Dr Adam's Blog

Taken from
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/technology/17distracted.html?th&emc=th

Driven to Distraction
SAN FRANCISCO — On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation.
Phones aren't just distracting drivers; they make pedestrians inattentive too.
“I ran into a truck,” Ms. Briggs said.
It was parked in a driveway.
Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.
But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.
The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.
Most times, the mishaps for a distracted walker are minor, like the lightly dinged head and broken fingernail that Ms. Briggs suffered, a jammed digit or a sprained ankle, and, the befallen say, a nasty case of hurt pride. Of course, the injuries can sometimes be serious — and they are on the rise.
Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Jack L. Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, noting that the number of mishaps is probably much higher considering that most of the injuries are not severe enough to require a hospital visit. What is more, he said, texting is rising sharply and devices like the iPhone have thousands of new, engaging applications to preoccupy phone users.
Mr. Nasar supervised the statistical analysis, which was done by Derek Troyer, one of his graduate students. He looked at records of emergency room visits compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Examples of such visits include a 16-year-old boy who walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion; a 28-year-old man who tripped and fractured a finger on the hand gripping his cellphone; and a 68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.

Young people injured themselves more often. About half the visits Mr. Troyer studied were by people under 30, and a quarter were 16 to 20 years old. But more than a quarter of those injured were 41 to 60 years old.
Pedestrians, like drivers, have long been distracted by myriad tasks, like snacking or reading on the go. But the constant interaction with electronic devices has made single-tasking seem boring or even unproductive.
Cognitive psychologists, neurologists and other researchers are beginning to study the impact of constant multitasking, whether behind a desk or the wheel or on foot. It might stand to reason that someone looking at a phone to read a message would misstep, but the researchers are finding that just talking on a phone takes its own considerable toll on cognition and awareness.
Sometimes, pedestrians using their phones do not notice objects or people that are right in front of them — even a clown riding a unicycle. That was the finding of a recent study at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., by a psychology professor, Ira Hyman, and his students.
One of the students dressed as a clown and unicycled around a central square on campus. About half the people walking past by themselves said they had seen the clown, and the number was slightly higher for people walking in pairs. But only 25 percent of people talking on a cellphone said they had, Mr. Hyman said.
He said the term commonly applied to such preoccupation is “inattention blindness,” meaning a person can be looking at an object but fail to register it or process what it is.
Particularly fascinating, Mr. Hyman said, is that people walking in pairs were more than twice as likely to see the clown as were people talking on a cellphone, suggesting that the act of simply having a conversation is not the cause of inattention blindness.
One possible explanation is that a cellphone conversation taxes not just auditory resources in the brain but also visual functions, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. That combination, he said, prompts the listener to, for example, create visual imagery related to the conversation in a way that overrides or obscures the processing of real images.
By comparison, walking and chewing gum (that age-old measure of pedestrian skill at multitasking) is a snap.
“Walking and chewing are repetitive, well-practiced tasks that become automatic,” Dr. Gazzaley said. “They don’t compete for resources like texting and walking.”
Further, he said, the cellphone gives people a constant opportunity to pursue goals that feel more important than walking down the street.
“An animal would never walk into a pole,” he said, noting survival instincts would trump other priorities.

For Shalamar Jones, 19, the priority was keeping in touch with her boyfriend. Last month while she was Christmas shopping in a mall near San Francisco, she was texting him when — bam! — she walked into the window of a New York & Company store, thinking it was a door.
“I thought it was open,” she said, noting that no harm was done. “I just started laughing at myself.”
The worst part is the humiliation, said Christopher Black, 20, an art student at San Francisco State University who 18 months ago had his own pratfall.
At the time, Mr. Black said, the sidewalks were packed with pedestrians. So he decided he could move faster if he walked in the street, keeping close to the parked cars. The trouble is he was also texting — with a woman he was flirting with.
He unwittingly started to veer into the road, prompting an oncoming car to honk. He said he instinctively jumped toward the sidewalk but, in the process, forgot about the line of parked cars.
“I splayed against the side of the car, and the phone hit the ground,” he said. He and his phone were uninjured, except for his pride. “It was pretty significantly embarrassing.”

Dr Ad's comment
Just another study that shows being Present and focused helps our brain be more productive and helps us get better performance.

