Rainmakers: Why bad weather means good productivity.

Rainmakers: why bad weather means good productivity.

People believe that weather conditions influence their everyday work life, but to date, little is known about how weather affects individual productivity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we predict and find that bad weather increases individual productivity and that it does so by eliminating potential cognitive distractions resulting from good weather. When the weather is bad, individuals appe...

Journal of Applied Psychology Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity

Why bad ideas are a good idea

What would happen if we wrote an Abstract that was the exact opposite of what the paper described? This is a bad idea, but it makes us think more carefully than usual about properties of Abstracts. This paper describes BadIdeas, a collection of techniques that uses ‘bad’ or ‘silly’ ideas to inspire creativity, explore design domains and teach critical thinking in interaction design. We describe...

Why Even Good Defenses May be Bad

Why good leaders make bad decisions.

Decision making lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Yet the daunting reality is that enormously important decisions made by intelligent, responsible people with the best information and intentions are nevertheless hopelessly flawed at times. In part, that's due to the way our brains work. Modern neuroscience teaches us that two hard-wired processes in the brain--pattern re...