In another universe, Karl Starr has already given a TED talk — One of the most disheartening conversations of my life happened at a meetup for science writers at a bar in New York about six years ago. I was venting to a friend, “John,” about not getting a response from a Professor after multiple emails; an interview would have been ideal…

The Great Resignation is a Culture Shift: Loyalty only works in times of stability — I’ve been through multiple “once in a lifetime” economic meltdowns, and lost track of how many times I’ve been advised to stay the course, be consistent, and be loyal. The career advice we’ve all grown up with worked great in another era, that era of Boomers, when there was a…

The life-changing magic of empathy and zooming out — If you’re one of the few humans who hasn’t heard about the Marshmallow Test, here goes: a researcher at Stanford, Walter Mischel, tested kids’ ability to delay gratification. In his seminal study, he left kids alone in front of a piece of candy. If they could refrain from eating it…

The Benefits of Being Inconsistent and Having a Psychologically Rich Life I haven’t posted anything in a while. I mean, a while. I felt guilty at first — I broke my semi-consistent streak, ran the risk of appearing unprofessional, and creates a gap in the newsletter archives. Plus, if the whole point of me writing online is to connect with like-minded…

Workaholism is in our DNA — You’re sick of hustle culture. You’re sick with the American obsession with productivity. You might blame it on a lack of social safety nets, the internet, or rising economic inequality. Bad news, folks: it’s not an artifact of the internet age, the industrial era, or even remotely new. The idea…

Reality is more complicated than numbers — The first book I ever fell in love with was Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield? Swoon. Now there was a protagonist after my heart: a swearing curmudgeon who just did his own thing. But the book has one fundamental flaw: it took J.D. Salinger 10 long years to write. …

Offices are great for managers and awful for everyone else — You may have noticed something about all of the articles and propaganda discussing the “return to the office.” Guess who wants to return? The managers. According to a recent survey, three out of four executives want to return to the office—compared to only 1 in 3 workers. Managers are desperate…

And not being able to take that advice can make you feel worse — The well-intentioned Brad Stulberg, a performance coach and author, has recently written some pieces on “Behavioral Activation,” a premise revolving around the idea that motivation and energy follow action. Don’t wait until you feel like doing something, he says — just do it. The old adage “Move a muscle, change…

Stress is cumulative; depression and anxiety follow — I have a new theory that there are now two kinds of people in the world: Those who have been dealing with significant mental health challenges during the pandemic Liars The answer to the ages-old question “genes or the environment?” is always both: the environment pushes us over the edge…