Business books are notorious for being loaded with MBA lard, trotting out "key takeaways" like "take risks,""build a great team," and "don't be afraid to fail." 

But the ones worth reading ditch the platitudes in favor of instructive anecdotes — which is why they so often come from execs who have lived through it. 

From the memoir of a former gang member to an analysis of the most efficient hiring methods, here are the best leadership books from people who have led their companies to success.

SEE ALSO: 15 books by billionaires that will teach you how to run the world

'The Hard Thing About Hard Things'

What is the hard thing about hard things? That they don't have a formula, says Ben Horowitz.

"Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes," he writes. "They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness." 

Horowitz, now one of the most sought-after investors in the game, used to be CEO of software management company Opsware before it was acquired by HP for $1.6 billion. 

Bonus: Horowitz shows off his ridiculously extensive knowledge of rap lyrics — quoting Kanye West and DMX before the close of the opening chapter. 

Buy it here >>

Disclosure: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, is an investor in Business Insider.

'My Years with General Motors'

Alfred Sloan was the CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1946 — when the car company was arguably the most important organization on Earth. 

More than your average business memoir, the book is a distillation of Sloan's experiences and thoughts around how to steer a massive organization. It serves as a treatise on decentralization and the structure of the modern corporation. 

Buy it here >>

'Rework'

Coauthored by Jason Fried, the cofounder and CEO of Basecamp, "Rework" is a spare startup manifesto. 

While everything in the book might not apply to you — Fried's company has remained at a tiny 37 members while staying profitable — it's useful for the contrarian mirror it provides. After reading it, you'll scrutinize every meeting request that crosses your desk. 

Buy it here >>

Two women made history this week when they completed Ranger School, one of the US military's most demanding courses. It's a grueling, two-month physical and mental gauntlet, and graduating from it earns almost universal respect within the armed forces — one of the quickest ways to show how tough you are in the Army is to wear a Ranger tab.

In the months it takes to complete the course, a soldier's endurance is pushed to the absolute limit. Ranger candidates survive on one meal a day and a few hours of sleep per night.

They arrive at Ft. Benning in the best shape of their lives and will lose an average of 20 pounds if they stay the full course.

The Discovery Channel's "Surviving the Cut" shows the 61-day course at Fort Benning and offers a glimpse into some of the toughest military training in the world. The attrition rate at Ranger School is intense and less than one-in-three who start the course achieve the coveted tab. 

This post is originally by Allison Churchill, Robert Johnson, and Geoffrey Ingersoll

338 Ranger candidates begin the 61-day course long before the sun's up — and won't stop for another 20 hours

It's a non-stop schedule that includes brutal hand-to-hand combat tests ...

... along with strength tests where candidates carry another soldier 100-yards, the kind of ability that save lives on the battlefield.

As an experiment, I decided to go on a "dumb" week.

That means I turned off my smartphone, which I use to check/write emails, send/receive Gchats, look up directions and locations with Google Maps, check subway maps, check weather, get calendar reminders, use Shazam, stream music, browse the web for news or general boredom relief, or browse/post to social media. 

I replaced it with a $15 "dumb" flip phone that would let me make/receive phone calls, send/receive texts, and take pictures. Really bad pictures.

I would also restrict any internet usage to my computers at home and at work.

Here's what I learned from the experience.

Call quality was terrible.

My $15 flip phone didn't have any noise cancellation features.

On my first dumb call while outside in noisy New York City, I could hear the other person just fine. But the other person had an awful time trying to hear me, and we eventually had to hang up because they could barely hear me over the city noise.

Our smartphones have sophisticated noise canceling technology that prevent noises around you, like wind, construction, cars, and other people's voices from overpowering your own voice while your on the phone.

We complain about autocorrect, but it's a miracle compared to how we used to send texts.

For some, the on-screen keyboards on smartphones are too small and it's harder to tell if you're pressing the right key because the keyboard is flat.  

I know some will disagree with me, but you don't want to go back to typing out texts with physical buttons on a dumb phone's number pad. Even small words like "style" can be a chore to type out (press 7 four times, then 8 once, then 9 three times, 5 three times, and 3 twice).

Even with T9 texting, the software that predicts what you're typing when you press buttons once for each word's letter, texting is slow and laborious, especially for words with apostrophes or when you need to use punctuation.

