The Secret Hit-Making Power of the Spotify Playlist Starley Hope thought she was done with the music biz after writing “Call on Me.” The song felt like her last shot at success after spending years trying to make it as a songwriter. “I decided I was going to give it up and get a ‘real job,’” she told the website Music Love. She released the track as her debut single in July, expecting it to be her swan song. It wasn’t. “Call on Me” currently sits at No. 80 on the Billboard Hot 100. It hit number one on the Swedish charts, and went gold or platinum in nine countries. Hope wrote a certified hit single, one dwarfed only by the remix from Aussie DJ Ryan Riback. Although you hear it all over the radio now, Spotify users found themselves bouncing along to her synthy strains seven months ago. The song […]

If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about? If you’ve ever put off an important task by, say, alphabetizing your spice drawer, you know it wouldn’t be fair to describe yourself as lazy. After all, alphabetizing requires focus and effort — and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile to wipe down each bottle before putting it back. And it’s not like you’re hanging out with friends or watching Netflix. You’re cleaning — something your parents would be proud of! This isn’t laziness or bad time management. This is procrastination. If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about? Etymologically, “procrastination” is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow. But it’s more than just voluntarily delaying. Procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment. “It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor […]

Learn faster. Retain more. Maybe even become the smartest person in the room. Science says so. While it’s nice to think you can hack your way to success, whenever you try to accomplish a huge goal — like starting and growing a business — skills matter. Who you know is certainly important. But what you know, and what you can do, matters a whole lot more. Which means the faster you learn, the more successful you can be. So let’s jump right in. Here are ten ways, backed by science, to speed up the learning process. 1. Say out loud what you want to remember. Research shows that compared to reading or thinking silently (as if there’s another way to think), the act of speech is a “quite powerful mechanism for improving memory for selected information.” According to scientists, “Learning and memory benefit from active involvement. When we add an […]