Human Factors
We tend to blame burnout on simply doing too much, but some researchers argue it…
For years I believed burnout was a simple equation. Too many hours in, not enough rest out, and eventually you hit the wall.
Human Factors
Thought of the day from Carl Jung: "Who looks outside, dreams
I am not a psychologist or a therapist, and what follows is one writer reading Jung and a bit of modern research, not advice.
Human Factors
Researchers found that people who often share meals with others tend to report…
Most days I leave my place around 1pm and go to lunch, usually alone. It is the seam in my working day, the bit between the morning at my desk and the afternoon spent moving between coffee shops.
Human Factors
The ideal amount of leisure time might be less than you think
Picture the version of your life where the work just stops. No inbox, no calendar, no one waiting on you for anything.
Human Factors
Researchers tracked football fans and found they tended to overestimate how long…
You hear the buzzer. Your team has won, and you are already living a little way into the future, certain this feeling will carry you through tomorrow and the day after.
Technology
A 2025 study of over 600 people found a correlation between leaning on AI tools and…
A study I read recently has stuck with me. It found that the people who lean hardest on AI tools tend to score lowest on critical thinking, with the steepest gap among the young.
Human Factors
In the 1990s, anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued there's a natural ceiling on…
Here is a number you may have run into without knowing where it came from: 150. It gets quoted in management books, on team-size pages, in articles about why your group chat feels too big.
Human Factors
Researchers tracked 122 people for three months and found that on days they visited…
There is a particular kind of flatness that comes from moving through the same loop of places, day after day.
Human Factors
Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Epictetus
A short email lands wrong. A plan you were counting on falls through an hour before it was supposed to happen.
Human Factors
Many people assume the path to happiness is to want it and aim for it, but some…
Here are two things that both seem obviously true. The more you want something, the harder you will work to get it.
Human Factors
Thought of the day from Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius
Whatever else changes across two thousand years, this much seems to hold: a person only ever has the moment they are standing in.
Human Factors
We tend to think money can't buy lasting life satisfaction
Money can't buy happiness. We say it so often it has the worn feel of a proverb, the kind of thing nobody bothers to check. And then a group of economists went and checked it. They followed people who actually came into money, for years on end.
Human Factors
When 61 UK companies cut the working week to four days with no cut in pay, the…
Take a day off the working week, keep the pay the same, and surely the work falls off a cliff.
Human Factors
A cluttered desk might not feel like a big deal, but some research suggests…
At university my desk during exam time was a mess. Coffee cups colonised the corners, highlighters lay around with no caps, three different revision notebooks sat open at three different chapters, and photocopied past papers.
Human Factors
A two-week mindfulness course might sound too short to make any real difference…
Sixteen percentile points. That is the size of the average GRE reading-comprehension gain a group of undergraduates posted after two weeks, in a study run by researchers at UC Santa Barbara.
Human Factors
Many people view income and titles as the measure of a successful life, but one…
Is there a scoreboard you check without meaning to? Salary, the size of the place you live, the car in the drive, how all of that stacks up against the people you went to school with.