.....ALL LIVING BEINGS HAVE BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS THAT AUTOMATE LIFE FUNCTIONING TO THE DESIGN OF THE CREATOR FOR WELLNESS AND SAFETY..... ........and humans tend to upset these rhythms with greed and ignoring the power of nature and Creator..... ......NEW CHALLEGE TO CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF "BALANCING WORK-LIFE LIFESTYLE CHOICES " ..... TONY SCHWARTZ, the author of today's news story of the lifestyle challenging thinking in new book "The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working" said the following: "We are arguing for a genuinely new paradigm in work. We’re saying two things to the employers:       “Don’t worry about the number of hours your employees work; worry about the value they produce and let them figure out how to do that.”      “Stop trying to get more out of your people and focus more on investing in them.” Those are pretty challenging ideas for organizations, so yes, we do run up to resistance.... First of all, work in increments of no more than 90 minutes. You don’t have to work 90 minutes. Why is it magical? Because there is a rhythm in our bodies that operates in 90-minute intervals. That rhythm is the Ultradian rhythm, which moves between high arousal and fatigue."...   .......WHAT IS ULTRADIAN RHYTHM...   A rhythm is a measured movement; the recurrence of an action or function at regular intervals. Biological rhyths are the cyclic changes that occur in physiological processes of living organisms; called also biorhythms. These rhythms are so persistent throughout the living kingdom that they probably should be considered a fundamental characteristic of life, as are growth, reproduction, metabolism and irritability. Many of the physiological rhythms occur in animals about every 24 hours (circadian rhythm). Examples include the peaks and troughs that are manifested in body temperature, vital signs, brain function and muscular activity. Biochemical analyses of urine, blood enzymes and plasma serum also have demonstrated rhythmic fluctuations in a 24-hour period.It has long been believed that the cyclic changes observed in plants and animals were totally in response to environmental changes and, as such, were exogenous or of external origin. This hypothesis is now being rejected by some chronobiologists who hold that the biological rhythms are intrinsic to the organisms, and that the organisms possess their own physiological mechanism for keeping time. This mechanism has been called the 'biological clock' Ultradian rhythm is the regular recurrence in cycles of less than a circadian of 24 hours, as certain biological activities which occur at such intervals, regardless of conditions of illumination. In contrast, infradian rhythms, such as the human menstrual cycle, have periods longer than a day. The descriptive term ultradian is used in sleep research in reference to the 90–110 minute cycling of the sleep stages during human sleep. Some of the other ultradian cyclings of the body are hormonal release, heart rate, thermoregulation, urination, bowel activity, nostril dilation and appetite. The last involves rhythmic release of Neuropeptide Y (NPY) and Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), stimulating and inhibiting appetite ultradian rhythms. (Please click here to continue learning more about this topic...)  ......WHY PVAF SHARING THIS NEWS...... PVAF is publishing this news story today because of its very challenging nature of thinking about work-life balance that humanity is used to currently.....PVAF is about challenging life with increasing KNOWLEDGE of which there is infinite amount in the universe we live in as per vED = SCINECES OF LIFE AND CREATION....vED also states that there are infinite number of universes created by the Creator to have infinite forms and do infinitely different  kARm.....   Please click on the next line to read today's full news story and may be you can borrow this book from your community library to challenge yourself in your pursuit of knowledge to make your tomorrow happier than today with more knowledge....and also read up some more on evolving theories on  ULTRADIAN RHYTHM...to really understand today news-knowledge sharing..... ........WORK-LIFE BALANCE REQUIRES LIFE TO HAVE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING EIGHT FULFILLMENTS DAILY..... .....AND WHEN YOU HAVE THESE EIGHT DAILY THEN FOLLOW YOUR NATURAL BODY RHYTHMS OF THE CREATOR'S DESIGN INCLUDING THOSE IN TODAY'S FOLLOWING NEWS STORY..... Secret to Success: WORK LESS SLEEP IN Take more breaks.... Follow ultradian rhythm.... ........new book New York Times No. 2 bestseller "The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working" BY TONY SCHWATZ FOR CORPORATE RETHINKING..... (From Canadian ice-it-could-be-just-what-the-company-needs/article1587070/"> Globe and Mail:&n:  May 31, 2010:  Wency Leung) Tony Schwartz wants us to sleep more, take more vacations, stop checking e-mail and daydream. /> /> No, he isn’t encouraging us to be slackers. The New York-based author of the new book