If You Can...

If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can get going without pep pills;
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles;
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it;
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time;
If you can forgive a friend's lack of consideration;
If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of your own, something goes wrong;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him;
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend;
If you can face the world without lies and deceit;
If you can conquer tension without medical help;
If you can relax without liquor;
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed or color, religion or politics; then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog.

(Found this on jimgeary.com. Thought it might brighten your day.)

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Break Free from the Power of Guilt

**Disclaimer: This article is not intended to substitute for the advice of a qualified physician.**

What are emotions?

I read once that emotions are nothing more than the circulation of various chemicals in the bloodstream. Whether the emotion is anger, fear, sexual excitement, affection, or guilt, some gland or other has been instructed to dump various potions into your bloodstream, and these complex cocktails, in their turn, affect different organs in their own special ways. Fear, among many other things, may cause a constriction in the anal sphincter, for example. Anger may cause the heart to pump more furiously, pun intended. Sexual arousal may cause the palms to become sweaty and the muscles of the throat to tighten so that you speak in a high-pitched squeal, rather than your usual smooth baritone. The article I read suggested that anger should be allowed just two circuits around the bloodstream, and no more.

Emotions can be controlled to a degree.

We all know that ending an emotion is difficult to accomplish. But it is not impossible if you know how. In fact, in many cases, emotions are initiated (and maintained) by the thought processes of the brain. When you look at a photo of that special person, affection may result. But if, as you gaze adoringly at the photo of your loved one, a hungry, 12-foot alligator should enter your peripheral vision, I can guarantee that your feelings of affection will instantly be swapped for bowel-loosening terror. How did that happen? It is simple enough, really. Your thoughts were taken up by something more pressing. So it is possible, therefore, to control, to a large extent, the emotions you feel, by controlling the thoughts you think.

Emotions often depend on our thoughts.

This ability to control our emotions by controlling our thoughts becomes especially useful when emotions are harmful to ourselves and others. The ability to feel emotion is generally a wonderful thing; but it can become less than wonderful when the emotions control us and bring about injury.

The power of guilt.

One particular emotion that can do us harm is the one called guilt. There is no question that guilt is sometimes helpful. When we have hurt another person, guilt should move us to reconcile and perhaps make recompense. On the other hand, guilt can be used by others to manipulate us into doing things that we would not do otherwise and which are either foolish or injurious. (To see a master manipulator in action, you can watch Marie doing her thing on Everybody Loves Raymond.) Guilt can rob us of sleep, of happiness, of energy, of confidence, of life. Therefore, it is important to know when it is being used by others to manipulate us, and when its control over us has become pathological.

Being manipulated by guilt.

How often are people manipulated via the use of guilt? Every minute of every day. A guy you only met a couple of months ago tells you he needs money to buy a new set of rims for his car, and that if you really loved him you’d help. So you spring for the rims to the tune of several hundred dollars, while the slacker spends most of his time playing on his Xbox. A preacher tells you that if you don’t tithe to his church, you are making God mad, meanwhile his Lexus is parked outside a few spaces away from your Corolla. A charity sends you a request for a donation along with some return-address stickers, the implication being that you’d be a selfish jerk for using the stickers and not sending a donation. A spouse keeps reminding you of an infraction you committed in the past in order to get you to do what they want you to do today. All of these are examples of manipulation through guilt. The next time you feel the tug of guilt prodding you to do something, or not do something, stop and ask yourself if what you are contemplating is wise, or if you are perhaps being manipulated.

Being controlled by guilt.

The other harmful type of guilt is the kind that takes over your life and steals your joy and self-confidence. There may be something in your past that you continue to feel guilty about, even decades later. Ask yourself, is there anything useful that can come out of me continuing to feel guilty about this? If the answer is no, then you might need to work on breaking the cycle of bringing that event to mind over and over again. Maybe your guilt is something you are using as a means of punishing yourself for some perceived failure in your past. You want to make up for it somehow, but there doesn’t seem to be any avenue for making amends. Maybe someone has died and you can’t reconcile with them. Understanding that your feelings of guilt have no useful outlet doesn’t seem to help. One suggestion in these circumstances is to find a way to make indirect amends. You might write a letter, or perform some act of kindness. Even though these actions cannot directly affect the specific person you feel you wronged, they can be enormously helpful for you to feel that you have put the thing to rest.

However you may be affected by the power of guilt, you should know that it is possible to break free from its debilitating or otherwise harmful effects.

(This article has been featured on the Carnival of Improvement!)

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10 Quick & Easy Ways to Save Money

Who doesn't care about saving money? People who don't have any. For the rest of us, it pays to do a bit of spring cleaning on our spending habits every once in a while. One of the most pernicious myths about saving money is the idea that cutting small expenditures won't make much of a difference. These little outflows add up quickly and make a substantial impact on our finances over time. Here's a list of 10 ways you can save money without breaking a sweat.

