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Sean D Souza – Blackbelt Presentations
When you make a presentation, wouldn't it be amazing to completely control the room—without turning anyone off?
(It's rough enough to have to speak to an audience, but aren't you always in awe of presenters who can bring the room to life? How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action)?
In the year 2008, I stood before an audience of about 250 people in Chicago. It was a conference (like most conferences you go to). And it was my turn to speak. After my speech, I made an offer to the audience for some of our products. And most of the audience bought the product priced at about a little over $300.
The interesting part was that I wasn't the first speaker (I might have been the sixth). So I didn't have a first-speaker advantage. In fact most of the audience didn't know me well. And yet I sold over $20,000 worth of product, without the usual "sales pitch".
So what causes presentations to come alive?
All of us have done presentations, but this isn't about just "doing" presentations. It's about setting the stage alight. It's about doing masterly presentations, or in other words "Black Belt Presentations".
For you to do "Black belt Presentations" you'd need three core elements:
1) Slide Design and Packaging (Controlling the Presentation Design)
2) Structured Presentation Delivery System (Controlling the Delivery)
3) Control Mechanisms That Get Results (Controlling The Event)
Element 1: Slide Design and Packaging
This is about creating presentations that are so yummy that the audience is gobsmacked. They want to know how you made your presentation so simple, yet so luscious.
And you of course learn how you can create designer-presentations—and do it without a massive graphics budget. This part is about creating packaging that makes your presentation stand out from every other presenter.
Element 2: Then there's the delivery system
Most of us have some kind of system. It's called the start-muddle-end. Yes, muddle. Sit back and think of even one presenter who's really rocked your boots recently? Can you think of that person?
If you can, it's a person with a delivery system. The delivery system we're going to use is called the 13-Box System. If someone wakes you at 3am, you should be able to get your presentation going—groggily but technically correct.
Element 3: And of course, event-control
Control sounds like an ugly word. But the lack of control is chaos. And yet control isn't about hypnotising your audience into submission.
Rather it's about creating an environment that's right for learning. Once you have control, you have an audience that knows they're in the hands of a maestro. And they'll come along happily for the ride.
So how do you get this trio of design, delivery and control?Presenting "Black Belt Presentations". It's a series of three books + audio that span a chunky 100+ pages each plus of course audio.
In this series you get to go in depth and see what makes a Psychotactics presentation so darned powerful (if you've ever been to any of our presentations you'll know what I mean).
You don't need hoopla.
You don't need fancy-schmancy stuff. What you do need is a solid understanding of what makes a presentation extremely powerful. And that gives you a boost to put your best foot forward. And to create a presentation that creates real results for a change.
The 'Black Belt Presentations' series contains almost 100,000 words and about 400 pages of solid content. And not just some crappy re-packaged content. Every page of the audio and text in the book will give you a deeper insight into how to dramatically improve your presentations.
So what does the 'Black belt presentations' series contain?
Here is a list of what to expect
Part 1: Controlling Presentation Design
- DIY Slide Design: How to create stylish slides without driving yourself crazy.
- Understanding the 'promixity of elements' and why it avoids visual chaos
- The power of invisible lines and how they help avoid distraction—and increase focus
- Why a simple colour palette saves you endless amounts of preparation time
- How to avoid 'unwanted noise' by choosing uncluttered backgrounds
- Why 95% of your slides need just one thought for max impact
- The palm test: How to get rid of unwanted and distracting graphics
- How to use the power of size to make graphics pop on your slides
- Two core methods to instantly increase curiosity on every slide
- Why most photos/graphics are flat on slides and how to bring them to life instantly!
- How to avoid busting your budget on photos/graphics
- Easy ways to stretch your budget without compromising on quality
- How masking and transparency make graphics stand out
- Why most graphs are confusing—and why to avoid 3-D completely
- How to transform graphs into powerful visual data that make audiences sit bolt upright
- How to avoid the downsides of animation
- The secret of how 'invisible' animation helps reduce surprise
- Handy presentation resources to help improve your presentation skills
Part 2: Controlling Presentation Delivery
- Why the 13-Box system will change the way you do presentations forever
- A simple way to instantly wake up an audience in a matter of minutes
- The biggest mistakes made with audio and video
- The importance of well-loved stories and how they captivate an audience
- Why 'easy questions' break the ice—especially with a tough audience
- How to get engagement with your audience every single time
- The importance of the teaser at the start of your presentation
- Why the right agenda creates a safe zone
- How the fairy tale sequence helps create a flow with your core topics
- How to create drama with statistics, story and problem scenarios
- How examples can save your bacon when you're running out of time
- How to get a good chunk of your audience to sign up for more information
- Why a break in the middle of your presentation improves conversion
- Goodies: Why they work and when they fail miserably
- Why any goodies or bonuses must have a price point
- Why taking questions at the end is a bad idea
- How to smoothly segue from your presentation to actually selling a product or service
Part 3: Controlling The Event
- The importance of control: And why lack of it leads to utter chaos
- Mastering the three Phases of Control: Pre-event, live-event, post-event
- Teasers: Why they're an important part of pre-event control
- Why most presenters don't give any details of presentation content—and why it's a BIG mistake
- How to use music to influence mood, energy and direct specific behaviour
- Why props change the pace of your presentation—and why this change in pace matters
- How room temperature will make or break your presentation
- 3 Important personal devices no presenter should be without
- Why you need a back up plan. And how to execute on, should things go haywire
- Alcohol: Why even the smallest drink can change the audience perception
- Audience volunteers: Why they play a critical role in keeping you focused on your presentation
- Three check points when using video as a control device
- Why 'rocking chairs' and other mundane stories are more effective than more elaborate ones
- A powerful analysis of rhetoric, coercion and story-telling—and why story-telling rocks!
- Three simple keys to create great stories that entrance your audience
- The black slide: A fail-proof method to yank an audience's attention in a fraction of a second
- Why presenters run out of time—and how to control time down to the last minute
- The challenge set-up: How it adds tremendous suspense and drama to your presentation
- How to engineer the audience testimonial—and how to prevent it from going terribly wrong!
- Why most speakers ignore the 'radar sweep' and isolate their biggest potential fans
- How to get rid of the 'ums' and 'ahs' in your speech in under 15 minutes
- The wind down: Why it's important to wake up a tired audience
- How to create variation with rhythm, pace and volume
- The myth of public speaking as the No.1 fear deconstructed (You have to read this!)
- The critical importance of the 'free report' break—and how it helps you get the contact details of audience members
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So, I had a stroke. Two, actually.
The landing gear stores itself away, mechanics that could also fail, though it's designed not to.
I'm moving again.
My knees hit the back of the seat in front.
I read that we don't know why we cry on planes, and I'd had romantic visions of me breaking down somewhere over the Indian Ocean, going for that cathartic, filmic gesture of leaving a previous life behind. Toodle-oo, health scare. Sayonara, job stagnation. But I get distracted by the inflight entertainment, instead. Oo, TV shows I can't get on Netflix!
The friday before I got on the first of three planes to London, my stroke specialist told me the MRI showed the scar of another mini-stroke I'd had – they couldn't say when – suggesting that the more recent one wasn't such an arbitrary occurrence. She told me that the fatigue I felt in the weeks after being discharged from hospital was normal, which placated my worry about that. She also told me not to let the stroke define the rest of my life, that she meets many people – men, especially – who let the ischemic attack keep them from living a full life. I told her about the blog post I wrote; I told her she'd have to get a legion of federal policemen to drag me away from the departure gate in order to keep me from my trip abroad.
As I sit hour after hour flying, my thoughts bounce over the last few months, but never settle. My adventure awaits: London, Iceland, the US, Mexico. After going to Hong Kong and Taiwan for the previous Christmas, I booked this trip a couple of weeks later, my addiction to travel flaring up again. This trip: revisiting places I love, and only a couple of new ones, all mostly centred around friends and family. The last time I travelled for this long I was 26. Now at 31, my thoughts bounce around differently.
I had a stroke. Actually, two.
Don't let it define you, the specialist said.
Do you realise how serious this is? Others say. I'm given blood thinning injections to administer on myself, and I'm on aspirin for the rest of my life.
Could be worse. At least I know now. How many movies can I watch before landing? I wonder what the next meal is going to be? Why do I need to pee so much?
Still no tears.
I stay with a friend, Benji, who I met in Hong Kong, before he went to Everest base camp the day before the earthquake hit Nepal. He left a day early to meet a lover in Thailand. A blown up photo of him on a Himalayan precipice hangs above my bed.
I meet up with my cousins. I meet up with friends, old and new. Day upon day I'm wrapped up in the comforting blanket of "why don't you live here?" and retell the stroke story, now getting the details and plot beats down to a fine art. I have no request to see anything, nowhere I want to be except with good people.
On the Wednesday, my blog post gets a lot of attention. I have my WordPress notifications left on and every time I find wifi, my phone lights up with unmanageable numbers of people 'liking', following, and commenting on my little corner of the world (wide web). It's very nice. What strikes me most is the universality readers of the post found for themselves. Sometimes I wonder how interesting my story is; how interesting anyone's is unless the highlights are relevant to me at that particular point in time. On a train, I read a page of a Kindle over the shoulder of a stranger. It seems autobiographical, but could be fiction. Either way, nothing much happens. The protagonist discusses rent prices in an American city, and how much they like phone booths. I guess I can't underestimate the voyeur quality to mundanity.
Which is my favourite thing about travel.
I asked a coworker why she was going to the Gold Coast for a holiday, and she replied, instantly, "The theme parks!" which is an unexpected answer coming from anyone above the age of 18 (even though I think I befriend people who would answer the same at any age). It got me thinking: why do I travel?
I couldn't answer it straight away.
Was I just running again, like the Red Queen from 'Through the Looking-Glass'?
What was the experience I craved outside of my routine?
Then I realised I liked travel because I got to see routines of others. I love following in footsteps. People-watching at transport hubs. Supermarkets. Running errands with friends. Seeing how a system works in another country. All the mundane things that can make me feel so static at home become the things of other people's lives far away that make me feel connected again.
I guess that's why I continue to write. I'm sharing experience to feel connected. This time in front of my laptop makes me pause and try to articulate where I'm at in my life – no inflight entertainment to distract me.
the next post will be about Iceland… (more travel-y, too)

