Seven Things To Worry About

here's what should keep you up at night. Sorry in advance for the Kung-fu you are going to do with your pillow, but if you have a pulse and conscious, you might find these things to be in the least, alarming. Yes there are many others to consider, but these are the ones happening right, now.

The Omnipresence of Surveillance

Privacy and secrecy feature prominently in literature going back to the Bible. Consider Bathsheba, who strips for a bath in the second Book of Samuel and is purposefully spied on by King David. Or poor, lonely, bedraggled Hamlet, whose private conversation with his mother is overheard by Polonius, hiding behind the drapes, which leads to the  " Knife in the Rug Through to the Guts" moment of the famous play by Francis Bacon. (I mean Shakespeare.)

Thinking that you are not being watched, monitored, tracked and followed is useful to many different kinds of people, and not just Big Brother. So, you can start by being self-consciousness as of now, and realize that this powerful platform knows more about you then you are most likely willing to admit. Of course, thinking that we lead private lives gives us lots of room to screw up. We can cheat on our taxes and spouses. We can play hooky from school and work. However, the line between private and public space no longer exists, so do not assume that you are not busted even if no one tells you otherwise. We assume that no one sees or hears our private moments, and we’re right—until someone watches or listens, and that was made OK when you signed your life over to Facebook or whatever platform you populate with your private data on and by Congress, not once but twice since 2003. 

By the way, all of this was going on before the National Security Agency began collecting our telephone and Internet records from technology and communications companies, and long before the House of Representatives on July 24 gave a thumbs-up to further NSA collections by a narrow 12-vote margin, 217-205. That's right folks, exactly 217 of our elected leaders think we should be spied on, for our safety.  

Right.

Cyber Crime

There is a migration happengin from the terrestrial to the virtual in the same way that we've had down the centuries, terrestrially, the seeds of conflict--power, money, political influence, territory and so on--they're all being replicated in the virtual space. And with it, geo-political conflict is migrating too.

The significant difference though, is that are no front lines and no soldiers on the ground. You'll still have essentially factional/tribal warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda and so on.  These are different types of conflicts, and still very serious. In the virtual space, it's going to be the private sector, as well as government, that is going to be in the front line. Cyber-attacks provide maximum leverage, and very low risk for the perpetrator. That's a completley new paradigm. The CIA or the NSA is no longer able to completely ensure that there are not unseen and persistent holes in defending the government, or intelligence agencies serving governments around the world. 

All the problems that existed terrestrially will be replicated and amplified digitally. There are 30 nation-states with very aggressive offensive information warfare programs using one immensely powerful weapon: the computer. The bullet are hacks downloaded from the web, and anyone can fire that weapon at anybody they choose. 

Governments are ill-equipped to deal with this threat because it's a fundamental change in how you look at national security, what you look at as defense and offense. And the world in which we are currently living in, this kind of different environment, is essentially a world of chaos. There is no arms control. There are no mechanisms by which we can produce order out of chaos---not yet. There will be, in time, but there isn't at the moment. So it's a sort of free-for-all in the virtual space and we're only just beginning to see the dimensions of it. 

Climate Change

We are currently in the sixth wave of mass extinction during the living history of this planet.

The effects this will have on our species are numerous, and will become absolute reality over the next fifty to two hundred years. If that seems extreme to you, I assure you it is not. In fact, almost every single leading scientist associated with climate change and population dynamics believes it to be true. The impacts of a still-avoidable sixth mass extinction are likely to be massive, catastrophic, widespread and, of course, irreversible. In the past, it has taken life ten to thirty million years to recover after such an extinction, 40 to 120 times as long as modern-looking humans have been telling tales by firelight.

Future changes driven by humanity may go so far as to create not just a new epoch in geologic history – such as the widely-touted Anthropocene – but a fundamental reshaping of Earth on par with the rise of microbes or the later shift from microbes to multicellular organisms. 

