Is Aladdin one of the most popular family pantomimes ever? Oh yes it is!

Long before Disney commercialised it, the story of Aladdin has been a popular one in its own right. Enjoyed by children and parents alike from around the world, there is nowhere that this tale is expressed better than in the form of a Christmas family pantomime, where it is one of the most popular stories to perform. Pantomimes are fun, exaggerated kinds of plays, with the emphasis very much on family entertainment and audience participation. Sometimes the roles of men are played by women, and the women by men. And you’ll often have two or more actors playing the part of an animal such as a cow or a horse or a camel.

Is Aladdin one of the most popular family pantomimes ever? Oh yes it is!

Long before Disney commercialised it, the story of Aladdin has been a popular one in its own right. Enjoyed by children and parents alike from around the world, there is nowhere that this tale is expressed better than in the form of a Christmas family pantomime, where it is one of the most popular stories to perform. Pantomimes are fun, exaggerated kinds of plays, with the emphasis very much on family entertainment and audience participation. Sometimes the roles of men are played by women, and the women by men. And you’ll often have two or more actors playing the part of an animal such as a cow or a horse or a camel.

Most people will judge you within the first second of meeting you and their opinion will most likely never change. Making a good first impression is incredibly important, because you only get one shot at it.

Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov and co-author Janine Willis, a student researcher who graduated from Princeton in 2005 had people look at a microsecond of video of a political candidate. Amazingly, research subjects could predict with 70-percent accuracy who would win the election just from that microsecond of tape. This tells us that people can make incredibly accurate snap judgments in a tenth of a second.

Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand.

This myth is based on the assumption that human beings are capable of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time. We’re not. Instead, we learn to move rapidly between tasks. When we’re doing one, we’re actually not even aware of the other.

If you’re on a conference call, for example, and you turn your attention to an incoming email, you’re missing what’s happening on the call as long as you’re checking your email. Equally important, you’re incurring something called “switching time.” That’s the time it takes to shift from one cognitive activity to another.