Taken from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17kristof.html?th&emc=th

Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex and Giving

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 16, 2010

Want to be happier in 2010? Then try this simple experiment, inspired by recent scholarship in psychology and neurology. Which person would you rather be:

Richard is an ambitious 36-year-old white commodities trader in Florida. He’s healthy and drop-dead handsome, lives alone in a house with a pool, and has worked his way through a series of gorgeous women. Richard’s job is stressful, but he spent Christmas in Tahiti. Unencumbered, he also has time to indulge such passions as reading (right now he’s finishing a book called “Half the Sky”), marathon running and writing poetry. In the last few days, he has been composing an elegy about the Haiti earthquake.

Lorna is a 64-year-old black woman in Boston. She’s overweight and unattractive, even after a recent nose job. Lorna is on regular dialysis, but that doesn’t impede her active social life or babysitting her grandchildren. A retired school assistant, she is close to her 67-year-old husband and is much respected in her church for directing the music committee and the semiannual blood drive. Lorna believes in tithing (giving 10 percent of her income to charity or the church) and in the last few days has organized a church drive to raise $10,000 for earthquake relief in Haiti.

I adapted those examples from ones that Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, develops in his fascinating book, “The Happiness Hypothesis.” His point is that while most of us might prefer to trade places with Richard, Lorna is probably happier.

Men are no happier than women, and people in sunny areas no happier than people in chillier climates. The evidence on health is complex, but even chronic health problems (like those requiring dialysis) may have surprisingly little long-term effect on happiness, because we adjust to them. Beautiful people aren’t happier than ugly people, although cosmetic surgery does seem to leave patients feeling brighter. Whites are happier than blacks, but only very slightly. And young people are actually a bit less happy than older folks, at least up to age 65.

Lorna has a few advantages over Richard. She has less stress and is respected by her peers — factors that make us feel good. Happiness is tied to volunteering and to giving blood, and people with religious faith tend to be happier than those without. A solid marriage is linked to happiness, as is participation in social networks. And one study found that people who focus on achieving wealth and career advancement are less happy than those who focus on good works, religion or spirituality, or friends and family.

“Human beings are in some ways like bees,” Professor Haidt said. “We evolved to live in intensely social groups, and we don’t do as well when freed from hives.”

Happiness is, of course, a complex concept and difficult to measure, and John Stuart Mill had a point when he suggested: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

But in any case, nobility can lead to happiness. Professor Haidt notes that one thing that can make a lasting difference to your contentment is to work with others on a cause larger than yourself.

I see that all the time. I interview people who were busy but reluctantly undertook some good cause because (sigh!) it was the right thing to do. Then they found that this “sacrifice” became a huge source of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

The implication is that we are hard-wired to be altruistic. To put it another way, it’s difficult for humans to be truly selfless, for generosity feels so good.

“The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people,” says Brian Mullaney, co-founder of Smile Train, which helps tens of thousands of children each year who are born with cleft lips and cleft palates. Mr. Mullaney was a successful advertising executive, driving a Porsche and taking dates to the Four Seasons, when he felt something was missing and began volunteering for good causes. He ended up leaving the business world to help kids smile again — and all that makes him smile, too.

So at a time of vast needs, from Haiti to our own cities, here’s a nice opportunity for symbiosis: so many afflicted people, and so much benefit to us if we try to help them. Let’s remember that while charity has a mixed record helping others, it has an almost perfect record of helping ourselves. Helping others may be as primal a human pleasure as food or sex.

Dr Ad's thought
Makes you think how does this affect your culture at work?  I am sure the fallout would be greater engagement, culture and work place performance.By focusing and engaging with others at work we increase our level of happiness!!

Taken from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annie-toro/a-flexible-workplace-is-a_b_342260.html

As National Work and Family Month and Mental Health Awareness Month draw to a close, it's a good time to reflect on the impact of flexible work arrangements on the health and well-being of employees and their families.

Years of psychological research provide a strong foundation for flexible work arrangements, demonstrating the benefit to employees' physical and mental health, as well as their family life. To promote this knowledge, the American Psychological Association created an Office on Work, Stress and Health that promotes research, training, practice and policy addressing these matters, including:

a) Promoting understanding of work stress and its impact on the well-being and productivity of workers;

b) Exploring organizational and behavioral interventions to reduce stress, illness and injury in the workplace;

c) Studying the impact of changing work force demographics (e.g., aging workers, increasing proportions of ethnic and racial minorities and women) on health and safety in the workplace; and

d) Building collaborative partnerships among psychology, industry, labor and federal agencies to reduce stress and health and safety risks in the workplace.