European Economic Meltdown

The European debt crisis (often also referred to as the Eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis) is a multi-year debt crisis that has been taking place in the European Union since the end of 2009. Several euro zone member states (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Cyprus) were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of third parties like other Eurozone countries. The European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continue to struggle to contain and solve the crisis as it worsens and is exacerbated by the migrant waves coming from North Africa.

The precise causes of the debt crisis varied. In several countries, private debts arising from a property bubble were transferred to sovereign debt as a result of banking system bailouts and government responses to slowing economies post-bubble. The structure of the Eurozone as a currency union (i.e., one currency) without fiscal union(e.g., different tax and public pension rules) contributed to the crisis and limited the ability of European leaders to respond.[3][4] European banks own a significant amount of sovereign debt, such that concerns regarding the solvency of banking systems or sovereigns are negatively reinforcing.[5

The crisis continued to have adverse economic effects and labor market effects, with unemployment rates in Greece and Spain reaching 27%, and was blamed for subdued economic growth, not only for the entire eurozone but the whole European Union.

The crisis has had and will continue to have a significant political impact on the ruling governments in 10 out of 19 eurozone countries, contributing to power shifts in Greece, Ireland, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, Belgium and the Netherlands. The crisis continues to degrade social stability, inside as well as outside of the eurozone, most especially if the United Kingdom "brexits". and Africa not excluded

The Nigerian Educational Crisis

Today it would be more accurate to say that we have two systems of public education, not one. The first of them is based principally, though not entirely, in the suburbs of this country and [in] some of the wealthier urban jurisdictions and districts. That is a public school system that could be better and should be better. In many respects it is mediocre, particularly when compared to our international peers in the advanced industrial nations. But it is not failing its students.

The second system of public education, which is based principally in poorer urban and rural areas, is indeed in crisis. Too many of the students in those schools are dropping out well before high school graduation. Too many are receiving high school diplomas that do not certify academic confidence in core subjects. Too many are being left unprepared for the world of work. Too many are being left unprepared to go on to higher education and advanced technical training. Those schools are indeed in crisis, and they require emergency treatment.

There are significant gaps in resources between many of the wealthier jurisdictions and many of the poorer provinces. And money matters in education--there's no getting around that. However, many of the gaps in per-pupil expenditures between urban districts and their surrounding suburban districts have been closed in the past ten years, not eliminated in all cases, but closed substantially in many cases. [This is] in part because a higher percentage of the expenditures in the poorer districts are now being picked up by the states or even by the federal government through its compensatory education programs.

So, while money matters, it's not the only thing that matters. School safety and discipline matter a lot. Teacher quality matters a lot. Support from parents and the surrounding community matters a lot. And a culture of learning matters a lot. And all of those things have to be attended to at the same time that we continue to focus on the existing and remaining gaps in resources.

The Normalisation of Islamic Radicalism

Terrorist atrocities by Sunni Muslim extremists are the world’s white noise. We scarcely flinch to hear about attacks. In the past years alone there were several attack by killers swearing allegiance to the Islamic State in the north eastern Nigeria 

Then you have Paris and Brussels.

The Shabab are the fastest growing Sunni terrorist army that best exemplifies the beautiful, humane example set by ISIS. Boko Haram has declared its allegiance to ISIS. When attacked several Muslim survivors had said that some their Christian colleagues claim to be Muslims, only to be shot in the head when they fail to recite passages from the Koran correctly. In fact, this particularly brutal form of Islamist extremism has been spreading across northern Africa for several years. ISIS is now also active in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and is gaining strength with disturbing rapidity across Libya.

But of course, you were worried about the Robots coming to eat you.

Yellow-Fever

The worst yellow fever epidemic in Angola since 1986 is rapidly spreading, including the capital, Luanda. In Angola, the epidemic began in December 2015 and the laboratory-confirmed outbreak was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on January 21, 2016.

