrightness, touching your ticker primes your brain for truth-telling, explains study coauthor Michał Parzuchowski, Ph.D. But be warned: Parzuchowski says he doubts this tactic would work if you try it on someone who’s motivated to lie—like a lover who you suspect may be fooling around. It’s more useful in situations when someone might be tempted to lie or cheat, but isn’t that motived to bluff you, he adds. (For example: You ask your roommate if he took your dog to the park, or just around the block.)

Here are five more ways to coax the truth out of someone:

Ask in a text.
People tend to respond more honestly in texts than in verbal phone conversations, shows a study from the University of Michigan. The researchers hypothesize that, since you don’t have to hear the emotional consequences of your honesty—like your friend’s disappointment when you tell him you can’t make his bachelor party—you’re more likely to be forthright over a text.

Take money off the table.
When people are exposed to cash or finance-related words, they’re up to 46 percent more likely to lie than if they’re primed with language unrelated to money, shows a study from Harvard and Penn. If you’re trying to drag straight answers out of an employee or coworker, shift his mind away from financial considerations. Talk about his long tenure with your company, how much fun you both have hanging out with coworkers—anything to get his mind off the dollars and cents of the matter, the research suggests.

Spritz a little cleaner.
You behave more honestly in clean-smelling environments, according to research from Brigham Young University. All the scientists had to do was spray a little lemon-scented Windex in the experiment room, and honesty jumped up to 90 percent among people asked to divide up some cash between themselves and someone else.

Shine a light.
You're less inclined to lie or act unethically in bright spaces, as opposed to dark rooms, shows research from Taiwan. How come? Your brain equates light with openness and honesty. And when a room is brightly lit, you feel like your thoughts and actions are exposed, the study authors explain. As a result, you’re 35 percent more likely to behave honestly.

Make him go the distance.
When soldiers were told they’d earn an extra 30 minutes of leave on a Thursday evening for every point they scored in game of dice, they were much more likely to cheat on a Wednesday or a Thursday—as opposed to a Monday, reveals an Israeli study. Whatever motivates someone to cheat—whether it’s money, power, or sex—putting “temporal distance" (a.k.a. more time) between the lie and the payoff reduces the likelihood of dishonest behavior. If you want honest answers, try to widen the time gap between when you ask your questions and the possible payoff of a dishonest answer, the study suggests.

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Three powerful ways to stop wasting time

Since the whole point of this article is to help you make the most of your time and career, I won’t waste words here. All three of these techniques work well, but you should pick the one that best fits your personality and personal situation:

1. The Repeat Test
Take a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, and make a column of numbers representing the hours of the day that you are awake. Mine goes 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12… and all the way back to 11. Leave enough room for a wider column to the right of the first one.

At the top of every hour, stop for one minute and consider how you spent the past hour. Was it useful or a waste of time? Would you repeat the same action again, or are you frustrated that it was an incredible waste of time?

Now jot a few words next to the number that represents that hour. You might write: ran six miles, feel fantastic.On the other hand, you could observe: dept. meeting accomplished nothing… 30 people in one room is far too many.

Be careful not to let this exercise transform you into a selfish jerk; sometimes wonderful uses of your time are inefficient and require patience and/or generosity. For example, after I met with a young assistant, I wrote: it took three tries, but was worth it; Dave gets it now.

You can use this technique to improve your own performance. If you make the mistake of dominating a meeting and offending others, you might write: I need to listen a LOT more.

Try this for a couple of days, and see how it works. At the very least, you will gain immediate insight into the ways that you use your time.

If you keep at this, The Repeat Test will give you a valuable record of how you spent your week, month or year. In my experience, it is much more useful to have a What I Did list than a To Do list. The former is based in reality, while the latter is often a pipe dream.


2. Take 10 at the Hour
For some, The Repeat Test is too judgmental; they don’t feel comfortable evaluating every meeting and personal interaction. If this describes you, try this technique that is utterly non-judgmental.

At the top of every hour, take 10 long, slow deep breaths. While you do this, clear your mind of everything. Don’t analyze your day, and don’t start spinning your plans about what you are going to do three minutes from now. Just stop.

The benefits of Take 10 don’t occur while you are pausing, so don’t expect immediate miracles. But I find that after such a break, my stress level shrinks and good ideas tend to pop into my head.

And, yes, sometimes it becomes clear to me that I am using entirely the wrong tactics to get what I want.

3. Go Slower
This may be the most counter-intuitive advice you have ever received: by going slower, you can save time.

Instead of rushing to send a cryptic email that results in three or four back-and-forth exchanges before the other person understands your intent… go slower and compose a clear and complete message that the other person understands the first time.

