Workaholics Shouldn’t Try to Achieve Work-Life Balance

For workaholics, the concept of work-life balance isn’t helpful. There is always more work to do, and they’re more than willing to do it. The problem is that this type of drive and dedication often leads to burnout because workaholics aren’t the best at protecting themselves. So instead of trying to achieve balance — an impossibility, really — workaholics should set boundaries. Examples include setting aside time for family and friends (temporal boundaries), getting out of the office at regular intervals (physical boundaries), and forcing oneself to focus on something other than work (cognitive boundaries).

SOURCE: Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

Build the Right Team Behaviors

Even though most management systems focus on individual performance, it’s critical to reward and recognize your team collectively. As a team manager, support the right group behaviors by:

• Encouraging collaboration. Talk about your people as a team, not as a set of individuals. Instead of talking about individuals’ contributions, praise the common behaviors that contribute to the team’s overall success.
• Evaluating team performance. 
Every six months or so, take a close look at the group’s progress. Don’t mention individuals in this appraisal but focus on what the team has done—and can do—together.
• Using rewards. If you are able, tie a portion of your organization’s discretionary compensation to team performance. If you don’t control the purse strings, try recognizing your team’s hard work in a public way—through a departmental email or even displaying their picture in a common space—or giving them exposure to senior leaders.

Adapted from “How to Reward Your Stellar Team,” by Amy Gallo.

You Can Win Without Differentiation

from: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/you-can-win-without-differentiation

For decades, strategy gurus have been telling firms to differentiate. From Michael Porter to Costas Markides and through the Blue Oceans of Kim and Mauborgne, strategy scholars have been urging executives to distinguish their firm’s offerings and carve out a unique market position. Because if you just do the same thing as your competitors, they claim, there will be nothing left for you than to engage in fierce price competition, which brings everyone’s margins to zero – if not below.

Yet, at the same time, we see many industries in which firms do more or less the same thing. And among those firms offering more or less the same thing, we often see very different levels of success and profitability. How come? What explains the apparent discrepancy?

To understand this, you have to realise that the field of Strategy arose from Economics. The strategy thinkers who first entered the scene in the 1980s and 90s based their recommendations on economic theory, which would indeed suggest that, as a competitor, you have to somehow be different to make money. Over the last decade or two, however, we have been seeing more and more research in Strategy that builds on insights from Sociology, which complements the earlier economics-based theories, yet may be better equipped to understand this particular issue.

Consider, for example, the case of McKinsey. Clearly, McKinsey is a highly successful professional services firm, making rather healthy margins. But is their offering really so different from others, like BCG, or Bain? They all offer more or less the same thing: a bunch of clever, reasonably well-trained analytical people wearing pin-striped suits and using a problem-solving approach to make recommendations about general management problems. McKinsey’s competitive advantage apparently does not come from how it differentiates its offering.

The trick is that when there is uncertainty about the quality of a product or service, firms do not have to rely on differentiation in order to obtain a competitive advantage. Whether you’re a law firm or a hairdresser, people will find it difficult – at least beforehand – to assess how good you really are. But customers, nonetheless, have to pick one.  McKinsey, of course, offers the most uncertain product of all: Strategy advice. When you hire them – or any other consulting firm – you cannot foretell the quality of what they are going to do and deliver. In fact, even when you have the advice in your hands (in the form of a report or, more likely, a powerpoint “deck”), you can still not quite assess its quality. Worse, even years after you might have implemented it, you cannot really say if it was any good, because lots of factors influence firm performance, and whether the advice helped or hampered will forever remain opaque.

Research in Organizational Sociology shows that when there is such uncertainty, buyers rely on other signals to decide whether to purchase, such as the seller’s status, its social network ties, and prior relationships. And that is what McKinsey does so well. They carefully foster their status by claiming to always hire the brightest people and work for the best companies. They also actively nurture their immense network by making sure former employees become “alumni” who then not infrequently end up hiring McKinsey. And they make sure to carefully manage their existing client relationships, so that no less than 85 percent of their business now comes from existing customers.

Status, social networks, and prior relationships are the forgotten drivers of firm performance. Underestimate them at your peril. How you manage them should be as much part of your strategizing as analyses of differentiation, value propositions, and customer segments.

Two kinds of failure

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch. When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning. In any case, to apprentice as an entrepreneur you must act on your ideas as early as possible, exposing them to the public, a part of you even hoping that you’ll fail. You have everything to gain.

- Via Mastery

When to Give Up on an Innovative Idea

You have a new innovation under way, but things aren’t going well. You find yourself at a crossroads: carry on, or jump ship? It’s always a tough call. But if you haven’t experienced any pleasant surprises in a long time — say, something took far less time than anticipated, or you came across a new but unexpected design enhancement, among other scenarios — take pause. And if you’re not gaining any new insights, it’s time to reassess. Finally, if you also notice a lack of enthusiasm from team members, customers, and/or clients, kill the idea. Bad things, remember, come in threes.

