Change

Change / Creativity / Productivity — No Comments
19
Oct 12

Focus

I meditated for the first time.

Wow.

I sat upright, relaxed and comfortably on the sofa, hands on thighs, arms and shoulders loose, feet flat on the floor. I set a timer for five minutes, closed my eyes and I was off.

I focused only on my breathing. In, out, in, out. Only through my nose. In, out, in, out. My mind tried to wander off onto things like the meetings I had scheduled, the emails I needed to write, the projects to check, but I kept forcing myself back to my breathing…. in, out, in, out.

The alarm went off and I was shocked! Was that it? That was five minutes? Continue reading →

Change / Lifestyle / Self — No Comments
1
Sep 12

Know your Customer

Our family vacation this year was spent in New York, visiting family, and in Florida for sun and fun. In Florida, my wife and I agreed on a collection of activities, trips, shows, etc. Some Disney stuff made the list as well as the Kennedy Space Center and a number of good restaurants. List in hand we went forth and vacationed.

After a few activity days, I noticed the kids getting grumpy and tired, although they were sleeping a lot and quite heavily. I asked but they said everything was OK. But of course, it wasn’t … we had overloaded the schedule.

The adults were naturally working hard to enjoy things to keep everyone engaged and entertained, and because the adults seemed to be enjoying things so much, the kids didn’t want to complain. Continue reading →

Change / Productivity — No Comments
23
Jun 12

Do One Thing at a Time

I work in the IT industry and we are obsessed with multi-tasking. Perhaps we look at the processors that power our computers and devices, and assume that emulating them is how we can be most productive and effective. Ability to multi-task appears on many job announcements, and juggling or having a lot of balls in the air is considered a good thing, enviable even. But what exactly do we mean by multi-tasking?

CPUs don’t multi-task. Instead, they simulate parallelism by reducing tasks to a collection of tiny nano-instructions and them executing them really, really fast. This gives the appearance that many different tasks are moving forward simultaneously. But the truth is that, at any one time, one instruction for one task is being executed; only one thing is getting done.

And that’s OK, especially for people. Continue reading →

Change — No Comments
13
Oct 11

Life is Change and Change is Life

When you are through changing, you are through.
-Bruce Barton

Every day, everything and everyone is, or is about to, change – how bloody annoying!

On the other hand, what are we without change? The same person with the same (old) goals and objectives, strengths and faults, circle of friends and acquaintances. Same job, same commute, same options for lunch and dinner, same shirt and tie combo … same, same, same…

Continue reading →

Change — No Comments
28
Jul 11

Change – Like a Child

I have two amazing kids, currently aged 5 and 6, who continually astound me. Every parent out there knows exactly what I mean :-)

My 5 year-old daughter just gave up her binky (a.k.a. pacifier, soucette, dummy). She just decided that it was time, announced that to my wife and me, and that was that! No hedging, no bargaining, no rationalizing, nothing. It’s been three nights now and it is clear that the binky is gone for good.

Continue reading →

← Older Entries