subset: commoncrawl


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My blog has moved! I've moved my blog to my website! You can now view all of my blog posts at BananaMoonStudio.com. Going forward, new posts will only be on my website, so you'll want to be sure to bookmark my new site, and sign up for my newsletter so that you don't miss a thing! See you there!
Merry Christmas SALE!
Merry Christmas dear readers! My gift to you today is a 75% off sale in my Ravelry store! Did you get yarn or new tools for Christmas? Lucky you!!! Now I'll help you put your goodies to use! No coupon code needed. Link below:
Posted by Unknown at 7:00 AM No comments:
Don't Lean Too Far Over Your Spinning
Don't Lean Too Far...
Just a short post for you dear readers today. Ever wondered what would happen if you got your own hair caught in your spinning?
Right here, right now, bringing you answers to life's greatest questions! This is Drama Queen learning to spin. She was pretty tense, and leaning so far over her work that her hair got caught in her spinning. (Princess is in the background).
In other news...
Hope you are all having a fantastic week! The girls and I are finishing up our last week of school work before taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's. We are all looking forward to the break!
I'm working hard on a design for a magazine, and when I'm
|Stylized logo I created using MS Paint, included on my new biz cards
What do you think of the stylized logo? Like it, I hope! Anyhow, hope you all have a fantastic day!
Happy crafting!
PS - Looking for more about spinning? Here you go:
How to fix broken yarn when spinning
Use clay & a crochet hook to make your own drop spindle
Drop spindle tip
Not What I Thought
More handspun to show you!!! I love spinning. I do it when I don't have an urgent project...or when I feel like avoiding my work.
So, I have this Malabrigo Nube in colorway #866 Arco Iris. It is very colorful. When I got this roving I expected that it would produce very loud, bright yarn.
Then when I began to spin it, I worried that the yarn would be really ugly, because I was getting lots of yellowish-brown. I am not really a big fan of brown.
All the way through spinning the singles of the first batt I really was not sure if the yarn would turn out nice. Even though some sections were much prettier than the yellowish-brown, I felt very unsure about how it would look once all the colors were mixed together in plying.
I am pleased to say that this yarn turned out to be beautiful, but not at all what I thought it would look like! It reminds me of the pattern on my mom's china, and of heirloom quilts that my husband and I have from our great-grandmothers. I think if I were going to name this colorway I would call it "Antique Rose" or "Antique Treasure".
Then, I spun up the second batt of roving and got interesting results again. This time the yarn was a little more like what I thought it would be, but markedly different from the skeins of the first batt, even though they are the same colorway and dye lot.
These skeins had a lot more purple and green in them than the first batt.
Here are all the finished skeins. The 3 on the left are from the first batt, and the 3 on the right are from the second batt. I love them all. The pictures don't do them justice. I am excited to make something with these to see how the color story continues to unfold in the stitching. I'm leaning towards an infinity scarf/cowl.
What do you think? Do you like it? Does it seem like a surprising result based on the look of the roving? What would you name it? What would you make with it?
Happy spinning!
Posted by Unknown at 7:00 AM No comments:
A Tour of the Studio - a Crochet and Knit Designer's Space
Today I bring you more pics of the studio. No photos of the closet this time, but you can see the rest of it. I have two desks, one for my sewing machine and one for my computer. I have a pile of things to be mended next to the sewing machine, and my spinning wheel handy so that I can easily turn around in my chair and do some spinning when I feel like avoiding work.
See my spifty light fixture? That is especially exciting because this loft was not designed with a permanent light fixture, and for the first 2 1/2 months here, I didn't have one, so my office was not very usable. I really don't understand why one would design a house and leave a room with no light fixture. It does not make sense to me at all. I ordered this hanging lamp and now I can work in here! Really exciting!
I have these three stacking baskets where I keep the things that I am currently working with or are in my queue. On the bottom there are blanket squares I'm making for a donation to Project Night Night. The middle basket has some balls of single-ply handspun that are waiting to be plied. The top basket has...an idea in it.
I have this cabinet for storing my girls' sheets and pillowcases, but on top of it I have my blocking board and rotary cutting mat stored....and there's the vacuum, and a couple of Home Depot bags with towel rings in them...waiting to be hung up in the girls' bathroom.
There is my guest chair (which was made by my mom years ago when she took a woodworking class), and Juliet, sporting a project in progress.
This is one of the drawers in my computer desk with all of my sewing thread on a pegged rack designed for thread spools. I have my color grid by Gail Callahan, and resume paper which I use to print tags for Etsy purchases and design swatches.
This space is still a work in progress, and I'm sure it will change over time, but it's finally a functional work space. The closet in particular still needs a lot of organization.
I don't have anything on the walls yet, besides the clock, but I have plans to hang up crosstitch pictures that my grandma made, and one that I made years ago. I have a painting that I did in college and doilies that my great-grandma made. I plan to hang up all of those things in here so that I will be surrounded by my crafty heritage as I work.
I am SO excited to finally have a space set up just for my business! Do you have any great ideas for how I can improve my studio? Organize the closet? I'd love to hear about them!
Happy crafting!
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By Dr. Mercola
In the U.S., many Americans use a sauna only while at the gym or on vacation, if at all, in contrast to people living in Finland. At least once a week, 99 percent of Finns1 take a sauna, and some far more often. The Finns value sauna use for stress relief. Known as a "poor man's pharmacy," saunas offer proven health benefits virtually anyone can enjoy.
Not surprisingly, much of the research has come from Finland where saunas are nearly as common as television sets, found in private homes, offices and even factories.2 Today, they're becoming increasingly popular with athletes for post-workout muscle relaxation and to improve athletic performance.
According to Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.,3 increasing your core temperature for short periods, as accomplished in a sauna, may have multiple positive effects on your body, including the growth of new brain cells. As your skin is a major organ of elimination, promoting sweating with sauna use may also help you detoxify. Researchers have also linked sauna use with a reduced risk for stroke.4
In a study published in Neurology,5 researchers assessed over 1,600 men and women aged 53 to 74 who did not have a known history of stroke. The participants were part of the Finnish Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease prospective cohort study and as defined by the researchers, took either one, up to three or up to seven sauna sessions per week.
At least half the participants were followed for nearly 15 years, during which 155 stroke events were recorded.6 The researchers compared individuals who used a sauna once a week against those who used a sauna up to three or up to seven times per week. After adjusting for other variables, they found those who took a sauna up to three times per week were 12 percent less likely to have a stroke, whereas those who took a sauna up to seven times a week reduced their risk by 62 percent.7
The researchers suggested sauna use may help reduce stroke risk by lowering inflammation, reducing arterial stiffness and improving blood flow through the circulatory system. These changes may be a result of an increase in body temperature during a sauna.8 The popularity of the sauna in Finland led the researchers to suggest further research was necessary to compare those who never use saunas against those who use them frequently.9
They encouraged those who have a regular sauna habit to continue as the results suggest significant benefit. However, those not familiar with sauna use should start slowly and build their heat tolerance to improve the results without heat stress on their cardiovascular system.10
Sweating is an essential process designed to keep your body cool but also has benefits beyond temperature control. Sweating helps expel toxins, kill viruses and clean your pores, and may have other benefits as well. Your skin is a major organ of elimination, but as many do not sweat on a regular basis, using a sauna may help restore your skin's ability to eliminate toxins.
Saunas and heat baths have been a form of cleansing since ancient times. Sweating has been perceived to promote health and has been a part of worldwide traditions and customs since ancient Roman baths and Aboriginal sweat lodges. A review published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health found:11
"Sweating is not only observed to enhance excretion of the toxic elements of interest in this paper, but also may increase excretion of diverse toxicants, as observed in New York rescue workers, or in particular persistent flame retardants and bisphenol-A … Optimizing the potential of sweating as a therapeutic excretory mechanism merits further research."
"Sweating is not only observed to enhance excretion of the toxic elements of interest in this paper, but also may increase excretion of diverse toxicants, as observed in New York rescue workers, or in particular persistent flame retardants and bisphenol-A … Optimizing the potential of sweating as a therapeutic excretory mechanism merits further research."
Patrick calls this concept "hyperthermic conditioning." Exposure to extreme temperatures, hot and cold, is an effective way of boosting mitochondrial biogenesis. The strategy places stress on your body in short bouts and produces benefits in a process called hormesis, referring to exposure to very short bursts of stress such as exercise, heat, cold, fasting or antioxidants. Through short bursts, it activates a variety of response pathways preparing your body to deal with stress.12
Elevating your core temperature through exercise, steam rooms, hot baths or saunas helps optimize heat shock proteins (HSP) inside your cells, which limit cellular damage and facilitate cellular recovery.13 Accumulation of damaged HSP may lead to plaque formation in your brain or cardiovascular system, thus leading to an increased risk of stroke or cardiovascular disease.
Heat stress helps prevent this adverse chain of reactions and may be involved in increasing longevity. Heat stress may also improve athletic performance as demonstrated in one study where athletes who spent 30 minutes in a sauna after workouts, two to three times a week for three weeks, increased the time it took them to run to exhaustion by 32 percent.14
This may happen through a number of adaptations, including reduced heart rate, lower core body temperature during exercise, higher sweat rate and increased thermal regulatory control, increased plasma volume, and reduced rate of glycogen depletion through improved blood flow to skeletal muscles.15
Wim Hof, a Dutch fitness trainer, who also goes by the nickname "Iceman," has popularized another branch of environmental conditioning in which he uses ice baths.16 His argues the circulatory system is designed to adapt to different surrounding conditions.
In the face of a lack of stress on your cardiovascular system from consistently controlled temperature, it may be damaged and result in conditions such as hypertension and stroke. A study published in Nature17 revealed evidence exposure to cold temperature may transform the type of fat in your body, helping to burn off excess weight. The primary stimulus to produce this type of fat was cold exposure.
Sauna use may lower the risk of dementia,18 and may improve vascular function and your ability to improve focus and attention.19 Other research has demonstrated the ability of heat stress to promote myelin growth,20 helping your brain to function faster and repair nerve cell damage. Heat may increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, stimulating cerebral output of brain-derived neurotrophic factor,21 activating brain stem cells to convert into new neurons.22
Sauna use may help soothe muscle tension and is beneficial in helping your body recover from strength and endurance training sessions. In one study of 44 patients with fibromyalgia, researchers found a reduction in pain23 between 33 percent and 77 percent after use of a far infrared dry sauna. Six months after the study had concluded, the participants continued to report a reduction in pain between 28 percent and 68 percent.
Sauna use may naturally release human growth hormone (HGH), reducing serious muscle loss and atrophy occurring with aging.24 Injections of HGH are banned in nearly every professional sport due to potential side effects and long-term harm. This use is unnecessary as there are ways to naturally optimize your HGH using high-intensity exercise, intermittent fasting and saunas.
Sauna use has also demonstrated benefits for individuals suffering from asthma, bronchitis and obstructive pulmonary disease.25 Those with rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis report positive effects from using infrared sauna therapy, reporting less pain and stiffness after four to eight weeks of treatment.26
You have several types of saunas to choose from, including:27
