Become More Productive with these 9 Tips for Better Sleep

by David Folkerson on May 22, 2015 , No comments

“How did you sleep last night?” That’s a question I’ve been asking my wife a lot lately. She’s pregnant, you see, with a little over a month left to go, and her body is less and less her own. She wakes up and can’t go back to sleep, sometimes for hours at a time, and she doesn’t know why. Some literature says it’s simply nature’s way of getting us ready for recurring, ongoing, sleep deficiency with a newborn baby.

Recurring, ongoing, sleep deficiency… lovely.

So you can understand if the topic of sleep has been on my mind a lot lately. I know how important the quality of sleep is to your health, mental acuity, productivity, and general happiness (for a great read on the theory that supports this, see John Medina’s Brain Rules). I’ve battled insomnia over the years, and I’ve spent many nights counting the hours of sleep I would get – if I got to sleep now – until my alarm would go off. “How can you fall asleep so soon?” I would silently ask my wife as she lay there in blissful dreamland, in her pre-pregnancy days. I want to know the secret!

Unfortunately, there is no secret (at least, none that has yet been discovered). Some of us are simply tuned differently. However, there are some things you can do to make sleep as conducive as possible. Read on for nine tips that have been proven to help.

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David FolkersonBecome More Productive with these 9 Tips for Better Sleep

Desensitize yourself to public speaking anxiety

by David Folkerson on February 14, 2015 , 3 comments

Bill told me that the thought of presenting put razor blades in his stomach and rubber bands around his chest. It was getting harder and harder to breath. I said, “Bill, your anxiety is normal, but you can actually desensitize yourself to it by just doing more and more presentations.” “How can I desensitize myself to public speaking,” he said, “when I’m too nervous to even get started?”

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David FolkersonDesensitize yourself to public speaking anxiety

Combat anxiety with the thermometer visualization technique

by David Folkerson on December 20, 2014 , No comments

I’m happy that I get anxious before delivering a big presentation. It means that I’m excited about what I’m about to do. But I don’t like feeling anxious. Too much anxiety can be crippling. I like to use what I call “the thermometer visualization technique” to help manage this kind of anxiety when speaking in public.

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David FolkersonCombat anxiety with the thermometer visualization technique