Angola has had 2023 suspected cases and 258 deaths as of April 26, 2016.1 China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya also has reported cases arising from infected travelers from Angola. Namibia and Zambia also share a long border with Angola, with considerable population movement between the countries. Similar to other recent epidemics, quick and efficient action to stop the spread of yellow fever is the responsibility of the world’s health community.

These things, friends are far more likely to be of a serious concern than are artificial intelligence and robots.

Wake up 

~

Powerful Ways To Get People To Take You More Seriously

Do you ever feel like nobody takes you seriously at work? If so, you’re not alone. More than 50% of people don’t feel respected at work, according to a global survey of more than 20,000 employees by the Harvard Business Review.

Maybe colleagues ignore your input in meetings. Perhaps they interrupt you or don’t include you in important decisions. It’s easy to blame that on a bad boss or a toxic work environment. In some cases, that’s even true. But if you really want to be taken more seriously at work, you should start by looking in the mirror and doing what you can to increase your influence.

There are eight things you can do right now to increase your credibility, get people to take you more seriously, and ensure you get treated with the respect you deserve.

Don’t let your statements sound like questions. One of the most common things people do to undermine their credibility is end their sentences on a higher inflection than where they started. It’s called “up-speak,” and our brains are trained to interpret that pattern as a question. So instead of delivering information, you end up sounding like you’re asking if your own input is correct. And people notice. In a survey of 700 managers by Pearson, 85% considered up-speak to be a sign of insecurity and emotional weakness, and 44% said they mark job candidates down by as much as a third for using up-speak. That’s one habit you should break right now to give yourself an instant credibility boost.

Don’t just give reports—tell stories. The most successful TED talks follow a magic formula—they are 75% stories and 25% data backing up those stories. Stories provide an emotional hook that helps people remember what you said, and they give you a platform for connecting your knowledge to the real world. There’s a huge difference between memorizing mathematical formulas, for example, and being able to use them to calculate whether a particularly dangerous asteroid is going to hit us in our lifetime. Stories help people take you seriously because they demonstrate that you can apply what you know.

Encourage people to talk about themselves. When you first started dating, your mom probably encouraged you to get your dates to talk about themselves. Sure, it’s good manners—and we all know that everybody likes to talk about themselves. But it turns out that there’s a scientific basis for this. Your brain rewards you for self-disclosure. In fact, talking about yourself feels so good that it causes neurological changes in the brain. So if you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, let them talk about themselves first. Once those “feel-good” neurotransmitters are flowing and people start feeling connected to you, they’re much more likely to take you and your contributions seriously.

Do your homework. One of the best ways to get people to take you seriously is to be prepared and know what you’re talking about. Americans attend 11 million meetings every day, and unproductive meetings cost the US economy $37 billion every year. Why are there so many unproductive meetings? Because people are unprepared. Don’t be one of them. Whether it’s a team meeting or briefing your boss, always take the time to prepare. Know what you want to say, be able to back up your opinions with data, and be prepared to answer questions two or three levels down.

Stay informed. If you look at the employee handbook for tech company Valve, it says that it looks for “T-shaped” employees: people who have a lot of broad knowledge layered on top of their primary area of expertise. Do whatever it takes to keep up with what’s going on in the world. It’s particularly important to stay abreast of trends in science and technology, especially as they relate to business. You don’t want to look like a deer in the headlights when somebody starts talking about how the Internet of Things is going to transform manufacturing.

Dress for success. Fair or not, we judge people on their appearances every single day. And it happens so fast—in about a tenth of a millisecond, according to researchers at Princeton—that we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We make inferences about a person’s character and capabilities based on appearance. If your appearance is sloppy, for example, people are likely to subconsciously conclude that your work will be sloppy too. Looking polished and well-groomed, on the other hand, creates the impression of responsibility and competence. That doesn’t mean you have to rush out and blow your budget on a designer wardrobe. But it does mean that you should show enough respect for yourself and for your colleagues to make a substantial effort.

