Making teams work: Increasing cooperation and productivity by removing primate politics…

Any of you who’ve spent time working in a large organisation will be familiar with the seeming need for (what feels like) endless meetings. In fact, working with and in groups is an inescapable fact of pretty much all organised work. Occasionally, this experience can Read More …

Being professional: Ethics and practice…

We all remember the Suarez biting incident a few weeks back. Given my background in sport psychology, I found it particularly interesting and even thought about writing a blog about it. At the same time, I had several requests (from the media) to speculate on Read More …

How not to be miserable: Challenge, mastery, and flow as panacea…

There’s a pervasive theme among my clients. Time and again, they report having pretty OK lives; they have a comfortable home, supportive relationships, a decent job, and plenty of stuff. But they’re unhappy, or preoccupied, or stressed, or overwhelmed by their emotions (usually anxiety and, Read More …

Riding the hard stuff: An instruction manual for your brain…

First up, my apologies for the lack of a post in the last few weeks – busy times. I’ll get back to a normal publishing schedule in a fortnight. In the meantime – below is an article that I recently wrote for Flow mountain bike and which should Read More …

There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute…

Today’s blog will be a little different, but touches on human credulity, especially in the modern world of mass distribution of (mis)information. As a person trained in science, it pains me to see the amount of crap being pumped through social media, and the remarkable Read More …

Actions speak louder than words…

I, for one, am fed up with watching inequity, stupidity and bigotry, and walking by because it’s ‘uncomfortable’ to say or do anything. So today, I’m going to write about why it’s not OK to let politicians, organisations, and individuals get away with actions that Read More …

Neuroscience vs. psychology: Why we need to understand the hardware and software…

Last time, I wrote about the sometimes bridge between psychological research and practise. I pointed out that many psychologists practise based on nonscientific beliefs, instead of sound, evidence-based protocols. Again, last week, I pointed out that many psychologists practise in almost complete ignorance of neuroscience. Few Read More …

Psychologists vs. psychology: It’s time we started practising science…

This week, I’m going to rant. Actually I’m going to rant about my own profession. As you probably know, I’m a psychologist. I first became involved with psychology as a student 25 years ago. Since then, I’ve spent 11 years at university studying it, and Read More …

The Biggest Exploitation…

Most of my readers will be familiar with the television show “The Biggest Loser” – there are ‘homegrown’ versions of it in Australia, the UK and the US. Today I want to write not only about why they do immense harm (and no good), but Read More …

Understanding intelligence: You’re not as smart as you think you are (and neither am I)…

A lot of the things you learnt about the brain whilst growing up were probably wrong. In fact, over the last decade or so, most of the things neuroscientists knew (or thought they did) about the brain have been shown to be either incomplete or Read More …

How well would you cope in a disaster? Performance in extreme situations…

You probably think you’d cope well in a disaster right? In fact, whether it’s their imagined reaction to a car accident, a bushfire, or a medical emergency, most people think they’d deal with it pretty well. Actually, most people think they’d deal with it better Read More …

Performing under pressure: What you need to know…

Some of you probably know that I’m trained as a sport psychologist, and spent four years running a Masters’ degree in Sport and Performance Psychology in London. During that time, I designed what I believed to be a cutting-edge course, had it ratified and accredited Read More …

How to exercise properly: Making sure you get what you need…

I’m on holiday this week – four days in and I’m feeling relaxed – perfect time for a blog. I’ve had this idea sitting in my drafts folder for ages – and given I’m taking a week off exercising it’s probably the right time to Read More …

The power of purposeless activity: Fun (or why I mountain bike)…

When was the last time you had fun? I don’t mean the sort of things that, as adults, we often confuse for fun, like getting pissed or washing the new car. I mean something that was frivolous, purposeless, even pointless, and yet resulted in feelings Read More …

Wellbeing at work (Part 3): Helping your employer be less of an arsehole…

OK, looks like life has conspired to answer my own question – a blog every two weeks seems to be doable, so from now on (unless I get extra excited), expect fortnightly entries. Today, I want to finish the trilogy of wellbeing at work articles. Read More …

Wellbeing at work (Part 2): Taking control…

I’m still not quite decided whether I’ll continue this blog on a weekly or a fortnightly basis – recently I’ve come up with quite a few new ideas, so we’ll see how things go. You can help though! Let me know whether you’d really like Read More …

Wellbeing at work: Cutting through the bullshit…

Apologies for the break last week – turns out that coming up with a new topic every week is actually pretty hard – and there have now been over 65 blogs (stretching over a 14 months). Hits are steadily increasing too – the site just Read More …

The science and practice of Meditation (cultivating your inner daily llama)…

Today’s post comes to you from onboard a train to London – normal service should resume next week on my return home to Melbourne. I realised recently that I’ve spent a lot of time in my posts talking about the importance of meditation, including how Read More …