1. Stop buying designer coffee. It's fine for special occasions, but stopping at Starbucks every day on your way to the office can take a big bite out of your wallet. Either make yourself a nice travel mug of coffee at home, or get it free at work.
2. Stop using the ATM at the 7-Eleven. Many people don't give a moment's thought to using that oh-so-convenient ATM and paying a couple of bucks for the privilege. Think about it...you take out $20 and pay $2 in ATM charges. That's 10% of your money you're giving away! Plan ahead and use your own bank's ATM. You'll save a bundle.
3. Get regular instead of premium gasoline. The fancy-sounding names for that high-octane fuel really don't make your car any happier.
4. Don't waste money on lottery tickets. Another name for them is a tax on the poor. Sadly, the people who can least afford them are the ones who buy them. If you saved that money and put it into an interest-bearing account you'll for sure win.
5. Cut back on your cable package. Do you ever watch all those extra channels?
6. Cut back on your cell phone minutes. Call up your mobile provider and ask for an analysis of your minute usage. You may find that you can easily get by with a cheaper package.
7. Do not go over your minutes on your cell phone! You'll actually save money by paying for more minutes. (Better yet, cut back on the talking altogether.)
   
8. Get rid of your landline. If you and your family members all use cell phones, consider ditching your landline.
9. Take lunch to work rather than buying it. You'll not only save money, you'll save on your health too.
10. Stay away from free trial offers. They're all designed in hopes that you'll forget to cancel in time and end up paying for the service.
    

If only a few of these apply to you, you might find that they make a big difference in your wallet.

*This article has been featured in the Carnival of Improvement!

If you've found this article helpful, please consider dropping a bill or two into the hat. The Price of Rice! and I could use your support in order to put out more articles like this one. Thanks!

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Make Time for Rest & Reflection

Today is Sunday. What do you do on Sunday? Many of you might go to church today. Some of you went to church or temple yesterday. Many of you have to go to work on Sunday. Many of you might do none of these things; instead, you might sleep in, get outside for some fresh air, go out to eat, watch sports, do the crossword puzzle.

The Judeo-Christian tradition holds that the Sabbath (some say it's Sunday, others claim it's Saturday) should be a day of rest and worship. I won't take the religious approach in this article since for all intents and purposes I am not a believer in a supernatural being, but there does seem to be a great deal of validity to the idea that human beings fare much better, both physiologically and psychologically, when we set aside for ourselves a day of rest and reflection; rest for the body and reflection for the mind. In the religious traditions I mentioned earlier, working on the day of rest is forbidden. We don't need to be religious, however, to enforce such an edict upon ourselves, if we see the value of such an island of time set aside to exclude all work.

An alarming number of adults in our society wake up feeling tired every day of their lives. They find themselves dragging themselves to work, with no energy and no enthusiasm. Is this how life is meant to be lived? Is this the natural order of things? Maybe not. Perhaps one potent answer to this common problem is, in fact, a day of rest and reflection.

It has long been known to researchers that the human brain operates on both conscious and unconscious levels, and that it requires diversion from work in order to function effectively. We have all been in the situation where we are completely bereft of any creativity or freshness, sitting with a blank stare, like fungus on a piece of decaying deadfall. I have sometimes combed the Internet for hours, hoping in vain for an idea to shoot out of my screen and into my head. What is the cure for that kind of mental vacancy? It is not to keep working at the same problem. Often it is to get my mind completely off that track and let it amuse itself for awhile. Only then can the dead batteries recharge so that I can return to the same insoluble problem to find that is not nearly so insoluble after all. In fact, my subconscious has solved it while my conscious mind has been enjoying some form of interesting diversion.

So how valuable can an entire day of diversion be? It can be enormously valuable, I have found. In a similar way that ten minutes of inconsequential play every hour or two can help me in the short term, so can a day of rest and reflection every seven help me in the longer term. Listen to a conversation with Dr. Fred Hardinge, who holds a Doctorate in preventive care:

FRED: Fatigue is a significant problem in our society today. A recent survey showed that two-thirds of Americans say they are very tired most of the time.

SHAWN: Two out of three of us are saying we're always tired.

FRED: That's correct.

SHAWN: Well, I have to admit that I probably fall into that two-thirds. I probably wake up tired much more often than I should. As a matter of fact, I've just finished a long itinerary, I am dragging myself around all the time, and the thing I'm curious about is, what does that do to us? If two-thirds of us are tired all the time, and we have jobs that place really high demands on us, what is it actually doing to us? Does it affect us?

FRED: It absolutely does, Shawn. A tired person is slower, they are less efficient, and they make more mistakes.

SHAWN: OK.

FRED: And a lot of research in recent years has demonstrated some of the reasons as to why that actually may be the case. We have observed for many years that tired people's performance slips. Tired soldiers don't make good soldiers, tired nurses make more mistakes, and tired doctors have more accidents on the way home. They, too, may make a few more mistakes even in their care of patients, although that's a difficult thing to prove sometimes. More and more research is looking at this kind of thing. However, probably the most fascinating kind of research to me has looked at why brain function seems to slow down.

SHAWN: Right. Now, I can understand-people make mistakes when they're tired. I say things I don't mean when I'm tired, I put this file in the wrong folder and so on, when I'm tired. But the thing I wonder about is, why? Why does fatigue do that to my mind, doctor? Because I'll share with you, I think of it as a computer. It ought to just work no matter how tired I am. I just plug it into an energy source and let it run. Why am I making mistakes when I'm tired? What is actually going on?

