About Erin Wildermuth

The United States Military Academy is an elite, selective institution with an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent. Despite this, not everyone who matriculates graduates. Psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz decided to find out why. Drawing on 14 years of data detailing the motivations and outcomes of over 10,000 cadets, they found intrinsic […]

My sister is obsessed with games. Video games, board games, role-playing games – she loves them all. She will readily admit that the pure glee she derives from unlocking achievements fuels this obsession. She isn’t alone. Quests result in gold, each round of Tetris earns additional points, and grown adults spend more time searching neighbor’s […]

For all of the champagne, new diets, and gym memberships folks are about to experience, only about eight percent of resolution-takers succeed in attaining their goals. What goes wrong? Any number of answers might hold a kernel of truth, but I’d offer the following: New Year’s Day is not a real new beginning. Much as […]

May 6, 1954 was a cold and windy day in Oxford, England. It was far from ideal conditions for a race, but it was also the day Roger Banister broke a record. He wasn’t a professional athlete, but a medical student with a knack for running. He set out on a wet race track and […]

This morning I had a list of four sizable items to accomplish. I knew it was an ambitious plan, but I tackled the day with confidence. I was determined to be a single-minded machine of efficiency, slaying tasks with unparalleled gusto. I started early, but it didn’t matter. As I write, it’s mid-afternoon and not […]

“Tell me about a time you worked with a team.” It is a common interview question, one many of us have heard before. If you’re like me, a flood of past teams comes cascading into your brain, some good and others not so good. There is the team where you had to the do all […]

I met Dave at a residential behavioral health center in Arizona. An older man with stories to match his years, he was great with the clients and even better with our young coworkers. One story he shared has stuck with me. He had been working with a particularly unpleasant young man for several months. Let’s […]

Think back to the last decision you made. What were your options? How did you choose what to do? Most importantly, was the outcome of this decision instrumental in building your life, productivity, or happiness? Unless I caught you at a particularly productive or essential moment, probably not. Most of the decisions we make are […]

As a kid who wasn’t allowed to watch television, the focus of my childhood was play. The games are too many to count. There was, for example, a little girl who lived in mirrorland and would possess me if I accidentally touched that shiny, reflective surface at night. She scared the heck out of my […]

What do you do when you wake up in the morning? Do you brush your teeth, take a shower, and eat a bowl of oatmeal? Maybe you go for a run before the rest of the house is up or maybe you press the snooze and lie in bed, going over your day’s goals. Whatever […]

Even if you don’t consider yourself a “reader,” you read all the time. Signs, instructions, articles, bills, blogs, newspaper headlines and grocery lists all depend on literacy. Literature is the icing on the cake. Reading permeates so much of our lives, and yet human civilization has only been literate for a tiny sliver of our […]

I used to take yearly sabbaticals. For three glorious months each summer my time was more or less my own. I did whatever took my fancy: running around the yard with my siblings, reading books, pestering my parents. You probably did, too. We were little, so the associated learning was not exactly productive. Luckily, sabbaticals […]

Curiosity starts early. Children throw cups from highchairs over and over, testing gravity and their parents. They repeat the same noises and ask the same questions, exploring sound and language. When everything is new, there are countless experiments to run. The answers are awe-inspiring: sunsets, gravity, hula hoops, and bugs. As more and more questions […]

Your intuition is a lot like Shawn Spencer. If you’re not familiar with the hit TV show Psych, Spencer is a private detective with a twist: he has everyone convinced he is psychic. In fact, his supernatural, detecting power is nothing more than exceptional attention-to-detail. How is this like intuition? Though people are apt to […]

The idea of self-talk elicits images of less-than-sane people muttering to themselves as they stumble about less-than-safe streets. I try not to look like that when I talk to myself. In theory, this means ensuring my internal monologue is actually internal when other people are about. In practice, people are always sneaking around corners and […]

My two-year-old is asleep for the third time today. I thought I had developed a clever disciplinary method when I started telling him that cranky kids need naps, and sending him to bed multiple times. Turns out I was being more clever than I knew. Instead of being better behaved, he just keeps going to […]

One of my earliest memories involves a handwriting struggle. My class had been tasked with writing stories. I love stories. My masterpiece, about accidentally catching a great white shark and putting him into my bedroom aquarium, was the longest in the class. It was pages and pages long. It had chapters. I was in child-heaven […]

Three years ago I boarded a crowded, somewhat dirty bus and set off for Wat Suan Mokkh, a Thai forest monastery. The grounds featured giant monitor lizards and bats that would fly low at dusk, almost touching you with their wings. Though the bat-filled evenings were a highlight of my trip, they were not my […]

In the 2007 film “Music and Lyrics,” an absent-minded lyricist played by Drew Barrymore drives her high-strung musical partner a little crazy by insisting that they take breaks throughout the day. Each time they take a walk or run out for food, however, the lyrics come to her as if by magic. Sometimes, as an […]

Fear is universal. The gymnast fears stumbling instead of sticking the perfect landing. The singer fears a moment of wavering pitch. The serious speaker fears laughter; the joker silence. We all fear failure. How we respond to fear, however, varies considerably and determines whether this emotion will help us achieve our goals or leave us […]

My life is full of celebration. There are happy dances for finished dishes, celebratory puppy cuddles for when our rescue dog makes it around the block without barking, and obligatory family clapping when my son eats anything other than bananas. He really loves bananas. That’s my home life: dances, cuddles, and clapping. There are also […]

Before starting Praxis, Isaac Morehouse needed an investor. He didn’t need an investment of money or of time. He didn’t need a website built, a curriculum designed, or a market analyzed. What he needed was an investor of passion. He needed someone to believe as firmly in his vision as he did, someone “to believe […]

It is easier to be thankful during Thanksgiving. The name alone inspires a sense of appreciation. Mix that general feeling with turkey, good wine, family, and friends and even the busiest, overworked American can find a reason to stop and be thankful. The challenge is maintaining a thankfulness habit throughout the year. All too often, […]