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Saturday, August 31, 2013

How much sun could a good beard block? 08-31


How much sun could a good beard block?

NOTE: Sci's got some major stuff going on professionally which requires her full attention. I would hate for you all to go without your weekly dose of Friday awesome, however, and so have arranged these reposts. Thanks for your patience!

...ok I guess that probably won't work for some of us. Fake beards, maybe?


(I love the look on her face. 
  )

I know a guy with a rather luxuriant amount of facial hair. I once asked him if he ever put sunblock on it. Get in the cracks, you know? He said of course not, hair blocks sun. He's never gotten a burn there, after all.
This is definitely true enough, I've never gotten a sunburn where my hair is, either. But how much sun does a good beard block if a good beard could block sun?
Answer? It blocks the sun that a good beard could block if a good beard could block sun.* At least, depending on the angle, and the thickness of the beard. But how to find out PRECISELY?!
Well for that you need SCIENCE. Science and fake heads with beards on them. On a weathervane. Really.
Parisi et al. "DOSIMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF THE SOLAR ERYTHEMAL
UV RADIATION PROTECTION PROVIDED BY BEARDS AND MOUSTACHES" Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2012.
By now I think we all know the risks of UV radiation from the sun. Wear layers, slather on some SPF 30 until your skin can take no more, wear a hat, etc. But what about facial hair?
To investigate this point, the scientists in this study needed to look at the UV damage caused by the sun, at various angles, and with different lengths of facial hair. And since humans guys probably can't hold very still for the many hours it would take to measure this...well, this is what they built.


(I would have LOVED to see this thing hangin' out behind someone's lab on campus. Science in action, my friends!!)

They authors then looked at protection from UV radiation (using dosiometry  , which measures dose exposure to UV radiation) at several angles of sunlight, and on several angles of chin, cheek, upper jaw, etc. They had a no beard condition, a "short" beard condition (10 mm on the upper lip, 40 mm on the chin), and a "long" beard condition (up to 20 mm on the upper lip and 90 mm on the chin). The beards were fake, as manikin heads have a terrible record of growing their own facial hair.


What you can see here is the exposure ratio, after 1 hour in the sun with the face angled up to receive the light (described as horizontal, they did 1 hour at most angles, except for the 25ish degree angle, which had 2 hours of exposure). You can see that beard presence significantly decreased the amount of UV exposure. When teased apart, the longer beards provided more protection.
So clearly, in addition to all our layers and sunblock, we need to be growing us some beards! Or, possibly, get fakes. There are of course caveats. Wither the stubble, my friends?! Wither the short goatee?! The "short" length here was 40mm long on the chin (almost 2 inches), which is pretty hefty, and the "long" was full on lumberjack. But most guys don't have facial hair that long, what protection, if any, are they getting? Does a couple of mm do any good? Or do we need to start a trend for some long and luxuriant facial locks?

Me, I think fake beards are going to be all the rage next summer.

Practice Makes Perfect: Endangered Whooping Cranes Rely on Social Learning for Migration 08-31

Practice Makes Perfect: Endangered Whooping Cranes Rely on Social Learning for Migration