Instead of rushing out a report that triggers alarm bells across your business… go slower and “socialize” your conclusions before you release the report, giving others the opportunity to influence – and understand – your conclusions.

Instead of rushing to furnish your apartment, buy a new house or plan a vacation… go slower and figure out what will really make you happy over the long run.

It takes far less time to do something right the first time, than to suffer through countless rushed efforts.

Treat time as the most precious of all gifts, because it is.

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The science behind television binge-watching

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Never before have we been such compulsive multitaskers, blogging and tweeting using multiple devices and smartphones anywhere and everywhere, from trains to cafes. It seems a little backwards, then, that one of our top post-workday hobbies is enjoying the complex storylines of TV series such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and House of Cards, which engross us for hours on end.

A new type of consumer has evolved in recent years — the love child of the Couch Potato and the Channel Surfer — who has been raised on streaming devices and nurtured by entire seasons of shows available at the click of a remote.

For just a small payment each month, subscribers to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Videohave access to thousands of streamed movies and TV shows that are updated and added to regularly. And with Netflix's new post-play feature, which prompts viewers to play the next episode just as the credits of the last one begin rolling, it's easier than ever to succumb to the captivating lure of Breaking Bad cooks Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, whose signature dish of crystal meth notched up 10.3 million viewers in one concluding episode.

The birth of the "binge-watcher" has been an intriguing, unexpected development of the past five years.

High on empathy
British psychologist Edward B Titchener, active at the turn of the 20th century, might argue that we become glued to complex, emotionally-charged stories because of our ability to recognize the feelings of others. A newly identified phenomenon at the time, Titchener coined the term "empathy" in 1909. In addition to identifying others' discomfort or elation, this branch of "cognitive empathy" examines how humans can also adopt others' psychological perspectives, including those of fictional characters. Psychological tests (through the use of puppets, pictures, and videos) have even been developed to study empathy in preschool-aged children.

Neuro-economist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University in California set out to examine the science of empathy in storytelling. He showed participants a video about a young boy with terminal cancer, who is carefree and completely unaware of his fate. We get the father's perspective, too — although he tries to enjoy his final months with his son, he finds it impossible to be happy.

Zak found that subjects commonly elicited two emotions after viewing the video: distress and empathy. When a blood sample was taken from participants before and after viewing, both cortisol (a stress hormone) and oxytocin (a hormone associated with human connection and caring) levels were higher after the video. While cortisol was correlated with ratings of distress, there was a strong relationship between oxytocin and empathetic feelings.

After watching the video, participants were also given the opportunity to donate money to a stranger in the laboratory, as well as a charity that helps sick children. In both cases, the amount of cortisol and oxytocin released predicted how much people were willing to share. Zak concludedthat these empathetic feelings (that we also, apparently, act on) are evidence of our compulsions as social beings — even when faced with a fictional story.

So it's clear that humans connect emotionally with stories of their kin. But what explains the binge? Or why, according to Netflix, did three out of four members who streamed the first season ofBreaking Bad finish all seven episodes in one session?

TV and film meet the brain
Psychologist Uri Hasson of Princeton University pioneered the new field of "neurocinematics", or the study of how TV and film interact with the brain. In a 2008 study, Hasson and colleagues showed participants four clips while they had their brain imaged via fMRI (an imaging technique that measures changes to bloodflow in the brain): Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Alfred Hitchchock's Bang! You're Dead, and a 10-minute unedited, one-shot video of a Sunday morning concert in NYC's Washington Square Park.

Hasson wanted to determine the inter-subject correlation (ISC) across all viewers' brains to examine how similarly they'd respond while watching these four very different clips. The Washington Square Park video evoked a similar response in all viewers in only 5 percent of the cortex, while Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly came in at 18 percent and 45 percent, respectively. The Hitchcock film, however, elicited an ISC of 65 percent.

In other words, compared to the other films, Bang! You're Dead was able to co-ordinate the responses of many different brain regions, resulting in simultaneous "on" and "off" responses across all participants 65 percent of the time. Hasson concluded that the more "controlling" the clip — those that showed the viewer exactly what they're supposed to pay attention to — the more focused the audience.

While the one-shot park clip allowed viewers to direct their attention to anything they found interesting, Hitchcock proved the master of orchestration: what you're watching, what you're thinking, how you're feeling, and what you predict will come next. In the same way, modern-day TV writers and directors can engage viewers worldwide with the flash-forwards of LOST or the gruesome action scenes of Game of Thrones.

Based on a survey commissioned by Netflix in December, 61 percent of 1,500 online respondents claimed to binge-watch Netflix regularly (defined, modestly, as watching at least two or three episodes successively every few weeks). Three-quarters reported having positive feelings in doing this.

