Jeff Davidson's Blog, page 31
February 26, 2015
Forsake "Woe is Me"
Key thought:
Steve Rizzo, author of Get Your Shift Together says to, "Stop using your toxic past as an ID card to validate your right to proclaim your 'woe-is-me' story to the world. Practice awareness and choose to break free from The Big Mouth Inside Your Head now."
Steve Rizzo, author of Get Your Shift Together says to, "Stop using your toxic past as an ID card to validate your right to proclaim your 'woe-is-me' story to the world. Practice awareness and choose to break free from The Big Mouth Inside Your Head now."
February 18, 2015
Getting Hacked = No Breathing Space
Using any of the 25 most popular passwords of 2014 is highly risky. A hacked password equals no breathing space. Instead make up something more complex, with random letters and numbers, such as ij6kf40d1. Or use an acronym and numbers known only to you, such a mwdSina8 ("my wonderful dog Skippy is now age 8").
These are a hackers delight:
1. 123456 (Rank unchanged from 2013)
2. password (Unchanged)
3. 12345 (Up 17)
4. 12345678 (Down 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
7. 1234 (Up 9)
8. baseball (New)
9. dragon (New)
10. football (New)
11. 1234567 (Down 4)
12. monkey (Up 5)
13. letmein (Up 1)
14. abc123 (Down 9)
15. 111111 (Down 8)
16.mustang (New)
17. access (New)
18. shadow (Unchanged)
19. master (New)
20. michael (New)
21. superman (New)
22. 696969 (New)
23. 123123 (Down 12)
24. batman (New)
25. trustno1 (Down 1)
These are a hackers delight:
1. 123456 (Rank unchanged from 2013)
2. password (Unchanged)
3. 12345 (Up 17)
4. 12345678 (Down 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
7. 1234 (Up 9)
8. baseball (New)
9. dragon (New)
10. football (New)
11. 1234567 (Down 4)
12. monkey (Up 5)
13. letmein (Up 1)
14. abc123 (Down 9)
15. 111111 (Down 8)
16.mustang (New)
17. access (New)
18. shadow (Unchanged)
19. master (New)
20. michael (New)
21. superman (New)
22. 696969 (New)
23. 123123 (Down 12)
24. batman (New)
25. trustno1 (Down 1)
February 16, 2015
Paper Reduction as an Art Form
Brett Weston was an artist with vision.
While most artists consider the destruction of their work a tragedy, as reported in Time magazine, photographer Brett Weston always considered it a necessity. Best known for haunting semi-abstract nature studies in the tradition of his famous father Edward, Weston vowed for years to destroy his negatives so that others could not make new prints from them after his death.
On his 80th birthday, Weston kept his vow. Surrounded by friends and family, he tossed hundreds of negatives into the living-room fireplace of his home in Carmel, California. Art historians and photography curators were horrified. The Center for Creative Photography, a photographic archive in Tucson, even sent a representative to Weston’s home in an unsuccessful effort to persuade him to change his mind. Weston insisted that he was merely limiting his legacy to work fashioned by his own hand. “Nobody can print it the way I do,” Weston explained. “It wouldn’t be my work.”
While most artists consider the destruction of their work a tragedy, as reported in Time magazine, photographer Brett Weston always considered it a necessity. Best known for haunting semi-abstract nature studies in the tradition of his famous father Edward, Weston vowed for years to destroy his negatives so that others could not make new prints from them after his death.
On his 80th birthday, Weston kept his vow. Surrounded by friends and family, he tossed hundreds of negatives into the living-room fireplace of his home in Carmel, California. Art historians and photography curators were horrified. The Center for Creative Photography, a photographic archive in Tucson, even sent a representative to Weston’s home in an unsuccessful effort to persuade him to change his mind. Weston insisted that he was merely limiting his legacy to work fashioned by his own hand. “Nobody can print it the way I do,” Weston explained. “It wouldn’t be my work.”
February 12, 2015
For Breathing Space, Concentrate!
Here are notes I took from Sam Horn's session on Concentration years back. Still great advice to this day!
* Concentration defined: voluntarily focused attention.
* Discipline of ignoring irrelevant matters
* Fixing ones' powers, efforts and attention
* Most people work best under a deadline; when their concentration is focused.
* Fatigue is a big road block to concentration
This last note is telling!:
* Society is moving towards a lower frustration tolerance with less discipline, and more need for immediate gratification. These are detriments to concentration.
* Concentration defined: voluntarily focused attention.
* Discipline of ignoring irrelevant matters
* Fixing ones' powers, efforts and attention
* Most people work best under a deadline; when their concentration is focused.
* Fatigue is a big road block to concentration
This last note is telling!:
* Society is moving towards a lower frustration tolerance with less discipline, and more need for immediate gratification. These are detriments to concentration.