Before the first Europeans landed their ships on the eastern shores of North America, there were more than ten thousand whooping cranes (Grus americana) flying the skies above the American midwest and central Canada. Nearly three centuries of habitat loss and overhunting meant that by 1870, the population of cranes plummeted to just 1500 individuals. In 1941, there were just 21 remaining in the wild and two in captivity. Still, it wasn’t until 1967 that the species was declared endangered   by the IUCN U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Then, in the fall of 2001, a nonprofit called Operation Migration   became involved.
The work to restore the whooping crane to a viable wild population began when the folks at Operation Migration imprinted a handful of infant cranes that hatched in captivity to costumed humans dressed in crane suits. When they were old enough, they were trained to fly behind an ultralight aircraft. It was the very same process that Bill Lishman used to train a group of Canada geese to migrate, which was dramatized in the 1996 movie Fly Away Home   starring Jeff Daniels and a very young Anna Paquin.
Several months after leaving the breeding area in Wisconsin’s Necedah National Wildlife Refuge  , the metal-and-feather caravan landed at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge   on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The cranes remained there through the winter, and, relying on innate navigation abilities, began their annual flight northward on their own the following spring.
Whooping cranes led by ultra-light aircraft.
Thanks to the careful work of biologists and conservationists in the intervening years, there is data available on the genetic relationships between each individual whooping crane that now comprise the “eastern migratory population,” now numbering around 100 individuals. Combined with telemetry data from small bands placed around the birds’ legs, this meant that Thomas Mueller   and colleagues from the University of Maryland, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the US Geological Survey, and the US Department of Fish and Wildlife have been able to finally address a question that for so long has eluded ornithologists: How much of a bird’s migration route – in many species, including this one, spanning thousands of miles – is innate, and how much requires learning?
Mueller and colleagues gathered up 8 years of migration data on reintroduced whooping cranes from the eastern migratory population. They found that flocks that included older, more experienced birds were more likely to stay on course to their summer breeding grounds, while flocks that were comprised mainly of younger birds were more likely to take longer, more meandering, less direct flight paths.
Specifically, the researchers found that the age of the oldest bird in a group improved migratory performance by 5.5% per year of age. This translated to a decrease in just over four kilometers of flight distance per year of age of the oldest bird in a group. In other words, adding a bird one year older than the oldest bird in a flock would make that group’s performance 5.5% more accurate and four kilometers shorter.
of one-year-old birds flew nearly thirty extra kilometers compared to groups that contained at least one eight-year-old whooping crane. Seven years of migratory practice therefore resulted in a 38% improvement in migratory performance.
Taking genetic data into account, the researchers discovered that closely related birds did not perform more similarly when it came to migration than unrelated birds, so the variation in performance among cranes was due entirely to experience. But practice alone isn’t enough, argue the researchers. It’s social learning that counts. “[M]igrations by naïve-to-migration, captive-reared juveniles flying in the absence of experienced individuals would be unlikely to lead to a successful journey,” they write, “suggesting that cultural transmission of information” from older, more experienced birds to younger ones is critical.
But what is it, exactly, that this sort of learning provides that might aid the cranes in executing more accurate flight plans?
For one thing, the birds might gain improved spatial memory of visual landmarks. Other research on wild-born whooping cranes showed that they’re aided by keeping track of landscape features, both small-scale, such as particular mountains, rivers, or lakes, and larger scale changes in topography.
More experienced birds might also have better knowledge of weather patterns. More than 75% of birds veered off-course by flying too far east. This pattern is consistent with the westerly winds which dominate the American midwest during the time that the cranes fly south.
The importance of these findings to conservation efforts are two-fold. First, and more obvious, strong limits need to remain in place on the hunting of whooping cranes. The migration success of this species is enormously dependent on older, experienced individuals, and those cranes must survive long enough to transmit their acquired knowledge to younger cranes. Luckily, according to the researchers the average age of the whooping crane within the eastern migratory population is increasing, suggesting that their migration accuracy will continue improving over time.
Second, prior research suggests a possible link between migration competence and breeding success. Thus, the researchers argue, “additional [migration] experience may also improve successful reproduction in the wild,” providing an additional boost to the species’ survival, and moving the species towards reduced reliance on humans in crane costumes and ultralight aircraft.