The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, co-written with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy, says we can be more productive by fluctuating between bursts of rest and highly focused work. Humans aren’t meant to perform like computers, at high speed, continuously, for long periods of time, he says. Yet we routinely try to do so, neglecting our four key needs – our physical needs, met through fitness, nutrition and rest; our emotional need to feel valued; our mental need to control our attention; and our spiritual need to believe that what we do matters. A complete overhaul of how we operate is in order, Mr. Schwartz says. Radical? Maybe. But considering his book has become a New York Times No. 2 bestseller within weeks of publication, his workplace revolution may be catching on. Q: Your book suggests it’s possible to get more done by spending less time at work. Can you explain? I don’t think it’s so much about spending less time at work; I think it’s about shifting the focus from time to energy. The more continuously and longer you work, the less incremental return you get on each additional hour. We are physiologically meant to pulse, and we operate best when we move between spending energy and renewing energy. We value spending energy and we are good at it, but we undervalue renewing energy, even though that’s a powerful way to improve performance. Q: How did we lose sight of the renewal part? It’s not very long ago at all when if you got into your car to drive home, that was almost by definition renewal time. Remember, less than three decades ago, there was no such thing as a cell phone. Now, you get into a car or you get onto an airplane and you can keep working. So unless you intentionally build renewal time, it will no longer be there. It will have disappeared. In a business world that lives by the ethic of “more, bigger, faster,” renewal doesn’t get any respect. Q: You advise working in 90-minute bursts, and taking breaks in between. Is there something magical about the 90-minute interval? First of all, I would say you want to work in increments of no more than 90 minutes. You don’t have to work 90 minutes. Why is it magical? Because there is a rhythm in our bodies that operates in 90-minute intervals. That rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, which moves between high arousal and fatigue. If you’re working over a period of 90 minutes, there are all kinds of indicators in your physiology of fatigue so what your body is really saying to you is “Give me a break. Refuel me.” Q: You offer the example of John Weiser, president of the television division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. He goes to bed every night at 10 p.m., sleeps for seven hours, manages to go to the gym each morning, takes meditation breaks at work, leaves work early enough to spend time with his family and doesn’t check e-mail at home. How is this possible? It It seems a little unreal. … [But] when he’s working, he’s really working. Just to take an example from my own life, when I wrote this book – while, by the way, running a company, sleeping eight hours a night, working out every day, and continuing to have a marriage and kids – the reason I could do it is because I wrote the book in three 90-minute sprints every morning. /> And when I was writing, I took no phone calls, I didn’t check e-mail, and I was 100-per-cent engaged. Then, I took a break. One of my breaks was a run. It turned out to be a time when I got my best ideas because as we know, we don’t get our best ideas while sitting at a desk. Q: Do you have any advice on how to take breaks without looking like a slacker? In the best of worlds, organizations begin to recognize that this [way of working] is actually serving them well. But in most organizations, the one minute you’re not working, you’re a slacker. There, I think, it really becomes strategic. There’s a wonderful little breathing exercise that you can do for 30 to 60 seconds, and it’s just breathing in through your nose to a count of three and out through your mouth to a count of six. You can get a lot of renewal in a short time … and it’s very unlikely that a co-worker or a boss is going to come up to your desk and say, “What are you doing? I see you’re breathing there.” Q: You say that leaders can inspire and energize their employees by giving them appreciation. How should you do that without coming across as cheesy or handing out the obligatory “employee of the month”? The most powerful way is to make it a cultural value. There’s a principle in psychology that “bad” is stronger than “good,” in which we default to noticing what’s wrong and we are much less likely to focus on what’s right. But if you’re a leader or a manager, think of the feeling of being valued as a critical source of nutrition for human beings. It’s a food and people need it to thrive. That’s not to say they should be praised for things that don’t deserve to be praised. But it is to say that it serves not just an employee well, but a manager or leader well to be really alert to