Seek Completions All Day
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.
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.
January 31, 2015
Smell the Roses!
Studies at The Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation shows that flowery odors will help your brain function more effectively. Test subjects were asked to complete puzzles before and after being exposed to flowery odors. The scents apparently relax or improve your mood—subjects were able to complete puzzles 17% faster after smelling the flowers.
January 18, 2015
Drugs, Unfortunately, Rule
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 years back in Wired Magazine said, "America may be the land of Mickey Mouse and Goofy, but the U.S. 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."
Patrick Di Justo, writing years back in Wired Magazine said, "America may be the land of Mickey Mouse and Goofy, but the U.S. 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."
January 13, 2015
Real Leisure is Vital
Real leisure is necessary in our lives. It cannot be squeezed into our busy days. It must happen at its own pace. We need to take the time to relax. Without a balance between work and play, we become "human doings" instead of human beings.
January 8, 2015
A New Year, Time for Tickler Files
If you're overwhelmed by what crosses your desk, it's worth considering the benefits of having a file folder for each month of the year and a file folder for each day of the month. This idea, the "tickler file" system, has been in practice for years.
Create a file for days 1-31 of the month, and place it at the front of one of your file drawers. Behind that, have a file for each month of the year. If it's the second day of the month, for example, but you receive something that you won't need to deal with until the 15th, then put it in the file for, say, the 13th to allow yourself some slack. If anything comes in that you don't need to handle now, put it in your tickler file. This yields some immediate benefits. It keeps your desk clear and eliminates a lot of worry about where things go.
As the days and months go by, you continually take files that were in front and put them in the back. Once you get this system in place, you'll find that many of the things you file may not need to be acted on later. The benefits of this system are immediate.
Create a file for days 1-31 of the month, and place it at the front of one of your file drawers. Behind that, have a file for each month of the year. If it's the second day of the month, for example, but you receive something that you won't need to deal with until the 15th, then put it in the file for, say, the 13th to allow yourself some slack. If anything comes in that you don't need to handle now, put it in your tickler file. This yields some immediate benefits. It keeps your desk clear and eliminates a lot of worry about where things go.
As the days and months go by, you continually take files that were in front and put them in the back. Once you get this system in place, you'll find that many of the things you file may not need to be acted on later. The benefits of this system are immediate.
January 1, 2015
The Breathing Space Institute Platform
January 1, 2015: The Breathing Space Institute Platform
Population
Replacement-level human population is the practical and ethical approach to ensuring a sustainable quality of life on this planet – for human beings and other remaining species. Responsible parenting is the most important element of society.
Information
As producers of information, each of us needs to control the amount of data we offer to others so as to not inundate or overwhelm them. As consumers of information, we need to be discriminating about what we ingest and realize the counterproductive impact of taking in more information than we can reasonably assimilate.
Media Growth
The need for responsible reporting has never been more critical. Even among supposedly high reputation media outlets, politically biased, tabloid, and innuendo journalism is tearing at the fabric of our society. Media professionals and their audiences must overcome the prevailing predisposition of focusing attention on 1) disasters, 2) scandals, 3) personal attacks, and 4) news that fails to convey a balanced view of society.
Paper, Paper
Paper still remains the medium by which most information in our society is distributed. Each of us faces the challenge of adopting new measures to limit the amount of paper on our desks. Such measures include more selectively targeting message recipients, limiting the length and frequency of messages, and recycling.
An Over-abundance of Choices
No one benefits by being confronted with more choices than he/she can sensibly consider. As producers, we need to offer appropriate choices that best serve consumers. As consumers, we need to ignore many of the choices confronting us.
Population
Replacement-level human population is the practical and ethical approach to ensuring a sustainable quality of life on this planet – for human beings and other remaining species. Responsible parenting is the most important element of society.
Information
As producers of information, each of us needs to control the amount of data we offer to others so as to not inundate or overwhelm them. As consumers of information, we need to be discriminating about what we ingest and realize the counterproductive impact of taking in more information than we can reasonably assimilate.
Media Growth
The need for responsible reporting has never been more critical. Even among supposedly high reputation media outlets, politically biased, tabloid, and innuendo journalism is tearing at the fabric of our society. Media professionals and their audiences must overcome the prevailing predisposition of focusing attention on 1) disasters, 2) scandals, 3) personal attacks, and 4) news that fails to convey a balanced view of society.
Paper, Paper
Paper still remains the medium by which most information in our society is distributed. Each of us faces the challenge of adopting new measures to limit the amount of paper on our desks. Such measures include more selectively targeting message recipients, limiting the length and frequency of messages, and recycling.
An Over-abundance of Choices
No one benefits by being confronted with more choices than he/she can sensibly consider. As producers, we need to offer appropriate choices that best serve consumers. As consumers, we need to ignore many of the choices confronting us.
