Attentiveness – A Seed of Excellence

To be or not to be…that is a famous question. I am convinced that an important way to be is to be attentive. As the monk Thomas Merton wrote, “By being attentive, we can find ourselves engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained.” We need to be attentive humans for one another and for ourselves. Let’s consider our level of attentiveness.

To illustrate the importance of being attentive, I will tell you about three people – Sarah, Kamara, and Tonio. Sarah is a dancer, and a dancer has to be attentive. Sarah is attentive because I know she focuses on the details, is mindful and observant, and pays attention to what is happening at the present moment. As a result, her degree of satisfaction has increased with her level of attentiveness.

Being attentive is the art of conscious living, observing one’s self and activities – the sensing, feeling, thinking, judging, reflecting, deciding, and acting – in order to gain new insights about ourselves. By paying attention to what is happening in our hearts as well as our heads, we may question our deeply held intentions and desires. We learn more about ourselves. We are likely to be more human.

I met Kamara Abdul in the restroom at the airport one night. He works for the company that cleans the restrooms, and his tee-shirt had “Committed to Cleaning Excellence” on its back. My business is excellence, so you know I had to ask the question. After asking his permission, I asked, “Are you really committed to cleaning excellence, like it says on your shirt?”

It is 10 PM and the airport was crowded with tired, frustrated, impatient people whose flights had been delayed or canceled. The restroom was crowded with these travelers. Who even notices a small, bald man who is continually wiping, picking up those aggravating little wet scraps of paper, and cleaning mirrors? We expect clean restrooms, and only notice when they are unclean. But what do you think his answer, in heavily accented English, was? His answer was YES. After a few more questions, I had learned that he is trained to pay attention to a number of items that need to be addressed regularly, in order to achieve cleaning excellence. Whether Kamara is happy or not, I do not know. I believe he is committed to being attentive to the details his work requires.

Tonio, as told in a folk tale, is a young man of wealth because his father is a rich farmer. Tonio spends his time visiting the taverns and other haunts of the idle rich. His father, on his deathbed, says, “Pay attention to what I tell you; keep a sharp eye on the farm and take care of business.” Did Tonio follow his father’s wishes?

No, he continued to party with his friends, even as his family and neighbors scolded him for squandering what his father had provided. When he finally noticed the farm was being ruined, he sought advice from everyone. None of it helped, until he went to an old woman who practiced magic. After hearing his tale of woe, she gave him a small chest bound carefully with bands of brass. In the top of the chest, there was a small hole. The old woman said, “In this chest is magic dust. Every morning, before the dew dries, take the chest to every corner of your farm. Do not neglect any spot. Do this every morning, and you will prosper like your father prospered. Never let a morning pass and never till the day you die break the bands and look inside. If you do, the magic will be gone.”

The magic worked. Tonio went every morning to every place on the farm where work was being done. And he prospered, just as his father had prospered. On the day of his death, he got his son to open the box. Under the lid were written these words: “Look you, the master’s eye is needed over all.” In the bottom of the chest were ordinary grains of sand. Tonio, because he became attentive, was the reason for the prosperity. The magic is paying attention to the people, the property, and the process of farming.

Sarah, Kamara, and Tonio illustrate the importance of being attentive. What about us? Let’s agree that an important quality of being human is to be attentive to all the world offers. To be attentive is not a question, it is an answer. Let’s make our answer, yes, and be attentive to those in our lives. As Mary Oliver says in a poem, “Attentiveness is the beginning of devotion.”

Posted February 12th, 2007 in Seeds of Excellence

I’m Tired

“I’m Tired.” That’s an answer often heard when one asks, “How are you?” In an informal survey I took with a group of youth, two out of ten got eight hours a sleep per night. The others got between five and seven. How about you? Are you tired? The purpose of this speech is to provide some information and research about the effects of sleep deprivation and some suggestions on managing fatigue.

There is only one proven way to recover from fatigue. The proven way is to sleep, uninterrupted, for eight hours in each 24 hour day. Studies by the National Institute of Health show that the average night’s sleep has decreased from about nine hours to about seven over the past fifty years. Once humans began to use artificial light to vary the length of the day; this led to the decrease in the length and the quality of sleep began to vary considerably from night to night.