FRED: A series of studies have recently been done at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research over the last 10 years. And they have taken healthy subjects who are fully rested and, using modern technology that is non-invasive, looked at certain aspects of the function of the brain.

These individuals were tested when they had been fully rested, and then were awakened at six in the morning. Brain scans were done. They then were kept awake, but they weren't asked to do any difficult problem solving, simply remaining awake-a day at the beach twiddling one's thumbs.

SHAWN: OK, so they are not engaged in high thought processes, it's just day-to-day existence.

FRED: Very relaxed. Then on the same day, 16 hours after waking, the same tests were done, and when they compared the results, they found that the front part of the brain lost blood supply compared to when they were rested and first awakened.

SHAWN: So we don't have fuel going the to front part of the brain when we're tired?

FRED: Not as much.

SHAWN: So what does that do to us? I mean, why is the front part of the brain-you'll have to forgive my ignorance-but what does that front part of the brain do for us? What actually takes place there, and why is this affecting us?

FRED: The front part of the brain carries out the most important functions of the mind. It is where we make our decisions. And successful living is dependent upon good decisions.

SHAWN: Now, are we talking about the decision of which pair of socks to wear this morning, or are we talking about big or moral decisions?

FRED: It involves every decision, from the so-called small ones to the biggest one. And this research has demonstrated, given us a reason to understand, why the front part of the brain is so important to this decision-making process. There are what are known as the high-order mental functions-and there are five of them. The first is discrimination or discernment. It is the ability to recognize that there are choices we can make. And when you get up in the morning, a simple example is that you discern in your drawer between the white socks and the dark socks.

SHAWN: Yeah, you know, I always make the wrong decision. That's what my wife tells me.

FRED: That's why I ask my wife-and if it goes with it or not.

SHAWN: That's the discrimination or discernment.

FRED: There are no decisions to be made if there are no options.

SHAWN: OK.

FRED: I can't think of anything in life, any circumstance, that has no options at all. So, we make discernments all the time. We are exercising that. But when we're tired, we don't discern as well.

SHAWN: That can be dangerous when it gets into the moral realm, obviously.

FRED: Absolutely.

SHAWN: What are some of the higher mental order?

FRED: The net high-order mental function is judgment. That's where we evaluate those options that we have discerned.

SHAWN: Very good.

FRED: And we draw upon past experience, knowledge, etc., to choose which one is the best for the current set of circumstances. The next high-order mental function is initiative.

Initiative is the ability to start doing something now that we have decided we need to do. There are many times in life when we know what we should do, but we don't act on it.

SHAWN: That does happen all the time.

FRED: And when we're tired, discernment, judgment and initiative wane and we are not as effective in our decision-making. But it goes even further than that. Our ability to problem solve is a high-order mental function. And what happens when we're tired is we may look at the options and choose one that we think is the very best, based upon our judgment, but in reality, our field of vision has been narrowed, and we have missed the very best one. And that's because problem-solving requires the ability to look at all the possible options.

SHAWN: Now, that makes good sense to me. The other day I was exceptionally tired and somebody approached me and said, "What do you think about this? Should we do A, B or C?" And I looked at it, and you know something? I had only slept a few nights out of the previous week, and I couldn't make a decision. I looked at all the options and I said, "I don't know." I couldn't evaluate them; I couldn't do anything with them.

FRED: And E or F may not have even been within your vision, so to speak.

SHAWN: Absolutely.

FRED: And F might have been the very best one under those circumstances.

SHAWN: Right.

FRED: That is what happens when we're tired. The last high-order mental function is forethought, and this has much to do with efficiency. Forethought is the ability to begin doing something now that will save us time in the future. Tired people are not very efficient. It takes them longer to do the same things that they could have done when they were rested.

SHAWN: Now, that seems to make sense. In light of everything you have shared with me, we don't have the ability to make judgments in this state, we don't have the ability-our initiative is weakened, all of these areas are weakened. And so when you look at a task when you're tired, you can't always make the right decision to do it the best way or the most efficient way.

FRED: That is exactly what happens when we're tired.



SHAWN: Right. I think you have just described most people reading this script today. We have all lived with this, and we live with it much more than we ought to.

FRED: You have probably heard of Yo-Yo Ma, the world-famous cellist.

SHAWN: Absolutely-a favorite of mine.

FRED: He gave a concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City a few years ago, and following the concert, he got in a taxi to go to his hotel. He put his cello in the trunk of the taxi. When he got to the hotel, he paid the cabbie, he went into the hotel, went to his room, and then realized that his cello was left in the trunk.

SHAWN: Oh, my.

FRED: Now, he would not normally have done that. But in an interview with a newspaper reporter, he said, "I was so tired that I simply forgot it."

SHAWN: Now, I'm no Yo-Yo Ma, but the other day I left my camera on the airplane for the same reason. I was actually at the luggage carousel and mentally I was thinking, "I usually have three bags. Something's missing." And it took me 20 minutes or so until I realized my camera was still on that plane and it was leaving!

FRED: There is another area of the brain, Shawn, that is also affected by fatigue. It's called the thalamus, and it has many important functions, but relative to our decision-making, it passes all of the sensory information to the higher levels of the mind.

