Month: January 2012

Making Really Hard Decisions

January 25, 2012
Suppose that you have to make a decision that will significantly alter the course of your life. For instance, imagine that you are trying to: decide whether to marry your boyfriend or girlfriend choose between two job offers in different fields decide whether to finish your PhD program or drop out pick between two cities that you're thinking of moving to These kinds of decisions can be excruciatingly hard, and people often waffle in an unpleasant state for months trying to ch...
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How Can We Learn From Our Mistakes?

January 14, 2012
Suppose that you'd like to make fewer mistakes. How do you go about actually learning from the ones you've already made, rather than repeating them? The first step is to admit to yourself that you've made a mistake. Trivial errors, like accidentally putting the container of orange juice in the freezer, are easy enough to come to terms with. But for more serious matters, or matters that involve pride or shame, our minds often recoils at the pain caused by acknowledging we've screwed up. We mak...
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