Got Breathing Space?

When you don't have, or feel you don't have, an extra moment to read philosophy, history, or science, when great literature, plays, and novels are as foreign to you as hieroglyphics, do you have any chance of seeing your work, career, or life in a new light?

The Non-solution to Slow Service

The clocks have been removed in the customer areas of 37,000 U.S. Post Offices nationwide. “The effort is designed to give the public-service areas a more uniform appearance,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock," said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service. At the Fort Worth post office, the hook that once held up the small battery-powered clock now protrudes from a plaster wall. The clock was taken down months ago.

A customer-service expert at Texas A&M University was not impressed with the decision to take down the timepieces. "It's silly," said Leonard Berry, holder of the M.B. Zale Chair in Retail and Marketing Leadership. "I guess they think people don't have watches.

Surf Faster, Breathe Easier?

According to J.D. Power and Associates in their “2006 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study,” broadband has finally passed dial-up for Internet home access.

Some 56% of residential ISP customers subscribe to broadband, and 44% subscribe to dial-up. Will you use the time you save surfing to have more Breathing Space in other areas of your life?

Boob Tube U.S

Got Breathing Space? An AP newswire report indicates that he average American home now has more televison sets than people. That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research.

There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said. Half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent have just one, Nielsen said. In 1975, 57 percent of homes had only a single set and 11 percent had three or more, the company said.

Let's Take Back our Time

Here is an excerpt of an insightful article by William J. Doherty appearing UU World September/October 2004, called “Let's Take Back our Time”:

“Welcome to the strange new world where being home for dinner is a radical act. For three decades a new spiritual and social justice issue has been arising in our culture and our congregations, but we've been too busy to notice it. It's the problem of time: over-work, over-scheduling, and a chronic sense of hurry. We have become the most productive and the most time-starved people on earth...”

“This is a spiritual issue as well as a social justice issue for us as Unitarian Universalists. Overbusyness has spiritual effects. Every spiritual tradition emphasizes the importance of silence and repose; most have some form of Sabbath and seasons of reflection. Our culture of busyness is antithetical to the spiritual life. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton expressed it well in Confessions of Guilty Bystander:

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of this innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

More Web, Less TV

Technology 'optimists' turn off TV
By Paul Bond

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week that do those without Internet access, while those using a dial-up connection watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV.

The data come from a Forrester Research study released Tuesday that uses what it calls the longest-running survey of its kind, counting nearly 69,000 people in the U.S. and Canada as participants.

Broadband Internet users watch just 12 hours of TV per week, compared with 14 hours for those who are offline, according to the study, "The State of Consumers and Technology: Benchmark 2005." Forrester also predicts that the number of broadband households in the U.S., which already soared to 31 million at the end of last year from 2.6 million in 1999, will swell to 71.4 million by 2010.

While its conclusion that Internet usage detract from other media is not new, the study delves deeper than others, separating consumers into various categories, including technology "optimists" and "pessimists" and "tenured nomadic networkers."

While newspapers and magazines also suffer a bit from Internet competition, radio and video games do not, the study concludes. "Online media attracts technology optimists in droves," says the report, noting that they are three times more likely to use streaming media and peer-to-peer file sharing and read blogs as are their pessimistic counterparts. Optimists play video games, read magazines and listen to the radio more than do pessimists, while pessimists watch more television.

Wellness On Wheels

Here’s a site apparently for the ultra-frantic: Wellness On Wheels – “Most people live life at a frantic pace-rushing around in the morning, getting ready for work, dealing with rush hour traffic, working through lunch, racing home to find something, anything, they can call ‘dinner’, and then try to catch up on all the personal responsibilities at night or on weekends. It’s exhausting!”

“We come to you! No travel time, dealing with the weather, or getting yourself psyched up to work out - we bring the health club to your door! And when we show up at the appointed time, we also provide focus and motivation, ensuring that the time spent exercising is safe and effective!”

The Origins of "Breathing Space"

People sometimes ask how I derived the title of his book, "Breathing Space." One afternoon, while I was speaking on the phone to a mentor, the mentor mentioned that he needed to "get some breathing space." I wrote down those words.

The phrase became one of the powerful guiding forces in my life. From that conversation, I devised the Breathing Space Institute, wrote the book "Breathing Space," and have since given hundreds of lectures for audiences across the nation and around the world on managing the daily pace with grace, mastering information from any communication overload, and, of course, having more breathing space.

Uncluttering Your Life

With the introduction of more channels on the television set, the Internet, which was not prominent before 1993, and all the consumer choices that exist, there are many things that compete for your time and attention. If you cram that into the same 24-hour day or 168-hour week that you have
always had, then your perception will be that time is speeding by.

For example, if you talk to a friend, watch a single television show while doing nothing else, read a book, or engage in any singular activity for one hour, you will have a certain perception of how quickly that hour will pass. But, if you pack more tasks into that same hour: the television being on, trying to read a book, maybe eating, maybe looking at 4-year-old; maybe a friend calls; maybe the PC nearby is on the Internet, and so on, then you perception of time changes. So, the more things that you can fit into that hour, then more things compete for your time and attention, and the faster that hour passes will seem to pass.

Does this seem like all the makings of a chaotic life? We each have 24 hours in day, so how are you supposed to fit in all of your daily tasks without getting so stressed out or frustrated that you cannot finish any? The answer is: less is more.

You can only eat one meal at a time. Focus on the task at hand and reflect on that 60's phrase, Be Here Now! You can actually taste the food when you are eating. You can actually watch the show that you are watching. You can actually play the sport that you are playing. Have the emotional and financial strength to let go of all the peripheral items competing for your time and attention and focus on the activity at hand.

The key to reclaiming your time is to practice the art, something I call an art, of doing one thing at a time. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Focus on the task at hand and be present in the moment.

The message that is being disseminated in contemporary society is to practice multi-tasking. "Do multiple things at once." "Click here." "Push here." "Turn me on." "Switch me on." Every place you look, you are besieged by more items competing for your time and attention. Now, people
actually have dwindling attention spans. They lack the ability to remain focused on the same subject for more than a few minutes and, sadly, some people for more than a few seconds.

Now It's Official: Time Flies

According to findings published in Scientific American, the human brain generates images faster when it experiences positive emotions. Time seems to "fly" when you're having fun! Conversely, the brain reduces the rate of image making during negative emotions. This may explain why misery seems to linger. So, Norman Vincent Peale was right all along: positive thinking is essential!