Breathing Space Blog

Other People's Voice Mail

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:11:00 +0000

To successfully deal with other people's voice mail:
* Speak a little louder than usual, enunciating as you speak.
* Say your name and organization, and then slowly leave your phone number.
* Follow that with a short, essential message.
* Make your message last 40 to 50 seconds.
Too short, and it may seem insignificant. Too long, and you may irk the other party.
* Pretend you're writing your phone number in the air as you're reciting it.
Some callers speak too fast, making recipients replay the message repeatedly.
* Days later, if you’ve had no reply? Say, "I'm calling to follow-up on my call last Tuesday."
* Be flexible when offering times and dates when you can be reached.

Be friendly and personable. You'll stand out like few others callers that day!

Organizing and Over-collecting

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:38:00 +0000

Becoming and staying organized is desirable. Being organized, however, is not the same as being neat. Neatness is just a virtue. Being organized is done for the practical purpose of creating breathing space. What good is information if you spend all morning looking for it?

The recurring problem with staying organized is holding on to pieces of the past. Overcollecting, or packratism, can create huge pile of junk at home and in your office. Reexamine what you retain and practice creative trashing. If you must hold onto items you no longer need, put them in a special box and hide it in the attic or garage. If you can go two years without missing it, then throw it out.

Intermittent Explosive Disorder

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:21:00 +0000

Intermittent Explosive Disorder
* It appears that road rage is far more common than experts had expected and is not confined to the road. Almost 16 million Americans are inflicted with a disorder that prompts them to erupt in shouting or screaming, and violent outbursts sometimes at the mildest provocation.

* EID is regarded “as a pattern of explosive outbursts in response to everyday frustrations which can lead to injury to other people and property, revenge, and domestic abuse” says Michael McClusky, PhD in the New Scientist. "They often say that their anger goes from 0 to 100."

It is my strong suspicion that a lack of breathing space is at the root of this phenomenon!

Leave the Office on Time

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Leaving Ready for the Rest of Your Day
Here's what you can do, on a typical weekday, to leave on time when you choose to:

1. Tell everyone that you have a personal commitment at 5:30 that evening. If you have a
child you could say that your child is in need of important parental assistance. Schedule
something for 5:30 that evening if it helps.

2. Mark on your calendar that you'll be leaving at five.

3. Sleep well the night before.

4. Eat a light lunch.

5. Strike a bargain with yourself at the start of the day, in late morning, in early
afternoon, and in late afternoon.

6. View any intrusion as merely part of the workday.

7. Once striking the bargain with yourself, don't add more items at the last minute.

8. Imagine how you'll feel when you leave right at closing time (however, there is no
reason for you to be staring at the clock for the last 45 minutes).

9. Ask a co-worker to walk you out at closing time.

Completions All Day Long

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:57:00 +0000

The process of giving yourself a mental completion on all tasks or even thoughts, described in my book Breathing Space, sets up a mental partition for you whereby you have more energy, focus, and direction for what’s next.

You can practice completions all day long. When you get up tomorrow morning, whether you had good sleep or bad sleep, you'll be complete with that phase of your day, and so on. If you give yourself acknowledgment, and this takes only two or three seconds, you will have more energy, more focus, and more direction for whatever else you face.

The Zeigarnik Effect

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:19:00 +0000

When interruptions predominate, little work gets done, observes Paul Radde, Ph.D. author of Thrival. Radde says "Cell phone use is not just plain rude, it is mentally distracting and abusive to others. Cell phone use captures the brain's interest in completing the conversation, so whether the user is broadcasting or simply within earshot, the Zeigarnik effect kicks in. This is the same desire for closure that makes the effects of multi-tasking akin to the effects of post-traumatic stress."

The Zeigarnik effect is characterized by the tendency for people to remember interrupted tasks better than those that have been completed. "Once taken off one task, without completing the transaction," Radde observes, "the mind continues to seek closure. If you have a number of things going, but none of them to completion, you have these tensions tending toward completion -- and that is stress-provoking."

Solitude is Golden

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:56:00 +0000

Too many career professionals are uncomfortable with solitude. Increasingly, this discomfort tolerates only shorter and shorter attention spans. To retreat into one's own mind, to pause, to reflect is now treated as if it were enemy territory, yet these skills are needed now more than ever!

Flip and Strip

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:39:00 +0000

When you receive newspaper or magazine subscriptions, flip through them immediately, tear out the articles of interest, and toss the rest. You’re now left with a smaller, lighter, manageable pile that you can tackle more easily or take with you as needed.

For more Breathing space tips, visit the Breathing Space Zine.

