In Praise of The Quiet Life

Quiet lives feel nowadays like lives of failure and resignation, but they may be no such thing: true ambition can lie in learning how to minimise stress and divert energy to properly important projects.

Why do people run the marathon? I ran one to find out

Why are so many athletes opting to run 26.2 miles? Vox's Joe Posner explains the marathon from inside a mass of 50,000 other runners.

Why Cuban cab drivers earn more than doctors

Cuba’s economy works as a central planning model, where government ministries dole out resources and set everything from prices to inventories to salaries. The fact that a taxi driver can make so much more than a physician is a reflection of the Cuban government’s heavy focus on tourism. For years, the central planning apparatus has valued tourism as a key mechanism for both bringing in revenue as well as propagating the idea that Cuba is thriving. Many pesos are collected by the high prices on everything related to the tourism industry.

The Secret to Kicking Procrastination: Reward Yourself

Dan Ariely, the author of "Predictably Irrational," believes in associating undesirable tasks with pleasurable activities.

A Simple Mind Trick Will Help You Think More Rationally

Emotions can cloud our rational decision-making. By adopting the perspective of an outside advisor, psychologist Dan Ariely says we can inject some rationality into our cognitive processes. Ariely's new book is titled Irrationally Yours

Nilofer Merchant: Got a meeting? Take a walk

Nilofer Merchant suggests a small idea that just might have a big impact on your life and health: Next time you have a one-on-one meeting, make it into a "walking meeting" — and let ideas flow while you walk and talk.

Nilofer Merchant has been helping to grow businesses -- from Fortune 500s to web startups -- for 20 years. She’s worked for major companies (like Apple and Autodesk) and early web startups (remember Golive?). Logitech, Symantec, HP, Yahoo, VMWare, and many others have turned to her guidance to develop new product strategies, enter new markets, defend against competitors and optimize revenue.

Today she serves on boards for both public and private companies, and writes books about collaboration, like The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy, and openness -- check out her recent ebook 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra, chosen by Fast Company as one of the Best Business Books of 2012. She also writes for HBR, including the personal and brave essay about a previous attempt on the TED stage: "What I Learned from My TED Talk."

How to build a business that lasts 100 years

If you want to build a business that lasts, there may be no better place to look for inspiration than your own immune system. Join strategist Martin Reeves as he shares startling statistics about shrinking corporate life spans and explains how executives can apply six principles from living organisms to build resilient businesses that flourish in the face of change.

Martin Reeves is the Director of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG's think tank for new ideas in strategy and management, and a Senior Partner based in New York City.

Reeves has been with the firm for 26 years and focuses on strategy, dividing his time between the Institute and client strategy work across sectors. He is author of a new book on strategy, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, which deals with choosing and executing the right approach in today's complex and dynamic business environment, as well as numerous articles in Harvard Business Review and other publications.