For APA, issues impacting work, stress and health are of utmost priority. Our dedication to furthering initiatives that lead to a healthy workplace environment stems from our association's mission to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.

These issues are particularly important under the sustained pressures of global competition on the U.S. work force. Psychologists are uniquely trained to address the behavioral aspects of change faced by our work force.

Research provides us with essential information regarding changes in our society that speak to the critical need to prioritize workplace flexibility. However, public policy has not kept up with the realities of working families. Today's families are more likely to include single parents, unmarried couples, same-sex couples -- sometimes with children, and stepchildren.

One of the most striking changes in U.S. families in the past 30 years is the increasing number of working women and the rate of mothers who work, especially mothers of infants and young children. Recently, California first lady Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress released a provocative report entitled "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything" on the status of women in the United States and the drastic changes that have taken place in our country as a result of women's entrance into the work force. The study is aimed at inciting what it calls "a national conversation about what women's economic power means for our way of life."

Research tells us there is a positive connection between workplace flexibility and an individual's work-life balance. For instance, employees who work in environments that provide flexible work hours also tend to experience fewer conflicts within their work, family and personal lives. However, when a workplace does not provide adequate flexibility, women are more likely than men to experience work-family conflicts and health-related distress, some studies show.

Another key factor is employee perception of workplace culture. Many employees do not use such policies, even when they are available, because they are concerned that taking advantage of parental leave or flexible work schedules, for example, may be perceived as a lack of job commitment and could negatively affect their career advancement. Thus, it is imperative that employers not only support the employees by promoting their company's flexible schedule options, but also create and maintain a culture that encourages use of these policies.

Research shows that employers benefit from offering greater workplace flexibility. When employees receive the flexibility they need, there is less absenteeism and greater job satisfaction. Employees are more motivated to adopt healthier behaviors, sleep better and be involved in employer-promoted health education programs. Additionally, employers have lower health care utilization costs.

Given the interest in issues affecting working families demonstrated by the Obama administration through the development of initiatives such as the White House Middle Class Task Force and the first lady's efforts to bring much-needed attention to issues involving work-family balance, we hope to see the development of sound federal policies and initiatives that will lead to positive outcomes for employees, employers, families and our country as a whole.

to find out more about culture and engagement go to http://www.dradamfraser.com/CustomContentRetrieve.aspx?ID=216930

Taken From
http://www.consultant-news.com/article_display.aspx?p=adp&id=6258

Due to greater pressures from work 40% of women who earn in excess of £40,000 don’t feel equipped with the skills to achieve a work/life balance, according to new findings.

40% of women won’t achieve a work/life balance due to stress at work

The research by Morgan Redwood, a leading expert in talent development, is based on 237 detailed online interviews with women from a range of backgrounds across the UK.

With National Stress Awareness Day taking place next week (4th November) these recent findings just underline even further how stress at work is affecting women in achieving a work life balance.

The study was designed to determine to what extent women of working age in the UK agree or disagree with a range of attitude statements and determine their levels of contentment towards life, work, relationships and future prospects. Throughout the study women frequently experienced negative and stress related feelings, with 39% highlighting this fact further, by saying they are constantly feeling anxious.

Janice Haddon, Managing Director of Morgan Redwood says: “With the economic climate as it is many companies are looking to save money, one way of doing this is obviously to add to the workload of their staff. However by doing this, it is having a major knock-on effect. Pressure from work is increasing, meaning stress levels are getting higher. And when this is happening, particularly with women, as this survey shows, a work life balance is not being achieved.” This obviously also affects their work place performance and work place productivity.

The research also identified another interesting fact. For those women who have had children, they had experienced a loss of confidence when returning back to the workplace. Two fifths of women with children who were surveyed said they had lost confidence as a result of having a family.

Haddon comments: “Having children is life changing. With the pressures of returning back to work, and the worry of performing well after time off, it’s not surprising that women lose confidence after having a family. This can add to stress levels, making it harder to achieve that work life balance, as more time is needed in the office to prove their worth and build their confidence up.”

Haddon continues: “We’ve just launched a new series of workshops to help women and men achieve a work life balance and help them deal with stress. Our one-day workshops, self-titled ‘Creating My Future,’ will help individuals find the confidence and sense of purpose to get their lives back on track, stress free.”

