It is advisable to get one’s Swine flu shots as soon as possible; this is a government recommendation on the official flu site.

In particular it is recommended that pregnant women and others at risk such as immune compromised individuals should get Swine flu shots as soon as they are available in the community.

However, many myths and fallacies about the vaccine are circulating; and it is important to sort out fact from fiction here.

There is the apprehension that the swine flu vaccine is unsafe; that it will cause Guillain-Barre (GB) Syndrome etc. as it was seen to cause in the last outbreak of the flu in one out of a million cases. This however has no basis in truth; the Swine flu vaccine does not cause GB syndrome.

Another myth doing the rounds is that the vaccine will actually give you the flu. This is not true either.

It is contended that the swine flu vaccine is less safe than the seasonal flu vaccine, which is also not true.

There is also the widely held view that it is better to take your chances with flu rather than to take the vaccine. However, it is to be remembered that though the illness itself is not serious, it can lead to several serious complications that may even lead to death.

So really at this time, the swine flu vaccine is our best defense against the infection, and so it is one that should definitely be used.

The much talked about ‘vaccine for cervical cancer’ which is actually a vaccine to prevent infection of the Human Papilloma virus or HPV may now have limited efficacy.

According to a new study, women over the age of 40 are not likely to benefit very much from the HPV vaccine, which reduces cervical cancer risk. The recommendation of the vaccine is for females ranging from age 9 to age 26.

According to the study conducted among Costa Rican women, it was found that HPV infections that were newly detected dropped with age: from 35% among women of ages 18 to 25 to 13.5% among women over 42 years of age.

These new infections cleared in about 2 years or so without treatment. Though cervical cancer is less prevalent among younger women than older women, the actual cancer develops a long time, even decades after the actual HPV infection. For this reason vaccinating older women is of little or no actual use.

According to the researcher Dr. Ana Cecilia Rodríguez, the lead author of the research paper says, “Because the HPV vaccine can only prevent infections, and these women are not getting that many new infections, the potential benefit of HPV vaccination among older women is very limited.”

Source: nytimes

If you spend any time working with a small group of people on intense, timeline-driven projects with limited resources you’ve experienced some – or maybe a lot of – tension. You’ve probably also read, with some trepidation, stories of people showing up at the office with an AK-47 dressed all in black.  How likely is it that the person next to you will snap?  Recent events showed us that even mild-mannered professors can snap (although the “mild-mannered” part might have just been a cover for a seething, troubled pysche).  What flips the kill switch?

Anyone who chooses to strap on steel-toed boots, load up an automatic weapon and go shoot at Suzy because she didn’t help him on the March budget presentation would have gone crazy working on a horse farm, too. I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve wanted to “kill people” in fits of anger.  I never came close to translating that fit of anger into an actual, concrete series of actions to kill that person; for example, going to the gun store, buying ammo and studying schematics of the fourth floor.  Yet office shootings do occur.

I’ve been in arguments in the office over the years. Occasionally profanity-laced and often with raised voices, only twice did they reach the level of actual physical violence.  One was not surprising, the result of a fraud investigation I was leading; the subject threatened me and I had to be escorted by security in the evenings after his termination.  It was all bluster, though, and nothing happened.

The other incident, I’m sad to say, was initiated by me. A fellow manager and I had argued over responsibilities on a shared project, ranging from staffing to budget to the question of “ownership” of the results of the report.  The argument escalated over two days.  On the second day, I was working at a client’s office about an hour by public transportation from my company’s office.  A phone call from the other manager (I’ll call him Jim) came late in the afternoon after a stressful afternoon working on a particularly difficult set of audit items.  In the middle of the Russian winter, I was in the midst of (yet another) semi-cold/semi-bronchitis episode and in no mood for yet another go-around with Jim.  Jim – at least in my opinion – was a bit of a Crip, and I was hanging with the Bloods (you’ll have to read my article on life in the salt mine to fully appreciate that reference).  Jim was everything I disliked about expatriates in Russia; disdainful of the language, the people, contemptuous of their education and unable to stutter out a single word in the language of the country in which he lived.

I’d like to say I remember the real initiator of the afternoon’s meltdown, but I don’t. I do remember standing in front of my (mostly female) staff in a conference room, doing that cartoonish move where you hold the phone receiver in front of your face, yelling at the top of my lungs while his voice rang out in an echo from the earpiece.  Choice words were exchanged.  After slamming the phone down, I calmly put all of my stuff together in my bag and walked out.  My staff assumed I was going home for the day.

Instead, I walked the mile to the subway station seething. I walked into the station, got a token, caught a train, sat and seethed.  It arrived at my company’s office after 45 minutes.  I walked past security, took off my coat and dropped my bags, and walked down the hall.  I turned into the cubicle area where Jim worked, and saw him over the low walls.  Thunderous yelling between the two of us commenced.  I taunted him in Russian, which he didn’t understand.  He grew louder and more threatening until I picked up an office chair and threw it as hard as I could directly at him.  At his head.  All of this I did calmly, premeditated and without any “fog of rage” type of intention.  I meant to do it, more than an hour in advance of actually doing it.

