Before bed last night, I came across this New Yorker article from 2016 that I thought was fascinating and broadly useful for both life and business. In it, Maria Konnikova talks about how people learn to become resilient. And she starts by citing the work of a developmental psychologist and clinician who spent decades studying why some people seem to manage stress and trauma far better than others. Here is an excerpt talking about why that might be the case:

From a young age, resilient children tended to “meet the world on their own terms.” They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a “positive social orientation.” “Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively,” Werner wrote. Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.

It immediately reminded me of something that Steve Jobs once said in an interview back when more people wore buttoned up jean shirts. His comment was that one of the most powerful things you can learn in life is that much of what surrounds us was created by people who are no smarter than us. His point being that everything can be altered. We all have that ability. We are "orchestrators of our own fate."

The article goes on to argue that one of the ways we can exhibit a strong internal locus of control is by learning to view and respond to situations in a productive way. Put differently, whether or not we are subjected to shitty experiences matters less than how we ultimately react to and view those shitty experiences. If you can reframe and place in positive terms, then you can reduce any perceived stresses and become more resilient.

The good news is that, supposedly, these are skills that can be learned. So if this topic is at all interesting, I would encourage you to check out the full article. It certainly caught my attention before bed last night.

Here is an interesting study about personalities and places (Journal article here and study here). It is interesting because so many of us are working from home and away from our regular environments. But it is also interesting because a lot of us, here on this blog, are in the business of creating spaces. And these environments have an impact on all of us.

The researchers for this study started by assessing the personalities of some 2,000 university students. The objective was to determine their baseline temperaments according to the "Big Five" personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Once that was established, the students were sent out into the world with a location-based app on their phone.

Four times a day, the participants were asked to enter their current location, as well as answer a few questions about their current state of mind. The big takeway from this study is twfold and is as follows: "People actively select their environments, and the environments they select can alter their psychological characteristics [both] in the moment and over time."

The first bit is perhaps not all that surprising. We all have different personality traits and we choose environments that suit what we like. Extroverts, for example, tend to spend less time at home and more time at restaurants, bars, clubs, and at friends' places. (Presumably this means that quarantine was a lot harder for extroverts.)

The second part of this finding suggests that once we have actively chosen where we want to be, that environment then impacts how we feel at that exact moment, as well as over a certain period of time. You'll have to read the study for the nuances around this. But it is fascinating to me because it helps me explain why I feel different now that I'm mostly working from home.

Beyond poor video call connections and the lack of in-person collaboration, there also seems to be the psychological impact of not being in a particular environment. Not having to commute is a nice feature, particularly for some, but it also means not being around colleagues and not being able to meet for that impromptu craft beer. Turns out those things matter for our mental state.

Before bed last night, I came across this New Yorker article from 2016 that I thought was fascinating and broadly useful for both life and business. In it, Maria Konnikova talks about how people learn to become resilient. And she starts by citing the work of a developmental psychologist and clinician who spent decades studying why some people seem to manage stress and trauma far better than others. Here is an excerpt talking about why that might be the case:

From a young age, resilient children tended to “meet the world on their own terms.” They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a “positive social orientation.” “Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively,” Werner wrote. Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.

It immediately reminded me of something that Steve Jobs once said in an interview back when more people wore buttoned up jean shirts. His comment was that one of the most powerful things you can learn in life is that much of what surrounds us was created by people who are no smarter than us. His point being that everything can be altered. We all have that ability. We are "orchestrators of our own fate."

The article goes on to argue that one of the ways we can exhibit a strong internal locus of control is by learning to view and respond to situations in a productive way. Put differently, whether or not we are subjected to shitty experiences matters less than how we ultimately react to and view those shitty experiences. If you can reframe and place in positive terms, then you can reduce any perceived stresses and become more resilient.

The good news is that, supposedly, these are skills that can be learned. So if this topic is at all interesting, I would encourage you to check out the full article. It certainly caught my attention before bed last night.

Here is an interesting study about personalities and places (Journal article here and study here). It is interesting because so many of us are working from home and away from our regular environments. But it is also interesting because a lot of us, here on this blog, are in the business of creating spaces. And these environments have an impact on all of us.

The researchers for this study started by assessing the personalities of some 2,000 university students. The objective was to determine their baseline temperaments according to the "Big Five" personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Once that was established, the students were sent out into the world with a location-based app on their phone.

Four times a day, the participants were asked to enter their current location, as well as answer a few questions about their current state of mind. The big takeway from this study is twfold and is as follows: "People actively select their environments, and the environments they select can alter their psychological characteristics [both] in the moment and over time."

The first bit is perhaps not all that surprising. We all have different personality traits and we choose environments that suit what we like. Extroverts, for example, tend to spend less time at home and more time at restaurants, bars, clubs, and at friends' places. (Presumably this means that quarantine was a lot harder for extroverts.)

The second part of this finding suggests that once we have actively chosen where we want to be, that environment then impacts how we feel at that exact moment, as well as over a certain period of time. You'll have to read the study for the nuances around this. But it is fascinating to me because it helps me explain why I feel different now that I'm mostly working from home.

Beyond poor video call connections and the lack of in-person collaboration, there also seems to be the psychological impact of not being in a particular environment. Not having to commute is a nice feature, particularly for some, but it also means not being around colleagues and not being able to meet for that impromptu craft beer. Turns out those things matter for our mental state.