Mindframe

Idleness is the Devil's workshop, or so the saying goes. Blame it on our Puritan origins if you like, but Americans take fewer vacation days than nearly anyone else. And worldwide, when it comes to how much paid time off a company must give its employees, the United States comes in dead last, at zero days. Uncle Sam, it seems, got the Puritan memo: downtime is laziness. That's a problem, says Heather Rogers in her Experience Life article, "The Upside of Downtime." Rogers cites Victoria Sweet, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Sweet's new book, God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine,  tells the story of her medical residency, where she was under enormous pressure to perform, and where, in response to that pressure, she began to take frequent smoke breaks. This could've been disastrous for her health, except for one detail: Sweet didn't smoke. Instead, she used these lit...

The idea of a life in sales can have a greasy connotation, summoning the mental image of a slick insurance or car salesman pitching you some policy or vehicle that is a catastrophe away from leaving you both figuratively and literally stranded on the highway. For that reason, many salespeople liken their job more to that of their favorite junior high teacher, the one who had a great command of the English language and an unending font of knowledge, despite wearing the same sweater every day. In other words, modern salespeople see their main role as suppliers of valuable information. Spreading the data correctly will yield a well-informed customer, ready and willing to make the right purchasing choice. I understand how this feels preferable. Honest information delivered appropriately is at the very core of how we see our ministers and favorite teachers. It's what those of us that grew up on TV from the 60's through the 90's came to expect from the Shell Oil Company...

Have you ever wondered how your brain and your smartphone's operating systems compare? After all, people commonly draw analogies between computers and the brain. Given how a smartphone really is just a very small computer, these days, you're likely lugging around one of each.  Of course, a smartphone differs from your brain in many ways. For one thing, your brain's carrying case is generally more durable.  For another thing, a smartphone processes in a series format, a couple of bits of information at a time. Imagine a light switch connected to a lamp in your bedroom. The switch only controls that single light circuit. It has no effect on, say, the lights in your kitchen. In much the same way, your phone's silicone processing chips are essentially a collection of tiny switches, each creating a single and separate cause and effect. Combined in sufficient numbers, you get the cool little apps we rely on. They're perfectly configured for computing the s...

When we think of rust, we think of old cars and decaying highway bridges. Perhaps the Tin Man from Oz pops into your head. One thing you probably don't think about is the inside of your own body. Nevertheless, that talk you hear about eating antioxidant-rich vegetables is really a matter of rust reduction. Part of the reason old age kills is because you are, at this very moment, in a lifelong process of rusting out. And reaching for the WD-40 isn't going to help. Your body is a complex soup of chemical reactions. At an atomic level, your cells try to maintain stability. Unfortunately, they are forever being damaged from pollution, stress, junk food, the sun, ozone, electrical appliances, x-rays, smoking, alcohol, and just about anything else you encounter on a day to day basis. Our cells are quietly under siege 24/7. Even your own metabolic processes like breathing and digestion add to the damage. Use or abuse of a cell weakens it. If the structure is too badly ...