The ability to control dreams may help us unravel the mystery of consciousness

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The ability to control dreams may help us unravel the mystery of consciousness

 by Commentary
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We spend around six years of our lives dreaming—that’s 2,190 days or 52,560 hours. Although we can be aware of the perceptions and emotions we experience in our dreams, we are not conscious in the same way as when we’re awake. This explains why we can’t recognize that we’re in a dream and often mistake these bizarre narratives for reality. But some people—lucid dreamers—have the ability to experience awareness during their dreams by “re-awakening” some aspects of their waking consciousness. They can even take control and act with intention in the dream world (think Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Inception). Lucid dreaming is still an understudied subject, but recent advances suggest it’s a hybrid state of waking consciousness and sleep. Lucid dreaming is one of many “anomalous” experiences that can occur during sleep. Sleep paralysis, where you wake up terrified and

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paralyzed while remaining in a state of sleep, is another. There are also false awakenings, where you believe you have woken up only to discover that you are in fact dreaming. Along with lucid dreams, all these experiences reflect an increase in subjective awareness while remaining in a state of sleep. To find out more about the transitions between these states—and hopefully consciousness itself—we have launched a large-scale online survey on sleep experiences to look at the relationships between these different states of hybrid consciousness. Lucid dreaming and the brain About half of us will experience at least one lucid dream in our lives. And it could be something to look forward to because it allows people to simulate desired scenarios from meeting the love of their life to winning a medieval battle.

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There is some evidence that lucid dreaming can be induced, and a number of large online communities now exist where users share tips and tricks for achieving greater lucidity during their dreams (such as having dream totems, a familiar object from the waking world that can help determine if you are in a dream, or spinning around in dreams to stop lucidity from slipping away). A recent study that asked participants to report in detail on their most recent dream found that lucid (compared to non-lucid) dreams were indeed characterized by far greater insight into the fact that the sleeper was in a dream. Participants who experienced lucid dreams also said they had greater control over thoughts and actions within the dream, had the ability to think logically, and were even better at accessing real memories of their waking life. Another study looking at people’s ability to make conscious decisions in waking life as well as during lucid and non-lucid dreams found a large degree of overlap between volitional abilities when we are awake and when we are having lucid dreams. However, the

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 ability to plan was considerably worse in lucid dreams compared to wakefulness. Lucid and non-lucid dreams certainly feel subjectively different and this might suggest that they are associated with different patterns of brain activity. But confirming this is not as easy as it might seem. Participants have to be in a brain scanner overnight and researchers have to decipher when a lucid dream is happening so that they can compare brain activity during the lucid dream with that of non-lucid dreaming. Ingenious studies examining this have devised a communication code between lucid dreamer participants and researchers during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when dreaming typically takes place.

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 Before going to sleep, the participant and the researcher agree on a specific eye movement (for example two movements left then two movements right) that participants make to signal that they are lucid. By using this approach, studies have found that the shift from nonlucid to lucid REM sleep is associated with an increased activity of the frontal areas of the brain. Significantly, these areas are associated with “higher order” cognitive functioning such as logical reasoning and voluntary behaviour which are typically only observed during waking states. The type of brain activity observed, gamma wave activity, is also known to allow different aspects of our experience; perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and memories to “bind” together into an integrated consciousness. A follow-up study found that electrically stimulating these areas caused an increase in the degree of lucidity experienced during a dream. Another study more accurately specified the brain regions involved in lucid dreams, and found increased activity in regions such as the pre-frontal cortex and the precuneus. These brain areas are associated with higher cognitive abilities such as self-referential

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 processing and a sense of agency—again supporting the view that lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of consciousness. Tackling the consciousness problem How consciousness arises in the brain is one of the most perplexing questions in neuroscience. But it has been suggested that studying lucid dreams could pave the way for new insights into the neuroscience of consciousness. This is because lucid and non-lucid REM sleep are two states where our conscious experience is markedly different, yet the overall brain state remains the same (we are in REM sleep all the time, often dreaming). By comparing specific differences in brain activity from a lucid dream with a non-lucid one, then, we can look at features that may be facilitating the enhanced awareness experienced in the lucid dream. Furthermore, by using eye signaling as a marker of when a sleeper is in a lucid dream, it is possible to study the neurobiological activity at this point to further understand not only what characterizes and maintains this heightened consciousness, but how it emerges in the first place.