I’m not a small guy and back then I was not small at all. I had the strength and body mass to throw something as awkward as an office chair with a great deal of velocity, and I didn’t take anything off of it.  I missed, though, and both Jim and I were restrained by several of our colleagues.  The odd part was this:  the principals of our little company never even came out of their offices.  Motivated by fear that I was the guy with the bullet with their name on it?  Or just indifferent?

After that, things were better. Jim and I weren’t asked or expected to work on anything together, or even speak.  We crossed paths again but had the good sense not to engage in a fistfight in an office building where the security guards carried sawed-off shotguns.  Jim drifted back to his home country after a while, forgotten by both the expats and the Russians in my office.  I faded away slowly, burned out by illness and rage, until I left Russia for the relaxed pace of Manhattan.

I’m not sure what might have happened if I had access to a weapon that day. Probably nothing; I’m not stupid.  In America that would land you in jail, but in Russia I would probably have ended up having a couple of those aforementioned shotguns’ butts applied to my skull – if I wasn’t having my right arm blown off first.  But for a while I had a brief glimpse of the level of rage that could be set on fire by something as trivial as work; started by work, fanned by exhaustion, stress and contempt.

I don’t get as angry anymore. By stages I’ve moved away from that type of work to contracting jobs, which demand little and pay well.  I haven’t been in a fight of any sort in at least ten years, although opportunities have arisen.  Once you’re married and have children, it’s easy to think of the consequences for THEM and to back down; nobody needs daddy in the hoosegow.   But I wonder how many people lurk in these high-stress jobs in cubicles.  How often does someone spend the hour commute home fantasizing about killing their boss and telling themselves that their fantasy is just “blowing off steam?”

The fantasy occurs more often than we’d like, I bet. The short-term mentality promoted by stock markets and corporations,  far-flung “communities” creating longer and longer communities and the pressure to superconsume are constantly testing the stress points of millions of people.  If we’re “lucky”, the most vulnerable have health problems or depression and drop out before they hurt someone else.  The easy availability of firearms doesn’t help (and yes gun-owners, I know it would have helped if someone else is armed and can shoot the shooter; are you REALLY going to feel better if HR issues you – and everyone else -  a handgun at employee orientation)?

I don’t think there’s a solution; there have always been people who kill for their own dark, unbalanced reasons. But at some point as a society we’ll have to look at the way in which fear of unemployment and consumerism and access to firearms will continue to create fearful office environments, leading to more stress and a downward spiral.  It’s not a path anyone wants to stroll down.  I’m sorry I was part of it.  If you think it’s not lurking out there in the dark corners of the office at 3:45 on a grim Wednesday, you’re more optimistic than I am.

Note: A good read on this subject is Going Postal, a book written by Mark Ames, a guy whose writing I much admire (much like his partner, Matt Taibbi) for their writing for the eXile, both in Moscow at the same time I was there (where I didn’t know them although I think based on hazy recollections that I met Mark at a party). Mark’s got some terrifying stories in his book, which should serve as an anthem to anti-cubicle life if there ever was one.  Oh, and yes, that’s an affiliate link, if you buy the book through that link I will become minutely wealthier-ish, so please, if you were planning on buying it, do so through that link.  Thanks FCC for the requirement to do that extra disclosure:  the world is safer in your hands.

photo by darkpatator

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workplace violence is an original article from the website brip blap.

If you had to rank the biggest rewards from blogging, #2 would definitely be the recognition of your peers (#1 is communicating directly with readers – I love getting emails, even if I’m Mr. Procrastination in answering them). But in the #2 category I was surprised to hear from Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary that I’m one of the nominees for “Best Personal Finance Blog for Careers.”

I’m doubly surprised considering the quality of the other nominees:  Bargaineering,Brazen Careerist, The Digerati Life and Squawkfox.  I’ve appeared with Jim (and Lynnae of being frugal – another nominee for “best frugality blog”) on Marketplace Money.  SVB of The Digerati Life is a blogging friend and a fellow member of The Money Writers network, who has a far better employee-to-problogger/webguru story than I do.  Kerry from Squawkfox has a fantastic blog that, like mine, goes all over the place (and has written some great pieces on resumes).

And if you’ve read this blog for any length of time you know how much I like Penelope Trunk’s writing; she’s amazing.  I also owe her a lot; she and Lazy Man were the first two big-time bloggers to get in touch with me, link to brip blap and – most importantly – encourage me.  Without the two of them I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing this today.

So given all that I’m actually not even going to ask you to vote for me, though feel free to go here and vote.  With all sincerity I can say that it’s just nice to be nominated.  I’m very grateful.

And if you’re interested, #3 is making some money.  #4 is the simple enjoyment of creating something outside yourself.  And here are my Marketplace Money appearances:

• Fourth appearance
• Third appearance
• Second appearance
• First appearance

Off to the links:

• Writing a Financial Mission Statement: I have a mission statement for this blog – if you were around for the first 3-4 months of brip blap you saw it. I haven’t had it up in a while, but I may dust it off soon and repackage it as my financial mission statement. To summarize it? You need to have just enough to stop worrying. More is too much, less is not enough.
• Ten Things Millionaires Won’t Tell You: The only item I take exception to: “I shop at Wal-Mart.” I’m having a bit of Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus thinking about Wal-Mart these days. I have justified buying things there in the name of saving money, but Wal-Mart’s an economic menace: they are on the wrong side of the debate on unions, health care, buying American, supporting local communities and even – in the long term – frugality. Buy products from there, and see how long those crap products made by non-union child labor in Malaysia last you. I’m still going to be a millionaire, but I’m not going to do it shopping at Wal-Mart.
• Square Foot Gardening: How To Grow Vegetables In Your Own Backyard: Awesome. If you didn’t see it the first time around, check it out. I spent the last weekend prepping the herbs for the garden. Next weekend? Citrus trees. The next? Veggies. Did I mention it’s in the 70s here in Florida?
• Credit Card and Debit Cards No Longer Have Automatic Overdraft and Over Limit Protection: That’s fine with me. Keep track of your spending.
• Selling Wine – Almost Like Blogging: I like the concept of limited networks: networks with an optimal size that would suffer from growing. I’m in the network with Lazy Man, of course, so I know what he’s talking about. I was lucky to make it in on one of the last couple of rounds of expansion of the neighborhood, and I’ve enjoyed being in the network immensely – but I’d be slow to add new members, too, considering how well we interact right now.
• 10 Ways to Save Money on a New Car: I know it’s not popular to buy new, but I’m very much in the “buy-new-and-drive-for-10-years” category of car buyers; I’m simply not comfortable buying used, and I’ve had very good luck buying new so far. Please knock on wood for me.
• Graduate School Costs & Options: Side note: graduate school is a more cost-effective career investment than undergraduate, but due to the fact that you can’t get the one without the other it’s actually less effective as an investment. Discuss!
• New Credit Card Laws to Protect Consumers Begin: By and large, good news.
• Free Online Tax Filing, Tax Preparation Services & More: If the kind souls at TurboTax would accept me into their affiliate program I might promote their software – that I’ve used for about six years – but they don’t, so check out these alternatives
• Those Who Don’t A-S-K Don’t G-E-T: Absolutely true.
• Dear President Obama: We Need Healthcare Reform Right Now.: I restrain myself – again – from political shrieking, but yes, ram it through and be done with it. American health care is broken. I’m not voting for anyone who doesn’t at least TRY to do something.
• Being Frugal is Foolish: I know Jim’s doing a Devil’s Advocate post, but to a certain extent I agree.
• Online Tools for Mindful Consumerism: Check out GoodGuide – I was quite surprised about some of my favorite “good” products.
• Independent Contractor vs. Employee: What’s the Difference?: It’s a distinction that most people don’t get, but if you have someone who works IN your household, they are an employee, not a contractor. How did that come up? Read the next article…
• How I Made My Peace with Hiring a Housekeeper: I agree. I hate cleaning, and it’s one of the activities I’m willing to outsource to simplify and improve my life – much like I enjoy outsourcing the maintenance and upkeep of my cars.
• On The Brink by Henry M. Paulson Jr.: I had a few choice comments about Mr. Paulson. I am, to put it mildly, no fan.

photo by hiperia3d

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linklings, plutus award nomination edition is an original article from the website brip blap.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

I get asked a lot of questions, many of them repeatedly, and I figured instead of answering them all over and over, I’d compile my answers for everyone here.

Of course, there’s a lot more about me and this site on the About page, and I’d always love it if you checked out the Books page.

I hope you find this useful!

1. Why did you turn off comments on Zen Habits?
This has been the most difficult decision I’ve made since starting Zen Habits, as I truly loved comments here. I love hearing from readers, and it was my opinion that the comments often held better tips than the posts themselves. I learned (and still learn) a lot from my readers.

So why did I turn off comments? There was too much comment spam, resulting in huge headaches for me. Seriously, it took up a lot of my time — time I wanted to spend creating, or with my family. And the tiny minority of legitimate comments were mostly bloggers trying to get noticed — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just don’t want to spend my life moderating spam for this reason alone.

Edit: Yes, I’ve tried several different software solutions for comment spam, and they don’t really solve the problem of humans leaving comment spam. Even things like Askimet (and numerous other such filters) and CAPTCHA let a lot of spam through. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of research, and when spammers are motivated, they’ll find a way through for a site with this kind of traffic.

People can still give me feedback via Twitter, and if I don’t always respond I do listen. Getting rid of comments has been regrettable, but they don’t scale, and it has brought peace to my life.

2. When and why are you moving to San Francisco?
We’re moving to San Francisco this summer – in late June 2010.

And we’re super excited.

We’ve bought our plane tickets but haven’t reserved a house or apartment yet. We’ll be living in the city, going carless.

We’re selling all our stuff but a handful of clothes and my laptop, and a few pieces of artwork. Read more about selling all our stuff on our “yardsale” site (if you don’t live on Guam, you can’t buy anything).

