What Should an Internal Ticket Management System Do?

Wouldn't it be nice to have better all-around team productivity from your web help desk? A help desk that is up to speed can do all sorts of valuable things, like deliver lightning-fast support responses to all your internal customers, save time for all team members by offering a vast knowledge base, and much more. But getting an excellent web help desk up and running isn't as easy as wishing it to be. The task calls for specific skills, determination, and a mission-oriented attitude on the part of those who set up the help desk.

One of the core functions, among many, that the help desk performs is related to internal ticket management. Before setting out to create a desk with top-notch ticketing capability, make sure that your own, or your team's, skill levels are where they should be. That's because you're really doing several tasks at once. When the job is done, you should be able to check off, in the affirmative, each of the following capabilities of your new system.

General capabilities

If you've set up your internal ticketing system correctly, you can look forward to a company that is highly organized and able to stay abreast of a large volume of internal service requests. With the right software in place, and a team that knows how to use it, you'll be able to turn each support request into a ticket in a matter of seconds. Your new ticket management system lets you both assign and carefully track every ticket, and make sure each one gets to the right team member based on their skills and ability to resolve specific issues.

Between the initial request and final resolution of all issues, managers can easily deal with the entire life cycle of all tickets.

Full-Scale internal support

Full support means all-around capability to deal with any employee's need for assistance at any time. If you want your ticketing to reach its potential, include not only internal customer survey forms and live chat capability, but also a comprehensive resource for self-help (usually in the form of an easily searchable knowledge base). Some corporations add how-to tutorial videos, detailed self-help content, research papers, customer case studies, and hundreds of relevant FAQs to their knowledge bases. As a result, they see a decrease in the need for support tickets by as much as 85 percent.

If you want your ticketing to reach its potential, include not only internal customer survey forms and live chat capability, but also a comprehensive resource for self-help.

Automation means higher productivity

Many AI-based ITM apps automatically assign tasks based on recent history,...

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7 Ways to I.M.P.R.O.V.E. Difficult Moments

Have you ever been in a situation that you truly disliked? And I mean truly.

Your displeasure can range from mild discomfort to pure agony. Do you hate going to the dentist? Do you have a tight deadline at work? Have you recently experienced a loss?

Today we will discuss how to improve the moment. When we improve the moment, we replace immediate negative events with more positive ones, and make the moment feel positive and easier to tolerate. This skill is particularly helpful when we are feeling overwhelmed in a stressful situation that is likely to last for a little while. To help us remember the steps, we'll use the acronym I.M.P.R.O.V.E.

I is for Imagery

Do you have a pretty good imagination? You can put it to work by using imagery to create a situation different from reality.

With imagery, you can create a safe or relaxing space for yourself when you’re in a difficult moment. For instance, I have a friend who hates getting shots—and has even passed out at the doctor! They use imagery to imagine themselves on a warm beach whenever the doctor pulls out the needle. They find it helpful for getting through the experience. The trick with imagery is that you should practice it outside of the event so you have greater access to the imaginal experience and get to that safe place more easily.

Imagery can also be used to cope more effectively with crisis events. You can imagine a future event that will likely be highly stressful for you, such as a death in the family or meltdown at work. While imagining the event, you can rehearse how you can respond in ways that are helpful to you and won’t make the situation generate more suffering. For example, I have my patients imagine future conversations that they are worried about. I will have them imagine what the person is likely to say and how they could respond to different scenarios. This helps them feel more confident in the actual moment. It might feel silly to pretend as an adult, but never underestimate how much rehearsal can help you in the long run.

M is for Meaning

Finding or creating meaning helps many people survive tragic and horrific situations. Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, an important book about surviving the Nazi concentration camps. It is based on the premise that people need to find or create meaning in their lives to overcome tremendous suffering. This is very similar to making lemonade out of lemons. When we can find meaning in our pain, we can bear it and walk through it more easily.

Now when I say "more easily," it doesn’t mean easy. It means that it could be harder if we took a different path with our pain. One quote that has helped give me meaning through difficult moments is from Leonard Cohen:...

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Tombstone, Gravestone, or Headstone? What's the Difference?

When autumn begins in the northern hemisphere, people often decorate their businesses and homes to get ready for Halloween. The National Retail Federation says Americans will spend a whopping $3.2 billion on Halloween decorations this year, so as you can imagine (or as you may have seen in your own neighborhood) these decorations can be quite elaborate. You often see mummies, witches, skeletons, spiders, jack-o-lanterns, black cats, cobwebs, ghosts, and tombstones. Or are they headstones? Or gravestones? Is there a difference? Does it even matter? 

The words tombstone and gravestone used to refer to large stone slabs that served as a lid for a tomb or covering for a grave. They might have had engravings on them, but their purpose was to secure a deceased body in a tomb or in the ground. "Gravestone" is the older word, being used from the late 1300s, and "tombstone" is from the mid-1500s. A headstone, as the word implies, referred to a grave marker placed at the head of a grave. It's the newest of the three words, arising in 1676, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Today, the words tombstone, gravestone, and headstone are often used interchangeably to refer to stone grave markers of any size or style. Regardless of which term you use, all three words refer to something made of stone that marks where someone is or will be buried. Sometimes cemeteries have grave markers showing where people who are still alive will be buried someday, but most grave markers indicate where someone has already been buried. So, whether they are being used to designate the location of a present grave or future grave, all three words—"tombstone," "headstone," and "gravestone"—refer to the same thing: a burial site with a marker made of stone. 

Other words are also used to refer to grave markers. For example, the...

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EEEEEKKKK!!! Understanding Why Screams Sound So Terrifying

If you want to be really frightening this Halloween, don’t waste your time dressing up as a ghost or goblin. Instead, just let loose with a bloodcurdling scream. As it turns out, the acoustics of the human scream communicates fear even more effectively than Jason or Freddy Kruger.

But why are screams so particularly startling to us when other noisy sounds like airplanes, construction noise and thunder surely boom in our ears as loudly? What is unique to the human shriek that sends a chill down our backs when we hear it?

It’s a rough world out there

Human screams, while using the same voice box as when we say “boo,” are particularly noticeable because they occupy an acoustic range not found in our everyday speech. The result is a specific sound quality, called “roughness,” that seems to register in our brains as very unpleasant or cringe-worthy, the vocal version of nails on a chalkboard.

Speech scientists are able to quantify this acoustic “roughness” using a measure known as a modulation power spectrum or MPS. MPS is basically a way of measuring how quickly a sound shifts back and forth in loudness. It seems when there are wide and fast volume changes, it is heard as harsh, jarring, or rough sounding.  

Screams are characterized by such very rapid shifts (at a rate ranging from 30 to 150 Hz), while normal human speech uses a much slower modulation range (e.g. around 5 Hz). So, when comparing human screams to speech from a variety of languages, research has found that screams have higher roughness measures. In addition, screaming is typically louder and has a more variable and higher pitch than spoken sentences, but neither of these attributes are unique to screams.

Instead, it seems like it is this specific acoustic quality of roughness that humans psychologically react to when we hear someone scream. In other words, we notice a harsh and grating quality to screaming because these fast changes in volume do not seem to happen in our regular speech, while high pitch and loudness alone sometimes do. As a result, a scream’s MPS range seems to be an innate short-...

