I love getting the New York Times on Sundays and devouring it, curled up in my favorite chair sipping a cup of coffee!  It’s a luxury to me to be able to “really” read the paper and absorb the stories rather than just race through and grab information from the newspaper while getting ready to go to work.   Sundays, I use the time to discover “new” ideas, different opinions, cultural trends and business practices.  This Sunday, while reading one of my favorite features, “Corner Office” I discovered an important message.

NYTimes reporter, Adam Bryant interviewed Cristobal Conde, the president of SunGard (a software technology company) Mr. Conde is an IT kind of guy and his company is built on how to make technology available to financial, higher education, and government agencies.  Now you would think Mr. Conde is a techie freak but he isn’t.  In fact, the lessons he learned as CEO of his company it all about relationships and thinking.  Mr. Conde says he tries to take 1 1/2 hours everyday just to close his office door and think.  My first thought when reading that was, “Wow, an hour and a half? Where does he find the time?”  Think about it, or do you have the time?

Mr. Conde “makes” the time.  He believes it is so important for his company’s future that he takes time to consider, contemplate, goof off in his mind.  It doesn’t matter what he thinks about but it is important to take the time.  Mr. Conde says, “Sometimes it gets cut short.  But many topics or issues can only be dealt with in an uninterrupted format.  I worry about our entry-level people- they’re bombarded with information, and they never get to think”.

Well friends, guess what, there is a study out about that!   Yes, Stanford researchers have found that people who are multitaskers, and by that I mean even folks who are instant messaging, writing a report, and listening to music or taking phone calls do not pay attention, control their memory, and are easily distracted from any focus on the array of tasks before them.  The study was published in the Aug 24 edition  of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Their findings show that multitasking actually impairs the organizing mechanisms in your brain.

100 Students in the study were put though a series of three tests,  half were self confessed heavy multitaskers and the others were low multitaskers.  After the tests the researcher found that the high taskers were constantly distracted by irrelevant information because they just couldn’t ignore it.  Follow up studies showed that high multitaskers had a low performance in  memory  and organizing information.  They just couldn’t filter out the irrelevant information. Plus, they didn’t take in enough information to contemplate with any depth of knowledge.

So there you have it, take it from a high tech guy like Cristobal Conde, if you really want to get ahead, take time to think, one thought at a time.  Still, how the heck does he find an hour and a half?  Maybe he’s lifting weights, or would that be multitasking?  How many tasks makes multi.  Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that.

I just got a new phone.  I liked my old phone but there are times when I have to keep up with clients and check my e-mail  and I don’t usually carry my laptop around with me.

So when the new “smart” phones came out I waited, because I don’t believe in buying the first version of techno gadgets.  I had a friend who bought one of the first portable computers and let me tell you, she lugged around that overpriced computer around for years.  The thing was as big as a sewing machine and twice as heavy.  (There’s your first fitness idea…after all this is a Health Blog)

So I waited to get a phone that could get e-mails, take pictures, and have a reliable signal.  I waited a couple of years till the prices came down.  Yes, I did yearn for an iPhone but I didn’t like the price.  So I finally got a Palm Pre.  I got everything I wanted.

There was one little hitch however, kind of a minor thing, I couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone!  I’m not used to it.  I have to learn the phone all over again. At first I hated the phone because it was completely new to me.  You see, I knew my old phone, I new my old ringtone, I liked my ringtone, I could answer the phone.  But that was then and this is now.

It got me to thinking.  Everything is a learned skill.  When you were a baby…EVERYTHING was new and as soon as you got used to being a baby, you turned into a toddler and you faced all kinds of new obstacles, like how to walk!  Then, you have to learn to tie your shoes, and run, and jump and then there’s school.  So everything is always changing and you have to learn it all over again in a new way.

I can see that you are wondering where I am going with this.  Well, if everything is always changing and we have to learn it all again.  Why do we get so stuck staying with  “what we know” or why is it more comfortable to stick with what we are used to, even if it is not working for us anymore.

Since change is a way of life, why would we want to hold on to things, like habits, attitudes and belief systems that no longer benefit us?  Shouldn’t it be your job to make the change work for you, or change it for the better.

I work with so many people that hold on to belief systems that they are used to but no longer work for them.  For instance, I hear things like:  “I’ve always been filled with anxiety” or “I’ve always had a weight problem”, or “I just don’t have the time to exercise!”

Really? Do you really think you can’t change?  Yes you can!  You can be healthier, happier, calmer, and actually you can become the person you want to be.  All you have to do is want it bad enough to change.

Hey, if I can learn to use and love my new phone then surely anything is possible.

Who knew that using your feet would mean taking your life into your hands!

An article by C. W. Nevius in the San Francisco Chronicle last week looked at how dangerous it is to be a pedestrian in San Francisco. He pointed out that half the traffic fatalities in San Francisco are pedestrians, compared to only around 15 or 20 percent in other similarly sized cities.

The standard reaction to a pedestrian fatality is to blame bad drivers, motorists distracted by talking on the phone, texting, tuning the radio, changing the CD or staring at their iPod trying to decide what to listen to next, drinking coffee, even putting on makeup.

But I also think we need to add another group to that list – clueless pedestrians.

I ride a scooter around town and have learned through painful experience to always be hyper vigilant. I start each journey by assuming the other motorists on the road are drunk, crazy, blind or all three – that way I don’t allow myself to believe that they see me or even know what they are doing. Sadly, all too often my assumptions are proven correct.

But I also make the same assumptions about pedestrians. It never ceases to amaze me how many pedestrians seem blissfully unaware of the world around them.

Every day I see people crossing the street against a red light, often when there is traffic whizzing by. Every day I see people walking down the street reading a book or newspaper, not watching where they are going (this might explain why the number of newspaper readers is declining rapidly – they are all dying because they are too busy reading the paper in the street and not paying attention to what’s around them) Every day I see people walking around, listening to music on their iPods or other devices, lost in their own little world. And every day I see tourists standing in the middle of the road, trying to get one of those quintessential San Francisco photos of steep hills and breathtaking views.

It’s no wonder that every so often an unaware pedestrian gets hit by a distracted driver – with the driver always coming out on top.

Now, I’m not blaming pedestrians for being hit any more than I am saying motorists are always to blame – I’m saying we all have to take responsibility for our own actions and our own behaviour.

I know if I don’t pay close attention to everyone and everything around me then I could easily end my journey in the Emergency Department of my own hospital – not that they aren’t lovely, skilled people in the ED, it’s just that I want to be a colleague, I don’t want to be a customer.

All it takes is one driver suddenly changing lanes without signaling, or for a pedestrian to walk out from between two parked cars, at night, wearing all black, and my future is precarious.

Everyone needs to be aware of where they are and what they are doing.

Last year the American College of Emergency Physicians released a report warning about the dangers of what they called “oblivious texting”, people who injured themselves or were even killed because they were trying to text people while walking down the street. Some walked into lamp posts and bashed their head. Some stepped off a curb into oncoming traffic. Neither resulted in a happy ending. And for a text!!

Maybe we need to put signs on street corners and busy intersections saying “Before operating feet, engage brain.”