In fact, it was such a pain that I often ended up simply calling people instead of replying via text. 

I realized smartphone cameras are miraculous.

I wasn't expecting to miss my smartphone's excellent camera as much I did. The camera in my cheap $15 flip phone took horribly grainy pictures.

At the same time, the bad photos also had their charm for how bad they were, and they reminded me how amazing how smartphone makers can fit great cameras in such slim handsets. We've come a long way.

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YouTube may be chock full of make-up tutorials, but no one does transformations quite like rising star Promise Phan.

Phan is the sister-in-law of fellow beauty guru Michelle Phan and has nearly 4 million subscribers between her two YouTube channels, dope2111 and Promise Phan.

While she has plenty of tutorials about cute everyday makeup, what she’s really known for are her incredible Hollywood looks, from celebs to cartoons characters.

The Nepal-born Phan can look like anyone: Kim Kardashian, Demi Lovato, Rihanna, and even Disney princesses. Using wigs and her massive makeup collection, the 26-year-old renders herself virtually unrecognizable.

Keep reading to see some of her most magical looks.

Phan started on YouTube in 2010. Her first video was of herself in Avatar makeup where she proved to be a self-taught makeup prodigy.

Her first video that she said really made her channel take off came in 2011. “My first big video was an Angelina Jolie transformation,” she told Tech Insider. “Seeing a normal Asian girl change her face to look like a popular Caucasian actress — they thought it was some sort of sorcery.”

Since then, Phan has channeled a wide array of characters, from Rihanna to Bruno Mars. But her favorite videos by far are her Disney transformations. Here she is as Ariel.

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A restaurant chain called LYFE Kitchen is creating a stir in the restaurant industry.

Mike Roberts, former global president of McDonald's, and Mike Donahue, former chief of global communications of McDonald's, teamed up with organic-food entrepreneur Stephen Sidwell three years ago to launch the healthy chain.

The restaurant, which serves chef-inspired meals designed with affordability and nutrition in mind, began in California and now has 17 locations nationwide with plans for expansion. Every item clocks in at under 600 calories.

Appetizing gluten-free items are available, and even the organic produce is sourced locally when possible.

I headed to the new New York City location to see this future of "fresh casual" for myself.

SEE ALSO: McDonald's has unveiled its restaurant of the future

The store is located on West 55th Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway — it boasts a sleek, modern, and simple design.

A colorful sign at the door advertises the restaurant's cocktails with a healthy twist. Definitely tempting, but noon is a little early for a cucumber-cilantro margarita for me.

The menu is everywhere you look: on-screen, above the counter, and on paper. The choices aren't massively extensive, but there's certainly enough to please even the most discerning of appetites.

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It's not quite "private," but this 52-seat Boeing 757, operated in partnership with TCS World Travel, will fly around the world on a series of six-figure itineraries in 2016.

We took a quick tour to find what $117,000 per person gets you.

SEE ALSO: The best premium economy airlines in the world

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The TCS jet is a specially outfitted Boeing 757-200 with just 52 business-class-style seats and a slick all-black livery.

While TCS operates a variety of trips aboard charter aircraft, the Four Seasons-branded "Select Escapes" are new for 2016.

An around-the-world trip leaving Orlando on January 2 will visit Peru, Chile, Australia, India, Jordan, and more on a 23-day journey priced at $117,000 per person. A second trip, leaving Los Angeles on March 19, will visit Australia, Laos, India, Tanzania, South Africa, and Brazil, among others, on a nearly month-long, $122,000-per-person journey.

On board, white leather seats in a two-by-two configuration offer business-class width, power plugs, Bose headphones, and iPads preloaded with movies, music, and other entertainment in lieu of seat-back TVs.

 Wi-Fi is available globally on TCS flights, according to the company.

We may hear about new technologies like driverless cars and virtual reality in the media, but most people aren't sure when, if ever, these technologies will begin to touch their lives. 

Some of these emerging trends will be here before others, but some of the most significant technologies will become prevalent in fewer than 10 years. 

Gartner published its annual Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies on Tuesday revealing where all most new technologies stand in terms of adoption.

The report tracks the evolution of new technologies and plots their progress on a chart that is composed of five stages, from the early beginnings to mass adoption.