The company then sent cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken into the homes of TV streamers to find out why. McCracken reported that 76 percent said binging was a welcome refuge from their busy lives, and nearly eight in 10 people said binge-watching a TV show made it more enjoyable than watching single episodes. So despite our hectic, digitally driven lifestyles and 140-character social interactions, McCracken concludes that we're actually craving the long narratives that today's good television can provide. Instead of dealing with the day's stresses by zoning out, we'd rather become engrossed in an entirely different (and fictional) world.

A new report also claims that the average American watches more than five hours of television daily. This statistic comes at the same time that it was revealed how all this sitting is slowly killing us, and that sedentary time in older age puts one at a significant risk for disability.

With all this binge-watching, then, it is perhaps a good idea to do as House of Cards' Claire Underwood did for her husband Frank and set up a nifty little rowing machine in front of the screen. This could counter the negative effects of binge-sitting and binge-eating (pizza delivery, anyone?). For the same reasons we're wired to binge-watch TV, our brains also crave a good workout session — marrying the two might prove the less killer combination.

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Can dogs understand human emotions?

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Whenever I cry, my beagle, Sadie, jumps into my lap and nudges me with her nose. Is Sadie’s intuitiveness unique, or can dogs really understand human emotions?

According to a recent study, the answer is yes. Attila Andics, at the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, coaxed 11 canines into laying still in an MRI for 10 minutes at a time. While the pups listened to about 200 snippets of human voices, dogs' yips, yaps, grunts and barks, and environmental din, the researchers looked at their brain activity.

They found that when Fido heard his doggy brethren vocalizing, a particular region in his brain became very active. The area is comparable to one that humans have, which sparks when hearing the sound of one’s own species.

And when Fido heard human and doggy voices, neurons in a small area in the back of the brain, behind the ear, fired. This patch of neurons in the dogs’ brains is similar to one in humans known as the “voice area.” In humans, this region aids in understanding the emotional intent of the speaker, helping us differentiate between sarcasm and disgust, for example. In dogs, that area responds to the emotion in voices. It doesn’t help them understand the words, but rather allows them to decipher the emotions—so Fido understands happiness and sadness.

Dogs don’t simply have a region analogous to humans; they actually act like humans, too. “When you looked at how dogs respond to emotion cues in sounds, it’s very similar to how humans respond,” Andics told NPR.

The dogs also pick up on context clues. "For instance, when you laugh, 'Ha ha ha,' it has short, quick pieces," Andics said. "But if you make the pieces longer, 'Haaaa, haaaa, haaaa,' it starts to sound like crying or whining. This is what people—and dogs—pay attention to."

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Secrets from the happiest people on earth

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I've posted a lot about happiness. Looking back, what can we learn from the happiest people to make our own lives better?

1. Relationships, relationships, relationships
What happens when you look at the happiest people and scientifically analyze what they have in common? Researchers did just that. There was a clear answer to what differentiated these people from everyone else — and it wasn't money, smarts, age, gender, or race.

It was strong social relationships.

Turns out, there was one — and only one — characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships. My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result — social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it's huge — most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. [The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work]

The Grant Study (which followed a group of men for their entire lives) found that "the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty."

Vaillant's insight came from his seminal work on the Grant Study, an almost seventy-year (and ongoing) longitudinal investigation of the developmental trajectories of Harvard College graduates. (This study is also referred to as the Harvard Study.) In a study led by Derek Isaacowitz, we found that the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty. [Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being]

If you do one thing today to be happier, spend time with friends. Not spending more time with people we love is something we regret the most.

2. Do more, not less
The happiest people are those that are very busy but don't feel rushed:

Who among us are the most happy? Newly published research suggests it is those fortunate folks who have little or no excess time, and yet seldom feel rushed.

I know, you're tired. You want a break. But doing nothing is not the answer. Too much time is a burden: Surveys "continue to show the least happy group to be those who quite often have excess time." Boredom, it seems, is burdensome.

So what do you need to be doing? Things you're good at.

"Signature strengths" are the things you are uniquely talented at — and using them brings you joy. People who deliberately exercised their signature strengths on a daily basis became significantly happier for months.

When 577 volunteers were encouraged to pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way each day for a week, they became significantly happier and less depressed than control groups. And these benefits lasted: Even after the experiment was over, their levels of happiness remained heightened a full month later. Studies have shown that the more you use your signature strengths in daily life, the happier you become.[The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work]

Signature strengths are the secret to experiencing more "flow" at work and in life. Exercising them is why starving artists are happier with their jobs. The old saw "those who do what they love never work a day in their life" seems true.

