Jeff Davidson's Blog, page 17
October 29, 2017
Don't Just Do Something
Don't just do something, sit there: Reading or merely looking out the window in contemplation could be the most important and productive activity you do today. Too often, people throw their time at tasks when they should be exerting more brain power.
The single best way to handle several different projects is to begin working on one thing at a time, until its completion, and then go on to the next project, and then the next, until you are finished.
The single best way to handle several different projects is to begin working on one thing at a time, until its completion, and then go on to the next project, and then the next, until you are finished.
October 26, 2017
Chances Are Your Chances Are
When I was seven years old, my mother took me and my sister Judy to see the up-and-coming crooner, Johnny Mathis, on Route 10 in Plainville, Connecticut. The event was a combination luncheon and mini-concert. I was too young to know it at the time, but Johnny Mathis's golden tones were about to launch a decades long career that would see him on the adult contemporary charts and pop charts from the early 60's clear through 2000.
Johnny Mathis, still around today, seemed to offer a sense of Breathing Space to his listeners!
Johnny Mathis, still around today, seemed to offer a sense of Breathing Space to his listeners!
October 21, 2017
Does Time Fly?
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 could explain why misery seems to linger. So, Norman Vincent Peale was right all along: positive thinking is essential!
October 18, 2017
Audiobook: Work-Life Balance Starting Today
Technology was supposed to make us ultra-efficient, thereby enabling us to finish our projects and tasks faster and have more leisure time! How is that working out for you? Actually, as the pace of work and life accelerates, people everywhere find themselves striving for solutions to the constant time-pressure that they encounter.
Here's help: Work-Life Balance Starting Today
October 9, 2017
Setting Limits to Preserve Your Focus
A book worth perusing: Boundaries in an Overconnected World: Setting Limits to Preserve Your Focus, Privacy, Relationships, and Sanity seems to be exactly what many people need these days!
October 3, 2017
The Myth of 'Healthy Obesity'
From www.webmd.com ...a myth is revealed: "The notion that some people can be overweight or obese and still remain healthy is a myth, according to a new Canadian study."
"Even without high blood pressure, diabetes or other metabolic issues, overweight and obese people have higher rates of death, heart attack and stroke after 10 years compared with their thinner counterparts, the researchers found."
Excess pounds raise death risk over time.
September 27, 2017
Chances Are Your Chance Are
When I was seven years old, my mother took me and my sister Judy to see the up-and-coming crooner, Johnny Mathis, on Route 10 in Plainville, Connecticut. The event was a combination luncheon and mini-concert. I was too young to know it at the time, but Johnny Mathis's golden tones were about to launch a decades long career that would see him on the adult contemporary charts and pop charts from the early 60's clear through 2000.
Johnny Mathis, still around today, seemed to offer a sense of Breathing Space to his listeners!
Johnny Mathis, still around today, seemed to offer a sense of Breathing Space to his listeners!
September 21, 2017
Messing With Your Appetite
The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is compelling reading, perhaps the most eye-opening book on our relationship to food and how to reclaim it that I have ever encountered.
With a laser-like focus, author Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, explains in graphic terms how -- through no mass conspiracy to make us fat -- food manufacturers, producers, and servers offer us caloric bombs which we willingly wolf down. He pinpoints how, within the last few decades, 10,000 years of human consumption patterns have been completely overturned.
With a laser-like focus, author Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, explains in graphic terms how -- through no mass conspiracy to make us fat -- food manufacturers, producers, and servers offer us caloric bombs which we willingly wolf down. He pinpoints how, within the last few decades, 10,000 years of human consumption patterns have been completely overturned.
September 12, 2017
Let Your Unconscious Decide
'Sleeping on it' is best for complex decisions!
From the February 16, 2006 issue of New Scientist (vol 311, p 1005): “Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result with which people remain happy than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem.”
“Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with.”
Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands says “We found that when the choice was for something simple, such as purchasing oven gloves or shampoo, people made better decisions – ones that they remained happy with – if they consciously deliberated over the information.”
“But once the decision was more complex such as for a house, too much thinking about it led people to make the wrong choice. Whereas, if their conscious mind was fully occupied on solving puzzles, their unconscious could freely consider all the information and they reached better decisions.”
The unconscious mind appears to need some instruction. “It was only when people were told before the puzzles that they would need to reach a decision that they were able to come up with the right one.” If they were told that none of what they had been shown was important before being given the puzzles, they failed to make satisfactory choices.
“At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we’re not very good at it. We should learn to let our unconscious handle the complicated things,” Dijksterhuis says.
From the February 16, 2006 issue of New Scientist (vol 311, p 1005): “Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result with which people remain happy than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem.”
“Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with.”
Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands says “We found that when the choice was for something simple, such as purchasing oven gloves or shampoo, people made better decisions – ones that they remained happy with – if they consciously deliberated over the information.”
“But once the decision was more complex such as for a house, too much thinking about it led people to make the wrong choice. Whereas, if their conscious mind was fully occupied on solving puzzles, their unconscious could freely consider all the information and they reached better decisions.”
The unconscious mind appears to need some instruction. “It was only when people were told before the puzzles that they would need to reach a decision that they were able to come up with the right one.” If they were told that none of what they had been shown was important before being given the puzzles, they failed to make satisfactory choices.
“At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we’re not very good at it. We should learn to let our unconscious handle the complicated things,” Dijksterhuis says.
September 4, 2017
Virtues of Reading
Here's a surprising finding: "Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer" according to an article in Time Magazine. "'Deep reading' is vigorous exercise from the brain and increases our real-life capacity for empathy," not to mention bestowing upon us a sense of Breathing Space.
