When you add it all up – incessant Web surfing; over-allegiance to chat rooms, forums and discussion groups; fixation on online pornography, gambling and games; music, movie and other media downloading; and a wide variety of other fixation – the portrait of a society and indeed a world sitting on its derriere, breezing through one
screen after another emerges.

By some estimates, as many as 10% of Web users are living with one or more forms of Internet dependency, which has now been given the name of Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD. IAD, as acknowledged by the American Psychiatric Association, is characterized by individuals who devote gargantuan amounts of time to online activities to the detriment of their careers, studies, families or loved ones, and social and community participation.

If you find yourself spending increasing amounts of time online and experiencing a growing sense of anxiety when you’re not online, you may be at risk. What’s more, the phenomena is not confined to the Internet per se. People who check their cell phones, pagers, telephone answering devices, and any electronic information or communication gizmos on a too frequent basis may be exhibiting addictive behavior.

Are you spending less time devoted to career, community, social and recreational pursuits because of the amount of time you find yourself online. You know you’ve gone too far when you’re experiencing relationship woes, loss of friendships, loss of sleep, and, in particular, career or academic jeopardy.

The key to overcoming any addiction is to first acknowledge that you indeed are afflicted. Following that acknowledgment, you then have to summon the requisite motivation to change. Without realization and motivation, nothing is likely to happen.

Unquestionably, the Internet is a marvel of our age. The ability to find answers, make connections, order goods, satisfy curiosities, control the vast sea of knowledge contained therein is certainly enticing. It boggles my mind to think what Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, and other geniuses throughout human history could have achieved aided by the knowledge they could have gained using the Internet. At the same time, such geniuses, being all too human, may too have fallen into some of the same traps in which we mere mortals now find ourselves firmly ensconced.

As with so many aspects of life, the key to using the Internet effectively is to achieve a fine balance. First, if this works for you, establish a time limit for daily use. Thirty minutes a day many not be enough, three hours may be excessive. At work, depending on your job responsibilities, all day may be the norm. Thus, your task is to choose the limits for your personal life.

Recognize that excessive Web use may be the indicator of problems in other aspects of your life. Are you devoting time here because there are voids elsewhere? Or are you using the Internet as a tool of procrastination in shirking your responsibilities? If you recognize that you’re using the Internet to avoid the challenges of life, shying away from battles that need to be fought, it might be a good idea to speak to a therapist.

Most of us surf the net alone. But if you find reading up on the news or keeping current in some other pursuit is rewarding and enjoyable, you don’t have to forsake your family or friends in the process. Can you arrange your space so that you and your significant other, you and your children, or you and whoever can be online at the same time in close proximity, such as at the same table, so that, much like playing cards or a board game, you achieve a variation on the theme of togetherness. That in itself may go a long way towards alleviating some of the problems that excessive time on the Internet may be causing.

What step will you take now to turn from the screen, to go out and enjoy time with the people you value – proving to them that you do?

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Here’s a handy checklist to make your next meeting so productive that people leave with a strong sense of purpose and plans to support each other.

Running the meeting

Be sure to have a clear purpose for each meeting that can be articulated in advance to invited attendees.

Only invite individuals who are needed for the decisions to be made at that meeting.

It is the rare meeting that needs to last more than 20 minutes.

Agree to discuss topics that need joint decision-making or timely clarification of information for individuals to prepare their next actions.

Don’t use meetings for:

• disseminating information that can be shared in other ways.
• report-outs of information that is not relevant to all individuals in the room.

The only people invited to a meeting should be those who have some value to add or something to contribute to the agenda and purpose of the meeting.

What to do before, during and after a meeting

Before the meeting, make sure the topics on the agenda are going to be relevant to everyone in the room. Determine the agenda ahead of time and send it to everyone. Invite them to add to or clarify something on the agenda so that the attendees have some say in what is going to be talked about. They should be part of the decision-making.

During the meeting, engage individuals by name and related to the topic being discussed.  Avoid side conversations or tangential comments.  Avoid “death by PowerPoint” by using it sparingly and with images versus words to best engage the right side of the brain.

To ensure a thread to the group’s conversation, evoke the Native American tradition of using a “talking stick.”  Whoever has the stick gets to talk. When done it is passed to one person who wants to pick up the thread of that conversational point. This helps introverts break into the conversation and be heard without interruption, and it reduces the frequency of people talking over each other or interrupting.

The underlying rule is to let everyone be heard while keeping the conversation flowing towards a collective decision – even if that acknowledged decision is that the group has not yet reached agreement.

Before the meeting is adjourned, review the actions items agreed upon, the person accountable for each and the related timelines. When people feel heard, appreciated, and able to use their best talents, they are more likely to volunteer for tasks.

As a core Rule of Engagement for your meetings, those who are accountable for actions meet their deadlines, brief colleagues sparingly by email and warn them in advance when a deadline cannot be met, providing their alternative plan for completing it.

Some researchers believe that 90 percent of meetings don’t have to happen. If you are calling for a meeting, clearly state the mutual benefit or main goal for all attendees to participate and the specific need(s) for each individual to attend. That is your surest sign of respect and understanding amongst your colleagues.

Further tips for productive meetings

1. Confirm that the suggested meeting time is convenient for all participants
2. Make and stick to an action-based agenda that has received input from participants before the meeting.
3. Listen well: specifically respond to what you hear, proving you understood, and then offer your opinion.
4. Be clear, brief and specific in your communication.
5. Be engaged, purposeful and thoughtful so that you don’t derail the conversation and stay focused on reaching decisions in a timely, collaborative manner.
6. Recognize individuals for their specific contributions.
7. Honor participants’ time: if you are finished with the agenda for a one hour meeting in just 30 minutes, adjourn.  If you are not finished a 30-minute meeting at the 30-minute mark, schedule another meeting and adjourn.
8. Eliminate unnecessary meetings by reviewing the agenda to see if the items could be accomplished by email, phone or smaller meetings of fewer people.