3. Do not stay in a job you hate
Karl Pillemer of Cornell University interviewed nearly 1500 people age 70 to 100+ for his book 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. What piece of advice were they more adamant about than any other? More adamant about than lessons regarding marriage, children, and happiness?

Do not stay in a job you dislike.

You know those nightmares where you are shouting a warning but no sound comes out? Well, that's the intensity with which the experts wanted to tell younger people that spending years in a job you dislike is a recipe for regret and a tragic mistake. There was no issue about which the experts were more adamant and forceful. Over and over they prefaced their comments with, "If there's one thing I want your readers to know it's . . ." From the vantage point of looking back over long experience, wasting around two thousand hours of irretrievable lifetime each year is pure idiocy. [30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans]

Take a lesson from people who have already seen most of what life has to offer: Do not waste time in a job you hate.

Why the pinkification of toys hurts women

For every mother whose daughter goes through the princess phase spurred on by movies and toys, I wish to apologize for the entertainment industry. We are changing. We must. Gender is over-designed into toys, games and play experiences—and it hurts us.

In fact, the prevalence of indicators a toy is for a boy or for a girl is shocking, as a walk through a toy store or the recent Toy Fair 2014 shows. We know the practice of gendering toys creates and maintains stereotypes. Rigid gender lines correlate to lack of female participation in STEM professions, such as computer science, the entry point for game design. And these lines set up lifelong, false notions of what opportunities are available to females in general.

In 1981, a LEGO ad famously showed a young girl, Rachel Giordano and her LEGO construction, which implied playful creating is a beautiful thing—for all. The contemporary version of this ad features an older girl, and her creation differs significantly. It suggests creative work happens in different colors and “she” is one of a kind. This girl speaks to girls because it is marketing a girls’ product. No longer can a mere girl playing speak to any potential players, male or female.

Parents may argue that girls like being addressed as a particular demographic, and social pressures force them to buy “girlie” toys. I’ve heard many swear girls are born from the womb wanting princess dresses. Yet we know this is not entirely true if we look at the history of advertising toys and see how play is represented. What may seem quite “natural” is wrapped in images on television, in games, and in ads.

Ultimately, the “pinkification” of toys is problematic. Girls’ LEGOs are pink and purple, and positioned as being about making cakes. Children learn early on through play objects there are striking differences in goals, opportunities and creative outlets between the sexes. The toy industry has done girls no favors for limiting what can be dreamed. It is no wonder the percentage of women entering highly technical fields such as computer science peaked in the 1980s and has declined ever since: Fewer than 12% of computer science graduates were women in 2011, according to The Computing Research Association. The drop in women in computer science corresponds to the change in the marketing of some important creative and constructive toys.

I often wonder if I am a game designer because I was allowed to think about play without the constraints of over-branding and over-marketing of toys by gender. Unlike kids today, I wasn't constantly reminded I was a girl when I was daydreaming or playing. Sure, I took Barbie to the proverbial beach, but I also needed a dump truck to move sand and construct the resort. Psychological research shows again and again that people from a group suffering from a stereotype will perform poorly if reminded of their disadvantaged status. So, the pervasive cultural stereotype that girls are bad at math will be activated unconsciously if gender is brought up at all. That's right: Just mentioning gender or race will critically affect performance on a test. This works both ways: Studies looking at white men playing basketball reveal white men performed less well with a black coach because they, too, are subconsciously reminded white men are stereotyped as being poor ballers.

Ultimately, stereotypes hold everyone back.

Board games, such as Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit, never seemed to be marked for anyone in particular, but an ever-increasing number of toys and computer games do get marked along gender lines. This translates into jobs and career options: In 2008, the International Digital Games Research found only 11% of digital game industry jobs were held by women.

Today, Giordano from the LEGO ad is a health practitioner in Seattle. Did LEGOs encourage her to pursue science? Research has shown a number of factors that open up science, technology, engineering and math careers for women. One is how these fields are represented; the lone scientist in real life works on a research team discovering new knowledge.

We have a long way to go to unpack the hypergendering of toys and games. With the rise of casual games and the popularity of Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, perhaps different groups will become interested in game and toy design as a profession. Perhaps newcomers will create less stereotypical works and even use toys and games as platforms for prosocial learning.

Changing underlying “shorthands” that overly categorize kids is another piece; we must bring back girls and boys as equal in play. Otherwise, stereotypes fostered in playthings create limitations that hurt our kids, limit their dreams and affect our national future.

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Behaviorists: Dogs feel no shame despite that puppy dog face

The next time you start shaking your finger and shouting "Shame on you!" because your dog chewed up your favorite fuzzy slippers, just remember that no matter how guilty your dog looks, it doesn't know what your rant is about.

