A Low-Information Diet – The Solution for Overwhelm and Overload?

When I was in college I struggled with the perceived pressure to always be “in the know” with local and national media. As soon as I woke up I would turn my TV to the morning news as I checked emails and got ready for the day. On the way to class I would grab our Daily Collegian and a USA Today and scour the top headlines. During breaks I would sit with my phone and scroll through the feeds from various news apps. For all intents and purposes – I was completely wired. I self-prescribed this high-information diet so that I would never appear oblivious or ignorant to the outside world I was just learning to navigate. I was utterly convinced that absorbing as much media as I could was the only way to ensure I could hold a mature an intelligent conversation in the real world.

The building of this pressure was amplified by my communications professors’ preaching to always stay informed, to subscribe to at least 5 news sources a day and to read, read, read. It made sense. If I was going to excel in the field of communications, I needed to understand how people communicate and join in the conversation! I quickly allotted what little free time and free mental space I had remaining to becoming a media watch dog. Once out of college and in the midst of a hectic political campaign where information overload was the first line of the job description, I still tried to absorb the news from several different sources daily on top of everything else expected of me.  Every day was filled with overwhelm.

Then there came the critical moment in my life, the moment that if mapped out on a timeline would look something like a black hole, that I finally found the volume knob on my information feed and turned it completely off.

As you might imagine this was the time I spent re-evaluating what I really wanted to do with my life, what would make me most happy and what I had to do to get there. This was when I became an entrepreneur. It was during these critical weeks that I simply had no time or concern left for a high-information diet. All I knew was that what I was currently doing was making me miserable and I needed to stop it all in order to pinpoint the cause. So what happened when I stopped checking my phone and email, turned off the TV and closed the newspaper? Absolutely nothing. Nothing blew up, nothing burned down, I wasn’t accused of being ignorant and my career wasn’t the least bit affected. In fact, for the first time in a long time I found myself with some free time and free mental space to dedicate to things I actually cared about. The news feeds in my email no longer existed to serve as another to-do and I wasn’t under the same stress to absorb every piece of information around me and store it for later use.

I didn’t become blissfully ignorant, I became selectively ignorant.

So you might expect that with the start of my own business, I began to work this information back into my daily routine. You might even expect for me to brag about how many news sources I consume in a single day or how my finger is always on the pulse of the universe. This simply isn’t so. I still continue to enjoy a low-information diet to this day and I truly believe the benefits I receive from this are far more important and impactful than what I would receive returning to my old routine. My day begins by immediately getting to client work – not slogging through news headlines that may or may never be of any value. My inbox isn’t overloaded with unimportant emails that are basically self-inflicted spam. Most importantly, my mental focus has drastically improved from where it was years ago. I feel clear, calm and collected. This allows me to complete projects more efficiently which in return gives me even more free time. I turn this time into far more meaningful results than simply absorbing the chaos of the news world. Most enjoyable, I’ve found a fountain of focus to write and really dig deep into my thoughts. It’s this low-information diet that helps fuel the Bennis Inc Blog.

Ultimately, by exposing myself to far less information, I only expose myself to the right information. When I do choose to read or learn something, it is far more likely to be absorbed fully and used immediately. I‘m no longer in the business of seeking and storing information that can’t be of immediate value.  When I need information, I get it on demand. This has proven to be far more effective than reading, storing and trying to recall that same information through years and years of mental clutter. But most noteworthy is how moving away from a high-information diet has completely changed my mood, my sense of overwhelm and my amount of free time. I still fear becoming ignorant or oblivious to the outside world, but I now know this has no correlation to the amount of news I force feed myself in a day. As long as we remain hungry for knowledge and seek it out as we need it, we will stay as informed as we want to be –without the overwhelm or overload.

What type of information diet do you exist on? What do you think would change if you made the switch to a low-information diet? Share your personal experience with information overload or cutting it off completely!

 

5 Public Relations Tips For A Healthier Business

Often I talk with local business owners, friends and fellow entrepreneurs, who when they find out my line of business, ask for basic Public Relations tips that they can immediately put into action. I never mind offering such advice because they’re usually the starting fixes I would ask any client to make before we dive deeper into an all-encompassing PR strategy. Just like a doctor might first recommend some lifestyle changes before prescribing you medication, I too recommend these 5 Public Relations tips before prescribing we do something more “invasive.”

