Category: better lifestyle

Hunting the perfect job

What makes a perfect job? A job is the combination of many factors and maybe the blend of these factors really depends on what you want to get out of it, and the lifestyle you want to lead. Lifestyle? What has that got to do with a job? Well, actually, a lot – because a job is something that allows you to obtain the means to live the life you want, then certainly the first thing to decide is the kind of life you want.

What kind of life do you want? Obviously we want to have meaning in our lives. We want to do things we enjoy, and have the means to do so. For some people, living thrill-seeking lives are important to them. They may spend weekends jumping out of airplanes, climbing mountains, going on long marathon runs – the adventure bug keeps biting and they have a zest for life and living. If you are one of these people, then you must find a job that allows you to do this. It may be you already are a good runner – in which case you may have to find sponsorship deals to allow you to do the things you want. But what happens if for example, you enjoy being an 10,000 metre runner and as you age you find you cannot keep up with the younger runners? After all, it is unlikely you will be running when you are 65 and still expecting to compete with twenty somethings. You may have to obtain financial sustenance in another form. Look at your track career and leverage that to your advantage. Become a life coach, or a motivational speaker. Speak of your training and the things you have learnt in life. Sell your experience – and be a coach in another field for another generation.

Life always presents opportunities but the best things to ask yourself are – what am I good at? What can I do? Then look for opportunities to do them. It may be something like playing the piano. You may want to follow a career in music. But you may not want to tread the difficulties with a piano career; in which you case you could take up a more stable job, while earning the money that would give you the chance to buy a piano and have lessons – still pursuing your passion! The balance of all these things will do wonders for your mental health.

Being too clever can make you blind – really?

Does being educated lead you to become myopic? This is what recent research seems to be pointing at, and what the NHS website seems to be endorsing. According to a study of nearly 68,000 participants, the research suggests that for every year spent in education, there is a decline of 0.2 dioptres in vision.

We all know the typical stereotypes of kids being brainy and wearing glasses. Everywhere we look this stereotype is being perpetuated. If you look at the character Cuthbert in the Dennis the Menace cartoons, he is the smart one in the class in the class, and like the teacher, one of few who wear glasses. Wearing glasses seems to convey some form of intelligence. Harry Potter wears glasses. The alternative stereotype is the muscular but dumb individual, big on muscles, small on brainpower.

The sample size of nearly 68,000 makes it of worthwhile consideration, unlike some research that (rather pointless) tried to use only a sample size of 20! Believe it or not, there was a piece of research on an important area such as smoking and vaping that published results after a sample size of 20 people were consulted. How is that even feasible? We have seen in the past how sample sizes skew statistics and this is how some manufacturers try to initiate the process of research in their twenty-year monopoly in pioneering new drugs; one can only speculate that this was why that particular research was published.

The research assessed the eye health of individuals are correlated them with the years spent in education. On the face of things, this seems to suggest that the more you study, the more your eyes deteriorate.

The more educated you are aiming to be, the more you have to sacrifice your sight.

Which is absurd.

It is not education that spoils the eyes. If that were the case, then all professors would wear glasses and have worse eyesight than the general population. And no teenagers would have high prescriptions.

The answer – if you can call it that – is what we do with our eyes. If we read in poor lighting conditions, then we put our eyes under strain and develop bad habits. For example, if you read with a overhead lamp and a shadow is cast on your book, or you lie on your back while hoisting a book upwards towards the sky, then you are straining your eyes; and if you spend more years (presumably in education) reading like this then you are going to develop myopia. But if you have good reading habits, then it is not going to hurt you to educate yourself and read, because you will not be doing much harm to your eyes.

But reading itself is not going to harm your eyes per se. We can point to various different activities that strain your eyes, such as watching too much television with faulty lighting, too much glare from scrolling cellphones in the dark, too much playing computer games and not noticing it has got dark … all these things strain your eyes.

In fact, if the researchers went back to the 68,000 people they surveyed, and asked how many people owned a smartphone, they would more or less get a close to 100% response and might as well have concluded that owning a smartphone leads you to developing myopia. It does – only if you focus for too long on it.

Poor vision has many causes – diet, prolonged focus and habit. One of the ways to help your eyes recover is to minimise the time you spend focusing on things close-up, and then to spend time outdoors to focus on things that are far away so that your eyes are not consistently taxed. If you were thinking of taking up piano lessons and then had to focus on reading the notated music, which may be tiny, and under dim conditions difficult, minimise the time you spend on it.

Being educated does not make you myopic – the poor reading habits that individuals have can be exacerbated by the reading demands that the pursuit of higher education requires. It is important to note the difference!

