The brain tires out at about two hours.
This explains why it is so difficult to focus.
And we spend 80% of our day in the default mode of tired brain at which point we make more mistakes, become less efficient and turn to stimulants.
So, today’s DayStarters suggests that we live like an air traffic controller.
Work two hours on and then 45 minutes off to rest, rewind and refocus.
We can have 1.5 at the most intimate friends (it’s an average).
5 close friends.
15 best friends.
50 good friends.
150 generic friends.
500 possible acquaintances.
1,500 known names.
5,000 known faces.
A new report in The Atlantic says there are different kinds of friends and that we can have between 100 and 250 with 150 being the average total.
Not all friendships are equal.
The question is: are we spending the appropriate amount of time on the intimate, best and closest friends where the value is greatest or dissipating our efforts over all types of friends even though they may not be as personally rewarding?
Live like there is no tomorrow but savor each day along the way.
All we have is now – the past is useless, the future not assured.
Live life like there is no tomorrow does not mean live recklessly.
It means live today like it is your last day.
Not to get it all in but to eat it all up.
Amazingly the most common regret for people at the end of life is not that they don’t have more time but the time they previously wasted.
Sometimes you’re ready for a restart.
Products often relaunch to freshen them. Homes get redecorated. We change jobs.
Restart also works for personal.
First hit delete – careful to eliminate the things that you want to improve, get away from or prevent from happening again. In other words, delete before adding to your personal life.
Then protect the things that you don’t want to change.
I know people who have survived serious surgeries that want to live their future life in a different way.
People who want to change what they do for a living who have made sacrifices to find something that reinvigorates them.
Even people in relationships who want to improve them or cancel them before the rest of their life slips away.
Restart is a second, third or fourth chance and worth it if gets you to happiness.
A new study out of Germany indicates that people who claim to feel younger are healthier, less stressed and live longer than those who bemoan their age.
People who may otherwise be healthy but feel old lose cognitive abilities, have more life threatening inflammation and feel the ravages of stress.
Stress is killing all of us – this is a fast world we live in and there are lots of pharmaceutical solutions, online counseling and physical solutions that people have been turning to.
For free – no fees or cost of entry – a youthful attitude is a proven life extender and answer to the stresses of our digital world that are not going away.
Providing that Henry David Thoreau was right when he said none are so old as those who have outlived their zest for enthusiasm.
Perhaps you heard about the dog who flunked out of service school – part golden and part lab.
Sheldon was trained as a service dog but the gregarious dog has been certified in State Farm’s arson dog program and can detect a Molotov cocktail in about 30 seconds.
He made a better arson dog than a service dog.
Same concept is true for the two-legged species – never give up, keep trying because success isn’t always about being able to predict what we will be successful at as much as what is our special thing.
I’m saving the story of Sheldon for the next time I feel discouraged by barking up the wrong tree. Read about Sheldon here.
When we talk too fast, we make it easy for others to ignore our message.
When we are not deliberate when talking about things that are important, we missed an opportunity to communicate.
When asked “what do you think?”, try responding slowly and adding “what do YOU think?”
As counterintuitive as it may sound in our fast paced world, slow and steady still wins the race in communication in spite of the noise, connectivity and self-centeredness.
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them” – Walt Disney
Actually, dreaming is easy – making good on them is the hard part.
Tenacity.
The willingness to go it alone even (and especially) when others don’t see yours.
The willingness to fail, learn and reboot.
A plan.
A plan is the Google Maps of a dream, where is it, how do you get there, how long might it take and what other things will you come across on the way.
NASA Astronaut Mark Kelly spent 340 days in space and had plenty of time to think about loneliness.
His advice.
Keep a journal.
Stick to a schedule.
Go outside (not easy for an astronaut in space).
Get a hobby.
People who are constantly around others are also lonely and we haven’t even begun to know the consequences of “social distancing” which is now an accepted term in our vocabulary when we probably meant “physical distancing”.
In 2018, a year ahead of the pandemic, Cigna did a survey that discovered 54% of the 20,000 people they surveyed reported feeling lonely.
A year later that number rose to 61% with 18-22 year-old members of Gen Z feeling the loneliest.
Astronaut Kelly’s article on his time in space is here.
Just weeks after Apple made active a new feature that allows users to opt out of ad tracking, only 4% are choosing to allow Facebook, Google and others to invade their privacy.
So, it turns out people really care about being watched in a world that has cameras everywhere.
Steve Jobs said “Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain language, and repeatedly.”
Seth Godin calls it “Permission Marketing”.
To individuals it is the courtesy of asking first and assuming nothing.
If there is a lesson watching big tech companies scramble to force users to let them be tracked, it might be that “asking first” for anything is what people really want.
A new study from Denmark concludes that children who grow up near green spaces may have a lower risk of developing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
Less green means more chance of developing ADHD in early childhood.
