Month: February 2023

Chunking Helps

Chunking, or taking a piece of the whole, focusing on it can help us get more done. Initially, chunking was developed to help with memory (see this post on how it helps some studying ). Chunking this the process of grouping related bits of information together, which reduces the number of “things” to manage. Let me explain it also helps us get more done.

We all want more time to do what we desire. Being a time multiplier, such that we get things done today that also makes tomorrow more efficient, helps (see Be Fruitful and Multiply – Time That is…). Language has enabled us to save time by being more efficient. Language allows us to express our thoughts and share ideas succinctly.

The Value of Measurements

The 2023 book Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants by Vincent James has helped me understand that measurements are a language. The language of measurement allows us to cooperate, collaborate and get more done. Katie Hafner remarks in the Washington Post Review of this book:

…Sometimes a book happens along whose central question is at once so profound yet so utterly simple it takes your breath away. Such is the case with James Vincent’s deeply engrossing “Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants…”

Review by Katie Hafner, Washington Post, November 30, 2022

While measurements help us organize life, chunking makes life even more manageable. In essence, it is taking part of the whole and focusing on that part. One could think of how a calendar chunks time measurement to make it more manageable Calendars are a human creation to derive structure from the natural world.

Checklists Chunks

Another example of chunking is making a list. As I learned in Atul Gawande’s “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” (see my review on good reads here or below), although creating a list (checklist) takes time to set up initially, it saves time and improves our ability to get things done.

MY REVIEW of “Checklist Manifesto”: This was a good book. It was a reminder that having a checklist is good for making the basics more effortless. Using a checklist frees our minds to do so much more. Despite their documented significant benefits to pilots, surgeons, financial investors, and all involved, he highlighted much hesitancy in professional areas to use checklists. Gawande was also able to integrate how to use checklists while also using successful leadership and management strategies. It is a good read and a great reminder of how simple checklists can help us function better as we avoid easy mistakes from inattention, absent-mindedness, or overconfidence.

Craig Becker’s review of Gawande’s “Checklist Manifesto” on GoodReads

Measurement Concerns

While highlighting the benefits of measures, we must remember economist Charles Goodhart’s Law, as paraphrased by Marily Straythern, “When a measure becomes a target, it fails to be a good measure.” In other words, measures are only guides and assistants. Also, although I am encouraging chunking, it is vital to remember how each chunk contributes to the whole. As a reminder, Russ Ackoff explains in this powerful 10-minute presentation below how we must focus on the whole, not just the parts, to make things better.

Helpful Measurement Chunks with Caveats

Although measures are not perfect, they can help. As I learned, the language of measurement helps us become time multipliers while enabling us to communicate, collaborate and work better. In other words, using measurements can help us generate comprehensive improvements. Measures help because they help us understand how to create net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits.

Please share how your use of measurements helps you practice paneugenesis or create all good.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Powerful Chat GPT Good??

For those of us that have an interest, Chat GPT has become a hot topic. It undoubtedly has potential, however, it is also quite scary. I recommend the 2 recent NYTimes Daily Podcasts below to learn more:

The Online Search Wars

Microsoft released a version of Bing powered with artificial intelligence. Did it just revolutionize how we search the internet?

Wednesday, February 15th, 2023

The Online Search Wars Got Scary. Fast.

Our technology columnist encounters the darker side of Bing’s A.I. chatbot.

February 17, 2023  •  32:39

I encourage you to listen to both. I have used Chat GPT some. You can access and use ChatGPT on this site. I encourage you to try it and see what you think.

Here is what ChatGPT inaccurately wrote in response to:

Write an essay about salutogenesis citing Craig Becker’s work

The concept of salutogenesis, which refers to the origins of health and well-being, was first introduced by Aaron Antonovsky in the 1970s. Since then, this concept has been widely studied and discussed by various scholars in the field of public health. One of the key contributors to this field is Craig Becker, whose work has greatly expanded our understanding of the salutogenic model of health.

The past paragraph is ok…

Craig Becker’s work on salutogenesis builds on Antonovsky’s ideas, but also expands upon them. Becker emphasizes the importance of the social determinants of health, which are the economic, social, and environmental conditions that influence health outcomes. He argues that understanding the social determinants of health is crucial for promoting health and well-being.

The past paragraph is not accurate.

Becker also highlights the importance of resilience in the salutogenic model. Resilience refers to an individual’s ability to bounce back from adversity and maintain their sense of well-being. Becker argues that resilience is a key component of salutogenesis because it helps individuals to cope with the challenges they face and maintain their health and well-being.

This is also not accurate.

One of the key contributions of Becker’s work on salutogenesis is his emphasis on the role of agency in promoting health and well-being. Agency refers to an individual’s ability to take action and make choices that promote their health and well-being. Becker argues that agency is a crucial component of salutogenesis because it allows individuals to take control of their lives and make choices that promote their health and well-being.

Again, the past paragraph is not accurate

Another important contribution of Becker’s work is his emphasis on the importance of social support in promoting health and well-being. Social support refers to the resources and assistance that individuals receive from their social networks. Becker argues that social support is essential for promoting health and well-being because it helps individuals to cope with stress and maintain their sense of well-being.