where there is a reason to appreciate and recognize another person – not as an employee of the month, but as an employee of the minute. Q: Do you get much resistance to your ideas? We are arguing for a genuinely new paradigm in work. We’re saying two things:       - We’re saying to employers, “Don’t worry about the number of hours your employees work; worry about the value they produce and let them figure out how to do that” and      - “Stop trying to get more out of your people and focus more on investing in them.” Those are pretty challenging ideas for organizations, so yes, we do run up to resistance. But here’s what’s fascinating: The most progressive organizations in the world, companies like Google and Sony Pictures and Ford, are embracing the work we do, and many of the companies that need us most are less interested in what we do.    Image by Chris Halderman .......AND NOW LEARN HOW CREATIVITY + PRODUCTIVITY = SUCCESS..... .............WITH SuperchargING  Your Productivity with Ultradian Rhythms.... (FROM LATERACTION.COM: By Sami Paju | 2/15/2010.   Sami Paju is a Finnish blogger who By Sami Paju | 2/15/2010)   Sami owledge can be used for greater personal growth, health, fitness, and living a happy life. You can find him at samipaju.comnd on Twitter. ) With the coming of the information age a fad called multi-tasking was also born. Somehow it was perceived efficient to be able to do many things at the same time; read your emails, talk with your spouse, eat bubblegum while walking… The reason I call multi-tasking a fad is that research shows that multi-tasking is actually detrimental to productivity, and apparently can be worse on your IQ than pot smoking. . How about that? Instead of concentrating on doing many different things at the same time, you should choose a single important task and immerse yourself completely in it. This approach has been paraded in multiple productivity blogs and books, including here at Lateral Action. Indeed, the real power of human mind is the ability to focus on single things for extended periods of time. When and if that focus is interrupted, it may take up to 25 minutes to regain it. And if those interruptions happen multiple times a day, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see how disastrous this is to productivity. In order to be able to take advantage of this remarkable power of focus, you need to first eliminate distractions. This means finding an environment that does not interrupt you, putting your mobile phone on silent and away from sight, closing Facebook, email, twitter, and instant messaging programs. Ultradian Rhythms and Peak Performance I assume most people who follow  Lateral Action  are aware of the importance of single-tasking and being able to focus on one specific thing without interruptions. However, these concepts and their benefits can be taken even further with the use of Ultradian Rhythms, meaning natural bodily rhythms that occur at intervals of less than 24 hours. In practice, most people experience this by feeling energized for an hour or two, and then rather quickly their minds start to wander, they feel drowsy, and unfocused. This is evident in feeling full of energy in the morning at work, getting things done, but in the afternoon you suddenly find it hard to concentrate on anything. I myself experience Ultradian Rhythms very very powerfully after work and late at night. Everytime I get home from work I feel too spent to do anything, but about an hour later I’m already feeling a lot better and find myself engaged in some activity. Then, around 8-9pm I am tired enough to fall asleep, but because it’s not that late yet I struggle to stay awake. After 10pm I’m again so full of energy that it’s impossible to even think about going to bed. The trick is to learn to harness these periods of high energy for productive purposes, and also to learn to wind down, relax, and replenish your energy during the “down” times. How to Harness Your Ultradian Rhythms for Maximum Effectiveness Image by Creativity103 For most people Ultradian Rhythms occur at intervals of 90-120 minutes throughout the whole day, during which they feel energized and are able to get things done. This is followed by a 30 minute stretch of low energy levels. Then the cycle starts again and you’re on your way towards another period of peak performance. How you can take advantage of this, is to set a timer when you start your work to, say, 50 minutes and use those 50 minutes to fully engage in one important activity. After the 50 minutes are up, set the timer for 10 minutes during which you can take a break from whatever you were doing. Then set yourself another 50 minute block of uninterrupted time, after which you can enjoy a longer 30 minute break. The ability to focus is like a muscle, and by training it this way you actually become better at it, and focusing on whatever you are engaged in becomes easier over time. However, being great at immersing yourself in the task at hand is only one side of the coin. It is just as important to actively disengage yourself during