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This post originally appeared at The Conversation. Follow @ConversationUS on Twitter. http://cashpackets.com/link.php?ref=96913

Tags: brain science, brains, consciousness, dreams, lucid dreams, repubs, science, sleep, sleepparalysis, The Conversation http://qz.com/tag/repubs/

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The Real Style --------- NP2016

‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is psychologically damaging

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‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is psychologically damaging


 by Commentary
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 Our lives and careers are filled with examples of inauthentic behavior. We feign interest in meetings or laugh at our boss’s bad jokes in order to be positive team members, build relationships, and accomplish shared goals. This is how we get along—and it is how some of us get ahead. But according to Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, our chronic phoniness comes at a cost. In her latest research, Kouchaki—together with Francesca Gino of Harvard and Adam D. Galinsky of Columbia—shows that being inauthentic actually makes us feel immoral. “We shouldn’t overlook the psychological distress that comes with inauthentic behavior,” she says. “Just as an immoral act violates widely accepted societal moral norms and produces negative feelings, an inauthentic act violates being true to oneself, and it can take a similar toll.” Feeling icky Kouchaki’s research is the first empirical demonstration that authenticity and morality are linked in this way.

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 Across five experiments, she and her colleagues discovered that when asked to recall “a time in your personal or professional life when you behaved in a way that made you feel inauthentic,” participants expressed greater feelings of moral impurity than those who recalled a neutral experience. On a 7-point scale, those who described an inauthentic experience rated their feelings of impurity at 3.56 on average, compared to an average of 1.51 for those in the control group. The researchers also found that recalling one’s inauthenticity led to a desire for self-cleansing. Those who wrote personal essays about inauthentic behavior generated more cleansing-related words during a subsequent word-completion test (words like wash, shower, and soap); expressed a greater interest in cleansing products (such as Dove soap, Crest toothpaste, and Tide detergent) over neutral products (such as Post-it notes, Energizer batteries, and Snickers

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; and demonstrated a greater desire for cleansing behaviors (such as taking a shower or washing hands) over neutral behaviors (like watching TV or listening to music). “Simply remembering these inauthentic behaviors makes us feel unclean,” Kouchaki says. And the feelings of uncleanliness persist, even when our inauthentic actions are not of our own choosing. In a separate experiment, a group of students was asked whether course descriptions should include difficulty ratings. Afterwards, some participants wrote an essay in support of the opinion they had just expressed, while the others wrote in support of the side they did not believe in. Those who wrote “inconsistent” essays showed a greater desire for cleanliness than those who expressed their honest opinion—even though they had been directed to take that stance by the researchers.

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Moral compensation If inauthentic behavior makes us feel less pure, what do we do to compensate? “Feeling impure or immoral is a threat to one’s moral self-concept,” Kouchaki says. “And when your moral self-concept is threatened, you have to address it.” One way to compensate for feelings of impurity is to physically clean oneself—as suggested by participants’ desires in previous experiments. But that is not the only strategy. In a follow-up experiment, the researchers found that feeling fake can drive people to engage in “prosocial” behaviors such as offering help or donating money. When given the opportunity to fill out an optional 15-minute survey to assist the researchers, a third of those who remembered past instances of inauthenticity did so; only 17 percent of those who had written about a time they felt true to themselves agreed to help out. (Interestingly, those who were given a chance to wash their hands no longer saw the need to engage in prosocial behavior.)

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 Whether through self-cleansing or prosocial behavior, each of us is disposed to protect our identity as moral beings. “We all have a certain comfort zone when it comes to our moral self-concept,” Kouchaki says. The level may be different for a saint than an assassin, but the basic dynamic holds true: when people act inauthentically, they find a way to return to that comfort zone. “We have a kind of moral debt that’s caused by being inauthentic.” The costs of emotional labor The fact that inauthentic behavior threatens our sense of morality may shed light on certain aspects of the modern workplace. Take employee engagement, for example.