SHAWN: OK, so this is like a relay-switch from my sense of touch, taste, feel, hearing?

FRED: Exactly. And when we are tired, the funnel gets smaller, if you will. In other words, the same amount of information is coming in from the senses, but the funnel fills up because it's smaller, and some data is lost. When we make decisions on only partial information, that is when we tend to make catastrophic decisions. This is what happened with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

You might think it ironic that I'm writing this article (working, in other words) on a Sunday. Well, I'm not perfect, but I'm working on it.

If you've found this article helpful, please consider dropping abill or two into the hat. The Price of Rice! and I could use your support in order to put out more articles like this one. Thanks!

Protect Yourself with Written Contracts and Receipts

Whether you are a business owner or just a regular Joe or Jen, when it comes to business dealings, you owe it to yourself to put them all in writing. Oral contracts (many people use the term “verbal” when they mean “oral,” but the term “verbal” includes anything that uses words) are enforceable in court in most instances (real estate transactions are a notable exception), but they are notoriously difficult to prove, often coming down to a “he said, she said” type of situation.

Most people choose not to put things in writing, either because it seems like too much trouble, or because they “trust” the other person. Both of these reasons are quite foolish. Many disputes are not the result of bad intent on either side, but rather are due to an honest difference of opinion as to the terms of the agreement. Having the terms spelled out clearly in writing will usually clear up these misunderstandings. Further, we should keep in mind that “trusting” people in business dealings, even close family members, can prove to be an unwise decision, since people will usually act in self interest when it comes to business.

Some tips to keep in mind when putting an agreement in writing:

• Make two originals, one for each party, both signed and dated by all parties. If there is a dispute, you should both be able to produce an original.
• Sign the agreement in blue ink. This makes it easy to see that you have an original and not a copy (although it’s not that difficult nowadays to make a color copy!).
• Write in plain English. Don’t try to make it fancy by trying to speak in lawyer-like language. “The party of the first part” and such legal-speak should be left out.
• Don’t amend a written agreement orally. It will not hold up in court. A written agreement can only be amended in writing.
• When money changes hands, always use written receipts or pay in a form that can be proven, such as check, money order or credit card. Paying in cash, with no receipt to prove payment, is the height of folly and can come back to haunt you if the other party disputes your payment.
• Always, always, always read contracts carefully before signing!

**Disclaimer: No part of this article should be construed as a substitute for professional legal advice. On legal matters you should always consult a professional attorney.**

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Do We Need God in Order to be Good? (A Response)

(SpacemanSpiff, who, I am proud to say, happens to be my oldest child, has kindly agreed to write a guest post for my blog. This is an eloquent response to my posts on the subject, Do We Need God in order to be Good. Thanks Spaceman! I love you!)

Yes "religion" taken as the actions of religious people (which is certainly a fair way to take it) has been used as a justification for evil as often as for good.

My answer to this question though requires connecting a number of conclusions that I don't think you've heard before. So I'll try to summarize as best I can. If you like this you can post it as a guest article. Anyway, here goes.

First, while I agree that religion has often been used to justify evil at least as often as it has been used to for good, I do think the language we're using is very interesting. Where did we learn to use language like good and evil?

Can there be any content to the ideas of good and evil other than "that which I like" and "that which I don't like"? Without some sort of religion, I'm fairly certain it can't. Yet I think you and I both want to be able to mean something more than that. So the very fact that we are asking why religious people so often do evil things already seems to concede that something like religion is a given, since there is some good and evil larger than both us and those religious people.

Second, that religious people do so much evil doesn't prove that religion does no good. Only that it isn't a panacea, and that people will use anything they can find for the ends they had. Would you say that science has more often been used for good than evil? I'd be willing to take that debate any day of the week. But of course I wouldn't then make the claim that science is false or evil or a negative force in history. What people use science for only shows their own nature, not the nature of science.

Third, if my understanding of Christianity is correct, then there is plenty of evidence to support the idea of "general revelation." If God reveals himself in nature, and if man is made in God's image, it is no surprise then that we might find men everywhere doing good without "religion" and people with "religion" doing evil. Christianity allows me to say "God is working over there in those people, though they may not know His name" and "All who call themselves Christians run the risk of doing so falsely and using Christianity as another tool for evil." Ultimately, Christianity teaches that God is progressive, and nothing else, least of all religion. Thus wherever we see good happening, we say "Praise God!"

A view of science or democracy as uniquely progressive, or a view of religion as uniquely or inherently regressive is much less forgiving and flexible, and as far as I can tell, doesn't hold up under scrutiny. There are too many examples of religious understanding causing people to do good and noble things and too many examples of science, capitalism, democracy, and what-have-you being used in evil ways for those to hold up.

Stephen Colbert interviews Richard Dawkins

I'm not feeling well today (could be Bird Flu), so rather than my usual thoughtful essay, I'm posting this thoughtful video. Hope you enjoy it. It's really very good.

Get Your Life Back (Part Five)

Once again, your goal is to increase your effectiveness and efficiency at work by eliminating, as much as possible, time and effort that bring about little or no productivity. One of the most inefficient endeavors in existence, and one that most people don’t consider, is focusing on tasks that you are not good at.

