
          RESPECT YOUR MOTIVATIONAL RHYTHMS

           Copyright 1994 Marcia Yudkin.  You may reproduce this
           entire electronic disk and pass it on as shareware.  All
           other rights reserved.  Excerpted from THE CREATIVE GLOW: 
           HOW TO BE MORE ORIGINAL, INSPIRED & PRODUCTIVE IN YOUR
           WORK, Volume I, #6.

               Here's fuel for fantasy the next time you're hunched
           tight with stress: In one South American tribe, people
           never do anything unless they have so-called gana for the
           task. "Sorry, no gana," you could say if you lived there
           and felt crazed by the slowmoving mounds of work on your
           desk. And there, no one -- not the president of the company
           or your own voice of conscience -- would urge you to budge
           until your gana came back.

               In our North American tribe, a gana-like excuse would
           rank with "the dog ate my homework." Instead we rely on
           mental and physical tricks to keep ourselves going when
           we're tired, to whip up willpower when motivation flags.
           The cost in wear and tear on our systems is high.

               Research by physiologists and psychologists suggests a
           less extreme approach than gana consistent with our ancient
           wisdom that everything has its proper time. By learning
           about and respecting your individual, predictable
           motivational cycles, you can maintain your accomplishments
           with less stress. Here's what researchers in chronobiology
           and related fields advise, and why:

           1. OBSERVE AND PLAN FOR DAILY PEAKS AND SLUMPS. 
           If you're a "lark," awake and ready to chirp with the
           songbirds, you're less adaptable to an uncongenial schedule
           than "owls," who prefer to perform toward and after dark.
           In larks, a sharp morning rise in body temperature causes
           early alertness, and a drop starting in mid-afternoon makes
           mental and physical vigor fade. In owls, the body-
           temperature cycle runs about seventy minutes later. Since
           both patterns are as inborn and fixed as height or eye
           color, you're wiser planning jobs and schedules accordingly
           than expecting discipline or coffee to change your
           biological druthers. Flex-time anyone?

           Blood pressure, heart rate and hormone levels fluctuate
           daily as well, causing mental acuity for most people to
           crest late in the morning, about 11 a.m. Short-term memory
           is 15 percent better in the morning too, while long-term
           memory improves in late afternoon and at night. During the
           hours before dawn, accidents peak, independently of the
           need for sleep. 

           2. TAKE BREAKS AT LEAST EVERY NINETY MINUTES. 
           Newly discovered ultradian, or shorter-than-24-hour,
           rhythms indicate than marathoning through your day without
           stopping doesn't make you optimally productive. Just as you
           dream every ninety minutes at night, every ninety minutes
           during the day your brain tends to slip into daydreaming.
           If you welcome rather than fight brief periods of fantasy
           and escape, you'll periodically refresh your concentration
           instead of hurling yourself headlong toward burnout.

           Similarly, sleepiness and fatigue attack in ninety-minute
           cycles. Until mid-afternoon, the urge to sleep will pass
           relatively quickly if you're absorbed in something
           interesting or you reenergize yourself by taking a stretch.
           But around 3 p.m., a biologically determined gateway for
           sleep opens, so strongly that whole cultures -- again, not
           ours -- close down for a few hours and people nap. Avoid
           scheduling a slide presentation or a high-stress interview
           for that time unless you're up for disaster.

           3. STAY ALERT FOR SEASONAL EFFECTS. 
           For some people, February is the cruelest month: Gloom,
           despair and lethargy deepen as winter lasts, while their
           spirits lift with the arrival of spring. If that's true for
           you, find a practitioner qualified to diagnose and treat
           Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with a proven remedy,
           high doses of bright light. Even without clinical symptoms,
           you're more likely to gain weight through the darker
           months. As a remnant from the eons in which our ancestors
           needed extra fat in winter, you tend to eat more from
           September through March and store most of what you eat as
           fat. Start your diet as an April fool, then, and you'll
           keep your poundage down with less effort.

           By respecting rather than fighting your motivational cycles
           you won't need to dream about the exotic allure of
           motivational gana. 

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