#paceblog

#paceblog Do you think that where you live affects how when you go to bed? In an article on Yahoo! Heath, Bedtime in America: Which Cities Stay Up The Latest?, this question is answered and you may or may not be shocked at the results.

  Bouncing off of my last post about Arianna Huffington and the importance she puts on sleep and how it helps us recharge, this study seemed to be the next perfect thing to cover. A college senior at MIT recently did a study that found in a city such as New York, people went to bed later than in cities such as San Francisco. Even through New York and San Francisco are two major cities, people in New York went to bed around 11:50pm, while people in San Francisco went to bed around 11:30pm.

#paceblog @ariannahuff This past week I was in San Francisco for a 4 day conference, called Dreamforce. Dreamforce is a conference the CRM company, Salesforce, puts on every Fall. If you would like to learn more about Salesforce you can click here :  http://www.salesforce.com/ J

  At Dreamforce, I had the privilege of seeing Arianna Huffington, CEO of the Huffington Post, speak in a session called “Reimagine. Everything.”   She was funny, real and connected with the audience. She spoke to four important points that we all need for ‘doing well and being well’. Here they are

  1)      Giving – She highlighted that we need to give ourselves a break by unplugging, which helps us recharge. There are three things she mentioned that she said essential to our performance at our jobs and how we live our lives. They are getting sleep, unplugging, and recharging. The two things she said that stood out to me from this point were “burnout is the disease of civilization” and “working 24/7 is the equivalent as coming to work drunk”.

2)      Wisdom – She emphasized that we all have wisdom, peace and strength within us. One of the quotes she used was from Bill Clinton. He said, “The most important mistakes I made, I made when I was tired.” Her point was that we all have wisdom that we can turn to; we just have to listen to it and take a break when we are tired.

3)      Well-being – As people who were not wired to stay awake 24/7, therefore we need a time to recharge. That time is when we sleep.  She reminded listeners that we need to pick a time to turn off our devices and not let them distract us. She also reminded us that sleep is the place where we recreate. This is where we come up with new ideas, inventions, and innovative ideas.

4)      Wonder – In order to wonder we need to stop multitasking. Wondering to a child comes naturally, however what happens when we get older and we multitask to get more done and become so focused that we do not have time to wonder? She mentioned that for the ‘first time 90% of our data has been made available in the last 2 years’. That is absolutely incredible! She then added, ‘how much of our collective wisdom has been made available in the last two years?’ She suggested that what we need to do now is ‘combine new technology with amazing data and our wisdom otherwise we will keep ignoring the warning signs’ that were created to keep us from burning out. The millennial generation is a great example of how technology affects us. She has two daughters in the millennial generation and she has made two observations: 1) the millennial generation is the most stressed and 2) they don’t know how to be with each other because of the constant use of technology. I find both of these observations to be true. Do you?

  Her four points highlight exactly what our society as a whole needs to thrive. Of the four things she listed which one do you need to improve on to thrive?

  To hear her talk click this link, “Reimagine. Everything.”. (Please note: She starts on the 4th page so all you have to do is click the end of the video bar 3 times and you will get to her part. The order of speakers before her goes as such: Al Gore then Neil Young.) 

One of the benefits of using the Internet is: it allows us to connect with people we know but don’t see often.  If you’re new to the World Wide Web, you may think the first shared interaction people ever made, started with social media.  But on the contrary social media sites are not the founders of the social evolution on the Web.  I was a big fan of AOL when their chat rooms were the hottest things around.  At one point, moderated conference rooms and private rooms were all we raved about. 

We’ve had almost four centuries to get used to the mail system. In 1660, the General Post Office was official established and everyone grew accustomed to sending and receiving messages this way.  When I was in third grade, my teacher taught the entire class how to properly fill out an envelope for the postman.  She always said, “If the envelope isn’t filled out properly the postman will return it to you.”    

Those of us already deeply familiar with email have had a decade or two of experience, making the process of drafting and sending a note and managing addresses. But for millions of elderly or poor Americans, Internet communication can be confounding and nerve wracking.

In my efforts to help newcomers to he Web learn to communicate, I find that if you can communicate the similarities between an email system and your neighborhood postman the light bulb turns on for them.  

The Postman’s primary job function is to distribute and pick up mail.  Our job consists of writing letters, putting them into envelopes, and placing them into a mailbox for the Postman.  After we read the mail we perform two essential functions. We either save the letter/message if it’s important or we put it in the trash.  Once Mary and Jocelyn, two of the people I’m working with in this Citizen Why Project, visualized this picture the inner workings of an email system was no longer difficult for them to comprehend.  Now they understood the following:

The Inbox is their mailbox; it’s where they pick up delivered mail. 

Compose, is their nifty pen and paper, which allows them to write a letter to someone. 

Sent Mail is a carbon copy of the original letter that they sent to someone. 

The Spam folder is where they can store all that junk mail from businesses like, Publishers Clearing House.  

And finally, the Trash Bin is their kitchen garbage.

We laughed at my form of reasoning but it made perfect sense to them.  

As we mature I think it becomes increasingly hard for us to step back into a classroom and learn something new.  Our minds become preoccupied with just about everything in today’s world and those distractions cloud our focus.  If you’re willing to put aside some time to learn something new, you will learn the “un-learnable.”