Colin Postma

A great visualization regarding what happened during the Credit Crisis of 2008-09 that I came across in my Political Economy course this term.

This is a great comic that reveals the childishness of many leading corporations.

Let's cut to the chase.

Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be fine.

Now let's say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Not so good. After several days, you'd be almost completely unable to function. That's why Amnesty International lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture.

Here's what former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had to say in his memoir White Nights about the experience of being deprived of sleep in a KGB prison: "In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep ... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it."

So why is sleep one of the first things we're willing to sacrifice as the demands in our lives keep rising? We continue to live by a remarkably durable myth: sleeping one hour less will give us one more hour of productivity. In reality, the research suggests that even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a significant toll on our health, our mood, our cognitive capacity and our productivity.

Many of the effects we suffer are invisible. Insufficient sleep, for example, deeply impairs our ability to consolidate and stabilize learning that occurs during the waking day. In other words, it wreaks havoc on our memory.

So how much sleep do you need? When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours. That means just 2.5 percent of us require less than 7 hours of night a sleep to feel fully rested. That's 1 out of every 40 people.

When I ask people in my talks how many had fewer than 7 hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the vast majority raise their hands. That's true whether it's an audience of corporate executives, teachers, cops or government workers. We've literally lost touch with what it feels like to be fully awake.

Great performers are an exception. Typically, they sleep significantly more than the rest of us. In Anders Ericcson's famous study of violinists, the top performers slept an average of 8 ½ hours out of every 24, including a 20 to 30 minute midafternoon nap some 2 hours a day more than the average American.

The top violinists also reported that except for practice itself, sleep was second most important factor in improving as violinists.

As I began to gather research about sleep, I felt increasingly compelled to give it higher priority in my own life. Today, I go to great lengths to assure that I get at least 8 hours every night, and ideally between 8 ½ and 9, even when I'm traveling.

I still take the overnight "redeye" from California to New York, but I'm asleep by takeoff — even if takes an Ambien. When I get home at 6 or 7 a.m., I go right to bed until I've had my 8 hours. What I've learned about those days is that I'd rather work at 100 percent for 5 or 6 hours, than at 60 percent for 8 or 9 hours.

With sufficient sleep, I feel better, I work with more focus, and I manage my emotions better, which is good for everyone around me. I dislike having even a single day where I haven't gotten enough sleep, because the impact is immediate and unavoidable. On the rare days that I don't get enough, I try hard to get at least a 20-30 minute nap in the afternoon. That's a big help.

Here are three other tips to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep:

• Go to bed earlier — and at a set time. Sounds obvious right? The problem is there's no alternative. You're already waking up at the latest possible time you think is acceptable. If you don't ritualize a specific bedtime, you'll end up finding ways to stay up later, just the way you do now.
• Start winding down at least 45 minutes before you turn out the light. You won't fall asleep if you're all wound up from answering email, or doing other work. Create a ritual around drinking a cup of herbal tea, or listening to music that helps you relax, or reading a dull book.
• Write down what's on your mind — especially unfinished to-do's and unresolved issues — just before you go to bed. If you leave items in your working memory, they'll make it harder to fall asleep, and you'll end up ruminating about them if you should wake up during the night.

For more tips on sleep and other forms of renewal visit our web site.

Check out this series of photos by National Geographic. I thought the picture above was the most fascinating. I looked at it for a long time. Its a picture of a cloud and ship in the Black Sea from Ai-Petri Mountain. Its a perspective I don't see to often, that's for sure.

Check out the others here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/national_geographics_photograp.html

Rob Ventura & Jack Buckley, Pastors. (Read full article here The Christian and his Books)

Matt Perman:

Productivity is Really About Good Works

That’s essentially the thesis of my upcoming book and it was the main point in my seminar at the Desiring God national conference last month.

There are lots of reasons we care about productivity — we might want to have less stress, we might want to get more done in less time, or we might simply find the subject interesting in itself. And those are all good reasons.