For more info on getting control back visit: http://www.dradamfraser.com/CustomContentRetrieve.aspx?ID=187950

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- In people with type 2 diabetes, higher average blood glucose (sugar) levels may be linked to lower brain function, according to a new study.

Researchers found that patients with higher levels of hemoglobin A1C (a measure of average blood glucose levels over 2 to 3 months) had significantly worse results while doing cognitive tasks that tested memory, speed and the ability to manage multiple tasks at the same time. Higher A1C levels were also associated with lower scores on a test of global cognitive function. There fore high glucose levels reduced brain performance and productivity.


The findings from the Memory in Diabetes (MIND) study were published online Monday in the journal Diabetes Care. MIND is a sub-study of the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial.

"Even a mild impairment in cognitive function is of concern for people with type 2 diabetes," lead researcher Dr. Tali Cukierman-Yaffe, of Tel-Aviv University in Israel, said in an American Diabetes Association news release.

However, the researchers noted it's not yet clear whether higher blood sugar levels increase the risk for cognitive impairment or whether cognitive impairment decreases the body's ability to control blood sugar levels. They hope the question will be answered in the ongoing ACCORD-MIND study, which will test the theory that lowering A1C levels could improve cognitive function.

Previous research found that people with diabetes are 1.5 times more likely to suffer cognitive decline and dementia than people without diabetes.

Posted January 26, 2009, by Dr Adam Fraser
taken from the following website.
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/01/26/higher-blood-sugar-could-impair-thinking.html

Sweet Dreams, Sleep Tight, Succeed!

I recently came across from fascinating research from Harvard University by Professor Boris Groysberg. For years he has been studying the characteristics of high performers. In a new study her looked at what happened when you took a high performer from one organization and placed them in a new organization. What he found is that male high performers saw a dramatic decline in performance. Specifically 46% of top male performers saw a 20% decrease in performance. Incidentally this did not recover within the 5 year study period. The only exception to this was the female top performers, when they moved to another organization their performance stayed stable and tended to increase.

Why?

Boris looked into this in more detail, what he found is that the females in the study were often denied access to internal peer groups in the male dominated industry. In a nut shell they were excluded from the “boys club”. With few people to network with who did they form relationships with?

Their customers and suppliers!

The result was that while their internal network was weak their external network was incredibly strong. In comparison their male colleagues had a very strong internal network however their external network was lacking.

Which network is portable? Internal or external?

Of course the external ones! While the males said goodbye to their close co-workers, the females took their network to the next company. The result an increase in work performance.

In this time of rapid staff turn over which is the most valuable employee?

What are you doing about your external network and how portable is it??

Lets face it business is personal here’s how to build rapport with clients!

Develop a database.
This sounds so simple it is almost an insult. Most people in their own business live and die by their database, however people in corporations rarely have a strategically set up database. Start to develop and update your database on a regular basis.

Keep them front of mind.
Whenever you contact them don’t just say calling to touch base. People are far too busy to have you just touch base with them. Only contact them if you are going to give them value. So keep your database front of mind, be on the look out for articles that might benefit them. If you find something new and interesting that may help them pass it on. Also be on the look out for opportunities you can pass onto your network. You may be able to connect people.

Be Engaged.
With our fast paced society people are losing the ability to focus on a single train of thought. Constant interruptions at work, blackberries, mobile phones and our addiction to multitasking has caused us to lose our ability to focus in conversations and be deeply engaged in conversation. The greatest compliment you can give another human being is your undivided attention. When you are truly present in a conversation you build rapport and develop relationships, alternatively when are disengaged and not present in a conversation we insult people and damage the relationship.

Posted By Dr Adam Fraser

I was recently at a conference in New Zealand and the speaker before me was a neuro-anatomist who was speaking on Neural Plasticity. Neural Plasticity means that the brain has an amazing capacity to alter how its neurons are organised. For many years it was thought that after we reached adulthood, the neurons in the brain were set. However we now know that you can change the density and capacity of neurons in your brain.

For example when you first started to drive the neural patterns for this activity was quite weak and unco-ordinated, the more you drove the stronger this neural pattern became and the better you got at driving.

Further evidence comes from stroke patients. A stroke is where part of the brain dies due to a lack of blood flow. Following a stroke, researchers observed that other regions of the brain took over the function of the part of the brain that had died. For example if they lost the ability to speak, over time with rehab and concerted effort, surrounding areas of the brain took up this function and they regained the ability to speak.

