Tag: IPod

Spirituality and Stilettos

Jackie-portraitOne of my favorite bloggers, Jackie Dumaine, has a beautiful post on her blog on the topic of spirituality:

“Being “Spiritual” does not mean giving up who you are.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

It’s about embracing who you are.

Being “Spiritual” does not mean giving up wine night with the girls or refraining from buying a new pair of stilettos (or two).  It means embracing varying levels of friendships and the little pleasures that life has to offer, without being attached to them for your happiness. Continue reading “Spirituality and Stilettos” →

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The Mindset List: 2016

Beloit College in Wisconsin posted this on their blog; a ‘paradigm inventory’ of what the college class of 2016 really is about:

This year’s entering college class of 2016 was born into cyberspace and they have therefore measured their output in the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds. They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America’s future, and are entering college bombarded by questions about jobs and the value of a college degree. They have never needed an actual airline “ticket,” a set of bound encyclopedias, or Romper Room. Members of this year’s freshman class, most of them born in 1994, are probably the most tribal generation in history and they despise being separated from contact with friends. They prefer to watch television everywhere except on a television, have seen a woman lead the U.S. State Department for most of their lives, and can carry school books–those that are not on their e-Readers–in backpacks that roll.

The class of 2016 was born the year of the professional baseball strike and the last year for NFL football in Los Angeles. They have spent much of their lives helping their parents understand that you don’t take pictures on “film” and that CDs and DVDs are not “tapes.” Those parents have been able to review the crime statistics for the colleges their children have applied to and then pop an Aleve as needed. In these students’ lifetimes, with MP3 players and iPods, they seldom listen to the car radio. A quarter of the entering students already have suffered some hearing loss. Since they’ve been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16-cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride, authors of The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal (John Wiley and Sons), it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references. It quickly became an internationally monitored catalog of the changing worldview of each new college generation. Mindset List websites at themindsetlist.com and Beloit.edu, as well as the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million visits annually.

For those who cannot comprehend that it has been 18 years since this year’s entering college students were born, they should recognize that the next four years will go even faster, confirming the authors’ belief that “generation gaps have always needed glue.” Get the list here: The Mindset List: 2016 List.

http://youtu.be/Hb3a44CaeBY

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Limit Screen Time, Limit Sitting

Leo Babauta writes:

One of the hazards of our modern lifestyle is our tendency to become more and more addicted to staring at screens, and more and more sedentary.

We look at laptops and desktop computers, iPhones and Androids and iPads and iPods, TVs and movie screens, play video games, watch videos, surf the web, socialize online, work online. And we’re sitting the whole time.

I’m a victim of this as much as anyone else. My family and I are drifting toward this lifestyle, and while I’m no Luddite, I do believe that we should live less as victims and more consciously.

Too much screen time means less active time, less personal socializing, less focus on the present, less time for cooking healthy food, less time reading novels, painting, making music, making time for the ones you love. And too much sitting means fewer years on your life.

So what’s a better way?

Limits.

Limit how much screen time you have each day. Limit your sitting to short periods with breaks in between.

I realize that many people have jobs that require them to have a minimum amount of computer time, and probably mostly sitting. So I don’t recommend a certain number, only that you figure out a limit and work with that.

What I’ve Been Doing

Though I’ve set limits for myself in the past, I’ll admit that they’ve eroded in recent months, so that my screen time has grown over time. And not just for me — for my wife and kids. So recently Eva and I set limits for ourselves, and we’ve been working with them.

We find them to be great. I find daily limits to be a better balance than going on week-long or month-long digital sabbaticals, which aren’t realistic for many people.

Here’s an example:

  • We set a limit of either 4 or 5 hours of total screen time a day. (We haven’t figured out what’s best yet, still experimenting.)
  • That total is broken into 30-minute chunks. So if it’s 5 hours total, that’s 10 chunks of 30 minutes.
  • At the start of a 30-minute chunk, I set a computer timer and put a tally mark on a text document, so I know how many chunks I’ve used today. When the bell rings, I close my laptop.
  • After the 30-minute chunk, I take a break of at least 30 minutes. I try to get up and move, stretch, play with the kids, get outside. I also often read a novel. The moving is good for my body, and helps me to think.
  • If I have things I want to look up online, or write online, I’ll just make a note of it and do it when I start my next 30-minute chunk.

This isn’t the only way to do it — you’ll have to find the limit that works for you, and the chunk size that works for you. But the idea is to set limits, and to break the total up into pieces so you’ll take breaks and do other things.

Benefits of the Limits

We’ve loved it: we’re reading more books, spending more personal time with each other and the kids, getting more chores done, exercising more, playing outside more.

It also means that because we have a limit, we have to figure out the best way to use that time. We have to make choices — what’s worthy of our limited time, and what isn’t? This means more conscious use of our time.

