Teeco Solutions July 2017

When someone tells you about their business, an event they’re attending, or their friend’s lost dog, what makes you pass that information along to someone else? According to Live Science, you share the information because it makes you look good, not them. A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania examined the brain activity of 80 college students while they read 80 titles and abstracts from the New York Times’ health section. These articles had been shared a total of 120,000 times via Facebook, Twitter, and email by real readers, according to the New York Times. Over the course of the study, researchers noticed a specific brain activity pattern that was linked to the students sharing the articles in the real world. Emily Falk, the study’s senior author and the director of Penn’s Communication Neuroscience Lab, found that people are interested in reading or sharing content that connects

to their own experiences. According to Falk, “They share things that might improve their relationships, make them look smart or empathic, or cast them in a positive light.” Whether you share information through word of mouth, social media, or email, this makes complete sense. We share information that resonates with us because it connects to our emotions. These findings are not only pertinent to Falk, who hopes this information will help the science community share health behavior changes, but also to any person who has a message to share. And we all have information to share. Small-business owners communicate with customers, parents try to get through to teenagers, grandparents try to relate to their grandkids, journalists communicate with readers, doctors communicate with patients, etc. The moral of the story is this: If you have information you want shared, make the people you are talking to feel good about themselves when they pass it on.

MICHAEL BREUS’ ‘THE POWER OF WHEN’

You know you’re supposed to eat right, exercise every day, and sleep 8 hours each night. You might even have a routine down from when the alarm goes off to when your head hits the pillow. But did you know there’s actually a perfect time to do each thing every day? That’s the thesis of “The Power of When,” a new time- management book by Dr. Michael Breus. Breus, a clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep disorders, realized that

That wonder led him to look into what else could be timed for maximum efficiency. And the more he researched, the more he discovered. “Contrary to what you might have heard, there is a perfect time to do everything,” Breus writes. From that cup of coffee and your daily workout to when you watch TV, there’s a time for every activity in your day. And by a “perfect time,” Dr. Breus means a perfect time for you. Much of this book is dedicated to helping you learn your own habits and preferences, so you can customize your perfect time routine according to what will work in your own life. Breus is a scientist first, and his findings are based on hard evidence. His advice on when to wake up, for example, involves the use of a sleep monitor and is based on our internal biological clocks, which were, for thousands of years, activated by the sunrise. Humans were slowly brought into stage 1 or 2 sleep by the gentle increase of light. That method is less taxing on our systems and leaves us feeling more awake when we rise. This book covers everything, from learning something new or drinking coffee to meditating or using the restroom. Whether you want to read a book at the optimum time, or change your sleep schedule, “The Power of When” is a must-read.

for some of his patients the time they went to sleep was actually more important than the amount of sleep they got. By changing when they crashed, they changed how effective that sleep was. “I wondered, ‘What else could this work for?’” Breus says.

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