I know the burning question is why. The reasons are manifold, but here are a few:

• Guam will always be home, but we’d like to experience more of the world, and we’d love our kids to see more than this tiny little slice of life, however wonderful it is.
• San Francisco is one of my favorite places in the world – I lived there as a teen-ager, and I fell in love with it. It’s beautiful, the people are diverse and crazy and awesome, there’s no shortage of things for kids and teens and adults to do, the food is great, the weather is superb, and the areas around it are varied and gorgeous, from the California coastline to the mountains to the redwoods to wine country to Oregon to the north to Disneyland to the south (I know, but we have six kids, so.).
• As a blogger, I can work anywhere in the world, and I’d love to meet online blogging friends and readers in real life from time to time.
• As homeschooling parents, my wife and I want to expose our children to more opportunities to learn from the world around them. Guam is a great place for that, but San Francisco offers more. It’ll be an incredible learning experience for our kids.
• We hope to go carless, and San Francisco is a good place to do that, with muni and BART and a cycling friendly city and the ability to walk and things like Zipcar and City CarShare if we need them. Guam is a very bad place to go carless if you have kids.
• I’m vegan, and Guam is also a bad place for that. There’s exactly two vegan/vegetarian restaurants on Guam, and great as they are, I’d love to be in a place with more options. I can’t wait to try veggie restaurants in S.F., or at least restaurants with more veggie options than, you know, salad. Farmers markets and natural food co-ops and leftist bookshops and such are also attractive to a person like me. We also considered Portland and Eugene, OR as options, for these same reasons, but for complicated reasons S.F. is our choice.
• We have awesome family in the Bay Area, and I can’t wait to spend time with them. Seriously, other than the family I have here on Guam, the ones in S.F. are among the rockingest I have (well, there’s also the ones in Eugene and Austin and Vegas and Scottsdale and Chicago and a couple other places, but I digress).
• My oldest daughter will be a senior in high school next school year, and being in California will help her visit and apply to colleges and even establish residency should she decide to go to college in CA.
• I try to buy as little as possible, but when I do need to buy something, I prefer to buy used. Guam’s options for thrift and second-hand shops are, shall we say, limited.

Again, these are just a few. I could go on all day.

I love Guam, but it’s time for a change. We’ll always come back to Guam. We just want some new experiences, and we can’t wait.

I hope to see some of you there!

3. What’s your current workout/running routine?
At the moment, I run 3-4 times a week (training for a half marathon), and I go to the gym 3 times a week, and bike a couple times a week. You can see my training plan on this spreadsheet, but be aware that it changes from month to month, depending on my goals.

I like to mix things up. I don’t often train for races anymore, but I still love running. I’m trying to build a little muscle, which is why I’m lifting weights right now, but in a few months I’ll probably stick to bodyweight exercises and the like.

I’m riding my bike right now to get in better bike shape — I hope to make it my main form of transportation when I move to San Francisco.

I also eat fairly clean, about 90% of the time. You can take a look at my Daytum to see how often I’ve been eating clean this week. Diet has been the biggest part of my weight loss, actually — I’ve lost 30 lbs. in the last year on my Bellyfat Challenge.

4. Cool. But can’t you give us a sample of what you typically eat during a day?
Um, sure. But before I do that, a couple of caveats:

1. Obviously I don’t eat exactly the same thing every day. It varies.
2. I usually have a “cheat meal” each week, and sometimes two.
3. I don’t recommend my diet for everyone — pick the eating style that works for you, your goals, your health situation, etc.

That said, here’s a typical day (lately):

• 7 a.m. 1/2 cup cooked rolled organic oats w/ berries, raw almonds, cinnamon, raisins, ground flaxseed.
• 10 a.m. Unsweetened coconut flakes w/ berries, almonds, soymilk.
• 1 p.m. Quinoa, steamed veggies, and some kind of protein — usually black bean chili or lentil curry or a veggie burger.
• 4 p.m. Soy yogurt w/ almonds, berries, some other fruit, ground flaxseed.
• 7 p.m. Quinoa, steamed veggies, and some kind of protein — usually black bean chili or lentil curry or a veggie burger.

I don’t eat many grains other than the rolled oats (quinoa isn’t a grain). I am vegan. I get more than enough protein. This diet is about 400 cals per meal, or 2,000 cals daily — which will net me a 500-1000 cal deficit depending on exercise and activity during the day.

5. What time do you go to sleep/wake up?
This question arises as I’ve written in the past about waking up early and becoming an early riser. One thing to realize is that those posts were written in 2007, so things have changed in the last few years.

At various times in 2007, I was waking at 5:30 a.m., 5 a.m., 4:30 a.m., and 4 a.m. Part of that depended on where I was in my marathon training — when I was doing long runs, I’d wake up at 4 a.m. so that I could leave by 4:30 or 4:45 for a 2 or 2.5 hour run. On days when I wasn’t doing the long run, I’d use the extra time early in the morning to write my blog before I had to go to work.

Or sometimes I’d sleep in. And these days, I sleep in half the time, as I don’t have a day job so I can blog any time in the morning. I still get up early many days — 4:30 or 4:45 usually — but on other days I’ll sleep in until 6 or even 7 a.m. and let my body recover from the previous day’s workout.

When do I go to sleep? I prefer to go to sleep by 9:30 or 10 p.m., but my wife likes to watch a little late-night TV (not cable TV but one of our favorite shows on the Apple TV), and I stay up with her, usually until 10:30 p.m.