SOURCE: Three Signs That You Should Kill an Innovative Idea by Michael Schrage

Every Job Matters

The rat race begins well before a lot kids graduate from college — extracurricular activities, internships, you name it — everyone has an eye toward securing the best career. But not everyone is lucky enough to beef up their résumés with eye-catching credentials; instead, many college students work in retail or in food service, among other jobs that they may not plan on doing for the long haul. Yet, these experiences can still be very valuable. Working with a diverse group of people, for example, can help pop your ego-centric bubble, among many other things. It’s something we all have to keep in mind: not every experience has to fit so nicely into a career narrative. Sure, it’s important to enhance a résumé, but it’s more important to grow as a person.

SOURCE: In Praise of Humble First Jobs by Simon C.Y. Wong

3 Tips to Build Better Relationships with Your Employees

When people feel connected to you, even difficult conversations feel less threating. Here are three tips to forge stronger bonds with your employees: 

• Relate whenever you can. View every interaction as an opportunity to get to know someone a little better. Make a habit of asking employees one question about their work or their personal lives each time you encounter them.
• Take note of subtleties. People seek emotional connection through countless small “bids” for attention—questions, gestures, or looks. Take stock of how much you notice these cues . You might also solicit some feedback from friends and family on how well you listen and respond to social cues in general.
• Regularly express appreciation. Research shows that the ratio of positive to negative interactions is 5:1 in a successful relationship. You don’t need to pay someone five compliments before offering criticism, but do be mindful of the ratio.

Adapted from the HBR Guide to Coaching Your Employees.

Management Tip of the Day: Make Good Decisions Faster

A simple approach can help replace your slow deliberations with fast decisions. Try this framework: 

• Know your ultimate objective. The biggest hurdle to fast decisions is criteria overload. Of the seven or eight possible objectives you would love to meet, which one or two will make the biggest impact? Consider which stakeholder you least want to disappoint—which goal would they care about most?
• Get a second opinion. Asking one other person can broaden your frame of reference and help eliminate judgment errors. Plus, the act of explaining your situation anew often gives you fresh insights.
• Do something. Select one option while letting go of all the other "good" ones. No amount of deliberation can guarantee that you have identified the "right" option, but remember: The purpose of a decision is not choose perfectly, but to get you to the next decision.

Adapted from “Make Good Decisions Faster,” by Nick Tasler.

Control Is the Key to a Workaholic’s Happiness

According to a recent study, more than 60% of executives, managers, and professionals work 72 hours a week. Blame it on smartphones. These folks are always connected, in other words — 67 hours during the week, 5 hours on weekends. But most of them don’t sweat it. As long as they have control of their workload, and when they can get it done, they don’t mind working long hours. But when their bosses are to blame for the overload — late meetings, demands for overtime — they aren’t too happy about it. It just goes to show: control is king.

SOURCE: Welcome to the 72-Hour Work Week by Jennifer J. Deal

The Best Leaders Are Both Tough and Nice

Leaders often ask themselves whether it's best to be tough or nice. If you're tough — a "driver" — you can push people to go beyond the limits of their abilities. If you're nice — an "enhancer" — you can better understand the needs, problems, and concerns of your charges. It's a hard choice. So which style results in the more highly-engaged employees? According study of 160,576 employees under the command 30,661 bosses, the tough-versus-nice battle is tight. Eight percent of tough-led employees are highly engaged. Nice? Six percent. So tough-minded leaders are the winner, right? Not so fast. The most effective leaders, it turns out, use both styles, and 68% percent — that's right, 68% — of their employees are highly engaged. That's impressive.

A Good Story Can Help You Raise Prices

What makes one object — a toaster, a shoe, a painting — more valuable than another object? Why is one painting, for example, worth $10 million more than another painting? Back in 2006, Rob Walker, a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, put this question to the test. He bought all sorts cheap items for under $4 — a wooden mallet, for example — asked a bunch of writers to insert the objects into short stories, and then put the items, along with the stories, up for sale on eBay. On average, the value of the objects increases by 2,700%. Crazy. The project should serve as an important reminder to all companies: a meaningful story, above all else, can go a long way in increasing the value, i.e., the prices, of your products.

SOURCE: If You Want to Raise Prices, Tell a Better Story by Ty Montague

Management Tip of the Day: Evaluate Your Potential Customers

Before you launch a new product, you need to have an idea of how many people will buy it. There are two ways to do this. If you’re already selling products, it’s often easiest to start by looking at your existing customers. Who among them might find this new product useful? Then build up your forecast from there. Think about other people who are similar to your current customers, including those in adjacent market segments. This is called a bottom-up approach. To do a top-down calculation, start with a large, diverse population (say the entire population of the U.S.) and then use a series of qualifying attributes, such as income level or age, to narrow your potential market. To get the best of both of these methods, have two people on your team use each one and then compare the results. 

