The above graph shows the electronic waste collection and recycling rate by region in 2016 and 2019. In both years, Europe showed the highest electronic waste collection and recycling rates. The electronic waste collection and recycling rate of Asia in 2019 was lower than in 2016. The Americas ranked third both in 2016 and in 2019, with 17 percent and 9 percent respectively. In both years, the electronic waste collection and recycling rates in Oceania remained under 10 percent. Africa had the lowest electronic waste collection and recycling rates in both 2016 and 2019, showing the smallest gap between 2016 and 2019.

The hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which can be described as "natural" to human beings, appears to have had much to recommend it. Examination of human remains from early hunter-gatherer societies has suggested that our ancestors enjoyed abundant food, obtainable without excessive effort, and suffered very few diseases. If this is true, it is not clear why so many humans settled in permanent villages and developed agriculture, growing crops and domesticating animals: cultivating fields was hard work, and it was in farming villages what epidemic diseases first took root. Whatever its immediate effect on the lives of humans, the development of settlements and agriculture undoubtedly led to a high increase in population density. This period, known as the New Stone Age, was a major turning point in human development, opening the way to the growth of the first towns and cities, and eventually leading to settled "civilizations."

Many human and non-human animals save commodities or money for future consumption. This behavior seems to reveal a preference of a delayed reward over an immediate one: the agent gives up some immediate pleasure in exchange for a future one. Thus the discounted value of the future reward should be greater than the un-discounted value of the present one. However, in some cases the agent does not wait for the envisioned occasion but uses their savings prematurely. For example, early in the year an employee might set aside money to buy Christmas presents but then spend it on a summer vacation instead. Such cases could be examples of weakness of will. That is, the agents may judge or resolve to spend their savings in a certain way for the greatest benefit but then act differently when temptation for immediate pleasure disappears.

There's a lot of scientific evidence demonstrating that focused attention leads to the reshaping of the brain. In animals rewarded for noticing sound (to hunt or to avoid being hunted for example), we find much larger auditory centers in the brain. In animals rewarded for sharp eyesight, the visual areas are larger. Brain scans of violinists provide more evidence, showing dramatic growth and expansion in regions of the cortex that represent the left hand, which has to finger the strings precisely, often at very high speed. Other studies have shown that the hippocampus, which is vital for spatial memory, is enlarged in taxi drivers. The point is that the physical architecture of the brain changes according to where we direct our attention and what we practice doing.

To find the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, we‘re better off shifting to a process called brainwriting. The initial steps are solo. You start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and elaborating them, teams can surface and advance possibilities that might not get attention otherwise. This brainwriting process makes sure that all ideas are brought to the table and all voices are brought into the conversation. It is especially effective in groups that struggle to achieve collective intelligence.

Simply giving employees a sense of agency ― a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority ― can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs. One 2010 study at a manufacturing plant in Ohio, for instance, carefully examined assembly-line workers who were empowered to make small decisions about their schedules and work environment. They designed their own uniforms and had authority over shifts while all the manufacturing processes and pay scales stayed the same. It led to decreased efficiency because their decisions were not uniform or focused on meeting organizational goals. Within two months, productivity at the plant increased by 20 percent, with workers taking shorter breaks and making fewer mistakes. Giving employees a sense of control improved how much self-discipline they brought to their jobs.

As businesses shift some core business activities to digital, such as sales, marketing, or archiving, it is assumed that the impact on the environment will be less negative. However, digital business activities can still threaten the environment. In some cases, the harm of digital businesses can be even more hazardous. A few decades ago, offices used to have much more paper waste since all documents were paper based. When workplaces shifted from paper to digital documents, invoices, and emails, it was a promising step to save trees. However, the cost of the Internet and electricity for the environment is neglected. A recent Wired report declared that most data centers' energy source is fossil fuels. When we store bigger data on clouds, increased carbon emissions make our green clouds gray. The carbon footprint of an email is smaller than mail sent via a post office, but still, it causes four grams of CO₂, and it can be as much as 50 grams if the attachment is big.

Growing crops forced people to stay in one place. Hunter-gatherers typically moved around frequently, and they had to be able to carry all their possessions with them every time they moved. In particular, mothers had to carry their young children. As a result, hunter-gatherer mothers could have only one baby every four years or so, spacing their births so that they never had to carry more than one child at a time. Farmers, on the other hand, could live in the same place year after year and did not have to worry about transporting young children long distances. Societies that settled down in one place were able to shorten their birth intervals from four years to about two. This meant that each woman could have more children than her hunter-gatherer counterpart, which in turn resulted in rapid population growth among farming communities. An increased population was actually an advantage to agricultural societies, because farming required large amounts of human labor.