Breathing Space Blog

Trouble Studying or Concentrating?

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:18:00 +0000

If you or your children are having trouble studying or concentrating in our over-information society, here's a brief, helpful video.

Sane Cell Phone Use

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:02:00 +0000

As cell phones take over the earth, it's vital to remember that you control yours, and not vice versa. As often as you possibly can, keep your cell phone off and only use it for making outgoing calls or when you are expecting an important call from someone in particular. You really do not
want to be available to everyone all the time - that's a guarantee you won't even be able to think straight.

Don't freely give out your cell phone number, except to those you actually want to hear from such as loved ones, clients, and prospects. This should be a relatively small universe. If you can live without it, don't put your cell phone number on your business card, and don't advertise that you have one. People can call your office number and be assured that calls will be returned in a reasonable amount of time.

"Public" Discourse and Disclosure

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:27:00 +0000

A report from the Associated Press is distressing. "We're the YouTube Generation, living in the YouTube Era, in a YouTube World. And now we apparently have a YouTube Divorce. Some
prominent New York divorce lawyers couldn't think of another case where a spouse -- in this instance, the wife of a major Broadway theater operator -- had taken to YouTube to spill the secrets of a marriage in an apparent effort to gain leverage and humiliate the other side."

"This is absolutely a new step, and I think it's scary," said Bonnie Rabin, a divorce lawyer who has handled high-profile cases. "People used to worry about getting on page six of the New York Post, the gossip page. But this? It brings the concept of humiliation to a whole new level."

Jeff's take: if only it would stop here. From high school beatings, to beheadings, to crime sprees, to what have you, the level of public discourse and disclosure is taking some severe and sordid turns. Should we all now tread as if candid camera is lurking around every corner?

Pervasive Technology Overload

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:48:00 +0000

Here is a timely article that ran on 200 NBC TV news affiliates on the growing phenomena of something we all face, technology overload.

The news story is accompanied by a short video: once you're on the NBC site, click on the little red camera to the right of the screen.

Roasting the Sacred Cows

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:19:00 +0000

In my books and keynote speeches, I describe six "sacred cows"of time management that need to be forsaken.

The six "sacred cows" briefly listed below represent conventional time management wisdom. In contrast to each bit of "wisdom" are Breathing Space principles that serve as action guides.

1. Handling Paper -- Wisdom: "Handle Each Piece of Paper Once."
2. Reducing Clutter -- Wisdom: "When in Doubt, Throw it Out."
3. Being More Efficient -- Wisdom: Speed Reading, Listening, Learning.

4. Beating the Competition -- Wisdom: "Work Smarter, not Harder."
5. Managing Your Schedule -- Wisdom: Use Sophisticated Scheduling Tools.
6. Staying Informed -- Wisdom: Read Key Executive Publications.

While time management was a set of rules that worked well in a relatively finite setting, Breathing Space principles will prove to be far more effective for the ever changing multi-variable situations that executives and managers face today.

Harvey MacKay on Handling Stress

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:40:00 +0000

"Swim with the Sharks" guru Harvey MacKay writing in the Rochester Post-Bulletin offers a long list of tips on handling stress, streamlined here:

• Be completely present for whatever you are doing

• Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue

• When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane

• Keep your pace relaxed, and go outside once a day

• Take notice of the tension in your body

• Find a safe place where you can express and embrace your feeling

No Joy in Heavy Personal Debt

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:26:00 +0000

An AP report indicates that "Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double- digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come." Analysis of financial data from the country's largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Racking up heavy personal debt is the antithesis to Breathing Space!

To Your Health!

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Health links worth visiting;

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16933166

www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2006/hmprobiotics.htm

www.twliterary.com/ghuffnagle_newsweek_01.html

www.squidoo.com/netipotnasalwash

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/31/earlyshow/saturday/main3226777.shtml

Nothing is Simple Anymore

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Too true:
In our complex modern world, nothing is simple anymore, not even dying.
Lori Watt

Cutting off the Catalogs

Jeff Davidson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Catalogchoice.org offers a service to help you "cut off the catalogs" for good. Click and select which catalogs you no longer want rather than having to contact each company separately.