1. Update you web site content. Whether you created your web site or you outsourced this to a firm, you should have the working knowledge to make basic changes to your content as needed. This is crucial in ensuring your visitors and potential clients are always given the most up to date information about your business and services. If you want someone to view you as competent, professional and organized, your web site should reflect this same image. My best suggestion is to initially create web site content that is simple, direct and avoids using dates or specifics. This will help to give the content longevity and prevent you from having to update it on a weekly basis. Featuring upcoming events and your most recent blog post on your homepage are great ideas and can usually be automated through Google Calendars or WordPress. If you don’t choose to automate these features, just remember to set a calendar alert to remind you to update it when appropriate. I suggest never letting more than a week go by with obviously outdated content left visible on your web site.

2. Social media profiles – use it or lose it. Rarely would I suggest for a client to not utilize social media; however in most of these instances, I am the person who is managing their social media so I can ensure it is staying updated and on target. When simply offering outside Public Relations advice, I strongly advocate that your social media should be a positive representation of your business. If your Twitter profile is stagnant and your Facebook group has just 7 fans, then is social media really helping your business’s image or has it become a hindrance? If you don’t currently have the time to manage your social media nor do you have the means to outsource this, it is better to close down the account than push your potential customers to a page that negatively represents your organization and consistency. Just as you wouldn’t open a new store front and not put an employee at the front counter, opening a social media account and letting it sit vacant provides the same unprofessional, unwelcoming impression to visitors.

3. Communicate consistently. Similar to what I have talked about in my tips for blogging, consistent communication is paramount. Firing off three emails or three blog posts in one week and then going silent for 4 months is not effective in furthering your business’ message. I highly recommend not missing out on the opportunity to communicate with your publics, but I do suggest you choose a regular schedule for communication and stick with it. There are various low-cost ways in which you can establish regular communication. One would be creating a monthly e-newsletter through MailChimp and for fewer than 2,000 subscribers, this is completely free. I don’t recommend a personal e-blast sent directly from your email, because customers appreciate the opportunity to “opt-out” if they so desire and a professional email template goes a long way in also establishing you as a professional business.

4. Become a resource. All of the Public Relations tips I’ve mentioned also provide the opportunity for you to establish yourself and your business as a resource in your industry. Your web site content, social media updates and monthly e-newsletters or blogs should all work together to achieve this. Looking at Bennis Inc as an example, my web site content uses various locations to communicate that my services are focus on creating customized Public Relations strategies at competitive and flexible rates. My blog, also linked from my homepage slider, provides tips and advice on entrepreneurship, social media, blogging and Public Relations (like today’s). Finally, on my social media profiles like Facebook and Linkedin, I share these same blog posts (to reach my contacts that aren’t yet subscribers) and I often share articles, quotes and web sites that keep the pulse on emerging Public Relations trends. When you make yourself a resource, you build a relationship of trust and confidence with your networks. Regardless of whether they’re a client now, when the time comes when they do need a service your business offers, they will remember the confidence they have in your expertise and come to your first.

5. Evaluate your business’s message regularly. People are constantly growing and changing. And because businesses are run by people, they too are constantly growing and changing. The mission of your business that you started with years ago may no longer reflect what it has since developed into. One of the most basic and most important Public Relations tips I can provide is to regularly evaluate, and as needed update, the message your business communicates with its publics. Think about where your business gains most of its income, where you’ve developed a level of expertise and what sets you apart. All of these should be mentioned in your concise mission statement. If it changes regularly as your business grows, that’s very normal. As you learn more about your business and the direction in which it is headed, you will need to adjust your mission. Be sure to use the four other Public Relations tips I’ve provided as opportunities to weave this message into everything else you do.

I hope this “PR Prescription” has provided you with some healthy tips for your business’s communication strategy. What I enjoy so much about giving this advice is that people can immediately put it into action and see results. Whether you’re a business owner or in a position to suggest these changes to the company for which you work, I look forward to hearing about how you choose to implement them and the results it brings about. Please share!

