Morning Advantage: Get Control of Yourself

In the high-stakes, male-dominated world of money trading, it was long thought that the best players were the ones with nerves of steel and hearts of stone. But analysis of interviews conducted by the London School of Economics and the Open University with 118 traders (116 men, 2 women) and 10 senior managers at four City of London investment banks found otherwise. The most successful traders were not the ones that suppressed their emotions but the ones most acutely in touch with them.

When making losses, the best traders (whose annual income averaged £500,000) acknowledged their anxiety, became more cautious, and took fewer risks. The least successful (who averaged only £100,000) tended to ignore their anxiety and continue to go with their gut. Ironically, the researchers conclude, by suppressing emotions, the less successful traders were actually ensnared by them, relying on feelings alone rather than thinking critically about the sources of their hunches. (No data on which group those two women fell into, though.)

WAKE ME UP WHEN THE LIGHTS GO ON

Why PowerPoint Presentations Feel So Boring (The Psychologist)

A growing body of research is finding clear patterns in our subjective perceptions of time. In retrospect, for instance, people tend to equate the amount of time that’s gone by with the amount of data they’ve dealt with in it — so they’ll estimate the time they spent solving a complex problem as longer than the identical time they spent solving a simpler problem. The more interruptions in a given period, or the more pieces information is broken up into, the more time will seem to have elapsed. No wonder those bullet-point ridden PowerPoints feel interminable.

FRONTIERS OF RECYCLING

Making a Dent in the Pacific Garbage Patch (Good)

Why go all the way to Hawaii to get recycled plastic? To use up some of that junk floating out in the Pacific. Together with volunteers from Sustainable Coastlines and the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, designer cleaning-products company Method has been scouring the beaches of the James Campbell Wildlife Refuge in Oahu for plastic debris from the Pacific patch to turn into its slick-looking bottles for a combination dish and hand cleaner slated to be released in November. It’s a dirty job but…

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I'll Get Back To You

Why Procrastination Is Good for You (Smithsonian)
Innovation Almost Bankrupted LEGO (Knowledge@Australian School of Business)
Nine Small Companies Making Waves at the 2012 Olympics (Inc.)