Here are five interesting new studies/articles I found on the web recently:
There are upsides and downsides to choosing based on gut-feeling: Are you choosing an exercise programme, or which candidate you're voting for? The first may mean you're more likely to stick to it; the second has potential consequences for democracy.
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It takes only 100 ms, faster than the blink of an eye, for messages from your gut to reach your brain. This is why diet is extremely important for brain health and mental wellbeing. And this research suggests that "gut feeling" may actually be a sixth sense.
Time Management May Not Help You Be More Productive. These techniques encourage you to pursue productivity for its own sake which is counter-productive. And "it often makes people lose track of their real motivations." Rather, we should take control of our lives and determine what's really important. “Do I want this job? Do I leave my spouse? Do I want kids? They all are time-management questions.”
Is working long hours a good thing or a bad thing? Working all the time "makes accidents more likely, boosts stress levels, and even causes physical pain." "Cortisol levels (the hormone that regulates the ‘fight or flight’ reaction and plays a role in raising stress levels) of people ‘on call’ [after work hours] rise faster in the mornings than those of people who are not required to be available, even if they don’t end up working that day."
It only takes 10 minutes of mild exercise to increase memory function. That's because 10 minutes is enough to improve the connectivity between the hippocampal dentate gyrus and cortical areas linked to detailed memory processing.