But there are deeper, better reasons to care about productivity. There are, in fact, some amazing and incredible reasons to care about productivity that I am seeing almost no one ever talk about.

Chief among these reasons to care about productivity is this: Productivity is really about good works.

That’s worth saying again: Productivity is really about good works — which we were created in Christ to do (Ephesians 2:10) and which are to do eagerly and enthusiastically (Titus 2:14). That’s why productivity matters, and that’s why I write about productivity. My aim is to help Christians be effective in good works.

This changes how you think about everything.

It means that when you are getting your email inbox to zero, you aren’t just getting your email inbox to zero. You are doing good works. When you are going to a meeting, you aren’t just going to a meeting. You are doing good works. Everything that we do as Christians, in faith, is a good work.

And therefore we are doing good works all day long — and consequently need to learn how to be more effective in them so that we can be of greater service to others.

And that’s where understanding productivity and productivity practices comes in. By learning how to be more effective in our everyday lives — in all of the work and projects and initiatives and intentions that come our way — we are able to serve others more effectively.

Or, to put it another way: Everything we learn about productivity (and at all levels – work, life, organizations, and society), every productivity practice we might implement, and every productivity tool we might use, ultimately exists for the purpose of helping to amplify our effectiveness in good works, for the glory of God.

That’s the essence of the framework in which, as Christians, we need to think about productivity.

Related posts:

 

Good Works that are Performed in Order to Become Right with God are Not Really Good

Do Smart Phones Hurt Productivity?

3 Questions on Productivity

Both Work Distractions and Productivity are on the Rise

3 Questions on Productivity

 

November 12, 2010 | Filed Under Productivity, Theology | 6 Comments 

A great article which clarifies why I, and other Christian bloggers, post about productivity and the like.

Yesterday I was able to get my hair done, as Pat has taken the entire week off in order to use up vacation days.  He gave me the morning  to do as I wished, and so I took my under-protected and over-neglected head of hair off to Roswell Square to be managed by the professionals.   I sat in the chair and leafed through my magazine and was done from start to finish in moments.  All that was available to me was People magazine and I inwardly rebuked myself for leaving my book at home.  I do not want to know who is sleeping with whom in Hollywood this week.  And the uniquely unwholesome thing about Hollywood: everyone has basically slept with everyone else, and that is not something I want to dwell on.  Plus, I feel that it would look rather inconsistent to read a racy article while telling the stylist where we go to church. 

An article I did notice and made a note to further investigate featured the “family” of the TLC show Sister Wives.  4 wives and 1 husband = harmonious polygamy.  This the nature of the news,  though the eyes speak volumes and am not easily convinced by what I see in the gazes of the sisters.  I found the show on Vimeo and Pat and I streamed 2 episodes in last night.

 

Now, I am not so naive as to believe that moments in reality television are not constructed and scenarios created just for show.  I get that.  I am also not so unaware as to believe that everything seen is real.  I realize that too.  Networks are mass-marketing people’s lives and there is much money to be made in pandering the ugly before an audience that eats it up with a spoon.  So, obviously construction of fiction may occur at times, in the ceaseless need for new material and new cash. 

But I do know based on what I believe to be true about God Himself: He has created marriage between 1 man and 1 woman to be His ultimate design.  And the loyal unity between 2 people alone, to be what He wants in family.   And when we veer from this intrinsically good way, there are always problems to be found and hurts waiting to be unearthed.

 

My heart was troubled and entirely sad as I watched the 4 women interacting in this life as they know it: sharing one man and a multitude of little ones, while all vying and dying for the affection of their husband.  To watch their children live in apartments under the same roof as their Dad cycles between them all.  To see their teenage sons shoulder many of the responsibilities of the household, filling in the holes that are left in the unbalanced equation of: 1 man   4 families.  To view every woman vying for the love and personal attention that God has created women to give and receive in monogamous marriage.