These are five of the coolest technologies that Gartner predicts will go mainstream in the next five to 10 years.

Biochips could change how consumers get diagnosed

Biochips are tiny microchips that can perform thousands of biological reactions, like decoding genes or analyzing food contaminants in food and water, in just several seconds. Think of it as a computer for biological analysis.

These chips are currently used in specialist laboratories, but could move into doctors’ surgeries in as soon as five years and into consumers’ hands for self diagnoses anywhere from five to 10 years, according to Gartner.

The potential of these devices is huge because multiple tests can be performed simultaneously, allowing for faster analysis than traditional methods.

For example, a biochip, also known as a “lab-on-chip,” can be used to detect food pathogens like E.Coli, salmonella, listeria and others all at the same time.

Some mobile device manufacturers have even experimented with integrating biochips onto mobile phone cases so that mobile operators could potentially begin to offer health related services, according to the report.

Connected home

Smart homes are slowly beginning to excite the masses.

The connected home entails several technologies, devices, applications and services and touches everything from entertainment and security to health monitoring and energy management.

During the last year, major tech companies have continued to invest in the space including Samsung, Apple, and Google, which helped bring broader interest to the trend.

While the technology is still in the early stage of innovation, it’s moving out of its niche phase and will become commonplace during the next decade, according to Gartner.

Smart Robots

Smart robots are just beginning to emerge as a technology, but are receiving a growing amount of attention because of companies like Amazon, Google, and Rethink Robotics making a lot of progress in the space.

These robots are essentially autonomously functioning machines that can sense their environment and learn to improve from their experiences.

Gartner predicts that these robots will begin to become widely adopted at first in product and service-centric industries. So think patient care, product assembly, ecommerce order fulfillment, and shopping assistance.

Amazon is already planning to use 10,000 robots to fill customer orders and Rethink Robotics’ collaborative robots are already working alongside humans in factory settings.   

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Over the weekend, presidential candidates descended on the Iowa State Fair, a campaign tradition that allows voters to get up close with candidates.

A campaign trip to the fair involves a plethora of rituals: Giving a speech and taking questions on a hay bale, going on some carnival rides, taking a picture in front of a giant cow made of butter, and, most importantly, eating a lot of fatty, greasy food.

One of the Iowa State Fair's signature items is the pork chop on a stick, which candidates have been indulging in for the past several election cycles, along with corn dogs and ice cream.

Eating fried food with Iowans is a necessary part of a campaign strategy that allows candidates to appear folksy. As The Washington Post notes, candidates generally pack on weight during campaigns because it can be difficult or impolite to turn down food when voters offer.

Some candidates embrace the grease, while others need a little coaching.

According to New York Times reporter Amy Chozick, Secretary of State John Kerry's then press secretary, Robert Gibbs, freaked out when he saw Kerry slurping a smoothie instead of eating fried food during a trip to the fair in 2003.

"Somebody get a f------ corn dog in his hand — now!" Gibbs said.

But if the candidates this year are looking to impress Iowans with enthusiasm for unhealthy food, they'll have to beat out former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who downed a corndog, a hard-boiled egg on a stick, and a massive pork chop on a stick when he attended the fair in 2011.

Here are some of the current and former presidential candidates chowing down at the fair.

Note: this post has been updated.

Real-estate magnate Donald Trump takes a bite of a pork chop on a stick. The pork chops are a famous state-fair snack.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is very familiar with the state fair's famous pork chop on a stick.

Clinton mingles with voters at the Iowa State Fair in 2007, ice cream in hand.

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The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders unveiled the video presentation they recently made to the NFL that shows the latest renderings of their proposed $1.8 billion stadium in Carson that would bring the NFL back to Los Angeles.

The presentation was led by former 49ers executive Carmen Policy and the teams are going all out in this endeavor, even getting Kiefer Sutherland to narrate the video.

Below are some of the highlights of this stadium which is unlike anything we have ever seen with the video provided by RaiderCentral.

The first reaction to seeing the Carson stadium is simply 'wow.'

One end of the stadium is open with a gigantic replica Lombardi Trophy shooting up through the concourse.

A view of the same end of the stadium from the inside reveals that the lower level (below the black line) is actually built below ground-level with an enormous videoboard that circles that end of the stadium.

