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RSS FeedJanuary 24th, 2010
Tips on dealing with jet lag
By now, I have become a self-proclaimed expert on dealing with jet lag. As I just return on a trip, once again somehow I have no jet lag, traveling from time zone 10 hrs away. While no one has yet asked me for my expert advice, that won’t stop me from giving some tips here:
- Change your wrist watch/cell phone/ computer clock to your destination time zone as soon as you start your flight.
- Do not think about the time zone that you came from. That is, do not think to yourself, wow it is 3 AM in the place where I came from, so I should really be tired. Rather think to yourself in the new timezone – it is 8 PM (here).
- Set yourself reasonable goal. For example, say you normally are awake from 7 AM to 11 PM midnight. Suppose you travel between Central European time (say Berlin) and US Central time (say Chicago). These time zones are 7 hrs apart. 4 PM in Chicago is same as 11 PM in Berlin. It will be pretty darn difficult for you to stay up till 11 PM in Chicago, your usual sleeping time. It will also be pretty darn silly for you to fall asleep at 4 PM in Chicago (no adjustment). Rather, plan to sleep at 8 PM in Chicago which will be a bit early by Chicago time, and a bit late as per your usual unadjusted body, but doable both ways. Similarly, plan to get up at 5 AM in Chicago. This will give you good rest period as well, and a good start on your day.
- Similarly when you travel eastbound, set yourself a reasonable goal, say if you go to bed at 11 PM in Chicago, go to bed at 1 AM in Berlin, and plan to get up at 9 AM, and ask for meetings to start at 10 AM if you can. If you are traveling for a big conference where other people are traveling too, you obviously can’t request that, but it is also likely that there will be no meetings before 9 AM.
- Sleep in the flights early. If you are in an 8 hr flight, do not waste a couple of ho
urs watching movies in flight. If you plan to sleep, sleep right away. Then, you can get up, and prepare in terms of your landing. If you are on a long red eye, sleep through out your flight, and wake up 40 minutes or so before the flight landing. - In general, avoid watching a lot of movies or TV in flight, since that is tiring to the eyes, and removes your focus on travel.
- Don’t forget to enjoy your travels!! Happy people adjust easier to changes. Don’t let some minor inconveniences such as a secondary screening or a rude stewardess distract you from your travel joy.
Hope these tips are helpful. I look forward to YOUR tips and suggestions as well.
January 6th, 2010
A new year’s wish (Thoughts on happiness, success and satisfaction)
As the year 2010 dawns, here is a simple new year’s wish for you: May you be happy! But of course, that “simple wish” brings us to a central notion of what is happiness. There are quite a few related terms, and we can try to establish some general relationships among them:
- happiness
- success
- satisfaction
Do these concepts always go together? Perhaps not.
Let us begin with the obvious. Can we measure someone’s success? If so, then how? Two different individuals may have different conditions and different goals, in that case, how might we be able to compare them on their end result in any sense? Even if two individuals had similar conditions and similar goals, might it be possible that the individuals had different priorities for those goals? Pushing this argument further, we can reach the conclusion that the success is just as subjective a phenomenon as satisfaction, and only an individual can judge or measure their own success. Success is usually not independent of money, social power, family structure and other such measures, but it is also not any of those things by itself (or even in a combination) consistently for every single individual.
Can success be a measure of satisfaction? Is it possible that a highly self satisfied individual may recognize that they are not the most successful they can be? If so, does that contradict their self satisfaction? Do we then reach the conclusion that:
Being satisfied implies being successful.
In formal propositional logic, this would be written as:
satisfied(x) -> successful(x)
Another way to phrase this is to say that “Success is a component of Satisfaction”.
Similarly, can happiness be a measure of satisfaction? Is it possi
ble that a highly self satisfied individual may recognize that they are not the happiest they can be? If so, does that contradict their self satisfaction? Do we then reach the conclusion that:
Being satisfied implies being happy. Similarly as before, we can write this as:
satisfied(x) -> happy(x)
“Happiness is a component of Satisfaction.”
So, we arrive at the notion that the satisfaction is really the super concept here, and happiness and success are (at least) two components of satisfaction. We further need to evaluate the relationship between happiness and success, and explore what else we missed. Here is a cheesy graphic of the simple conclusions we drew.
Perhaps, the new year’s wish should really be: “May you be satisfied.”