Strike a power pose. If you assume an expansive pose—taking up more room by keeping your shoulders open and your arms wide—other people see you as more powerful. This is a hard-wired human characteristic, as people who have been blind since birth throw their arms out in victory, even though they’ve never seen someone do this. Moreover, power poses actually change our body chemistry. Researchers at Harvard found that after participants held a power pose for just two minutes, their levels of testosterone rose by 20% and their cortisol (the stress hormone) levels dropped. Power poses are a win-win: they make other people see you as more powerful, and they actually make you feel more powerful.

Be confident but not too confident. No one is going to have confidence in you until you have confidence in yourself. But you have to balance that confidence with a little humility. Truly confident people aren’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything—it doesn’t make them feel threatened at all. In fact, the most confident people are eager to ask questions and learn. The best way to show your confidence is to own what you know and what you don’t.

Bringing It All Together

If you feel like you don’t get the respect you deserve at work, nobody can change that but you. Sometimes people don’t take you seriously because of little things that you don’t even realize you’re doing. And that’s something you can fix.

What do people do that makes it hard to take them seriously? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Wise Habits of Supremely Happy People

We’re always chasing something—be it a promotion, a new car, or a significant other. This leads to the belief that, “When (blank) happens, I’ll finally be happy.”

While these major events do make us happy at first, research shows this happiness doesn’t last. A study from Northwestern University measured the happiness levels of regular people against those who had won large lottery prizes the year prior. The researchers were surprised to discover that the happiness ratings of both groups were practically identical.

The mistaken notion that major life events dictate your happiness and sadness is so prevalent that psychologists have a name for it: impact bias. The reality is, event-based happiness is fleeting.

Happiness is synthetic—you either create it, or you don’t. Happiness that lasts is earned through your habits. Supremely happy people have honed habits that maintain their happiness day in, day out. Try out their habits, and see what they do for you:

They slow down to appreciate life’s little pleasures.

By nature, we fall into routines. In some ways, this is a good thing. It saves precious brainpower and creates comfort. However, sometimes you get so caught up in your routine that you fail to appreciate the little things in life. Happy people know how important it is to savor the taste of their meal, revel in the amazing conversation they just had, or even just step outside to take a deep breath of fresh air.

They exercise.

Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a neurotransmitter that makes your brain feel soothed and keeps you in control of your impulses. Happy people schedule regular exercise and follow through on it because they know it pays huge dividends for their mood.

They spend money on other people.

Research shows that spending money on other people makes you much happier than spending it on yourself. This is especially true of small things that demonstrate effort, such as going out of your way to buy your friend a book that you know they will like.

They surround themselves with the right people.

Happiness spreads through people. Surrounding yourself with happy people builds confidence, stimulates creativity, and it’s flat-out fun. Hanging around negative people has the opposite effect. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with negative people.

They stay positive.

Bad things happen to everyone, including happy people. Instead of complaining about how things could have been or should have been, happy people reflect on everything they’re grateful for. Then they find the best solution available to the problem, tackle it, and move on. Nothing fuels unhappiness quite like pessimism. The problem with a pessimistic attitude, apart from the damage it does to your mood, is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you expect bad things, you’re more likely to experience negative events. Pessimistic thoughts are hard to shake off until you recognize how illogical they are. Force yourself to look at the facts, and you’ll see that things are not nearly as bad as they seem.

They get enough sleep.

I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to improving your mood, focus, and self-control. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, removing toxic proteins that accumulate during the day as byproducts of normal neuronal activity. This ensures that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your energy, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough quality sleep. Sleep deprivation also raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. Happy people make sleep a priority, because it makes them feel great and they know how lousy they feel when they’re sleep deprived.

They have deep conversations.

Happy people know that happiness and substance go hand-in-hand. They avoid gossip, small talk, and judging others. Instead they focus on meaningful interactions. They engage with other people on a deeper level, because they know that doing so feels good, builds an emotional connection, and is an interesting way to learn.

