Before the episode starts, here's your random tip. This time from NPR's L-Manyan.

To increase productivity and reduce burnout at work or while studying, you can use the

Pomodoro method. You focus for a set amount of time, say 25 minutes, then get a 5 minute

break. After completing a set number, you get to celebrate with a longer break. And then

get back to focusing.

LifeKit wants to hear from you. If you've got a random tip, leave us a voice mail at

NPR.org.

This is NPR's LifeKit. So imagine this. You see a flyer that says, the psychology of shopping

study.

We advertised the study as the psychology of shopping study. It sounds really fun, doesn't

it? And it was not very fun to be a part of. That's Jan Tamayama. She's a researcher

at UCLA and she ran the study. So you see the flyer and you say, oops, sign me up. And

so you would arrive to our suite of lab rooms and one of the rooms, the door is sort of halfway

open and there are clothes that you can see hanging on racks inside and there's pop music

blaring from there. You get there and they tell you this study is about hormones and shopping.

And guess what? You get to try on clothes donated by an up and coming designer.

There's just one catch. But the first thing we need to do is make sure you'll fit into

the clothes. And so we take them to another room down the hall and we weigh them and we say,

okay, we got to crunch some numbers. Can you go wait in the waiting room? You go sit in

a waiting room and next to you on the couch is a really thin woman. I mean, like really

small and you don't know this, but she's in on the study. And we back into the thin woman

and say great news. You've qualified for the shopping part of the study. You can go down

...