Multi-vitamins increase risk of death in some cases

Over the last few decades, people have been more concerned about health. The fitness boom of the 1970s led to a running craze and the 1980s could be described as the supplement decade, where people started taking multivitamins. (We could refer to the 1990s as the bodybuilding age and the noughties as the creatine and steriod age.)

Why do people take supplements? As the term suggests, it is to make up for vitamins that might be missing in your diet. But a report by the Guardian found that not only did supplements not have any positive effect, some vitamins actually have a higher risk of death of poor health.

Researchers at the University of Toronto looked at the effect of various vitamins on the risk of heart disease and stroke. What were the results? There was no significant proof that vitamins prevented heart disease, although folic acid, found in the B vitamins, did reduce the risk of stroke.

However, niacin (vitamin B3) and antioxidants (vitamins A, C and E) were associated with an increased risk of all causes of death, according to the findings published in the Journal of The American College of Cardiology.

Too many people have assumed that multivitamins only have a positive effect, but the levels in the products on sale can be well over the daily recommended limit, sometimes by as much as 1000%.

Vitamin C, in particular, is assumed to be good but too much can be dangerous.

There should be no need to take multivitamins if you are on a balanced diet, and the money spent could turn out to be a waste, or even harmful, if you happen to get supplements that have high levels of certain vitamins.

The pianist Robert Schumann suffered from poor health and even lost the use of his left hand, causing his performing career to be over. While part of it was reportedly due to a device that he used to widen the reach of his handspan, medication he was taking did not help either – which goes to show you must be careful what you put in your body.

Part of the problem is due to what we call anchoring. When we have a fundamental belief in an assumption, subsequent opinions are formed relative to that first opinion. If you believe supplements are good, then successive formulations of opinion are assumed to be good too, even though they may be distorted.

Why outlets for stress help mental health

According to data scientist Seth Stephenson-Davidowitz, Google searches are a more accurate indicator of our innermost thoughts and emotions, because people believe they are anonymous on the internet. Well, in light of the recent developments of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, people are more aware of the issues of privacy, and if you haven’t, certainly you would have been bombarded by companies asking your data consent, to opt in voluntarily, instead of being opted in. But the latter concerns over privacy also are a breeding ground for spam. Wait to receive “opt out” messages from spammers who then ask you to fill in your account details on their site – beware!

Coming back to the issue of using data trends for insights, people are less inclined to tell the truth face to face or in a survey, because of how they feel it would reflect on them. They may worry about how their innermost thoughts are perceived and the effect it has on others around them. For example, did you know that many adults regret having children? The time and energy devoted into parenting detract from promising careers and pursuits. But yet admitting this would be akin to telling a child “I never wanted you”.

The problem with modern life is that we have to manage a lot of contradictions. For some, children are a source of happiness, but they detract from our own and cause us unhappiness. Ever seen an adult who wanted to do something but couldn’t because he or she had to stay home with the kids? In the 1980s, work was rebranded to look cool, to be able to do the thing you enjoyed most as a career, but for many the enjoyment of work is not as what it seems. We don’t necessarily do the things we enjoy, just the things that give us the financial freedom. Enjoyment is secondary.

The whole thing points towards a big, fat disconnect between the way our lives are going and the way we want them to.

And disconnect breeds mental stresses and health deterioration in the long term.

It is my opinion that society is walking towards a social and mental health timebomb.

As companies trim their workforce, and job security wanes, and the stresses of life impact on us and causes us a disconnect between the reality of life and our expectations, what can we do?

We can learn to manage our expectations of life.

There are many things that people around say which are not necessarily true. Things like “You should enjoy your job”, “no pain no gain” and other sayings or axioms that we take to heart but are actually not helpful. Try telling a homeless person “no pain no gain”, or talk about “trading it all in, to do the things you love” to someone who is struggling with job security, with a mortgage and children to bring up. Don’t listen and accept blindly the things around you, because as Seth says, everybody lies.

The second thing you can do is to find outlets for your mental triggers.

Seth’s research into Google data trends suggest that money and climate are high causes of depression. So what if you live in a cold place, and have no money to spend? Are you screwed?

Seek to establish some form of financial security. Spend less, save more. Work towards maximising income and minimising expenditure. Forget momentarily the trappings of modern appearance; we all want to look cool but life involves knuckling down and setting aside the need to look hip. This is how society encourages us to spend – it tells us we need the most modern gadgets and things, the best clothes – but we really need to live frugally, although it is easier said than done.

