Learn about how a 30-minute workout can boost your body image; the ideal deadline to avoid procrastination; and how climate change could make the day longer. A 30-Minute Workout Is A Surefire Way To Boost Your Body Image by Anna Todd MacMillan, A. (2017, June 16). How to Feel Thinner in 30 Minutes. Time; Time. https://time.com/4821689/exercise-feel-thin-fast/?xid=newsletter-brief Salci, L. E., & Martin Ginis, K. A. (2017). Acute effects of exercise on women with pre-existing body image concerns: A test of potential mediators. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 31, 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.04.001 E, C.-R., J, M.-J., W, S.-R., & G, A.-V. (2021). The acute effect of different intensity aerobic and resistance training exercise on the body image in adult women. International Journal of Physical Education, Fitness and Sports, 22–31. https://doi.org/10.34256/ijpefs2144 Study finds the ideal deadline length to avoid procrastination by Cameron Duke Haupt, A. (2021, July 9). Why do we procrastinate, and how can we stop? Experts have answers. Washington Post; The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/procrastinate-why-stop-advice/2021/07/09/13b7dc2c-e00e-11eb-9f54-7eee10b5fcd2_story.html Knowles, S., Servátka, M., Sullivan, T., & Genç, M. (2021). Procrastination and the non‐monotonic effect of deadlines on task completion. Economic Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13042 Urban, T. (2013, October 30). Why Procrastinators Procrastinate — Wait But Why. Wait but Why. https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html What deadline length is best for avoiding procrastination and completing tasks? (2021, November 3). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/933369 Climate change could make the day longer by Steffie Drucker If all of Earth’s ice melts and flows into the ocean, what would happen to the planet’s rotation? – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. (2021). Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/30/if-all-of-earths-ice-melts-and-flows-into-the-ocean-what-would-happen-to-the-planets-rotation/ Scientists ID three causes of Earth’s spin axis drift. (2018, September 27). Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2805/scientists-id-three-causes-of-earths-spin-axis-drift/ NASA Study Solves Two Mysteries About Wobbling Earth. (2011). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-study-solves-two-mysteries-about-wobbling-earth Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about how a 30-minute workout can boost your body image; the ideal deadline to avoid procrastination; and how climate change could make the day longer.
A 30-Minute Workout Is A Surefire Way To Boost Your Body Image by Anna Todd
Study finds the ideal deadline length to avoid procrastination by Cameron Duke
Climate change could make the day longer by Steffie Drucker
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/exercising-for-body-image-ideal-deadlines-longer-days-from-climate-change
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how a 30-minute workout can boost your body image; the ideal deadline to avoid procrastination; and how climate change could make the day longer.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
What if I told you there was a way to feel skinnier and stronger in just 30 minutes? You’d probably think I was trying to sell you something. But according to research, there really is such a wonder-drug: exercise. Science says that you can boost your self image from just one 30-minute workout.
One study that looked into this back in 2017 involved 60 active college-aged women with body-image issues. Researchers surveyed the women about their own perceptions of their appearance, then had them spend 30 minutes either sitting and reading quietly or engaging in a challenging cycling workout. Then, everyone completed the same survey again. The women who experienced the challenging workout reported significant improvements in their body image immediately, and they felt the same psychological benefits even 20 minutes later. Specifically, the women in the exercise condition said they felt thinner and stronger, which made them feel better about their bodies overall.
Another study this year compared the body-image boosting effects of a few different types of workouts: weight training and cardio, either at a low or high intensity. This time, the 62 female participants engaged in a regular series of workouts, so researchers could see how subsequent sessions influenced their body image. They found that women considered themselves more muscular after every weightlifting session, regardless of its intensity. And those in the high-intensity cardio group felt thinner than both weight training groups, who themselves felt thinner than the low-intensity cardio group.
It takes weeks or months of exercise for visible results to appear in your body, so the fact that these participants felt fitter and stronger after just one workout is important. If you’re feeling less than stellar about what you see in the mirror, it might be worth going for a run or heading to the gym. It's also important to note that the women in these studies were all exercisers — doing any sort of exercise that your body isn't ready for is a bad idea. For the best results, choose something that's demanding, but also within reach. But if you're feeling sluggish, get moving! It’ll probably make you feel better.
