Even if your manager is not as helpful to career advancement as you would like, it might be possible to move up by catching the attention of your boss' boss. Thinking strategically, knowing your numbers and demonstrating your commitment to growth can help.

By age 7, most children have made assumptions about what job they will achieve, according to research from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. "Too often young people's ambitions are narrowed by an innate sense of what people from their background should aspire to and what's out of reach," says Nick Chambers of Education and Employers.

Many people turn to productivity advice and self-help books to learn how to maximize productivity, but not everyone fits the profile of the author's situation, according to Midgame co-founder Jason Shen. He writes that people have different 24 hours, so the career advice someone receives applies only to a specific demographic because of the author's bias.

Experience can be a poor predictor for new hires' performance, so companies should seek specifics about the quality of past work. Consider administering job-relevant tests and reviewing data to pick out patterns that predict good performance, researcher Chad Van Iddekinge says.

Trucking companies struggling to find drivers are increasingly hiring women, although roughly 93% of drivers are men. "If you go to a fleet and ask how much drivers are paid, it is by experience level, routes, etc., not gender-specific," says Bob Costello of the American Trucking Associations.

To balance health and a career, Michael Morelli, founder of multiple wellness brands, suggests five habits to follow: eat an anti-inflammatory diet, drink plenty of water, do high-intensity interval training, meditate, and build strong relations with supportive people.

If you get up in the middle of the night to do something and turn on the light, you might not have any problem getting back to sleep; but if you end up walking around for an extended amount of time with the lights on, it's a lot harder to sleep. Thanks to a new technique developed at the Salk Institute for tracing activity of individual nerve fibers known as axons, scientists have a better understanding of the phenomenon.