They help others.

Taking the time to help people not only makes them happy, but it also makes you happy. Helping other people gives you a surge of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, all of which create good feelings. In a Harvard study, employees who helped others were 10 times more likely to be focused at work and 40% more likely to get a promotion. The same study showed that people who consistently provided social support were the most likely to be happy during times of high stress. As long as you make certain that you aren’t overcommitting yourself, helping others is sure to have a positive influence on your mood.

They make an effort to be happy.

No one wakes up feeling happy every day and supremely happy people are no exception. They just work at it harder than everyone else. They know how easy it is to get sucked into a routine where you don’t monitor your emotions or actively try to be happy and positive. Happy people constantly evaluate their moods and make decisions with their happiness in mind.

They do things in-person.

Happy people only let technology do their talking when absolutely necessary. The human brain is wired for in-person interaction, so happy people will jump at the chance to drive across town to see a friend or meet face-to-face because it makes them feel good.

They have a growth mindset.

People’s core attitudes fall into one of two categories: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you’re challenged, because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed. People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. This makes them happier because they are better at handling difficulties. They also outperform those with a fixed mindset because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.

PURCHASE ....> FINANCIAL LITERACY

Bringing It All Together

Happiness can be tough to maintain, but investing in the right habits pays off. Adopting even a few of the habits from this list will make a big difference in your mood.

What other habits make you happy? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

11 Ways To Beat Procrastination

Procrastination strikes everyone, and once it gets a hold of you, it can be very difficult to shake it off. When you imagine a highly productive person, you likely think of someone who focuses effortlessly on the job and never succumbs to procrastination. You know, the type who can sit on the ground in a subway station with their laptop and still manage to get more done in an hour than you would in a day at the library.

The truth is, ridiculously productive people face the same procrastination challenges as the rest of us. The difference is, they beat procrastination by using a calculated approach. First, they understand why they procrastinate, and then they apply strategies that beat procrastination before it takes hold. Anyone can follow this two-step, research-driven process to overcome procrastination.

The Procrastination Doom Loop

You can’t hope to stop procrastinating until you first have a firm understanding of why you procrastinate. Research from Joseph Ferrari at DePaul University shows that procrastination is more complicated than most people think. People tend to think of procrastination as coming from poor time management or laziness, but Ferrari’s research shows that procrastination stems from negative emotions that hijack your mood. Once you’re under the influence of these emotions, you can’t bring yourself to work.

Instead of being lazy or disorganized, people usually put things off because they aren’t in the right mood to complete the task. Doing so places you firmly inside the procrastination doom loop. Since you’ve decided that you aren’t in the right mood to work, you distract yourself with other tasks—checking email, checking the news, cleaning your desk, talking to a coworker, etc.—and by the time you come up for air, you feel guilty for having wasted so much time. This only worsens your mood, and as the deadline draws closer, you feel worse than you did when you first put off the task.

Overcoming Procrastination

Beating procrastination is a simple matter of exiting the doom loop by taking control of your mood with emotional intelligence. With the right strategies in place, you can take the reins and get yourself in the mood to get things done. The strategies that follow will help you to make this happen.

Figure out why. When you aren’t in the mood to work, procrastination is telling you something important. It could be something simple, such as you need to take a break or get something to eat. It could also be something complex, such as you’re carrying the team on your back or you’re dissatisfied with your job. Whatever it is, instead of punishing yourself for procrastinating, take a moment to reflect and figure out why you’re procrastinating. This could end up being the most productive step you take in conquering your task.

Remove your obstacles. Prior to getting started on a task, take a moment to carefully consider the obstacles that might get in your way. Then, develop a plan to ensure that they don’t. For example, you might have instructions for a task in your e-mail inbox, and if you don’t do anything about it, you’ll repeatedly go back to your inbox to look at them, only to get distracted by other incoming e-mails. In this case, your management plan should be to get the instructions out of your inbox prior to starting your work. By planning ahead, you can maintain your focus and avoid procrastination. After all, it’s much harder to regain focus than it is to maintain it.