Behaviorists insist dogs lack shame. The guilty look — head cowered, ears back, eyes droopy — is a reaction to the tantrum you are throwing now over the damage they did hours earlier.

"Just get over it and remind yourself not to put temptation in the way next time," said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, a professor at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and executive director of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists.

But scientific findings have not put a dent in the popularity of online dog shaming sites like dogshaming.com and shameyourpet.com or videos like those posted on youtube.com/crackrockcandy. In the photos and videos, dogs wear humorous written "confessions" and often are surrounded by the remnants of their misdeeds. There is no question that in some photos, they look guilty of eating, drinking, chewing, licking or destroying something they shouldn't have.

Dogshaming.com was the first and is among the most popular sites. Since Pascale Lemire started it in August 2012, it has received more than 58 million page views and more than 65,000 submissions. A submission has to come with a photo showing the dog's guilty look.

Lemire, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, also published a book called "Dog Shaming," which hit the New York Times best-seller list in January.

"I don't think dogs actually feel shame," Lemire said. "I think they know how to placate us with this sad puppy-dog look that makes us think they're ashamed of what they've done. My guess is that their thinking is: 'Oh man, my owner is super mad about something, but I don't know what, but he seems to calm down when I give him the sad face, so let's try that again.'"

She thinks the online dog shaming memes are all in good fun.

"People come for a laugh and camaraderie," Lemire said. "They see that their dog isn't the only one who does awful things. People don't shame their dogs out of anger, they do it out of love."

Another dog owner helped get celebrities into the trend. In late 2011, Jeremy Lakaszcyck of Boston started putting shaming videos of his lemon beagle, Maymo, on YouTube. Four months later, Ellen DeGeneres ran one of them on her show and comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted it. The popularity of the videos soared, Lakaszcyck said.

He also submitted photos to Lemire for dogshaming.com, which made Maymo even more famous.

Maymo has a naturally sad or guilty face and senses something is wrong if Lakaszcyck speaks in a stern voice. "They know when their owners are angry.

"Maymo can sit for quite a while looking sad because he's a ham. It's natural, and he knows a treat is coming. His tail usually wags through the wait. It's like he's happy on one end and sad on the other," he said.

One of the first scientific studies on the "guilty dog look" was conducted in 2009 by Alexandra Horowitz, an associate professor of psychology at Barnard College in New York City. One of her books, "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know," included the findings.

In the study, she used 14 dogs, videotaping them in a series of trials and studying how they reacted when an owner left the room after telling them not to eat a treat. When the owners returned, sometimes they knew what the dogs had done and sometimes they didn't and sometimes the dogs had eaten the treats and sometimes they hadn't.

"I found that the 'look' appeared most often when owners scolded their dogs, regardless of whether the dog had disobeyed or did something for which they might or should feel guilty. It wasn't 'guilt' but a reaction to the owner that prompted the look," Horowitz said.

"I am not saying that dogs might not feel guilt, just that the 'guilty look' is not an indication of it," she added. She also believes there is a difference between guilt and shame.

Dogs can certainly learn from bad behavior, but rewards or punishment are most effective right after the wrongdoing, said Beaver, the veterinary professor. "The farther it gets from that, the less connection is made with the behavior," she said.

At some point, your dog will probably cower, waiting for you to complete your meltdown, ditch the negative voice and lose the nasty body language, Beaver said.

But you do wonder what other emotions dogs lack besides guilt.

"Humans have a natural desire to know what an animal is thinking, and yet we are limited to reading body language and measuring physiological reactions," Beaver said. The bottom line is: "We will never truly know because we cannot ask them."

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Six realistic tips for a better sleep

Laura Doss/Fitness Magazine

You have to live in dreamland if you want a good night's sleep, according to the usual expert advice: Make your bedroom into a spa like sanctuary. Don't drink a drop of caffeine after 2 p.m. No laptops in the bedroom. So we were shocked when sleep doctor Michael Breus, PhD, admitted that he drifts off with the TV on and his Chihuahua, Sparky, and cat, Monte, in the bed -- two major no-nos. His refreshing philosophy: "Steer clear of all the hard-and-fast rules and do what makes sense for your lifestyle." That we can handle. Read on for more surprising sleep tips that mere mortals like us can actually follow.