the breaks as it is to focus on doing something. Being able to unfocus this way is a hugely unrated skill, but a complete disengagement from the task at hand is at the heart of being able to rest and properly replenish your energy levels. There are three channels of activity that we humans have. Those are       - the cognitive,       - the physical, and       - the emotional. When you are taking a break, it’s important to change channel. If you’ve been engaged in an activity that requires a lot of thinking and brainwork, the break should disengage you from the cognitive channel. This can be done by e.g. going for a walk, doing some yoga, meditating, playing with your children, or even taking a 20 minute powernap, which happens to be my personal favorite. tyle="color: #FF0000">A great way to consciously engage the emotional channel is through music. It has the wonderful quality of invoking our emotions. In a way, we don’t play music, but music plays us. Choose a few songs that resonate strongly with you, turn up to the volume on your speakers or headphones, close your eyes, relax, and simply experience the music flow through you. As an example, Life is Wonderful by Jason Mraz never fails to put a smile on my face, making me feel grateful just to be alive, and When Things Explode by UNKLE and Ian Astbury is simply epic. It is reassuring to know, that even if you are tired and spent now, you will feel energized again after the break – but you need to let yourself to take the break. And this may be harder than it sounds. Especially for workaholics. ByBy timing the blocks of uninterrupted time you are already making a pact with yourself; agreeing that this period will be used in full engagement in one important task. So whenever you get those impulses to check instant messaging, email, or some news sites, you can say to yourself “later, I will do that during the break.” Or you can even assign an hour a day for things that require multi-tasking, such as making some phone calls, responding to email, or anything else that does not require full focus and consists of small tasks that can be batched together. Energy . Energy Is More Important than Timer   The most important message here is, that omething, but how much energy you have for doing it that matters. . And for this to work, you need to be aware of how you feel. You need to understand that your body needs rest instead of violently pushing through that feeling by taking yet another cup of coffee or eating a powerbar. By acknowledging and accepting that you have these natural bodily rhythms of high and low energy, you can take comfort from the fact that after taking a break you will be full of energy again, and can continue your work. What I want to also emphasize is, that you really need to learn to listen to your body. Even if you use the 50+10/50+30 minute system – or any other one – you can never be sure at which point of the Ultradian Cycle you are when you start the timer in the beginning of a workday, or after returning from a lunch. So when you feel drowsy, your mind starts to wander, and it seems difficult to focus, take that 30 minute break with full understanding that the feeling of drowsiness is just temporary. And after the break you can start your timer again from the beginning.   .....NOW MORE ABOUT THE   . ....NOW MORE ABOUT THE Ultradian rhythm and the natural ‘trance cycle'... (from UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE web site) You may have heard of the ‘Circadian rhythm' the daily bodily cycle that regulates our ‘awakeness' during the day and night. The Circadian rhythm is the reason that we feel like getting up in the morning (hopefully !) and what causes us to feel sleepy at bed time. ircadian rhythm occurs once a day, ultradian rhythms happen more than once. One ultradian rhythm has been shown to moderate the ‘hemispheric dominance' within the brain. Although the exact function and interplay of the 2 hemispheres is as yet unknown, we do know that the left hemisphere is more specialised for linear, logical thought and communication, and the right is more active when we are relaxed, dreaming and in hypnosis. If not too stressed, you will have, after getting out of bed in the morning, around 90 to 120 minutes more focused attention followed by a 20 minute period of lesser focus. This is often experienced as difficulty concentrating. During this 20 minute period you are more likely to feel sleepy or ‘day dreamy' This is often the time that people take a break, grab a coffee or smoke a cigarette as a way to try and cheat this natural break. However, since it has been shown that taking advantage of this natural rhythm has profound physical and mental health benefits, it is a better idea to do what your brain is asking you to do - Relax! Hence the creation of ‘power naps' and their adoption by progressive companies.   Unsurprisingly, in workplaces where regular breaks are encouraged, productivity increases and rates of sickness drop. There are 0 additional comments.   Send your news items to be posted to news@prajapati-samaj.ca.