We haven’t instituted the limits with the kids yet, though we have been talking to them about it and getting them thinking about what would work best for them. And we do tell them to take breaks from devices throughout the day, so they’ll do other things.

For the kids, this has meant they have more unstructured, imaginative play, more reading, more art and music, more activity. Kids get addicted to screens just as much as adults do, and it’s not a healthy thing for them. We’re trying to teach them ways to live a healthy lifestyle, which is a lesson with lifelong benefits.

We’ve found this lifestyle to be healthier, better for relationships, better for our peace of mind. And to me, that means it’s something work keeping.

More reading:

via Limit Screen Time, Limit Sitting.

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Music and emotion through time

Michael Tilson Thomas: Music and emotion through time | Video on TED.com.

This TED talk from Michael Tilson Thomas made me think again about something I think about all the time and that is how the availability of any music on demand makes this a great time to live. Sure, clean air and clean water and an abundant supply of food is great, but music? MUSIC? I can listen to anything I want on my Google Nexus S via Spotify anywhere at any time and that never ceases to amaze me and I am grateful for the wide variety of music that is available to me…

The Gothic east end of Cologne Cathedral repre...
The Gothic east end of Cologne Cathedral represents the extreme of verticality. (nave, dating to the 19th century). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In May of 2005, I was blessed to attend a high mass in the Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany. The sun streaming through the stained glass, the incense, and the music, ah, the music — an all Mozart mass — I tried hard to imagine what an incredible experience that would have been in the 19th century when music was in short supply but with 5,000 songs on my iPod, it was hard to do!

I have very eclectic tastes in music; thanks to services like Pandora, I continue to get exposed to a wide variety of music. Just last night I found ‘Relaxation Radio’ and ‘Calm Meditation Radio’ channels on Pandora — great background music for massage. :-D

Before I sign off to go pick weeds in the garden, here’s another TED talk from one of my favorite musicians, David Byrne…

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What We Really Need to Be Happy

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” ~Unknown

Standing, getting crushed on the metro at peak hour, I look around and my heart sinks. I’m surrounded by sullen faces, their eyes focused intently on games on their iPads and smart phones.

These are the sullen faces representing a world of people dreading going to work, dreading grinding away at a job they hate.

The gadgets they use as distractions during their morning commute are constant reminders of why they must put themselves through this daily hell. They feel they need these things (among others), and their job allows them to have them.

Throughout history humans have always strived to have better “things,” to have more than their neighbors or at the very least be equal to them.

First it was outdoing the neighbor who just upgraded from horse and carriage to a car. Later it was getting a black a white TV, then the cassette player, and years later a CD player.

But in today’s modern world where trends change as soon as they begin, where the next version of the latest gadget comes out seemingly straight away, people are driven to work longer hours to afford to be at the forefront of the trends—the latest gadget, the latest car, the latest fashion.

But lurking behind the lives of shiny new cars, flat screen TV’s and iPhones is a void, is a huge deficit, and it’s not a budget one.

Our world is experiencing a passion and purpose deficit.” via What We Really Need to Be Happy | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In.

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I talk frequently about curation and what a valuable tool it is. I teach my students and clients that the time to curate content like this is when you find the paragraphs you WISH you’d written and you can add value to the curated content in the process. Jeff Goins is one of the most influential writers in social media and he recently shared this:

The privilege of leadership used to belong to a select few. The social elite. The especially charismatic. The unbelievably successful.

You used to have to be the head of your own organization. Or carry a prestigious title. Influence was earned slowly over time. And few had access to it.

But now, that’s all changed.

Photo credit: Jorge Franganillo (Creative Commons)

In the age of ideas when the exchange of information is as easy as a click of the button, anyone can be a leader. In the traditional sense, leadership is dead, and influence has replaced it.

So what do you — someone who wants to lead — do?

Become a thought leader

There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think… it’s all about the information!
—Cosmo, Sneakers

Start a blog. Launch a podcast. Begin recording videos of yourself and posting them on YouTube. Share your ideas with the world, and see which ones spread. This is what you need to do to see your influence grow.

In the age of the iPod, when we have instant access to gigabytes of teaching for free, the person with the best data (not the most) wins.

We don’t need more information. We need better information. We need compelling reasons to believe in a cause worth following. And those sharing them will be the leaders of tomorrow.

So where do you begin?

How about with collecting information? With becoming a learner (again)?

As they say, “leaders are readers.” But leaders are also conversationalists and event attendees.

They take people out to coffee and make friends at a party. Introvert or extrovert, they put themselves out there.

And if you want to lead, you will have to do the same.

An opportunity to lead (and learn)

Be honest. You don’t need more information. You need better discernment. I recently heard Alli Worthington share the following:

I hate it when people say they don’t know how to do something… Have you heard of Google?!

We all know this. Still, we struggle with knowing what information to believe or follow. So many choices, so little results. We just get paralyzed.