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 According to a 2013 Gallup poll, only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work. And for those who eventually leave their jobs, frustration, burnout, disillusionment, and misalignment with personal values are often cited. Kouchaki believes this employee disengagement might be caused in part by moral distress. “Behavior that alienates people from themselves will always have an effect,” she says. Hotel staff, for instance, might wield tight-lipped smiles and impeccable manners during exchanges with even the most disagreeable travelers. Kouchaki calls this “surface acting”—common behavior for those whose jobs depend on politeness and constant restraint. “This type of emotional labor has consequences,” she says. For business leaders, these consequences are worth keeping in mind. If employee dissatisfaction is based on a violation of moral values— even at a subconscious level—it might be worth considering how authentic employees are allowed to be in their particular role. “It seems to be true that to act in accordance with one’s own self, emotions, and values is a fundamental aspect of well-being,” Kouchaki says. “Leaders might want to factor that in. The knowledge that inauthentic behavior has costs and that prosocial behavior”— like assisting or mentoring a colleague—“increases moral self-

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 regard—this is something leaders might consider when designing their organizations.” In other words, it is important to note that a threat to someone’s moral self-concept is different from other negative states of mind such as feeling confused, disrespected, or overwhelmed. Clear instructions, positive feedback, and flexible hours are all undoubtedly appreciated, but for leaders who want to keep their employees engaged for as long as possible, understanding their need for a positive moral self-concept might be key. Of course, being true to oneself is a complex proposition. “As human beings we have multiple identities, and our identity depends on which of our selves is most salient at the moment,” Kouchaki says. Our identities shift on a daily basis—from parent to professional, from partner to friend. Still, it might be worth the effort. “I would say that staying true to yourself matters, even if it is difficult, because we notice that there is a cost involved in straying too far from your personal values.” This post originally appeared at Kellogg Insight.

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The Real Style --------- NP2016

If you answer emails after work, you should be getting unlimited vacation

If you answer emails after work, you should be getting unlimited vacation
by Commentary
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This post originally appeared at LinkedIn. Follow the author here.
Since 2004, Netflix employees have taken as many vacation days as they’ve wanted. They have the freedom to decide when to show up for work, when to take time off, and how much time it will take them to get the job done. As far as I can tell, this hasn’t hurt Netflix one bit. Since instituting the policy, it's grown its market cap to over $51 billion.
Just because there’s flexibility at Netflix doesn’t mean it lacks accountability. Employees have to keep their managers in the loop, and they’re expected to perform at a very high level. High performance is so ingrained into Netflix culture that they reward adequate performance with a generous severance package.
Netflix employees have unlimited vacation because no one is tracking their time. Instead of micromanaging how people get their jobs done, the leadership focuses only on what matters—results. They’ve found that giving people greater autonomy creates a more responsible culture. Without the distraction of stifling rules, employees are more focused and productive.
Why Traditional Vacation Had To Go
When Netflix still had your typical vacation policy, employees asked an important question:
“We don’t track the time we spend working outside of the office—like e-mails we answer from home and the work we do at night and on weekends—so why do we track the time we spend off the job?”

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Management listened. They couldn’t deny the simple logic behind the question.
Back in the industrial age, when people stood on the assembly line from 9 to 5, paying for time made sense. With advances in technology, however, that’s no longer the case. People work when work needs to be done, from wherever they are. There’s really no such thing as “after hours” anymore.
We’re now operating in a participation economy, where people are measured and paid for what they produce. Yet, when it comes to time off, we’re still clinging to the vestiges of the industrial economy, where people were paid for the time they spent on the job. This is a huge demotivator. Netflix realized this, and it changed its policy to reflect the way that work actually gets done.
Brazilian Origins
While Netflix was one of the first notable American companies to take on an unlimited vacation policy, the idea didn’t start there. Brazilian company Semco has been quietly offering unlimited vacation for more than thirty years.
After a health scare when he was just 21, Ricardo Semler, the son of the company’s founder, realized that the schedule he was keeping was slowly killing him, and that if it could kill him, then it could kill his employees too. So, he made the radical decision to do away with schedules, sick days, and vacation time.
Contrary to the prevailing worry that productivity would plummet, Semler found that employees actually became more productive and fiercely loyal, and when the employees thrived, the company did, too. When Semler first instituted this policy in 1981, Semco was just a $4 million company. It’s now worth over $1 billion.
Overworked in the United States