6. Can you provide a sample “schedule” of your day?
Hoo boy. That’s a bit difficult, as I don’t follow a set schedule anymore. I prefer to live moment by moment and go with the flow of life. That’s a bit vague for most of you, so here’s an attempt:

1. 4:45 to 6 a.m.: Wake up, have coffee, read. The time I wake depends on whether I’m going for a morning run.
2. 6 a.m.: Run (Mon, Wed, Fri and sometimes Saturday)
3. 7-9 or 10 a.m.: Write, do other most important tasks.
4. 10 a.m. to mid-afternoon: Smaller tasks, catch up on RSS feed reading, research various things I’m interested in (and will often blog about later). This really varies.
5. Late afternoon – evening: Spend time with kids. Sometimes get a gym workout in. Or read. Also varies from day to day.
6. Evening until 10 or 10:30 p.m.: Eat dinner, spend some time with wife and kids. Watch one of our favorite TV shows (The Office, Community, How I Met Your Mother, Mad Men, Lost, 30 Rock, not in that order). Once a week Eva and I will go on a date.

Again, this is a rough sketch, but in general:

• I go for runs early and do other exercise later in the afternoon.
• I write and do other important tasks next.
• I do less important stuff later.
• Always try to find time for Eva and the kids.

7. What happened to the Search function on Zen Habits?
I took it off as part of my simplification of this site’s design.

Update: I’ve now added an Archives page with a search function, so you can not only look through every old post easily, but search through all the Zen Habits articles using Google.

8. What theme are you using on Zen Habits? Is it available for download?
Zen Habits is running a modified version of Frugal theme for Wordpress. I’m working with Eric Hamm, the developer, to make a Zen Habits skin available for anyone who buys the theme.

9. What’s your story, buddy?
Hey there, friend! You can read my story here.

10. Can I use a post you’ve written here for my blog, my book, my magazine, etc.?
Yes, please do! Read my Uncopyright.

There is no need to email me for permission. You already have my blessing.

11. I’d like to do a guest post. What’s the deal there, buddy?
I don’t take guest posts. I run about a guest post a week, by invitation only, and at the moment I have enough for the next couple of months.

12. Why does Zen Habits have the word “Zen” in its title? Are you a Zen Master or Zen Buddhist?
No, I’m not. Read more about all of that here: Why Zen Habits.

13. How do I contact you via email?
I’m a bit of an email recluse, sorry. Here’s why I ditched my email inbox. You can always contact me via Twitter, though I don’t guarantee a response.

My focus is on creating, and spending time doing the things I love most. Email gets in the way of that.

14. But … I’d like to share my new book/blog post/product/seminar with you!
Thanks, but no. Please don’t ask me to promote your product, book, website, service, or blog post, or I will karate chop you to death.

15. Do you still wear Asics? Also, have you tried barefoot running?
Yep, still use Asics. Love em.

I’ve been trying barefoot running lately, a little at a time, at the recommendation of several readers. In fact, I ordered a pair of Vibram Fivefingers KSO and will be giving these a try. Basically, there have been a few studies done on barefoot running (including a couple of recent ones), but even those acknowledge that there are many questions and lots of other research needs to be done.

16. How can I follow Zen Habits? How can I thank you with a donation? Where else can I read your brilliant stuff?
OK, I’ll admit these aren’t really common questions, but hey, any opportunity for a shameless plug (or three), right?

I’d love it if you subscribed to Zen Habits via email or RSS subscription. It’s completely free (and always will be), and you get about three posts a week, all quality posts without the fat.

If you’d like to support Zen Habits, I’d love it if you bought my print book, The Power of Less, or one of my ebooks. Or you can make a donation if you have some extra cash lying around, Mr. Moneybags.

Other than my books, you can read more of my writing at my other blog, mnmlist, or little tips & brilliant insights on Twitter, or occasional thoughts on Zen Habits Offloaded, or links that I like to share on the Zen Habits tumblr. I also co-own and often contribute to Write To Done (for writers & bloggers) and Zen Family Habits. And then there’s my new site on changing habits: 6 Changes.

Other questions that I should add to this list? Ask via Twitter, & I’ll do my best to answer the most common ones. And feel free to share this post via Twitter.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Consider the above quote from Lao Tzu, (perhaps mythical) father of Taoism: how can it be true?

Is it possible to never hurry, but to get everything done?

It seems contradictory to our modern world, where everything is a rush, where we try to cram as much into every minute of the day as possible, where if we are not busy, we feel unproductive and lazy.

In fact, often we compete by trying to show how busy we are. I have a thousand projects to do! Oh yeah? I have 10,000! The winner is the person who has the most insane schedule, who rushes from one thing to the next with the energy of a hummingbird, because obviously that means he’s the most successful and important.

Right?

Maybe not. Maybe we’re playing the wrong game — we’ve been conditioned to believe that busier is better, but actually the speed of doing is not as important as what we focus on doing.

Maybe we’re going at the wrong speed. Maybe if we are constantly rushing, we will miss out on life itself. Let’s let go of the obsession with speed, and instead slow down, stop rushing, and enjoy life.

And still get everything done.

Let’s look at how.

A Change of Mindset
The most important step is a realization that life is better when you move at a slower, more relaxed pace, instead of hurrying and rushing and trying to cram too much into every day. Instead, get the most out of every moment.

Is a book better if you speed read it, or if you take your time and get lost in it?

Is a song better if you skim through it, or if you take the time to really listen?

Is food better if you cram it down your throat, or if you savor every bite and really appreciate the flavor?

Is your work better if you’re trying to do 10 things at once, or if you really pour yourself into one important task?

