
Winning isn’t everything, but it sure is nice. When you don’t see eye to eye with someone, here are the best tricks for winning that argument.
| Some personal and shared stuff | Monday, 26 January 2026 - 7:50 |

Winning isn’t everything, but it sure is nice. When you don’t see eye to eye with someone, here are the best tricks for winning that argument.

Over a decade ago, psychologist Barry Schwartz published what might be the ultimate psychological life-hacking tome, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. In it, Schwartz argues that the modern world’s smorgasbord of options—Brawny or Bounty? Coke Zero or Diet? Major in sociology or anthropology?—makes us less happy, not more. “Choice overload,” as he calls it, makes us question our decisions, set our expectations too high, and blame ourselves for our mistakes.
The book spawned the usual TED talks and counterintuitive Internet takes. More recently, Schwartz has been interviewed in a variety of publications and platforms about how his advice holds up 10 years later. The rise of social media, he argues, has only heightened the agony of decision-making through phenomena like FOMO (fear of missing out).
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Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife, and worst of all stress.
Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus—an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small “arms” that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success—when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.
Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you’re bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It’s the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.