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Interruptions and Productivity

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:08:00 +0000

Paul Radde, Ph.D. author of Thrival says "Cell phone use is not just plain rude, it is mentally distracting and abusive to others. Cell phone use captures the brain's interest in completing the conversation, so whether the user is broadcasting or simply within earshot, the Zeigarnik effect kicks in. This is the same desire for closure that makes the effects of multi-tasking akin to the effects of post-traumatic stress."

The Zeigarnik effect is characterized by the tendency of people to remember interrupted tasks better than those that have been completed. "Once taken off one task, without completing the transaction," Radde observes, "the mind continues to seek closure. If you have a number of things going, but none of them to completion, you have these tensions tending toward completion -- and that is stress-provoking."

It's not that you can't get things done with the use of a cell phone; indeed, you can get a lot of things done. However, the nature of what you get done is highly skewed. Just as the man with only a hammer sees everything as nails, the incessant cell phone user accomplishes a variety of tasks, understandably enough, that accrue directly to having a cell phone. In other words whatever can be handled by a phone call is more likely to be tackled than say a problem that requires solitude and abstract reasoning.

Sometimes this get-it-done kind of individual overdoes this stay-in-touch aspect of what he's trying to accomplish. How often do you need to stay in touch with your office? Would every 60 minutes do it, or would 45 minutes be better, or 30 better still? What kinds of new tasks and new responsibilities at work are you creating for yourself and others as a result of the constant communication and, need I say it, over-communication?

Each 30 Minutes Count

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:15:00 +0000

Question: No matter how conscious I am of saving time throughout the day, I still find myself racing the clock. What, if anything, am I doing wrong?

Consider the following: any one-hour activity that you undertake in the course of the day will consume one solid year out of the next 24 years of your life. One hour is to 24 hours as one year is to 24 years. With this realization, consider the cumulative effects of reading junk
mail for only 30 minutes a day or spending 15 minutes a day in line at the bank--both of which could be avoided if you used mail, phone, or email services. Obviously there are some things that you couldn't or wouldn't want to give up and it is silly to apply this kind of arithmetic to activities such as personal hygiene. In general, however, each 30 minute segment of the day is valuable!

Managing the Beforehand

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:06:00 +0000

During the closing days of my senior year of high school, I rounded up some of the items on the bulletin board that I thought would make great memento. I had a roster of all the letter winners who were invited to the awards dinner last week. I also had the daily absentee list of the senior class, several of the school's monthly news letters, and various other announcements and memos.

Over the years, moving from Connecticut to Washington, DC to North Carolina, these items remained in a folder of other school items such as report cards, progress reports, and college acceptance letters.

For many reasons, my high school class did not have a five or ten of fifteen year reunion. They had one eighteen year reunion which I heard about afterwards and then another at thirty which, thankfully, I did learn about in time to attend. In preparation for attending the thirtieth reunion, I carefully copied all my artifacts from my high school days, left the copies at home, and brought the originals with me.

When I dispensed them to the class secretary and other officers, it blew them away. They made announcements during the evening of the artifacts I had so carefully preserved over the last thirty years. One of my friends, Greg, thought I was nuts. Actually, what I had been doing was practicing the art of managing the beforehand, long before I even had defined it. It just occurred to me that someday what represented every day kinds of documents in way back when would be highly noteworthy 30 yars later.

Got Breathing Space?

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:55:00 +0000

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?

Brave New World is Here

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0000

"People never are alone now... We make them hate solitude, and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it." --Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

Control Your Environment

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:57:00 +0000

At my speeches audience members say to me, "I'm able to handle the tasks in front of me for the day, but if I get one more call or one critical email, everything is just thrown off." That's why it is important to condition your work environment.

Look at your office, your car, your home, and all of the other physical spaces in your life, and ask, "What can I do to make these spaces work for me in the way I work and in the way I live my life?" Take your desk, for example: realize that it must be specifically set up for you. Position your PC monitor in the way that's most comfortable for you. If you need tissues, candy, or certain supplies, then put them on your desk, close at hand.

Look at your desk in new ways. Align it so that it supports the way you work, regardless of how it looks to anyone else. Never mind what the person down the hall thinks! Identify the items you need, and then condition your desk to work for you. Remove piles from the window sills or
cabinets tops and put them into file folders. Gain some clear space!

Life a is Desk. Clear Yours

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:45:00 +0000

To prehistoric man, life was a spear. Today life is a desk. Joe Sugarman, in his book, Success Forces, explains that by clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day. This is a discipline that yields a marvelous sense of breathing space with which to start each day.

To ensure that your desk and office environment supports you, invest in yourself. If you need them, room dividers and sound barriers are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can improve upon any existing sound barriers.

