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Originally posted in our September 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. Thinking about the value of mind-wandering might lead you to reflect on times you’ve been guilty of procrastination. Everyone does it, but why? And perhaps more importantly, how can we combat it? In this Harvard Business Review article from 2016, we see a simple yet effective outline of how to get over procrastination. From simple tips like committing publicly to achieving a goal to visualizing how…

Originally posted in our September 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. What causes our minds to wander? Is it helping us or hurting us? Researchers have found that the answer is more complicated than you might think. But, as the fields of psychology develop and shift, so too does neuroscience. We can now better than ever understand what parts of the brain are doing while we perform tasks or when we are prompted to think about specific…

Originally posted in our August 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. As we see the start of the public school year throughout much of the US and other countries, let’s take a moment to reflect on the goal of education and how we might want to reframe it.  For starters, many of us believed that the path toward the highest paying and most rewarding job was a college degree. And while it is true that, on average,…

Originally posted in our August 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. Thinking about the tumultuous changes to education, one might naturally consider how this impacts the job market. As has been reported for several years, jobs increasingly care about skills, mindsets, and experience over holding a particular degree. In this recent article from the Washington Post, we see an examination of the recent trend of ditching the degree requirement in a variety of fields, namely IT.  What’s…

Originally posted in our August 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. In Virginia, Ohio, and across the country, schools are experiencing massive disruptions. While regionally, there are differences, many of the causes are similar: continuing COVID-19 complications, lack of funding, teacher burnout, and in some states, a massive teacher shortage. This shortage isn’t because there aren’t enough trained teachers, but instead from qualified teachers who have had enough.  In this article from Virginia Mercury, we see a…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. How can we influence ourselves and others to overcome the most basic human barrier; fear? Fear is indeed the biggest barrier to innovation, with good reason. Innovation is by definition associated with ambiguity; even with a well-defined goal, innovators simply cannot know all outcomes of their efforts. So, as we close this month’s Top of Mind, let us reflect on how we are preparing our society…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. In research conducted around the ideas of good teaching, we learn that developing some skills can come at the cost of student engagement. For example, in this piece from the Hechinger Report, researchers found that those teachers who better prepare their students for tests often fall short when it comes to creating an engaging classroom. Interestingly, among the teachers who engage their students and improve outcomes,…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. In a recent piece published by Yale, we see an interesting pattern emerging. While employers report a need for entrepreneurial skills, they are not very likely to hire startup founders who are applying, “according to a new study by Tristan Botelho, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM.” Interestingly, of the profiles Botelho reviewed, successful startup founders fared the worst in a job search study.…

Originally posted in our July 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. Startups are often seen as risky, requiring significant time and monetary investment to get going. While that’s not an entirely false perception, we at ELI have found that there is much more we, as educators and entrepreneurial support workers, can do to prepare someone for the trials of starting a fledgling business. In this piece from CB Insights, we see the top 12 reasons (by their…