I remember staying with grandparents who went to bed around dusk and got up around dawn. And they also took a nap right after lunch, except they called it dinner. Now most of us stay up till 11 PM or after, yet we may still get up before dawn, according to a Wall Street Journal article I read recently. We are burning the candle on both ends.

The way we live causes one’s circadian rhythm from settling into a pattern, and creates a state of perpetual semi-jet-lag. Our bodies’ rhythms attempt to appropriately adjust our alertness, blood pressure, and such for particular times of day. When we confuse this cycle, problems occur with our alertness and eventually with our health. The world today is a 24-7-365 society and the economic engines never stop. Those engines require human attention for operations, maintenance, and fuel.

Let’s think about how fatigue might affect you and me, when it comes to safety. These industrial accidents occurred in the early hours of the day, and fatigue was determined to be a contributing factor – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, BP Texas City Refinery, and a number or pipeline spills as documented by the National Transportation Safety Board. Let’s make it more relevant, in case we don’t work in hazardous industries.

In the U.S., drowsy drivers are responsible for a fifth of all motor vehicle accidents and some 8,000 deaths annually. It is estimated that 80,000 drivers fall asleep at the wheel every day, 10% run off the road, and every two minutes, one of them crashes. About 11 million people say they’ve had an accident or a near accident because they dozed off or were too tired to drive, according to the NSF 2005 survey. The state of New Jersey now has a vehicular homicide law that includes driving without sleep for more than 24 hours as recklessness. Dr. Drew Dawson, a sleep researcher in Australia, has conducted research that indicates inadequate sleep has the same effects on drivers as alcohol – decreased alertness, slower reaction times, impaired judgment, and drowsiness. The number of vehicle accidents is greater on the Monday after Daylight Savings Time begins in the spring than any other day.

Now, let’s consider performance in the workplace. The fatigue from sleep deprivation affects:

• Ability to maintain vigilance and attention levels
• Awareness and perspective of the environment around us
• Poor memory, poor decisions, bad mood, nodding off
• Reaction times
• Motor coordination skills

It is hard to estimate the toll sleep deprivation takes on people’s productivity, but according to the National Sleep Foundation, the annual cost in lost worker productivity due to sleeplessness is about $18 billion dollars. I have found that the tendency to be irritable, frustrated, and contrary increases as the amount of sleep decreases. We may find ourselves doing and saying things that are harmful to our careers. Watch those late night e-mails to colleagues.

The third area is the health effects of sleep deprivation. A study at Columbia University found that people who sleep less than six hours a night are twice as likely to have high blood pressure as those who get more sleep. Lack of sleep can also contribute to life-threatening obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. About 50 million to 70 million Americans suffer from the health effects of sleep-disorders, lack of sleep, and extreme daytime sleepiness. These health effects add about $16 billion to the U.S. health care bill and costs industry $50 billion each year.

The solution is simple: Sleep between 7 and 8 hours every night.

• Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends.
• Keep your bedroom dark and quiet – no TV, no computer or other distractions.
• Limit caffeine and alcohol, particularly close to bedtime.
• Get regular exercise, but not in the hours before bedtime.

You may be thinking, “That sounds great, but you don’t know the demanding schedule I have.” Here are some other tips, if you have to manage fatigue in other ways besides the best way.

• Obtain sufficient sleep, even if this means breaking up the sleep patterns into several periods of sleep during a 24 hour period.
• Make strategic use of caffeine, and remember our bodies can build up a tolerance to caffeine over time. Don’t abuse energy drinks in order to stay awake.
• Take a nap most days. An article in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution noted the positive effects of naps on heart health.
• If planning a trip, plan rest intervals before and during the trip.
• Get a good night’s sleep
• Don’t drive in the late afternoon and through the night
• Talk to passengers or self, sing along with your music
• Schedule a break every two hours
• Stop sooner if you get sleepy.

The only safe solution to fatigue is sleep. When tired, stop and go to sleep.

Posted February 12th, 2007 in Managing Fatigue