Nike founder Phil Knight recently discussed last year's advertising campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, as well as insights he learned from John McEnroe, LeBron James and his college coach, Bill Bowerman. "It doesn't matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it," Knight said.

Churchill, Manitoba, serves as somewhat of an ongoing experiment in how humans and polar bears can cohabitate, with a multifaceted deterrent program aimed at keeping polar bears out of town without having to shoot them. More recently, the town dealt with damage to the rail line that effectively cut off residents from the rest of Canada for 18 months.

Boredom is not something children or adults should avoid at all costs, writes John Baldoni, building on an essay by Pamela Paul of the New York Times Book Review. He offers three tips for embracing boredom and incorporating it into a better life.

Middle management is often disrespected, especially at bigger companies that think the function is redundant and expensive, writes Theodore Kinni. Research suggests, however, that middle management is where innovation happens, where organizational culture is formed and where companies can learn the most about their customers.

Every employee needs to know where the lines are, but inside those lines, try to encourage initiative rather than waiting for permission, writes Dan Rockwell. "Persistent permission-seeking points to inept leaders and top-down structures," he argues.

How we shake hands, avoid distractions and even how close we stand are all ways we communicate without words, writes Harvey Deutschendorf. "Turning away from others or not squaring our bodies while speaking, indicates that we are either uncomfortable, not interested, not engaged, or distrustful of the person we are speaking to," he writes.

Companies struggle to move on from underperforming or legacy areas because of sentimentality or a refusal to give in. These companies should try structuring their assets in a way that requires justification for keeping, much less investing more, write Tim Koller and Zane Williams of McKinsey and Dan Lovallo of the University of Sydney.

Rituals of all forms can help people overcome stagnation and delay, in part because they are personally meaningful rather than being some unthinking habit. "A ritual is something done to prepare for action; a habit is something done repeatedly for the purpose of performing the action itself," writes Gustavo Razzetti.

Aurora displays in the northern and southern hemispheres rarely look the same because they're distorted by the sun's magnetic field, researchers say. The solar magnetic field "alters the path traced by Earth's field lines, squashing the lines on our planet's dayside facing the sun and elongating the lines on the nightside, creating a magnetic tail," writes Katherine Wright.

Effective leaders use both a reflexive mindset, which allows for quick decisions in a fast-paced environment, and a reflective mindset, which looks at the big picture. "Greater reflective leadership may be the way forward, along with the argument for going a little slower now so we can go much faster in the future," writes Julie Winkle Giulioni.