As publisher of over 50 science magazines, Hugo Gernsback had a lot of be distracted from. A ringing telephone or a doorbell, Gernsback complained, was enough to stop the flow of thought. But 50% of the time, he concluded, we are our own disturbers. “The greatest difficulty that the human mind has to contend with […]
Milkshake Duck – The phrase so famous you never heard of it. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has awarded “milkshake duck” its 2017 word of the year. On June 12, 2016, Australian cartoonist Ben Ward tweeted it to describe our tendency to foist instant celebrity on some person and its inevitable backlash. In Ward’s tweet, the cuddly duck is accused […]
Called someone a smart aleck lately? Well, you just compared them to a 19th-century pimp. Turns out that Smart Aleck was a real person – and not one you’d like to meet down a dark alley. Or any kind of alley. Missouri professor Gerald Cohen writes that the term is derived from a real-life person. Alexander Hoag was […]
Mobile phones have become an extension of ourselves. How often you check your phone depends on when you were born… Were you born in the 1980s and 1990s? You probably get anxious if you haven’t checked your phone in 15 minutes. Those born between 1965 and 1979 are more relaxed. Only 42% tend to get uneasy […]
Here are some gems for a real world marketing directory. Content calendar What we’ll do if everything works perfectly, you pay on time and nobody has a day off. Content. Lorem ipsum Polyfilla to anyone except the harmless drudge who has to write it. Best Practice. What everyone else pretends to do. Or, […]
Well, this guy nailed it. Can you describe YOUR startup in one sentence? The one-sentence startup pitch or high concept pitch is easily mocked. In fact, there’s a Facebook group dedicated to doing just that. Members suggest hilarious one-sentence descriptions for real (and how-it-not-a-thing) companies. Most pitches follow the “Tinder for____” formula: A […]
Want to foster more creative brainstorming? Embrace your embarrassing side. An experiment looked into whether groups could be pre-loaded for better brainstorming. 93 managers were randomly assigned to three-person teams. Half of the groups were told to share embarrassing stories; half talked about times they had felt pride. Embarrassing Brainstorming No cheating. The anecdotes had to be […]
Employees get 1% of their working week to focus on training and development. Yet, we live in a culture where companies look to hire “learning animals”. The perfect employee has the smarts to handle massive change and the character to love it. IBM found that when deprived of advancement opportunities, learning animals were 12 times more likely to […]
When you let your mind wander, you engage a brain circuit called the “default mode network” (DMN) . Dipping into our deep storehouse of memories, ideas, and emotions plugs us into our DMN. Which was thought of as our “Mostly Do Nothing” circuit. Until recently. Turns out, the “resting” DMN uses 20% of the body’s […]
Billboard advertising and New Jersey just got a little weirder. New Jersey radio station, WFMU-FM, just put up a billboard featuring Justin Bieber, Rihanna and, uh, Charles Manson on busy Route 280 in Newark. The station is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to choose and fund its “first (and last)” billboard advertising. As they […]
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