Does Time Really Fly?
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The perception of time seems relative to one’s age. What causes the feeling that “time flies”? It seems that life has played out in fast-forward mode, much like it has for Homer Simpson in “Every Day.”
Homer Every Day from Noah K. on Vimeo.
NPR’s “Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?” (Robert Krulwich) puts that very question to neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine. He proposes that when we are young, we are establishing many “first” memories — the first day of school, the first friend, the first kiss — and these experiences seem long and rich.
“The list of encoded memories is so dense, reading them back gives you a feeling that they must have taken forever. “But that’s an illusion,’ says Eagleman. ‘It’s a construction of the brain. The more memory you have of something, you think, Wow, that really took a long time!’”
According to Eagleman’s findings, brains use more energy to imprint a memory when the experience is original. Children are not the only ones who create first memories. As adults, we may try to slow the pace of time by creating new “firsts.”
A geek with a mission
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NPR’s Dustin Dwyer spotlights a nonprofit in the Midwest with interesting beginnings. The article “Geek’s Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan” introduces us to Chris Boden, who couldn’t afford to enroll in college but followed his passion for learning anyway. He created The Geek Group, “a consortium of people devoted to good old-fashioned scientific and technical experimentation.”
The Geek Group, boasting a world-wide membership, is headquartered in an old machine shop north of Kalamazoo, MI. What started out as a place for making and running experiments has evolved into a nonprofit that serves as a research-and-development facility for firms that cannot afford to run their own labs.
Boden wants to expand The Geek Group by building a 40-acre campus used for “open source” research and development. What Boden needs is investors. And, according to Dwyer, Michigan is “a place that could use some real geeks.”
Social media and security
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With the rise of social media use, businesses have to consider strategies for protecting their intellectual property and sensitive data. Sophos, a security firm, discovered that 60% of the 500 businesses polled believe Facebook to present the largest threat to company security. That does not go to say that Facebook has had more security woes than Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn. But the perception stands that Facebook is the octopus that reaches into more homes and businesses than any other social media platform currently on the internet.
Businesses will not likely block employee access to social media sites, primarily because these sites are increasingly used for marketing and sales tactics. Since social media lends itself to the casual exchange of information, now is the time for companies to create a chapter in the procedures manual — “Best practices for social media on the job.”
Want fries with that?
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Daizi Zheng has created a new kind of food packaging with Stereotype. Project Stereotype’s aim is to change people’s poor eating habits by encouraging them to make better choices — carrots in a pseudo-cigarette box, blueberries in a blister pack, and celery in a french fry container.
Whether the Stereotype marketing project proves successful remains to be seen. An interesting point does surface, however. The creative packaging points to our tricky relationship with food. It’s not just about eating what’s good for us; it’s about having some “fun” while doing it. Our hedonistic tendencies move us out of the bounds of “healthy” many moments throughout our lives. Can you mix healthy and forbidden fun? Maybe so.
What is the state of Your Union?
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Every year around the end of January, the State of the Union address is given by the President of the United States to members of Congress. The President reflects on the current health of the nation and places legislative priorities on the congressional plate. While the Constitution doesn’t require the address to be delivered in speech form, virtually every President since Woodrow Wilson has done so.
How is the state of the union in your company, your team, your family? Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. (Peter Drucker)
Whether we lead a corporation of thousands, a team of hundreds, a family of several, or a person of one, let’s take a cue from our nation’s capitol – reflect and act in order to fulfill this year’s priorities, keeping in mind that time is of the essence.
Competition is everywhere
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Competition is everywhere. Even when we don’t take notice. Seth Godin’s post, “The ubiquity of competition,” illustrates the point that businesses must win their audience by offering a compelling reason to be chosen over competitors.
There are twenty towns you can choose for your family’s new home. One invests in its schools, has a focus on inquiry, AP courses and community, while the others are muddling through, arguing about their future. Which one commands a higher premium for its houses?
There are fifty people applying for a job. Forty nine have great credentials and beautifully standard layouts on their resumes. One resume was hand delivered to the CEO by his best friend, together with a glowing recommendation about a project the applicant did for the friend’s non-profit. Who gets the interview?
So why choose Coca-cola and McDonald’s over Pepsi or Burger King? The customer knows what to expect when she buys a bottle of Coca-cola (happiness)! A child knows what he’s getting for the happy meal (the bliss that comes with the surprise toy). In a competitive market, winning businesses give their customers the compelling “why.”
A mythical “tech” creature
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Is the tech industry taking after computers in Hollywood movies that are “thin and light, a single pane that jumps to life when touched” (”The Tablets of Our Dreams,” Fast Company)? It seems that technology is getting closer with a highly anticipated product people are calling the iSlate by Apple.
