Mind Space

Want to Help People Escape Crazy Conspiracies? Read This

- Adam Clare
fog

2020 witnessed the rise of an absolutely bonkers conspiracy theory based around some anonymous internet poster. You may know somebody who believes the illogical thoughts that led to the insurrection in Washington last week and are concerned for their mental well being. If you know somebody deep into illogical and self-defeating conspiracies please check out this article from last November in the Guardian (to be clear, some conspiracies are real).

Like with most problems facing the world right now we can solve it by better educating people and applying critical thinking skills.

Finally, some conspiracy theorists greatly exaggerate debates among experts themselves. Not all epidemiologists will agree on the best measures to reduce the spread of the virus, but this disagreement shouldn’t be used to justify the idea that the whole pandemic has been engineered by the government for some nefarious end.

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The tobacco industry used these tactics to great effect in the 1970s, with adverts that quoted fake experts and rogue scientists who questioned the harms of smoking.

“It’s a really persuasive form of misinformation,” says Prof John Cook, an expert in “science denial” at George Mason University. Fortunately, he has found that educating people about the history of this common deceptive tactic can make people more sceptical of other fake experts at a later point.

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Stop Interrupting People to Lower Stress

- Adam Clare
happy workers in a factory

If you want to be a good boss please don’t interrupt your workers. If you are coworkers, please don’t interrupt each other. A recent study has shown that we physically react to stress in the workplace cause by interruptions. We can use this nugget of knowledge to create workplaces which don’t increase people’s stress by basically respecting one’s work time.

If you have had a bad boss, I’m sure you can relate to this. Let’s all remember to give people their space.

“Most research into workplace interruptions carried out to date focused only on their effect on performance and productivity. Our study shows for the first time that they also affect the level of cortisol a person releases, in other words they actually influence a person’s biological stress response.”

What surprised the researchers were participants’ subjective responses in terms of how they perceived psychological stress. They observed that participants in the second stress group, who were interrupted by chat messages, reported being less stressed and in a better mood than the participants in the first stress group, who didn’t have these interruptions. Interestingly, although the two groups rated the situation as equally challenging, the second group found it less threatening.

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Be More Successful by Practicing Self Awareness

- Adam Clare
Interview

Self awareness helps in many aspects of one’s life, from romance to learning new things; it can also help you be successful in your professional life too. Let’s be honest though, self awareness is hard and is something that needs to be practiced everyday. Over at Fast Company they put together a list of five things you can do to improve your self awareness and how it can help you in your work life.

2. REVIEW YOUR SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

Take stock of the times you were successful, as well as those you weren’t. What happened in each situation? What was different? If you were to do it again, what would you change? Keep note of these reflections to see if patterns emerge and what you can learn from and take action on.

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It’s Time to Get Crafty for the Winter Pandemic Months

- Adam Clare

tape and tool

In North America and Europe we are bound to have to spend the winter mostly in our own domiciles due to political mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic alongside the scourge of ignoramuses who don’t wear masks. Being stuck in one environment all the time will inevitably lead to boredom, so we must find ways to keep ourselves occupied. Consider crafting.

Pickup a hobby, any hobby, and get crafty with it to make these long winter months fly.

That’s another side of crafting that I personally find, perhaps paradoxically, valuable: how separate it is from my actual work, and how it makes me feel productive without that productivity being tied to the pursuit of money. Of course, plenty of people make their living in part or wholly by selling what they make, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking up a craft with the hope that you might be able to sell your finished products. Especially at the beginning stages, though, I’d advise against focusing on that as your end goal, and instead concentrate on turning off your anxious brain, deciding which skills you’d like to get the hang of, or thinking about who you might like to give the first (or, let’s be real, third) fruit of your labors to. No shame whatsoever if that recipient is yourself.

So how do you choose which craft is right for you? There’s no such thing as a “crafty person” versus a non-crafty one, IMO, but your mileage may vary in terms of how much time, attention, and money you’re willing or able to invest. This goes triple during, say, a pandemic, when it should be considered a rousing victory simply to get through the day.

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In Canada Your Doctor May Tell You to Walk it Off

- Adam Clare
Forest

Doctors in Canada may soon be prescribing the oldest medicine in the world: walking it off. Thanks to the work of family doctor Dr. Melissa Lem in British Columbia the province will allow a walk in nature to be prescribed by doctors. It’s been proven time and time again that exposure to nature helps with all sorts of medical conditions and recovery times. This initiative to prescribe nature means people can take medical time from work to go for a hike and get a nudge from their doctor to improve their lives.

Dr. Lem wants to bring the program to every province.

Prescriptions for nature became available through this program at the end of last month, and their availability will improve as more health-care practitioners sign up for the prescription packages, which include fact sheets, relevant literature and a unique provider code. This can be done on the program’s website.

In the coming months, Lem intends to expand the program to other provinces and territories, forging partnerships between health-care and parks organizations and sharing the resources she has spent years collecting. Until then, she said health-care providers outside B.C. can sign up in advance and will get their prescription packages when the program reaches them.

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