I want it all, and I want it now!

The mantra of consumerist society.

Clever marketers have persuaded us to believe that we just can’t live without whatever new product they want to promote. Actually they know, and we know if we’re honest, that we can easily survive without that latest gizmo. But they’re skilled at making us believe that, if we don’t rush out to get it, we’ll somehow be inferior, out of step, out of touch.

It’s okay to have a different make or model of cellphone from your friend, so long as you’ve both got one that takes pictures, accesses the internet, holds more music than you could ever listen to and makes a fantastic latte. If you’re still walking about with something the thickness of a candy bar that only lets you make calls and send messages, you’re up there with the dinosaurs – even if the gadget does everything you want of it.

Expectations have been created in our children that there’s an electronic solution to everything, and that this is the best – even the correct – solution. Even toddlers can have their own play versions of laptops, cellphones, music and movie players. Those marketers are smart: hook them into the idea early and you’ve got them for life.

Look round at children in airports waiting for planes. How many of them are in some way hooked in to electronic machines? Teenagers and adults too. Dad gives his son a gizmo to keep him busy so he can check the ballgame results on the web in peace.

It’s not just entertainment. Satellite navigation is also being pushed as a ‘must have’, turning the traveller from a thinking machine into an automaton, responding to commands, even if these don’t seem to make sense (it looks like a dead end but if the satnav says to turn there, it must be right). Cars are becoming more dependent on computers that diagnose faults whose solution is usually to replace a part, rather than repair it.

We’re growing a generation of people who expect their every entertainment need to come from a shiny little box. Or a shiny big box hanging on a wall emitting larger than life pictures. A whole bunch of people who are being discouraged from thinking and acting for themselves, of making their own entertainment. People who don’t know how to do simple repairs, or even maintenance checks on equipment. A generation who believe that home-made bread comes out of a machine sitting on the kitchen counter, an hour or so after all the ingredients have been tossed together.

What sort of legacy is this for our children? For YOUR children?

If they always expect someone or something to provide a solution to their needs, be it entertainment, equipment problems and household repairs, or travel directions, they’ll go through life relying on others.

Do them a big favour and make sure they grow up with their own coping skills and resilience. Limit the amount of time spent on electronic games and computers and make sure your child has a variety of different stimuli that will develop different skills and abilities.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Use pen and paper based word and number puzzles to develop writing skills including spelling and grammar, as well as logic and reasoning.

Get them involved in practical tasks around the home to build practical skills and confidence. A cake baked at home gives much more satisfaction than one bought in a shop, even if the shop-bought one looks more attractive.

Teach stewardship. If something goes wrong or breaks, explore repair before replacement. Help your child to understand that we don’t live in a throw-away world.

Make sure they interact with others. Too many electronic games are played solo, or turn by turn, and even when there is more interaction it’s rarely face to face. Help your child build socializing skills, learn to give and take, and to win and lose in real life.

Invest your own time with your child so he can talk to adults as well as people closer to his own age. Discuss current affairs and encourage your child to express and explain his views. The more comfortable he is with talking, forming opinions and debating them, the better prepared he’ll be for the world of work. And he’ll be better able to discuss any personal issues that arise.

Encourage links between the generations. Many adults regret not knowing more about their family history. If there are elderly relatives in your family get them talking about their childhood but make it relevant for your child. Talk about the first television set, a rare trip somewhere, an eccentric or noteworthy ancestor.

Make sure your child reads regularly and not just off a screen. Make available books and magazines on things that interest her, and ask her to read things to you – a recipe while you’re baking, the instructions to set the DVD, anything that will make sure she’s seeing correct spelling and grammar, rather than only being exposed to the language of computers and cellphones.

On a car journey, take a map. Plan your own journey then see how it compares to your satnav one. Follow the satnav directions on your map. Look at the places you’re passing through: are there interesting things to see? Strange names for places? You can bet your satnav voice won’t be giving you a commentary about the country you’re going through.

The younger you can start this the more effective you can be. But for older children who have already become slaves to their electronic toys, only switching them off when there’s something they really must watch on television, the task is both urgent and important if you want them to develop self reliance rather than always looking to someone – or something – else to solve all their problems.

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Face your fears by imagining the very worst

A few days ago I got an email I’d been waiting for but I waited a further day before reading it. Why? Because I was worried about what it might say.

The email was from a friend and ex-work colleague who I was keen to keep in touch with when I left the UK, but our communications have been sporadic at best in the last 18 months. Every so often I sent chatty emails to which I rarely received a reply. And when I did get a mail it was often a non-event: an apology for not writing and a promise to write soon, which wasn’t followed up unless it was with a further apology. If he’d stopped apologizing and used the time to write a few lines of news I would have been happy.

In the end I sent him a sort of ultimatum, in as friendly a way as possible. I told him I didn’t want to lose touch, and suggested how we could stay in communication without it being onerous. I also acknowledged that he may not want to continue the contact, so gave him a ‘get out’ option. I hit ‘send’ and waited with trepidation.

It was a couple of weeks before I received a reply and, as I said earlier, I didn’t immediately look at it.