A lot of the time, the thing standing between you and something you need to do is an unclimbable mountain called procrastination. While there are as many reasons to procrastinate as there are procrastinators, there are things we can do to help ourselves and others get out of the procrastination slump. One of those tools might be setting better deadlines — and a new study may have just the thing.
While some procrastination can be related to clinical conditions such as depression, ADHD, and anxiety, much of your garden variety procrastination might be based on regular old human weakness. Tim Urban, writing in his blog WaitButWhy, describes his own procrastination as a tendency to give in to instant gratification and constant distraction until the looming monster of an impending deadline begins breathing down his neck.
While there is obviously more than one way to deal with procrastination, a recent paper in the journal Economic Inquiry offers an intriguing solution. What if there’s an ideal deadline length that minimizes people’s ability to procrastinate?
In this study, the researchers mailed surveys to more than 1000 participants and told them that a charitable donation would be made in their name when they mailed the survey back. The catch? Each participant was given a different deadline to complete the survey. One group was told they had a month, the second group was given one week, and the third group was given no deadline at all.
While you might think not giving people a deadline is a risky endeavor, that group actually turned in their surveys at the highest rate. This wasn’t a matter of having more time to get them in, either — nearly half of those responses came in the first three days. Second place went to the group who got a one-week deadline. Those who got a month turned in the fewest surveys overall. Why would that be? Well, the researchers believe that the lengthy deadline inadvertently gave people permission to procrastinate on the task and eventually forget about it. Meanwhile, the short and nonexistent deadlines encouraged them to just get the survey done.
In the end, they concluded that not giving people a deadline was the best approach, but they acknowledged that that might not always be possible. In that case, a one-week deadline is the ideal length for most tasks, as it provides the right balance of time and pressure to complete a task that might otherwise be put off.
It’s a small study, but it speaks to something all procrastinators know deep down inside: a long deadline begins with relaxation and ends in panic.
We know our planet’s climate is changing and that those effects appear in seemingly countless ways. But here’s one you might be surprised to learn: Climate change could make the day longer.
Here’s how that works. Earth is constantly turning on its axis, but it’s not a perfectly uniform rotation. First of all, the speed of Earth’s daily rotation varies by up to a millisecond per day. It’s also not a 360-degree circle like the globe on your desk makes. Our planet acts more like a spinning top that wobbles slightly as it spins round and round. Specifically, it has wobbled about 4 inches or 10 centimeters every year in the last century.
To figure out why, NASA scientists compared a graph of that wobble to global water storage data. The striking similarity between the patterns showed researchers that the way water flows across our planet affects its spin.
The position of that water makes a huge difference, too. To understand why, think about an ice skater. With their arms in, the skater can spin faster and faster. But if the skater puts their arms out — in other words, if they displace their mass outwards — their spinning slows. The same thing happens when water moves toward our planet’s equator.
Take Greenland, for example. Since Greenland is 45 degrees below the North Pole, its meltwater has a stronger effect on the planet’s spin than ice at the poles. About 7,500 gigatons of Greenland’s ice melted throughout the 20th century — that’s the weight of more than 20 MILLION Empire State Buildings! The mass of all that ice transferred to the oceans and caused sea levels to rise. That mass was redistributed further from the planet’s axis, metaphorically pushing its arms out and causing its spin to slow. If Greenland’s ice sheet completely melts into the ocean, scientists think sea levels would rise by 23 feet or 7 meters and the day would get two milliseconds longer.
Greenland’s ice is melting even faster than the last century, so the planet’s polar motion is wobblier, and a longer day is more likely. Fortunately, we won’t really feel or notice either of these effects. But it’s a striking example of the hidden ways climate change can influence life on Earth.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s writers were Anna Todd, Cameron Duke, and Steffie Drucker.
ASHLEY: Curiosity Daily is distributed by Discovery. [V3]
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!