Adapted from HBR's Go to Market Tools: Market Sizing.

Management Tip of the Day: Strengthen Your Confidence

Confidence isn’t something you either have or you don’t. It’s a dynamic emotion that, like a physical muscle, needs exercise to grow stronger. Here are two ways to build and maintain it: 

• Take inventory of your past. It’s easy to doubt yourself and your abilities. But if you look at your track record, chances are that your successes outweigh your failures. And, more importantly, you likely survived your missteps and gleaned lessons along the way.
• Focus on strengths. Most leaders are very strong in a few competencies, average in the majority, and weak in a few. Concentrate on leveraging what you’re best at. Then, manage your average and weak areas so they don’t detract from your effectiveness.

Adapted from “To Strengthen Your Confidence, Look to Your Past” by Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins.

Management Tip of the Day: The Right Questions to Ask Your Data Analysts

In today’s business world, you’ve got to be data literate to succeed. If you aren’t trained in analytics, don’t fret. As a non-expert, you can play a critical role by asking your “quants” the tough questions. Here are a few that almost always lead to more rigorous, defensible analyses: Where did the data come from? How well does the sample represent the population? Does the data distribution include outliers? How did they affect the results? What assumptions are behind your analysis? Might certain conditions render your assumptions and your model invalid? Why did you decide on that particular analytical approach? What alternatives did you consider? If you don’t understand a reply to any of these, ask for one that uses simpler language. 

Adapted from “Keep Up with Your Quants” by Thomas H. Davenport.

Management Tip of the Day: Take a Long Lunc

There’s a simple, old-fashioned practice that can make work more effective, engaging, and fun — long lunches. The idea of a leisurely lunch chatting with colleagues or clients might seem like something out of another era, but it has a place in modern office life too. Eating slowly has documented health benefits and having unplanned time with colleagues can help you forge deeper connections. Instead of scarfing down a sandwich at your desk or grabbing something on the go, make time for a longer lunch break. Even if you do it just once or twice a week, it can create stronger relationships with co-workers, and make you healthier and more productive. 

Adapted from “Old-School Business Practices Worth Bringing Back” by John Coleman.

The Design of Everyday Things, Keeping it Simple

by Gisele Muller: http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/the-design-of-everyday-things-keeping-it-simple

A while back we posted a list of 8 Books Every Designer Should Read, and among those books was a book I believe is a “must read” for every designer: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. In my opinion the book wrote by Donald A. Norman should be mandatory reading in all design related classes because it shows us amazing examples of good and bad designs, besides explaining through psychology and cognitive science why people like some things and dislike other. Even though the book was published in 1988 (its first version) it is still a masterpiece. His explanations of understanding something to use it seamlessly are really nice.

Since I believe that to deliver better designs we need to understand how people think and what they expect from things, I really liked to read about all Donald’s concepts. It doesn’t matter if you are a web, graphic, product or package designer, you can certainly take some good information from the book.

After reading the book I started paying attention to “everyday things” designed in a simple and minimal way. Things as cutlery, pans, mugs, tables, chairs, etc. Things we know how to use and we know that they don’t need “extra elements or details” to work. Things we know that may be super simple and deliver the same result. This is why I had the idea to gather some everyday things beautifully designed to inspire you.

Here I will show you some examples of beautifully designed products. Products designed in a minimalist way that reinforce that something may be simple and still deliver what it is intent for. Certainly something we can apply to the web and much more. Enjoy.

Cutlery Series by Oji Masanori

Kaiko Cookware Series by Makoto Koizumi

Swing by Jan Kochański

Revolt chair by Ahrend

The Revolt chair was originally designed in 1953 by the Dutch industrial designer Friso Kramer and is a true design classic. This one is a model was reintroduced by Ahrend in 2004.

#3 chair by StudioGorm

Hedy collection by Hannah Morrow

NW3 speakers by Neue Werkstatt

Bulb Fiction by KiBiSi

The Daily Stat: Men's Arm Strength Affects Their Political Views

Among men of high economic status, the greater the self-reported circumference of the flexed bicep, the greater the opposition (on average) to measures that would redistribute wealth to the poor. But among men with low economic status, bicep circumference is associated with greater support for such measures, says a team led by Michael Bang Petersen of Aarhus University in Denmark. Women's bicep size had no impact on their views. Men with greater upper-body strength tend to feel more entitled, reflecting a pattern in nature in which stronger males are more willing to assert their self-interest. The researchers studied more than a thousand people in three countries, disqualifying several males for reporting unrealistic bicep circumferences of 250 centimeters or more.

