I tried every trick in the book to improve my posture. None worked. So I asked my doctor why I’ve had such a hard time straightening up.

“Because you’re lazy”, he answered matter-of-factly.

I was expecting a more textbook response. Nevertheless, he was right. If getting good posture was easy, everyone would do it. The truth is it requires hard work and a significant, long-term change in your physiology, surroundings, and mentality. When you’ve let your posture go, correcting it isn’t a weekend project. However, it is a relatively straightforward process if you dedicate yourself and take a few simple steps.

We all like to think of ourselves as level-headed thinkers who see things as they truly are. Although sometimes we’re right, often we’re completely wrong. At one point or another, we all find ourselves duped by conventional wisdom. To paraphrase Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, conventional wisdom gives explanations that are convenient but not necessarily correct. Our fast-paced, low attention, git-r-done culture demands easy, one-line answers. Not necessarily accurate answers, just easy ones. That’s where Google Scholar comes in to ruin the fun with undistilled, boring, inconveniently scholarly truth. Cataloguing academic journals and studies – the gold standard of unbiased data – Scholar can help you find the truth in a sea of hearsay. It just takes a little knowledge and effort.

Everyone dreams of being their own boss. The problem is that bosses are supposed to be hard-driving jerks who get maximum output from their employees. When no one is breathing down your neck, you quickly find yourself prone to being a lazy ass rather than a demanding jerk. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s simply physiological; your body senses the absence of a whip-cracking overlord and starts conserving calories. However, when this natural inclination to sloth hampers the achievement of your goals, it’s time to make the transition from ass to jerk and get slave driving.

I’ve always had a passion for charts and graphs. Lame, I know, yet my passion is justified. Every once in a while I learn that tracking results has played a big role in many diverse achievements. While commonplace in business, there are unconventional examples: Arnold Schwarzenegger won the title of Mr. Olympia seven times with the help of detailed training journals. Last Comic Standing winner Dat Phan went so far as to record the intensity of the audience’s laughter for each joke he told. So it follows naturally that if you’re motivated to achieve something more common — like happiness and mental well-being — tracking your progress can help.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to work when something is on your mind? Ever lay awake, desperate to sleep but finding no rest from your thoughts? Of course you have; we all have. Few things are as frustrating as having our own minds control us. Mental focus is a skill we overlook until it’s gone. Then, the loss of control becomes an all-consuming problem. But what is happening inside us? What is causing this loss of control? And how do we train ourselves to see past the distractions, clearly once again? This article will seek to explain the physiology of the situation and present a pragmatic solution to control our concentration.

I hate debt. Always have. In an ironic, self-loathing twist, I spent several years working as a mortgage specialist with a large bank. The benefit of this experience is that I learned all the tricks to saving money on a mortgage. I also learned that a mortgage makes all your needless purchases cost twice as much. Here’s why, and how to stop it.

If you’re interested in putting on a bit of muscle, accept this fact before you do anything else: Building muscle is hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Part of what makes it so exceptionally difficult is that it requires knowledge as well as training. Working out is straightforward. Knowing which exercises to use, nutrients and supplements to take, and what order to do so is the complex part. As a result, when you ask three bodybuilders for advice you’ll get five different opinions. Distilling these opinions to their proven base truths, this article shows how to work smart, so you can focus on working hard. Yes, sorry, you need to do both.

I love getting things done. And I love tracking all those things that have yet to be accomplished; it makes me feel so very productive. The problem is that feeling productive isn’t being productive. Like many, I spent years trying to fine tune David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) task management system to my exact specifications, eventually learning that feeling productive can be the best way to procrastinate. Nevertheless, a bit of tracking is important to remind you what needs to be accomplished. So here now is how I track my tasks without any needless prepping of supplies, tools, hacks, or other things that stand in the way of progress.

When I set out to break my nail biting habit once and for all, I came across a lot of advice. I looked at much of it with contempt; a long-time habit can’t be broken with tips alone. I knew there were experts who dedicated their lives to studying habits and finding cures. I knew there were regular people who conquered their habits as a result. So after I studied the basal reasons people have bad habits, I decided to troll even the dustiest medical journals and find a once-and-for-all, tried-and-true, real-deal solution. I set out to find how academics who specialize in breaking habits, break habits themselves.

Sensationalist title aside, banks do give free money to their customers. They do so because they believe people will spend more than they should and poorly manage their finances. In most cases, they’re right. However, if you avoid temptation by following this system, you’ll get the bait without triggering the trap. The most beautiful part: this method comes with the added bonus of encouraging financial responsibility and requires little more than simply living your life and paying your bills.