You’d have thought I was eager to hear from him – which I was – but I was worried that he might have accepted my ‘get out’ and that his email might just say ‘It’s been nice knowing you, have a good life, goodbye’. Although I’d offered this outcome I really didn’t want it to happen. And for a while I was afraid that, just by opening the email, that’s what I would find.

For me this would be very disappointing: the end to a 19 year friendship which I’d really valued. This was the person who first interviewed me for the company, the one who helped me work through my early doubts, the one who I kept returning to work with – and for – and who always made me smile just to see him. We’d been a strong partnership, working well together, almost instinctively at times, and achieved some notable successes.

We’d spent many hours putting the world – or at least our little bit of it – to rights over a couple of drinks. We’d had our disagreements and many long, drawn out discussions, but always remained friends. It was sad to think we might not ‘talk’ to one another again. I wondered what would happen if I met him on a visit back to England, how awkward it might be if we met somewhere, by accident or design.

I wondered if I had been right to send my email. We could have carried on as we were: granted I wouldn’t be getting any replies but by continuing to write I could make myself believe we were still in contact. But if we did end the contact I would have been the instigator.

It was done now. I couldn’t retract my action and his reply was waiting. If he told me he didn’t want to stay in touch I felt he would be rejecting me and there would be nothing I could do about it. Even if he offered understandable reasons for his decision I told myself it would really be because I wasn’t as important in his life as he was in mine; I wasn’t worth the 10 minutes it would take every few weeks to write me a few lines and hit ‘send’.

I put my imagination in top gear and really worked at it: building up all the negatives that I was sure would flow from his decision – which I felt sure would be negative as well.

But I couldn’t put it off forever, so I considered the worst outcome I might get. The worst that could happen is that he wanted nothing more to do with me and was telling me so. In fact the worst that could happen was a formalization of the present in that I wouldn’t hear from him, but with the addition that he didn’t want me to write to him either. The worst that could happen was to know…

His reply wasn’t long but it was friendly and chatty. A brief acknowledgement of his tardy communication habits was followed by a short update on what was happening in his life. My worst fears weren’t realized: He, too, wants to keep in touch. I know he won’t ever be a regular, lengthy writer, and I hope he knows I will look forward to his communications without being disappointed at the long intervals between them.

People are really good at visualizing bad things. Usually we’re better at the bad things than at imagining that good things might happen to us, and this can make us fearful of taking the action we need to take. Our internal dialog is more likely to rehearse a negative experience than a positive one:

If we want to ask the boss for a raise or for permission to do something we don’t normally do (he might refuse)

When we want to discuss something important with a loved one (she might want to leave me)

If we want to find out what’s troubling our children (she might be gay)

When we need to speak to a colleague about an aspect of work that isn’t going to plan (he might blame me for the problems)

If we want to complain about poor service (they might be uncooperative)

Face the fear by asking yourself the question:

What is the worst that could happen in this situation?

Make a picture of it in your mind. Play it through with pictures, sounds, feelings. Live through it in your imagination.

Then ask:

If this does happen, what will I do about it?

Think through different ways that you could move forward. If your daughter is gay will you reject her or seek to understand her choices? If your boss says ‘No’ you’ve still got a job, and you have the opportunity to ask when your salary is likely to be reviewed, or how you can get to work on new projects.

If my friend had called an end to future contact I would have put him on my Christmas letter list (his choice whether to read or reciprocate of course) and accepted that I’d still had the experience of a good relationship, and good memories to look back on.

Once you’ve identified positive ways that you can deal with the very worst you can imagine it puts you back in control. You know you can get through the worst, and so you will. You’ve faced up to your fear mentally and come out smiling.

Then go off and do it for real!

And always remember you’ve only considered one possibility – the worst you can imagine – but there could be many other outcomes, all of which must be better than the worst. Chances are it will be one of these in reality, as the worst thing we can imagine rarely happens to us.

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Have you ever watched children playing together?

Often they start off happily enough but after a while things start to go wrong. Maybe they both want to play with the same toy at the same time, maybe they both want to set the rules of the game. Whatever it is, they hit a point when they are no longer able to play successfully, so they part.

Parting may only mean turning their backs on each other, rather than actually going apart, but in effect it’s giving them some mental space from each other. They have time to focus on themselves and their own actions without thinking about anyone else.

If they stay in the same room, chances are this ‘time out’ may not last too long. After no more than a few minutes they may make tentative gestures to one another, non-verbal hints that they’re ready to get back together. And soon they’re playing happily again, as if nothing had happened.

And usually this is the case as far as the children are concerned. As an observer we know something did happen. We know there was a situation that caused them to break apart. But they have let this flow past them, out of their minds.

As we get older we seem less able to do this. We seem to need to hold on to the hurts and slurs. When we have a disagreement with someone, or something goes wrong in our lives, we need to pick it to pieces, to investigate and recreate in our minds, to rehearse different scenarios, maybe to apportion blame. Sadly the last thing we’re likely to do is put it fully behind us and ‘let bygones be bygones’.