SOURCE: The Ancestral Logic of Politics: Upper-Body Strength Regulates Men's Assertion of Self-Interest Over Economic Redistribution

Using Money to Buy Happiness

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=using-money-to-buy-happiness

We live in America with two bits of contradictory received wisdom — that you’d be a lot better off if you made more money, and that money can’t buy you happiness. Now two scholars suggest another way of thinking about the relationship between cash and joy: To a large degree, how you spend is just as important as how much you spend.Michael Norton, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and coauthor – with Elizabeth Dunn – of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

Gareth Cook: What is the biggest misconception people have about the relationship between money and happiness?

Michael Norton: One of the things that my coauthor Liz Dunn and I hear again and again when we ask people about money and happiness is a simple phrase: more is better. In general, we all believe that having more money is going to make us happier. And, while it’s true that having more money doesn’t usually make us less happy, it’s also true that simply having more money doesn’t guarantee happiness. After all, most of us have a friend, family member, or coworker who is relatively wealthy who certainly doesn’t strike us as particularly happy.

We suggest that people should stop thinking exclusively about how to get more money, and instead focus more on whether they are getting the most happiness out of the money they already have.

Cook: You write that people should “buy experiences.” Why do you say that?

Norton: When we ask people to list all of their expenses in a given month, and then categorize them, it is always striking how much of their budget goes toward buying what we call—using the scientific term—stuff. Gadgets, music, books, lattes, and so on. As it turns out, buying stuff is not badfor our happiness—buying coffees and cars and even houses don’t make us unhappy—but stuff also doesn’t make us any happier.

Buying experiences, in comparison, does seem to create more happiness for every dollar spent. Why? Consider the difference between buying a TV and buying a vacation. TV is great, sure, but the experience of watching TV pales in comparison to the experience of going to a special meal once a week with a partner or friend. A $4,000 high-end TV may seem like a great purchase, but taking that chunk of cash and devoting it to buying experiences (say, 40 wonderful meals that cost $100 each) creates much more happiness. And what’s more, we watch TV alone, but we eat dinner with others. The increase in social interaction—a key predictor of people’s happiness—means that experiences generally offer greater happiness bang for the buck than material goods.

Cook: What advice do you have for people planning a summer vacation? What can they do to get the most happiness out of it for the money?

Norton: There’s a funny thing about vacations: we often experience one of the biggest increases in happiness in the weeks before the vacation begins. This seems odd—after all, the purpose of a vacation is to go away and be happy—but it speaks to the power of anticipation. Yes, it can be hard to wait for things (think of children in the days leading up to Christmas) but research shows that anticipation is a huge and often untapped source of happiness. Vacations are great, but looking forward to that sunny beach while trapped in an office cubicle can be nearly as exciting and interesting as the beach itself.

Given this, how do we maximize the happiness we get from our vacations? While we’re often tempted to put the trip on a credit card and pay it off months after the trip, we suggest a new strategy: pay now, and consume later. Imagine a vacation where you had to pay for every single bite of food you took, with a man standing next to you and making you fork over a dollar each bite. Not. Much. Fun. But when we pay for things up front, by the time they come around they actually feel free—because thepain of paying is so far in the past, we can truly enjoy the moment. And of course, paying up front also increases the likelihood that we will spend the time before the vacation daydreaming about it. Our employers might not be pleased, but that anticipation increases our happiness.

Cook: There are many people who earn a lot of money, but then have no time to enjoy it. How do you think about the trade-off between time and money, and what advice do you have for people as they plan the broad contours of their life?

Norton: One of the biggest mistakes we all make with our money is that we fail to use it in ways that maximize the amount of time we spend engaged in activities that make us happy. Instead, we often accidentally use money in ways that seem like they will make us happy, but instead doom us to unhappy time.

Take buying a nice house in the suburbs. It seems like a great idea. In fact most Americans see owning a house as a key part of living the American dream. And when you buy a house in the ‘burbs, you’re thinking of all the family barbecues you’ll have on the lawn. But what you’re not thinking enough about is the fact that you’ve just doomed yourself to a two-hour commute—in heavy traffic—every day for the rest of your life. Would having a large house be enough to make you happy at the end of a long day when you’d spent two hours in standstill traffic? Our guess is, not so much. And so in general, thinking about how every purchase you make is going to affect your time allows us to spend money in ways that buy us happier time.

Cook: OK, talk to me about Sarah Silverman.

Norton: Sarah Silverman is a personal hero of ours, not just because she’s talented and hilarious, but because her philosophy of comedy contains nuggets of wisdom that we all can apply to our own happiness.

Silverman loves, loves, loves one kind of joke over all others: fart jokes. As a result, rather than get sick and tired of the thing she loves, she demands that her writers use fart jokes sparingly. This way, when one comes up, it feels like a treat instead of like a routine.

