10 Tips on the Right Time of Day for Your Personal Best

Does choosing which time we do an activity really make a difference?

Have you ever wondered what would be the best time of day (or week) to do different kinds of work? Every person's internal clock runs on the Human Circadian Timeline. Except those who have been on graveyard shift for years!

This is the schedule by which our body systems (including our brain) 'take care of business'. Every work day is divided into cycles that match our naturally heightened abilities - both physically and mentally. The trick is to take advantage of identifying and using this information to schedule your work and life activities accordingly.

Circadian rhythms are present at birth and the body temperature cycle emerges between 6 to 9 months for infants. By the age of three the adrenal system is coordinating a complete daily cycle or timeline. The adrenal glands in coordination with our pituitary, hypothalamus, pineal glands control both our internal clock and our stress reaction.

This means our stress levels are in direct proportion to how far off we are from our natural time cycle.

Body temperature cycle doesn't vary so much from person to person. However, our natural rhythms do shorten as we age. Mental conditions like depression in which sleep disturbance is common and physical illness of any kind disrupt the daily cycle. However, healthy people keep their innate circadian cycle throughout their life.

Although each body system has its own rhythm, generally cell replacement peaks between noon and nine pm. The skin and the liver are the only organs which replenish worn out tissues with new ones at night and this process peaks by midnight. The brain is the only organ that functions without cell replacement - So, we'd better take better care of the one we have!

Setting Your Internal Clock

To work and live at our best, we need our internal circadian rhythm in harmony or synchronized with the environmental cues (i.e., light and dark, temperature etc). Human beings grow faster, produce more offspring, enjoy better health, do better work and live longer when time setting environment cycles match.

This makes it easy to understand the fact that graveyard shift (midnight to eight am) workers experience more accidents than day and evening shifts combined. Also, that more of the worst auto accidents occur after midnight. Our bodies 'know' we should be asleep!

One night of short sleep does not affect overall performance. However, several nights of sleep deprivation leads to dull sensory perceptions (vision, hearing etc.), longer reaction time, slow motor coordination, reduced memory retrieval, lowered new memorization ability, as well as increased irritability. These are exactly the functions we need to do good work - including decreased irritability.

In almost all life on this planet, light is the number one influence...and most powerful internal clock setting factor. Obviously, different mammals have different clocks; cats are active at night and sleep all day and people are active during the day and sleep at night. No one had heart attacks prior to the 1800s (city dwelling, rise of industrial work using artificial light).

Number two influence is temperature...

For example, people's sleep and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) or dream cycles are disturbed and they awake more often when the sleeping temperature is above 75 degrees. When the sleeping temperature is below 65 degrees dreams become unpleasant and contain emotional conflict. Working in a cold room increases your chances of a repetitive stress injury.

Number three is eating.

Did you know that Japanese people who are most Americanized have five times the heart disease compared to those who practice more traditional cultural habits and diet?

Number four is sounds for most species on the land and in the oceans. As you might expect, sound is an especially strong factor for auditory dominant learners like myself. Studies have indicated that among people living under the airport approach route there is a thirty percent higher rate of admissions to mental hospitals.

Exercise

Regular exercise increases everyone's cognition capability and releases stress from our bodies. For most men, the best time to exercise is in the afternoon. Women who exercise in the morning raise serotonin levels, which prompts a positive mental state.

If you exercise in the evening it disturbs the natural slowing down cycle leading to sleep. So a good thing like exercise can be even better if you know the best timing. If the only time you can exercise is the afternoon - go ahead!

Stress

We can't live without stress - but, what we need is the right type of stress in the proper quantity and at the right time. When mental (adrenal) skills are high sensory sensitivity is low and vice versa. We were designed to concentrate on the physical or the mental - but not to peak perform in both at the same time.

Stress causes our internal rhythms to lose synchronicity. It subverts our natural circadian rhythms into a dis-ease progression which affects sleep, eating and all functions.

Stress response is the same as if you were physically wounded and losing blood. This in turn breaks down the immune system and leads to weakness to new diseases as well as injuries healing more slowly.