Jump right in, no matter what. Sometimes it’s really hard to get started on something, even when it’s something that you love to do. I might be staring at a blank Word document or standing on the beach on a cold winter morning. That first step is difficult, but once you get going—typing that first paragraph or taking off on that first wave—your mood improves dramatically. When you focus your attention on how difficult and cruddy it is to get started, you discourage yourself from doing so. When you dive right in no matter what, your mood quickly improves, which helps you to stay on task.

Cut holes in your project. We often procrastinate because we feel intimidated by the size of a project. To minimize intimidation, try cutting holes in it. Find smaller pieces of the task that you can quickly and easily accomplish. For example, writing a proposal might require 10 hours of intense concentration, but you can spit out an intro in 15 minutes and develop a list of deliverables in 10. Before you know it, these smaller tasks have cut serious holes in the project and it’s no longer intimidating.

Work in the right environment. Even if you do everything else right, working in the wrong environment can make you succumb to procrastination. This means keeping yourself away from television, electronics, friends, and loud places. This isn’t what works for everyone, but you need to exercise discipline by working in the environment that’s right for you.

Enjoy small victories. There’s nothing quite like checking something off of your to-do list. To keep yourself from procrastinating, you need to experience this sense of accomplishment by tracking your progress carefully. Small victories build new androgen receptors in the areas of the brain responsible for reward and motivation. The increase in androgen receptors increases the influence of testosterone, which further increases confidence and eagerness to tackle challenges. This keeps you fired up and moving forward. Sometimes crossing a few easy things off of a list is all it takes to build up the mental strength to tackle something big. Remember, it’s not about doing small tasks to avoid big tasks; it’s about including small tasks in your daily checklist to build your confidence and momentum.

Get real. Setting unrealistic goals for your day is a great way to become discouraged and to succumb to the negative moods that fuel procrastination. Setting realistic goals keeps things positive, which keeps you in the right mood to work.

Take control of your self-talk. Saying to yourself, “I’m not going to procrastinate. I will not procrastinate,” virtually ensures that you will procrastinate. There’s a classic study where participants were told to not think about a white bear. It turns out it’s nearly impossible to avoid thinking about something that you tell yourself not to, as your mind gravitates towards the thing you’re trying to avoid. The trick is to shift your attention to something completely different (and positive). Instead of telling yourself not to procrastinate, think about what you will do and how great it’s going to feel to have it done. This way, your mind fixates on the action you want to take instead of the behavior you’re trying to avoid.

Don’t be a perfectionist. Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming characters and plot, and they even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in the book. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don’t get started and give your ideas time to evolve? Author Jodi Picoult summarizes the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”

Focus on results. Chances are, you don’t enjoy going to the dentist. Not many people do. So why do you go? It gets results. Your dentist is quite good at making your teeth and gums healthier and more appealing. You also go because the pain of having someone pick at your teeth for an hour is nowhere near the pain of getting a cavity filled, a tooth pulled, or a root canal. You go to the dentist because you know the process is worth it. The same mentality applies to a challenging task. While it may make you anxious to get started, don’t focus on that. Just think of how great it’s going to feel to get things done and how much worse you’ll feel if you wait until the last minute and don’t give it your best effort.

Forgive yourself. There’s no point in beating yourself up when you slip up and procrastinate. You might think that punishing yourself will help you to avoid procrastination in the future, but it actually has the opposite effect—beating yourself up sends you right back into the procrastination doom loop.

Bringing It All Together

The key to beating procrastination is to understand that procrastination is rooted in emotions. If you think you might need some extra help here, consider taking an emotional intelligence test. The strategies above will help you to turn the procrastination doom loop on its head and to achieve greater productivity than ever before.

How do you beat procrastination? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.