8 WAYS TO BRING SANITY TO YOUR CRAZY, WIRED LIFE 08-31


8 WAYS TO BRING SANITY TO YOUR CRAZY, WIRED LIFE

HERE'S HOW THE BUSIEST CONNECTORS--MIGHTYBELL FOUNDER GINA BIANCHINI, HOOTSUITE CEO RYAN HOLMES, REDDIT COFOUNDER ALEXIS OHANIAN, IVANKA TRUMP, AND MORE--GIVE THEMSELVES A BREAK.
1. RESPECT THE WEEKEND.
"I'm a natural introvert, as many entrepreneurs (and especially social software entrepreneurs) are. Keeping the weekends quiet is critical. I disconnect and read, watch a movie, or just remember that I am a person outside of my mission."
--Gina Bianchini, founder, Mightybell  
2. EXERCISE EQUALS ENLIGHTENMENT.
"I take time out of each day to bike, do yoga, or rock climb. It's pretty impossible to check your iPhone   in downward dog while scaling a rock face."
--Ryan Holmes, CEO, HootSuite  
3. START A TECHNOLOGY SHABBAT.
"When my father passed away, my husband and I decided to do something with our kids: Unplug one day a week, Friday night to Saturday night. It's our tech Shabbat. This amazing thing happens: Time slows down. Every Saturday morning we get to do, like, six things: We'll be in our garden, we'll do an art project. . . . It's changed my life. My films are better. I'm more productive. I'm happier. I'm more balanced."
-- Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker; founder, Webby Awards
4. PLAN YOUR DIGITAL VACATION BREAKS.
"Set 'digital times' when on vacation--an hour in the morning or evening when you will be online. Better yet: Go someplace where you can't be connected." 
-- Gerald Brady, managing director, Silicon Valley Bank  
5. ASK YOUR COMPANY TO UNPLUG.
"We have a 'no email' rule every weekday after 7:30 p.m. and at all times over the weekend. Employees can spend more quality time in their personal lives without worrying about the office."
-- Dolf van den Brink, president and CEO, Heineken U.S.A.  
6. DITCH THE PHONE DURING MEETINGS.
"I never take my iPhone into meetings. I give my undivided attention to my colleagues and partners, and I expect the same respect in return." 
-- Ivanka Trump, executive vice president of development and acquisitions, Trump Organization
7. SEE THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR PET'S EYES.
"I get up, turn off the laptop, and start playing with my cat. It's a chance to enjoy simple, mindless pleasures--like a stick with yarn attached to it. Cats make us a little dumber." 
-- Alexis Ohanian, cofounder, Reddit
8. GET PERSONAL.
"Recently, I was walking down the hall at work, on a call via my headset and simultaneously writing an email, successfully balancing it all--until I went sailing in the air as I flew over an abandoned box. Now I try to get up and talk to the person two desks away rather than texting them.
 I welcome our team's new hires face-to-face rather than sending an email. I make meetings in person when it's an option. I am not always perfect, but I am more conscious about my behavior." 

Make Time for the Work That Matters -08-31

Make Time for the Work That Matters


To identify the tasks you need to drop or outsource, take this interactive assessment.

More hours in the day. It’s one thing everyone wants, and yet it’s impossible to attain. But what if you could free up significant time—maybe as much as 20% of your workday—to focus on the responsibilities that really matter?
We’ve spent the past three years studying how knowledge workers can become more productive and found that the answer is simple: Eliminate or delegate unimportant tasks and replace them with value-added ones. Our research indicates that knowledge workers spend a great deal of their time—an average of 41%—on discretionary activities that offer little personal satisfaction and could be handled competently by others. So why do they keep doing them? Because ridding oneself of work is easier said than done. We instinctively cling to tasks that make us feel busy and thus important, while our bosses, constantly striving to do more with less, pile on as many responsibilities as we’re willing to accept.
We believe there’s a way forward, however. Knowledge workers can make themselves more productive by thinking consciously about how they spend their time; deciding which tasks matter most to them and their organizations; and dropping or creatively outsourcing the rest. We tried this intervention with 15 executives at different companies, and they were able to dramatically reduce their involvement in low-value tasks: 
They cut desk work by an average of six hours a week and meeting time by an average of two hours a week. And the benefits were clear. For example, when Lotta Laitinen, a manager at If, a Scandinavian insurance company, jettisoned meetings and administrative tasks in order to spend more time supporting her team, it led to a 5% increase in sales by her unit over a three-week period.
While not everyone in our study was quite that successful, the results still astounded us. By simply asking knowledge workers to rethink and shift the balance of their work, we were able to help them free up nearly a fifth of their time—an average of one full day a week—and focus on more worthwhile tasks with the hours they saved.
Why It’s So Hard

