Thinkcage

I’ve got a pretty Utopian view when it comes to the workplace so I’m always interested in what companies are doing to make the office environment more productive, conducive to creativity, more fun, and overall help preserve the separation between what we do to make a living and what we do with our families.

Netflix, the online DVD rental service has a policy of allowing employees to take as much vacation as they’d like. I’m fascinated by the idea that the conventions of the modern workplace need to be rethought and in fact, represent an antiquated system that makes workers less productive. Netflix seems to agree:

“The worst thing is for a manager to come in and tell me: `Let’s give Susie a huge raise because she’s always in the office.’ What do I care? I want managers to come to me and say: `Let’s give a really big raise to Sally because she’s getting a lot done’ – not because she’s chained to her desk.”

I could not agree more.

I am bit late to this party, but I wanted to climb on board anyway because I feel very strongly about this.

[Note: this is part of a webwide series of blog posts about compact fluorescent lightbulbs. January is the darkest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (December might be a bit darker, but with all the candles, trees and dropping balls, we work hard to light it up). To fight off the darkness, bloggers everywhere are invited to create a post with their own riff on why CF bulbs are cheaper, better politically, harder to market or just plain cute. Your choice. If you trackback here, I'll post your link in a future post and/or you can add your link to this lens, which donates all royalties to Ecotrust].

From Seth Godin’s Blog

This is something I’ve felt pretty strongly about for some time now. I’ve always been a turn the lights off when you leave a room kind of guy so naturally any energy savings is appealing to me. Why? Is it to save on my utility bills? Sure – who wouldn’t want that? But I really think it is more than that. Every bit of energy you conserve cascades, it adds to the big picture. Sure your bills might be a little less. But on a grander scale every little bit of energy that you save is less energy that has to be produced be it via a coal plant or oil refinery. That helps the environment. So when people are still buying large SUV’s because they can “afford” the price of gas, they’re missing the point. There is more to conservation than just your bottom line.

But the thing is, switching away from incandescent lighting may make a bigger impact than you might expect. How big? Well, according to Energystar.gov:

“If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR [compact fluorescent bulb], we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gasses equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.”

Frankly, that’s a pretty modest goal. Australia has plans to completely ban incandescent bulbs altogether by 2009. How about that for government really acting on something?

So please comment here. Send your trackbacks. Sign the lens linked above. But most of all, replace those outdated bulbs with newer, more energy-efficient compact fluorescent models.

Just days after this clearly-manipulated photo of Katie Couric started making the rounds (first on the web, but my wife pointed it out in People Magazine, too) we get the word that HP has announced a new digital camera with a “Slimming” function. According to the page on HP.com:

They say cameras add ten pounds, but HP digital cameras can help reverse that effect. The slimming feature, available on select HP digital camera models, is a subtle effect that can instantly trim off pounds from the subjects in your photos!

And to think we all thought that CBS used Photoshop.

More than half of Americans using sugar free products, but our waistlines keep growing. Some studies have suggested that artificial sweeteners interfere with our ability to gauge calories from foods containing real food. That wouldn’t be good considering even foods like peanut butter and soup come loaded with sugar these days.

This seemed to be rather appropriate today in light of my previous post. Personally, I have long -avoided artificial sweeteners. Party, because I appear of be one of a percentage of the population that can readily taste them and their foul after-taste; but also because I really believe that they are a poor solution. Instead of training ourselves to eat less sweet things, we instead consume more on the pretense that they aren’t detrimental. But the behavior is what is important – the only way to stay healthy is to eat right. Sugar isn’t bad for you in moderation -virtually no food is, and at least sugar is bad for you in a way that is natural and completely predictable. Nobody knows what our nation of Diet Coke drinkers is going to experience in thirty years.

To me, substituting artificial sugar makes people feel like they can have all they want because it isn’t bad for them now, but the behavior continues to be eat, eat, eat; consume, consume, consume; more, more, more. This is akin to letting your dog pee on the tile floor in your house but scolding him for peeing on the carpet. The behavior is set and the distinction between the two is confusing.

read more | digg story

Research by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is associated with an almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese for both children and adults.

I am always fascinated by studies that show how our modern lifestyle seems to directly disrupt the natural bio-rhythms of our bodies and minds. Our technological culture seems to continually increase the separation between humans and our environment. We don’t go outside as much as our ancestors; have decreased physical activity, cheat the sun with interior illumination, sleep too little on sporadic schedules, and eat foods that are wholly man-made. While these advances certainly make us more productive, I often wonder if they come at the expense of our overall health, happiness, and well-being.

I like to compare our lifestyles to that of people that lived one hundred years ago. Certainly I am generalizing, but it is safe to say most people worked out doors from morning until dusk; lack of transportation and other sophisticated machinery meant that much of their work was manual labor; they ate fresh foods often cultivated by their own hands; woke with the sun and slept by the moon.

As for me I typically get up by 6:30 am regardless of the time of year – in the winter it is dark, in the summers rather light. I sit in an air conditioned room at a computer for 8-12 hours per day, then sit some more in my car as I commute and only see the light of day filtered through glass. I try to eat right, but like anyone else consume too much refined sugar, bleached flour, salt, and caffeine – more of it coming from a box than the produce isle. I end the day with leisure activities that are more likely to include video games and movies (more sedentary time) than sports and exercise. The day ends around midnight – long past sundown.

While I consider myself to be blessed with good health, I suspect it could be better. Would I be more productive, creative, happy, and relaxed if my day was more like the guy one hundred years ago? Would I be less prone to cancer if I spent my days in the warm sunshine growing a garden for my family, fully experiencing the solar cycle? I have to think that we are more tied to the biology of this planet than we admit as a species and our constant struggles to best mother nature may ultimately be in vain.

read more | digg story

yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot yankee hotel foxtrot group 10 group 10 november sierra victor november hotel november foxtrot yankee zulu ima november zulu november tango un mike echo hotel bravo zulu victor india delta alpha mike juliette hotel india golf victor victor zulu sierra zulu oscar juliette hotel zulu golf kilo zulu uma juliette charlie end of message repeat repeat message message group 10 group 10 tankst tankst november ima sierra victor november victor november hotel november foxtrot yankee end of message end of message

15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 15728 Ready Ready 35 35 00011 00011 53535535 2179 3217 93658 666 5866