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Since 1851, the World's Fairs have drawn millions from across the globe to exchange ideas and inventions. 

The fairs have also left behind architectural stamps, forever changing city landscapes and skylines. 

These "leftovers" represent the challenge that's posed to fair architects: build a structure that represents an idealized vision of the future.

While some of these gems — such as the Eiffel Tower and the Seattle Space Needle — have become cultural icons, every World's Fair city has its own architectural keepsake.

Photographer Jade Doskow has made exploring and documenting these sites her lifelong pursuit. "As a photographer, I’m interested in architecture that’s outlived its purpose," she told Business Insider. 

Keep scrolling for a tour of the somewhat bizarre World's Fair remains Doskow has photographed. 

SEE ALSO: 15 Gorgeous Retro-Future Photos From The 1964 World's Fair

With her photographs, Doskow begs the question, "What is that thing doing here?" Built for the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal, Canada, this geodesic dome (part of the "Man and his World" exhibition) by Buckminster Fuller is known as the Biosphere and houses an environmental museum.

Montreal 1967 World's Fair, "Man and His World," Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome With Solar Experimental House (photographed in 2012)

Also from the "Man and his World" exhibit, the famed Habitat 67 is one of Doskow's favorite World's Fair structures. Designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, the apartment complex brings the luxuries of suburban living to an urban environment. It has 146 residences, each with its own private terrace. Safdie was only 23 when he began the endeavor.

Montreal 1967 World's Fair, "Man and His World," Habitat ‘67 (photographed in 2012)

Doskow conducts extensive research before shooting a site. She's especially a fan of old maps from the 19th and 20th Century Fairs: "They have all these cool design elements from each era," she says. Here, a structure from New York's 1964 World's Fair stands at the New York State Pavilion.

New York 1964 World's Fair, "Peace Through Understanding," New York State Pavilion (photographed in 2008)

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Ask someone to name cities with thriving tech, media, fashion or food scenes, and you’ll hear the usual suspects: San Francisco; New York; Portland, Ore.

But there’s a slew of other metro areas with established infrastructure and skilled work forces that can match those more established locations at a fraction of the cost of living and with less day-to-day stress.

These are the places where startup dreams come easier and cheaper, but can still pay off big. Start packing.

SEE ALSO: The 20 hottest startup hubs in the world

1. Salt Lake City, Utah

Best for: Software and hardware
Metro-area population: 1.1 million
Median household income: $53,036
Median home price: $243,300
Unemployment: 3.5%
College graduates: 31%

Tech companies such as Adobe and Workday are moving to “Silicon Slopes” in droves, inspired by startups launched by alumni from software pioneers Novell and WordPerfect, not to mention the easy access to world-class skiing. On the hardware side, everything from flash memory chips (one of every 14 worldwide is made here) to Skullcandy headphones calls the Wasatch Front home. VCs invested nearly $1 billion in local startups last year, making Salt Lake tops nationally in dollar-per-deal average.

The Utah Science Technology and Research Economic Development Initiative provides funding to the University of Utah in Salt Lake and Utah State University in nearby Ogden to research new technologies and spin them off into a handful of companies each year. And when the state’s insurance department wanted to ban Zenefits, a Silicon Valley startup that gives away its HR-management software for free, Governor Gary Herbert signed a law reversing the ban, stating, “Utah is open for business.”

Did you know? Thanks to thousands of Mormon missionaries returning from time abroad, Utah has the highest percentage of foreign-language speakers in the country.

2. Baltimore, Maryland

Best for: Education
Metro-area population: 2.7 million
Median household income: $68,455
Median home price: $223,100
Unemployment: 5.7%
College graduates: 36%

There’s a quiet revolution happening in Baltimore, which has become a booming hub of education-focused companies anchored by Johns Hopkins University, named the best grad school for education by U.S. News & World Report. The city is also home to Laureate Education (formerly Sylvan Learning), a for-profit education powerhouse. 

Now Baltimore is luring ed-tech startups. Citelighter, which helps K-12 students and teachers organize and share research via a browser plug-in, recently moved there from New York City and received $100,000 as a housewarming gift from Technology Development Corp., Maryland’s public fund investing in tech companies.