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As successful as unlimited vacation policies have been, less than 1 percent of U.S. companies have adopted them. That’s not hard to digest when you think about our workaholic culture. U.S. employees get less vacation time than workers in any country, except South Korea.
In fact, American companies aren’t legally required to give any paid time off at all, whereas it’s mandated in many other countries. Workers in the United Kingdom, for instance, are entitled to 28 paid days off per year (including national holidays). In Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxembourg, and Sweden, employees receive a mandated 25 days of paid leave, and in Brazil workers get 30 paid vacation days each year plus 11 national holidays.
Do People Take Advantage of It?
Companies defend their strict vacation policies with the belief that employees will take advantage of anything else. But companies that have actually tried unlimited vacations have found the opposite to be true. Freedom gives people such a strong sense of ownership and accountability that, like business owners, many end up taking no vacation at all.
Employers that have instituted unlimited vacation policies have also had to make policies that encourage people to actually take time off. Evernote, for example, gives employees $1,000 to spend on vacation, and FullContact gives employees a whopping $7,500. Since employees are hesitant to take time off, they have to submit receipts showing that the funds were spent on a vacation in order to be reimbursed.
While workaholic employees might sound good on paper, that’s not what smart companies want. Smart companies know that when employees take time off to recharge—especially when they have the freedom to take time when they need it—they come back even more creative and productive. Subsidizing that time off is money well spent.

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Bringing It All Together
It’s sad that we’re still compensated according to an assembly-line mentality. We work from whenever and wherever necessary to get results, so it only makes sense that our compensation and benefits reflect that shift.

The Real Style ------------ NP2016

Toughen up—it will be worth it

Toughen up—it will be worth it

In cycling culture, there is a thing called ‘Rule V’ that states, "HTFU" (Harden The F-word-of-your-choice Up). It means that even though the hill is steep, it is cold and raining and you are tired, you toughen up and ride hard. If you want to be fast, that is what it takes. The hard work you put in that day makes you stronger for next time.

That rule very much defines my approach to life.
Living in a studio apartment with one or two babies was a constant challenge to HTFU. As I stated above, living in a small space was tough—there were days I wanted to give up. The space was too small, the noise was too much, there was nowhere to go to be alone. But fighting through those days is how I would get stronger for the next day.

Why is that important?

We humans have a strong ability to adapt, sometimes that actually works against us. If we live with a certain amount of luxury, we will become accustomed to it. The trouble with getting used to an easy or expensive way of living is that none of us know what is next.

In the startup world, we talk about something called "runway." It basically means how much time you could keep operating if the money stopped coming in. For many companies, that time is very short. For many families, it is even shorter. That is an extremely vulnerable place to be.

The reason I think it is so important to always keep expenses down is that it has the dual effect of decreasing your burn rate and increasing your savings. The two of those combine to allow you more freedom.
When you have a lot of financial runway, it allows you to make decisions based on reasons other than money.

There is some sum of money that, under the right conditions, you could live the rest of your life on. At that point you would never need to work again, but certainly could. That is true freedom.
Not everyone has a chance at freedom. Some people have to work long and hard just to scrape by. But many people repeatedly sign away their freedom by choice.
And don’t forget about the importance of compound interest. I will remind you that $2,000 per month saved on rent for one year is $24,000. Invested for 50 years averaging 6% interest comes to roughly $450,000. Freedom. HTFU.

Real Style ---------- Today.

When living on tight margins, the highs are the same, but the lows are much lower.

When living on tight margins, the highs are the same, but the lows are much lower
Thinking on all of our time in that apartment, I can recall many of my favorite times. None of them have much to do with the apartment—they all have to do with the people in it. Whether that was our family, my former roommate, visiting friends or extended family.
The highs we experienced were no different than any other family’s.
In contrast though, the lows were much lower.
Now, I don’t mean the personal lows one family might encounter: illness, strife, financial woes, etc. Those would likely be as low no matter where you are. I am specifically referring to the lows that are more directly tied to the living space.
In a small space, the typical day is ok, but there are such thin margins of free space and separation. There are times when all of this implodes. One thing going wrong can tip the next wrong domino and cause a chain reaction
For example, consider the weekend in which I built the loft bed. In order to assemble it in the room, I needed to move everything out of the way, start attaching pieces, and stand things up against the wall while I started on another. There were screws and planks and sawdust everywhere. It took more than one day which meant there was a night where we neither had a finished loft bed nor room for a regular bed. Unfortunately I overestimated how much I could get
done and had to leave for a business trip. Sunday night I took the red eye, leaving my pregnant wife at home with a toddler in a construction zone with no bed to sleep on. Not our happiest goodbye. (I had cleaned up most of the screws and some of the sawdust)