The difference between an infrared sauna and the traditional Finnish-style saunas (whether wet or dry) is the Finnish-style sauna heats you from the outside in, like an oven. The infrared sauna heats you from the inside out. Infrared saunas are particularly known for their ability to promote detoxification, and the heating method is part of the reason. By heating your tissues several inches deep, the infrared sauna may enhance your natural metabolic processes and blood circulation, also helping oxygenate your tissues.
Near-infrared saunas have additional benefits over others, including far-infrared saunas. Near-infrared penetrates your tissue more effectively than far-infrared since wavelengths under 900 nanometers in the near-infrared are not absorbed by water like the higher wavelengths in mid- and far-infrared, and thus can penetrate tissues more deeply.
The near-infrared range affects your health in a number of important ways,28 primarily through interaction with chromophores in your body. Chromophores are light-absorbing molecules found in your mitochondria and in water molecules. To ensure near-infrared rays penetrate your skin, avoid wearing clothing when using a near-infrared sauna.
In your mitochondria, there's a specific light-absorbing molecule called cytochrome c oxidase (cco), part of the mitochondrial electron transport chain. Cco is involved in energy production within the mitochondria. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — cellular energy — is the end product. ATP is the fuel your cells need for all their varied functions, including ion transport and metabolism. Most people don't realize light is a necessary fuel, like food. When your bare skin is exposed to near-infrared light, cco increases ATP production.
Near-infrared light also has healing and repairing properties, and helps optimize many other biological functions. Its absence in artificial light sources, such as LED and fluorescent lights, is what makes these sources so dangerous to your health. We now know mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of most health problems and chronic diseases, including many signs of aging. For these reasons, I strongly recommend using a sauna offering a full spectrum of infrared radiation, not just far-infrared.
Regular exposure to near-infrared through the sun and/or sauna is a powerful strategy to improve your health. Beware most infrared saunas emit dangerous non-native electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Seek one emitting low or no non-native EMFs to protect your health. To learn more about this issue, please see my interview with Steve Benda below, who has spent many years developing low-EMF saunas.
Before you jump into the first sauna you can find, there are a few safety factors you'll want to consider:
• Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated. Heat stress or heat stroke are real possibilities from excessive fluid loss. The potential for the effects of significant dehydration are higher when you use a sauna after a hard workout. Carry a water bottle, preferably protected glass, with you and drink frequently. Do not drink alcohol in a sauna as the alcohol and heat may trigger a cardiovascular event.
• If you experience a headache after using a sauna or hot tub, you may want to use a cool rag over your head so your body will cool more easily. Your core temperature will still rise, but the experience may be more pleasant for you.
• If you are trying to have a baby, you'll want to steer clear of the sauna. As your body heat rises, so does the temperature of your testicles, reducing your fertility. This reduces your sperm count and motility (how well sperm swim). The effect is reversible, but can take up to five weeks. You'll also want to avoid the sauna during pregnancy as it may cause fetal abnormalities.
• A sauna is supposed to be relaxing and not a torture chamber. Your body is designed to function optimally at 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C). Raising your core temperature above 104.8 degrees F (40.4 degrees C) is a medical emergency. Staying in a sauna longer than you should, or becoming severely dehydrated, can lead to death. Avoid using a sauna by yourself; always sauna with a buddy.
• Steer clear of public saunas that are not thoroughly and carefully cleaned between clients. Remember, saunas detoxify your body of heavy metals, which are released in your sweat. When you enter a sauna that hasn't been cleaned you can potentially absorb the heavy metals and toxins from the previous client through your skin.
Health centers offering sauna therapy have rigorous cleansing protocols in place between each patient, which is something you likely will not find in your local gym or other places offering saunas for public use. Ideally, consider purchasing your own for use at home.
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Hold Off On Proposing Solutionspost by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2007-10-17T03:16:04.000Z · score: 56 (53 votes) · LW · GW · Legacy · 50 comments
From Robyn Dawes's Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.1 Bolding added.
Norman R. F. Maier noted that when a group faces a problem, the natural tendency of its members is to propose possible solutions as they begin to discuss the problem. Consequently, the group interaction focuses on the merits and problems of the proposed solutions, people become emotionally attached to the ones they have suggested, and superior solutions are not suggested. Maier enacted an edict to enhance group problem solving: "Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any." It is easy to show that this edict works in contexts where there are objectively defined good solutions to problems.
Maier devised the following "role playing" experiment to demonstrate his point. Three employees of differing ability work on an assembly line. They rotate among three jobs that require different levels of ability, because the most able—who is also the most dominant—is strongly motivated to avoid boredom. In contrast, the least able worker, aware that he does not perform the more difficult jobs as well as the other two, has agreed to rotation because of the dominance of his able co-worker. An "efficiency expert" notes that if the most able employee were given the most difficult task and the least able the least difficult, productivity could be improved by 20%, and the expert recommends that the employees stop rotating. The three employees and . . . a fourth person designated to play the role of foreman are asked to discuss the expert's recommendation. Some role-playing groups are given Maier's edict not to discuss solutions until having discussed the problem thoroughly, while others are not. Those who are not given the edict immediately begin to argue about the importance of productivity versus worker autonomy and the avoidance of boredom. Groups presented with the edict have a much higher probability of arriving at the solution that the two more able workers rotate, while the least able one sticks to the least demanding job—a solution that yields a 19% increase in productivity.
I have often used this edict with groups I have led—particularly when they face a very tough problem, which is when group members are most apt to propose solutions immediately. While I have no objective criterion on which to judge the quality of the problem solving of the groups, Maier's edict appears to foster better solutions to problems.
This is so true it's not even funny. And it gets worse and worse the tougher the problem becomes. Take artificial intelligence, for example. A surprising number of people I meet seem to know exactly how to build an artificial general intelligence, without, say, knowing how to build an optical character recognizer or a collaborative filtering system (much easier problems). And as for building an AI with a positive impact on the world—a Friendly AI, loosely speaking—why, that problem is so incredibly difficult that an actual majority resolve the whole issue within fifteen seconds.2 Give me a break.
This problem is by no means unique to AI. Physicists encounter plenty of nonphysicists with their own theories of physics, economists get to hear lots of amazing new theories of economics. If you're an evolutionary biologist, anyone you meet can instantly solve any open problem in your field, usually by postulating group selection. Et cetera.
Maier's advice echoes the principle of the bottom line, that the effectiveness of our decisions is determined only by whatever evidence and processing we did in first arriving at our decisions—after you write the bottom line, it is too late to write more reasons above. If you make your decision very early on, it will, in fact, be based on very little thought, no matter how many amazing arguments you come up with afterward.
And consider furthermore that we change our minds less often than we think: 24 people assigned an average 66% probability to the future choice thought more probable, but only 1 in 24 actually chose the option thought less probable. Once you can guess what your answer will be, you have probably already decided. If you can guess your answer half a second after hearing the question, then you have half a second in which to be intelligent. It's not a lot of time.
Traditional Rationality emphasizes falsification—the ability to relinquish an initial opinion when confronted by clear evidence against it. But once an idea gets into your head, it will probably require way too much evidence to get it out again. Worse, we don't always have the luxury of overwhelming evidence.
I suspect that a more powerful (and more difficult) method is to hold off on thinking of an answer. To suspend, draw out, that tiny moment when we can't yet guess what our answer will be; thus giving our intelligence a longer time in which to act.
Even half a minute would be an improvement over half a second.
1Robyn M. Dawes, Rational Choice in An Uncertain World, 1st ed., ed. Jerome Kagan (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 55–56.
2See Yudkowsky, "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk."
50 comments
Comments sorted by oldest first, as this post is from before comment nesting was available (around 2009-02-27).
What circles do you run in Eliezer? I meet a fair number of people who work in AI, (you can say I "work in AI" myself) and so far I can't think of a single person who was sure of a way to build general intelligence. Is this attitude you observe a common one among people who aren't actually doing AI research, but who think about AI?
Oh, I'm not talking about the mainstream AI field. Most of them know better. I mean, say, a random middle or upper-class individual in Silicon Valley, or a random user on an IRC channel.
However, the rule about instantly solving Friendly AI may apply even within the AI field, since it's a more difficult problem.
It's obvious how to build AI. You just add complexity. AIs need complexity. :-)
And a randomness-adder :)
I've just finished a 3-day training course on TRIZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) a problem solving technique, one of the recurring themes throughout the course was what to do about all the solutions that come out even before you've figured out what the true problem is you're trying to solve. The advice was to write the solutions down (rather than be diverted by them or try to bat them away), use them to help examine the problem a bit more and then carry on until you have enough information to make useful judgements about all the solutions you've generated; this was very helpful advice. You need to have a sound way of formulating and exploring the problem space, as well as generating solutions, otherwise you'll become too distracted by all the great solutions your brain is generating.
I just want to remark that it is far from obvious on apriori grounds that there is no elegant general AI algorithm that will solve all the other problems quite nicely. We've only learned this by the continued failure to find such an algorithm or anything like it by the AI community and the continued small successes of more specific less elegant approaches.
AI's need Emergence too. Make sure to add some of that to the soup ;^)
X3J13, the ANSI committee that standarised Common Lisp, had many problems to solve. Kent Pitman credits Larry Masinter with imposing the disciple of seperating problem descriptions from proposed solutions and gives insights into what that meant in practise in a post to comp.lang.lisp
The general interest lies in that fact that the X3J13 Issues were all written up and are available on line.
so if you wish to study how this works there is a resource you can analyse.
I should confess that my interest has been in content not process. I have been reading these issues to learn Common Lisp. Are these pages really a useful resource for scholars wishing to study the separation of problem descriptions from proposed solutions? I don't know.
I think this argument is flawed with respect to the more technology-oriented questions. Most people do not seriously claim to solve AI problems. What most people (like myself) who are slightly educated in the field (I did an undergrad minor in AI, just very simple stuff) will do is they will suggest an approach that they would try if they had to start working on it. Technical questions also usually yield to evidence very quickly whenever it matters, i.e., when someone would start burning money on an implementation. That is not to say some time and resources are not to be saved by using the maxim outlined here.
OTOH, the part about economists is valid, since most people have very strong ideas (usually wrong ones) about what will work, e.g., as a policy. But then again, most people have no way of wasting (other peoples') resources based on these faulty ideas.
No, wait...
The latest of a number of really good posts from you that directly address the concern of this blog. You seem to be really starting to "grok" the terrifying reality of just how biased we are by the very nature of our thought processes, and coming up with good and useful steps to reduce those biases. Nicely done.
This post makes me wonder how much time passed for Eliezer between concluding that a technological singularity was a probable part of the future and deciding that creating an AGI was the best response, and likewise how much time passed between concluding that AGI Friendlyness would be a difficult problem and concluding that working on a theory of AGI Friendlyness was the best response.