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Do Dogs Need to Play With Other Dogs?

A listener wrote to me because her dog had hurt another dog during off-leash hours at the local park – and not for the first time. My listener was worried for the safety of other dogs, but she was also sad to think that her dog might not be able to mingle and play with other canines. Wouldn’t that diminish her dog’s quality of life?

How to Tell if Your Dog is Stressed

The short answer is no. Although some dogs revel in dog park play at any age, most dogs grow less interested in playing with unfamiliar dogs as they grow up. They may greet special dog friends enthusiastically and play with those friends, but greet most new dogs casually and then more or less ignore them. Some dogs grow up to be completely indifferent to most other dogs. And some, like my listener’s dog, respond to certain (or all) dogs with aggression.

Our dogs do need physical activity, mental activity, and social relationships. But they don’t necessarily need to get those things from other dogs. In one study, dogs separated from familiar kennelmates may have been less stressed than dogs separated from familiar human caretakers. It’s just one study, and it’s small, but it hints at what strong bonds dogs form with humans. Studies of shelter dogs also suggest that human companionship improves their welfare.

Do Dogs Grieve When Another Dog Dies?

Most dogs who can’t safely mingle with random unfamiliar dogs can still have a few carefully chosen dog friends. But even if your dog can’t socialize safely with other dogs at all, you can give her a rich and happy life, with plenty of play, affection, and mental exercise. I promise, she won’t feel she’s missing one darn thing. 

 

Jolanta Benal is the author of T...

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The Broken Constitution: Lincoln's Choice

This is The Broken Constitution, a miniseries from Unknown History from Quick and Dirty Tips and Deep Background from Pushkin Industries. I'm Noah Feldman. Over the next three episodes, I'm going to talk about Abraham Lincoln and how he needed to break the Constitution in order to remake it. It's all based on my new book, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, out November 2. 

In the first episode of The Broken Constitution, I talked about how the U.S. Constitution was a compromise between northern and southern states, small and large states, and made several key compromises around slavery and the slave trade.

In this episode, we're going to turn to what happened to Abraham Lincoln when he became president, and to the moment in which he was forced to break the Constitution in order to begin to think about how to save it. No other president in U.S. history has ever faced a crisis even vaguely comparable to Lincoln when he was inaugurated. Since he'd been elected, seven states announced that they intended to withdraw from the compact known as the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln had to make a crucial choice. Lincoln decided to confront the Confederacy. In retrospect, this looks inevitable, but at the time, it wasn't clear that the president had the constitutional authority to confront them.

Listen to the full episode to hear about the constitutional questions that Lincoln faced, and how his choices led to our understanding of the Constitution today.

Click the red audio player above to listen. Be sure to follow Unknown History on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts to catch the rest of this miniseries, and if you want to hear more from me, check out my podcast Deep Background from Pushkin Industries. On Deep Background, I bring together a cross-section of guests to explore the historical, scientific, legal, and cultural context of today's news.

Want even more? Pre-order The Broken Constitution wherever books or audiobooks are sold.

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Savvy Psychologist Survey

Eggs and Oat Bran: The Cholesterol-Fiber Paradox

Dan writes:

We're told that eating foods like oatmeal, which contains soluble fiber, can help lower cholesterol. My understanding is that this works because the fiber binds to the cholesterol in your food, preventing its absorption.

But we're also told that the amount of cholesterol in your food doesn't make much difference because, if you get more in your diet, your body just produces less.

If the soluble fiber is reducing absorption of dietary cholesterol, but dietary cholesterol doesn’t matter, then why would that reduce your serum cholesterol?

This is a great question but one that requires a bit of a deep dive to answer. But if this is not the place for deep dives into nutrition nerd-dom, I don’t know where is!

How dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol

About 80% of the cholesterol that’s circulating through your body right now was manufactured in your body, not extracted from your food. Most of that de novo cholesterol production happens in the liver, but small amounts are also manufactured in the small intestine.

And Dan’s absolutely right: The liver will ramp its production of cholesterol up or down in response to your dietary intake. Take in more cholesterol through food and the liver will make less, and vice versa. (Cholesterol production in the small intestine is not affected by that feedback loop, however.)

To some extent, the amount of cholesterol that you absorb from food is genetically determined. Some people are “hyper-absorbers” and for them, the amount of cholesterol in their food may have a bigger impact on their blood cholesterol levels.

But for most people, dietary cholesterol intake doesn’t have a significant impact on total blood (serum) cholesterol levels. More to the point, cholesterol intake does not appear to impact the risk of heart disease. This is why we are no longer advised to limit our consumption of dietary cholesterol (unless, of course, you’re one of those hyperabsorbers).

If you’re looking for a dietary culprit for high blood cholesterol levels, look to saturated fat and refined carbohydrates, not cholesterol. Eggs and shrimp, which are both high in cholesterol, are virtually carb-free and relatively low in saturated fat.

How soluble fiber affects blood cholesterol

According to the National Lipid Association:

“Soluble fiber can bind cholesterol in the intestine and remove it from the body. Eating 5 to 10 grams of soluble fiber a day can help lower total and LDL-cholesterol by 5 to 11 points, and sometimes more.”

You might imagine that when you eat...

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Contempt of Court

 

First, a disclaimer: Although I am an attorney, the legal information in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for seeking personalized legal advice from an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Further, I do not intend to create an attorney-client relationship with any listener.   

Today I will discuss contempt of court. Steve wrote:

Could you please explain how a judge can have someone imprisoned for contempt of court and not consider this a violation of the right to due process or unlawful imprisonment? Also, if someone is jailed for contempt of court how can they be held for an unspecified length of time, potentially years, without this being cruel and unusual punishment? After all, a person who is actually convicted of a crime after a fair trial could spend less time in jail than a person found in contempt.

The short answer is that a person facing imprisonment for contempt of court has likely received full due process of the law. Most people that face contempt charges have been fully advised on several occasions as to the consequences of their actions. 

A User's Guide to U.S. Supreme Court Cases that Shaped History

Contempt of court refers generally to any willful disobedience to, or disregard of, a court order or any misconduct in the presence of a court or action that interferes with a judge's ability to administer justice or that insults the dignity of the court, and is punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. A judge who feels someone is improperly challenging or ignoring the court's authority has the power to declare the defiant person (called the contemnor) in contempt of court.

The contemnor is said to "hold the keys" to his own cell, so strict adherence to all due process requirements is not necessary.

There are two types of contempt — civil and criminal. Criminal contempt occurs when the contemnor actually interferes with the ability of the court to function properly — for example, by yelling at the judge. This is also called direct contempt because it occurs directly in front of the judge. A criminal contemnor may be fined, jailed, or both as punishment for his act.

Civil contempt occurs when the contemnor willfully disobeys a court order. This is also called indirect contempt because it occurs outside the judge's immediate realm and evidence must be presented to the judge to prove the contempt. A civil contemnor, too, may be fined, jailed, or both. The fine or jailing is meant to coerce the contemnor into obeying the court, not...

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An Audiobook Excerpt from "Her Honor"

In Her Honor, Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell provides a rare and thought-provoking insider account of our legal system, sharing vivid stories of the cases that came through her courtroom and revealing the strengths, flaws, and much-needed changes within our courts.

Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible.

Her Honor is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures from the media, law enforcement, lobbyists, and the friends and families of the people involved.

Cordell’s candid account of her years on the bench shines light on all areas of the legal system, from juvenile delinquency and the shift from rehabilitation to punishment, along with the racial biases therein, to the thousands of plea bargains that allow our overburdened courts to stay afloat—as long as innocent people are willing to plead guilty. There are tales of marriages and divorces, adoptions, and contested wills—some humorous, others heartwarming, still others deeply troubling.

Her Honor is for anyone who’s had the good or bad fortune to stand before a judge or sit on a jury. It is for true-crime junkies and people who vote in judicial elections. Most importantly, this is an audiobook for anyone who wants to know what our legal system, for better or worse, means to the everyday lives of all Americans.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books. 

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Dinosaurs in Flight

Dinosaurs had always been built to fly. It started with their commitment to bipedalism. Their forelimbs, no longer required for running, were reduced, the hands left free for other activities, such as grasping prey, climbing, or flying. In sauropods, dinosaurs reverted to being quadrupeds and became the largest land animals ever to have lived, some measuring more than 50 meters long and weighing more than 70 tons. But dinosaurs also excelled at being small. The peculiar, bat-like Yi was no bigger than a starling.

How did dinosaurs get to be so very large—and so very small?

It began with the way they breathed. Dinosaurs and their immediate relatives evolved a one-way system for air handling, which made breathing very efficient. Air entered the lungs but did not immediately come out again. Instead, the air was shunted, guided by one-way valves, through an extensive system of air sacs throughout the body. Air spaces surrounded the internal organs and even penetrated the bones. Dinosaurs were literally full of air.

For more, listen to the full episode using the player above, or your favorite podcast app.

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How to Combat Toxic Productivity

I recently read a blog post by Scott Ninneman in which Scott says: “The beautiful thing about helping others is that you don’t have to be an expert. No, instead, you only have to be a little further along than the person you’re assisting.”

Generally, I like to show up for you as the expert. But sometimes my expertise comes from my own seat on the struggle bus, maybe just a row or two ahead of where you’re sitting. Today’s going to be one of those days.

I’ve always prided myself on my productivity. I’m a go-getter, an over-achiever. I was voted Teachers’ Pet in my high school yearbook. And oh yes, there’s a photo. But in the past couple of years, I’ve noted that my drive to achieve has started to feel more like a need, a compulsion. It’s as if being busy is the thing, rather than the means to a purposeful outcome.

In trying to better understand my own experience, I encountered the idea of toxic productivity. It feels…like me. And I’ve made some strides toward overcoming it. And my goal today is to share some actionable insights I’ve picked up and put into practice along the way.

What is toxic productivity?

I’m not knocking productivity. Like exercising or saving money, it is truly a virtue... until it’s not.

Productivity, in my book, is the act of doing or delivering things that yield a benefit or positive outcome—like shipping a product to your client, publishing a blog post designed to attract new customers, or learning a new skill that will support your professional goals.

Productivity becomes toxic when the act of doing—of just being busy—is the goal. It’s the inability to stop doing or producing even when the need for an outcome has abated. Your customer is happy, your blog is published, you’ve learned enough for today. And yet, you keep going because stopping or shutting down scares you.

Toxic productivity hangs out at the same parties as workaholism and hustle culture. It’s not the party the cool kids are going to.

What are the indicators of toxic productivity?

The slope from productive to toxically productive can be a slippery one. It may manifest differently in everyone. But here are some of the signs I—and my family—noted in my own behavior.

• My energy was low. I was burned out, exhausted, and not resting sufficiently because shutting down was so hard for me to do.
• My...

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Kids Banking: 3 Account Types Every Parent Should Consider

It's never too early to start teaching kids about money. And what better way to help them hone their financial skills and experiences than by helping them open and manage a bank account? 

But if the thought of giving your child free reign over a bank account concerns you, don't worry. One of the benefits of modern banking for kids is that parents can choose the level of control they have over how their kids use (or don't use) the account.

This post will cover three types of kids banking accounts, including their innovative features, pros, and cons, so you can decide which one may be right for your kiddo. Choosing the best bank account can help you set your kid up for financial success while giving you confidence nothing will go wrong. 

3 types of kids banking accounts

You can generally break down kids banking products into three categories: banking apps, checking accounts, and savings accounts. Here's what you should know about each:

1. Kids banking apps

Let's start with banking apps because they're the most innovative products for kids. Since they're relatively new to the financial services scene, you may not know much about them. But they offer a slew of helpful features for parents, including: 

• Creating chores and automating allowances for kids.

• Setting spending limits for the app's prepaid card. 

• Restricting your child from shopping at specific merchants.

• Setting up a savings account that earns parent-paid interest.

• ...

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How To Stop Locking Your Elbows and Knees During Workouts

Most of us have been taught to move through a full range of motion while performing resistance exercises such as squats, pushups, and pullups. Going through a full range of motion (a.k.a. moving as far as anatomically possible) during an exercise is important for giving the muscles a more robust workout.

However, if you take this advice literally and you do happen to go all the way up and all the way down during an exercise, you risk locking or completely straightening your elbows and knees, which can increase the risk of injuries and hinder fitness gains. 

I frequently observe this common strength training mistake made by newbies and gym buffs alike. The good news is that this mistake is easy to avoid and being aware of why it happens will help make it less common. 

Why locking your elbows or knees is so common

While locking your elbows or knees during exercises like pushups, pullups, chest presses, shoulder presses, squats, leg presses, and knee extensions is a problem, it’s actually super common for three reasons:

1. Habit: Most of us have been taught to go through a full range of motion while exercising. I’m sure most of you recall a gym teacher, sports coach, or trainer getting on your case at some point for not going all the way up and all the way down while performing an exercise. For me, it was a couple of Marine Corps drill instructors screaming “lock out your elbows recruit” in each of my ears while performing pullups and pushups. 

2. Enthusiasm: Experienced weightlifters know that your lifting performance improves when you’re psyched up right before and during the lift. By going into what some would call “beast mode”, you can lift more weight for more repetitions than normal. You’re also more prone to locking out your elbows or knees while lifting with increased enthusiasm.

3. Fatigue: Another common reason why people lock the elbows or knees during strength training is because of muscle fatigue. Locking transfers all the weight from the muscles to the joints, which provides the muscles a...

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The Myth of Love Languages

Last weekend, two married friends and I took our kids to a local theme park for a day out together. We were talking about how I was planning to write an episode for Relationship Doctor about a common myth about relationships: love languages. While she was aware that love languages were not scientific, her husband looked really sad to hear that. “Love languages aren’t real?” he asked, and his wife responded, “Well, no, but I needed a way to get you to open up and talk to me about stuff.” 

In 1992, Gary Chapman wrote the book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, and it took the world by storm. Marital therapists, relationship coaches, and romance enthusiasts heavily bought into the idea that there are five ways to express love to your partner, that we have preferences for how to give and receive love, and that you can improve your relationship just by tailoring your affection to your partner’s love language.