Many people mistakenly strive to achieve a balanced portfolio of strengths. They want to be well rounded, to eliminate their weaknesses. If they’re very good at crunching numbers, they focus on learning a new language. If they’re good at inspiring and leading people, they invest great gobs of time into developing their skills at designing spreadsheets. You’ve heard the phrase, Jack of all trades, master of none. This well describes the usual outcome of that sort of undertaking.

The art of using leverage is one of the most powerful techniques in the universe. Archimedes is famously known to have said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” In the context of this article, using leverage means making use of your strengths, as a fulcrum, to achieve things that would normally be impossible.

Let me give you an example. Why do people run for the office of President of the U.S. when they and everyone else knows that they have no chance of winning? They do it in order to gain name recognition and a degree of celebrity. Why? To feed their needy egos? No, they do it in order to use their celebrity later on as leverage to sell books and command very lucrative speaking fees and become rich lobbyists. So ask yourself this: Am I leveraging my strengths to accomplish more than I ever thought possible, or am I kicking at the goads of my weaknesses in a vain attempt to transform them into strengths?

In an earlier article I wrote about following your bliss, or doing what you love. What I’m advising here is that you do what you are good at, which, in many cases is what you love. A very happy coincidence when it happens, and it frequently does.

If you've found this article helpful, please consider dropping abill or two into the hat. The Price of Rice! and I could use your support in order to put out more articles like this one. Thanks!

Get Your Life Back (Part Four)

Your goal, as we’ve stated, is to be able to leave work at a reasonable hour without your employer feeling that you haven’t done enough. To accomplish this Herculean task, you must help your employer to feel the opposite, that you consistently get the job done and do it well. That’s a reputation that will go a long way towards reclaiming your life.

When I was in high school, I cultivated such a reputation with my teachers, at least with most of them. They weren’t concerned about an absence here or there, or a tardy once in a while, because they thought of me as a diligent student. In the same way, when your employer or supervisor thinks of you as dependable, resourceful and motivated, he or she will not begrudge you time for your family or yourself.

One of the most effective ways to cultivate this kind of reputation, with a relatively small investment of time and effort, is to master the art of follow-up.

Let’s say you’re given an assignment. Keep your boss up to date on your progress. Let him or her know when you’ve completed it. If you’ve got customers or clients, do the same thing. Let them know what’s happening. You’ll keep them happy, and you’ll cut way down on the calls and emails you’ll get from them wanting to know what’s going on, especially the ones that come in at night or on weekends. I hate those. Put yourself in their shoes. Don’t you hate it when you have to hunt down information from people to find out the status of something you’ve delegated to them? Don’t you appreciate it when they keep you informed before you even have to think about it? Sure you do. Do the same for your boss and your customers and they will never worry about what you’re up to when you’re not around.

And one related tip: Teach those who work for you to do the same for you!

If you've found this article helpful, please consider dropping abill or two into the hat. The Price of Rice! and I could use your support in order to put out more articles like this one. Thanks!

Get Your Life Back (Part Three)

Businesses understand the point of diminishing returns. They exist to maximize profits. They have to know at what point the making of one more widget not only adds nothing to their bottom line, it actually takes away from it. That last widget will net them zero profit because the amount they will get from selling it equals the amount it costs them to make it. That’s where they stop. But this principle applies to many aspects of your working life as well. If you learn to use it, you will have gone a long way towards reclaiming your life.

Remember, the goal we are discussing here is to get more done at work in less time, so you can give more time to your loved ones and your own needs without making your employer feel cheated. This tip involves learning to recognize that point at which more time at a certain task will not bring more or better results. That’s the time to put a full stop to it and mark it done, or at least done for now.

Now, if you are the type of person who likes to cut corners and take shortcuts and generally do a substandard job on a regular basis, this tip will not help you. This tip is for the obsessive perfectionist. It’s for the person who won’t leave well enough alone, who pours unprofitable time into a project or task simply trying to make it perfect.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Will my continued efforts make things significantly better?
2. Will my continued efforts make a difference to anyone?

If the answer to these questions is no, it’s time to put a period to it. As Timmy admonished George Costanza, “From now on, when you take a chip, just take one dip and end it!” Let me give you a couple of examples.

I was working on a project late one night. I had gotten a lot done, but I wasn’t finished. I was close to the end, it was within sight. There’s a part of me that just wants to get it done, get it off the radar screen, so I was tempted to keep plugging away. But I realized that, even though I might finish it that night, from that point on I was too tired to make it any good. It wouldn’t be up to snuff. I decided that I’d reached the point of diminishing returns (PODR). More time that night would not be efficient. I knew that there was a more efficient use of my time at that moment. So I went to bed and fell asleep. It was, indeed, a very effective sleep. The next morning I finished up in 10 minutes and did a great job of it.

When I write, I know that I can always make it better. Every time I go over what I’ve written, I can spot something I could say more graphically, or more pithily, or more artfully, or more…you get the idea. I’m not talking about errors in grammar or stupid typos; those should be completely eradicated if possible. However, I know that, at some point, the improvement I might achieve would not be worth the time it would take to achieve it. I’ve arrived at the PODR.