Imagine a clipboard gone tech. This tablet computer is creating lots of buzz due to its potential utility on a personal and professional level — we will be able to access and share information with our clients and colleagues in a medium that many say could further transform the publishing industry (for book authors and magazine publishers).
Check out NPR’s interview with Cliff Kuang on the subject of this mythical creature, which is expected to debut next week.
Be a superhero!
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A retired teacher has debunked the commonly held belief that car owners should change out their vehicles every 5 years. Entrepeneur.com highlights Irv Gordon, who has driven his 1960 Volvo P1800 over 2.7 million miles! “Can Your Car Last 1,000,000 Miles: How to get super miles and beyond” notes that more people are going Irv’s way, driving their vehicles past the 200,000 mark.
Consumer Reports estimates that drivers can save $20K by driving the same car for 15 years and 225,000 miles. Obviously just any vehicle will not do. Starting with a well-built product and maintaining it with diligence are essential.
“And by taking care of that vehicle and keeping it alive for another few years–perhaps allowing room in the budget for a vacation or other toys–you might earn superhero status in your own household.”
Article from www.rismedia.com
RISMEDIA, January 19, 2010—From construction laborers and secretaries to physicians and lawyers, people experience better moods, greater vitality, and fewer aches and pains from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, concludes the first study of daily mood variation in employed adults to be published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. And that ‘weekend effect’ is largely associated with the freedom to choose one’s activities and the opportunity to spend time with loved ones, the research found.
“Workers, even those with interesting, high status jobs, really are happier on the weekend,” says author Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “Our findings highlight just how important free time is to an individual’s well-being,” Ryan adds. “Far from frivolous, the relatively unfettered time on weekends provides critical opportunities for bonding with others, exploring interests and relaxing- basic psychological needs that people should be careful not to crowd out with overwork,” Ryan cautions.
The study tracked the moods of 74 adults, aged 18 to 62, who worked at least 30 hours per week. For three weeks, participants were paged randomly at three times during the day, once in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. At each page, participants completed a brief questionnaire describing the activity in which they were engaged and, using a seven-point scale, they rated their positive feelings like happiness, joy, and pleasure as well as negative feelings of anxiety, anger, and depression. Physical symptoms of stress, such as headaches, digestive problems, respiratory ills, or low energy, also were noted.
The results demonstrated that men and women alike consistently feel better mentally and physically on the weekend. They feel better regardless of how much money they make, how many hours they work, how educated they happen to be, or whether they work in the trades, the service industry, or in a professional capacity. They feel better whether they are single, married, living together, divorced, or widowed. And, they feel better regardless of age.
To tease out exactly why weekend hours are so magical, the researchers asked participants to indicate whether they felt controlled versus autonomous in the task they were engaged in at the time of the pager signal. Participants also indicated how close they felt to others present and how competent they perceived themselves to be at their activity.
The findings indicated that relative to workdays, weekends were associated with higher levels of freedom and closeness: people reported more often that they were involved in activities of their own choosing and spending time with more intimate friends and family members. Surprisingly, the analysis also found that people feel more competent during the weekend than they do at their day-to-day jobs.
The results support self-determination theory, which holds that well-being depends in large part on meeting one’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This study, conclude the authors, “offers one of the first substantive and theory-based explanations for why well-being tends to be more favorable on the weekends: People experience greater autonomy and relatedness, which are, in turn, related to higher wellness.” By contrast, write the authors, the work week “is replete with activities involving external controls, time pressures, and demands on behavior related to work, child care and other constraints.” Workers also may spend time among colleagues with whom they share limited emotional connections.
The study also raises questions about how work environments can be structured to be more supportive of wellness. “To the extent that daily life, including work, affords a sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, well-being may be higher and more stable, rather than regularly rising and falling,” the researchers conclude.
For more information, visit www.rochester.edu.
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What drives you?
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Extrinsic or intrinsic reward? Which one drives you to move toward a goal? The annual bonus offered to an employee is like the carrot tied to a stick in the hope that sufficient motivation is created for the task. Is it enough?
In a National Public Radio interview with Neal Conan, author Daniel Pink declares that while extrinsic reward can and does work in certain circumstances, the driver that trumps all is the intrinsic need for freedom to self-direct.
One of the important drives that we have – this third drive to do things because they’re interesting, because we want to do them – is this drive for autonomy and for self-direction. This…comes out from the research of two brilliant scholars at the University of Rochester named Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. And what you’re seeing now in a lot of companies, and plenty of companies you haven’t heard of, is that providing individuals with enormous amounts of autonomy leads to a more satisfied, more engaged, more productive, more innovative work force.
For more on Pink’s analysis, check out his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