DON’T’S

1. Don’t hog all the airtime.
2. Don’t reprimand anyone in front of the group.
3. Don’t check or use your blackberry, iPhone or other device while in the meeting.
4. Don’t do the opposite of any of the tips listed above – unless you have a better rule to propose – and I encourage you to propose it in the comments below!

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Then one day, I got up the courage to go to the dictionary.  The definition of humility I like the best is “a lack of false pride.”  These words gave me permission to see I didn’t have to be better than anyone else.  More difficult to swallow at first was that no one had to be worse than me. All of that was false pride.   If I could start my meeting assuming we were all on equal footing – coming to the table with individual talents and no answers, things got easier and I seemed to become for myself and others, a more delightful person to be with.

Here’s a tip I use to prep for meetings now that makes me feel empowered and no less or more powerful than anyone else:  I concentrate on what I most want to give to this client, or group.  What in my heart of heart do I know is MINE to give – my gifts.   I give very little thought to what I want to get.   I listen for what others have to give as if I am being given the best they have to give and that collectively we’ll come up with the solutions and answers we need.  In the end, I feel I have played “my part” and I am a “part of” the whole.  It is always personally satisfying.  The results are usually terrific.  It makes me happy.  After all, what I am looking truly for is all the joy I can experience.  I love the whole pie.  I’m no longer so interested in just accepting crumbs.

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In recent years, society has all but relegated the pursuit of the collective interest to the world “as it ought to be,” a pursuit given lip service at religious services, political rallies, and during half time at sporting events as coaches try to motivate their teams.  Meanwhile, we have grown to accept self-interest as the real world of making a living and paying the bills, and of running a political machine.  The thought that, outside their own immediate families, people are motivated by anything other than ambition and greed is considered naïve.  To see the world as fundamentally Machiavellian is considered rational.

The problem with these assumptions is not only that they are simplistic and misleading, but that by accepting them as factual, we perpetuate a tyranny of low expectations, and we fail to employ other levers for cooperation and human advancement that are at our disposal.

Humans are an obligatorially gregarious species, meaning that we have always lived in social structures in which our survival is heavily dependent on one another.  According to the “social brain hypothesis,” the driving force behind the evolution of enhanced intelligence was the need to manage the intricate social bonds that kept us alive.  The line of hominids that led to us branched off on its own distinctive path as much as seven million years ago.  During 99.9 percent of that vast expanse of time, the interest of the individual and the interest of the family or tribe were so tightly intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable.  Even if a brutal egoist could survive for a while at the expense of those around him, without a healthy and sustainable framework of social bonds to protect them, rarely if ever would his heirs live long enough to reproduce.  Thus the genes that survived as part of our biological heritage are heavily biased toward the formation and attentive maintenance of human attachments and collective efforts.  That is evidenced by how social context “gets under our skin” in profound ways: Loneliness, for instance, can alter the DNA transcription in your immune cells.

I don’t buy the justifications for greed, either from the school of “rational self interest,” or from the “they’re all a bunch of crooks” school that simply abdicates responsibility and looks the other way. Top down efforts to constrain self-interested behavior—legal sanctions and moral codes—can only do so much.  The most effective lever for improving human behavior is bottom up: it lies in what we as individuals envy, expect, accept, and celebrate.

– John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick

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Conversely, what can bring us down the most – if we let it – is rudeness, indifference, and other negative words and actions from others.

So here is a simple but powerful and transformative – that is, intense – experience for you.

First, make a list of the people you don’t like who impact your life.

This can include those in your professional and personal world, and those in the public eye, who rub you the wrong way or who — if you didn’t believe in kindness and compassion or at least in avoiding jail — you’d flat out enjoy punching in the nose.

Surely a few folks spring to mind.

Consider each person on your list in this regard:

What is it about this person that is worth emulating?

Instead of focusing on their disagreeable qualities, that is, for each person shift your perspective to what their best qualities are … more particularly, to the aspects of their character YOU could learn from and perhaps use more of.

Everyone has something worth emulating. Though certain people may deserve to be jailed or impeached, even they have qualities worth appreciating and emulating.

It is our reactionary egos that are prone to completely trash those who seem to have a negative influence in some way on us.

Our egos are primitive; if somebody strokes them, that somebody is good, and if somebody kicks them, that somebody is bad.

This lingering reaction creates the notion of dislike, or hate, which blocks our mind and heart from focusing on anything but the negative. But by focusing on the negative, we are doing by far the most damage to ourselves.

Honing in on what we don’t like in people won’t change them, but it does make us far less peaceful, productive and happy. It becomes a habit that perpetuates the self-damage. Plus it makes us considerably less attractive to others.

This is not a call to accept being taken advantage of by people; if changes need to occur to avoid those circumstances then by all means do what is ethical to make those changes.

But it IS a call not to let those people – really, your own ego – pull you down into discord where you don’t deserve to be.

The key then is not to let your ego rule, but to try to focus on what is worth emulating in those “unlikeable” people.

And the second step is to extend that practice to daily life.

The next time you encounter someone who seems disagreeable or worse, don’t focus on what makes him or her so lousy. Focus instead on what it is about this person that is worth emulating. Keep striving to do this until it becomes a habit you don’t even need to think about.

You will be quite surprised at how this shift in your perspective reduces your overall anxiety and enables you to achieve more … and achieve it happily.

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