Let’s cut to the chase–psychologist Ron Friedman told the Harvard Business Review that most people “typically have a window of about three hours where we’re really, really focused.” Our own data backs this number up as well. When we analyzed over 225 million hours of working time, we found that the average knowledge worker (someone who deals with information for a living, like a writer, developer, designer, or manager), is only productive for 12.5 hours a week. That’s roughly 2.5 hours a day. […]
If you planned your day assuming you would have eight hours of time for productive work, and you end up with just over one hour, it’s going to be really frustrating.
Even worse, you’re going to keep adding more and more to your plate, thinking you have all this extra time to do “core work” each day.
It’s upsetting. But it’s also human nature.
For decades, psychologists have called this behavior the Planning Fallacy–our bias toward being overly optimistic when it comes to how much time is needed to complete a future task. In other words, we’re notoriously bad at looking into the future and figuring out how long a task will take us. […]
One of the most frustrating things about the modern workplace is not feeling like you’re making meaningful progress. And while you might get paid for 40 hours of work each week, you can’t realistically schedule 40 hours of work. We all have biases that get in the way of scheduling our days properly. Only by understanding and acknowledging them are we able to set ourselves up for success.
[Source: Fast Company, “We’re terrible at planning our time. Here’s how to fix it” on August, 12, 2018.]
How Self-Esteem Changes Over the Lifespan (Psychology Today UK)
“The cumulative increase in self-esteem going from childhood to young adulthood to midlife was much larger than I expected,” says Richard Robins, a psychology professor at the University of California. […]
Scientists recently combed through numerous studies of self-esteem to chart the average changes that occur from childhood to old age. […]
The team analyzed 331 studies that assessed self-esteem, collectively covering more than 164,000 people between 4 and 94 years old. Self-esteem is measured with questionnaires in which respondents state to what extent they agree with statements such as “I feel that I’m a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others” or “I wish I could have more respect for myself.”
The investigators discovered that self-esteem tended to rise slightly from ages 4 to 11, remain stagnant from 11 to 15, increase markedly from 15 to 30, and subtly improve until peaking at 60. It stayed constant from 60 to 70 years old, declined slightly from ages 70 to 90, and dropped sharply from 90 to 94. (Fewer studies addressed the oldest and youngest age groups—just a couple each for the 4 to 6 range and 90 to 94 range—so the evidence is weaker for the tail ends of the spectrum.) The results were published in the journal Psychological Bulletin. […]
[Source: Psychology Today, “How Self-Esteem Changes Over the Lifespan” by Abigail Fagan on Sept. 6, 2018.]