Eliezer, I get the impression that your recent blog entries will make me a better rationalist or if not that a better inventor of software, organizational innovations and social arrangements that will help people become better rationalists.
Good stuff, I say.
A surprising number of people I meet seem to know exactly how to build an Artificial General Intelligence, without, say, knowing how to play the guitar or juggle (much easier problems).
Yes, but while those two topics may be interesting to me, other "easy" problems (home and car maintenance, farming) are not so much even though I recognize their importance. I'm not going to learn how to do everything basic before I am going to learn something complicated. Am I?
Is an AI?
And these problems aren't even easy, really. Like the person who knows how to make an AI, one imagines they "know" how to play guitar. There's a competence level and there is a deeper mastery/creation level. I know three chords; I am not .
Unless that was your point.
My AI will play the guitar and juggle so I won't have to.
This advice seems the opposite of, "avoid analysis paralysis." These may be bounding two extremes, neither of which is healthy. Or I may simply be wrong about the relationship.
Playing the guitar has human-aesthetic components so it's a subproblem of Friendly AI, not just AGI. Building an AI that juggles is a valid challenge. As for trying to do it yourself, that quite misses the point. A mathematician may not be able to do high-speed mental arithmetic, but ought to know how to build a calculator.
I remember reading something much like this in I am right and you are wrong by Edward de Bono, who as I recall wrote that we should try to hold on to the "I haven't made my mind up" state much longer than we do, and be prepared to say "I don't know" much more often than we do (I think he even proposed a new word we could use to answer questions with that meant we don't have a reason to think either way yet). This was about 15 years ago so I've probably mis-remembered.
I was a philosophy undergrad at the time, and when I asked my tutors about de Bono, they told me he was a vacuous 'self-help' nitwit I should ignore.
"My Ap distribution is rather flat."
Hm, MADIRF? :)
Completely useless methods for building a general intelligence:
Method 1: Put some bacteria on a lifeless planet with liquid water. Wait until one evolves.
Method 2: Find a fertile human of each gender and induce them to mate. Wait nine months.
Luis Enrique, See above about "We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think"; my interpretation is that the people are trying to believe that they haven't made up their minds, but they are wrong. That is, they seem to be implementing the (first) advice you mention. Maybe one can come up with more practical advice, but these are very difficult problems to fix, even if you understand the errors. On the other hand, the main part of the post is about a successful intervention.
Constant, regarding "analysis paralysis," keep in mind there are often two separate questions:
How much time should I spend thinking about X?
Given I'm allocating T time to think about X, how should I divide up T among different thought subtasks?
Analysis Paralysis would generally be a problem with (1).
The current blog post applies more to (2). In the Maier example, the participants presumably know they have a sizable chunk of time blocked out, and the experimental group presumably gets better results not by spending more time overall, but because they reserved a good chunk of T to spend learning the problem, without committing right away to a solution.
The notion of delaying proposition of 'solutions' as long as possible seems an excellent technique for group work where stated propositions not only appear prematurely but become entangled with other, perhaps unproductive interpersonal dynamics, and where the energy of the deliberately 'unmade up' group mind can possibly assist the individual to internally change position. The thorny bit for me however, is the individual trying to 'hold that non-thought' - a challenge that is more or less equivalent to stopping, or even slowing the thought process deliberately, which is meditation after all - something we mere mortals haven't found all that easy so far. Indeed, some argue that many of us aren't even aware there is an 'internal dialogue', let alone knowing how to stop it. In other words, it's easy to say don't make up your mind, but not so easy to enact.
It's okay to think up solutions. You just have to write them down and refocus on the problem.
This is how a brainstorming session is supposed to work. The main goal of the facilitator is to keep the group criticism from spinning out of control. Usually, if someone proposes a solution, someone will shout out an objection to it. But we should still be thinking about the problem. Just write down the solution and shush the objection, then return to the problem.
"...human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can't get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort."
Charlie Munger
I agree. I really hate our notion that "you shouldn't bring up a problem unless you have a solution".
It is obvious to anyone that solves problems that we should analyze the problem before letting our minds move on to a solution.
The people advocating that might be confusing analysis with politics. It's annoying when someone criticises your political idea but offers no alternative; it feels (sometimes accurately) that they're disrupting the conversation but offering no input. So in a political debate, a ground rule might be "don't criticise my solution if you don't have a solution of your own".
Rationally, however, that doesn't excuse not assessing the solution. And it's also important to remember that one potential solution is "do nothing" or "carry on doing what we were doing already". So, in most cases, ANY new solution had an alternative solution to which it can be compared.
That's like arguing food doesn't taste good because I can't prove it.
Please stop misusing the word edict.
...what? How is the 'question' of whether food tastes good even related to this? It's nothing like a problem needing a solution.
Are you sure of that citation? I just looked for it in a copy of Dawes's "Rational Choice in an Uncertain World" and again with the full text search in Google books
and did not find any mention of Maier's work. Also, though Maier does frequently use the "Changing Work Procedures" problem, I haven't turned up any publication by him that matches this description. (Note that this failure is quite possibly mine; I haven't done an exhaustive search).
-- MarkusQ
I'm thinking perhaps it is this book by Norman R.F. Maier:
Problem Solving Discussions and Conferences, published by McGraw-Hill Education (December 1963).
Does anyone know of more recent journal article on the topic, 'wait before proposing solutions'?
"why, that problem is so incredibly difficult that an actual majority resolve the whole issue within 15 seconds.", "We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think" and "Cached Thoughts"...
Right. We don't do a lot of "our" thinking ourselves. We aren't individually sentient, not really. We don't notice it, but the actual thinking is going on in our subcultures. The sad and funny thing is, we don't even try to understand the cognition of our subcultures, when we research cognition.
I think I'm sentient. If you're not sentient, I would surmise that you believe you're lucky enough to be in a competent subculture -- one self-aware enough to bring this realization to you.
Could one devise a series of experiments to show that individuals aren't sentient, but "subcultures" are?
This is one of the techniques I've always thought sounded really useful, but never had a clear enough picture of to implement for myself. Does anyone have an example (a transcript, or something of the like) of groups and/or individuals successfully discussing a problem for 5 or 10 minutes without proposing any solutions? I have trouble imagining what that would look like.
No transcript. But I do this professionally all the time. Clients frequently come to me with a design in mind for a solution, and it's often important to back them up and get them to tell me what the problem actually is.
Usually, I start with the question "How would you be able to tell that this problem had been solved?" and repeat it two or twenty times in different words until someone actually tries to answer it.
On one occasion I handed a client my pen and asked whether it was a solution to their problem. They looked at me funny and said it wasn't. I asked them how they knew that, and after a while one of them said "well, for one thing, it doesn't do X" and I said "great!", took the pen back, and wrote "has to do X". Then I handed them the pen back and said "OK, suppose I add the ability to do X somehow to this pen. Is it a solution to your problem now?" and after a couple of iterations they got it and started actually telling me what their problem was.
The thing that used to astonish me is how often the proposed solution utterly fails to even address the problem articulated by the same person who proposed the solution. I've come to expect it.
I start with the question "How would you be able to tell that this problem had been solved?" and repeat it two or twenty times in different words until someone actually tries to answer it.
I handed a client my pen and asked whether it was a solution to their problem
Bleakly funny. Thanks for that. I usually retreat (probably with an angry or pained look on my face) when I notice I'm not really being heard. But sometimes it's better to play and explore.
(nods) It's kind of critical in a systems engineering role.
Only vaguely relatedly, one of my favorite lines ever came from my first professional mentor, about a design he was proposing: "It does what you expect, but you have to expect the right things."
Usually, I start with the question "How would you be able to tell that this problem had been solved?" and repeat it two or twenty times in different words until someone actually tries to answer it.
What a true and hilarious depiction of life. I have the exact same problem doing web development. Because the people giving me projects are not IT people they tend to come up with totally dysfunctional solutions. Yet they almost always start by telling me how they want the problem solved. I have to dig to find out what the problem is first but I just ask them "What result do you want?" or "What purpose do you want this to serve?" and say "I can't make it serve the purpose without knowing what the purpose is." That works for me, without me having to ask them 20 times. Then again maybe you're doing projects in radically different contexts all the time, or with completely different people who vary in their ability to see the point in answering that question. I work with a limited number of people and contexts, all of which I understand pretty well, so my problem clarification process is pretty simple.
Yeah, it's different people and a different context every time.
What purpose do you want this to serve ... I work with a limited number of people and contexts, all of which I understand pretty well, so my problem clarification process is pretty simple..
In my experience as a programmer (who wore all the software-related hats), I found that even when I understood the domain quite well, inquired about the purpose multiple times, and wrote little stories illustrating my interpretation of the users' desires, I could walk away from early usability tests with major changes to the project.
In one particularly memorable instance, I got all the way through making paper prototypes and making pretend e-mails. Then, I convinced my manager to try out the system. The process started in a pre-existing e-mail package and then routed stuff to the proposed custom software. He sat down, opened up the pretend e-mail, and started to save the attached files. At that point, we discovered that there was no need for the custom software and killed the entire project.
I have attempted using this in more casual decision making situations, and the response I get is nearly always something along the lines of "Okay, just let me propose this one solution, we won't get attached to it or anything, just hear me out..."
What do you do in this situation? Let them speak? Ask them to write down their solution, to be discussed later?
Oops... Couldn't resist proposing solutions.
To be perfectly honest, at the time I simply planted my face on the table in front of me a few times. I was at a dinner party with friends of my mother's; I would have sounded extremely condescending otherwise.
Ah yes, status mismatch in a not very rational crowd. Not much you can do there.
There's a comment already asking for more modern articles/citations/research on this topic but in case someone wants to run with this idea in real life, you can find a summary of Norman Maier's research at http://www.iaf-world.org/Libraries/IAF_Journals/Assets_and_Liabilities_in_Group_Problem_Solving.sflb.ashx
The article was written by Norman Maier in 1967 and reprinted in Psychological Review in 1999. For those of you with access to well-funded libraries, the citations are:
- Psychological Review, Volume 74, Number 4, Pages 239-249.
- Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal — Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1999, Pages 45-51
And, to be on really solid ground, you'd want the actual source article(s) that the above review refers to. They are:
- Hoffman, L. R., & Maier, N. R. F. The use of group decision to resolve a problem of fairness. Personnel Psychology, 1959, 12, 545-559
- Maier, N. R. F. Screening solutions to upgrade quality: A new approach to problem solving under conditions of uncertainty. Journal of Psychology, 1960, 49, 217-231.
- Maier, N. R. F. Problem solving discussions and conferences: Leadership methods and skills. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.
- Maier, N. R. F., & Hayes, J. J. Creative management. New York: Wiley, 1962.
- Solem, A. R. 1965: Almost anything I can do, we can do better. Personnel Administration, 1965, 28, 6-16.
From which edition of the book does the reference originate? At first glance it does not seem to be included in the second edition and I'm curious to read more about it.