A final, and more humorous situation I would often find myself in was early morning meetings with nowhere to go. The 12 person startup I moved to San Francisco for has grown into an international software company. That meant I’d sometimes be needed for early morning meetings at 5 or 6a.m. My typical day, as is common with San Francisco tech companies, usually started closer to 9 or 10a.m. Rather than wake up at 4a.m. to get ready and head into the office before a 5a.m call, my strategy had been to take the call in my PJs and then get ready and commute afterwards.

That worked great when I was single, had a roommate, and even when my wife moved in. But once the babies came onto the scene, it was tough. You never want to wake a sleeping baby. I tried the bathroom, but the babies would wake up. The eventual solution was to take the call from my car in the garage. I am proud to say I’ve helped close million+ dollar software deals in my PJs sitting in a car parked in my garage. But there were definitely some days I would sit there thinking "What the heck am I doing right now?"

We had some really tough days, but in the end I live a life of many blessings. Reflecting on these days, however, has given me much more understanding for those living life with less. Whether rich or poor, a normal day is a normal day. When you’re wealthy and your car breaks down, you can get a rental. But when you’re poor, paid hourly, and your transportation fails—that sort of thing can just compound into a really bad situation. Sick days can mean extra expenses and lost earnings at the same time. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about poverty, and even lower-to-middle class working lives. If we better understood margin and variance, it would really help us become more sympathetic and caring people.


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Less house means less housekeeping

Less house means less housekeeping

Living in a studio apartment was hard. It took work, planning, organization, and commitment. But there was a silver lining. Having less house has benefits in reduced housework.
One of the most obvious is that there is less to clean. There are fewer shelves to dust and less floor to vacuum.

There also isn’t a need to furnish and decorate as much, which reduces stress, cost, and time spent planning.
There is also a decreased chance of clutter. Because everything happened in one room, if we didn’t clean up after ourselves, we couldn’t ignore the mess. We would put away the toys every night before my son went to bed so that we could sit in the living room afterwards and not stare at toys. As a strange side effect, our son loves cleaning up.

We didn’t lose things often. Living in a small space forced organization. Everything had a place and we all knew where that was. Even if you did misplace something in the house, there weren’t many places for it to hide. You would find it much faster than in a large space.

More house always comes with more house work. More yard with more yard work. In a world with finite time & money, reducing one thing allows you to increase another. Less time cleaning a house can mean more time living with the people in it.

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Home is more than a place to keep “stuff”

                                 Home is more than a place to keep “stuff”

The second limit of a living space is the need for storage of stuff (see: George Carlin). Consider that, by volume, your stuff occupies probably 50-200 times as much space as you do in your house.

 You would be able to get by fine with a smaller house if you either:

 increased the density of your storage space
 decreased the amount you needed to store

I already discussed the former point, but I’ll take a moment to reflect on the latter.
Our family had the constraint of an apartment that didn’t change size, even as we grew. Our adjustment into a small living space was gradual enough that we became accidental minimalists.

For three years, we donated at least one grocery bag per month to thrift stores, slowly paring down what we owned. As the space became tighter, the bar an object had to be above in order to earn a place in our house kept getting higher.
I started to really think about what I owned and why I owned it. I became a more conscientious owner of things. The possessions I own
now are such a reduced and fine-tuned representation of my current needs that it is hard for me to find want for anything else.

As things got harder, I also found ways to hack the system. I now use craigslist as something between a rental shop & storage facility. Buying things for a season of life and selling them when I won’t need them for a while. I have often even turned a small profit doing so.
I also found ways to hack myself. A lot of the things I owned were in my house with the purpose of "I might need this someday." I had to work hard to convince myself that I didn’t. In the end the compromise came down to this—"If you get rid of this and need it again, you have permission to buy it from Amazon with same day delivery"—so far that hasn’t happened.
Consider that you are paying rent for your stuff. That closet space, or worse yet, storage unit, is costing you money every month. Eventually you will spend more in storage than the contents ever cost you.

Real-Style --------Today.