On his website, Chapman proclaims, “The premise of The 5 Love Languages™ book is quite simple: different people with different personalities give and receive love in different ways. By learning to recognize these preferences in yourself and in your loved ones, you can learn to identify the root of your conflicts, connect more profoundly, and truly begin to grow closer.”

Here’s the thing: Gary Chapman is not a relationship scientist, and although he has a PhD, it is in education and he does not conduct relationship research. Chapman's five love languages were not driven by data, and his book is not based in science. In writing his book, he had no generalizable evidence that people have different preferences for giving and receiving love. He had no evidence that they are connected to your personality. He had no evidence that misunderstanding your own and your partner’s love languages could contribute to conflicts emerging.

What makes this unscientific book so catchy?

Whenever I talk about my research to someone new, inevitably they will bring up their love language and get excited to talk about it. Like other pop culture quizzes, such as the Myers-Briggs personality assessment (which is...

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Halting Halloween Candy Conflicts

Halloween for many American families means creepy costumes and candy consumption overload. I’ve mediated a whole heap of heated discussions between parents about children’s sugar intake on all of the other days of the year. So you can imagine how intense the swirl of parental emotions around Halloween candy can be!

While there are some parents that have difficulty setting any boundaries around sweets, they are more rare. More commonly, parents are convinced that regular intake of sweets will doom their child to obesity as an adult or that they’ll never learn to eat healthy. Parents worry their child will get addicted to sweets, or that eating sugary foods means they’ll ruin their appetite for "real" food. Some parents are even convinced that sweets should be earned—solely given as a reward for good behavior, and otherwise banned.

Many parents themselves grew up in homes where treats were strictly controlled. I’ve heard stories about playdates at friends’ houses where coveted junk foods—banned at home—were abundant and unrestricted by their friends’ parents. It’s unsurprising that the desire to go to friends’ houses can become more motivated by food than by the friends themselves! 

External restrictions don’t help a child develop self-control.

The thing is, the more parents restrict and vilify certain foods in their home, the more likely the child is to whine and beg for them and even try to get them in sneaky ways. Children will resist control, and when that control isn’t present, it becomes a free for all where kids don’t know how to put on the brakes.

As a parent, you’re hoping that control coming from you, which is external control, will create internal motivation in your child to eat healthy. But external restrictions don’t help a child develop self-control. So what can parents do instead? Nutritionist and family therapist Ellyn Satter, the creator of Satter Division of Responsibility in Feeding (sDOR), offers some great tips for parents anxious about Halloween candy.

6 tips for helping kids learn to regulate their Halloween candy intake

1. Unlimited candy on days 1 and 2

Hear me out. Ultimately, you want your child to be able to manage their candy intake independently and responsibly. Kids learn new things by doing those new things, not by you doing it for them. So let them be in charge of their own Halloween candy. When they come home from trick-or-treating, let your kids sort and trade and eat as much of their candy as they wish. Let them eat as much as they want the next day as...

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5 Ways to Improve Your Computer Skills

I often get asked, “How did you learn so much about computers?”

My answer is, "I learned most of my knowledge and skills through online research."

That answer is often met with blank stares because it seems like such an impossible task. But this week, I’ll teach you 5 easy tips that anyone can follow to become more computer savvy!

Tip #1: Google it

The first and most important step in becoming computer savvy is to learn how to use Google to your advantage.  It’s important to learn how to correctly pose a question for search, and how to use Google to find your answer. 

After a few years of using Google to research different things about technology and computers, you begin to form a solid working knowledge without even trying.

What’s awesome about Google is that there are tons of different ways you can search for something. So no matter what you’re researching, knowing how to find what you're looking for is a pretty universal skill.

To learn how to get better at Google, check out my episode, How to Use Google Like a Pro. It includes some of my favorite ways to use Google, such as searching for something within a specific date range, from a particular site, or even finding an exact phrase.

If there’s something I don’t know about a computer, the first thing I do is check out the first few hits of a Google search to get some information. For example, when someone gets a specific virus or has a specific problem affecting their computer, a quick search will often show how to resolve it.

After a few years of using Google to research different things about technology and computers, you begin to form a solid working knowledge without even trying.

Tip #2: Just try it

Don’t be afraid to try something on a computer. After all, there is hardly ever an action you can perform on a computer that will permanently break it. That being said, make sure you have back-ups of anything important.

This especially goes for parents with children who show an affinity for computers. If they like to take things apart and put them back together, or they just like to tinker, find a used computer on Craigslist for cheap. This provides a great platform for kids to learn on.

If you don’t have a computer you want to experiment on for fear of breaking it, checkout my episode on creating a virtual computer, How to Use a Virtual Machine. Just a warning though, you will have...

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How to Succeed at Graduate School

Graduate school involves a huge commitment of time and money, so if you've decided to go, you want to be successful. While you can build on some of the strengths you may have developed as an undergraduate, getting your master's degree or your doctorate is far more demanding. The tips below can help you thrive in your program.

Applying and paying for it

Of course, the first step is getting into school in the first place. This is a competitive process, so how do you prepare the best application you can? First, research the universities you're applying to. Get a good sense of what they emphasize. For example, some will place a higher value on standardized test scores than others will. If you need to include a personal statement or essay, be specific about why you are interested in this university and this program. Try to name the faculty that you want to work with. Explain your goals and how the program fits into it. Avoid coming across as too grandiose, but don't hesitate to demonstrate your ambition.

There may also be an interview process. Be ready to show during the interview that you know about the school and the faculty. You should be prepared to discuss your own research interests. You should also be ready to ask some questions of your own. You might ask about what kind of professional development resources exist or what the research requirements are for your program. Of course, these should be questions that are not easily answered by looking at the university's webpage and other material.

Finally, you should make sure you have the funding that you need. Taking advantage of private graduate student loans can be an excellent source of funding, even if you also have a scholarship or a stipend from an assistantship since these might not provide enough money to cover all of your expenses. You can look for a private lender that offers an interest rate and a repayment plan that will work for you.

Academic concerns

This will be your first though not your only focus as a student. It's important to know yourself and understand how you work best. For example, there may be certain times of day when you are more productive than others or certain study methods that work best for you.

If you don't already know what study habits work for you, then experiment until you find out! It's important to maximize your study time.

One feature of most graduate programs is a voluminous amount of reading. It can help if you are able to teach yourself to read better and more efficiently. When you sit down with a text, go over it quickly, looking at headings to...

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7 Types of Rest You've Been Missing

Are you tired?

I know I have moments where a spontaneous 2-week vacation sounds amazing! You may be looking around and thinking, “I get 8 hours of sleep every night, what’s wrong?!”

Well, first—I am so happy that you’re getting adequate sleep. 7-9 hours of sleep is recommended for adults; if you’ve struggled with sleep, then you know that you can sleep 8 hours and not feel rested. While rest is supposed to be the product of sleep, that isn’t always how it works when we are impaired by stress or mental illness. Also, sleep is most closely linked to physical rest and we often need more than that. For instance, I’m an introvert, so if I have too much contact with other people, I need social rest or I'll feel off no matter how much I sleep.

Today I am going to be outlining the 7 different types of rest as proposed by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, and how to get that rest if you're feeling tired.

Physical Rest

There are both passive and active forms of physical rest.