 

Finding What Triggers Your Drive & Determination

I’ve been a casual runner ever since I joined the track and field team in high school. It wasn’t love at first step and I was never anything more than average, but I committed to stomping the pavement several times a week and always felt accomplished after I did. I still know the exact course I’d run around my neighborhood; it’s the same course I love running anytime I’m in town because I can see all the changes of the place I’ll always consider “home.” It wasn’t until about one year ago when I realized that even after so many years of running, the cities in which I ran may have changed but my running never really improved or progressed. I ran about 2 miles at the same pace, no hills, no highways, no running partners and never a single race to validate my efforts. I never challenged myself to reach beyond that mental wall I built as my physical limit. I blocked myself from thinking I could ever go further or faster. Maybe it was the fear of discomfort or the uncertainty of trying something I didn’t already know I could do, but it was everything I had to push past to start my own business. So why couldn’t I apply this same confidence and discipline to trigger myself to excel in running?

The first time I broke my normal running course and added in an extra mile loop was the same time I also allowed my first running partner to join me. It was new, physically uncomfortable and at times so tempting to stop and walk, but with someone else at my side, I pushed through it all because I didn’t want to let him see anything less than my best. The whole run, I felt like I was struggling to just to keep up, but later learned from my partner that he was struggling just to do the same. We were both pushing each other while pushing ourselves. And so I found my trigger. Unlike entrepreneurship, which is very much a solo journey, my journey toward becoming a better runner required a partner – someone to push me to do better and remind me that no matter what, I can always take one more step.

In the months since that first run which pushed me out of my rut, I’ve started running in almost every city to which I travel, conquering hills, highways, woods and running with groups of 3 and 4 people along the way. I’ve also run with marathoners who would have easily intimidated me just a year prior, but held my own. The last thing I have yet to do to completely tear down all of my mental walls around running is to participate in a race. A 5k is less than what I do on a regular basis right now, so there’s no reason I couldn’t jump right in with the next community race. It’s amazing that all of these accomplishments were always obtainable, I just didn’t have the right trigger to make me want to do better.

The question I want to pose to you today is in what part of your life are you lacking the drive to want to do better? This could be a making a career change, mending a relationship, starting a hobby or exploring a religion. We all have something, maybe many things, that are just waiting for the right trigger to spur us into action. Each of these may require a different trigger to get us moving forward and what works for one, may be the opposite for another. What’s most compelling to consider is how obtainable these goals might be to reach, if only we put our full efforts into trying.

I’d like to close with sharing that in exactly 2 months from today, I’m going to marry my first running partner whose ability to challenge and encourage me in every aspect of my life has made him my true soul mate. I suppose this also makes him my trigger for a whole lot more than just running…

 

One Cell, One Lesson (Guest Blog by A Dear Friend)

The following blog post is part of the Bennis Blogger Battle. Support the author by “Liking” this post, leaving a comment and sharing it on your social media! The blog with the most hits, wins.

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The human body has many diverse mechanisms to maintain high quality cell reproduction. Mutation 1.
The human body has a cell, sometimes, that does not duplicate itself correctly. Mutation 2.
The human body has other cells which can, most often, detect that something is wrong. Mutation 3.
The human body has cells whose sole responsibility is to annihilate a rogue cell. Mutation 4.
The human body has a beautiful system that prioritizes the division of resources to cells. Mutation 5.
The human body has positive and negative feedback loops to maintain perfect equilibrium. Mutation 6.
The human body has safeguards to detect if a cell is using more resources than is fair. Mutation 7.
The human body has 7 distinct defenses to destroy a rogue cell before it becomes cancer. Mutation 8.

It is not mine. It is someone I love. She is my mother.

My world has suddenly become small. My priorities have been simplified. We humans sometimes forget
how good it is until it is not. We never revel in the ability to turn our heads to the left until we wake up with a crick in our neck. We forgot our pride in our country until the towers came down. Often we need a reminder to remember what should be cherished. I will always regret the missed opportunities of the
past; however, I will not let it devour me. I do not believe in the credo that one should live life
without regret. There is no shame in regret, yet there is much shame in not learning from it.

I never truly knew hope. Hope was always bitterly paired with unrequited love. I never truly knew joy. Joy was always a heady, impetuous night of revelry. I never truly knew love. Love was always an ethereal concept with no tangible proof.

I am learning Hope through the optimism of my father. I am learning Joy through incremental improvements in my mother. I am learning Love through the earnest support of my family and friends.

My time with my mother may be short. It may not be. We just don’t know. That is out of my hands and I am learning to accept that. It is not easy to know that I can only control that which is within my own power.