"Paperwork" is Here to Stay

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:57:00 +0000

Business Week: At 20 large U.S. banks, the cost of complying with U.S. laws and regulations grew 159 percent from 2001 to 2006, far faster than profit growth, an industry survey found. It costs the average big bank $83.5 million a year to keep up with Surbanes-Oxley, the Patriot Act, and other laws.

Given this reality, each of us needs to build greater "administration" time and effort into our plans. Society inherently grows more complex all the time. Our challenge is to harness that complexity and convert it to a competitive advantage.

Leaving a Voice mail Message

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:22:00 +0000

Many times you'll need to leave a voice mail message for one of your staff people. Before even dialing, think about what you want to say during this message. If it helps, write down three or four key words on a scrap of paper so that once you actually deliver your message, you can come right to the point.

Speak slowly but leave a succinct message of about 20-40 seconds. This may not seem like a lot of time, but actually allows for three to six sentences. There is no need to race, particularly when leaving your phone number. Say it slowly and carefully, as if you were writing it yourself. That's the Breathing Space way to leave a message.

Creativity in Your Life

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:42:00 +0000

Notes from the wonderful book, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron:

* Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy, pure creative energy.
* There is an underlying, indwelling creative force infusion all of life--including ourselves.
* When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.
* We are, ourselves, creation. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
* Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.

* The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
* When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
* As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
* It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
* Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source.

No Limits to our Social Pace

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:40:00 +0000

A paper titled "No Apparent Limits: Addressing Common Arguments Against Continuous Computational Acceleration states, "The closer we look, the more we discover the astonishing, surprising, and (for some at least) alarming irrelevancy of all currently proposed limits to
the ongoing acceleration of local computation. ...Ours is the generation that will no longer be able to ignore the phenomenon of continuing technological acceleration."

"We, and more particularly, our technological creations, are on a wild ride to an interesting destination-the technological singularity-a local rate of computational change so fast and powerful that it must have a profound and as-yet-unclarified universal effect."

"As a side effect of this hypergrowth, biological human beings will not be able to meaningfully understand the computer-driven world of the near future unless they are able to make some kind of transition to 'transhumanity,' an environment with greater-than-human computational capacity, and a new, as yet undetermined human-machine symbiosis. How this transition will and should occur, and how it is presently occurring, is a subject of spirited and insightful debate."

The upshot for each of us? Don't expect the pace of society to slow down in your lifetime, and employing Breathing Space techniques is more important than ever.

Jail Time for Cell Phone Drivers

Jeff Davidson — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:13:00 +0000

An article in the London Telegraph by David Millward and Christopher Hope reports that "Motorists caught using a hand-held mobile phone while driving could be jailed for two years under tough new guidelines issued today by prosecutors. Drivers who adjust sat-navs, tinker with MP3 music players such as iPods or send text messages at the wheel could also face prison sentences."

"Prosecutions will be brought if by using the equipment a motorist is judged to have posed a danger to other drivers, such as causing another car to swerve. Using a hand-held mobile while driving was outlawed in 2003, but it is estimated that half a million motorists flout the ban each day."

"Existing guidelines restricted prosecutors to pursuing only a charge of careless driving, for which the maximum fine is $10,000 along with up to nine points on a motorist's license. But under the new rules, drivers could be charged with dangerous driving, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail."

I has heartened to learn that U.K. police now check mobile phone records after road collisions to see if the driver was making a call. An excellent move and one that will help guard other people's Breathing Space.

Resorting to Drugs

Jeff Davidson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:40:00 +0000

Where is the Breathing Space in a nation that pops a pill at every turn? You'll never convince me otherwise: as a society our default response to information and communication overload is ingesting psychopharmaceuticals.

Patrick Di Justo, writing in Wired Magazine says, "America may be the land of Mickey Mouse and Goofy, but the US isn’t exactly the happiest place on Earth. Antidepressants are the most commonly popped pills in the country, accounting for 227 million prescriptions filled last year alone. Of course, Prozac and its descendants aren’t the only popular psychiatric meds: Remedies for seizure disorders — often used to treat bipolar disease, as well as epilepsy — and for anxiety are among the 10 most-prescribed drugs in the nation."