Sleeping and napping are the two most common forms of passive rest. To maximize the likelihood of getting restful sleep, make sure that you follow a sound sleep protocol (e.g. consistent bedtime, control temperature, not drinking caffeine late in the day, wind-down routine).

Active physical rest includes activities like stretching or yoga, breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, hot baths, and massages.

The type of physical rest you require will depend on where and how much strain you carry in your body. For instance, I spend a lot of my day sitting, so I can have a build-up of tension in my back, shoulders, neck, and hips. I find it really helpful to do Yin Yoga in the evenings to stretch everything out and provide relief.

Watch out for signs that you need physical rest, such as lacking the energy to make it through the day, feeling tired but having difficulty falling asleep, weakened immune system, frequent muscle pain and soreness, reliance on substances to give you energy (e.g. energy drinks, coffee, sugar), and depending on substances to give you more rest (e.g. alcohol or drugs).

Mental Rest

Next up is mental rest—who doesn’t need some of that with all of the stress we have in our lives and with the pandemic! Mental fatigue can result from a variety of things including negative self-talk, rumination, anxious what-if thinking, being stuck in the past, and judgements.

Signs that you may need mental rest include irritability or decreased frustration tolerance, avoiding activities, feeling like you’re in a mental fog throughout the day, and feeling overwhelmed by daily tasks.

One way to ease the...

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Using Present Tense in a Story About the Past

A couple of months ago, I ran an episode that contained part of an interview I’d done with Laura Bergells, a business communication coach and storytelling expert. If you listened to the episode, you might remember that she made a suggestion about how I could heighten the drama in telling the story of how I began doing the Grammar Girl podcast. 

Here’s a short clip of how I began the story when I told it to Laura: 

[AUDIO CLIP]

Actually, my background is in science and technology. I'm a Ph.D. program dropout in biology, and I was working as a science writer and editor, and frankly, I was quite bored. And so I got interested in this thing called podcasting. I love technology, I love gadgets. So I started a science podcast called Absolute Science. And, you know, I just I fell in love with it. ... And I did that podcast for about eight months. But I was working as a freelance writer and editor. And time really is money when you're a freelancer, and the podcast was taking so much time that I couldn't justify doing it anymore. But I didn't want to give up on podcasting. 

Laura suggested that I could try telling it in the present tense instead of the past tense:

[AUDIO CLIP]

Picture it, it's 2005, I'm a science writer, I'm living in Santa Monica, and for fun, I'm doing a science podcast every week, and the science podcast is really complicated. It's taking me a lot of time. And then on top of that, I'm doing lots of other writing, and I'm getting burned out. 

This use of present tense to describe past events is called the historical present tense. I loved the “you’re right there with me” feel that it gave the story, and it got me to wondering about how English speakers use historical present tense when telling their stories. A paper published in 1981, by Deborah Schiffrin, gives some interesting answers. 

Historical present and narrative structure

Schiffrin used a framework for analyzing narratives that was proposed by William Labov. In Labov’s framework, the first part of a narrative is called the abstract. It’s the part that tells the listener they’re about to hear a story. Laura did this part for me in our interview; here’s what she said: 

[AUDIO CLIP]

So you must have a story about how your wildly popular podcast all got started.

It’s no surprise to have present tense in the abstract of a story because it comes before we’ve gotten into the actual events of the narrative...

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'Beckon Call' or 'Beck and Call'?

Dave J. asked, “What's the appropriate phrase—'beckon call' or 'beck and call'?”

The correct phrase is “beck and call.” If you are at people's beck and call, you respond immediately whether they beckon or call; it implies complete subservience.

It's an old phrase, originating in the late 1800s, during a time when “beck” was used to mean “beckon.”

The problem is that the “on” in “beckon” sounds a lot like how we sometimes slur the word “and” in “beck and call.” Kind of like “rock ’n’ roll,”—we often say “beck ’n’ call.”

The word “beck” goes all the way back to Old English, but the Oxford English Dictionary seems to say that “beckon” is even older because they list “beck” as a shortened form of “beckon.” Old Saxon, Old High German, and Old Norse all had similar words. 

The correct phrase is 'beck and call.'

At first, “beck” didn’t mean to signal someone to come to you, it simply meant to make a gesture, but by the 1400s, “beck” meant to signal someone to approach. 

The words “beckon” and “beacon,” as in the light, actually come from the same Proto-Indo-European word that meant “to shine,” and if you think about it, a beacon can call someone to it just like a beckon. 

Examples of ‘Beck and Call’

“Oh please," Scout said."Don't take that tone with me. You know you'd love to have a minion. Someone at your beck and call. Someone to do your bidding. How many times have you said to yourself," Self, I need a unicorn to run errands and such?” — Chloe Neill, “Firespell”

“I cannot be willing to believe that spirits who have left this world have nothing better to do than be at the beck and call of any and all who choose to call them from the ‘vasty deep’ of the hereafter,” said the Philosopher. — “The Seven Travelers” ("Emerson’s...

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The Broken Constitution: The American Compromise

This is The Broken Constitution, a miniseries from Unknown History from Quick and Dirty Tips and Deep Background from Pushkin Industries. I'm Noah Feldman. Over the next three episodes, I'm going to talk about Abraham Lincoln and how he needed to break the Constitution in order to remake it. It's all based on my new book, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, out November 2. 

If you're listening to this podcast, you already know that one of the most important questions facing the United States today is whether racism and slavery are encoded into the DNA of the United States by virtue of being encoded into the Constitution. This question is behind debates about who we are, what we should teach, and what the possibilities are for our nation going into the future, especially with respect to racial equality. 

I wrote The Broken Constitution because I wanted to know the answer. I've devoted most of my professional life to thinking about the United States Constitution and about other Constitutions, whether in Iraq, Tunisia, or anywhere else around the world. I've written books about these documents and their legacies: about the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution and about the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. 

When I started writing this book, I entered with three misconceptions: 

• That our Constitution functions as a higher moral law guiding us into the future. It does not.
• That we've always had the same Constitution since it was drafted in 1787. We have not.
• That Abraham Lincoln was the President who saved the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln didn't save the Constitution. He broke the Constitution--three separate times in three separate ways--in order to transform it into something new and different.

Over the course of this miniseries, I will devote one episode to each of these three misconceptions. I'll also tell you the story of Abraham Lincoln's own engagement with the Constitution and what it reveals about the Constitution itself. 

In this first episode, I will begin by describing the purpose of the original Constitution--up until the time that Lincoln assumed the Presidency...

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Why Are Planets Round?

The ancient Greeks proved over 2,000 years ago that the Earth was round and figured out how big it was by using simple observations of the Sun.

But how do people know this today? When you drop anything, gravity causes it to fall directly toward the center of the Earth, at least until it hits the ground. Gravity is a force that is caused by nearly everything that has mass. Mass is a measure of how much material there is in anything. It could be in the form of rocks, water, metal, people – anything. Everything material has mass, and therefore everything causes gravity. Gravity always pulls toward the center of mass.

The Earth and all planets are round because when the planets formed, they were composed of molten material – essentially very hot liquid. Since gravity always points toward the center of a mass, it squeezed the stuff the Earth is made of equally in all directions and formed a ball. When the Earth cooled down and became a solid, it was a round ball. If the Earth didn’t spin, then it would have been a perfectly round planet. Scientists call something that is perfectly round in all directions a “sphere.”

