Technology & Innovation — April 29, 2011

What Your CEO Does

Do you know what your boss does? Researchers have studied how CEOs of big companies spend their time. Is it bad news that longer days correlated with better productivity?

bigthinkeditor

What’s the Latest Development?

Researchers scrutinized CEO time management by following 94 top managers in Italy for a week each. Most of the CEOs’ time was spent working with other people—via meetings, phone calls, and public appearances—and only 15% working alone. Two interesting findings were that the top managers who spent more time at work were more productive and that time they spent with ‘insiders’ correlated much more strongly with productivity increases than time meeting people from outside their company.

What’s the Big Idea?

CEOs should be mindful of how much time they spend with employees. Spending too much time with consultants, etc, ‘outside’ their company might not be as beneficial as they think. It seems bosses who work harder—and spend more time meeting with their staff—get better results.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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