Physical stressors include temperature, sound, vibration, movement and humidity.

Physiological stressors include sleep disturbance, irregular eating, alcohol and nicotine (depressants) and caffeine (stimulant).

Psychological stressors: fear, frustration, social and work or business pressure.

Generally adults operate in ninety minutes activity cycle - while under stress the cycle shortens to a one hour cycle (the same as in infancy). The natural activity cycle we are programmed for is made up of 30 minutes rest followed by 60 minutes activity followed by thirty minutes rest. Being at rest doesn't mean sleeping! It means alternating the kinds of activities you do every day for a little physical and mental variety.

The perfect ten-minute break is to drink a glass of water and walk around in the sunlight for ten minutes - wear a hat but, no shades. You want your eyes to pickup light without glare. It is remarkably refreshing to both mind and body.

Did you know an aspirin taken at seven am lasts for 22 hours but, taken at 7 pm it lasts only 17 hours? Here's why. Our mental abilities and physical functions coordinate with our body temperature which goes through a daily cycle of warming up in the morning and cooling down at night.

No matter what time it is, the colder you are the slower your senses function. Our ability to multiply quickly and accurately varies directly with body temperature, too. This is one of the reasons why cold is a strong stress factor.

Around 4 AM we settle into our lowest body temperature and the pituitary and adrenal glands start sending out wake up hormones. Our temperature begins to gradually rise until awakening around 5 AM - 7 AM. This also gives your body the opportunity to discharge the chemicals that keep you paralyzed during dream state (so you don't hurt yourself). Then, you can get up and move about without stubbing all ten toes.

You can trade in your morning cup of coffee for a quick warm shower because it wakes you up by increasing your body temperature, blood circulation and your breathing rate deepens.

Both men and women's hormones flow more quickly as body temperature rises and peaks out around mid-morning.

Mornings

Memory works best up til approximately noon. So for most any kind of testing mornings are best.

11AM body temperature reaches its daily plateau and remains with slight variation throughout the day.

Midday mental skills both speed and accuracy in mathematics and cognitive projects peaks out in early afternoon and then gradually declines through the afternoon.

After lunch performance level dips along with a slight temperature drop while digesting.

Heavier meals (high fat, more than 4 ounces of meat, etc.) the more physical lethargy and deeper loss of mental focus. Plus, the longer it takes our after-lunch fade to lift because digesting uses oxygen that would otherwise be available for brain functions.

Afternoons

Once the body has reached it's daily temperature of 98.6 degrees, motor skills remain steady throughout the day with mechanical skills peaking in the afternoon.

All five senses (seeing hearing, feeling, touching, tasting) peak in the afternoon as well. This is one reason why an enjoyable spicy dinner tends to be an unappetizing breakfast.

Pain sensitivity takes until mid-morning to reach its daily peak and is highest between 10am and 6pm. Then, our pain threshold falls off after dinner meal and into the night.

So by late afternoon most every one of our abilities has peaked and our temperature begins to drop at night before we sleep. This is especially true after 10PM. Then, it's "good morning", and the cycle starts over again!

You'll only find out if it makes a difference in your performance to align your activities with the time if you try it out and notice the improvement!

Eve Abbott's newest book, "How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain TM" is guaranteed to save you time while reducing your stress. The Organizer Extraordinaire pioneered in offering free online assessments to help you make your new personal organizing solutions match your individual work style.

For more proven tips, articles, interviews or teleseminars please contact Eve at: 510-528-4950 or Eve@Organizer-Extraordinaire.com. You are welcome to discover more cost-effective productivity resources at Eve's website http://www.Organizer-Extraordinaire.com

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Seven Steps to Prove the Existence of a Personal God

"Now at last you can be properly humble in the face of your maker, which turns out not to be a "who," but a process of mutations with rather more random elements than our vanity might wish."

Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

Here are seven steps to prove the existence of a personal God. Let us take them one step at a time and see where we wind up.

Step 1: The scientific mind exhibits the ego of God, providing the first clue.

