Advice

One piece of timeless wisdom that will help you build your creative life.

I once deleted a production-like staging database in my very first job

From Rocky Horror to the Muppets, Curry’s extraordinary career made him world-famous. Then, a stroke left him paralysed. The actor talks about his cocaine years, his friendship with David Bowie – and the moment his mother came at him with a knife

Procrastination is a pervasive habit that undermines well-being, productivity, and mental health. Developing brief and scalable interventions to address this issue is crucial. Here, we tested the efficacy of an intervention grounded in the Temporal Decision Model of procrastination. Our intervention targeted state-level procrastination by simultaneously reducing task aversion and enhancing outcome utility. A total of 1,035 participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group or one of two control groups. The experimental group engaged in a structured activity that adapted an Affect Labeling technique with subtask generation/reward selection; the former stage aimed to reduce task aversion and the latter stage aimed to enhance outcome utility. Control groups responded to neutral or some task-related questions. Participants rated task aversion, outcome utility, mood, stress, motivation, and likelihood of completing the procrastinated task. Social desirability bias was measured and controlled for. The experimental group reported significantly higher task completion likelihood, greater outcome utility, improved mood, and a larger utility–aversion gap compared to control groups. Mediation analysis revealed that the utility–aversion gap and mood partially mediated the relationship between group assignment and task completion likelihood. These findings illustrate the potential effectiveness of a brief, low-effort intervention for reducing state procrastination. By enhancing outcome utility and employing structured strategies, this intervention suggests a scalable solution with potential applications in digital platforms and workplace settings to improve task engagement and productivity.

“The ability to be strong and soft is an art, it’s a gift, it’s a superpower we all have inside…STROFT!” The are of being strong AND soft!

Your biggest mentor isn't someone else. It's the person you used to be.

Privilege the power of precision: discover 7 phrases you can use to regain control in an argument, grounded in social‑psychology research on persuasion, empathy, and communicative clarity.

Softness is a testament to our emotional strength and resilience. Feelings are messengers, guiding us toward greater self-awareness and growth.

Self-promotion doesn't have to make you feel sleazy. Here's how to share your work with those who matter, without ever feeling cringe about it. Ah, self-promotion. That horrible mix of nerves, awk...

The delight of reconnecting after a pause

Keep Going by Austin Kleon Starting something new and sharing it with the world is hard enough, but sustaining the creative practice day in and day out, staring into blank pages, waiting for …

Having ideas isn't your problem, says Rob Schwartz. If you want to make them reality, put them on paper.

Weave combines LLMs and domain-specific machine learning to understand engineering work.

Uncover how treating creativity as a sacred ritual, not a mundane task, can transform your artistic process and reignite your passion for personal expression.

Who else is the only woman on their dev team?

Learn about asynchronous communication and improve teamwork by utilizing effective collaboration tools.

Not every fun activity or moral good is a waste of time.

Why the Myth of Innate Coding Talent Is Holding Us All Back

And how to combat it. The story of an EM who created a ChatGPT for the internal docs in a few hours

Everything you need to know about OKRs vs KPIs. Help your organization set meaningful goals and execute effective strategies to reach them.

Are you wondering what the differences are between PAYE and a limited company? In this guide, we take a closer look at these ways of working. Learn more.

Spoiler alert: it's not LeetCode!

How do you determine whether to motivate your colleague towards progress or to respect their autonomy?

The complex of ideas I’m going to call the Dark Internet Forest emerges from mostly insidery tech thinking, but from multiple directions.

What if your company could have only one single advantage over the competition? This exercise will make your positioning and strategy stronger.

A friend who went back to school recently asked for public speaking tips, here's what I told her.

5 secrets behind Steve Jobs’ iconic keynote speeches.