In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there
Don’t bother rewinding
Immediately re-watching lecture videos is a poor strategy for learning, just as is re-reading, suggests research published in Experimental Psychology.
Re-reading is known to be a poor strategy as it’s too passive and lends itself to mind wandering – it’s better to test yourself on what you’ve read or explain it to yourself or someone else. And it’s the same with lecture videos, according to researcher Leonardo Martin and his team, in their paper, Re-watching lectures as a study strategy and its effect on mind wandering.
“Re-watching a video lecture does not encourage individuals to build a richer representation of the content, thus leading to a more passive mode of viewing that puts little demands on attentional control, ultimately leading to more mind wandering,” said the researchers.
- Read more here: http://bit.ly/2SfCKRK
Leaders influence nationally
The quality of the leadership and management of a country’s businesses impacts its national productivity, according to research presented at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology’s annual conference in January.
Researchers Max Choi and Alan Howard presented data from a study that involved more than 117,000 leaders and managers from 32 countries across a wide range of sectors.
In the paper, The bottom line: Leadership skills strongly influence ‘whole country’ productivity, they used two tests of judgement to obtain average scores for leadership and management skills for each country – a senior leadership level test (results were obtained for 24 countries) and a management-level test (results were obtained for 27 countries). They also used a range of measures of the 32 countries’ investment in human capital.
They found that leadership skills and management skills directly influence a country’s productivity, even when all the measures of investment in human capital have been taken into account.
Howard said, “Even if your country has high levels of enrolment in tertiary education, a low unemployment rate and a long life expectancy, its productivity is still substantially influenced by leadership and management ability.
The pong of productivity
A spritz of new fragrance No.10 Spirit de Travail could be just what’s needed to boost workplace productivity.
Creative coworking provider Spaces and lifestyle brand Marie-Stella-Maris joined forces to develop the room spray and scent diffuser to enhance creativity and positivity in its workspaces, “stimulating a worker’s sense of smell to make them feel more at ease, ultimately boosting productivity”.
The fragrance, whose name means spirit of work, combines citrus notes from Calabrian bergamot and ingredients like cinnamon bark, vetiver and sandalwood.
The fragrance developers highlight research by Gary E Schwartz from the University of Arizona, which suggests that irritation, annoyance and stress can be countered by smell, stimulating ‘positive’ emotions such as happiness.
Spirit de Travail will be used across 200 Spaces centres in more than 45 locations worldwide, and is currently available for purchase at Spaces centres in the Netherlands, in the Marie-Stella-Maris flagship store in Amsterdam, and will soon be available to purchase in the UK.
Spaces, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, is a pioneer in coworking and flexible office space. In those 10 years, Spaces has grown from a single location in Amsterdam to offering 180 coworking and flexible office locations across the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Asia and Africa.
- Read more here: http://bit.ly/2RSFO7d
Rock ‘n’ roll makes you sleepy
More coaching is taking place outside these days – why not top off a session with a nap in a tree-hung hammock? Apparently rocking motion improves both sleep and memory consolidation.
Geneva University researchers found that in humans rocking helped synchronise neural activity in the thalamo-cortical brain networks, which help with sleep and memory consolidation. Meanwhile, Lausanne University researchers found that rocking (four times faster than humans!) helped mice fall – and stay – asleep too.
“Rocking motion improves sleep and memory, studies in mice and people show,” according to ScienceDaily (24 January 2019).
- Read more here: http://bit.ly/2RoNEjC
- Contributions to this slot are welcome.
- Email: liz@coaching-at-work.com