I recently experienced two five-hour delays at the same airport, in the same 24 hr period, from the same carrier, on the same route. I was Tom Hanks in 'Terminal' for a while there.

The frustrating part was not so much the delay - I know enough about

We generally think of mindfulness as an idea that has been around for thousands of years, originally emerging out of Buddhist traditions. Many Buddhist researchers are doing great studies showing that mindfulness has an impact on many aspects of human experience.

I have...

In the last decade, we've seen tremendous changes in our workforce. With all of the recent advancement in technologies, nearly three-quarters of employers give their employees the tools they need to work remotely, giving employees more freedom to pick the hours they work.

Instead of designating the...

Bad management appears to be an epidemic, costing the economy a total of $360 billion every year in lost productivity. Some 65 percent of employees say they would take a new boss over a pay raise, and three out of every four employees say...

The science of self-improvement never ceases. Every year brings dozens of new quirky findings about how to be more effective, whether in managing our time, being more creative or just getting things done. Here are some of the highlights for me from 2012.

1. You don't know yourself as well...

Search Amazon for 'parenting' and you'll find 120,000 books. Parents, myself included, clearly have a lot of questions. New research is providing fresh answers every year -- though perhaps there are so many studies now it can be all a bit overwhelming. Here's my summary of what seemed...

History is often made when adversaries with well-established biases overcome expectations to find common ground: Ronald Reagan negotiating arms reduction with Mikhail Gorbachev, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signing a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, or Saudis joining the first Iraq War coalition as staunch allies. These events become...

Leaders of today's world know exactly what I mean when I say that it is becoming increasingly more important for newer and more innovative ideas to be brought to the table. Our workplace culture demands for us to experience stroke of genius 'aha' moments to be occurring on a daily...

According to Alexa, an estimated 50 percent of global internet users visited Google in the last month. Any website used by half of everyone on the web, every day, is remarkable. Google is definitely quite a force to be reckoned with.

As someone who focuses on improving...

With the 2012 elections just months away, people are now, more than ever before, thinking about leadership. What works? What doesn't work? What should we look for in leaders and how do we know if one is going to be more successful than another? Sometimes the choice is simple --...

The human brain is an extraordinary information processing system. It is brilliant at executing certain tasks, particularly physical tasks that can be codified like playing an instrument or driving a car. However, our brains have some surprisingly big limitations when it comes to certain types of mental tasks. Take linear...

This week sees the opening of the 6th NeuroLeadership Summit in San Francisco. The theme this year focuses on understanding the deeper biology that can help organizations of all types be...

The "Occupy" movement, as confused as it might seem, is clear about one thing. It wants to ask the modern world some uncomfortable questions. Contrary to media portrayal, the questions are not small ones like whether drum circles should be required in schools, or what brand of politician...

It is great that the U.S. government is revising the food pyramid -- that diagram that has been with us for decades that's supposed to remind people how to eat well. The model needed a revision, and the new version, called ChooseMyPlate, is a big improvement.

However, there's...

I recently finished coordinating the fifth NeuroLeadership Summit, which took place in Boston at the end of 2010. It was a tremendous experience to spend three days with a few hundred "positive change agents" from around the globe, people who are in charge of leadership development programs or...

A new study by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, confirms something we've all suspected: most of us are mentally checked out a good portion of the time.

This study shows that just under half the time, 46.9 percent to be exact, people are doing what's called "mind wandering"....

A new study recently caught my attention. It's by one of my favorite researchers, Roy Baumeister, called 'Personal Philosophy and Personnel Achievement: Belief in Free Will Predicts Better Job Performance.'

The authors discovered that a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance, at...

A newspaper headline recently caught my attention. It said 'Helicopter parents not doing enough to let children fail.' The article explains how parents concerned about self esteem are not letting their children do difficult things, and as a results we are developing adults who expect a lot from...

If you are paid to answer emails or respond to customers all day then this post might not be for you. But if you're someone who often needs to get some deeper thinking done, read on...

An epidemic of overwhelm
People everywhere seem to be experiencing an epidemic of...

The average waistline of people in the developed world has increased
400% in 25 years, with three-quarters of adults now overweight or obese. For the first time in history, there are literally more people overweight than there are starving.

One part of the problem is the food...