Aside from fart jokes, a large body of research suggests the value of what we call “Make it a Treat.” By limiting our access to certain products, we enhance our consumption greatly once we encounter those products again. In one experiment of ours, some people were assigned to eat chocolate every day for a week; others were asked to abstain from chocolate. When they came back a week later, we gave them more chocolate to eat. Nobody hated the chocolate—it was chocolate, after all—but those who had given it up for the week enjoyed the chocolate much more than those who’d been allowed to eat chocolate the whole time.

Cook: What can you tell us about giving gifts to others? 

Norton: We often think about giving gifts to others as increasing the happiness of the recipient. Again, think of kids opening their gifts on Christmas morning… Our research, however, shows that gift giving offers benefits to an unexpected group: the givers themselves. In experiments we’ve conducted in countries ranging from the United States to South Africa, from Canada to Uganda, we consistently find that spending money on other people—whether buying gifts for friends or donating to charity—provides people with much more happiness than spending that money on themselves.

The next time you’re in line at Starbucks, think about buying someone else a coffee instead of snagging one for yourself. Or, if you can’t bear to go coffee-less, at least consider buying a gift coffee for a friend in addition to the one you’ll gulp down.

Cook: Are there any lessons you've applied from this research to your own life? 

Norton: Behavioral scientists have studied how people fail to consider what are called “opportunity costs.” Simply put, anything we buy means we are giving up something else. But we don’t often think of our spending this way. When we are deciding between a stereo that costs $1,000 and one that costs $1,100, we focus almost exclusively on which stereo we like better. We don’t naturally frame the decision as a choice between the $1,100 stereo or the $1,000 stereo plus $100 worth of new music. Put this way, the $1,000 stereo seems amazingly attractive.

It’s a bit the same with money and happiness. We get stuck in thinking that we need to have a house, a car, a flat-screen television to be happy, and so we spend nearly all of our money on these possessions. I try to ask myself before I make any purchase: What else could I be doing with this money? Am I really using this in the best way to maximize my happiness? If not, and this happens with alarming frequency, I put my wallet away.

Reading the web alone, together

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/06/what-will-replace-google-reader.html

In early March, Google announced that it would “retire” Google Reader tomorrow, July 1st. An outcry followed. Google Reader had come to define the way many of its information-addicted users sorted through otherwise unmanageable amounts of Web content. It provided an answer to a question everybody asks when they sit down in front of a computer: What should I read right now? Everything.

Reader allowed its millions of users to quickly scan and read every story from any number of Web sites in a single, constantly updated stream. It worked fairly simply: many Web sites produce standardized feeds of their content. Users add the feeds of the sites they want to read—which can number dozens, hundreds, or thousands—to their list, and instead of visiting those however many different Web sites each day, they just wait for the sites’ content to come to them. Launched in 2005, Google Reader was not the first feed reader, but it became the most iconic.

The use of feed readers never became a truly mainstream Web habit, which is why Google is comfortable closing Reader over the shouts of its devoted user base. Moreover, the way we discover and read on the Web has changed dramatically since the birth of Google Reader, eight years ago. While Google Reader’s sharing features spawned an ersatz social network based on sharing feeds with other users, what most users read was largely self-directed.

Since 2005, social media has become the de facto way one keeps up with the Internet, and it has been repeatedly fingered over the years as the culprit in the demise of feed readers generally. Facebook transformed, from a place to stalk classmates, into an unending stream of things to view: links, photos, comments (and advertising). By July 2012, one billion things were shared daily on Facebook. At the same time, Twitter rapidly became more and more popular, creating personalized news—and not news—feeds. Twitter is the most efficient link-sharing medium on the Internet; there is always something to read, and it is almost always up to the minute, with four hundred million tweets per day. And while community-driven link-sharing Web sites have existed for a long time, there has been nothing that approaches Reddit’s current scale or scope as a community-driven link-sharing site. Over the last couple of years it has become a true internet juggernaut, with thirty seven billion page views and four hundred million unique visitors in 2012.

Nonetheless, in killing Reader, Google created a new product category overnight: the Google Reader replacement. A number of companies have sought to build the next Google Reader, in order to woo its millions of users to their Web sites. Good alternatives already exist, but press attention has largely been lavished on one built by Digg, a news Web site that was revived last year. Digg Reader, currently in its early stages, is explicitly intended as a successor to Google Reader; the first thing it asks new users to do is import their Google Reader feeds. It complements Digg’s Web site, which uses algorithms and human editors to surface news and interesting content from around the Web. The current interface is focussed and pleasantly minimal: a soft gray sidebar shows a list of feeds, while content appears in a larger pane on the right side. That’s it.

But a feed reader still represents a fundamentally different vision of gathering information than the social model that has gripped the Web. It is largely a single-user enterprise—a digital monk diligently scanning feeds. And it is intensely focussed on the Web sites most important to the user, rather than the omnivorous grazing that characterizes scanning news on social media, as links are surfaced by the people the user follows.