I do not pretend to have any profound message for you, nor do I have any good suggestions on how to live life. Still, if I may offer the one insight that I have gleaned through all of this:

Never miss an opportunity to tell someone you love them. Every day.

The author of this blog post is a personal friend and has chosen to remain anonymous, but still wishes to express some of the personal truths that he has stumbled upon (He is also really hoping to win that free cup of coffee). If this message has touched you, please share it, Like it or comment on it. We’re never alone…and we are ALL loved.

 

Entrainment – A School of Yogi Fish

This special guest blog is written by contributing author Kate Bennis, who is completing her yoga teacher training at Flow Yoga Center in Washington, D.C. Read more about Kate at the end of this post!

On a recent Sunday afternoon in my yoga teacher training class at the Flow Yoga Center in Washington, D.C., I physically experienced the beautiful concept of entrainment and I haven’t been able to stop seeing it in these fleeting, serendipitous moments every day since.

We started by practicing a simple sequence of poses linking each movement to breath (inhale, arms up, exhale, fold forward).  Our guest teacher, the lovely, inspirational Alanna Kaivalya, began the first sequence by calling out the breath, then the movement.  On the second round, she directed us by the breath only.  The third repeat, she said nothing.  I became deeply aware of the inhale and exhales of my fellow yogis, all in sync for the perfect four counts, leading me through to the next pose.  By the fourth try, I closed my eyes and moved through the sequence, void of visual or verbal cues, the only catalyst being the ocean-like sounds of our breathing, surrendering to the rhythm of the waves of movement.  My mind was not conscious of where my body was in the sequence; the natural life-force of my classmates’ own prana was driving me.

Finishing the sequence in tadasana, the 26 of us stood at the tops of our mats, two rows facing one another.  I opened my eyes to realize my hands were clasped on my pounding heart.  The yogi across from me held her shaking hands in prayer, with a blissful smile on her face.  Another lightly placed a hand over her mouth, eyes reflecting awe.  Like a school of yogi fish, our breath, our movement, our life pulses coordinated into a complex dance.  We didn’t think of how to move next, we just knew.  I’ve never felt a connection so strong than I did in that room, in that moment.

Entrainment is a term used in various scientific fields to describe the phenomenon of one being adjusting its own internal rhythms to sync with another being.  Shiva Rea opened her recent workshop in D.C. (which my sister Stephanie and I attended) by delving into this deep, complex, yet somehow at the same time, innate concept.  The terms were new, but the theory was well-worn territory for me: all beings, on a primitive level, desire to connect with one another.

I’ve been experiencing this phenomenon since the moment I was born, however now recently aware, I cannot help but to observe entrainment in the small and beautifully mundane moments of everyday city living.  I stand behind a stranger in line at Starbucks and now know my heartbeat is decelerating and hers accelerating to meet somewhere in the middle.  I speak to a partner at my law firm, and notice how I mirror his body language to convey engagement and understanding; he lowers his voice, I lower mine.  He leans in with arms crossed, I subconsciously do the same.  A flock of tens of birds soar up out of a city park, dart left, hang a quick right and land across the avenue in a tree, all as if they have been practicing this impeccably choreographed routine for weeks.

This awareness has helped me to cease to view others as merely obstacles in my daily routine, but instead as fellow passengers in the journey, moving forward right along with me.  I love how the heart rhythms yield to each other!  It is evidence that not only the ability but also the desire to compromise is an intrinsic, biological function.  What a beautiful allegory to help us understand one philosophy in how we should interact with others.

In early 2008, Van Morrison released a song entitled “That’s Entrainment” on his album Keep It Simple.  In an interview, he describes his interpretation of the concept as “it’s kind of when you are in the present moment – you’re here – with no past or future.”  In the yoga studio, on a cloudy, warm November afternoon, that moment when we stopped after the final sequence, I didn’t care where I was a year ago, or where in the world I will be next year.  All that mattered was that incredible moment of connection in my school of yogi fish, the unconsciously choreographed rise and fall of our chests and the pounding of our syncing hearts.

About the author: Kate Bennis currently lives in Washington, D.C.  When not studying at Flow Yoga Center, she works as a recruiter for an international law firm.  Kate’s current attributes to her frequent moments of bliss are sweater weather, cooking Sunday dinner, dogs that wear outdoor apparel and Yvette, her deep tissue masseuse/unsolicited astrologist.