Baltimore teachers work with diverse student populations and are entrepreneur-friendly, willing to test out new tech and ideas in classrooms. The city regularly hosts events to connect entrepreneurs with educators; a recent Baltimore Tech for Schools event drew 1,100 teachers and school administrators to check out product demos.

Did you know? Of the nation’s largest school systems by enrollment, Baltimore has the third-highest spending per pupil on an annual basis.

3. Nashville, Tennessee

Best for: Media
Metro-area population: 1.5 million
Median household income: $44,223
Median home price: $186,400
Unemployment: 4.6%
College graduates: 31%

It has long been a hotbed for the music business—evidenced this year by the first graduating class of the Project Music accelerator at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center—but Nashville has experienced a miniature media explosion. Among the spate of new creative agencies and fledgling media companies are
Good.Must.Grow., a nonprofit digital agency that develops corporate media strategies. Meanwhile, co-working spaces such as Refinery, Deavor, the Skillery and Weld have popped up to cater to self-employed media workers. 

Driving the boom is Nashville’s growing population of college grads, ages 25 to 34, which increased 48 percent between 2000 and 2012. Among U.S. cities, only Houston experienced faster growth in its young-grad population.

Did you know? Nashville is home to bestselling novelist Ann Patchett, who in 2011 teamed up with publishing veteran Karen Hayes to open Parnassus, a successful independent bookstore.

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Now's your chance to own a piece of certifiable rock history.

Kurt Cobain's childhood home in Aberdeen, Washington, is for sale, and it just got a price chop.

Originally listed in 2013 by Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor, for $500,000, the home's price was reduced to $400,000 in March. Today it's down to $329,000.

Beyond just being the place where Cobain grew up, the home retains the marks and scars of its famous inhabitant, including drawings of band logos. 

Aberdeen Realty has the listing.

SEE ALSO: This empty, 46-bedroom mansion in Texas would make one heck of a haunted house

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!

Kurt Cobain's childhood home is an unassuming house on a lackluster block.

Built in 1923, it looks as if it was updated in the mid 20th century. The entire home is rather rundown.

The one-and-a-half floor bungalow has four bedrooms across only 1,522 square feet.

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An elevator pitch is supposed to be a short summary of your business that you could pitch quickly when meeting someone in an elevator.

Venture capital firm General Catalyst decided to take the idea in a very literal sense, so it built a pitch room into the elevator in their Palo Alto, California office. The office is only three stories — a basement, main level and second floor — so startups in their accelerator (or anyone) can practice pitching fast.

The firm has used it not only to perfect the elevator pitch, but for meetings, some of which have lasted for hours in the small elevator-turned-conference room, said Katja Gagen, General Catalyst's VP of Marketing.  It's not as crazy as the stingrays or yoga studios seen in other Silicon Valley businesses, but it's a room that's actually useful — both as an elevator in the literal sense and as a conference room. 

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley lingo is getting pretty ridiculous: Unicorns, centaurs, and ponies

Join the conversation about this story »

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Samsung gave us a surprise teaser for the new Gear S2 smartwatch when it announced its new Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Note 5 smartphones last week.

We could only get a few snapshots of the teaser since it lasted all of 30 seconds, but Samsung finally released the full video on its YouTube channel.

Few official details exist about the Gear S2, so here's what we can discern from the teaser.

This looks like an app hub. The white dot towards the watch face's center left indicates what you select. You'll be able select another app with the rotating the bezel around the screen. This also helps confirm that Samsung is sticking to its own Tizen watch operating system rather than going with Android.

This could be one of the watch faces that come with the Gear S2.

This is what a variation of that watch face might look like on the Gear S2 itself.

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Located in northwestern India, Jaisalmer Airport was completed more than two years ago at a cost of $17 million. At a time when the spanking new facility should be welcoming hundreds of thousands of passengers per year, it sits abandoned. In fact, the airport has yet to operate a single day.

According to Reuters, Jaisalmer is one of more than 200 no-frills airports planned by India's previous government. They were meant to encourage travel and commerce in far-flung parts of the Indian sub-continent. 

However, in many cases, local political greed won out over reason and airports were placed in locations where there simply isn't enough demand for air travel to warrant a full-scale airport. 

In fact, Jaisalmer is one of eight airports the Indian Government has constructed over the past decade at a cost of more than $50 million to have never entered service, Reuters reports. 

