Hack Sleep

In the business world, if you are able to function on little sleep, it is seen as somewhat of an accomplishment. Studies by the CDC show that sleep deprivation costs businesses about $63 billion in lost productivity each year. The approach to this is to optimize sleep. Many large companies are investing in rooms where employees can catch some shuteye during the day. All it takes is a 10-20 minute nap to increase alertness and productivity for the next several hours. There needs to be the culture that sleep is not for wimps and that people should not feel that they are not doing their part. It is especially important for those people that are sitting in from of a screen with a software development project or an Excel spreadsheet that has no end. In addition to the rooms, there should also be lighting changes. Blue toned white lights can increase alertness and productivity so they should only be in the working part of the office.

Sleep Makeover

If you are having trouble with your sleeping patterns and they are keeping you from functioning at your best, there are some things that you can change in your daily habits. One of the things that you should do is sleep seven hours instead of eight. It sounds counter intuitive but there is research supporting the claim that you might do better with seven hours. Secondly, make sure that your phone and all those phone and cloud services are sleeping on the couch. The blue glow from the screen and the constant demand for your input will make it harder to fall asleep. Make sure that you are getting your workout in the morning and not at night. When your alarm rings in the morning, do not hit that snooze button because it will mess up your sleep cycle and you will be regretting it around noon. On the weekends you will want to sleep in but try to resist because it is all about consistency.

Increasing Mental Energy

Mental energy is important to have in any field of work but sometimes it can slag a bit. Fortunately there are lots of ways to keep that energy up. Do challenging brain puzzles everyday. Whether it is a mobile application or a trinket. There are many different apps and you just need to find the right one. You could also read something that you do not normally read. It could even spark some ideas to tread in a different territories. Not to mention that it will challenge you to think differently. You could also go and work in another place...right after a brisk walk outside. It can be stimulating and create new ideas. If you work in the same place all the time, it can get you to grow a bit lax. Do you have any other ideas about how to create more mental energy?

Things Technology Killed

Do you remember the suspense that was felt when you were waiting to find out the rest of the news story at 11 pm? Of course you do not. It has been so long when you could not know all the news whenever you felt like looking it up. Technology gave a whole new definition to news junky. Most of the time these days, you can keep up with the news as it is happening. What about the satisfaction felt when you slammed the phone down in anger. You cannot slam your phone down to hand up on that person unless you want to feel some regret about that very expensive piece of technology. You also cannot lie about trying to call someone and missing them or hearing a busy signal. Thanks to cell phone services, call display, call waiting, and voicemail, no one has missed a call in about 15 years. If you call someone, both your phone and their phone has disgusting, ugly evidence of the fact, and will hold onto it indefinitely if you want it to.

Eliminating Tolerations

Finding mental clarity can seem like a daunting task especially if you are running a business. Between all the video conferencing and using content management systems, that to-do list can get quite extensive. In A Portable Coach by Thomas Leonard, he says the key is to eliminate all tolerations. These are the minor annoyances that are not annoying enough to do anything about them but still can weigh us down. They can accumulate over a lifetime and start to clutter your mind. Time to remove them. Time to fix that blind. Time to finally organize the closet. The first thing to do is to mentally walk through your week and write down all those annoyances. Then take about a hundred dollars and an afternoon to address all of them and set up ways to prevent them from happening again. This will reduce the small stresses that sum up to equal one big stress in your life

The Eldery and Tech

According to the Pew Internet Research Project, more than three-quarters of Americans age 65-plus carry cellphones, and six out of 10 are online. And of Americans over 80, nearly two-thirds are on the wrong side of the digital divide. That is a shame. Technology can help your aging relatives live fuller, more independent lives for far longer. The problem is that it is not always easy to convince them to use all that technology. One of the challenges is that it might be harder than you think for seniors to use things like the mouse or understand terminology such as cloud services. A solution to being able to get seniors to use it is to make it relevent to them such as saying that it is one of the only ways to stay in touch with their grandchildren. It also needs to be practical and be able to help with things that they do everyday. Shouldn't that be everyone's criteria? Just a thought. Another way to get them to use it is to make the tech simple and easy to use.

Health and Wise

Some of it comes with age and the rest with learning. You can either make your mistakes and learn from them or read and learn from other people's mistakes. Whether it is in business or life, you need to have boundaries. First it is important to decide what matters and how you want to operate personally. Then you can set boundaries and keep them enforced. If the time with your partner is committed on certain days and times, keep those commitments and do not let work or even mobile applications creep up into those times. Work styles vary, but one thing is certain, getting up away from the desk is important. Moving around helps reset your energy level and stimulate new thoughts. It also gets the blood flowing, which is good for the mind and body. Words are powerful, and you need to make sure what comes out of your mouth agrees with what you believe and where you want to go. Clarity in conversation can be very important but so can clarity in your home, mind and body. Keep yourself organized in every aspect of your life by spending the few extra moments a day it takes to clean up after yourself, eliminate clutter and get organized.