Is your time spent with a friend or loved one better if you have a rushed meeting interrupted by your emails and text messages, or if you can relax and really focus on the person?

Life as a whole is better if you go slowly, and take the time to savor it, appreciate every moment. That’s the simplest reason to slow down.

And so, you’ll need to change your mindset (if you’ve been stuck in a rushed mindset until now). To do this, make the simple admission that life is better when savored, that work is better with focus. Then make the commitment to give that a try, to take some of the steps below.

But I Can’t Change!
There will be some among you who will admit that it would be nice to slow down, but you just can’t do it … your job won’t allow it, or you’ll lose income if you don’t do as many projects, or living in the city makes it too difficult to go slowly. It’s a nice ideal if you’re living on a tropical island, or out in the country, or if you have a job that allows control of your schedule … but it’s not realistic for your life.

I say bullshit.

Take responsibility for your life. If your job forces you to rush, take control of it. Make changes in what you do, in how you work. Work with your boss to make changes if necessary. And if really necessary, you can eventually change jobs. You are responsible for your life.

If you live in a city where everyone rushes, realize that you don’t have to be like everyone else. You can be different. You can walk instead of driving in rush hour traffic. You can have fewer meetings. You can work on fewer but more important things. You can be on your iPhone or Blackberry less, and be disconnected sometimes. Your environment doesn’t control your life — you do.

I’m not going to tell you how to take responsibility for your life, but once you make the decision, the how will become apparent over time.

Tips for a Slower-Paced Life
I can’t give you a step-by-step guide to moving slower, but here are some things to consider and perhaps adopt, if they work for your life. Some things might require you to change some major things, but they can be done over time.

1. Do less. Cut back on your projects, on your task list, on how much you try to do each day. Focus not on quantity but quality. Pick 2-3 important things — or even just one important thing — and work on those first. Save smaller, routine tasks for later in the day, but give yourself time to focus. Read more.
2. Have fewer meetings. Meetings are usually a big waste of time. And they eat into your day, forcing you to squeeze the things you really need to do into small windows, and making you rush. Try to have blocks of time with no interruptions, so you don’t have to rush from one meeting to another.
3. Practice disconnecting. Have times when you turn off your devices and your email notifications and whatnot. Time with no phone calls, when you’re just creating, or when you’re just spending time with someone, or just reading a book, or just taking a walk, or just eating mindfully. You can even disconnect for (gasp!) an entire day, and you won’t be hurt. I promise.
4. Give yourself time to get ready and get there. If you’re constantly rushing to appointments or other places you have to be, it’s because you don’t allot enough time in your schedule for preparing and for traveling. Pad your schedule to allow time for this stuff. If you think it only takes you 10 minutes to get ready for work or a date, perhaps give yourself 30-45 minutes so you don’t have to shave in a rush or put on makeup in the car. If you think you can get there in 10 minutes, perhaps give yourself 2-3 times that amount so you can go at a leisurely pace and maybe even get there early.
5. Practice being comfortable with sitting, doing nothing. One thing I’ve noticed is that when people have to wait, they become impatient or uncomfortable. They want their mobile device or at least a magazine, because standing and waiting is either a waste of time or something they’re not used to doing without feeling self-conscious. Instead, try just sitting there, looking around, soaking in your surroundings. Try standing in line and just watching and listening to people around you. It takes practice, but after awhile, you’ll do it with a smile.
6. Realize that if it doesn’t get done, that’s OK. There’s always tomorrow. And yes, I know that’s a frustrating attitude for some of you who don’t like laziness or procrastination or living without firm deadlines, but it’s also reality. The world likely won’t end if you don’t get that task done today. Your boss might get mad, but the company won’t collapse and the life will inevitably go on. And the things that need to get done will.
7. Start to eliminate the unnecessary. When you do the important things with focus, without rush, there will be things that get pushed back, that don’t get done. And you need to ask yourself: how necessary are these things? What would happen if I stopped doing them? How can I eliminate them, delegate them, automate them?
8. Practice mindfulness. Simply learn to live in the present, rather than thinking so much about the future or the past. When you eat, fully appreciate your food. When you’re with someone, be with them fully. When you’re walking, appreciate your surroundings, no matter where you are. Read this for more, and also try The Mindfulist.
9. Slowly eliminate commitments. We’re overcommitted, which is why we’re rushing around so much. I don’t just mean with work — projects and meetings and the like. Parents have tons of things to do with and for their kids, and we overcommit our kids as well. Many of us have busy social lives, or civic commitments, or are coaching or playing on sports teams. We have classes and groups and hobbies. But in trying to cram so much into our lives, we’re actually deteriorating the quality of those lives. Slowly eliminate commitments — pick 4-5 essential ones, and realize that the rest, while nice or important, just don’t fit right now. Politely inform people, over time, that you don’t have time to stick to those commitments.

Try these things out. Life is better when unrushed. And given the fleeting nature of this life, why waste even a moment by rushing through it?

Remember the quote above: if nature can get everything done without rushing, so can you.
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Read more about simplifying in my book, The Power of Less.

The cartilage, which is what the skeleton of a shark is made up of, is processed to produce a supplement that is thought to have various different curative/preventive uses.