Over three hundred years ago, Pierre-Simon LaPlace (1749-1827) told Napoleon that he had no use for God as an "hypothesis" to explain the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn; scientific reasoning was enough to do the job. Modern science continues LaPlace's dream of explaining a world without God. Finding they are making progress toward this lofty goal, scientists readily proclaim that God is a man-made delusion of no use for a thinking person, much less for the field of science. See, e.g., R. Dawkins, The God Delusion; C. Hitchens, God is Not Great.

Equipped with the human intellect -and its boundless theorizing power -scientists believe they need nothing else to understand the world. Why resort to an other-worldly force to explain the world when we have the human mind to do the job?

In short, in our modern world, the scientific mind plays the role of God. Thus, scientists believe they can create life, clone humans, and even create baby universes. See 12 Events That Will Change Everything, Scientific American, 36 (June 2010); J. Gribbin, In Search of the Multiverse, 193 (John Wiley & Sons 2009).

The fact that no one has done so does not stop scientists from believing they can reach this goal.

Scientists are most aggressive in attacking the concept of God when they picture this hypothetical being as a mythical figure flowing from the pages of the Bible-a kind old man with a bright face and long white beard. To increase the force of their arguments and belittle those of the opposition, scientists typically use a personal God as a straw man and then take turns bludgeoning the concept to death by comparing it to the theories of science and in particular, Darwinian evolution.

But suppose God is fundamentally a mind?

Step 2: The existence of the mind is beyond reasonable doubt.

In his famous Meditations, Rene Descartes, the great 17th century French philosopher, sought an unassailable foundation for the new field of science, one fact that could not be doubted and that would serve as the pivot point for theories about the world. He found that he could doubt everything, including the existence of the very material objects making up the world, but one thing he could not doubt: his own existence as "a thinking being, that is to say, a mind, an understanding, or a reasoning being[.]" The mind, he said, in the course of this radical skepticism, "recognizes that it is nevertheless absolutely impossible that it does not itself exist." Since Descartes's time, many theories and philosophies have come and gone, but no one has disproved his fundamental finding that the existence of the mind itself is beyond reasonable doubt.

Step 3: Modern scientists have overstated their progress in reaching a final theory of the universe.

With this step we begin to enter more controversial territory, but let's keep going.

The strength of science's argument against God can be said to be proportional to the degree of success science has achieved in explaining the world without God. Clearly, to the extent there are gaps or flaws in science's theoretical model, then we must leave open the possibility that some other theoretical model -even one involving God - might better explain the world. See, e.g., Bernard Haisch, The God Theory. And, indeed, science's current model, based upon materialism, is riddled with mysteries. Here are some of the major features of the world that science has yet to explain:


The origin of the matter that supposedly exploded in the Big Bang.
The origin of the laws of nature.
The nature of the mechanism that organized the universe into mathematical harmonies.
The nature of dark matter and dark energy.
The origin of life.
A coherent, self-consistent theory of physical world, or one that reconciles gravity with quantum physics.

These are not trivial details. Rather, they are the foundational elements to scientific theory.

A further sign of modern science's troubles is that its leading theory of the physical world, 11 dimensional superstring theory, has not moved much beyond mathematical speculation. As one writer describes it, "Much effort has been put into string theory in the last twenty years, but we still do not know whether it is true. Even after all this work the theory makes no new predictions that are testable by current -or even currently conceivable - experiments." Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics.

This short list of scientific mysteries is certainly not complete, but it is telling: key features of the world continue to elude science. The fact of the matter is that even though science has exiled God to the pages of ancient mythology, science is far from explaining the cosmos without God.

Step 4: Science Must Redefine Realism

Warning: Here comes the big step, which will take a bit longer to explain.

The failure of modern science to devise a coherent, all-encompassing theory of the material world is only a symptom of the real problem. At the root of the problem is science's death-grip on what it calls "realism" as a necessary model to the practice of science. An excellent example of this prejudice is shown by Lee Smolin in his otherwise masterful work, The Trouble with Physics. Professor Smolin, after exposing the flaws of string theory and calling for radical new ideas to explain the physical world, falls back to the overarching prejudice of realism, which to him means that the "real world out there... must exist independently of us. It cannot depend on our existence." (Kindle, Loc. 413-20).

