Month: January 2017

Work for Your Future Self

- Adam Clare

If you have trouble motivating yourself to start a new project or change something about yourself, change your perspective from now to the future. By thinking about what will benefit your future self you’ll be able to gain the motivation to act today instead of tomorrow. The best time to reshape your thinking is, of course, today.

Collectively, those moments of satisfaction will add up, a process Ainslie calls “bundling.” Like a worker assembling a gift backet, the brain’s subconscious reward circuitry computes the collective value of all the different benefits that will accrue tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and ties them all together in a package. Even if any of the individual future rewards may seem distant and hence hold little value, the whole bundle added up together amounts to something quite large—larger, even, than a single moment of pleasure in the here-and-now. The mountain will always remain larger than the tree. Even if the future benefits may seem distant and hence hold little value, they collectively can add up to something greater than a single moment of pleasure in the here and now. The mountain will always remain larger than the tree.

What you’re doing, essentially, is mentally projecting yourself into the future so you can experience the satisfaction of tomorrow’s rewards today. Intriguingly, researchers have found that people who more strongly identify with their future selves are better at self-control. In a 2009 study published in Judgment and Decision Making, psychologist Hal Hershfield showed subjects Venn diagrams with circles labeled “Current Self” and “Future Self.” Those who said they viewed the circles as mostly overlapping demonstrated more self-control in a later task: They preferred to wait for larger monetary rewards rather than taking small monetary rewards right away. Numerous other experiments have demonstrated a similar effect. “Being able to step into the shoes of our future selves,” says Hershfield, “is akin to being able to realize both the positive and the negative ramifications of our decisions.”

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Busting Urban Planning Myths

- Adam Clare

urban

There’s a lot of misconceptions about how to make cities a better place to live that need to be cleared up. A popular belief is that adding more lanes for cars will help curb traffic jams – when the opposite it true. Some backwards-looking individuals think that adding bike lanes is bad for business when multiple studies have proven otherwise. These myths have bothered a columnist over at Metro paper enough that they wrote an article focussed on busting these urban planning myths that hold back better cities.

A common political argument is that bike and transit riders should “pay their own way.” A study in Vancouver however suggested that for every dollar we individually spend on walking, society pays just 1 cent. For biking, it’s eight cents, and for bus-riding, $1.50. But for every personal dollar spent driving, society pays a whopping $9.20! Such math makes clear where the big subsidies are, without even starting to count the broader environmental, economic, spatial and quality-of-life consequences of our movement choices. The less people need to drive in our cities, the less we all pay, in more ways than one.

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Want more examples? There’s math showing that replacing on-street parking with safe, separated bike-lanes is good for street-fronting businesses. That crime goes down as density goes up. That providing housing for the homeless actually saves public money. That you can move more people on a street when car lanes are replaced by well-designed space for walking, biking and transit.

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A Little Exercise Goes a Long Way

- Adam Clare

run

At the start of the year people tend to make resolutions that they don’t hold – like regularly going to the gym. The good news is that you can break your resolutions and be OK, as long as you do something. Instead of trying to go to the gym and workout just go for a walk. Don’t stress out by setting unattainable goals; stay relaxed and stroll your way to health.

“Weekend warriors” — adults who perform the recommended amount of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity in one or two sessions per week — were found to have a risk of death from all causes about 30 per cent lower than inactive adults.

Researchers in England set out to investigate the risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer was associated with physical activity patterns.

“I think it’s important to reassure people that if they are a weekend warrior, if they are only exercising once or twice per week, and it’s of moderate or vigorous intensity, then that’s good enough,” study author Gary O’Donovan, of Loughborough University, England, said in an interview.

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Trees are Great for Cities

- Adam Clare

Cleaning the air and keeping areas cool are what trees do best. A new study has looked into how best to use trees from a purely utilitarian standpoint. Essentially they drilled down to what trees do best and where they can thrive. The researchers cataloged the best places to plant trees based on factors like removing particulate matter from the air and where they can have the greatest impact on local temperatures. As a result their research outlines the most efficient use of money when deciding where to plant more trees.

As always, the best time to plant a tree is today.

There is one catch, though: The tree-planting campaign has to be well-targeted. And that gets a bit complex.

Trees only improve air quality in their immediate vicinity, about 100 feet or so. That means cities need to figure out which neighborhoods benefit most from new trees (typically the densest areas, but also areas around hospitals and schools). They also have to plant species that are most effective at trapping pollution (typically those with large leaves).

Officials also need to account for things like wind patterns and tree spacing and figure out whether they’ll be able to maintain their trees. Plus, if water is scarce, they’ll want to consider drought-tolerant varieties. And they may want to steer clear of trees that increase pollen and allergies.

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