This post points out the possible uses of shark cartilage to check cancer as well as arthritis. This is how it could be seen to help:

• Shark cartilage is a good source of minerals such as calcium and phosphorus, which are required for good bone health, the proper functioning of the body’s organs, and several other vital functions. Due to high content of these minerals, it is advisable to balance this supplement with magnesium to balance out.
• There has been some evidence to suggest arthritis sufferers got some relief from shark cartilage supplements by reducing inflammation without suffering any adverse effect.
• A certain protein in shark cartilage known to be angiogenesis-inhibiting is seen to inhibit the development of tumors by preventing nutrients from reaching the tumor thereby retarding their growth.
• Things to keep in mind with this supplement are that it may not work for everyone, and excess dosage may cause constipation, low blood pressure nausea and fatigue. Also it is not suitable for heart patients, pregnant women, or those with kidney problems.

Though the popular adage is An Apple a day keeps the doctor away; it would not be at all incorrect to say that Fish a few times every week will do the same in keeping a way from the man in the white coat.

A number of health benefits accrue from fish consumption, which includes the heart, the brain and the waistline as well!

There are some pointers about preparing and eating fish that you should, however keep in mind.

Mind how you cook it: Fish lends itself well to a variety of healthy cooking options such as steaming, grilling, baking, poaching etc.

which retain all the health benefits of fish. Deep frying fish or drowning it in a rich or heavy quickly makes it lose a lot of the health giving properties of fish.

Deep frying also ups the concentration of the traces of mercury that may be present in the fish. Most fish cooks quickly and so it is easy to use one of the healthier options of broiling, grilling, steaming or even microwaving the fish.

It is also important to cook fish properly. There should be no remnants of translucent appearing flesh in the fish; it should be cooked through and flaky.

Improperly cooking or undercooking fish could cause certain kinds of parasite infection or food poisoning.

Mind which kind you eat: Oily fish is best to eat. This is because of the quality of oil found in fish is very high quality and is rich in Omega 3 fatty acids that are so essential for us and the proper working of our brains. Salmon and mackerel are oily fish that are known to be very good for health.

In addition, trout, blue-eye, squid, scallop, sea mullet, canned tuna and halibut, are also good for health because of their oil content.

It is generally recommended that two servings of oil fish a week is a must. This can reduce risk of developing heart disease by as much as 35% or more.

Mind the mercury: Larger and older fish as well as predatory fish such as sharks, swordfish, tilefish and king mackerel are known to having higher quantities of mercury.

Pregnant women, lactating women and children should avoid the varieties of fish that are known to have higher levels of mercury.

Though most people are able to eliminate the mercury content in fish from their system, those that may be more vulnerable ought to avoid certain kinds of fish.

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About four years into the business of managing new humans – i.e. raising kids – I’ve realized I have some regrets, unsurprisingly. You might not think four years with two kids (Little Buddy, almost 4, Pumpkin, almost 2) is long enough to develop a list of regrets, but it is. My feeling is that the time-frame for regret is compressed more and more as your children get older. The end result of teaching your children to eat right might not be apparent when you are forcing them to eat vegetables when they are two, compared to denying your 16-year old the right to drive by himself. The types of regret become more significant, as well: not teaching them to stay away from drugs is on a different level than not using cloth diapers, for example.

Focusing on the negative is never a good way to produce positive change, so before I catalog on the regrets I can toss out a few things that have made me proud of Bubelah and myself: our children have a fluent understanding of a second language, able to understand both English and Russian. We have instilled a love of reading in Little Buddy (uh oh, foreshadowing a regret here). They are healthy, verbal and happy, other than the usual little toddler outbursts. They are adorable kids (don’t worry, I’m being neutral, they are definitely the cutest, sweetest, smartest kids on the planet).

I won’t focus, either, on meta-regrets or things that are still in process. A good example? The kids have not yet been exposed to even 10 seconds of volunteerism or community work. That’s bad. On the other hand, I think there will be opportunities to do so. I also don’t focus on regrets that I call “meta-regrets” like circumcision – who knows whether I should regret that or not.

As a general bit of advice to new parents, in other words, here are a few fairly simple little regrets that I’ll just pass on, even though I know new parents – like we were – hear so much advice in the middle of sleep-deprived conversations that much of it becomes a big, fuzzy blur.

Toys with batteries

Since we send our son (and soon our daughter) to a Waldorf school, we’ve been exposed to the Waldorf philosophy regarding toys: all toys have to be natural materials and non-branded (i.e. no Dora or Batman). Battery-powered toys are forbidden (so no cute wooden trains), as are violent toys: no wooden guns. All of that is fine, but at home our kids have a vast area of beeping and booping Dora, Handy Manny, Sesame Street and LeapFrog devices. Cars honk. Alvin, Simon and Theodore chirp away. Dora blares out Spanglish. I don’t mind plastic toys so much; my brother and I spent countless hours playing with plastic cars and planes and bears and dinosaurs. I do, on the other hand, regret SOME of the branded toys and ALL of the battery powered toys.

Battery powered toys are horrible. I regret not placing a ban on them as gifts, buying them myself or allowing even “educational” ones like LeapFrog into the house. They have an unintended side effect: I have more than once snatched away a toy from my kids after one too many electronic shrieks of “GO! DIEGO! GO!” The noises make me grumpy. Plus, after a few years, the real problem is obvious: battery-powered toys crush imagination. My son or daughter can take a handful of toys like Smurfs, dinosaurs, even little action figures, a couple of little houses or castles and play fascinating, original little games. They can build cities, make up “families” from a bear, a duck and a smurf, and so on. But once a battery-powered toy is introduced, a bit of a rat-getting-cheese-by-pressing-a-lever takes over. Battery-powered toys are TV on a small scale.