If you learn to know when you’ve reached that point, and if you can muster the discipline to call it quits right there, you will be able to do excellent work in less time.

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Get Your Life Back (Part Two)

(I learned this tip from Stuart R. Levine.) Consider how much time is wasted by over-explaining. When someone is going over a project they want you to handle, sometimes they continue explaining it long past the point when you understood. (In a large meeting, you’re more or less stuck listening to them drone on. You may not be able to just stand up and walk out, but you can work on something else while they’re repeating themselves ad infinitum. When I was a preacher I came up with some of my best sermons while listening to another preacher make his point for the fifteenth time.) But when you’re one-on-one, you can simply say, “I got it.” This lets them know that you understand and that there’s no need to continue. In the same way, when someone says that to you, take the hint and move on. Some people really enjoy the sound of their own voice, and others are insecure either about their ability to explain or your ability to comprehend. In either case, you can save a great deal of time by letting them know you understand and are ready to go to it.

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Get Your Life Back

I live in Florida. As it turns out a significant portion of my State is what’s known as “reclaimed land.” That means, apparently, that some kind of water, either sea, lake or swamp, at some time, came and took our land. Just stole it, right out from under us. Well, we weren’t having any of that. So we went in with our heavy machinery and low-wage labor and flat took it back. We reclaimed what was rightfully ours! No, that’s not what happened. It would be more accurate to call it “claimed” land. In fact, if the global warming folks turn out to be right, that water is going to come and reclaim it from us. And it will take back more than what we took from it. Teach us to mess with the oceans.

Our lives can be like that. We wage a constant battle against external (and sometimes internal) forces that are trying to claim whole sections of our lives. We feel besieged, under assault, claustrophobic. We no longer have control of our lives, and everybody wants more of us. Our employer isn’t happy with our efforts; our families feel cheated; we feel cheated. Not a pretty picture.

In the fight over our time, the two combatants are usually family and work. Neither one will cede and inch, or a second. And so we often make the mistake of seeing our choice as giving more time to one or the other, which obviously can never please both because it’s a zero sum game: giving more to one takes away from the other. Then what’s the answer? The answer is not some complex magic formula for dividing 24 hours to make everyone happy. The answer is being more effective with the time you do have.

So I want to give you a few tips on being more effective with the time you put in at work, so you can get everything done well in a shorter amount of time. A recent survey showed that people who work in offices get distracted from what they’re doing every 11 minutes on average. The Productivity Institute estimates that 20 percent of the workday is spent on “crucial” or “important” things, and 80 percent is spent on things that have “little” or “no value.” There are countless ways that your time at work can be frittered away on things that keep you from what you really need to get done. If you can identify what these time-stealers are, and learn how to eliminate, or at least severely curtail them, you can begin to reclaim your life.

If you’re feeling the pressure to get things done at work, it’s unlikely that you are the chatterbox, but you are probably the target of one or more of them. If you added up the actual time you spend, on average, every day, in social interactions with coworkers, what do you think would be the grand total? Do you think you could use that time to get more done? Do you want to reclaim it? The trick is to find a friendly, inoffensive way to cut these conversations short, or better yet, keep the chatterboxes at bay altogether. One very creative office worker came up with this method:

Very early in my career I learned the trick of creating a folder for each person I had regular contact with (i.e., boss, peers, direct reports, suppliers and others). Items I needed to discuss with these folks (but which were not urgent) got tossed in their file along with a list of commitments they had made to me in terms of future deliverables. I used the files to prepare for one-on-one meetings, staff meetings, etc. A side benefit was that if someone arrived on my doorstep uninvited and unwelcome, all I had to do was grab their folder and start to ask them about the work they owed me and like magic they would remember somewhere else they had to be!

Some other ideas:

Say this: “I can’t talk right now because I’m right in the middle of something that’s due soon. Let’s talk later.”

Do this: When you see them coming, pick up your phone and pretend to be speaking to someone.

Whatever you come up with, the most important thing is to decide that you cannot afford to let chatterboxes steal time from you or the people you care about.

Please check back for more tips to come!

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The Astonishing Hypothesis

I ran across this quote from an excellent article on consciousness from Time online:

...neuroscientists agree on many features of both of them, and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"--the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.

The article goes on to say that:

...they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain.

A great deal of the fundamental basis for Christianity lies in the belief that human beings have a dual nature composed of a material body and an immaterial soul. It is this immaterial soul that holds the consciousness, the personality, within it, according to religious doctrine. The soul, it is believed, has an existence apart from the body, and lives on after the body is destroyed. In the Bible, it is not clear exactly what happens to the soul after the body dies. There are scriptures that speak of "sleep," while others seem to indicate residence in a sort of halfway house where souls await final judgment. Ultimately, at the resurrection, souls receive an indestructible new "spiritual" body, and face the judgment of Christ, moving on to either eternal bliss or eternal damnation, depending on the souls' faith or lack thereof.

If there is a soul that lives on and will face judgment, that fact would certainly have an all-important bearing on our choices and decisions. If these things are true, the equations that influence our decisions are changed drastically, placing a weighty infinity on one side and a paltry three to five decades of life on the other. Better spend a goodly portion of those decades worshiping God if you know what's good for you.