Why aren't airports such Jaisalmer in business? According to Reuters, one reason is because airlines can't open routes to these small under-developed areas. The domestic Indian market is incredibly competitive and for a route to have any chance of profitability, it has to either fly to or from one of the country's mega cities. 

This means that in order for an airline to open a route to Jaisalmer, it has to originate in a major hub such as Delhi or Mumbai. However, airports in these cities are incredibly congested and the precious space there is at these facilities are prioritized for more profitable destinations. As a result, the less populated locales remain perpetually underserved. 

Here's closer look at India's brand new ghost airport. 

SEE ALSO: A new design for airplane seats could cause chaos in the skies

Jaisalmer is located near the Pakistani border in the province of Rajasthan.

It's a desert town known for its tourism and natural beauty. However, it's also sparsely populated.

According to the Economic Times, the airport was supposed to open for business in August 2013.

Economic Times.

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“Share seamlessly, steal shamelessly.”

Four simple words that sum up the value of TED Talks.

We love these quick, easy-to-digest videos with just the right amount of important information to entertain and educate in just a few minutes.

It’s free, high-quality wisdom from industry leaders — what’s not to love?

Below are the top seven videos that every hopeful, driven, focused entrepreneur needs to watch before diving into the American Dream.

Take notes, assess your ideas and business model, consider what your strengths and weaknesses are, then when you’re done watching and thinking — watch all of them over again.

SEE ALSO: 10 TED Talks that will make you smarter about business

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Simon Sinek explains what he calls "The Golden Circle," which illustrates the "why, how and what" of an organization.

According to Sinek, it’s not the product, service, or plan that’s most important — it’s why you, as the entrepreneur, think the product, service, or plan is important. Once you can identify your true motivation (and it better go beyond just making money), you can inspire those around you — including your team and your customers.

Once they’re on board and aligned with your why, they’ll work toward the how and what, or the processes and products, of your organization.

If you skip the important step of clearly identifying and articulating this point, you can only hope to inspire temporarily, which doesn’t make for a great business model in the long run.

People respond to a cause, a purpose, a passion, a mission — not a plan.

Sarah Lewis: Embrace the near win

Sarah Lewis distinguishes mastery from success as being able to reproduce a victory again and again.

Mastery is a constant pursuit. It’s a race with no finish line. It’s like a mosquito bite between your shoulder blades that you can’t quite reach. It’s exhausting and elusive, but also the driving force behind competitive entrepreneurs.

The pursuit of mastery is what drives you forward when you just barely missed out on first place, when your product is not quite right, or when you can’t seem to replicate perfection.

Lewis describes, in those moments of “near win,” that once you accept the silver medal you can allow that near win to motivate you as you pursue your next race.

Near wins allow us to see our future victories with a new sense of clarity and precision.

“We thrive not when we have done it all, but when we still have more to do.” — Sarah Lewis

Masters realize there is no end. As an entrepreneur, you’ll probably never be completely satisfied. There will always be more to improve, more to grow, more to offer.

If you’re OK never reaching that finish line, you may be ready to begin the race.

Seth Godin: How to get your ideas to spread

Seth Godin is a marketing genius. He offers those rare gems of simplicity that make us all think, “Well duh! Why have I not thought of that?”

Godin explains how incredibly underwhelmed your audience is. Inboxes are full of static and spam, and your messages are just another fish in that overpopulated sea.

So how do you successfully reach your clients?

You must choose the correct audience, and you must stand out. You have to say or do something “remarkable.”

No, he means this literally: You must offer them something to remark about.

So what about choosing the right audience? Don’t we want to reach as many people as possible? Seth challenges that presumption. He challenges us to initiate the radicals—those way to the left (including innovators and early adopters) and those way to the right (who are considered laggers).

It’s on those two ends of the spectrum that you find your Chatty Cathys.

It’s those talkers who will essentially act as your marketing team. They’ll be the voice for your product, spreading the word and reputation for you. With them on your side, you can win over the middle, larger moderate group.

When you have something remarkable, tell the radicals and let them go to work spreading the word.

Are you worth talking about? Are you worth a status update, a tweet, a mention? Is your product or service worth stopping for? Are you worth water cooler talk?

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When it comes to your personal and professional achievement, you can be your own worst enemy.

