Oh, Just Give Up—It's Good for Your Health
The invaluable Null Hypothesis: The Journal of Unlikely Science is reporting a new study by psychologists Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch which finds that
…striving to achieve our goals is not all its cracked up to be… Whilst following adolescents who had the option of achieving or abandoning a key goal, [the researchers] found that it may be better to forsake the goal in order to maintain mental and physical well being. They found that study participants who didn't abandon their goal had increased levels of the protein CRP. CRP acts as an indicator of bodily inflammation and increased inflammation has been linked with both cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
For a less lighthearted take see the abstract for the study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin here. If failure gets you down, the research also finds that if at first you don't succeed, try something else. That will distract you from your shortcomings.
Next up, a new study finds that blogging as a way to procrastinate work on major projects results in massive health benefits.