On the other hand, if there is no eternal soul involved, if you and I and what we think of as our "selves" are entirely "tied to the brain," and will therefore cease to exist as soon as our brains themselves cease to live, then we can take eternity and final judgment out of the equations alltogether.

This idea frightens people, and the religious person will warn of anarchy and ruthless amorality run amok unless we have the fear of eternal torture to keep us in check. The article I quoted from earlier refutes this false prediction eloquently when it asserts that:

...the conviction that other people can suffer and flourish as each of us does is the essence of empathy and the foundation of morality.

If the "foundation of morality" proceeds from this "conviction," and not from religion (which is what I believe the facts of history bear out), then it follows that we do not "need God in order to be good" (see my three earlier articles on this question).

I mentioned in the post before this one that I choose to believe only that which the available evidence supports. On these related questions, the origins of consciousness and the existence or non-existence of the soul, it seems to me that all the evidence we have is on the side of physicality rather than immateriality. Truthfully, there is no eternal soul is in evidence.

The Question of Belief

I've had a few conversations lately about believing in God. (If you are a regular reader of this blog I think you will have picked up some hints that I don't, although I was a minister for about 20 years.) These conversations sort of ended with the other person saying, essentially, "Well, I can't prove that God exists, and you can't prove that he doesn't exist." This statement puts belief in God and unbelief in God on an equal footing, both schools of thought being equally rational. In this post I will briefly comment on that sentiment.

It is true that I cannot prove the non-existence of a supernatural being who is omnipotent, omniscient, intimately involved in the world, and all the rest. I can, however, demonstrate that the existence of such an entity is a) highly improbable, and b) completely lacking in any evidence whatsoever. (One of the bits of "evidence" I used to rely on, called evidence from design, says that the complexity of the natural world is so improbable that it must have had a designer; the problem with this theory is that a designer, who must be more complex that what he designed, would have to be even more improbable.) I can't prove that there is no Ford Taurus out in space somewhere, but there is no evidence that there is and the likelihood of it is extremely small. In the same way, the existence of God is highly improbable, and there is no evidence to support his existence. On the other hand, there is evidence to support the things that I believe, e.g. evolution, the Big Bang, etc. I choose not to believe in things that are highly improbable and have no evidence to support them.

Comments? Anyone? Anyone?

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The MySpace Quandary

Is MySpace the ultimate pedophile heaven that some claim it to be? Or is it a safe place for kids to interact with each other as long as they refuse to allow any communication with people they don't already know? There are whole books written about the evils of MySpace, and both MySpace and its parent company, News Corp are being sued by "parents of girls who were allegedly solicited and sexually assaulted by adult users of MySpace" (c|net News.com).

You should know that I favor the most severe punishments possible for adults who prey on kids. At the same time, however, I think kids out to be smart about this danger. As a father of two teen girls, I frequently try to impress on them the utter foolishness of actions that would put them at increased risk of being abused or assaulted in this way. I want to believe that they've gotten the message and are too smart to be lured into a dangerous situation, whether through MySpace or any other venue.

It seems to me that girls (or boys, for that matter) who interface with strangers on the Internet are lacking something. It may be general intelligence. It may be information about the ease with which evil people can hide behind false identities on the Internet. It may be basic self-esteem. It may be genuine friendships. It may be a combination of two or more of these absences, but something's missing. Am I wrong? Is every young person a potential victim no matter what? Of course I'd like to believe otherwise.

I will always remember my family's first awakening to the presence of circling sharks on the Internet. My oldest son, about 12 or 13 at the time, and I were trying out a new feature on the Internet that allowed him to play chess with other people online and chat with them at the same time. I was sitting behind him, looking over his shoulder, as a stranger began to ask him personal questions. I prompted him to give false or silly answers, until the other person began to get angry and spew expletives our way. That was the end of that.

My youngest daughter thinks I'm being overly paranoid because I won't allow her to go to a nearby park without an adult. Am I? I don't know, but I do know that we all have to do what we can to minimize the risks to life and limb that exist in our modern world.

Please share your thoughts and experiences on this important subject.

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Mars Attacks!

This is serious. OK, the title of this post is not serious, but the content is. There have been two new reports of UFO sightings that seem to be more credible than most, both occurring in the U.S. and both reported by seemingly credible people. The first was reported in the Chicago Tribune and was the most-read story on the Tribune web site for four days. The sighting took place at O'Hare airport on November 7, 2006, and was described by several United Airlines employees who claimed that "a flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies."

The second story, reported in WorldNetDaily, concerns a retired Air Force pilot in Arkansas. Here's what he describes:

"At first I thought they were landing lights from an aircraft. As I continued to observe them they began to slowly disappear, then suddenly one reappeared, followed by two, then three. On at least one occasion four or five appeared. Each time they would slowly fade and eventually disappear. This occurred several times and when they would reappear they might do so in differing numbers and in different positions, sometimes in a triangular shape, sometimes stacked on top of each other, sometimes line abreast, et cetera. When the objects appeared they might stay illuminated 10 or more minutes."