You perform poorly on tests because you think you will; you put off work assignments until the night before they're due; you're overconfident in the accuracy of your predictions about the economy.

These are but a few examples of the cognitive biases that affect the way you behave and see the world. We've rounded up 14 of them, to help you figure out how you could be sabotaging your own success.

SEE ALSO: 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

Galatea effect

Where people succeed — or underperform — because they think they should. 

Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, in schools it describes how students who are expected to succeed tend to excel and students who are expected to fail tend to do poorly.

Information bias

The tendency to seek information when it does not affect action. More information is not always better. Indeed, with less information, people can often make more accurate predictions.

In one study, people who knew the names of basketball teams as well as their performance records made less accurate predictions about the outcome of NBA games than people who only knew the teams' performance records. However, most people believed that knowing the team names was helpful in making their predictions.

Negativity bias

The tendency to put more emphasis on negative experiences rather than positive ones. People with this bias feel that "bad is stronger than good" and will perceive threats more than opportunities in a given situation.

Psychologists argue it's an evolutionary adaptation— it's better to mistake a rock for a bear than a bear for a rock. 

When "Star Wars: Episode VII" opens in theaters this December, it won't just be a big hit in the US. 

It will be a huge, global phenomenon. 

The film is expected to shatter box-office records currently held by "Avatar" and "Titanic." Analyst estimates have ranged from $1.2 billion - $1.75 billion globally, and still, that may not be enough.

While US audiences know the film as “The Force Awakens,” fans around the globe will know the next “Star Wars” by many different names. 

Take a look at how fans around the world refer to “Star Wars: Episode VII."

First, here's what the logo for "The Force Awakens" looks like in English.

In France, they call it "Le Reveil De La Force."

This is what it goes by in Russia.

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There's a new bar in London that has found a way to get people drunk without actually drinking.

Alcoholic Architecture is a pop-up bar in London that gets people drunk in a different way. Here, rather than sipping on a cocktail, people enter an alcoholic cloud and imbibe alcohol through their lungs and eyeballs.

The bar will be open for another six months.

SEE ALSO: 21 US destinations where it's legal to drink outside

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When guests walk in, they enter a walk-in cocktail "cloud," where the air is infused with various spirits and mixed drinks at a 1:3 ratio. Powerful humidifiers keep the humidity at 140%, ensuring that the cloud saturates the air, and thus that the alcohol enters guests' bloodstream through the body’s mucous membranes — primarily the lungs and eyeballs.

Breathing liquor means bypassing the liver, which in turn means that you will get drunk faster: apparently 40% less alcohol will cause the same effect. This also means consuming 40% fewer calories.

Guests are asked to don special protective gear that looks like a poncho so that they they don’t smell like, well, a boozy cloud.

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Bon Appétit magazine has published its annual "Hot 10 list of America's Best New Restaurants," with recently opened eateries in California claiming four spots on the list. 

Editors Andrew Knowlton and Julia Kramer curated the initial list of 50 nominees after traveling around the country in search of the best restaurants, ranging from casual to upscale dining establishments. 

Keep scrolling to see the 10 new restaurants that Knowlton and Kramer applaud as the year's best. 

SEE ALSO: America's 50 best new restaurants, according to Bon Appétit magazine

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10. Milktooth (Indianapolis, IN)

Open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Milktooth is a brunch-only restaurant serving unique dishes and 25 house cocktails.

Chef and owner Jonathan Brooks and his wife Ashley offer plates like a Dutch baby pancake with salted lemon curd and seasonal berries ($12), and a cranberry walnut and rocket grilled cheese on fresh bread with truffle honey and a sunny local duck egg ($16).

To learn more about Milktooth, click here »

9. Manolin (Seattle, WA)

Manolin is named after the young apprentice in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” and the nautical theme rings true throughout the ocean-centric menu and dining room décor. According to Bon Appétit, the star of Manolin’s menu is its seasonal grilled halibut with molé sauce, an exotic blend of 26 different ingredients. 

To learn more about Manolin, click here »

8. Rintaro (San Francisco, CA)

At Rintaro, rice is made every 45 minutes and dishes are served just as they would be in Eastern Japan. The izakaya was built by Chef Sylvan Mishima Brackett’s father, with the bar crafted from 100-year-old cedar.

To learn more about Rintaro, click here »

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