The danger of this is that we carry this baggage around with us and, like, the stereotypical cavernous woman’s handbag that holds everything bar the kitchen sink, we can pull it out whenever we need it. So next time we see the person we disagreed with, rather than starting afresh we quickly recall the recent hurts, and our attitude and behavior is based on these.

Maybe we’ll try to avoid him or perhaps we’ll try to slip a pertinent remark into the conversation, just to make sure he knows we haven’t forgotten what happened.

If we have to work with her and the problem was about a previous work assignment, maybe we’ll feel the need to bring it up ‘just to make sure we don’t have that happening again’.

Depending on how the event was perceived and remembered by the other person, we may find we create a hostile situation where none needed to exist. Or maybe there’s embarrassment over a genuine error that they hoped was now in the past. Perhaps there will be ‘point scoring’: our opening volley is met with a reply of ‘Oh that; surely you’re not still letting that bother you’, making it clear that we’re the one who holds onto, and worries about things.

And sometimes we can meet genuine bewilderment from the other person. They’re still able to use that childhood knack of putting something completely behind them. There are no negative feelings attached to the experience, it’s still in their memory but filed away with all the other miscellaneous stimuli they receive, rather than in their ‘must remember and re-use in anger’ drawer. So when we bring it up they honestly don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. And if we pursue the matter chances are we’ll just make fools of ourselves and feel even worse about it all.

That childhood skill is a good one to learn. Life shouldn’t be made up of worries about things that really don’t matter, about imagined insults, about missed opportunities or misinterpreted ‘wrongs’.

Start practicing now:

Next time you encounter someone with whom you think you have some ‘baggage’ act as if you don’t. Make a fresh start; treat them like someone you’re meeting for the first time. Forget all those preconceptions and past impressions. Give them another chance and they’ll most likely respond in the same way.

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Multitasking can work, but only if you choose the right combination of activities

According to a recent study many people who multitask lack the skills needed to do it effectively.

The study looked specifically at people who multitask in terms of media use – those who choose to read email, watch television, engage in online chat, play online games, read news feeds and the like – all, or several, at the same time.

To find out how good they were at multitasking they were tested in a number of exercises related to memory and filtering out trivia, tasks that have been deemed important for multitasking, and their results compared to those of a group of non-multitaskers.

Those who didn’t engage in this type of media multitasking consistently scored better in the tests, suggesting that their ability to multitask is greater than those who actually do it.

All the multitasking activities seem to be of a similar type: taking in, processing and responding to information, whether this is from pictures, words, sounds or a combination of these. It seems obvious that if you’re jumping from one source of information input to another you’re less likely to retain everything accurately. And as you can only focus on one thought at a time, each time you focus on something new you inevitably lose focus on other things.

Just try thinking about 2 different things at once: what you want to eat tonight and where you want to go for your next vacation, for example, and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s not possible to think about them both at exactly the same time.

And if you’re browsing across several media at once you’re less likely to spot what is trivial than if you’re concentrating on one thing. So you collect more information than you might need.

Or think about how you revise for an exam. You may only spend half hour or so on a particular subject, but while you’re studying history that’s what you do: study history. You don’t suddenly jump to geography or math; you stick with one subject, maybe going over things a few times to make sure you’ve understood. To retain the information you need to give it your undivided attention.

And that’s what these multitaskers don’t do as they flit around the airwaves and the ether.

The researchers now want to find out whether the activity dumbs down the skills: were these people better at retaining things and spotting trivia before they got hooked on their multi-streamed information feed? Or maybe they’ll just find that some people are naturally better at juggling several activities than others.

When I think of multitasking I don’t think of people trying to juggle several different media inputs at the same time. I think of someone making the dinner, ironing the week’s laundry, and watching the television. Three very different tasks that require different skills and that can be done simultaneously.

At different times each requires the full focus of attention: when the casserole needs checking or a there’s a tricky bit to negotiate on a garment for instance. But at other times each activity can go on ‘autopilot’ for a while, getting less attention while you’re still aware of it in the background.

Think of any busy parent and you’ll see a successful multitasker in action. But you’ll also see clear evidence that the more tasks someone tries to handle at one time, the less successful they’re likely to be. Especially where these tasks make demands on the same skills at the same time. Whether it’s trying to think about 3 different things or perform 2 different practical tasks it just doesn’t work.

So how can you be an effective multitasker?

Combine activities that need different skills, not the same ones

Combine activities that need attention at different times, not all at once

Make use of ‘helpers’ such as checklists and automatic timers

Don’t try to juggle too much: do 2 things well rather than 3 things badly

Don’t try to multitask something that needs your undivided attention

Don’t try to multitask all the time – give yourself a break

Avoid multitasking when you’re dealing with people: make sure they get your full attention. Feeling that you’re just one of several balls being juggled does no-one’s self esteem any good.

And always avoid that most dangerous of all multitasking: using a cell phone while you’re driving. If you’re using a hands-free cell phone your hands may both be on the wheel, but only part of your mind is concentrating on the road. And it’s your mind that reacts to situations and tells your hands and feet what to do with the brakes and steering wheels….

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