For the first few years the researchers assessed their volunteers’ levels of self-control, and also looked for signs of depression, aggression and drug use. Dr Brody and his colleagues followed almost 300 black American teenagers of different backgrounds as they aged from 17 to 22. This research, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at DNA methylation, a phenomenon which involves the addition of chemicals called methyl groups to genetic material in chromosomes.Ĭells use methylation to shut down genes whose services are no longer needed, and observation has shown that people’s methylation patterns change in predictable ways as they get older-thus acting as markers of a cell’s apparent age. That correlation did not apply to people who started farther up the social ladder.ĭr Brody and his colleagues have followed this study with one that comes to an equally astonishing conclusion: for people born at the bottom of the social heap, self-control speeds up the process of ageing. But if such self-controllers came from deprived backgrounds, they developed higher blood pressure, were more likely to be obese and had higher levels of stress hormones than their less-self-controlled peers. Work published two years ago by Gene Brody of the University of Georgia, who looked at a group of young black Americans, showed that those who exhibited self-control as teenagers did indeed get the expected benefits. Recent observations, however, raise the possibility that developing self-control is not always an unalloyed good. Leave comments, build your profile, and try to become one of the "big fish." Visit the Shark Bait site to get started.Study after study has confirmed Dr Mischel’s insight, and it is now starting to change public policy-particularly in America, where the Administration for Children and Families, a part of the Department of Health & Human Services, is trying to develop programmes that will teach children the art of self-control. Submit your own tech-related "baits" for points, or rate other baits. If you love Shark Tank, you'll have fun with Shark Bait, a place where you can really tear apart IT. Have a similar experience? Then add your comments to the daily Shark Tank blog! Send it to me at You'll get a stylish Shark shirt if I use it. Sharky will get nowhere fast without your true tale of IT life. "The kicker? After spending four months of trying to get me into their team, the new employer lays off the entire department eight months later."
The contracting company finally relents and lets me move to my new position - four months after I tried to leave in the first place. "I'm bothered by this seeming lack of ethics, not to mention the heavy-handed approach to staff retention, and threaten to immediately quit both companies. "Instead, I'm forbidden to mention to the client that I have resigned or that I want to leave," says fish. When fish finds out, he's irritated that no one has offered any sort of raise or incentive to stay. Turns out that the contract with that client is up for renewal, and fish has done such a bang-up job that his continued presence is part of the deal. That doesn't work, but the contracting company is able to arm-twist fish's new employer to contract him back to work for the contracting company - which then assigns him right back to work for the client with the automated-to-boredom data center. "It's only for people on that particular project, but that doesn't stop him from giving it a really good go."įirst, the contracting company threatens to sue fish's new employer if it hires him. "This manager digs around and finds that my current employer has a subdivision that has a contract with a subdivision of my new employer that prohibits recruiting employees of each other's companies," fish says. Then he finds another job and submits his resignation.īut he happens to mention to his boss who the new employer is. Then he asks for, say, some slightly different work that might be less boring. Unfortunately, fish has already automated his work so completely that there's nothing even remotely interesting to do.
#No gooddeed goesunpunished windows#
"In a year, I create several remote administration tools for Windows, oversee migration to Windows 3.11 and generally do such a good job the client decides to not only renew the contract, but significantly increase the scope and value."
"I'm the general admin reporting to their very junior project IT manager," says fish. It's the early 1990s and this sysadmin pilot fish is working for an IT contracting company, assigned to a data center running lots of Windows PCs and a few Unix servers.
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