The gas cloud that the Earth was made from was slowly rotating in one direction around an axis. The top and bottom of this axis are the north and south poles of Earth.

Now, hold out your right hand. Point your thumb on your right hand straight up, and curl your fingers around the direction of rotation. Your thumb is pointing toward the North pole. The equator is defined as the plane, halfway between the North and South Poles.

If you ever played on a merry-go-round, you know that the spinning merry-go-round tends to throw you off. The faster it spins, the harder it is to stay on. This tendency to be flung off is called centrifugal force and pushes the mass on the equator outward. This makes the planet bulge at the equator.

The faster the spin, the more unround it becomes. Then, when it cools and hardens, it retains that shape. If a molten planet starts off spinning faster, it would be less round and have a bigger bulge.

The planet Saturn is very oblate – non-spherical – because it rotates very fast. Because of gravity, all...

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Get More From Your Credit Cards This Holiday

If you haven't started thinking about the holidays yet, they're right around the corner! That means it's time to start making plans and strategizing ways to save money. A rewards credit card is an excellent tool for spending, getting benefits, and boosting your budget during the holidays.

To discuss tips for getting get more from your credit cards, I interviewed Kristy Olinger, a Credit Card Product Manager at Citizens. She's spent decades working in the credit card industry and knows a lot about consumer behavior, often-overlooked card benefits, and ways to use cards safely. She also co-hosts her own podcast, The Opposite of Small Talk. 

8 Ways to Make the Holidays Less Expensive and More Memorable

Kristy and I had a great conversation about how to kick off the holiday season with wise shopping strategies and what to do if you regularly end up with a debt hangover in January. Here are a few of the topics we cover on this Money Girl podcast interview:

• Holiday planning tips that help you stay out of debt.
• How to use credit card rewards to stretch your holiday budget further.
• What is an extended card warranty and when to use it.
• The importance of reviewing your cards' benefit guides.
• Why it's critical to use a credit card instead of a...

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Nutrition Diva's Rules for Snacking

I recently got an email from Gary, a long time podcast listener, asking how to decide whether or not a snack food can be considered healthy. He attached snapshots of several types of chips and crackers to his email.

“Is there a barometer that you use to rule a snack food in or out? I try to limit saturated fats, added sugars, sodium, and refined flours in my meals and snacks. These snacks all seem to be somewhat benign. But they are obviously processed. At what point do they cross over from a healthy snack to junk food?”

I had to laugh as I scrolled through the photos Gary sent because every single one of them is either in my cupboard right now or has been recently. Apparently, Gary and I have similar tastes in snacks!

Is this food healthy?

Over the years, I’ve received many variations on this question. Is this chip (or yogurt, or energy bar, or cookie, or sweetener, or whatever) better than that one? Whenever I’m trying to evaluate the healthfulness of a food, I have found it useful to ask 3 questions:

• How much are you eating?
• What are you eating it with?
• What are you not eating because you’re eating this instead?

What Foods Deserve to Be Labeled Healthy?

Let's tackle them one by one.

1. How much are you eating? 

Sometimes, we fall into the trap of thinking that we can eat more of something simply because it’s healthy (or healthier). So, if we select a tortilla chip that contains flax seed or a cookie that’s sweetened with honey or a bread that contains oat bran, we rationalize that we can have a larger serving or perhaps enjoy it more often.

A “healthy” snack may offer some nutritional advantages; it might have more fiber or omega-3s, for example. But it may not be lower in calories or sodium or sugar. (It might even be higher!) You’d still want to take a look at the Nutrition Facts label and consider how this food fits into your daily budget for these things. You’d also still want to pay attention to the portion size. For example, does that bag of whole grain chips contain one serving or three?

Biggest Nutrition Traps, Part 2: Quality v. Quantity

2. What are you eating it with? 

Individual foods also need to be considered in the context of other foods that are eaten with them. Sometimes we indulge in the a fantasy that one healthy choice cancels out an unhealthy one. Because the chips are dusted with spinach powder, we decide to go with the onion dip instead of bean dip or hummus. It’s the old “I’m having a diet soda so give me the large fries” thing.

I’m always likely to give a...

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How to Get a Shower Curtain to Stop Sticking—Plus More Shower Curtain Hacks

How to keep a shower curtain from sticking

If you’ve ever had a shower curtain liner that kept sticking to you while you were trying to shower, you know it’s less funny, more annoying. Get rid of this problem forever with a spray bottle! Pour a tablespoon of liquid fabric softener into the empty bottle and fill the rest with water. Spray on the liner just before you shower and it will always stay in its proper place.

Stop mildew before it starts

Avoid leaving a shower curtain bunched up after use, especially in a small bathroom—the steam encourages mildew. Always pulled it closed after bathing, and if small spots of mildew do appear, dab with baking soda on a damp cloth. Wash larger areas in hot detergent, rub with lemon juice, and dry in the sun, if possible.

5 Shortcuts to Make Cleaning Your Bathroom Easy

Keep mildew off the bottom of your shower curtain

If you have a pair of pinking shears (scissors with a zigzagging edge used in sewing), put them to good use in the bathroom. Use them to cut the bottom of your shower curtain liner: The uneven hem allows water to more easily slide off, making bottom-of-the-curtain mildew a thing of the past.

How to get mildew off a shower curtain

Need to remove mildew from a plastic shower curtain? Try running it through the washing machine (on cold) with two large, white bath towels. Add a little bleach in with your usual detergent, and use 1 cup white vinegar in the rinse cycle to prevent future mildew growth. Or, rub a wedge of lemon on the stains and leave the curtain out in the sun. By the time it dries, the stains will be gone.

Make a shower curtain liner last forever

Keep soap scum and mildew off your shower curtain on the regular with the help of hydrogen peroxide. Stick the curtain and a bath towel into your washing machine, pour in regular detergent, and start the wash. Add 1 cup peroxide during the rinse cycle. Do this once a month and you’ll pretty much never have to buy another shower curtain liner again.

It’s also said that soaking a shower curtain liner in saltwater before you use in can help repel mildew.

Keep shower curtain rings from squeaking

Do the rings on your shower curtain squeak as they run along the rod? The solution is simple: Just rub some...

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Grammar Quirks: Romy Hausmann on Rhabarbermarmelade

Grammar Girl: What’s your favorite word and why?

Romy Hausmann: First of all, I have to say that my native language is German and that I’m only just starting to train myself at a level of English that does not pass as “oh how cute, at least she’s trying,” but rather as something to be taken seriously (spoiler alert: there is still a looong way to go!). Because of this, I probably approach the English language a little differently. My favorite English word is “kindness.” It sounds so beautifully light, but of course, its meaning is more important. In my short career, I have dealt with a number of people, who tend to use their elbows in life and really fight their competition. Therefore: kindness, guys! And respect. We are all just human beings. We all do our best to get through this life well, and we all have feelings that are sometimes irreparably hurt by only a few inconsiderate words.

We are all just human beings. We all do our best to get through this life well, and we all have feelings that are sometimes irreparably hurt by only a few inconsiderate words.

GG: What’s a word you dislike (either because it’s overused or misused) and why?