Why am I writing about these two reports? I'm not exactly sure of the reasons, but these two stories seem to be about something more than people's wishful thinking or their minds playing tricks on them. I try to be skeptical about anecdotal evidence, including reports about bigfoot, chupacabras, Nessie, near-death experiences, and UFOs. Eye-witness accounts tend to be extremely unreliable for forensic purposes, since people lie or are suckered by their own minds all the time. It is fact that what we "see" is not an accurate representation of physical reality, but an amalgam of physical reality and our own mental construction.

With this in view, however, I still think these two reports may prove to be important. We will see. If they drift or plummet into oblivion, you won't remember what I said about them here. If they amount to something, don't worry, I will remind you of my prescient remarks.

Do We Need God in Order to be Good? (Part 3)

Is religion the cause of society’s goodness? That is the question we will examine today. There are two divergent views about the direction of our culture in terms of goodness and morality. One the one hand, religious people might decry the direction of our culture by citing the increased incidence of sex outside of marriage, or the widening acceptance of pornography and bad language. On the other hand, sociologists might hail the positive changes society has enjoyed in the last several centuries. As examples they would cite the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, laws against child labor, and an increasing acceptance of homosexuals (which most religious people would see as a decrease in morality).

Those standards of behavior that are predicated primarily upon religious beliefs, which have to do most commonly with restrictions on sexual expression outside of marriage, are certainly in decline. As religion loses its hold on our culture, I liken our behavior to that of a teen going away to college who experiments with his new found freedom from parental restrictions. Certain aspects of what he was taught by his parents do not seem to be rational, so he sets them aside. But as he does so, he learns whether or not those old restrictions make sense. If he finds that they do, he will abide by them. If not, he discards them entirely. For example, if he was taught that masturbation would make him blind, he will find that it does not, and he can see no ill effects at all. In a similar fashion, our culture, over the centuries, has been shedding the religious rationale for standards of behavior and is finding out whether or not those prohibitions have a basis outside of religious stricture. In some cases, for example having children outside of marriage, we are finding that there are solid sociological reasons for minimizing that practice. In other cases, for example the subjugation of women and marginalization of homosexuals, we are finding that there is no rational basis for them outside of religion.

So if we look at trends such as increasing justice and human dignity for women, minorities, and homosexuals, we can see that they are not fuelled by religion at all, and in large measure are actually hindered by religious belief.

There will always be debate on this issue, however I do hope that this series of articles will shed some light on the question for my readers.

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Do We Need God in Order to be Good? (Part 2)

According to statistics I have seen, taking one particular measure (divorce rate), those who profess a born again experience are just as likely to get divorced as those who do not. (Some studies show that divorce rates decrease as church attendance rates increase. This can easily be explained by taking into account the social pressures to avoid divorce in a closely knit church setting. In fact, in my former church, the claim was made that there were no divorces among its members. But any members who did get divorced would have to leave the church due to being shunned, so this specious statistic was maintained only by sleight to hand.)

We often assume, and hear it proclaimed by the religious, that our society gets its morality from its religion, and that without religion, people would have no reason to be moral and would thus descend into hellish deviltry.

Let us consider two aspects of morality. There is first the question of knowing what is moral and what is immoral. Can we know right from wrong without religion? The second question is, knowing right from wrong, are we likely to choose the right without religion? The religious say that the answers to both questions are negative. They claim that without God, without the Bible, we have no objective way to distinguish right from wrong. Let’s examine that claim.

In the words of Jesus (according to the New Testament), “Therefore all things, whatever you desire that men should do to you, do even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). According to Jesus himself, then, the entire set of God’s rules can be distilled down to this single principle. It is more familiarly known as the golden rule. So, do we need the Bible to teach us this principle. In fact, this principle is internalized in all normal human beings by virtue of human empathy. Do not children learn this principle when their mothers first pose the question to them: “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” I know that it is wrong to steal because I would not want anyone to steal from me. I know it is wrong to commit adultery because I would not want anyone to commit adultery with my spouse. When I consider acting in a way that would bring pain to another human being, I am given pause by that fact, that the other person will feel pain. Even if my actions would supposedly not hurt anyone directly, if they would inhibit my ability to do good, the same considerations would apply. I avoid becoming a drug abuser because such a course would hinder my ability to do good for my family or even society in general. So, as we can easily demonstrate, the idea that we cannot know right from wrong apart from religion is false.

The second question is, as I stated earlier, can I find the motivation to do what is right without religion? We have already seen that we can, since empathy is a powerful motivation. What other motives exist? There is the desire to be liked and respected by others. There is the desire to avoid punishment. There is the desire to respect myself. The additional motivation afforded by religion are not necessary, therefore.

Tomorrow we will look at this question: Does religion in our culture cause our culture to be more or less moral?

Do We Need God in Order to be Good?

This question has been asked and answered by many people, of whom, some are probably a bit brighter than I am. Nevertheless, it is a question that I must ask and answer for myself, for my own benefit and understanding. If you find the question to be important, perhaps this article will benefit you also. That, at least, is my hope.

Let me begin by letting you know that I was a preacher for many years and so am quite familiar with the Christian perspective, with which I shall begin. According to the New Testament, quoting Jesus himself, there is no one who is “good” except God (Mark 10:18). This theme is