Sleep in on weekends. 
Forget all the blah-blah about maintaining a consistent wakeup time every day. Snoozing late on the weekend can have real benefits. Adults who were sleep deprived for five days (sound like your workweek?) made up for it somewhat -- bouncing back closer to their baseline brain function and alertness -- when they clocked 10 hours the next night, a study in the journal Sleep found. Still, it's best to snooze only an extra hour or two come Saturday and Sunday. "Any more than that will reset your body clock, and then you won't be able to fall asleep on Sunday night," says Carol E. Ash, a sleep specialist in Monmouth County, New Jersey. If the additional winks aren't enough to make you feel rested, take a 20-minute nap at 3 or 4 p.m. on the weekend, which won't mess with your internal timetable, Ash says.

Exercise before bed -- it's OK, really! 
Working out after dinner has long been considered a don't by sleep docs. But -- surprise! -- it may actually help you snooze better. Young adults who rode a stationary bike for about 35 minutes, finishing two hours before bedtime, conked out faster and slept more deeply than when they didn't exercise, a recent study in the Journal of Sleep Research found. If you discover you're too revved up to go to bed after a nighttime sweat session, keep a weekly log of your exercise time and how you sleep afterward, advises Lisa Shives, MD, the founder of Northshore Sleep and Weight Management Medicine in Evanston, Illinois, and a medical expert for SleepBetter.org. You may learn that a treadmill jog within an hour of hitting the hay is disastrous for dozing, but that doing it two to three hours beforehand makes you sleep like a baby. Exercise, whenever you can get it, is one of the best sleep medicines, period, Dr. Shives says.

Snuggle with Fluffy. 
Feel lonely? If you do, you're likely to wake up more often during the night, a University of Chicago study found. Consider picking up a new bedmate...at your local animal rescue society. "I tell my patients who don't like sleeping alone to consider getting a dog," Dr. Shives says. A pet helps many women feel less isolated, which can restore sound sleep. It's fine to break the no-pets-in-bed rule even when you're not lonely, especially if keeping your furry friend out creates more disruption than letting him in. "If I banned my cat from the bedroom, he would paw at the door all night long, and I would get even less sleep," says Breus, the author of The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan: Lose WeightThrough Better Sleep.

Play a bedtime story. 
The next time you wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep, ignore the prevailing wisdom about getting out of bed to read by dim light. Dr. Shives recommends a new strategy: Quiet your churning mind with an audiobook, preloaded on your phone or music player and at the ready, bedside. Plug in your earbuds, press "Play," and cover the display to block the glow. The story shouldn't be too stimulating, so choose a biography or your favorite book from childhood instead of, say, Fifty Shades of Grey. In 15 to 20 minutes the narrative should soothe you to sleep, Dr. Shives says. If TV has always been a snoozing aid for you, follow Breus's trick: Use a TV with a sleep timer and set it to switch off after 30 minutes.

Think before you drink. 
It's generally a good idea to cut out coffee, soda, and energy drinks seven to eight hours before bedtime. But the half-life of caffeine affects everyone differently. Download Caffeine Zone 2 Lite (free at the iTunes App Store), developed by Penn State researchers, to help you predict the hour at which caffeine will still deliver a kick without stealing sleep. Also be aware that a nightcap can be as disastrous for your slumber as an after-dinner cappuccino. Under the influence, you snooze in seconds. Problem is, you'll wake up four or five hours later. And healthy women are much more susceptible to the "sleepus interruptus" effects of overimbibing, according to a recent University of Michigan study. "The best rule: Have your last drink three hours before you turn in," Breus says.

Score better sleep. 
You log your workouts, so why not your zzz's? A spate of new sleeptracking devices with mobile apps, including Zeo Sleep Manager and Lark, allow you to monitor such habits as the time at which you fall asleep and get up, how much light versus deep sleep you're getting, and the number of times you awaken during the night. We like the Renew SleepClock ($200, us.gear4.com; Renew SleepClock app, free, iTunes App Store) because you don't have to wear anything on your body to use it; your movements and breathing rates are detected and monitored through your iPhone, which rests on the SleepClock's docking station on your nightstand. "None of these devices are diagnostic, so they're not going to tell you if you have sleep apnea or insomnia," Breus says. "But they give you information about your sleep and make you think about how you can improve it." For instance, an app can help you notice a pattern, like how your slumber improves on days you exercise. Or you may be surprised to learn, as one FITNESS editor did, that you're getting a lot less sleep than you think.

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How to kick the snooze button habit

We'd be lying if we said it wasn't tempting to hit snooze. Considering around 35 percent of us get fewer than seven hours of sleep a night, who wouldn't want just a few more minutes of undisturbed slumber?

The problem is that snooze-button sleep is inherently disturbed slumber and may be doing more harm than good.