RH: "Sexy." Unfortunately, it is still most often associated with the outward appearance of women. And it is understood in probably every language, which only makes it worse. Do you know what is really sexy? Good manners, humour, courage, and, yes, kindness. Kindness is sexy. Damn it, now I used it myself.

GG: What word will you always misspell?

RH: As a non-native speaker, I struggle with pretty much any word that is spelled almost identically to another word that has a completely different meaning, often differing by just one letter. I've sat in restaurants and talked to people about the "desert," yet all I wanted was a chocolate mousse.

GG: What word (or semblance of a word) would you like to see added to the dictionary? Why?

RH: “Rhabarbermarmelade.” I mean, okay, it’s just the German expression for “rhubarb jam,” and you wouldn’t really need it in your dictionary. But it's a fun word, both in its spelling and in its pronunciation. It sounds like a drunken Viking mumbling under his beard.

GG: Any grammar pet peeves we should know about?

RH: Hahaha, that’s a good one. You know better about pet peeves than I do. I'm the one who still writes "The police is coming" even though I've been told a thousand times that ‘the police’ is a collective noun in English...

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The Great Permian Catastrophe

Around 340 million years ago, the fragments of what had been a supercontinent, Rodinia, reassembled into a new and greater landmass—Pangaea. At its greatest, Pangaea stretched almost from pole to pole. The union of the continents into a single landmass had drastic consequences for life both on land and in the oceans. On land, forms of life that were once endemic to particular continents mixed and mingled with others. Competition between natives and newcomers was fierce, and many kinds of animals died out.

Sealife was most abundant on the continental shelf, the part of the sea closest to land. When the continents merged, there was less continental shelf to go around, and competition for living space in the sea was intense.

The climate itself became more challenging. The interior of Pangaea was mainly dry, even if punctuated by annual monsoon inundations, and often very hot. Although the cool southern regions of Pangaea were clothed in a seemingly endless scrub of a tree-fern called Glossopteris, plant life was not as luxuriant as it had been, in the age of the great Coal Forests. Less plant life meant that there was less oxygen than there once was, so much so that by the end of the Permian, breathing at sea level would have been like trying to catch a breath in the Himalayas today. Terrestrial life was left gasping.

For more, listen to the full episode using the player above, or your favorite podcast app.

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Grammar Quirks: Cassandra Khaw on Writing for Video Games

Grammar Girl: What’s your favorite word and why?

Cassandra Khaw: "Nacre." My god, how I love that word. I love the way I hear the shine in it.

GG: What’s a word you dislike (either because it’s overused or misused) and why?

CK: "Triggered." I have a vicious dislike of how certain demographics have co-opted the word and now use it as an insult, or as a way of taunting people who have survived impossible horrors.

GG: What word will you always misspell?

CK: "Masscheteuts."  "Massesteusuts"? "Massachusetts" … That and "Mississippi" trip me up constantly.

GG: What word (or semblance of a word) would you like to see added to the dictionary? Why?

CK: "TK." It’s a publishing term meaning "to come," and I picked up its usage while I was working as a reporter. Unfortunately, I’ve since learned that not very many people understand its meaning. I’ve had people repeatedly ask why I’m making a cockroach-like noise when I finish a sentence with ‘tktktktk.’

GG: Any grammar pet peeves we should know about?

CK: I die a little whenever I see "peak" and "pique" confused, or when I see someone swap "complement" with "compliment."

Grammar Girl tackles this mistake in "Compliment" Versus "Complement"

GG: To what extent does grammar play a role in character development and voice?

CK: Gods, I think this answer differs depending on the author, the book, and the circumstances. Like, on a very basic level, grammar can help differentiate a character’s voice by showing a person’s education level, their understanding of the common tongue, their upbringing, even their state of coherence. But grammar can also be messed around with to create momentum, to disquiet a reader, to make them feel ill at ease, to create a sense of foreignness in the text. It can even be utilized to almost—*gestures vaguely at air*—create a sense of cinematography. Stephen Graham Jones’ "The Only Good Indians" and Tasmyn Muir’s "Harrow the Ninth" play loose and fast with their storytelling perspectives, engineering moments I didn’t realize were...

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What Does It Mean to Have Agility at Work?

Hiring leaders love buzzwords. Years ago when I worked in HR, “strategic thinking” was all the rage. Suddenly it caught on, and it became a key qualification in every job description. 

 

But what actually defines strategic thinking? And how do you know when someone’s doing it? Turns out these were the million-dollar questions. 

 

Years later strategic thinking is passé, but agility is hot stuff. If you can demonstrate agility, then leaders are looking to hire or promote you.

 

But what actually is agility, and how do you know if you’re doing it?

 

Luckily for many of us, it has nothing to do with physical agility—no one is expecting you to be able to run a mile in under eight minutes.

 

In a work context, agility is described in various ways.  Personally, I like Gallup’s framing, which describes agility as an “employees' capacity to gather and disseminate information about changes in the environment and respond to that information quickly and expediently.”

 

It’s about keeping up, taking quick action, and being comfortable shifting direction on a moment’s notice. And given that normalcy and stability are on short supply, this feels pretty important right now.

 

So let’s walk through a simple agility framework I like to use—it’ll keep you moving, changing direction, and achieving in increments.

 

I’ve even got an example for you: Years ago when I worked in corporate HR, I was asked to refresh our employee onboarding program. It was a big undertaking with major stakes. I wanted to get it right. So, I decided to take a fresh approach. Rather than diving deeply into research and planning months and years ahead, I leaned into agility and it served me well.

 

Here are the steps I took.

1. Scan

To deliver impact, you don’t need mounds of data, research, and leading practices as defined by external experts. You just need a sense of whose voice matters and what they’re chatting about in the moment.

 

For me, I was serving new employees and needed to know how they were thinking—and speaking—about their experience of onboarding.

 

I popped into a few new-hire training sessions, checked out a few forums on our intranet, and grabbed a few coffees with some new hires. And I just paid attention to what they were paying attention to.

 

I was hearing things like…...

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3 Simple Ways To Relieve Post-Exercise Soreness

Ever felt super sore the day after running, hiking, or throwing up some weights at the gym? You’re not alone. In fact, it’s common to feel stiffness and soreness begin to set in hours after strenuous or unaccustomed activity that can last for up to three days.

Popularly known as “delayed onset muscle soreness” (DOMS), it’s caused by movements where muscles lengthen under tension called eccentric contractions, such as downhill running, walking down stairs, slowly lowering weights, and plyometric exercises. 

Luckily, there are techniques to prevent and relieve post-exercise soreness that are well established by science. What may surprise most people is accumulating research suggesting that muscles may not be the source of this common post-workout phenomenon. 

Are problems with the muscles the source of post-workout soreness?

As the name implies, most theories attempting to explain DOMS attribute the symptoms to muscles. However, these theories have not been able to adequately link post-workout soreness to the muscles. 

For example, one of the oldest theories focuses on the accumulation of lactic acid in the muscles during exercise as the source of post-workout soreness. It’s true that soreness can be a result of lactic acid build-up when muscles fatigue during intense exercise. The problem with this theory is that lactic acid levels quickly return to normal after physical activity is stopped, whereas post-workout soreness occurs with a delay and persists for days. 

