A term coined by Mike Masnick, for what happens when you try and censor or suppress information: it draws attention to it.

It’s named Streisand after Barbara Streisand tried to have an aerial photo of her house removed from a set of California coastline photos intended to document coastal erosion. Views of the photo apparently went from 6 to 420,000.

The Streisand Effect

People in the last year of a decade, say, 29, 39, 49, 59, are known as 9-enders — a term from Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield. While it could have been that one year is kind of like the next year, Adam and Hal propose that as we approach the end of a decade we are more likely to do a kind of meaning audit of our lives. And in the years just before the end of a decade, if we may have fallen short, or feel there’s something else we want to accomplish, we’re much more likely to do it then than in any other year of a decade.

In practice, as Dan Pink shared in his book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, these are, therefore, the times when we’re more likely to do something extreme like running a marathon for the first time and, sadly, also committing suicide.

Read more in Dan Pink’s Atlantic article: You’re Most Likely to Do Something Extreme Right Before You Turn 30, Dan Pink, The Atlantic

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Dan Pink

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age, PNAS, vol. 111 no. 48, Alter and Hershfield, 2014.

9-Enders

So maybe this was always obvious to you, but someone showed me this when I was in my 30s and it was hard for me to believe that it took 30 years for me to learn it. So, now you know. A simple tip to stop your bag coming undone — particularly if you’re walking or running and you’ve stuffed it too full like I do.

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Zip backpacks to the side