WSJ: “Getting angry doesn’t just hurt our mental health, it’s also damaging to our hearts, brains and gastrointestinal systems, according to doctors and recent research. Of course, it’s a normal emotion that everyone feels—few of us stay serene when a driver cuts us off or a boss makes us stay late. But getting mad too often or for too long can cause problems. There are ways to keep your anger from doing too much damage. Techniques like meditation can help, as can learning to express your anger in healthier ways.”
Economist: “The conventional language of career success moves in only one direction: up. You scale the career ladder or climb the greasy pole. If you do well, you have a rapid ascent. And if you really succeed, you reach the top. No one ever rings home to share the news that they have reached a plateau. But there is another type of career trajectory. Sideways moves, to jobs that don’t involve a promotion or even necessarily a pay rise, can be a boon to employees and organisations alike. A study carried out by Donald Sull of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his co-authors in 2021 found that the availability of lateral career opportunities has a marked impact on employee retention. Their research found that chances to move sideways were two and a half times more important than pay as a predictor of workers’ willingness to stay at a firm. Another paper, by Xin Jin of the University of South Florida and Michael Waldman of Cornell University, concluded that lateral moves did not just benefit organisations: employees who experienced them were more likely to be promoted and to enjoy higher wage growth later in their careers than employees who did not. You can move up by first moving sideways.” [via Mint]
Arnold Kling: “Suppose that within the next three years, I am using an AI-powered app to write this substack. I can tell the app to summarize substacks and other sources that I follow. I can tell the app to grab passages to quote. I can tell the app the main point I wish to make in an essay and have it compose a draft in my style. Once an app can do those things, I no longer need a personal computer. I just need a headset that can handle AI, using the cloud if necessary. I could keep up this substack while on a walk or on a bike ride. In the future, either AI realizes its promise or it doesn’t. If it does, then we will be accessing computer resources by using our voices, possibly with gestures. If AI doesn’t pan out, we will still need personal computers and Microsoft software, but an AI PC won’t be much of an improvement over the laptop I am using now. I see no future scenario in which masses of people will be using an AI PC. That is what I mean when I say that an AI PC is an oxymoron.”
WSJ on a great vacation: “You don’t do plan as much, you do less of what you like, you take a break from enjoying yourself, and you make yourself do things that are actually uncomfortable. If that sounds like the recipe for a lousy trip, that’s understandable. But science suggests otherwise. So my advice is to forget about what feels like the smart thing to do and embrace the opposite. The result may very well become the stories you cherish and share long after your return.”