Knowledge workers present a real challenge to managers. The work they do is difficult to observe (since a lot of it happens inside their heads), and the quality of it is frequently subjective. A manager may suspect that an employee is spending her time inefficiently but be hard-pressed to diagnose the problem, let alone come up with a solution.
We interviewed 45 knowledge workers in 39 companies across eight industries in the United States and Europe to see how they spent their days. We found that even the most dedicated and impressive performers devoted large amounts of time to tedious, non-value-added activities such as desk work and “managing across” the organization (for example, meetings with people in other departments). These are tasks that the knowledge workers themselves rated as offering little personal utility and low value to the company.
There are many reasons why this happens. Most of us feel entangled in a web of commitments from which it can be painful to extricate ourselves: We worry that we’re letting our colleagues or employers down if we stop doing certain tasks. “I want to appear busy and productive—the company values team players,” one participant observed. Also, those less important items on our to-do lists are not entirely without benefit.
 Making progress on any task—even an inessential one—increases our feelings of engagement and satisfaction, research has shown. And although meetings are widely derided as a waste of time, they offer opportunities to socialize and connect with coworkers. “I actually quite look forward to face-to-face meetings,” one respondent told us. “A call is more efficient, but it’s a cold, lifeless medium.”
Organizations share some of the blame for less-than-optimal productivity. Cost-cutting has been prevalent over the past decade, and knowledge workers, like most employees, have had to take on some low-value tasks—such as making travel arrangements—that distract them from more important work. Even though business confidence is rebounding, many companies are hesitant to add back resources, particularly administrative ones. 
What’s more, increasingly complicated regulatory environments and tighter control systems in many industries have contributed to risk-averse corporate cultures that discourage senior people from ceding work to less seasoned colleagues. The consequences are predictable: “My team is understaffed and underskilled, so my calendar is a nightmare and I get pulled into many more meetings than I should,” one study subject reported. Another commented, “I face the constraint of the working capacity of the people I delegate to.”
Some companies do try to help their knowledge workers focus on the value-added parts of their job. For example, one of us (Jordan Cohen) helped Pfizer create a service called pfizerWorkswhich allows employees to outsource less important tasks. We’ve also seen corporate initiatives that ban e-mail on Fridays, put time limits on meetings, and forbid internal PowerPoint presentations. But it’s very difficult to change institutional norms, and when knowledge workers don’t buy in to such top-down directives, they find creative ways to resist or game the system, which only makes matters worse. We propose a sensible middle ground: judicious, self-directed interventions supported by management that help knowledge workers help themselves.