As an initial matter, it is not easy to argue against realism since the opposite concept is something that is not real, and who can support that? But what if science has defined "realism" to describe a world that not only does not exist but cannot exist? In that instance, what purpose would be served by adopting a fantastical worldview to base the field of science? Since we know the world is real - or at least as real as worlds get -perhaps the problem lies in how science has defined realism.

Realism, to modern science, is a world independent of consciousness or mind. It is a free-standing world disconnected from what we are; a world that does not depend upon us and that will be there when we are not looking.

But at this critical juncture we find an ambiguity. What is the "us" in the sentence "must exist independently of us?" Is "us" our bodies, or our minds?

Of course the natural world - the sky, trees, ground, and other living things - are separate from our bodies. But in order to determine whether the world is independent of "us" we need to define what "us" is; in other words, we have to determine our essence.

Here, we can refer again to Descartes, who provided an answer that is consistent with the spiritual tradition. In the course of his deep meditations on the foundation of knowledge, he found that he was in essence "a thinking being, that is to say, a mind an understanding, or a reasoning being[.]"

So if we are fundamentally thinking things, then both our bodies and the natural world are outside of "us." The question then becomes whether body and world are independent of the mind.

To give some context to this question, consider the following:


When you sneeze violently or receive a sudden jolt to the head and "see stars," are the stars "out there" separate from your mind or are they a simple phantasm of the mind?
When you dream at night and imagine hitting the home run to win the world series, climbing Mount Everest or engaging in any number of other fantasies, is the three-dimensional vision independent of your mind or simply a night dream of the mind?
When sensory deprivation, drugs, or fever cause daytime hallucinations, are the visions independent of the mind?

The answer in each of these real-life cases is that the vision the mind sees arises from the mind. The examples show that the mind is capable of conjuring up a real-seeming, independent world from nothing with no help from any external force. The flashing "stars," the night-dream, and hallucinations are clearly not independent of the mind but rather, projections of the mind.

But what about the public world, the world out there? Isn't that independent of the mind? Here we can quote one of Plato's dialogues:

Socrates: The question I imagine you have often heard asked - what evidence could be appealed to, supposing we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep or wake, dreaming all that passes through our minds or talking to one another in the waking state?

Theaetetus: Indeed, Socrates, I do not see by what evidence it is to be proved, for the two conditions correspond in every circumstances like exact counterparts.

Perhaps the difference between night-dreams and the public world is only one of degree.

Few, if any, modern scientists consider the significance of these observations in developing their theories or the concept of "realism." They also all but ignore the findings of philosophers in the 18th and 19th century who reached the conclusion that since the mind can only know its own perceptions, it cannot prove that a mind-independent world exists. The great 18th century British philosopher, David Hume, for example, found that "nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion." Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part II, Section 4. The belief in an independent world, he concluded, had no basis in experience or reason, but was actually a train of ideas propelled by the imagination. Book I, Part IV, Section 2. Immanuel Kant, widely considered one of the greatest philosophers in history, wrote that "we ought, however to bear in mind that bodies are not objects in themselves which are present to us, but a mere appearance of we now not what unknown object." Critique of Pure Reason, A387 (Norman Kemp Smith trans.)

There is a very important reason why modern scientists should not ignore the idealist philosophers: quantum physics is reaching the same conclusion but from a different standpoint. As Bernard d'Espagnet put it in a Scientific American article, " The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human conscious turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experience." In Quantum Engima, the authors, Fred Kuttner and Bruce Rosenbloom write that "there is no way to interpret quantum theory without encountering consciousness. Most interpretations accept the encounter but offer a rationale for avoiding a relationship. They usually start with the presumption the physical world should be dealt with independently of the human observer." (Kindle, Loc. 3002-09). " Quantum theory tells us that physics' encounter with consciousness, as is demonstrated for the small, applies, in principle to everything. And that 'everything' can include the entire universe. " (Kindle, Loc. 3941).