While Digg Reader is young, and new features are still being built, it will remain a product for power users, tied to that traditional one-person feed reader model, for the time being. When asked what a more social-oriented Digg Reader could look like, Jake Levine, the general manager of Digg, replied by e-mail, “I don’t know if we have the answer yet. For now, we know we have to nail the single user utility.” In the meantime, its internal sharing features are rudimentary, built on “diggs,” —think a Facebook “like”—but they require a concerted effort to use. Digg also denotes stories that are popular in the Reader.

Another reader service that launched last week, called Potluck, provides a vision for what a socially driven feed reader might look like: it creates a list of stories based on what a user’s friends are reading and sharing. When a user wants to share a story, she clicks a button in her browser, called a “bookmarklet,” to dump it into her friends’ Potluck feeds. So when users arrive at Potluck, much like Digg Reader and Google Reader, they find, on the left, a feed of new stories. But those stories are placed in the feed explicitly because a friend—or two, or twenty—has shared it. Imagine a version of your Twitter feed stripped of everything except links tweeted by the people you follow.

There is something to this model: Rdio, a streaming music service, provides a more subtle version, populating its home page with the albums that a user’s friends are listening to. The model creates a passively communal experience in which you know that you’re always caught up with the things your friends are listening to or reading. Still, there are obstacles. Philosophically, the problem with these kinds of social services is that they perpetuate groupthink in a literal fashion. But the more practical issue with people-powered services is that they rely on people. Potluck, right now, feels a little desolate. It’s a classic ostrich-and-egg problem: it needs active users to be interesting, but it’s going to be difficult to ensnare active users when it’s not that interesting.

Everybody consumes the Web differently, so it’s hard to imagine a single reading service that works for every person. But it seems reasonable to think that one combining a person’s deep and abiding interests with the serendipity of social media could work for most. Digg may well be in the best position to accomplish this. It has a Web site, which surfaces new material from the around the Web, and the Reader, which provides a comprehensive view of a user’s favorite Web sites. In addition, Betaworks, its parent company, recently purchased the “read later” service Instapaper, which allows users to save Web articles they come across to access later on their mobile devices. And Digg is just one of a number of companies striving to figure out a better answer to, “What should I read now?” Google Reader may be gone, but there’s never been a better time to read on the Web.

How Money Actually Buys Happiness

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/how_money_actually_buys_happiness.html

Warren Buffett's advice about money has been scrutinized — and implemented — by savvy investors all over the world. But while most people know they can benefit from expert help to make money, they think they already know how to spend money to reap the most happiness. As a result, they follow their intuitions, using their money to buy things they think will make them happy, from televisions to cars to houses to second houses and beyond.

The problem with this approach is that a decade of research — conducted by us and our colleagues — demonstrates that our intuitions about how to turn money into happiness are misguided at best and dead-wrong at worst. Those televisions, cars, and houses? They have almost no impact on our happiness. The good news is that we now know what kind of spending does enhance our happiness — insight that's valuable to consumers and companies alike.

Buffet recently penned an op-ed titled "My Philanthropic Pledge" — but rather than offer financial advice about giving, he suggested we give as a way to enhance our emotional wellbeing. Of his decision to donate 99% of his wealth to charity, Buffett said that he "couldn't be happier."

But do we need to give away billions like Buffet in order to experience that warm glow? Luckily for us ordinary folks, even more modest forms of generosity can make us happy. In a series of experiments, we've found that asking people to spend money on others — from giving to charity to buying gifts for friends and family — reliably makes them happier than spending that same money on themselves.

And our research shows that even in very poor countries like India and Uganda — where many people are struggling to meet their basic needs — individuals who reflected on giving to others were happier than those who reflected on spending on themselves. What's more, spending even a few dollars on someone else can trigger a boost in happiness. In one study, we found that asking people to spend as little as $5 on someone else over the course of a day made them happier at the end of that day than people who spent the $5 on themselves.

Smart managers are using the power of investing in others to increase the happiness of their employees. Google, for example, offers a compelling "bonus" plan for employees. The company maintains a fund whereby any employee can nominate another employee to receive a $150 bonus. Given the average salaries at Google, a $150 bonus is small change. But the nature of the bonus — one employee giving a bonus to another rather than demanding that bonus for himself — can have a large emotional payoff.

Investing in others can also influence customers. Managers at an amusement park were unable to convince patrons to buy pictures of themselves on one of the park's many rides. Less than one percent purchased the photo at the usual $12.95 price. But researchers tried a clever variation. Other customers were allowed to pay whatever they wanted (including $0) for a photo, but were told that half of what they paid would be sent to charity. Now, buying the picture allows the customer not only to take home a souvenir, but also invest in others. Given this option, nearly 4.5% of customers purchased the photo, and paid an average of more than $5. As a result, the firm's profit-per-rider increased fourfold.