Find outlets for expression. Listening to music may be cool or great, but it is also receptive, not productive, so too much music can only cause you to feel more stressed. Instead, seek to do things such as learning to draw, or learning the piano, which uses a different part of your brain and allows you some temporary from of escape from life’s stresses and stressors. And learn to channe frustration into something creative, like many other Classical music composers in the past. And something like taking up piano exams could provide a target to aim for, in terms of self-fulfillment, and a diversion from daily life too. It is something meaningful you can do for yourself.

Modern life is about contradiction, and we have to learn to bridge the ever-widening gap. Learning to straddle the two is one of the most important skills we could teach the generations to come.

Managing sound and noise

How loud is loud? You have to wonder. We often see people plugged into their headphones, listening to music. Most of them are quite conscious of the effect their music has on others and not to turn it on too loudly. But there are some for whom music needs to be played loudly, as if they are having a personal disco, for it to have any effect or meaning. And then there are the real anti-socials, playing music deliberately loudly as if to provoke a reaction, antagonising others to speak up while their devices blare away.

It is of course anti-social to play music at loud limits that annoy others. Every one has a different limit, and unfortunately it seems there are those that will challenge these boundaries and step in the gaps of ambuguities. But leaving the anti-social nature of it aside, how loud is loud?

The World Health Organisation recommends 85 decibels to be the safe limit for eight hours of listening, while a maximum of fifteen minutes is recommended for sounds at one hundred decibels. But at discos, the sound levels have been registered to be at higher levels. Even in sporting events, the cheering of football crowds can reach over a hundred decibels. (You can find the information here. Which is why football fans deliberately make noise to rattle opposing teams. Football player Timo Werner had to be substituted in a RB Leipzig match against Besiktas, despite wearing ear plugs to block out the noise, because it was causing him headaches and respiratory problems.

Exposure to loud noises can cause one to lose hearing function over time. The problem with hearing impairment, is that the loss is permanent. The composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven had to cope with losing his hearing, but fortunately managed to deal with it. But perhaps we need a keener measure of sound pollution. We know a train may produce sound levels of up to a hundred decibels, but how far away or how close we are to it affects the impact too. If we are standing next to a pneumatic drill and it is constantly drilling, it would do us more harm than if we we heard it from three streets away.

Why is sound pollution a problem? Listening using earphones, by virtue of their proximity to the ear canal, may cause more damage even at a lower volume compared to listening to louder noises from a further distance. If you are at a classical music concert and sat in the front row of say, a performance of music by Wagner, it is going to have more of an impact on your ears than if you were in a back row. It is not inconceivable that we will see more lawsuits filed in the future by various professionals working in the sound industry (stage technicians), music industry (dancers), teachers, construction workers, filing suits against their employers claiming that their health and safety at work as not enforced. A teacher, for example, having to work with noisy classes may sue his school for giving him the class with more noisy students while other colleagues got “better students”. It sounds silly but it is not a far-fetched idea that in an economy that is stagnant, individuals seeking to claim compensation to make up for financial shortfall may resort to noise levels as a source of contention.

Digit-al Overload

Nintendo, of course, was – and still is! – the games maker that popularised the game console offering multi-dimensional movement easily by the use of thumbs. Before Nintendo invented their games console, if you wanted a game character to make a diagonal movement, you would have to hold the Up arrow at the same time as you held the Left or Right arrow, depending on which direction you were aiming to go. Circular flowing movements were impossible. But the rotary joysticks on the top of the distinct console meant new movements were possible, bringing gameplay into a whole new era.

Much of the control of the Nintendo console is operated by the thumbs, forefinger and middle finger. The ring finger and pinkie are there to stabilise the console. The thumbs are responsible for most of the buttons; a large arrray of controls is slaved to them. The thumbs are responsible for movement and activating special functions, so during gameplay a large part of the time, the thumbs are engaged in active operation, unlike the other fingers that sit passively until recalled. And since Nintendo games are addictive, incentivising the user to stay playing for hours, many spend a lot of time over-using their thumbs without being aware of it – until the onset of pain.

Many people often speak of how the younger generation suffer from Nintendo thumb. They attribute it to the lack of awareness among the young. But adults are equally guilty too. The New York Times reports how adults are increasing seeking medical intervention for a kind of localised RSI, “texting thumb”, caused by the use of over texting. The world of technology has evolved and the pace of life has accelerated to the point where people are on their phones all their times, and phones are increasingly the choice of communication – whether texting, or responding to emails. You may blame the Blackberry, which popularised the texting and typing using thumbs. But thumb overuse is increasingly common and can become very debilitating.

