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I read an interesting study the other day. I say “interesting” in this case because it confirmed my instincts. The study was a way of measuring how much people crave power and exactly what they want from it. In sum, the study found that most people don't want to control others, but rather they want power so they have autonomy, i.e. they get to control themselves. I've thought about this for years. While I would love to have a VP title to round out my resume, I have not wanted to be anyone's boss in a long time. I like the prestige that can be conferred by the title, the possible perks and greater autonomy, but I don't necessarily want to tell others what to do. My experience managing 50 people when I was in my 20’s was a lesson I learned well. In fact, I am now suspicious of anyone who actually wants to be a boss. That's not to say that I don't like being a coach and helper to my colleagues. I often enjoy these types of positive engagements with people and...

Here are some things that I know about myself. I learned them through some type of quantification, either formal or informal. My average weight over the past three years has been 151 pounds I can subsist on 24oz per day of water, assuming moderate physical activity and 80-85 degrees temperature I can survive for 3-4 days with no food with minimal impact to my energy or mood. I typically sleep 7.5 hours per night. I almost always wake up at 5:30 AM.  My mental state suffers at less than 6 hours of sleep. The result is typically slower reaction time, mild depression and irritability When I travel, I sleep less. I am also more depressed My stress behavior is typically to want to connect MORE, rather than less with others What do you know about yourself? How do you use this information to be more self-aware and manage yourself more effectively? Know your limits. Know what you can do with yourself. Test yourself before you're tested.

Yesterday was the last day of a weekend of baseball tournaments for this guy. Unfortunately, the team was bested by their opponents in a three hotly contested games.  My son is a pretty good ballplayer. He makes up for his average athleticism with a good mind for the game and incredible powers of observation.  What really amazes me is his absolute love of the game. After playing a hard game, his only wish besides eating the sandwich he had stuffed in his gear bag was to watch some other teams play. It wasn't watching the team he had just played, it was ANY game. So, after a long day, we sat in the stands and watched more games played by teams we've never heard of. Then we walked to another field where he could watch a team in his league play for the championship. Hunger and baseball overload finally got the best of me and I made the suggestion that we go get some dinner.  On our way out of the fields, a homerun baseball came flying over a fence. Santiago shagged i...

Last night I tried to stay on top of my "sleep hygiene," namely turning off screens and going to bed on time with an appropriate amount of winding down time. While I didn't execute it perfectly, I did get seven and a half hours of some of the most blissful sleep I've gotten in a while. That makes for a good day all around. I have already banged out a workout and I'll do another one at lunch. Plus, my mood is so much better automatically. When I think of how chronically under rested we Americans are (and maybe all of us modern people - my sleep app shows that a lot of countries get even crappier sleep), it's pretty amazing we can get anything done. Now, I will say that I think we want to avoid a slavish devotion to doing the same thing all the time. While generally getting a good nights sleep is good -and when you're in your late 40's, it's a freaking blessing every time it happens- I also think that we need to break patterns every now and again t...

In keeping with my alarmist postings about people being "checked out," I am thinking about the lack of good listening that goes on in my world. Probably yours too. How many times do you feel like someone is just keeping quiet while you are talking, waiting for the chance to insert what they were going to say, regardless of your point? How many times have you done this, if you're being honest with yourself? I'm a major offender myself. Oftentimes, I've thought up something witty and likely very relevant...to what was said five minutes earlier. This week, along with practicing good sleep hygiene (damn you, Words with Friends!), I'm going to practice listening more and talking less. The challenge I have right now is that we're all competing for airtime and people are so used to being interrupted that they talk and talk and talk if no one busts in. My experiment will be to see how long it takes for someone to finish what they have to say and then hold my to...

Lately, I've been very alert to people who are checked out while doing their job. It's fairly obvious with people who have service jobs, or office workers. It's not always so apparent when I'm observing professionals with high requirements for safety: doctors, first responders, truck drivers, etc. But if at least some percentage of these folks are checked out (or distracted by their phones, their own thoughts or otherwise not fully present), this has incredible ramifications for the people they serve, i.e. all of us. There is so much competing for our attention all the time. I'm certainly not immune. I'm one inch of finger movement away from checking Facebook RIGHT NOW. What if I'm driving a car at the same time? What if I should be making an important decision at work? Pay attention.

Reforming health care? Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to come out as a proponent for universal health care coverage.  Roosevelt, running as a third party candidate, announced his support for this during a time of Progressivism in American politics (great reading, the history around the late 1920’s and 30’s, by the way). Given the mood of the country, this idea had HUGE likelihood to actually be enacted when Roosevelt was elected. In fact, the American Medical Association was supportive of it as well as many influential lawmakers. It wasn’t partisan politics that led to its demise. It was the ultimate bummer, World War I that was one of the primary reasons for universal health care to be scuttled.  Roosevelt had actually borrowed the idea from Germany, whose head of state Otto Von Bismarck had actually enacted this type of coverage in Germany. However, the United States’ mood towards Germany even before its entrance into  the war made it quite unp...

It was most certainly anti-climactic to emerge from the woods on a cool Sunday morning and walk into a well-appointed campground bustling with car campers making breakfast over Coleman grills and disheveled children wrapped in Disney character blankets, quietly playing with IPads. In that moment of familiarity and habit I almost forgot what I had been doing for the past few days as I picked at the continental breakfast laid out by our instructor to welcome us back to civilization. I wanted a shower, a change of clothes and much more than a grocery store muffin (which I ate anyway). I wanted my foods: the nut butters and trendy high protein "superfoods" I am so used to and have come to expect.   Three days before, I was skinning a garter snake, awkwardly and squeamishly removing its guts, cutting it into one bite-sized piece for each of my classmates and adding it as the main part of a stew made up of pond water, wild garlic, a handful of tadpoles, a slug, a cricket, multipl...

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New Orleans fog. , a photo by Edward Melendez on Flickr. New Orleans fog.

Things That Have Kept Me From Going Crazy at Work Meditation I try to do it 20 minutes a day. I probably only get it done about 75% of the time and I know I should do it longer, but that's about the most time I'm able to get in the morning before everything starts popping. I became a big fan after reading the Happiness Hypothesis and it is the best thing I have ever done for my brain. Exercise I work out at least five days a week, often more. It's great to get out of the office for an hour, hit the gym and if I have time, the steam room. I do concentrated interval training three times a week and have started doing weights one day. I'm trying to figure out when to do some sort of stretching or core class like yoga or Pilates , but it's still hard to come up with a regular schedule. I'd also like to try doing cross fit or something like that, but again, it's a challenge to come up with a predicatable time. Improv Whew, what can I say about improv ? Sa...

Dr. Doctor from July. We're playing another show on January 26, 2011.

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We acquiesce to the visit with Santa Originally uploaded by Edward Melendez