People often ask me things like “Gosh, George, how do you seem to stay ‘up’ so much and get so much stuff done?” The answer is simple: I cheat. Most people never spend more than a few minutes considering in a logical way just how to get the most done. If you’re interested, I’ve got a short list that I try to live by:
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Get lots of sleep. Most people need anywhere from 7½ to 8½ hour per night. Get less than that over a long period of time and your personal performance may suffer – or your health.
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Lead a relaxing lifestyle. I can’t tell you the number of people that I’ve known who make the mistake of taking things to seriously that they have run around with internal stress that is going to kill them. When my son was down visiting, since he’s in emergency medicine, he took my blood pressure innumerable times throughout a couple of days. When I am doing my column in the morning it generally ran about 142 over 85, but that’s after three strong cups of coffee, playing with the cats, checking markets and account balances, and so forth. But, by the time evening was around, it was down to 120 over something much lower.
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Vitamins and balanced diet: Yes, I eat a lot of protein and veggies and no, with few exceptions, very little sugary stuff. Sugar is addictive and bad for you, and frankly I’d put sugar on the list of dangerous chemicals. Go read the book Sugar Blues
if you doubt it.
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Work for Yourself: This is an odd one…but it basically means that whatever you’re doing in life should be viewed as having some kind of a personal payoff. If you work for someone else (‘the man’) that’s cool and all, but keep it in the context of ‘I’m doing this because I have a long-term plan for gaining my own property/lifestyle/independence which is not going to depend on anyone but me and I’m deliberately sacrificing ‘x’ now in order to achieve my longer goals in life.
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Manage your physical environment – including the air. And this is where we get around to getting this morning’s note back on track…
The reason that I mention this is that I’m an ‘negative ion junkie’. “What’s that,” you’re wondering? Ah ha!
My personal awareness of being a negative ion junkie came back in my news directoring days when I interviewed Fred Soyka – this was in the 1970′s if memory serves. He had written a this book called The Ion Effect : How Air Electricity Rules Your Life and Health
I know – sounds like woo-woo, but it’s not. Here’s the short version of Soyka’s research: The air around you has either a positive, or negative, electrical charge. When air is charged positive, it causes a lot of ill effects. For example, the air that comes across the Sahara, the Sirocco, is a positively charged air mass. That air is a real bummer. Because it’s positively charged, people tend to get moody, depressed, suicide rates go up, and productivity goes down.
Not that you need to head to North Africa, though. You can find positive ion winds in places like Greece where they call it the Meltemi, and it’s well described in this German language translated Wiki. But again, you don’t need to even head for southern Europe to get a positive ion bummer: You also find high positive ions in places like Southern California where the Santa Anna winds blow a big bummer (not to mention the odd brush fire). Or, even closer to where you sit (perhaps in a ‘cube farm’) positive ions are created like crazy by the HVAC systems of many buildings and have been linked with something called ‘sick building syndrome’.
Far fringe of BS? Nope. Sick Building Syndrome, says a Wiki note, afflicts up to 30% of new and remodeled buildings worldwide.
Along about here, youi should be asking yourself “How do you know if you’re sensitive to this ‘ion effect?”
Easily identified. People who are ‘addicted to negative ions’ usually have some (or all) of the following characteristics:
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They like to shower, as opposed to bath. They find that they are ‘invigorated’ and much clearer-thinking after a shower.
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They tend to be drawn to any of the following: Waterfalls, the ocean, love the crispness of the air after a lightning storm has been in the area, or they might get a certain – almost a high- from being around water spraying about as during washing a car or using a pressure washer.
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They tend not to be bothered by wet – especially rainy – weather. And, although they can like sunshine OK, things like the desert don’t give them any particular pleasure – they’d be much more drawn to things like high altitude mountains with trees about.
If you’d like to pursue this on your own, the book The Ion Miracle: The effects of negative ions on physical and mental well-being
As I say, I’ve known for years that I’m a negative ion junkie – and I’ve gone way out of my way to live a negative ion rich lifestyle. Some things you can do:
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Just running a cold shower in your house for 5-minutes can release enough negative ions to improve your mood if you’re really sensitive – you don’t have to even be in the shower getting wet. It’s the creation of negative ions by falling water – which is why some folks like me can’t thinking of anything more stimulating that a fresh cuppa coffee while standing on a beach with an onshore winds watching wave break. Cup of coffee in the rain? Oh yeah… You are following this, right?