Those first few moments of the morning -- when we're likely to be hitting snooze -- are pretty crucial in how the rest of your day goes. "In the early-morning hours, our brain starts preparing our body to wake up before we actually are conscious," Michael Decker, Ph.D., a sleep specialist and associate professor at Case Western School of Nursing, tells The Huffington Post. "The way we wake up really sets our tone for the day," he says.

Those snooze-worthy hours also correspond with our longest periods of rapid eye movement or REM sleep, the stage in which most dreams occur. When woken during REM sleep, we tend to feel groggier than when woken during other stages of sleep. And because this so-called "sleep inertia" is stronger the more abruptly you've been awakened, waking up too harshly can leave its mark, the New Yorker recently reported.

Luckily for chronic snoozers, our internal alarm clocks are highly trainable, says Decker. With these seven tips, you can start weening yourself off the snooze button for good.

Go To Bed Earlier
We know, easier said than done. But hitting the hay earlier will make mornings easier. "We want people to shift their circadian rhythm so their REM sleep period isover by the time their morning alarm goes off," says Decker.

Doing so is probably going to require some very honest introspection: How much sleep do you need to feel your best (shoot for around seven to nine hours, please) and how much are you really getting? On the mornings you have to set your alarm for the wee hours, when are you really fall asleep, not just getting into bed?

Once you've determined what your ideal bedtime should be, adjust it gradually. The same practice applies when preparing to "spring forward" for the beginning of Daylight Saving Time. As sleep specialist Dr. Michael J. Breus writes, on the first night, get into bed 15 minutes earlier than usual. The following night, adjust your bedtime by 30 minutes, and then by 45 on the following night, and so on, until you've reached your goal.

Make The Morning Smell Right
"I set my coffee pot to wake up 15 minutes before I do," says Decker. "I wake up to the smell of coffee!" Our sense of smell is perhaps a surprising way to coax you out of bed, but olfaction happens to be "the only [sense] that establishes a direct connectionbetween the brain and its environment," researcher Markus Bastir, who has studied smell, said in a statement.

"If we have an arousing aroma that fills our space, our brain will activate and may help wake us up," says Decker. "I always thought it was convenient, but [now I know] I'll start smelling the coffee and waking up before I even hear the alarm."

Coffee not your thing? Peppermint and citrus fruits might do the trick, too!

Move Slowly
No one is saying you need to quit hitting snooze and starting launching yourself right out of bed. It's okay to take your time peeling back those covers. "I ask people to lie there for a couple of minutes and energize their brain," says Decker. "Think about the day, take a moment or two and then get out of bed." Just don't linger too long or you'll fall back to sleep!

Shift The Alarm Slightly

Sometimes the difference between a disruptive alarm and one that's only mildly annoying is mere minutes. If you've determined you're getting enough sleep but are still tempted to snooze when the buzzer rings, try adjusting your alarm by just a few minutes. Setting it for 10 minutes earlier or later could help you "accommodate your sleep cycle" better, says Decker.

Power Down Before Bed

If you're hopping into bed iPad in hand, you're likely cheating yourself of sleep. Light at night, especially the blue light emitted by electronic devices, revs up our brains, making it harder to fall asleep. "If we're exposed to high-intensity blue light right before bedtime, everything gets shifted back," says Decker, including slow wave and dream sleep. If those crucial stages of sleep are occurring later, you risk your alarm disturbing important slumber, which in turn sparks your desire to snooze.

Experts typically recommend powering down your devices (all of them!) at least an hour before bed.

Let The Morning Light In

However, bright light is a good idea when the a.m. rolls around. Exposure to daylightfirst thing can help you pop out of bed without snoozing. Sunshine -- or artificial light, like that from a sunrise-simulating alarm clock -- can help convince your circadian clock it really is time to hit the ground running. The brain perceives light steadily increasing in the mornings, even through closed eyes, says Decker. Then, "the machinery to start waking up becomes engaged before we actually wake up," he says.

Practice Good Sleep Hygiene In General

If you've tried everything and you're still pressing snooze, take a look at some of your other sleep habits. "We want people to wake up feeling refreshed, and if you're not, we have to start [asking] why," says Decker. Maybe you're eating too heavy of a dinner too late at night, or allowing yourself one-too-many caffeinated beverages in the late afternoon. Maybe you're a little too lenient about letting Fido in bed, or your bedroom is simply too noisy or too warm. Quit making these sleep mistakes, and you just might find yourself closer to an easier, snooze-free morning.

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Does money really buy happiness?

"Does money buy happiness?" is the kind of open-ended question that inspires great novels and Baz Luhrmann movies, but it also has spawned quite a research program in economics.

