Progress-focused

The challenges of school closures due to COVID have been significant for many young people. Recent research points to two factors that may support young people to stay motivated with schoolwork during such periods.

Progress can occur in various aspects of life, and technology has the potential to drive significant changes, ideally for the better. One technology that has gained attention recently is blockchain. In a previous article , I explored the potential of blockchain as a powerful source of progress.  Despite the challenges faced by centralized financial institutions and some major centralized organizations in the cryptocurrency world, I maintain a positive outlook on the potential of blockchain and crypto to make progress. Even though I am not an expert in this domain and acknowledge its complexity, I am still extremely fascinated and committed to it. Consequently, it may be valuable to re-examine the fundamentals of blockchain and cryptocurrency and explore their potential for driving progress.

I recently spoke to a person over 50 about all kinds of things she had learned, was learning, and wanted to continue learning. She said she felt that life actually gave her more options now than when she was young. She concluded: Old age doesn't just come with infirmity. That sentence stuck in my head. Read below why I think that sentence holds a lot of truth.

In a LinkedIn post by Jan Rotmans , professor of sustainability in Rotterdam and author of the book Omarm de chaos , I came across the concept of ' illusion of powerlessness '.

Within self-determination theory , much attention has been devoted for years to the positive effects of supporting basic psychological needs. Somewhat less attention has been paid to the undermining of motivation and functioning through frustration of needs. A new study looks at both.

We live in a time of great changes in our societies. Organizations must continue to innovate to succeed in a changing society, which requires leaders and managers to foster a culture that fosters creativity and innovation and to continue to explore new ways to innovate and grow. If innovation is also important in your organization, it can be useful to take note of the cruelty incentive .

There is no denying that humanity faces a number of existential problems such as economic inequality, environmental degradation and political instability. Therefore, it is necessary for society as a whole to work for the common good. Unfortunately, a sense of despondency prevails as so many people seem to feel powerless in the face of these problems. Yet our contribution to a better world, even if we sometimes think they have little to do with these important challenges, can have an impact. In this article, we explore the power of small actions and how everyone's choices can influence the course of the future.

How mindset interventions can improve adolescent mental health. A new paper by David Yeager and Carol Dweck raises the idea that adolescents have different perceptions of their personal qualities, and that changing these perceptions can lead to better coping with challenging situations and improved mental health. The paper presents both theory and data that support this idea.

The word values ​​refers to what we value in life and what we think is good and bad. Values ​​are important because they strongly influence our judgments, choices and behaviors. Self-determination theory research shows that when we engage in activities that are consistent with our values, we feel and function better. But what kind of values ​​can we have? In this article I describe characteristics of values ​​and explain Shalom Schwartz's Theory of Fundamental Human Values. Then I describe which values ​​wise people especially have and which they especially don't have. If you want to get wiser, maybe you can take some inspiration from this.

Wisdom is a complex concept. Wisdom contains multiple components and facets. It brings together many of the best things in people at the same time. The complexity of wisdom makes it difficult to describe and study. Different thinkers and scientists have looked at this complex concept from different angles. With the advent of the still young science of wisdom, there is gradually more clarity about what wisdom consists of, how it can be measured, how it relates to other concepts, what its importance is and how it can be developed.

We live in a time of profound changes and countless uncertainties. Recently, as a society, we have been shaken up by the dramatic opportunities and threats that artificial intelligence (AI) entails. These developments are going so fast that the prospects are that AI will be able to take over the work of many people in the foreseeable future. What possibilities and opportunities will there be for us in the future? This is an essential question because opportunity is crucial to the pursuit of goals, and without opportunity, progress is unlikely.

This article is about the quality of motivation according to self-determination theory (SDT). I focus on the best quality of motivation: autonomous motivation and explain that it comes in two forms: intrinsic and internalized motivation. Then I explain that there are two wrong ways of thinking about intrinsic motivation. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the balance between intrinsic and internalized motivation can be seen as an important key to success in education and work.

Rebecca Collie conducted a survey of 426 Australian teachers. Through this research, she sought to find out which factors are involved in teachers' well-being and turnover intentions ( Collie, 2023 ).

An interesting, fairly new discipline is emerging within the social sciences: Cognitive Immunology (CI). This discipline of science studies the immune system of the mind that protects against infectious and dangerous ideas, just as the immune system of the body protects against microbes. Cognitive immunologists strive to better understand disorders, causes of mental immunity, and interventions to improve mental immunity. Below I give a brief description of this discipline.

Being able to say 'no' effectively is important. Countless explicit and implicit requests are coming our way every day. By explicit requests I mean direct questions that we are asked, such as: "Could you do ...  for me?'' or "Is it okay if I ...'' By implicit requests I mean something more abstract, namely all the stimuli and triggers that ask for our attention. These can be all kinds of things such as e-mails that come in, interesting, exciting or disturbing news reports on websites or on the radio or TV, expressions on social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, incoming text messages or Whats app messages, and even people passing by or sounds you hear.

This week I facilitated a progress-focused session of a team of professionals from the municipality of Rotterdam. Facilitating such an unknown team in advance is often a bit exciting. You don't know who you're dealing with and you have no idea what they'll say or how they'll behave. But usually my sense of curiosity is greater than my nervousness. The reason for this is that I usually hear interesting and informative things from such a group. That was also the case that morning. Several interesting things were said that also made me think again. I will highlight one as an example.

I had an interesting experience last week during an exercise in our training. A participant changed his attitude from authoritarian and sarcastic to progress-focused within a few minutes. During our progress-focused leadership training, I supervised an exercise in which we practiced progress-focused directing . During part of that exercise, one of the participants, Peter, wanted to practice a bit. Peter had said earlier during the training that he wanted to practice being non-authoritarian in the conversation. He saw this as a pitfall for himself. I stepped into the role of employee and he stepped into that of manager. We practiced that he would ask me directing question and I would respond complainingly.

Love is an almost universal phenomenon with a biological background. It is therefore certain that love occurs worldwide. But to what extent do culture and environmental factors influence the extent to which people express and experience love? To find out, a group of 91 researchers conducted a large-scale study of romantic relationships in 45 countries and territories. 

Around the holidays and the New Year, we often meet a lot of people and sometimes have conversations that we can't always have during the busy working weeks . I had a few conversations with a few people about big topics of our time. I quite often think about such conversations afterwards. Below, from my memory, I try to recall as best I can how those conversations went.

Recently I was musing about people, as I often do. You may know that. As I did that, I realized that the people I thought about might, in real life, be very different from what I think they are. Our mental versions of them can be very different from themselves. I thought about that for a while.

How does internalization of motivation take place? It often happens that we have to do things that we do not find inherently fun or interesting. If this is the case, we need another reason to carry out the activity with motivation. Motivational internalization plays an important role here. Bex Hewett researched how internalization occurs.

Many see the growth mindset as an important concept for education. However, recent studies show relatively modest effects of growth mindset interventions on school outcomes. New research by Tieme Janssen and Nienke van Atteveld (2022) shows a specific improvement of growth mindset interventions. They not only explained to students about neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to constantly change, but also let them experience these changes themselves through neurofeedback. Below I briefly describe their research.

What is the intelligent attitude? Psychologists have been measuring intelligence for over 100 years. Intelligence measurements have been widely used for years for admission to educations and selection decisions. In a new article, Robert Sternberg (2022) argues for a broader view of intelligence. I discuss some of the main points from the interesting article.