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DIRECTOR – Roz Walden
Roz has been actively involved in CAFNEC since moving to Cairns 2.5 years ago. Through her involvement as both a volunteer and employee, Roz has demonstrated her commitment to the organisation and determination to strengthen environmental advocacy in the FNQ region.
Her qualifications include a Bachelor of International Hotel and Tourism Management and a Masters in Environmental Management but she attributes her skills and abilities to her diverse and varied career which includes experience in organisational development, events management, environmental consultancy and community organising.
She is passionate about using her management skills to benefit the community and environment and seeks to enrich the experiences of our members and volunteers. Roz is keen to implement the use of innovative approaches and technologies to build on CAFNEC's long history of success, fostering new and improved interactions between CAFNEC and the community.
Email: director{at}cafnec.org.au
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR – Bess Murphy
Hailing from country NSW, Bess is passionate about science, sustainability and education. Trained as an Environmental Scientist, majoring in Biology with First Class Honours she has worked at multiple universities as a research assistant.
She has over half a decade of environmental campaigning and outreach experience spanning Bathurst, Wollongong and Cairns.
Bess coordinates the Cairns Drain Stencil Project getting her out onto the street and into the community spreading the message that what goes into our drain system flows out to the reef.
When not at CAFNEC you can find Bess crafting sustainable timber jewellery in an off grid shed on the Tablelands, under the sea, or hiking in the rainforest nerding-out on botany.
Email: community{at}cafnec.org.au
OFFICE MANAGER – Marie Short
Marie has worked for us for many years and maintains a vast knowledge bank in relation to our work.
She says there is never a dull day in the CAFNEC office and that she is fortunate to be able to interact with so many interesting and energetic people, and of course the myriad of environmental issues.
Marie is involved in CAFNEC's annual Far North Wilderness Bike Tour and hopes to actually do some riding one year!
Apart from her CAFNEC life, she enjoys a range of sports, good friends and the odd glass of champagne!
Email: admin{at}cafnec.org.au
PROJECTS AND EVENTS COORDINATOR – Aïsha de Barros Lopes
Moving away from the rush of the big city Aïsha found her rhythm in Cairns between the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. After completing a Bachelors Degree in Environments at the University of Melbourne, and working alongside some of Melbourne's conservationist groups, she decided to undertake an internship with CAFNEC to learn more about environmental advocacy and education.
Although Aïsha is fairly new to the role her passion for environmental protection drives her to build upon her skills and knowledge, as well as her connection and engagement with the community. When not in the office, she will be out and about working at markets stalls, putting on events, teaching at schools, or mingling at community centres.
And if you can't find her at any of these place she will most likely be dancing and swimming amongst the critters of the rainforest!
Email: projects{at}cafnec.org.au
We are often looking for interns. If you are a university student interested in working for CAFNEC, learning about the key issues affecting Far North Queensland, and making a positive difference for the planet, email your resume and a one page cover letter and your available commitment to email@example.com or drop it to the CAFNEC office.


