GRANTED: Why I’m Always Late and the Joy of Missing Out

October 2015

The leaves change, the wind blows, and the newsletter arrives. This month, a new type of time-wasting and the best justification for lateness I've ever heard:

1. Pre-Crastination: The Opposite of Procrastination
Putting off important stuff? That's old news. The cool new way to act irrationally is to complete trivial tasks with great urgency for a false sense of accomplishment. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go alphabetize my sock drawer.

2. Why I'm Always Late
A typically hilarious post from Wait But Why revealing the real reason why some people are always late: their brains are inhabited and occasionally commandeered by a tyrannical monkey.

3. 20 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Your Decisions
Rounding out the trifecta of links featuring Brains Behaving Badly, here's a nifty infographic of some of our most common mental stumbling blocks.

4. When Women Get Stuck, Corporate America Gets Stuck
At the current rate, it will take more than a century for corporate America to reach gender equality in leadership. Drawing on a major new study by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, Sheryl Sandberg lays out some of the less obvious barriers to progress, and offers some solutions.

5. The Problem of Too Much Talent
What do LeBron James and a chicken have in common? They both do best with a clear pecking order, and it turns out the rest of us do, too. A diverting read for those who want to be/hire/lead the very best.

6. The Joy of Missing Out
You’ve felt FOMO: the fear of missing out. Now meet its happier cousin, JOMO: the Joy of Missing Out. “If FOMO arises from second-guessing your choices,” Oliver Burkeman writes, “JOMO means taking ownership of them.”
 

From My Desk:

7. No, You Can't Pick My Brain, But I'll Talk to You Anyway
I'd like prospective pickees to be less picky about who they meet, and prospective pickers to pick a different way to ask.

8. Stop the Meditation Madness
Meditation is the latest rage, but does it have any unique benefits? In my latest op-ed, I ask meditation evangelists to go breathe and leave me alone.

Thank you for reading—I hope you and your brain monkey each found something you liked. See you next month.

Cheers,
Adam

Adam Grant, Ph.D.
Wharton professor and author of GIVE AND TAKE