{"id":504,"date":"2006-04-06T09:21:01","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T13:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/06\/science-and-the-obvious\/"},"modified":"2006-04-07T08:37:05","modified_gmt":"2006-04-07T12:37:05","slug":"science-and-the-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/06\/science-and-the-obvious\/","title":{"rendered":"Science And The Obvious."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/popsci\/index.html\">Popular Science<\/a> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/popsci\/science\/02d3b3d795a6a010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html\">a nice round-up<\/a> of ten different studies where science confirms the obvious (with a bonus page about science disproving a few bits of conventional wisdom).<\/p>\n<p>The ten conclusions are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Combining Drugs and Alcohol is Bad For You<\/li>\n<li>Gun-Toting Drivers are More Prone to Road Rage<\/li>\n<li>Faraway Objects Are Tougher to See<\/li>\n<li>The Beer-Goggle Effect is a Bona Fide Phenomenon<br \/> (<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/30\/who-said-higher-math-wouldnt-help-you-in-real-life\/\">we covered this one a while back<\/a><\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Swallowing More Than One Magnet is Dangerous<\/li>\n<li>Smoking Cigarettes Costs You Money<\/li>\n<li>Memory and Concentration Fade With Age<\/li>\n<li>Women Like Funny Men<\/li>\n<li>Time Flies When You&#8217;re Busy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the final conclusion they cover?<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Too Many Meetings Make You Grumpy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Study:<\/strong> \u201cThe relationship between meeting load and . . . well-being of employees,\u201d <em>Group Dynamics<\/em>, March 2005<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Findings:<\/strong> Ever get the feeling that you\u2019d get more work done if you weren\u2019t constantly attending meetings to discuss all the work to be done? Two social scientists from the universities of Minnesota and North Carolina hypothesized that meetings are analogous to \u201chassles,\u201d defined in stress-research literature as \u201cannoying episodes in which daily tasks become more difficult or demanding than anticipated.\u201d The psychologists analyzed diary entries from 37 meeting-prone midlevel university workers over one week. They found that days chock-full of meetings left employees feeling stressed, exhausted and burned out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Bother? Employers take heed:<\/strong> Since beleaguered workers may perform poorly, be tardy, or quit, the authors suggest that \u201corganizations be sensitive to the number of meetings employees are required to attend.\u201d Managers could create \u201cformal guidelines\u201d for meeting necessity (presumably not drafted at a meeting).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And, just to complete the picture for you, allow me to show you my schedule from a sample day this week:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/04\/schedule.jpg\" width=\"510\" height=\"514\" alt=\"Schedule\" title=\"Schedule\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Popular Science has a nice round-up of ten different studies where science confirms the obvious (with a bonus page about science disproving a few bits of conventional wisdom). The ten conclusions are: Combining Drugs and Alcohol is Bad For You Gun-Toting Drivers are More Prone to Road Rage Faraway Objects Are Tougher to See The Beer-Goggle Effect is a Bona&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/06\/science-and-the-obvious\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-88","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}