"But even as our hunger for pills has grown, basic innovation has slowed. Many “new” medications are actually reformulations of previously approved drugs, not novel molecules. As a result, some of the most widely taken treatments have been around for years: Today's leading anxiety beater, alprazolam, for example, originally hit the market in 1981 as Xanax."

The Risks of Sleep Debt

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:44:00 +0000

"For years, sleep researchers have been preaching the dangers of lost sleep: People who are fatigued can't pay attention to routine tasks, have trouble learning and are prone to a laundry list of health problems, from depression to high blood pressure," says Kathleen Facklemann in USA Today

"New research suggests an added risk to losing sleep day after day: Humans and animals that have chronic sleep deprivation might reach a point at which the very ability to catch up on lost sleep is damaged, according to Fred Turek, a sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois."

"His research on sleep patterns in rats appeared this summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That, together with findings from a human study, suggests people who lose sleep night after night might not recover the alertness they need to perform well during the day. So far the studies don't tell researchers whether the damage is permanent. But they do suggest that people who go to work fatigued day after day might perform consistently at a subpar level.

Cell Phones ARE Dangerous

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:26:00 +0000

I've said it for years: talking on a cell phone demands your sharp attention and hence it is dangerous to employ a cell phone around vehicles. Now "indisputable" evidence confirms my observation. Steve Rubenstein in The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "A pedestrian apparently absorbed in a cell phone call was struck and killed by an Amtrak train in San Leandro today after he walked around a lowered crossing gate and onto the tracks."

"The victim, a man who was not immediately identified, was struck at 12:30 p.m. by a northbound Capitol Corridor train at the Alvarado Street crossing, about 8 miles south of the Oakland station... None of the 20 passengers or crew aboard the train was injured. That train and two others were delayed and another Capitol Corridor train was cancelled."

"Crew members aboard the Sacramento-bound train told authorities they saw the victim talking on the cell phone before he was struck, Graham said. The warning lights and gates at the crossing were functioning properly."

Draining Your Brain

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:44:00 +0000

David Brook, writing in the New York Times, offers a brilliant article called "The Outsourced Brain," wherein he describes how today's technology is aiding some people in abdicating from everyday decisions, and worse, even from basic thinking.

"The gurus seek bliss amidst mountaintop solitude and serenity in the meditative trance," he writes, "but I, grasshopper, have achieved the oneness with the universe that is known as pure externalization.

"I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings, and it all started because I bought a car with a G.P.S."

"Like many men, I quickly established a romantic attachment to my G.P.S. I found comfort in her tranquil and slightly Anglophilic voice. I felt warm and safe following her thin blue line. More than once I experienced her mercy, for each of my transgressions would be greeted by nothing worse than a gentle, Make a U-turn if possible.”

"After a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could no longer get anywhere without her. Any trip slightly out of the ordinary had me typing the address into her system and then blissfully following her satellite-fed commands. I found that I was quickly shedding all vestiges of geographic knowledge."

No Alarm, No Adrenaline Rush

Jeff Davidson — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:21:00 +0000

As I have been telling my audiences for years, if you wake by alarm clock then by definition you didn't get enough sleep. Receiving sufficient sleep for the night means that you arise on your own, without an artificial stimulant such as an alarm clock.

If you have trouble getting up at time you prefer to arise, experiment with going to bed earlier, to find that time in which you can comfortably arise without an alarm clock. A secondary benefit
to knowing that you've gotten enough sleep for the night because you've been able to arise on your own is not to awake in an adrenaline rush.

"Alarm" clocks and other devices are named as such because they are meant to alarm you. When you think about it however, is that the way you want to start each day? Being jolting out of your revery and thrown into waking consciousness ready or not? How much different would your day be if you woke peacefully, naturally, completely on your own?

Underfunding Healthy Foods

Jeff Davidson — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:12:00 +0000

In a Baltimore Sun feature by Scott Kahan it appears that "A long-running contradiction in U.S. farm policy is fattening the waistlines of Americans and the profits of agribusiness at the same time. For the 30 years that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been issuing dietary guidelines, there has been a stark inconsistency between the federal government's advice and its food funding."

