- An Evidence-Based Approach To Goal Setting And Behavior Change by Eric Trexler at Stronger by Science. The article and podcast episode cover different studies related to behaviour change. Interesting findings are e.g. the effectiveness of New Year’s goals (or any other specific life event) as well as setting up behaviour changes as “slack with a cost”, whereby you give yourself a certain budget for failing your goals.
- Psychology of Habit by Wood and Rünger (2016). Review of recent habit literature along cognitive, motivational, and neurobiological axes. Both creating and omitting a habit depends on three pillars: Repetition, stable contexts, and appropriate reward schedules.
- The Gym Business: Usage, Slacking, and the Duel Between Margins and Lifetime Value by Byrne Hobart at The Diff. Gyms have customers with very different demands but the same pricing for all. At my local gym, everyone pays about 20 EUR a month, no matter how often they train. This inflexibility is starting to break, as new business models target those willing to pay a much bigger buck for their gains. As many other things, this has been amplified by 1) digital and therefore 2) the pandemic.
- Why American Teens Are So Sad by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. Self-reported feelings of persistent sadness have increased form 26% to 44% in US youth. However, it doesn’t just seem to have been caused by the pandemic, as that rise was only accelerated by it. The article attempts to detect some of the major reasons for this increase.
- Fat Shaming Kids in Singapore by Adrian D’Souza. To reduce child obesity rates, Singapore introduced the programme “Trim and Fit” back in 1992. The programme was astoundingly successful, with a 33% reduction in obesity over ten years. However, the programme was largely based on shaming overweight kids (think exercise in front of your leaner classmates during recess).
- The Silence is Deafening by Devon Zuegel. In the online world it is the extreme voices that get amplified the most. The silent may be the majority, but without action they’re invisible. “A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally have no equivalent of a disapproving glare. You’re stuck choosing between staying silent and entering the fray, with few options in between.”
- 101 Design Rules by Brian Collins. “Skip the whole “Minimal Viable Product” thing. It leads to incrementalism. Try “Maximum Fucking Love.” It leads to something that someone else might actually care about.”
- Technicolor Tokyo Photography by Liam Wong at Neo Cha. A very Blade Runner-ish collection of Tokyo nighttime pictures.
- She Was Missing a Chunk of Her Brain. It Didn’t Matter by Grace Browne for Wired UK. The curious case of a woman who was missing her left frontal lobe and yet still had a knack for language. In the absence of her left temporal lobe, the task of language processing seems to have shifted to her right hemisphere.
- What is meant by saying “biology is programmable” Twitter thread by Eben Bayer.
April Reading List
April 17, 2022