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For not too much money, you can find air ionizers on eBay fairly cheap. Go read up on air ionizing over at Wikipedia, too.
OK, what got me to mentioning this? We’ve just had several days of thunderstorms with plenty of lightning here in East Texas…flooding, too, up in the Dallas/Metroplex, too. So last night while I was finishing up for the day, I turned on my small negative ion/ozone generator. This morning when I came into the office (with the requisite cuppa waker-upper, I was immediately ‘amped’ by the air in the room. Invigorating as well. Just like stepping into a shower or going for a hike in the mountains.
Not everyone is as sensitive as I am to this ‘negative ion’ affinity. But, as I look back over my life, I can see where my deep interest in tube-type radio gear comes from (lots of high voltage about, got it? Source of negative ions there…) as well as living on a sailboat for 10-years. Yeah, crapped and all, but whoa.,…what a great place for coffee in the rain…
When I find my creativity is waning, or I am not as ‘amped’ about something – or as clearly focused as I know I’m capable of being – I try to remember to stop and ask. “How am I managing the air that I’m breathing?” Subtle? yes. Big difference in personal productivity?
Go try it yourself.
Couple of cautions: Like anything, it can be overdone. Too much negative ions and you can cause lung irritation, so study up on ozone exposure limits. And, if you do happen to run a heavy ionizing system that does create ozone, be aware that anything made of rubber deteriorates quickly upon exposure to ozone. You’re after ions not ozone…so study the difference.
I’m having to repair the rubber suspension mounts on three studio condenser microphones (MXL-990′s) because I have run my ozone generator a bit heavy handedly causing the elastic to stop e-lasting…
When Universe Wants Something
Back in my airline days, we had a saying: “When you’re time’s up, your times up…” With the idea that no matter how good, or bad the weather, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go.
Latest story in that file: “Woman who missed Flight 447 is killed in car crash.”
You Know It’s a Depression When…
“Game sales fall sharply as recession bites…”
That’s because it’s not a game, it’s an role-playing adventure….
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Send comments to george@ure.net
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For Your Money’s Worth:
Depression or Recession?
This week, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the market rally a bit more, with some softness to follow come month-end, and then one or possibly two more short moves up into either mid-July or mid-August. And then, I’m figuring the stock market will have completed its setup for another one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ declines, which seem to be coming with some regularity. This week, a bit of detail on how past Depressions and sharp market drops have looked, and some amplification and detail on my very different way of looking at things’. We’ll start with…..
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MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear has nailed a great solution for people who living in apartments and condos who want to become at least partially self-reliant when it comes to raising food: An ultra-high efficiency micro-hydroponics system using readily available local parts. 25-pages and plenty of pictures to turn you into a farmer no matter where you live (Great if you have back problems, too…)…or if you just want to fill up the back yard with MyGroPonics trees and feed the neighborhood… $10 bucks here…
Maxa-Cookie Manager
Maxa-Tools has provided us with a free demo – which you’re welcome to try – of their dandy cookie manager tool that I use here on all my computers. It shows both the browser-specific and the newer browser-independent cookies. Quite happy with it.
Here’s the download link for the free demo:
www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those pesky ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I took over 1,000 cookies off my son’s machine that he swore was clean. It ran much faster.
Shameless Self Promotion
UrbanSurvival just keeps getting more popular – thanks to your help. (Oh, sure, sometimes because we tell you the news before it happens and because my economic analysis has been better than 99% of the PowersThatBe who obviously don’t get it; but let’s not go into chest-pounding mode…) So don’t stop now. Tell all your friends to wander on by for an uncommon mixture of relevant & real economics, humor such as it is, preparedness, all served up with the occasional side order of …well, weird. Click here for a tool that may help. (It’ll pop up an email window if youi use Outlook (or a few other email programs) then simply send a link to everyone on your distro list…
“Live on $10,000″ Updated
What? You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”? Suit yourself. We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway. I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped. But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:
Yep – still possible. I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them. The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings… Click here for the page with more details on it.
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