Quantum physics teaches that atoms are not things, but mathematical equations; probability waves interconnecting all the things that make up nature's scenery. Free-standing particles, little billiard balls of matter simply do not exist. We may want them to exist but they do not exist.

So physical science assumes a real independent world and finds it is "the stuff of which dreams are made." Idealist philosophers conclude we cannot know anything but the visions in our minds. But it is a real world. A world that is real because the body exists on par with the natural world. A mind-created body confronts a mind-created stage setting. They were made for each other.

Step 5: If there is no world independent of mind then the reason we experience the same world is because we have the same mind.

This is another big step but it follows from Step 4.

If there is no mind-independent world, then there is no free-standing Earth or sky existing outside of the mind. The reason we see the same sky, therefore, must be because we are connected internally, not externally. We have the same mind and are participating in the same dream. In sum, we would be one mind that is dreaming this world.

Step 6: An ultimate source to the dream is the solution to the paradox of solipsism.

The classic criticism of the view that the world is a dream is solipsism, the notion that if the entire world is all "in our heads" then we each experience our own little world. The theory that an ultimate dreamer exists, or a single source to the dream, is a solution to solipsism. This "ultimate dreamer" would be the Godhead, God the Father, the Sky Father, messiah, or whatever other term has been used in the world's belief systems to describe the final source of reality.

Step 7: We live in a real world of real people. The ultimate source of the dream must therefore be a person.

This last step may seem odd, but is not easy to avoid if we follow the other six steps. If the world is a dream then it is a dream of self-conscious humans. It follows that the ultimate source of the dream must be a person: God taking the highest form to experience life.

So now let's put the picture together. Modern scientists, with the ego of God, believe they can explain the world without an external, imagined God in heaven. But in adopting this standpoint, they assume that the external world is independent of the mind. We have indisputable evidence that the mind exists but, in the end, only hopes and dreams that a real material world exists. Our minds are capable of conjuring up a real-seeming world from nothing, and quantum physicists and idealist philosophers seem to be heading toward the same conclusion: consciousness creates reality. But if consciousness creates reality, it must create the same reality for everyone since we experience the same world; therefore, there must be one consciousness. If there is one consciousness, it must have an ultimate source; otherwise, there would be no focal point for the dream. We are real, we are people; the ultimate dreamer is a person. Scientists, in short, with the ego of God, have simply misdirected their reasoning power; they are trying to understand a world without God but what they are really doing is trying to understand the world without a God other than themselves. If science re-defines realism as explained above, then science will consist of God's attempt to understand itself.

Not every reader may follow the steps to the end. But do this: compare the logic connecting these steps with the reasoning connecting modern science's theories of the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, origin of law, origin of the laws of nature and theory of the physical world and see how it compares. You may find that science has assumed the foundation to its theories, which all rest upon the fundamental assumption of a mind-independent material world. And one more thing: the seven steps lead to a theory that unites the scientific enterprise with religion. Perhaps the notion of a personal God is not as crazy as modern science says it is.

Philip Mereton is a practicing lawyer with a philosophy degree whose mission is to expose the fallacies in our current materialistic worldview and to advance a more rational -- and promising -- outlook. His first book, The Heaven at the End of Science - An Argument for a New Worldview of Hope, began as a college essay in 1974. The theme is the same: idealism (the world is really a dream) better explains the world than materialism (the world is a decaying machine). His website and blog appear at http://www.heavenattheendofscience.com

Mr. Mereton asks all viewers who have doubts over the truth of the Big Bang, the origin of life from a primordial swamp, humankind's descent from bacteria, or the death of God (among many other doubtful findings of modern science), to join the revolution against scientific materialism. The revolution begins with a question: is materialism correct? Is there a better way to explain the world we live in? After all, if the world is really a dream, it'd be to our advantage to learn and understand that fact now so that we can learn how to master the dream and thus our own lives, rather than manipulate particles in materialism's grand machine. So what can you do? Visit the website; read books that question materialism; raise your hand in class and question science teachers; be kind. Under the tenets of science, the truth will remain standing after all the questioning and experimentation ends. But we must start first start the debate. Join in.

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