You Can Always Yell Later

My mom taught me as a child, it’s really hard to unyell once you’ve yelled. If you want to get what you want, start soft. You can always yell once that fails, but you once you’ve yelled, it’s too late for the soft approach.

Ice Cream For Dinner: A Graduation Speech

Most graduation speeches are full of clichés, claptrap and wicked insinuations. I have tried to adhere to that model as closely as possible.

Three Keys to Good Decisions

It’s hard to make good decisions, but here are three quick jedi mind tricks to avoid a lot of bad decisions:forget sunk costs, use absolute numbers rather than proportions, and be aware of confirmation bias.

Stealthy Workplace Workouts

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Office Drone Workout Plan

If you have a formal office and you’re not comfortable grunting your way through a set of pushups or the other aggressive workplace exercises, let alone building your secret office mini-gym, but you still like the idea of Workrave and mini-breaks, there are still some great things you can do and nobody will even know […]

Office Workouts: Staying Healthy in Front of the Computer

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Office Drone Workout Plan

Some researchers have recently recognized “sitting syndrome.” Otherwise known as “death by chair”, this set of health problems result from simply sitting too much. Meanwhile, as anyone who spends most of their day in front of a computer (like me) knows, even with good ergonomics, we develop aches and pains in the neck, shoulders, back and wrists. If we’re not careful, we also watch our gut grow.

Office Workouts for the Uninhibited

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Office Drone Workout Plan

If you have a private or free-spirited office, you can actually get in a nice little mini-workout on a Workrave break (see Part 1 for more on Workrave and micro-breaks) or just select one or two exercises and then have a drink of water.

Micro-Breaks, Micro-Workouts and Healthy Computing

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Office Drone Workout Plan

For those of us who spend far too much time planted in front of a computer, that very fact is a danger to our health. I’m in front of a computer full-time for work, then there are my hobbies (like this site), emailing friends and now there’s even Facebook and Youtube. Before you know it, […]

Is Stevia Safe? Is it Good for You?

Stevia is the newest sweetener on the market at the moment. Many times sweeter than sugar, that means that it is considered a zero-calorie sweetener. Stevia is an extract from the leaves of the stevia tree and therefore is considered a natural product. But does that mean it’s safe? A word about the word ‘natural’ […]

The Truth about Cinnamon, Metabolism and Weight Loss

Numerous weight loss articles and forum posts tout the virtues of cinnamon, commonly saying that it increases metabolism twenty fold and is therefore a useful supplement for weight loss. Sorry folks, but this is wrong on too many counts to count! That said, the research does show that cinnamon has beneficial effects on blood pressure […]

Social Proof (Weapons of Influence, part 3 of 3)

We all know birds of a feather flock together, but we’re often unaware of how frequently we flock with birds of our feather. Even when we say we are uninfluenced, the opinion and action of the crowd often get us to behave in ways we do not expect and can be used against us to influence our actions through the principle of social proof. (part 3 of 3 in the series on Weapons of Influence).