Gogh1 A person striving to reach a difficult goal or complete a task ― building a rocking chair or losing weight, for instance ― will be wise to supplement his motivation to do so by making a bet on it with a friend.
2 After retiring from the service, he went to France.
3 After twenty-two weeks, the rats on the soft-food diet had become obese, showing that texture is an important factor in weight gain.
4 Any discussion of coevolution quickly runs into what philosophers call a "causality dilemma," a problem we recognize from the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
5 As a result of that heightened conceptual fluency, consumers developed a more positive attitude toward the ketchup advertisement.
6 By combining sources of iron with sources of vitamin C, they can ensure that their bodies are better able to absorb both.
7 Further studies involving pythons (eating ground cooked steak versus intact raw steak) confirmed these findings.
8 However much you may remember the past or anticipate the future, you live in the present.
9 I often explain to my MBA students that the reason they take the same seat in class every week is that we are, at our core, instinctual animals.
10 If a pilot leaving from LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York.
11 In doing so, he will receive both a positive incentive to complete the task (his desire to collect the reward for winning the bet) and a negative disincentive to quit the task (his desire to avoid having to pay out if he loses).
12 In the same way, one of the basic principles of early modernist architecture was that every part of a building must be functional, without any unnecessary or fancy additions.
13 It is obvious then that there is no authority external to the community of language speakers against whose prescriptions all usage could be checked.
14 It is sometimes referred to as the "Calorie Delusion."
15 It is, however, possible for a person to personally manipulate and create consequences for his actions.
16 Lack of fossil evidence makes it impossible to run the movie backward and watch the first steps of the dance unfold, but modern studies suggest that plants are often the ones taking the lead.
17 Make understanding people a fun game, the solving of puzzles.
18 Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.
19 Many writers make the common mistake of being too vague when picturing a reader.
20 Of course, the moment during which you read that sentence is no longer happening.
21 On the botanical side, plants had long been experimenting with insect pollination, attracting dance partners with nectar or edible blossoms.
22 Once we have chosen a seat and made it through class safely without being attacked, the part of our brain responsible for our survival tells us that our best option is to repeat that behavior, because in a way it is the most economical use of our energy.
23 One study showed that a certain word (e.g., boat) seemed more pleasant when presented after related words (e.g., sea, sail).
24 Some of the things we profess to value in the abstract may not, in fact, characterize our actual everyday experiences.
25 Somehow, putting the details of the face into words interfered with the natural facial recognition at which we all usually excel.
26 Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff ― the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet ― but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart.
27 Suddenly, just a few minutes after Timothy dozed off, something woke him up.
28 The movies that are created by these questions don't trap you into worry.
29 The present moment does not exist in them, and therefore neither does the flow of time.
30 The questions you ask in your mind create your worries.
31 The skeletons found in early farming villages in the Fertile Crescent are usually shorter than those of neighboring foragers, which suggests that their diets were less varied.
32 Their minds are never idle and, once they start talking, their mouths aren't, either.
33 There is good evidence that the current obesity crisis is caused, in part, not by what we eat (though this is of course vital, too) but by the degree to which our food has been processed before we eat it.
34 They also show signs of stress, associated, perhaps, with the intensive labor required for plowing, harvesting crops, felling trees, maintaining buildings and fences, and grinding grains.
35 They learn the meanings of words by trial and error, by hypothesizing a fit between word and object and using the feedback they get from others to refine the abstract category for which the word stands.
36 This swarm phase of the locust is triggered by the build up of locusts as their numbers multiply, threatening food supply, which is why they swarm to move to a new location all together.
37 This will calm you down and help you observe people more dispassionately, understanding them on a deeper level.
38 Timothy, not knowing what to do, stayed very still just watching them fight.
39 Upon returning to St Petersburg and failing to find an academic position, he began work as a public official there, but his interests turned more and more toward literature.
40 We want them to think and act a certain way, most often the way we think and act.
41 When researchers changed monkeyflowers from pink to orange, for example, pollinator visits shifted from bumblebees to hummingbirds.
42 Work with what they give you, instead of resisting and trying to change them.
43 Yet as natural as this way of thinking is, you will not find it reflected in science.
44 You don't worry because you care; you worry because that is what you have learned to do.