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Dr. John W. Bass: actually, that says it all. This compassionate genius with the exquisite skill, eye, and judgment of a superlative medical Michelangelo enhanced my life immeasurably. Now, I match inside and out: I look the way I feel. I certainly didn't after that 127 pound weight loss: my face and arms didn't fit! Well, they don't flap in the breeze now! I actually recognize myself when I look in the mirror. The astounding result is that I've been repeatedly cast to play characters 25 years my junior, and was actually turned down for a role for the stated reason that I look too young for the part (I nearly fell through the floor upon hearing that statement). That's an outstanding observation, from an overwhelmingly judgmental director, on the quality of Dr. Bass's work! Dr. John W. Bass: no wonder his peers shower him with accolades!
Kathy Shedd, actress/singer/writer


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This second novel in a futuristic trilogy imagines an America where immigration reform has taken a dangerous turn. In "House Divided" the Latino residents of America have been confined to quarantine zones and a civil war is being waged between the US military and some underground guerilla groups who are fighting on behalf of various constituencies within the Latino community.
In this interview the author discussed how he imagined this disturbing scenario and how he has made the transition from advertising executive to novelist.


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The History
Community Initiatives Associates was established in 2004 and now publishes a wide range of products from magazines to boxing programmes and diaries.
Set up by two brothers, the company has been built on professionalism and customer care and continues to go from strength to strength.
With an office of over 50 people, each person employed is unique to the business and we ensure each and every person has the same outlook as the partners ensuring continuous customer satisfaction.
"Each and every individual that works for Community Initiatives Associates is more than just a number, we love seeing people becoming successful and reaching their true potential" Partner.
The Philosophy
Community Initiatives Associates are an independent national publisher of Community based magazines. The company was founded by publishing professionals who are dedicated to publish only the best in quality and content at reasonable prices. We believe in delivering quality products and services for the benefit of our customers and partners.
With decades of publishing experience, we understand the needs of our customers, and we continuously challenge ourselves to provide the highest level of products and services.
Our Values
• We take pride in our efficiency and professionalism in the ever changing needs of our customers
• We challenge ourselves to excel in all aspects of publishing and most importantly, we love what we do
• We are dedicated to providing outstanding products and services at the highest level of quality and professionalism.
•We treat our employees as individuals and we encourage them to recognise their full potential.
•We believe in communication and our successes are shared with everyone in our company.