What Workers Can Do
Our process, a variant of the classic Start/Stop/Continue exercise, is designed to help you make small but significant changes to your day-to-day work schedule. We facilitated this exercise with the 15 executives mentioned above, and they achieved some remarkable results.
Identify low-value tasks. Using this self-assessment, look at all your daily activities and decide which ones are (a) not that important to either you or your firm and (b) relatively easy to drop, delegate, or outsource. Our research suggests that at least one-quarter of a typical knowledge worker’s activities fall into both categories, so you should aim to find up to 10 hours of time per week. The participants in our study pinpointed a range of expendable tasks. Lotta Laitinen, the manager at If, quickly identified several meetings and routine administrative tasks she could dispense with. Shantanu Kumar, CEO of a small technology company in London, realized he was too involved in project planning details, while Vincent Bryant, a manager at GDF SUEZ Energy Services, was surprised to see how much time he was wasting in sorting documents.
Decide whether to drop, delegate, or redesign. Sort the low-value tasks into three categories: quick kills (things you can stop doing now with no negative effects), off-load opportunities (tasks that can be delegated with minimal effort), and long-term redesign (work that needs to be restructured or overhauled). Our study participants found that this step forced them to reflect carefully on their real contributions to their respective organizations. “I took a step back and asked myself, ‘Should I be doing this in the first place? Can my subordinate do it? Is he up to it?’” recalls Johann Barchechath, a manager at BNP Paribas. “This helped me figure out what was valuable for the bank versus what was valuable for me—and what we simply shouldn’t have been doing at all.” Another participant noted, “I realized that the big change I should make is to say no up-front to low-value tasks and not commit myself in the first place.”
Off-load tasks. We heard from many participants that delegation was initially the most challenging part—but ultimately very rewarding. One participant said he couldn’t stop worrying about the tasks he had reassigned, while another told us he had trouble remembering “to push, prod, and chase.” Barchechath observed, “I learned about the importance of timing in delegating something—it is possible to delegate too early.”
Most participants eventually overcame those stumbling blocks. They delegated from 2% to 20% of their work with no decline in their productivity or their team’s. “I overestimated my subordinate’s capability at first, but it got easier after a while, and even having a partially done piece of work created energy for me,” Barchechath said. A bonus was that junior employees benefited from getting more involved. “[She] told me several times that she really appreciated it,” he added. Vincent Bryant decided to off-load tasks to a virtual personal assistant and says that although he was concerned about getting up to speed with the service, “it was seamless.”
Allocate freed-up time. The goal, of course, is to be not just efficient but effective. So the next step is to determine how to best make use of the time you’ve saved. Write down two or three things you should be doing but aren’t, and then keep a log to assess whether you’re using your time more effectively. Some of our study participants were able to go home a bit earlier to enjoy their families (which probably made them happier and more productive the next day). Some unfortunately reported that their time was immediately swallowed up by unforeseen events: “I cleared my in-box and found myself firefighting.”
But more than half reclaimed the extra hours to do better work. “For me the most useful part was identifying the important things I don’t get time for usually,” Kumar said. “I stopped spending time with my project planning tool and instead focused on strategic activities, such as the product road map.” Laitinen used her freed-up schedule to listen in on client calls, observe her top salespeople, and coach her employees one-on-one. The result was that stunning three-week sales jump of 5%, with the biggest increases coming from below-average performers. A questionnaire showed that employee responses to the experiment were positive, and Laitinen found that she missed nothing by dropping some of her work. “The first week was really stressful, because I had to do so much planning, but by the middle of the test period, I was more relaxed, and I was satisfied when I went home every day.”
Commit to your plan. Although this process is entirely self-directed, it’s crucial to share your plan with a boss, colleague, or mentor. Explain which activities you are getting out of and why. And agree to discuss what you’ve achieved in a few weeks’ time. Without this step, it’s all too easy to slide back into bad habits. Many of our participants found that their managers were helpful and supportive. Laitinen’s boss, Sven Kärnekull suggested people to whom she could delegate her work. Other participants discovered that simply voicing the commitment to another person helped them follow through.
With relatively little effort and no management directive, the small intervention we propose can significantly boost productivity among knowledge workers. Such shifts are not always easy, of course. “It’s hard to make these changes without the discipline of someone standing over you,” one of our study participants remarked. But all agreed that the exercise was a useful “forcing mechanism” to help them become more efficient, effective, and engaged employees and managers. To do the same, you don’t have to redesign any parts of an organization, reengineer a work process, or transform a business model. All you have to do is ask the right questions and act on the answers. After all, if you’re a knowledge worker, isn’t using your judgment what you were hired for?