There was much self-justification.  All wives have come from polygamous upbringings and chorus phrases like: We so much wanted not just a husband but other sisters as well.  We want to live as a huge family.  We love to be all together and we raise one another’s children.  We have actually found that marriage can be better when there are more wives.  

 

The show introduces a 4th wife early on, who is the new one.  She is young and pretty, affording Kody (the husband) the opportunity to date for the first time in 16 years.  The first three wives were all married in quick succession to one another and have grown up together.  They are approaching middle age and bear the scars and weight and eye-creases that come with time and mothering.  They are attractive because they are women created by God, but they are getting older and are therefore nothing compared to the new model.

There are many tears as the women face reality with a new wife, and one who shows them all up with her youth and beauty.  Meri- the first and only legal wife- gazes down into her lap much of the time and looks frozen and broken as she is interviewed.  The middle wife finds solace in her career and seems primarily focused on herself and rather indifferent to the proceedings.  The 3rd wife who has enjoyed her position as the newest wife, is visibly shattered and cries easily. She is days away from birthing her 6th child, so it’s tough to maintain a stiff upper when your husband is dating again and you have to tell yourself: It is all normal.  And it is all good.  It is really better this way. 

 

But it is not normal.  It is not better.  And it is not all good.  Plural families celebrate the fact that within their midst multiple children are mothered by multiple women.  Siblings abound.  Chores are shared and work ethic learned.  But nothing can detract from the truth that all are neglected by the man of the home, as he speaks of the privilege of “loving” 4 women.  Yet, not surprisingly, none feel loved, nor how could they?

I inwardly shuddered as we watched and made a mental note as always, to be thankful for the day-to-day living with one man.  To be thankful for Pat’s reaction to such a show, as he showed the signs of wanting to do man-to-man combat with this guy who is neglecting his family, living in complete selfishness and leaving his children defenseless.

My thoughts turned to God’s ways again.  To the fact that He makes abundantly clear that women are prized, worthwhile, beautiful and necessary to the functioning of Earth.  Remove the traces of Christian thought from a society and all are left with abuse that women- and then their children- will bear.

I thought of the little girls in China who populate orphanages, for no other reason than because they are girls.  The tiny girls we we saw featured in Born Into Brothels- whose Thai parents sell them off into the sex trade for mere pennies, for no other reason than because they are girls.  The women in tribal Africa we have heard about who are shunned for bearing certain medical conditions and are therefore considered unworthy of marriage, love and place in the community. The head-to-toe coverings of girls all across the Muslim Middle East.  Tucked away, covered up and treated disrespectfully, for no other reason than because they are girls.

God’s imprint on a culture is the surest way to ensure that women are given freedom and equality.  This country was founded by Godly men with Godly principles, which affected their thinking- right down to gender roles.  Strip this thought process away, remove the background of Christian thought, replace with the Book of Mormon or any other substitute and the results are drastic and can be heart-breaking.

I am thankful for the gift of monogamous marriage today.  For the protective instinct of a man who guards his wife and children well, because he is solely focused on their needs and concerns.  It can be easy as a woman to pick and pick at this husband who lives in our space, to preoccupy ourselves with his imperfections.  To fixate on his flaws and areas of insensitivity.  To spend more time being wounded or irritated, than thankful.  I find myself in this place many times, and have to pray to love and respect Pat daily.

But looking around with global and cultural eyes brings me back to my senses.  The day-to-day commitment is so beautiful in its simple focus.  All that the Sister Wives or any any wives desire is a man who will set his sights solely on YOU. 

That’s what good marriage is: just a consistent day-by-day focus which becomes a beautiful collection of years together.  Memories that are intimate and personal and shared only between two people.  It’s not all perfect, but at least its yours.  And that shared bond is so worth enjoying and celebrating.

Some amazing shots of animal migrations around the world.

Psalm 29:3-9
3The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion[b] like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the LORD strikes
with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;
the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the LORD twists the oaks[c]
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”