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"The _____'s habitat is _______."
Animal Habitats Writing Lesson
Cessy's Animal Habitats Writing lesson was the perfect extension for our Treasures Unit 5 literature readings! The third week of this "Animal" unit focuses on habitats. Being that we are city folk,...our background in this knowledge in this area certainly need some prepping. And since we are all animal-lovers, we didn't mind spending the extra time on this topic. And the kids loved it!
On day one, students use xerox copies of the animals and the habitats to construct sentences.
On day two, the teacher models how to use the chart created the day before to construct complete sentences about animals and their habitats. A few students required a sentence frame that read:
"The _____'s habitat is _______."
Here We Come to Save the Day!
We are three energetic kindergarten teachers who want to share our kinder experience with you!
August 2018


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Ballymoney and Moyle Times
On Wednesday 24th June at 8pm a public meeting will be held in Ballymoney Town Hall to discuss the future of the Roddens care home. ALL local MLA's and Councillors have been invited , as have the Trust.
The residents of the Roddens need your support. Irrespective of whether you have a family member using the home or not , please come along......we need your help!!
Let's speak out for those who can not speak out for themselves.
Let's protect the welfare of our elderly and stand up for the most vulnerable in society
Let's send a clear message to the Trust and the Minister of exactly how we feel


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According to the U.S. Census Bureau (PDF), the average travel time to work (one way) in 2011 was 25.5 minutes. Of those who worked outside the home, 8.1 percent had commutes that were 60 minutes or longer. That means the average person spent 4.25 hours commuting each week, and a significant minority spent 10 hours or more.
If you're one of those people with a sizable commute, how do you make good use of that time? The answer will vary depending on whether you drive, bike, or take public transit, but the following are some suggestions.
If you're driving: Don't use your phone
I've already written about how dangerous it is to talk on the phone when driving, even if you're doing it hands-free. And obviously texting is dangerous, too. If you need to check your messages or reply to a call, please find a safe place to pull over before responding.
Use the time for learning
If you're driving, you can listen to informative radio shows or put interesting podcasts and audio books on your smartphone or other mobile device. Also, a number of universities provide free audio lectures on a wide range of subjects.
You can also save articles from the web to the Pocket app and then use the "listen" function to have them read to you.
You might also use apps or CDs to help you learn a foreign language. I learned some rudimentary but useful French by listening to a few tapes over and over in the car, until the vocabulary stuck. (Yes, tapes — it was a while ago.)
If you're using public transit, you can obviously expand your possibilities to include magazines, newspapers, physical books, e-books, etc.
Use the time for relaxation
Podcasts, audio books and such don't have to be educational — they can be just pure fun. Sometimes it's nice to just get lost in a good novel. Or you might choose to listen to music, either on the radio or on your mobile device. The right music might put you in a good mood to begin the day or might help take the edge off a not-so-wonderful workday on the way home.
If you're using public transit and have an Internet connection, you could use the time for reading and updating social media, such as Facebook or Twitter.
Another idea would be to use the commute to practice mindfulness, as Maria Gonzalez explained in the Harvard Business Review:
The idea is that you are continuously aware of three things: your body, what you see, and what you hear. This is what it is to be mindfully present as you drive.
Use the time for work
If it isn't feasible to leave work behind, and you're using public transit, you could use your commute time to handle some of your email. You might also update your to-do lists or take some time for planning and strategizing.
Strike up a conversation
If you're driving, it can sometimes be nice to have a commute partner. Some years ago, I drove to a yoga class that was a half hour from home with someone else from my area, and we both enjoyed getting to know each other better. It even led to a job for me.
And here's something that might interest those taking public transit. Kathleen Elkins reported in Business Insider on a study done by two behavioral scientists, Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, and published in October 2014:
Epley and Schroeder took their experiment to the subway. They randomly assigned three groups of commuters: One was instructed to connect with a stranger, one was asked to remain disconnected, and the control group commuted as they normally would.
While participants predicted their ride would be more enjoyable sitting in solitude, the research team found the exact opposite — those asked to engage in conversation reported a more positive, and no less productive, experience.
How do you use your commute time? Let us know in the comments.


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Wise disposition of content parts along with a presence of back-to-top button facilitates navigation around this theme. To see how it works, visit live demo page and click download button to get this trendy freebie.


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Every one of us suffering from IBS knows this: We have so called "trigger foods", that makes us run to the bathroom within minutes. And of course, we have all banished these foods from our diet. But there is more to diet than just suppressing a few ingredients. In fact, some diets are known to give a tremendous relief to a lot of IBS sufferers.
In this article, I will present the recent, very popular, low FODMAP diet.
Origin of the diet
This diet was created by Australian researchers, having found out that some foods created a lot of gas and bloating to IBS sufferers. It gained popularity over there, but remained almost unknown to most of us, until the book ibs: free at last went out in 2009. The diet rapidly gained popularity, and still is. Nowadays it's one of the most popular ways to deal with IBS.
What are FODMAPs?
FODMAPs stands for Fermentable Oligo-, Di- and Mono-saccharides, and Polyols. Basically, it is a collection of foods that contain carbohydrates that can be difficult to digest. The theory is that these carbohydrates stay in the intestines, feeding the bacteria, which then produce gas and water, thus giving us poor IBS sufferers our bout of diarrhea and gas.
Currently, researchers are working on the exact benefits of a low-FODMAPs cure, there hypothesis being that they can drastically reduce symptoms for 75% of the sufferers. Not a small achievement.
The diet
There's a huge amount of lists of high and low fodmaps foods on the internet, that you'll find easily. I don't really see the point in writing a new one here. Here are a few links I like:
- the about.com page on fodmaps
- a nice PDF to print
- a huge fodmaps list from Cassandra Forsythe's blog
So, we're moving to the important point: Is it feasible to stick with such a diet? It may sound hard at first, living without bread sounding almost impossible to me. But I am still going to try it out for a month, see how it goes. Using l-glutamine has already helped me a lot, but I think switching to a FODMAP diet could lead me to almost symptom free IBS.
The good news is that, although you should get rid of all high FODMAP food at first (the elimination phase), you may reintroduce them one by one after a few weeks, to see what really troubles you, and what your threshold is. The idea behind this is that YOU should determine how much you want to limit your IBS symptoms.
On the next article, I'll introduce the specific carbohydrate diet, a very hard-to-follow, but allegedly very efficient diet. In fact, several people declare they were cured from IBS, or even Crohn's disease thanks to it...


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Fitness Tips Completely From The Exercise Gurus
Being fit involves several things. Things beneath the umbrella of fitness include workout systems, nutritious foods and workout regimens. There are a variety of methods that someone can increase their health insurance and their appearance by obtaining fit. The below article provides you with advice on beginning your very own fitness plan that might be effective for yourself.
You really should consider getting several sessions having a private trainer when establishing your regular workout routine. A great fitness trainer will assist you to set goals, focus in on things that need work, and design the project out program that may be tailored to your needs. Training in a gym when you haven't done so before could be scary, so let someone know knows his way around a gym help you. After accomplishing this, you'll anticipate to start a new plan which fits your life-style.
Setting and reaching personal workout goals is the best way to stay motivated. Having something to concentrate on may help you avoid obsessing over how hard it is actually. Using a goal discourages thoughts of quitting and may help keep you motivated to go on up with your fitness program.
The frequency of your workouts depend upon exactly what you will be looking to achieve. If you would like muscles, you must not have more than one resistance training session a week. Yet to acquire leaner you will might like to do more resistance training workouts.
When you often backslide on the exercise program, take note of a schedule so that you don't forget to get it done. CHoose two or three days weekly to exercise, then follow through with your plans. In the event you miss a day for whatever reason, switch your regular workout to your day that you can exercise. Make sure you keep that backup date.
Are you thinking about increasing the potency of your workouts? Stretching will help enhance your strength by as much as twenty percent. While doing exercises in sets, take about thirty seconds to concentrate on stretching out your muscles you have been targeting. A straightforward addition like stretches can really increase your workout.
Make sure to tighten your glutes any time you conduct a rep of the weight-lifting exercise involving weight training over your head. That helps give your butt mucles an excellent workout, but you are also able to protect yourself from injury because you are likely to position yourself better. You may help your posture and spine during this process too.
If you would like stay comfortable buy some shoes which fit and feel happy. Try to find new shoes from the afternoon, when your feet tend to be at their largest. You realize a shoe suits you properly as soon as the space between big toe along with the shoe measures half an inch. Ensure you get some toe movement.
To summarize, fitness is definitely a broad subject that covers a lot of everyday products and techniques. There are several fitness methods which are ineffective and useless, but there are plenty of routines which not only work, but work efficiently. Hopefully, this post provided some guidance to help you become fitter..