Talents
We all have different talents! We are good at some things and terrible at others. Some people are good at artistic things like music or languages, while others are better at analytical endeavours like maths and science.

Here’s why!

 The brain is divided up into specific regions, one for planning, one for language, one for co-ordination, etc.

A talent is just a higher density of neurons in a certain part of the brain. Sporty people have a high level of neurons in the co-ordination areas of the brain, while some one with a good memory got more neurons in the memory area of the brain. Simple!

When we try something that we don’t have a talent for, we find it difficult and most people quit and never try it again. Because of this the neurons in that area of the brain fail to develop. This is the wrong approach as with effort you can increase the density of the neurons in every area of the brain and get better at any task.

For example if you do not have a flair for languages and you try to learn one, it tends to be difficult for you and you most likely give up. However if you persevered it would get easier for you.

What does this mean for us? No matter what your current ability, with effort you can always develop it and improve your performance.

Don’t focus on whether you are talented at something focus on how much effort you are putting into it. Accept that some things take more time than others, but it will become easier.

Posted by Dr Adam fraser

This months newsletter features our recent interview with Dr Fiona Wood. Fiona is the burn surgeon from Perth and in 2005 was awarded Australian of the Year. This woman is an inspiration to us all. She is Director of her hospital unit, a leading surgeon, a world renowned researcher, a teacher, a mentor, a board member on a number of health boards, speaks all over the country, has six kids all that live at home and exercises for an hour and a half a day. Fiona gets more high performance out of one day than most of us do in a week. She is a high performer who oozes creativity and productivity.

We asked her how she keeps up with this frantic and fast paced lifestyle.

**Health:** When asked “with your busy schedule how can you afford to exercise for 1.5 hours a day” her reply was “with my busy schedule how can I not afford to exercise for 1.5 hours a day”. “The only way I can keep up with my busy life is by staying fit and health. The exercise gives me the energy levels and fitness to lead such a busy life”.

Fiona’s tips are:
1. to do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day
2. Eat regular meals during the day to keep your energy levels high
3. Avoid fatty and sugary foods

To fit in exercise you need to be creative take your runners to work and when you feel tired and unproductive that is the time to go for a quick walk. Also get the family involved and take the kids out for some exercise.

**Be Present:** With 6 children and a busy career, Fiona has limited time with each of her family members to overcome this she practices being present with them. “Whenever I am with my family, I make sure I am completely present with them, they are all I am thinking about. When I am with my family I am not thinking about work or what I have to do tomorrow”.

**Negative People:** Fiona is careful who she spends her time with. She tries to avoid spending time with people who are a drain on her energy, rather she surrounds herself with motivated and energetic people who build her up rather than drag her down.

**Stay focused:** As a woman in a male dominated industry she had a lot of knockers when she started out. The way she overcame this is by staying focused on the goal she wanted and controlling what she said to herself. When people told her she couldn’t do it she blocked that thought from coming into her head and just focused on what she wanted to achieve.


Dr Fiona Wood an inspiration to us all!!!

Posted by Dr Adam Fraser

I recently had the pleasure of facilitating a day with some of the Olympic team at a Sponsored event. My role was to draw out information from them and also manage the questions from the audience.

One of the participants was Steve hooker who won the Gold in the Pole vault. My question to him was “Steve in Athens (2004) you came 28th in the world, 4 years later you won the Gold. What did you do in those 4 years to get that quantum leap in performance?” His response was interesting! Steve said that he always did the big things right, trained hard, ate well, and worked on his technique. However he realised that he didn’t do the small things right. These were things like, taking time out each day to relax, working on his mental focus, meditation, sleeping well, monitoring his self talk, working on his emotional control and small changes on his technique. He said that to move from really good to exceptional, you need to consistently do the small things day in and day out.

Recognising this was one thing, but changing his behaviour was the really challenging part. To facilitate this Steve had a daily list of the little things he had to do. As he did them he ticked them off. At the end of the day the number of ticks gave him a score out of 10. Each day he aimed for a ten out of ten day.

What small stuff are you missing out on each day? What is the extra small percentage in your day that could make a massive impact on your quality of life? Can you make a plan and consistently have 10 out of 10 day.

Too often we think that we have to do large things to get greater performance, productivity and wellness, however success in anything is all about doing the right things day in and day out.

Posted By Dr Adam Fraser on the 12/1/09