Warren Buffett, happiness guru. Just as we have taken his advice on making money, research suggests we should now take his advice on making happiness. By rethinking how we spend our money — even as little as $5 — we can reap more happiness for every dollar we spend. And Buffett's happiness advice comes with a financial payoff as well. By maximizing the happiness that employees and customers get from every dollar they receive in bonuses or spend on products, companies can increase employee and customer satisfaction — and benefit the bottom line.

7 Reasons I Dumped Facebook

http://news.yahoo.com/7-reasons-dumped-facebook-123200359.html

It’s official.  I’m off the Facebook grid.  Nobody offended me.  I didn’t have a bad experience.  While I’m not thrilled about the idea of Big Brother watching my every move, I’m not particularly paranoid about social media sharing.   Therefore, I’m sharing why I’m dumping Facebook and committing to Twitter and Instagram.

1)     Facebook sucks time from my life, and unlike money, time is a zero sum game (thanks to Laura Vanderkam for reminding us).  Without question, some of the time I spend on Facebook is edifying and life-giving.  For example, my good friend, Nick Selvi—a husband, father, teacher and musician—is stricken with stage four rectal cancer, and his Facebook page keeps me informed of the battle he and his family are waging.  I’ll miss that, but hopefully I’ll be a real friend and call and visit to support him.

2)     Most of my Facebook friends aren’t (actually friends).  They’re not enemies.  It’s not that I wish them ill, but for the majority of them, there’s a reason we don’t associate other than on Facebook.  For most, it’s not because of a geographic disparity or because they don’t have an email address or phone number—it’s because we’re simply not actual…friends.  (This makes me wonder if the reason I initially got on Facebook was actually a matter of pride.  “How many virtual friends can I assemble?”  I appreciated thereminder from Leo Babauta this week that comparing ourselves to others is an exercise in futility.)

3)     There are other (better) options for photo sharing.  Seeing my friends’ and family’s pictures, and sharing my own, is what I like most about Facebook.  A picture and a caption can generate a belly laugh or bring tears to my eyes.  I also know that it is the real-time exchange of family pics that likely inspired 90% of the grandparents who are on Facebook today—so I’m not going to leave them hanging.  Now instead of merely using Instagram to obscure my lack of photographic skill and then upload pictures on Facebook, I’ll simply use Instagram as my photo exchange medium, inviting only family and close friends to follow me there.

4)     Facebook brings out the worst in people.  How I didn’t quit Facebook during the last presidential campaign, I’ll never know.  The willingness of so many to spew half-baked punditry that almost assuredly alienates them from half of their friends—and convinces precisely no one of their opinion—boggles the mind!  Yes, these offenders are buoyed by the 10 Likes they get from the people who think similarly, but scores more harden their opinion in opposition and are likely offended in the process.  (If this point doesn’t resonate with you, you may be an offender.)

5)     I learn more on Twitter.  Twitter is to Facebook as a biography is to a novel.  I know there’s nothing wrong with reading fiction, but I confess that I (wrongly) feel a little guilty when I spend time reading something that didn’t (or won’t) actually happen.  I enjoy being on Twitter, much as I enjoy reading a good biography, but I’m allowed to feel like I’m better for having done so—that I’ve learned something beneficial.  Twitter is now my number one source for hard news and opinions I value, as well as a relational connecting point.  Twitter is more of a resource and less of a popularity contest.  And let’s face it, for all too many, Facebook is really closer to the intellectual or emotional equivalent of eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting.  (It’s not good for you.)

6)     The presence of ads on Facebook is getting ridiculous.  I care more about you than the fact that you like Cherry Coke.  I certainly care more about you than whatever Facebook wants me to buy, and it seems like there are increasingly more ads every day.  Am I the only one who notices that?

7)     Less is more.  I’m on a mission to simplify life, to slow it down to a pace at which it can actually be consumed, not just tasted.  I don’t want to hide behind the ubiquitous, “I’m really busy” as a badge of honor.  I want a lower cost of living (not just financially) and a higher quality of life.  I want to limit the number of [things] that compete for my attention so that I can apply more attention to those [things] I care the most about.  Less is the new more.

Goodbye, Facebook.  Follow me on Twitter: @TimMaurer.

Q&A: The Price of Paying Attention

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/11/information-sources/

Kent Thune recently asked me a few questions about The price of paying attention. He used a portions of my answers in his column, but much of what I wrote was off topic.

Never wanting to waste anything once written, here are those thoughts on Research, Media, Information Sourceset. al. :

1. How much time do you spend each day searching for and consuming information?

Less and less – I probably spend more time looking at curated material and less outright searching than I used to.

Twitter has become the new tape. I am constantly discovering new voices there. I do find myself looking for new sources, but that is not the focus of my process.