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Don't Just Serve — Enable: A New Model for IT Organizations 08-29

Don't Just Serve — Enable: A New Model for IT Organizations

The traditional IT model is much like a classic restaurant. First, IT acquires and stores all corporate data in much the same way that restaurants acquire and store all the ingredients for the dishes they serve. Next, IT provides a pre-determined menu of specific data you can have and in what combinations. 
Just as with restaurant menus, you can ask for substitutions or to leave out something, but you may not get what you want or, if you do, the change will take extra time. Any modification adds complexity and cost, so restaurants try to avoid them. Similarly, many business people are forced to consume what IT has chosen to serve them rather than what they really want and, in many cases, need.
IT can no longer serve precisely measured and pre-determined views of data to users. To be successful in today's world, IT must to shift focus to enabling access to the range of raw data elements that go into those traditional views. Then, users must be able to mix and match data as required for their specific problems. One method of doing this is to create "discovery" environments where users can freely explore data.
 These environments include "sandboxes" or "data labs" which are slices of a production environment's resources that are allocated to users. Within a discovery environment, users can query a broad range of data, create output data (which is not typically allowed in such systems), and even load new data. Of course, there are limits on how much data users can load or create. Those limits simply must be high enough to effectively navigate the discovery process.
I have seen many large companies accelerate the development of new analytics through the use of a discovery environment. Not only are users able to experiment more broadly and freely, but since they are already working within the scalable systems that will be used to deploy their findings, it is much easier and faster to move from prototype to final product. 
This in turn allows more iterations through the discovery process which allows the benefits to compound. With more flexibility and less bureaucratic overhead, users are able to be more innovative, more efficient, and are typically much more satisfied as well. After all, wouldn't you be happier if you weren't constrained arbitrarily in how you are able analyze data?
It is important to note that this isn't about ripping out and replacing an organization's data storage and analysis systems. It really doesn't require much in the way of capital investment. Rather, it is simply about changing how data storage and analysis are configured and how users interface with them.
 The systems in place at large companies today can easily handle the updated model as many Fortune 500 companies have proven. This shift requires some cultural and mindset changes, of course. At the same time, for those users who still prefer a predefined menu, there is nothing stopping IT from offering that too. The key is to enable users to choose what they prefer.
A model of enabling broad and flexible analysis of data as opposed to serving predetermined views of data isn't all that radical if you really think about it. Why wouldn't you want people empowered to freely search for the next great business-changing analysis? While it is a model that many organizations have yet to embrace, make sure that yours makes the shift.

Institutional Motivation: Inspiring and Retaining Talent 08-28


Institutional Motivation: Inspiring and Retaining Talent


Institutional motivation is a key issue when assessing an organization.  In today’s context it is even more important.

carrot_motivation_cartoon  
Organizations around the world are cutting back in a wide variety of ways, but few have considered how to motivate the talent they are keeping. Organizational assessments (OAs) which we have conducted suggest that they should. Our experience with international institutions, including NGOs, suggests that there is an assortment of leadership and organizational behaviours that can inspire talented staff to stay on and engage in their work to overcome short-term hardships  (in other words to create the motivation to perform).  Although not a panacea, engaging in these behaviors can offset some of the damage caused by lay-offs, pay reductions, job enlargements and so forth.
Our work in OA indicates that there are a set of recurring themes that are non financial in nature that help motivate employees to perform better, with better performing employees helping improve the performance of an organization.  The most frequently mentioned behaviors are leadership praise, leadership attention (for example, one-on-one conversations), and opportunities provided to lead projects or task forces.
There couldn’t be a better time to use these cost-effective approaches to support your performance goals.    Organizations face the challenge of retaining talented people amid morale-sapping layoffs. Often, top performers are the first to go. Strong talent management is critical to recruiting new talent, and the organizational culture is an incubator for talent.
Given the hard times we are presently going through, the question is why haven’t many organizations made more use of cost-effective motivators? One reason may be that many leaders have a tendency to “hibernate” during hard times  − to reflect and engage in deep thinking.  However, this lack of interaction between managers and their people creates a highly damaging void that saps employee engagement.
During these difficult times interaction is key.  If a leader does not like face-to-face interactions, they might be more comfortable engaging with their staff by using a survey.   In one recent survey, employees revealed that they were interested in organizational projects that supported their NGO’s environmental responsibility.  In another, there were suggestions to have coffee meetings with senior management.
Staff are often full of ideas that can provide guidance to managers.
“One-on-one meetings between staff and leaders are hugely motivational,” wrote a staff member in a multilateral organization, “they make people feel valued during these difficult times.”  By contrast, many respondents indicated that town hall meetings, corporate emails and large scale communications made them feel like just a “cog” in a big machine.  Often these communication tools sound like spin.
Motivating staff during hard times is a key role of organization leaders.  Inspiring the existing talent to perform at high levels is always a challenge, but particularly so during difficult times.  It is one of the reasons that in our OA model   we always pay a lot of attention to the idea of “institutional motivation”.  This refers to the underlying culture, values and norms that drive individual and organizational behavior.
For over 30 Charles  years, Dr. Charles Lusthaus was a Professor in the Department of Administration and Policy Studies in Education at McGill University. During that time, he taught Educational Management courses in organizational theory and behaviour, strategic management, organizational development, planning, and monitoring and evaluation to over a thousand graduate students.
Dr. Lusthaus is also a founding partner of the Universalia Management Group and is reputed for having pioneered an approach to institutional and organizational assessment (IOA). Today, the framework is used by a variety of international bodies including CIDA, IDRC, IDB, IUCN, and ILO.