Use the end of the day and slow periods to keep your desk orderly and better prepare yourself for high octane output when you're ready to get started again.

Every evening, after you've cleared your desk, acknowledge yourself for what you accomplished that day. Don't beat yourself up for what you didn't do. If you can do better, you will, maybe not at once, but soon enough.

The Tyranny of Choice

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:54:00 +0000

"Logic suggests that having options allows people to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery."
Barry Schwartz, "The Tyranny of Choice," Scientific American, April 2004

Noise Disturbs in Many Ways

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:14:00 +0000

“The high noise of modern life may affect speech and language development in the very young, according to a study that found the auditory parts of the brains of young mice are slower to organize properly in the presence of continuous sounds.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, reared a group of rats in an environment of continuous background noise and found that their brain circuits that receive and interpret sound did not develop at the same rate as animals that were raised in a quieter environment.

Edward F. Chang and Michael Merzenich, co-authors of the study appearing in the journal Science, said that the continuous noise delayed the organization of auditory neurons during a critical two- to three-week period after the rat pups were born.

Although the rat is not a perfect model for what happens in humans, the authors note, the study does suggest that high levels of noise might possibly affect some language learning in infants.

"These findings suggest that environmental noise, which is commonly present in contemporary child-rearing environments, can potentially contribute to auditory and language-related development delays," the authors write in Science. The authors noted that although the brain development was delayed in rats exposed to the noise, their brains did eventually mature normally.”

Eat What You Like

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:58:00 +0000

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. Conclusion: Eat & drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

Making Decisions

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:26:00 +0000

Here is some sage advice about making decisions in both your professional and personal lives, from author and counselor Rebecca Merrill.

Rebecca Merrill c 2004

1. We all have to do it.

2. We never get to stop doing it.

3. Every new decision leads to more decisions. It's just a question of how

4. It's difficult to make good decisions for a multitude of reasons.

5. We spend a small percentage of our lives making decisions, but they determine the rest of our lives, which are the consequences.

6. There are no "right" or perfect decisions.

7. With every decision, you will experience some loss, especially if you choose to do nothing.

8. You can only make the decision you are capable of making when the decision is called for; all decisions are a function of who you are at the time you make them.

9. The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your decisions.

10. It is well worth your while to learn how to make good ones.

Getting Things Done: Affirmations

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:37:00 +0000

# I choose to be open to new ways of doing things.
# I choose to acknowledge the accomplishments of others.
# I choose to stay connected to the creative process.
# I choose to retain that which supports me easily.
# I choose to reach for the highest that is within me.
# I choose to maintain clarity in my work and my life.

True Breathing Space

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:07:00 +0000

When you draw upon your own accumulated knowledge and the wisdom that you develop, you're able to intermittently free yourself from ever accelerating flows of information. That is true Breathing Space.

Get Older, Get Happier!

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:18:00 +0000

Perhaps the best news I've ever relayed: more happiness may come with age

According to a study reported by CNN.com,
# Older adults, may be better able avoid stressful situations,
which may mean less negative emotion
# They also may limit the time spent thinking about negative aspects of a situation
# Memory may also contribute to older adults' positive emotional state

Mark Twain on Enjoying life

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:54:00 +0000

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity." – Mark Twain

Are You a Prisoner?

jeff@breathingspace.com (Jeff Davidson) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:12:00 +0000

Noted Feng Shui author and friend, Nancy Wydra, writes: “For most of human history we lived not just in close association with nature but outdoors, in direct contact with it. Survival required full use of all of the senses. Early humans were able to identify poisonous plants by smell, discern by the sound of movement which animals lurked amid foliage, and use their vocal cords to identify themselves to others and to send signals of distress. Human beings evolved in direct response to their environment. Scientists theorize, for example, that standing upright was a response to the need to see faster predators from a safe distance.

Premodern human beings not only responded to the natural environment but also thrived in it. The sounds of birds, wind, and scurrying animals; the fragrance of grasses and flowers and the scents of animals were woven into the fabric of eachday while humans performed life-sustaining tasks. The warming sunlight encouraged the production of serotonin (a neurochemical that encourages feelings of optimism and happiness) and injected vitamin D into a recipient's life force. Nature provided a multi-tiered sensorial infusion that is obliterated indoors.

In sharp contrast, life today in spent mostly indoors. Statistics reveal that the majority of Americans spend less than one hour outside every day. Even if we do nothing else to help our lives, spending more time outside will contribute to our physical and emotional well-being. The National Institutes of Health report that if each of us would walk twenty minutes to work and then home again at day's end, the general population's health would improve significantly.