The University of Southern California's Richard Easterlin kicked the discussion off in 1974 when he proposed his now-famous "Easterlin paradox". He compiled happiness surveys, both within and between countries, and found that both types of data suggest that reported happiness does not actually increase as people or countries get richer. Here, for instance, is a scatterplot of real gross national product per capita (the then-current measure of how rich countries were) versus average self-reported happiness levels* in 1960.

There's basically no relationship. West Germany is close to 20 times richer than Nigeria, and no happier for it. Hence, the paradox: how can it be that such a large wealth disparity wouldn't show up in the happiness data at all? And if that really is the case, should we be focusing as much on increasing growth?

The answer, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found, was that Easterlin was just wrong. There is a clear upward relationship between income and happiness. It's just logarithmic: the happiness value of the next dollar you earn is always worth less than the one you earned before it.

Further, there's a difference between happiness (the answers people to give to questions like "Taking all things together, would you say you are: 'very happy,' 'quite happy,' 'not very happy,' 'not at all happy?'") and life satisfaction (the answer they give to questions like "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"). Easterlin treated the two measures as roughly synonymous (the graph above uses life satisfaction, for instance), but they're not. Stevenson and Wolfers find a stronger correlation between income and life satisfaction than they do between income and happiness, for instance.

Stevenson and Wolfers also found that happiness fluctuations pretty perfectly tracked changes in the economy. That shouldn't happen if income doesn't buy happiness.

Recent research has sided with Stevenson and Wolfers against Easterlin. The Nobel laureate psychologist/economist Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Angus Deaton found that "emotional well-being" (or happiness) maxes out around $75,000 of income in the U.S. Any more than that, and the benefits are negligible. But they found that life satisfaction keeps rising. "We conclude," Kahneman and Deaton write, "that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness."

Now Stevenson and Wolfers are back to show that their thesis has held up quite well during the recession. GDP per capita is still strongly associated with countries' overall life satisfaction levels.

And within countries, people with more money are more satisfied. These curves show the relationship between income and reported life satisfaction within a number of countries. In each country, the relationship is logarithmic but real.

Most intriguingly, they found that the General Social Survey's happiness question, which asks, "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days, would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" supports the theory that happiness rises constantly with income.

This is somewhat in tension with Deaton and Kahneman's finding, though Stevenson and Wolfers note in their conclusion that Deaton and Kaheman's conclusions are "based on very different measures of well-being, and so they are not necessarily in tension with our results."

What does this imply for policy? Well, it suggests that boosting GDP per capita is very important, for one thing. But the fact that the relationship is logarithmic, not linear, also provides solid evidence for the theory, common among fans of redistributive policies, that poor people get more out of the next dollar they receive than the rich do.

Mark Schmitt, now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, once made a memorable case for progressive taxation along these lines. "Progressive taxation is based on ability to pay, which increases logarithmically," he wrote. "It's patently obvious that the hardship of paying 15 percent for someone earning $20,000 is far greater than the burden of the same percentage for someone earning $200,000."

It may have been patently obviously, but Wolfers and Stevenson show it's empirically supportable too.

* The data here is the result of what Easterlin calls "Cantril-style" happiness questions, which produce "a rating by each individual of his personal standing on a scale from 0 (the worst possible life) to 10 (the best possible life), where 'worst' and 'best' are defined by each person for himself." These are basically life satisfaction measures, as we'll get into above. Read the paper for a more detailed explanation.

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The effects of sleep deprivation

Forget hits to the head—just one night of sleep deprivation creates changes in the brain similar to a mild concussion, according to new research from Sweden.

The small study was done on 15 healthy guys. One night they got 8 hours of sleep in the lab, and another night, total sleep deprivation. The men played games, read, or watched movies to stay awake.

After the all-nighter, blood samples revealed that certain levels of neurochemical markers associated with brain cell damage rose by 20 percent compared to when the guys snagged a full night’s rest.

“Dysfunctional sleep has been linked with a range of health problems, and it looks like that’s because we’re injuring our brain by not getting enough sleep,” says Men’s Health sleep medicine advisor W. Chris Winter, M.D., medical director of the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. Why? Your lymphatic system is 10 times more active when asleep in order to get rid of cell debris and toxins, he says. When you don’t sleep, your brain can’t clean itself up and you deal with brain fogginess or feel sick the next day.

The good news: Your brain was built to bounce back from the occasional night up—it’s long-term repeated nights of little sleep that may cause future damage. So ditch the perception that you might be really good at going without sleep—“it’s not a badge of courage,” says Dr. Winter. Make clocking the 7 to 8 hours you need every night a priority. If not for your brain, do it for your body: After a sleepless night, you’re more likely to crave junk food and skip workouts, according to a 2013 study.

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