Peter Harvey – Canberra

Sadly journalists don’t have a great reputation, just above used car salesmen in their credibility rating I think, but one journalist that had my respect was Peter Harvey who passed away yesterday.

I will remember him as a good balanced journalist who was able to bring good, balanced and intelligent questioning to his stories, such that you felt that regardless your position on a subject you were better informed after seeing his report and were given the opportunity to make up your own mind. His family have my condolences, he was a good man and will be greatly missed. I have to say the world would be a better place if there were more people like Peter.

A new skill I have been working on lately is learning to recognize when I have drifted of course mentally. I have given myself the excuse that as a creative, right brain person I will naturally be thinking laterally and going outside the box. That’s fine in some circumstances but it isn’t always helpful. Learning to tune in and pay attention to where my thoughts are at any precise time is a challenge. The internet is the greatest place to lose your mind, ever noticed that? My mind can drift off in a heartbeat and then hours can go by and nothing gets done. Well it feels as though stuff gets done and I can convince myself I have achieved things, but is it my best effort? No.

I have recently put in place some strategies to help keep me on track.

1. Make a list of the tasks that need doing that day and prioritize them.
2. Pick a task to focus on.
3. Only open the specific program on my computer that I need for that task.
4. Set the timer on my phone to go off in 30 minutes. It keeps me focused and measures out the day for me. I am much less likely to waste time if I am more aware of its passing.
5. Consciously think about where my thoughts are on a regular basis and if necessary bring them back to the task at hand.
6. Take regular short breaks, even just to get a drink or go to the toilet but do something that means getting up from my desk.
7. Learn to recognize when I am functioning at my best and when I am struggling and if I am struggling, allow myself to have a change. Get some exercise, have a break, put some loud music on. Move. Whatever but don’t just sit there getting nowhere and not realizing it.

A great Audio book on this subject is “Your Brain at Work” by David Rock available from Audible.com one of the pictures he paints is that of our mind as a stage in a theatre. Our mind is the stage and we can bring actors onto and off the stage, in the form of thoughts or tasks. There is only so much space on this stage and despite the popular misconception that we can multi task, we can only do one thing (that requires active thought processing) at a time.

Assuming of course that we aren’t being hoaxed by the news of the nurses suicide, it really is a tragic case and highlights the risk of hoax calls.

I am not a fan of hoax calls but I recall listening to one in the car a few weeks ago, on this occasion an unsuspecting lady was being encouraged to be in a TV commercial, she was told she was the winner of a prize. The catch was, she was then encouraged to be in bed with a “fake” husband because her own wasn’t suitable. As the call went on she was cleverly put under great pressure to accept this prize as long as she would get in bed with another guy and kiss and cuddle a bit, nothing serious, she was told. Despite all the pressure and manipulation, this lady never once wavered or gave any hint that she would even consider doing this, as she had respect for herself and her husband. I felt really proud of her and was almost cheering at the radio as she took a stand for herself and the DJ’s just embarrassed themselves. The hoax call fell flat because without her agreeing to their demands, there was no punch line, the DJ’s just had to concede it was a hoax and end the call.

A successful hoax call will always have a victim. Now the victim might be able to just laugh it off in some cases, but they were still the victim and not everyone will just laugh it off.  The risky part is, we have no idea what else is going on in a person’s life at that time or in their past.

Listening in and supporting hoax calls is pretty much like the crowd that would gather around a school yard fight, there would always be a victim and even if they laughed it off at the time, saying things like “that didn’t hurt” you don’t have to be Einstein to know it does, even if it is just emotionally.

My message to Mel Greig and Michael Christian is:

Humour is great, laughter is good for us, emotionally and physically but not at someone else’s expense.

I have to admire my local Real estate industry for their capacity to put a positive spin on almost any situation. My local paper carried a story the other day jubilantly announcing that house prices were now back to the same price as in 2006 and that, they say is a good reason to jump back in and start buying. Things are looking good and house prices will now start to rise.

Perhaps their right, but at the same time other headlines read, and I quote “Slowing economy boosts case for Reserve rate cut” and “Fiscal cliff talks going nowhere” . I am still really struggling to see where the next white knight is going to come from to save us. The mining sector is strong but not unbreakable and to be fair, the money only helps some people. Big sectors of the economy get no benefit at all.

The only thing that might effect house prices, is our local housing shortage, but even the law of supply and demand, requires people to have spending capacity, otherwise there’s no demand.

I am interested to see what people think will happen and also what people think does represent a good investment for the future. Is it property, gold, silver, dividend paying shares? Where would you put your money?