Your memory is unreliable. Shocker, I know. Life is full, and increasingly full of sensory overwhelm, so it’s not surprising at all that we sometimes forget things – details, things we needed to do, or something somebody told us. Our brains can’t retain every piece of information, and we need to constantly filter out piecesContinue reading “Counteracting Unreliable Work Memories”
Category Archives: Attention
Workplace Empathy in the New Academic Year
How does the beginning of a new academic year affect you? Even if you don’t have children or work in academia yourself, it might be impacting you more than you realize. If you have children of any age – or if you are a student or an educator yourself – the beginning of a newContinue reading “Workplace Empathy in the New Academic Year”
How is Your Team Like a Fireworks Display?
In honor of this week’s Independence Day celebrations in the United States and in Canada, we are revisiting this article, originally posted in 2021: If you live in the United States or Canada, you’ll have the chance to see fireworks at some point this week – in person or on a broadcast. If you’re anythingContinue reading “How is Your Team Like a Fireworks Display?”
Why Not Advertise to Yourself?
How many advertisements do you see every day? How many of those impact your behavior? Researchers disagree on the answers to these questions – some say the number is in the dozens, some say it’s in the hundreds, and some say it’s up to 10,000. The reasons for such a wide spread are based onContinue reading “Why Not Advertise to Yourself?”
What’s Your “Tiffany Problem”?
If you were reading a fantasy novel or watching a show set in medieval times, and a character was introduced as “Tiffany,” what would your reaction be? Chances are, it might stick out like a Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones. This is because Tiffany is thought of by most people as a modern-sounding nameContinue reading “What’s Your “Tiffany Problem”?”
Disrupt Your Muscle Memory
Making small changes to your devices and your daily habits can disrupt your muscle memory in powerful ways, enabling you to become more aware of your blind spots, and more actively choose how you want to do things.
Build “Breathing Breaks” Into Your Day
In many of Building Bridges Leadership’s programs we look at a number of reasons we all make biased decisions. One major factor that’s true for us all is that our brains take in around 11 millions bits of information per second – a number that has increased dramatically over the last 30 years with theContinue reading “Build “Breathing Breaks” Into Your Day”
Agreeing on a Currency that Works
Do you have a handful of foreign coins in your home – sometimes from countries you’ve never even been to? Somehow we always have in our house, despite moves and several “why do we have these?” conversations. I’m pretty sure ours even includes a car wash token for a place that no longer exists, andContinue reading “Agreeing on a Currency that Works”
Avoiding Selective Moral Outrage
I showed up to register for my first set of classes at Harvard Graduate School of Education on the morning of September 11, 2001. The World Trade Center attacks played over and over on the small TV screens in Gutman Library with large crowds gathered around, but we all registered for classes without acknowledging whatContinue reading “Avoiding Selective Moral Outrage”
Using Your Team’s Previous Work Cultures to Build a Better One
During a series of team building activities with a client this week, it was noticeable that one newer member of the group shared ideas that were shut down or ignored by the rest of the group – including the director of the department. Rather than point that out in the moment, I let the groupContinue reading “Using Your Team’s Previous Work Cultures to Build a Better One”
Building Bridges Leadership 