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Dumpster Rentals In Miramichi City, NB
Breau Disposal Ltd
- 1325 Route 11, Oak Point, New Brunswick, E1V 7J6
Breau Disposal Ltd of Oak Point, New Brunswick is a family owned/operated business located on the beautiful Miramichi. We take pride in providing our customers with dumpster rental, roll off container rental and complete disposal service.
We can manage any size of waste disposal and junk removal jog from curbside pickup to construction site clean up an commercial & industrial waste management.
We believe the key to protecting our environment is using clean, up-to-date equipment and recycling methods. If you are presently one of our satisfied customers, or you are looking for a reliable company to fullfill your waste management needs, please tour our website for a more complete view of the services offered. Thank you!
1325 Route 11
Oak Point, New Brunswick
Dumpsters Sizes
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Fero Roll Off Containers offer dumpster rentals and junk removal in all NB and parts of NS. Our disposal containers range in size from 14 to 40 yards and are used for larger projects such as large roofs, demolition, storage, modifying structures and other high volume commercial waste removal. If yo...Get Quotes


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Name: Lao, Laotzu, Lao!ze
Campaign: The Great Tower of Oldechi
I'm going to cheat a little more here, and for the same reason. Lao, Laotzu, and Lao!ze were different characters, united in that they were run by the same player in the same campaign and shared a naming scheme that gives my spellcheck fits. They also all had racial powers that let them attack multiple enemies. I'm not saying their character design was "find a race with a minor action attack power, then pick a class that deals damage, then make a personality that works", but I'm also not not saying that.
Lao was a bladeling wizard who was only around for the first five sessions of a 108-session campaign and so didn't affect the story or grow that much. Laotzu was a dragonborn sorcerer obsessed primarily with gaining power through magic and secondarily with setting the party barbarian on fire. Lao!ze was a thri-kreen ranger who loved disruption and chaos, but also precision and accuracy somehow. All of them dealt damage (Lao was not terribly good at it), but in different ways for different reasons, and all of them taught me something about what I do and don't like in characters.
Lao was easy. I knew I didn't like flavorless bundles of numbers, and 4E exacerbated that. He might have had the potential to be interesting, but "potential" means he hadn't done it by the time he left.
Laotzu was the most team-killing character I've ever seen, and I've played a character who killed a member of his team. He had a feat that gave him an accuracy bonus as long as one of his allies was in the blast radius and he used it mercilessly, usually on the barbarian, usually targeting the barbarian's worst defense. He also picked up War Wizardry, which halved the damage he dealt to allies. This wasn't an improvement; instead of mitigating his behavior it only justified it. War Wizardry and similar options became effectively banned from the campaign, which mattered when our next arcane striker tried to get it. It was, however, hilarious. Nobody actually died from it, and I got a good idea of exactly how much damage players will take for a joke.
Remember my less-than-glowing opinion on rangers from yesterday? Lao!ze is the character who formed them (though my time running Delve Night didn't hurt). He did a staggering amount of damage on his turn, what with his tendency to hit on a 3 and turn critical hits into more attacks, and an upsetting amount of damage on my turn as well even when he wasn't cartwheeling his way into making my monsters ineffectual. But I loved how he bonded with the party, slowly enough to be believable but solidly enough to be a campaign asset. He's also the only character I've ever seen use d7s, and we made him a custom weapon so he could roll them more often. The joy he got from rolling damage taught me a powerful lesson: find out what makes your players happy, and they probably won't murder you in an alley.
Since the campaign didn't visit Lao after L3, we assume he's either dead or still going through the tower. Laotzu left the party, formed his own group, became a campaign rival, went mad, ate his team, became a campaign villain (take a drink), and died. Lao!ze was part of the final party and thus ascended to godhood. I suppose in the end they came out about even.


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In this article from Parade Magazine, readers learn about new emerald ash borer detection research conducted by Anand Persad, manager of plant sciences research for the Davey Institute.
Posted: Sept. 14, 2015
By: Julie Bawden-Davis
Watching a tree in your landscape deteriorate and die is heartbreaking—especially if the tree has become a cherished fixture in your yard. This scenario is all too common when the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) attacks.
One of the most destructive forest pests ever discovered in North America, EAB (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) is a highly invasive beetle native to Asia. Originally discovered in Michigan near Detroit in 2002, this small, metallic green pest has killed tens of millions of ash trees in many states, leaving entire city treescapes destroyed. The adult beetle doesn't do much damage eating ash foliage, but its larvae decimate trees by feeding just under the bark and disrupting the tree's flow of water and nutrients.
Until recently, there wasn't much that could be done to prevent ash trees from dying once hit by EAB. Thanks to pioneering research done by the Davey Tree Expert Company, there's now a way to detect the condition much earlier. When the infestation is detected and treated within the first year, ash trees often can be saved.
This is good news for the nation's seven billion ash trees that are potentially at risk if not treated, says Anand Persad, PhD., manager of arboriculture and plant sciences for the Davey Tree Expert Company. He directed a research study of 700 ash trees in Ohio that took place from 2008-2012. Persad found that infected trees break at the top of the tree first, but this is difficult to see from the ground and at that point the trees appear to otherwise be healthy. By the time it's clear they're sick, which is usually after two to three years of infestation, it's often too late to save them.
The initial means of detecting EAB relied on seeing a thinning canopy and exit holes from the trunk created when the larvae become beetles and fly off. Persad's research uncovered earlier signs. Whereas when healthy tree limbs break, it occurs close to the trunk; trees infected by EAB have branches that break midway. Early diagnosis can be made by looking for telltale cracks in these areas, especially after stormy weather.
To keep reading, click here.


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Week 2 ACC rankings: Clemson, FSU create separation
The conference went 1-2 against the SEC on opening weekend, losing the two games everyone expected them to lose (against Alabama and South Carolina) but pulling off the win of the weekend with Clemson's thrilling 38-35 victory against Georgia. All in all, not a bad weekend.
MORE: Week 1 upsets | Week 1 photos
How they rank
1. Clemson
3. Miami
4. Georgia Tech
5. North Carolina
6. N.C. State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Virginia
9. Maryland
10. Syracuse
11. Duke
12. Wake Forest
13. Pitt
14. Boston College
CONFERENCE RANKINGS: Big Ten | Big 12 | Pac-12 | SEC
RISING: FSU QB Jameis Winston. Was there a better rookie performance by a quarterback than Winston's on Monday night? Was there a better performance by a QB, period? Winston lived up to the lofty expectations -- and then some -- with a near flawless outing and on the road, no less. And it's unlikely he'll be tested for quite some time. The Noles' next seven weekends: off, Nevada, Bethune-Cookman, at Boston College, Maryland, off and mark your calendars for Oct. 19 at Clemson.
FALLING: Virginia Tech. OK, it's Alabama. The Crimson Tide have a way of exposing flaws in their opponents. The Hokies played a tremendous game on defense, but that offense. QB Logan Thomas was 5 for 26 passing for 59 yards and an interception. Five completions. And this is coming from a veteran QB once touted as a Heisman candidate. The Alabama defense is good, but not that good.
BOTTOM LINE: In its constant battle to overcome the notion that it's a basketball conference playing football, Clemson gave the ACC the weekend's signature win and the opportunity to continue creeping up the conference ladder presents itself this weekend, too. Florida travels to Miami and the Hurricanes could pull the ACC even with the SEC this season in four head-to-head matchups. Also getting the chance to make a mark: Virginia hosts Oregon and Syracuse travels to Northwestern. No one's expecting either ACC team to win those games, but decent showings will only help.