Many people type as part of their job – it is hard to find someone who doesn’t, even on a subsidiary level – so the overuse of the thumb can lead for strain on the tendon, which may prove to be debilitating to the point of having to stop work. The cited report mentioned how some people couldn’t even use forks! An extreme case of a hand injury could be the pianist Robert Schumann, who after a hand injury, had to give up his performing career, and become more of a composer. Our hands are valuable assets – just ask the pianist Sergey Rachmaninov, who was said to have larger hands than the average pianist which he used to great effect in playing chords and show more technical skills. Who knows what these pianists would have done had they suffered from Texting Thumb or Nintendo Thumb?

Is the solution to phone addiction and thumb overuse a poorer phone? Hardly. Poorer phones have worse designs – remember having to press the “2” button three times to get a “c” character and stress digits even more. The solution to phone addiction is a conscious human being.

Diverting negative energies into positive gains

You’ve heard of Twitter. You’ve heard of trolling. And if you haven’t heard of the latter, you must be of the social media landscape, which may be a good thing for you. Trolling is the process – some may call it art now, unfortunately – of sending someone offensive messages in a bid to get them to respond. Some might liken it to baiting. It was a way of provoking conversation by say something to unsettle someone. I personally call it needling. It is like one of the silly things children used to do, to poke each other with a finger until someone got fed up and reacted. Over the years it has evolved into and art form, of saying something objectionable until someone “flames”. Unfortunately the development of such social terms only conveys how acceptable a practice it has become.

Twitter was a good medium for trolling – some say it still is – because it offered anonymity. And it was instantly responsive to news. Back in the days of the Arab Spring, and the London riots, people were using Twitter to communicate instant messages alongside Blackberry IM. It was almost as if these events opened the eyes of the authorities to the power of social media and how they needed to police it. To this effect, many have social media accounts to “communicate” with the public. Twitter may have had its twitterstorm, and while Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are having their turn in the news, Twitter remains an important feature of the social landscape nonetheless.

The responsiveness of Twitter and its immediacy mean that people can send anonymous messages to others and watch the impact as it unfolds Imagine receiving a message from someone who purports to know you somewhat like “The guy at the next table is watching you”. Immediately you would react to the sense of danger, and then feel a sense of embarrassment if it turns out to be a hoax and that you have been pranked. That’s what one form of trolling is. A cheap, inconveniencing laugh at someone else. And when you’ve been hoaxed, there is the embarrassment too that your hoaxer is in the vinicity observing you. But sometimes others troll (trawl) the Twitter landscape just to be objectionable, to say things to others without being physically around to be accountable for their words.

It’s not nice being trolled. It is akin to be digital bullying. A BBC report investigated some teens who had been trolled. But when they dug deeper, they had a nasty surprise. The ones responsible for the trolling, the cyber-bullies were the teens themselves.

Welcome to digital self-harm.

Why do people leave nasty online messages for themselves. One of those teens said that it was a way of getting attention and sympathy. When we are bullied online, we get some words of sympathy from others and a bit of their time and attention. Julian – not his real name – received the message “Nobody cares what you think. Just deactivate your account. No one likes your posts, and you’re a waste of everyone’s time.” Later it was discovered the digital hate mail originated from himself.

As he says of those who have been trolled, “they were quite popular so their followers would really support them through it and send them nice messages. I didn’t have many followers at the time so I thought sending myself a hate message might be a good way to get attention.”

Another girl, Sophie, sent herself hurtful comments in order to open up a discussion with herself, she said. She said she suffered from anxiety and to bring it out to the open, she penned a 1000-word response to her online hater – herself.

It may be useful, especially if you were concerned about an issue such as, say, one’s sexuality and needed to bring it out to the open. And one can perhaps understand that. But when a trolling comment is used only for the sake of generating attention, it really calls to mind the state of one’s mental health.

What kind of state is the mental health of someone who abuses themselves online to draw attention? Most would say “not good”. To that effect there are attempts to track those who do so. One of these methods involves checking the IP addresses of user accounts, to see if two have the same address – meaning they were sent from the same computer and individual.

What can you do if you are feeling down and need an outlet for your mental frustration? Sometimes it is useful to learn a new skill or do something to deflect your mental situation away briefly. You may find it useful to learn a new skill like learning the piano. And try to channel your frustration into a creative activity, because it will keep you from dwelling on your circumstances and the drive, directed correctly, will propel you to greater heights. The composer Ludwig van Beethoven, by all accounts, had a difficult childhood, but as a Piano Teacher in Crouch End expounds, Beethoven managed to transcend the difficulties faced to become a skilled musician and composer.

Certainly it is better to do something self-fulfilling, rather than self-harming!