Television

Now this one is funny. I hate children’s TV. It serves no purpose for children. I am as convinced today as I was four years ago that a child would be infinitely better off if he or she didn’t see a television program until their fifth birthday. All of the so-called “educational” programs are, largely, garbage intended primarily as branding tools for a line of merchandise. TV is garbage.

BUT – there’s a big but – TV serves a purpose that has nothing to do with the kids. It does serve as a babysitter. I am going to out myself as a bad parent, but you know what? When it’s 6:30 am on a Saturday, both kids are up and bouncing around ready to go, and Papa hasn’t had his coffee, Dora can turn them into the quiet little couch monkeys that give Papa 30 minutes to make breakfast and drink coffee. So it helps.

So the regret is not TV so much, but failure to take much more aggressive action to control the medium in this way: absolute avoidance of just turning the TV on at random. I wish I had recorded 100s of hours of Sesame Street videos. I wish I had recorded things like “Go Go Riki” – but edited out all of the commercials. And I wish we had purchased a Roku sooner, which has a nice little collection of things like Caillou. The TV experience then could have been limited to complete shows, commercial-free and consistent. Instead, far too often we’ve just flipped on the TV and said “hey kids, what do you want? Handy Manny or Curious George?” The kids then watch the last 10 minutes of a Curious George episode and 15 minutes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, mixed in with commercials (and believe me, PBS and Disney Playhouse can blather on all they want to about being advertising-free, but I still see Chuck E. Cheese popping up a lot between shows).

Reading

As I mentioned above, this is one of my few “split” regrets. I read to Little Buddy in the womb. I propped his wobbly little noggin up and read “Oh, the Places You Will Go” and “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” to him endless times. We read Mercer Mayer books, Richard Scarry, Russian classics, English classics nonstop. And then we had a second child and reading to Little Buddy became much more infrequent. That was fine – he had already developed enough of a love of books to keep him going. A few books a day hold him, and he can pick up a book and leaf through it, identifying letters he knows and even reciting stories from memory. That’s fine.

Pumpkin’s another matter. In the chaos of dealing with two small kids, too often she was left to play and entertain herself while we chased Little Buddy around. Reading to her was the exception, rather than the rule. That sounds terrible, and it’s not as bad as that: Little Buddy was probably read to far more than was necessary, and Pumpkin’s still had her fair share of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. But already the difference in the two of them is obvious; Pumpkin’s far more likely to squirm away from a book than Little Buddy was at her age. She enjoys a few favorite books but gets bored by new ones. I know we still have years to correct that, but I wish we had approached it differently.  I regret our approach more with one of our children than with the other.

Food

I am sure many parents could write “War and Peas” about their children’s eating habits. Again, I won’t go into meta-regrets about, say, vegetarianism or 100% avoidance of fast food or anything like that. I might wish that foods like chicken nuggets had never been introduced, but that genie is out of the bottle.

But what I do regret, and still hope to change, is the eating schedule and atmosphere. I insisted – and still do – that the TV be off while we eat. But what I should have paid more attention to is the idea that meals are meant to be shared. It’s very easy when you have four people in a family who are not only on different schedules but have different metabolisms to slip into an “eat-when-convenient” mindset. I rise earlier than everyone else. Little Buddy goes to school. I go to work. Pumpkin takes three hour naps covering lunchtime. I get home at 6 most days but the kids are hungry at 5. The result has been that we almost never eat together. We still have time to fix it, but it’s a regret because I wonder if the mental building blocks (“grab food and run”) have already been laid.

Regrets – I’ve had a few

That’s a long enough list of regrets for me to bear for today. The unifying factor of all of these regrets is that we worried about one thing but ended up regretting the unintended side effects, or something unanticipated For example, we worried about diet, but the problem hasn’t been diet (they eat fairly normal and non-junky diets) but the structure of mealtime. This is true of so many things in life; young people worry about where to go to college more than they do about what to study once they are there, even though that makes a far, far greater difference in the direction of one’s life.

Regrets are not productive. My dad sent me a birthday card years ago when I was in a bit of a down period that had a little guy standing at a fork in the road. In the forward direction a sign pointed with the inscription “the future.” The sign pointing in the direction headed back said “not an option.” The past is over and immutable. The future is the only thing that can be changed, and the only purpose of a regret is to help you improve in the future. Even if your regrets impact others, you can’t make the past any worse; you can only make the future better.

photo by broma

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small human regrets is an original article from the website brip blap.

From time to time I like to put a video up briefly; this one is touching. I’m a bit behind the curve – CNN’s already featured this video – but it seems worth sharing. Call me a sucker for sentimental safety reminders, but I imagine that the number one health tip – in terms of extending your life – is probably “always wear a seat belt.”

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If you read brip blap via RSS, you might want to visit the site and see the new theme; if you like it, it’s the frugal theme and if you buy it through that link, you help support brip blap.

embrace life is an original article from the website brip blap.