Barking Up The Wrong Tree
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Welcome to Barking Up The Wrong Tree. This site brings you science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life.
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
13h ago
Procrastination. The bane of productivity, the thief of time, the reason why you’re currently reading this instead of doing that thing we both know you need to do. In the world of procrastination, time ceases to exist in its linear form. Hours stretch like taffy in a carnival booth, and you find yourself doing things […]
The post How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 Secrets From Research appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
2w ago
Retirement. The mythical Promised Land where every day is a Saturday. No more punching the clock, no more staff meetings, no more pretending to be interested in Sharon’s photos from her third trip to Dollywood. Retirement is often presented like a montage from a pharmaceutical ad: biking through scenic parks with a face radiating pure […]
The post How To Have A Happy Retirement: 4 Secrets From Research appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
1M ago
IQ is real, folks. It’s a number that tells you how good someone is at puzzle-solving, logical reasoning, and making you feel inadequate at dinner parties. But here’s the rub: IQ isn’t everything. Greater education and intelligence don’t necessarily lift you up; sometimes they just provide better tools for digging trenches. Check this out: “Intelligent […]
The post New Neuroscience Reveals 5 Secrets That Will Make You Smarter appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
1M ago
Anger’s greatest trick is making you think you’re standing up for yourself, that you’re finally taking control. It tells you that your outburst is justified, that your righteous fury is not only warranted but essential. It whispers in your ear: “You’re not being unreasonable. You’re being assertive.” But you’re not. You’re a grown person screaming […]
The post How To Defeat Anger: 4 Secrets From The Ancients appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
2M ago
Anxiety is the modern age’s favorite emotional sport. It’s like carrying around a tiny, paranoid screenwriter in your head, constantly pitching you horror movie scenarios about your own life. Your brain is always preparing to fight a bear or run a marathon, except you’re just trying to order a coffee. “Should I take this job? […]
The post This Is How To Conquer Anxiety: 4 Secrets From Research appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
2M ago
The teen years. This is the age where one’s room can simultaneously resemble a FEMA disaster site and a meticulously curated museum of personal angst, each discarded clothing item a testament to a fleeting mood or an identity crisis. What causes all the problems? The teenage brain. It’s a marvel of nature, a biological enigma […]
The post New Neuroscience Reveals 5 Rituals That Will Make You An Awesome Parent appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
3M ago
You wanted to have friends over for dinner and impress them. Now the kitchen has become your personal Jackson Pollock canvas. Flour has turned the countertops into a winter wonderland, a lone egg yolk is weeping into the sink, and you’re wearing most of the other ingredients. Why is this so hard? The recipes always […]
The post How Psychology Can Make You A Better Cook: 5 Secrets from Research appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
4M ago
Being a new parent isn’t easy. Babies are essentially tiny, drunk roommates. They stumble around, they’re loud at all the wrong hours, they throw up on you without a hint of remorse, and they don’t pay rent. You’ll find yourself considering the merits of just squirting puree directly onto the floor just to cut out the middleman.
And this is all made more difficult by the fact that they can barely communicate. Babies come equipped with a range of sounds that are designed to trigger every parental instinct you didn’t know you had. There’s the “I’m mildly annoyed” grunt, the “I’m somewhat hungry ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
5M ago
There’s no specific moment when you know you’re getting older. No ceremony where they hand you a cardigan and a book of crossword puzzles and say, “Welcome. You’re one of us now. The Wi-Fi password is getoffmylawn.”
But the wrinkles and gray hairs start accumulating. Your brain’s default setting has gone from “efficient” to “making that dial-up internet sound.” And you wake up with injuries from sleeping wrong. SLEEPING. You know, that passive activity where you’re unconscious and immobile. It’s either laugh at the absurdity of it all or cry into your fiber supplement.
But it’s not all doom a ..read more
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
5M ago
At times, inexplicably bad stuff happens to all of us. The kind of thing that makes you want to stand in front of the universe with a sign reading, “Really? This is what we’re doing now?”
And sometimes we call it “bad luck.” Oh, magical thinking, my favorite kind of thinking when I want to avoid responsibility and logic, which, if I’m honest, is most of the time. We all have a friend who believes every retrograde Mercury heralds personal disaster. I never thought I’d have a friend who blames late credit card payments on distant celestial bodies, but here we are.
If you’ve been reading this bl ..read more