One advantage of the pandemic is that families rediscovered each other, did simple outdoor things together and most importantly, spent time away from their mobile devices.
We’re going to recover from the pandemic – it’s happening now.
But will we recover from the all-encompassing world of social media, connectivity and self-imposed social isolation.
They say before you can change a habit you have to replace it with a better one and now there’s evidence that experiencing the green of outdoors is a step in the right direction.
I have no need to be respected by people I don’t respect.
Chasing after their approval is a fool’s errand.
A better use of time is to build respect from yourself, the other type will follow.
Discussions are always better than arguments, because an argument is to find out who is right and a discussion is to find out what is right” – Buddha.
One of my DayStarter readers, Henry Harrison, sent this along because it’s popular today to use the phrase “we need to have a conversation about that”.
It is just as important to make that conversation a learning experience for all and not an exercise about who will eventually prevail.
When the coach of an NHL hockey team was asked at a post-game conference what he thought of his goaltender’s big mistake that cost the team the game, he did not fall for the bait.
Instead of criticizing the player, this coach said the goal was probably one that his goaltender probably would have wanted back.
Direct criticism has the effect of firing up the instinct to defend ourselves.
But indirect criticism like the words of this coach allow those being criticized to be less defensive and more willing to listen.
I don’t know about you but 20 years ago when I finished my work during the week, I had the weekend off.
I never opened my laptop – in fact, rarely took it out of my bag.
Today life is more complicated – if you turn off digital communication, you will certainly have to deal with it later. If you leave it on, you’re always on.
The reason we like vacations is because they force us to change our routines, to simplify them and give us a break from all the things that accumulate in our lives that weigh us down.
While we can’t have a vacation every day, we can adopt the vacation attitude – change the routine if only in a minor way, find a different way to work. The great WLS Program Director John Gehron takes pictures on his different walks to work in Chicago.
There’s a vacation in Hawaii and then there’s a vacation from every day hum drum that keeps us balanced with always being on.
One of the things I liked about being on-the-air in radio and television was that being on was always exciting but there was also a definite ending.
In TV, a countdown to clear.
In radio, the transition to the next song, show or content element.
In the busy digital age, we’re always on – there doesn’t seem to be a beginning because we are always in motion and there is never an end to what we do.
To me, life is a like a show – when it’s on give it 100% and when it’s over, walk away, relax, enjoy and get ready for another day.
Just saying you are is a powerful reminder.
Life happens in digital quickness, we’re up, we’re down, we’re stressed and distracted but at the end of the day why do often feel not good enough.
Never rely on someone else to make that decision.
Just showing up for life, handling its challenges and facing adversity makes us good enough – anything else is just ego.
When I was program director of a Philadelphia radio station, I raided the prize closet and brought some portable radios (this is before iPhones and iPods) to give to arthritic children at Moss Rehabilitation Center.
I can remember it as if it was yesterday – Christmas Eve, I was very tired and had all I could do to make the appearance that had been requested of my wife – she worked there.
The kids were on what looked like skateboards racing up and down the hallways because it was difficult if not impossible for them to move around unassisted and without pain.
Before my visit ended, the nurses put their young patients in bed and I visited one by one to hand each of them a little radio courtesy of our station – they were delighted (of course, I showed them how to tune in to the best station). They hugged me and were so grateful for something that many of us take for granted because a radio could bring them the world.
Suddenly I was no longer tired. The children got the radios but I got the gift – the best and most meaningful Christmas that I have ever had.
P.S., our station gave away tens of thousands of dollars-worth of prizes each year to get listeners to fill in their diaries and increase our ratings but this relatively minor requisition was the best investment we ever made.
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In my NYU Music in the Media Business class, our focus is — it’s just as important to make a life as it is to make a living.
God knows these young folks are going to be successful in their careers post-college and we want to make sure they are just as successful at finding happiness.
I thought you might be interested in one of the most popular Dale Carnegie principles they commit to work on during their semester.
Fill your Mind with Thoughts of Peace, Courage, Health, and Hope
Because what we think about matters.
And by visualizing peace, courage, health and hope, it is easier to battle anxiety, lack of confidence, the emotional price we pay for stress and the loss of hope.
It is possible to change the daily diet of destructive thoughts that plague all of is at this moment in time.
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Arthur Brooks does great writing for The Atlantic on the process of happiness – note that I say process because if we expect happiness to visit us rapidly, it may feel like a long wait.
“There is an old joke about a man who asks God every day to let him win the lottery. After many years of this prayer, he finally gets an answer from heaven: ‘Do me a favor,’ says God. ‘Buy a ticket.’ If you want happiness, reflecting on why you don’t have it and seeking information on how to attain it is a good start. But if you don’t use that information, you’re not buying a ticket.”
Like everything else in life, a plan is required otherwise even happiness is just an accident.
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