"True, the USDA has been doing more, over time, to promote health through dietary guidelines, food pyramids and other nutrition programs. And yet more than $20 billion yearly -- more than one-fifth its budget -- is sunk into a farm bill that supports many of the foods its recommendations warn against. At the same time, the department virtually ignores incentives to produce, promote and consume some of the healthiest foods: fruits and vegetables."

"This contradiction may play a role in today's obesity epidemic and is in part driven by a counterintuitive farm policy, highlighted by the farm bill, which is up for renewal this year in Congress. This legislation began during the Depression to protect farmers against environmental disasters and plummeting crop prices but has evolved into a massive program of handouts, largely benefiting agribusinesses. Worse, it promotes vast overproduction of crops that are the building blocks of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor, processed junk foods. It has become a 'food bill.'"

Jeff's take: overweight and obesity are the antithesis of Breathing Space. Learn to shop for yourself and eat what is healthy, or endure the consequences.

No Smoking: Real Breathing Space

Jeff Davidson — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:13:00 +0000

USA TODAY reporter Wend Koch writes that "Lawmakers in two California cities are casting votes this month on unprecedented legislation that would widen a growing voluntary movement by landlords and resident associations to ban smoking inside apartments and condos."

"Tens of thousands of apartments and condos have gone smoke-free in the past five years, management companies and health activists say."

Percentage of the U.S. adult population who smoke based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention :
• 1965: 42.4%
• 1970: 37.4%
• 1974: 37.1%
• 1980: 33.2%
• 1985: 30.1%
• 1990: 25.5%
• 1995: 24.7%
• 2001: 22.8%
• 2004: 20.9%

Now Sit up Straight!

Jeff Davidson — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:57:00 +0000

Trainer Luke Richesson quoted in Mens Health magazine says: "Your body adapts to the posture you most often assume. If you sit at a desk all day with your shoulders slumped and your neck protruding forward, then you'll inevitably have a posture that looks more like Neanderthal man than Superman. Want to be the best you can be...? Think about posture every waking minute.

Your mother was right, don't slouch

Wanted: Fewer People in the U.K.

Jeff Davidson — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:29:00 +0000

"Overpopulation is the main cause of environmental degradation," says Madeleine Bunting, writing in the London Guardian. Common sense tells us that, "if the planet's resources are being grossly depleted, there are just too many of us about." Yet none of the main environmental lobbying groups will mention that obvious fact "because of the unpleasant associations it brings
with it."

If we admitted that there were too many of us on this "crowded island" of Great Britain, we'd have to either limit immigration, which would seem racist, or limit family size, which would seem authoritarian. So the Green lobby tries to insist that if we all just recycle more and drive less, we can live together in ever-greater numbers. If only that were true. At the current rate of increase, by 2074 Britain will be the most densely populated country in the world after Bangladesh.

"How many more people can you squeeze into cities that already seem to be choking under the weight of their population density-the buses and trains packed, the streets clogged, and the parks on a Sunday afternoon teeming with people?" The challenge of the next few decades will be to have that debate "while steering well clear of racism."

Jeff's take: such a shame that honest debate about over-population and its enormous negative effects is stifled by the PC police.

Confronting the Noise

Jeff Davidson — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:45:00 +0000

The city of Mount Dora, Florida, "may put a leash on frequent dog-barking," according to a feature written by Brad Buck of the Daily Commercial. "Under a proposed change in Mount Dora's noise ordinance, dogs won't be able to just keep barking and barking, creating a disturbance in a neighborhood."

"Mount Dora already prohibits dogs from barking for five minutes at a time. But under the revised ordinance, even if dogs bark for less than five minutes, their owners can be cited by the city if the dog barks for three periods in 24 hours. Such barking is considered a noise disturbance."

"If passed, residents can add barking dogs to noisy radios, TVs, musical instruments, loudspeakers, tape players, record players, power equipment and similar devices. Loudspeakers, public address systems or similar devices can be used at activities authorized by the city including parades and art festivals.

"Currently, the ordinance says dogs can bark for at most five minutes at a time or intermittently for at least 30 minutes. City staff starting changing the noise law after resident Monique Richardson told the council in August she was concerned about a new renter in her neighborhood that has a dog or dogs that bark at all hours."

My view: seems a bit draconian but what else can you do in a nation with well over 70,000, 000 dogs distributed among 110,000,000 households?