We need a process to curate. To figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. This is why I love organizations who demonstrate excellence of thought leadership not only through their example, but also through organized efforts to bring ideas and leaders together.

Source: How to Be a Leader in an Age of Information Overload | Goins, Writer

Me? I think Michael Moon of Gistics nailed it in his epic book Firebrands back in 1996. Moon hypothesized that we have now entered into a “5th Era” of man; the era of ‘trust networks’…

FifthEra.1.1

The potential that Jeff Goins describes is to use the “good, fast, and cheap” publishing tools available to us to become a ‘thought leader’ who heads up a trust network. If you’re intrigued by Jeff’s ideas but have no clue as to where to start comment below or use the ‘connect’ form; I offer the tools and the tactics – a ‘process for curation’ that can help you establish a thought leadership position through effective content management and content marketing…

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10 things scripture says about being a father

Father/Son A and B
Image by heymarchetti via Flickr

There is nothing easy about being a dad. Especially nowadays, if conversations around the water-cooler are anything to go by. Well, we hear your pain. But an honest look at history reveals a—well—comforting familiarity to the foundational premise.

Fact is; dads have been throwing their hands up in the air for literally thousands of years. Fortunately for us this means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The iPod, maybe. But the wheel, no.

While children were frustrating the dads of yore, the teachers of yore also came up with their own ideas. So we took a look:

“10-Ways to teach your son to fight Romans” didn’t seem PC.

“10-Ways to marry off your daughter before she becomes a teenager” also didn’t work for us.

“10-Ways to plague the Egyptians” wasn’t going to pass muster with the State Department.

The good news, however, is that we did find the following—more appropriate—10 things scripture says about being a father.

via allprodad.com

Follow the ‘via’ link if you’re interested in knowing what Scripture says about Fathering…

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My declaration of independence

Icon from Nuvola icon theme for KDE 3.x.

Click the icon below for the audio version…

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.” via en.wikipedia.org

This independence day, I declare independence from…

  • Trying to manage the unmanageable…
  • Anger and resentment related to the first item…
  • Substances that stimulate or depress…
  • Anything that’s keeping me from being a more authentic me…

I’ll give myself 30 days and I’ve entered these issues into Habitforge to help keep me on track. July is going to be a hell of a month — you may want to wait until August to talk to me…

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Image via CrunchBase
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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357k_8t0QMw

Yeah, the iPhone is all that and a bag of chips as we say in Wisconsin, but what if you don’t use AT&T and don’t want to switch carriers? Or worse yet! You can get AT&T but they won’t sell you an iPhone because they don’t have coverage there [happened to a friend of mine]? Well, all is not lost.

Tech buddy Steve Gallimore pointed out to me that the iPod touch — which I previously thought was worthless because of the small storage space — actually has wifi [duh! How did I miss that?] which makes it the most valuable of personal digital assistants [pdas] in many ways. In my hands on testing the iPod touch does have a lot of “WOW! Factor”. My only major complaint? It’s very hard to type on and there is no stylus option. Can’t type on it with any kind of speed at all! So for most of my needs, I’m still married to my trusty BlackBerry Curve, but I can understand why the iPhone is gaining ground. Now if we could only fix the dysfunctional way that phones are distributed through certain carriers, I’d be a happy camper…

In the next few weeks I’ll be talking a lot about cloud computing, Google Apps, smartphones, pdas, etc. and how they all work together for the busy executive. Stay tuned…

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Electronic media usage by children reaches record high

USA Today
Image via Wikipedia

Apparently electronic media is equal to a full time job for most kids…

“The findings, out today in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 2,002 people ages 8 to 18, show that young people spend seven hours and 38 minutes using media in a typical day — up from six hours and 19 minutes a decade earlier.

About the only thing that seems to be fading: ink. Though daily book readership has held steady at about 47% since 1999, the percentage of young people who say they read a magazine every day has plummeted from 55% to 35%. It’s worse for newspapers, down from 42% to 23%.

Electronic media are now “a part of the air that kids breathe,” says Vicky Rideout, director of Kaiser’s Program for the Study of Media and Health.

African-American and Hispanic kids spend nearly one-third more time each day with electronics than white kids. Among other findings:

  • Cellphone ownership has increased sharply since 2004, from 39% to 66%.
  • Ownership of iPods has jumped even more since 2004, from 18% to 76%.
  • 20% of kids’ media comes via mobile devices.

The near-ubiquity of mobile devices has had a profound effect on kids’ free time, filling up “the insterstitial spaces” in their daily lives, says Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. She jokes that iPods and cellphones may be this generation’s “magazines and chewing gum,” harmless ways to fill time.” Source: Kids’ electronic media use jumps to 53 hours a week – USATODAY.com

What does this say about our culture? Our future? The future of newspapers? I have a thousand questions. What about you?

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