Rather, I seem to be hunting for excuses to eliminate bad, unreliable or biased sources. Investors have this cognitive bias that “more information” helps they make better informed decisions. It turns out not to be true; more information helps them be more emotionally comfortable with their decision making – over confident in fact. Paradoxically, more info leads to overconfidence and WORSE decision making.

2. How do you choose your information sources? Is this process similar to building a portfolio of investments?

Process is important. I want to know that there is a method to the madness of the person I am reading. Sure, track record matters, but I need to see a justifiable rational process that is not based on luck or randomness.
These days, I seem to be reading people rather than organizations. For example, Dan Gross is at Daily Beast – I will read him anywhere, even at a site (like the Daily Beast) filled with biased and corrupt writers I detest. I’ve read Jesse Eisinger at TSCM, WSJ, Portfolio and now Pro Publica – where ever he goes, I am a reader. And James Montier used to be at Dresdner Kleinwort, now he’s at GMO. So it’s the person, not the organization that matters most to me.

I try to eliminate people with bias or a terrible track record or who have to crank out content – give me any excuse to remove one more source of bad or mis-information and I am happy to do so. The perma-bulls and perma-bears are easy targets; the harder ones are the bad judgment or poor process.

For example, Kevin Hasset is one of the authors of Dow 36,000. That’s a fatal money losing horror show of awful judgment AND terrible timing. He is henceforth quarantined as a source for anything ever again. I cannot afford to let anything he writes influence. Ben Stein is another guy who simply murdered his readers financially. There are tons of other examples – people who denied the 2007-09 recession as late as October 2008, rewriters of history. They are too expensive, too costly, to allow them to influence my thoughts.

Every now and again, I have to sequester a writer I like. Perfect example: Look at Andrew Sullivan, who is a compelling and interesting author. I used to read him all the time. Even worse, he is a powerful and persuasive writer, making him all the more believable, and therefor dangerous. But his judgment was so god-awful about the Iraq war, that I simply quarantined him as a deadly infection, never to be trusted again. Guys like him are a curse to anyone who run money.

3. Have you noticed a proliferation of amateurism and incompetence in financial media in recent years? If so, which media type (i.e. web, print, cable, etc) has deteriorated the most?

Television News is just awful, cable especially. We switched off the TVs in the office about 5 years ago and never looked back. CNN is mostly idiotic, Fox News actually makes you uninformed + filled with wrong info, and CNBC has turned into this money-losing shout fest.

“Lose the News” was a column I wrote in 2005, and its more apt than ever (here)

The WSJ, once the greatest paper in the world, has lost a good chunk of credibility in my eyes since Murdoch took it over. The reason is his blatant bias – anything with a remotely political relevance is now 100% untrustworthy. Its still an excellent news source for me, but so long as he owns it, there is an asterisk attached to every article. MAY BE EDITED FOR POLITICAL REASONS. Forget the phone hacking scandal, that old bastard should go to jail for what he did to the paper. I hope NWS Corp spins it out so it can go back to being the best paper in America.

4. What is “chart porn” and why do you believe it is an apt term?

The website Chartporn.com credits me with coining the term some years ago, but I have no idea what I was thinking – other than gratuitous, hot sweaty charts of steamy market action and beautiful economic data are so wonderfully informative.

If a picture if worth a 1000 words, a well-crafted chart is worth 10 times that.

5. What cautions and advice can you offer traders with regard to their information consumption? Is there a diminishing return of information (i.e. more is less)?

Why are you consuming content? Are you looking to confirm a previously held belief? (Confirmation bias). Are you looking for additional information to make you feel good about your decisions? (Overconfidence bias)
Have a methodology that is not dependent upon finding some tiny piece of hidden info. That is not a repeatable process.

6. At The Big Picture, you don’t use SEO strategies or button-pressing headlines, such as “3 Reasons to Buy Gold Now.” Has this honest and often irreverent approach to financial news attributed to your success as a blogger?

Daniel Boorstin, the former librarian of Congress, once said “I write to discover what I think.” There is a lot of wisdom in that.

My writing is a way I manage to take all of the related but disparate thoughts across a variety of disciplines and organize them.

Here is a little secret: I write for me, not the reader. If that sounds odd, or anti-social, or even selfish, well, its all 3 of those things. But that’s why its very honest and perhaps why some people find it helpful. I am always seeking the Truth, trying to discern what is reality. There is enough bullshit in the world, who needs another SEO driven, hyped up headline content farm?

7. How important is intuition for the trader and how might information consumption affect it?

I don’t know, but I suspect intuition is wildly over-rated. Is it consistent reliable repeatable? If intuition was all that important than newbie traders with good intuition would be able to sit down at a desk and making a killing.

That does not seem to ever happen.

I suspect the best traders learn to internalize lots of what they have learned over time, and what appears to be intuition is really the result of 1000s of hours of hard work, research, practice, experience.

Thanks again, Barry.