6 Ways to Think Like a Wise Person

• By Adam Grant
• September 16, 2013
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If I asked you to judge how smart someone is, you’d know where to start. But if you were going to assess how wise that person is, what qualities would you consider?

Wisdom is the ability to make sound judgments and choices based on experience. It’s a virtue according to every great philosophical and religious tradition, from Aristotle to Confucius and Christianity to Judaism, Islam to Buddhism, and Taoism to Hinduism. According to the book From Smart to Wise, wisdom distinguishes great leaders from the rest of the pack. So what does it take to cultivate wisdom?

In an enlightening study led by psychologists Paul Baltes and Ursula Staudinger, a group of leading journalists nominated public figures who stood out as wise. The researchers narrowed the original list down to a core set of people who were widely viewed as possessing wisdom—an accomplished group of civic leaders, theologians, scientists, and cultural icons. They compared these wise people with a control group of professionals who were successful but not nominated as wise (including lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists, and managers).

Both groups answered questions that gave them a chance to demonstrate their wisdom. For example, what advice would they ...

Hack Your Mind: 23 Tricks to Learn Anything Better

• By Nick English
• September 13, 2013
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Greatist is the fastest-growing fitness, health and happiness media start-up. Check out  more wellness news at Greatist.com.

Learning hacks -- they’re a thing, and while the college kids are heading back to school, it’s a good time for all of us to rethink the ways we learn. Student, professional, or parent, we’re all learning every day -- whether it’s how to play guitar, use new software, raise a child, or poach an egg, the mind is always soaking up new information. Make it easier with the following tips.

Prime Your Mind: Creating Habits That Optimize Learning

With a little regular maintenance, the mind can become razor-sharp and ready to tackle any challenge and absorb new information. Keep the brain in tip-top shape by making regular habits out of the following activities.

1. Work Out
Lifting weights and doing cardio carry a host of physical benefits, but turns out exercise can also improve learning and memory. If your thoughts are muddled, try taking a brisk walk or heading to the gym. One study found that memory and cognitive processing (the ability to think clearly) improved after a single 15-minute exercise session.  

2. Meditate
Regularly getting your om on ...

How Caring for Aging Parents Affects a Career

• By Rosanna Fay
• September 13, 2013
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Having chosen the child-free life, I didn’t expect that caring for loved ones would play any significant role in my career path. But I didn’t factor in my mom and dad. Like many in my generation, I never fully considered the potential need to care for my aging parents.

Foregoing children was a complicated, difficult decision for me. It was riddled with fears about my parenting abilities, an irrational terror of labor pains, and the reality that I simply never felt ready. But once the decision was behind me, I enjoyed my marriage and career largely unfettered, supportive of my colleagues with kids, yet never imagining that I’d experience anything like the comings and goings of maternity leave that presented them with so many challenges. That is, until my parents began to age.

My father’s health was the first to go. Congestive heart failure made heart attacks an almost annual event. I found myself bolting out of meetings and onto flights from San Francisco to Boston in response to my mother’s hysterical, long-distance calls saying, “This is it!” Over 10 years of these 911 alerts, during which my dad also underwent a number of complex ...

What a Real Budget Process Could Look Like in Washington

• By John Kamensky
• September 13, 2013
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In June, Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas spoke at a conference where he declared he wanted to embed performance measures in each agency’s appropriations bill. What would this look like?

When Cuellar served in the Texas legislature, he saw how his state used performance information in the budget process. Appointed earlier this year to the House Appropriations Committee, he can finally bring this perspective to Washington in a real way. The next step is to convince his colleagues.

A decade ago, public policy professor Phil Joyce prepared a report for the IBM Center on ways the federal government could begin developing a performance budgeting approach.  In that report, he optimistically observed, “The federal government has never been in a better position to make its budget decisions more informed by considerations of performance.”  He identified ways performance could be linked at each stage of the budget development, decision-making and implementation process. It hasn’t yet happened, but states could serve as a model.

Based on a 2012 review, 40 states have adopted laws mandating the use of performance budgeting. Leading states include Michigan, Iowa, Texas and North Carolina. A number of cities also have adopted this approach. So it ...

Why Some People Have No Boundaries Online

• By Adam Grant
• September 12, 2013
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Many people are often shocked by what others post online. Sometime this year, you’ve probably marveled at an offensive Tweet, a debaucherous Facebook picture, an embarrassing YouTube clip, or an unprofessional comment on LinkedIn from someone you know. Why is it that some people seem to have no filter on social media, yet others are more selective and private? What should your strategy be?

There are two key factors that drive a person’s social media choices, according to new work by researchers Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Nancy Rothbard and Justin Berg. One is boundary preferences: Are you an integrator or segmentor? If you’re an integrator, you like to build bridges between your professional and personal lives. Integrators strive to blend their jobs with their lives outside work—they’re eager to talk about their kids at work, don’t mind bringing their work home, and are happy to share the same information with colleagues as family and friends.

If you’re a segmentor, you like to keep your professional and personal lives separate. Segmentors create mental fences between their jobs and other aspects of their lives. On social media this might mean using privacy controls, making your profile unsearchable ...