The Key To Success Is Practice 08-28

The Key To Success Is Practice

How fortunate I am to have met Dandapani (pictured) on several occasions and to have listened – and embraced what he shares about energy.
I am asked regularly – “tell me the ‘one’ thing that made you successful?” And most do not find my answer uplifting, which is simply “hard work and persistence.”
I pose the question – “Is living a good life the same as a happy life?” The relentless pursuit of happiness is in itself more likely to cause unhappiness.
Does success mean to live every day in happiness... or is success to live a good life? A life full of many human emotions that we experience – not just happiness — does that equate to a successful life?
I found Dandapani’s work insightful and uplifting as part of my relentless quest for understanding the ‘experience of happiness’ and well-being.
As a child my parents would say to me “practice makes perfect.” – And they were absolutely right. What we practice (over and over again) is how we create the neuro pathways in our brains – these pathways can be altered but it takes a great deal of conscious thought.
Dandapani shared:
  • “Practice does not have the ability to discriminate between constructive and destructive patterns.
  • “What ever you practice is what you become good at.
  • “It is a conscious choice about what you want to practice.
  • “There is a difference between the mind and awareness.
  • “Imagine your awareness is a ball of light – As an exercise to see how this works let your mind focus your awareness on a particular thing (the last wedding you attended) – that area of your mind lights up – when it lights up that area of your mind becomes conscious.
  • “Using your will power and your consciousness you can take your awareness to any area of the mind you want to – and you can hold it there for a period of time.
Where awareness goes energy flows
Four areas of focus
1. Learn to Concentrate:
  • Concentration is the ability to keep your awareness on one thing for a prolonged period of time.
  • The more you practice concentration the better you get at it
  • The power of observation is a natural by product of the ability to concentrate
  • The best way to improve your concentration is to practice every day – integrate it into your daily life.
  • (May I suggest you put away your smart phone whilst you practice concentration – and turn off your emails and facebook alerts)
2. Developing your Will:
  • The ‘Will’ has to be cultivated, the more we use your will the stronger it becomes
  • Ways to develop your Will Power:
  1. Finish those things you start (do you finish the sleeping process by making your bed?)
  2. Finish tasks well beyond expectations
  3. Do a little more than you think that you are able to do
3. The art of a balanced life:
“A balanced life is about managing your energy. A balanced life is when we are able to consciously direct awareness in turn energy, in a proportionate way to all the people and things in our life that matter to us.
4. Courage:
It takes tremendous courage, will and self-compassion to break habits. To challenge yourself to live a different way.
Life is energy – harness it and direct it to the ones that you love and what matters most in your life and to the things that are fulfilling to you.
By wisely discriminating where your energy flows we channel it to the people and things that uplift us. We can remain respectfully detached from others.
The key to success is practice – all success comes from within.
As I say “If it meant to be it is up to me.” – I have the power to determine where my energy flows - and as such practice leads to success