Another theory suggests that the post-workout soreness could result from damage of the muscles as a result of intense exercise. However, experiments that had participants perform eccentric exercises to induce post-workout soreness did not show a correlation between levels of soreness and levels of plasma creatine kinase, a marker of muscle damage in the blood. 

3 Excerises to Help With Knee Pain

If not muscle, what structure could possibly be the source of post-exercise soreness? 

...

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Relationshopping: Why Dating Apps Lead to Choice Overload

Using apps and online dating sites can be both an exciting and daunting experience. The next swipe or profile you look at might be just the person for you! But looking through so many profiles can also be overwhelming.

It seems counterintuitive, but too many choices may leave us less satisfied with the choices we make. We may feel that having more options means that we are eventually bound to find the “perfect” person. Ultimately, we should be feeling more confident about the decisions we make and the person we end up with since we will have seen and interacted with more “less-than-perfect” people. However, having more options may actually be more cognitively and emotionally taxing, leaving us unsatisfied in the end.

This phenomenon is what researchers call the choice overload effect. This is when people feel less satisfied with the choices they ultimately make when presented with too many options up front. Originally, work on the choice overload effect was done in marketing and consumer behavior. For example, showing options for consumer products like jam or other things you can buy at a grocery store. They found that people are more satisfied with their choice when they have fewer options, when they saw 6 types of jam instead of 25 types of jam. 

Researchers thought a similar phenomenon might happen in online dating. In the world of online dating, swiping on an app has made it so that we treat potential dating partners like an item on the shelf. They have a personalized ad, with a few taglines about who they are, and a few pictures of what they have to offer you. In light of all of my options today, which ad meets my needs? This commodification of people has been called “relationshopping” and it can be problematic.

Problems with “relationshopping”

Researchers have found that individuals who are presented with more options:

• Are more willing to change their mind. When people are just one...

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The First Step to Solve Child Behavior Problems

If you’re listening to the Project Parenthood podcast, you might be hoping to learn some respectful parenting tools and collaborative ways to encourage your child to behave in ways that are more acceptable to you. And sometimes collaborative parenting tools can be a quick fix for less entrenched behaviors.

But in my private practice, by the time families seek my services, the cycle of anger-triggering child behaviors and angry parental reactions has resulted in an adversarial atmosphere. And that kind of dynamic isn’t conducive to collaborative parent-child interactions, so respectful parenting tools usually lead to resistance instead of cooperation.

You might be the kind of parent who’s good at expressing anger in ways that don’t leave your child feeling emotionally cut off from you. Perhaps you’re able to let your child know you disapprove without leaving them with feelings of rejection.

But if you’re a parent who struggles with regulating your emotions—maybe you’re more likely to show overt or underlying rage, react coldly, or withdraw from your child in a way that conveys disappointment and helplessness—you may inadvertently evoke shame in them. And if your child has a lot of challenging behaviors, they probably invite a good deal of criticism from you and other adults, which only reinforces the shame.

Your child can internalize these chronic admonishments and the resulting shame can get tied up with their self-identity. When parent-child dynamics have veered off the rails, the first thing that needs to occur is for your child to feel more positively about themselves and less anxiety about the relationship with you. Before you can work on behaviors with parenting tools, you have to work on the atmosphere you’re parenting in.

For your child’s brain to create new relational pathways, it requires new relational experiences.

Imagine that, growing up, you were certain that you were exactly the person your parents or caregivers wanted and loved. That there was nothing you needed to do differently to earn their love, because that love couldn’t even be won or lost in the first place. Imagine that you grew up in an atmosphere that demonstrated to you that your parents’ care for you didn’t depend on how you achieved or behaved because their love was unconditional. They let you know when your behavior wasn’t okay, but they didn’t behave in ways that left you feeling unacceptable as a person. You could show as much developmentally normal emotional distress or unpleasant social behavior as you needed to without being afraid that your relationship with your parents would somehow be in jeopardy. This is the type of environment that allows for connection and collaboration with a child.

The vicious cycle of challenging behavior and angry reactions disrupts your...

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'Dos' and 'Dont's'

Here's a small problem we can address today: The spelling of the phrase "do's and don'ts" is inconsistent because that apostrophe in the word "don't" makes it tricky.

Generally, you don't use apostrophes to make words or abbreviations plural. For example, you don't use an apostrophe in "CDs" (the plural of "compact discs" or "certificates of deposit"), you don't use an apostrophe in "1970s" (all the years from 1970 to 1979), and you don't use an apostrophe in the word "bagels" (the plural of "bagel"). 

But English does have a few exceptions. For example, you can use apostrophes when they help eliminate confusion, which happens most often with single letters. "Mind your p's and q's" is typically spelled with apostrophes after the letter P and Q, and we write that the word "aardvark" has 3 a's, not 3 as.

The phrase "dos and don'ts" is an especially unusual exception. The apostrophe in the contraction "don't" seems to make people want to use an apostrophe to make "do" plural, but then to be consistent, you'd also have to use an apostrophe to make "don't" plural, which becomes downright ugly because then the word "don't's" has two apostrophes.

Style guides and usage books don't agree on how to handle it. The Chicago Manual of Style and others recommend "dos and don'ts."

The Associated Press and others recommend "do's and don'ts." 

The book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" recommends the consistent but ugly form that uses as many apostrophes as possible: "do's and don't's." I don't usually go to "Eats Shoots & Leaves" for style advice, but I included it here just to show the range of advice that's out there. OK, and to be honest, because the recommendation is so weird!

Here's my advice: Unless your editor wishes otherwise, if you write books, spell it "dos and don'ts"; and if you write for newspapers, magazines, or the web, spell it "do's and don'ts." If you're writing for yourself, you can spell it any way you want. Just be consistent.

I prefer 'do's and don'ts.'

 

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How to Feel Hope

October 10, 2021 was World Mental Health Day. It goes without saying that we’ve been living through a difficult time for mental health. Some of us have felt helpless or hopeless.

That’s why today, instead of a regular episode of Savvy Psychologist, we're sharing a special audio excerpt focusing on hope, brought to you by our colleagues at Macmillan Audio. This excerpt comes from the brand-new audiobook The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams.

In this audiobook, you’ll hear about Jane Goodall’s philosophy of hope. She discusses how she copes with all the discouragement and despair she’s encountered in her lifetime, from World War II to climate change, in order to remain hopeful. You'll also hear why she believes hope is an essential tool in her work for environmental justice.

Click the red audio player above to hear this excerpt from the introduction to the audiobook, read by Jane Goodall herself. 

If you like what you hear, you can pick up a copy of The Book of Hope wherever books or audiobooks are sold.

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Coming Soon: The Broken Constitution

Hey, Unknown History listeners! I'm Noah Feldman. I'm the author of the new book The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America. I'm also the host of the podcast Deep Background from Pushkin Industries. 

I hope you enjoyed the most recent season of Unknown History. If you've been liking the show, there's even more compelling history content coming your way very soon.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be taking over the Unknown History feed with a special miniseries. It's all about Abraham Lincoln and how he needed to break the Constitution in order to remake it. New episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays starting Thursday, October 21. 

If you like Unknown History, you won't want to miss this miniseries. Follow Unknown History on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. 

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