This is ok but not emphasized…

Overall, Craig Becker’s work on salutogenesis has greatly expanded our understanding of the origins of health and well-being. By emphasizing the importance of the social determinants of health, resilience, agency, and social support, Becker’s work provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how individuals can promote their own health and well-being. His work highlights the importance of empowering individuals to take control of their lives and make choices that promote their health and well-being, while also recognizing the crucial role that social support and resilience play in achieving these goals.

Inaccurate summary of my work

This is not accurate. You can see it wrote some general things about salutogenesis but it was not very accurate to my work. I do not emphasize social determinants, agency, or reslience in my work. It was even less accurate when I asked:

What research has Craig M. Becker, Ph.D. done related to salutogenesis?

It pulled incorrect resesarch citations.

I then asked about paneugenesis, the term I generated, published, and use in my work. It gave credit to another researcher. UGH!

Please try ChatGPT here and share your thoughts on your experience. Good, bad, scary, damaging, liberating????

Please help. I work to generate comprehensive improvements by creating net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits, The practice of paneugenesis. It appears ChatGPT does not. I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Meaning from Meaninglessness

Meaning and purpose are powerful forces in life for me. For that reason, I have discussed these concepts on this blog with these posts,  Its All Meaningless! Here is How to Create Meaning!; Making Sense of Chaos, Meaninglessness, Disorientation; Randomness & Creating Outcomes; Everything Happens for a Reason! Make it Good! and in others. Despite my attempt to address these ideas, I thought David Foster Wallace’s commencement address (video) below made an even more powerful statement.

I hope this video inspired you to create meaning in your life. I do this by working to generate comprehensive improvements by creating net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits. Please share what this video motivated you to do. Thank you.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Need More Good Progress(DD#1)

I am reading Austin Kleon’s short book, “Show Your Work.” His book recommends a daily dispatch that shows your work and documents progress. For years, I have been developing techniques, strategies, and practices to generate more good, not just less bad. I need to do more, so I am adopting his strategy of posting regular work dispatches. Here is an overview of my progress to date.

More Good Progress…so far

I have been working on this task for over 30 years. My mission is to emphasize more good focus for the long term. Less bad is essential in short-term, acute situations. I have yet to hear that people disagree with this effort, but the idea has not diffused or circulated as needed. The focus on less bad or less pathology dominates our world. Therefore, I will use Austin Kleon’s advice and post my work to hold myself accountable.

During my efforts to date, I have been working as a professor since 2001 and have a Ph.D. from Arizona State University. I have about 100 national and international publications and presentations about how to create or cause good health, which, as research has also demonstrated, effectively prevents or ends bad health…as a by-product. This work is summarized in the linked publication about the paneugenesis model, “Going on Offense to Promote Health Promotion Gains.” Additionally, the linked 2019 article by colleague Dr. Michael Stellefson discusses this idea by categorizing these efforts as a promotion of “Chronic Wellness.” For more, see the article, Planting a Tree Model for Public Health: Shifting the Paradigm Toward Chronic Wellness

If you are interested and have time, below are some links to presentations, papers, and online resources to my work. The best way to learn about my work is the 17-minute linked presentation, Create More Good, Not Just Less Bad. I gave this talk to the sustainability committee at East Carolina University (ECU).  

A short linked paper, “Creating Positive Health: It is More than Risk Reduction,” describes my approach to generating positive outcomes and not just avoiding bad results. Another published linked paper, “Salutogenesis 30 Years Later: Where do we go from here?”,  is about salutogenesis and describes how using this health-causing or creating framework/theory could help. A comparison of the traditional pathogenesis approach and salutogenesis is available in the often viewed (over 35k views) YouTube video: Pathogenesis & Salutogenesis with this 2021 update. I have also posted this video, Exceeding Expectations, about how to do better than not bad.

My work has resulted in developing the Salutogenic Wellness Promotion Scale for Young Adults, Adults, Older Adults, and Arabic populations. I have also worked on a childhood version for schools to improve health and education. If you are interested, see this article, Pilot Assessment of the Scholar Checklist: A Tool for Early Childhood Health & Education.

If you are interested in learning more about these scales, I linked an article validating my positive health scale, “Validity Evidence for the Salutogenic Wellness Promotion Scale (SWPS).” I have also linked an article about how focusing on generating more good helped us understand what helps students thrive. The study used the SWPS to measure the process, and what we learned about the student’s lifestyle process and it relates to doing well is described in the”What Helps Students Thrive” article.

Other videos about my work are available on my YouTube channel. In addition, this is a link to this blog on Positive Health Leadership, where I explore many related topics in over 400 posts. This blog also can be reached at www.bewellr.com. Please contact me if you have any ideas, thoughts, concerns, complaints, suggestions, or questions or are interested in learning more. 

Now What??

Unfortunately, I have not made desired progress in transforming society toward more good, not just less bad. However, I will forge ahead, and I hope you will help. My current efforts focus on disseminating these positive health ideas and practices and assisting people in adopting these practices. I will use the Diffusion of Innovations Theory to guide my future work. I hope to publish a related article soon.

Please share any advice and contact me if you want to help at bewellr@gmail.com, beckerc@ecu.edu, 252-328-5312, or on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you about how we can work together to generate comprehensive improvements by creating net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Foundation for More good??

I recommend our focus be on generating more good, not JUST less bad. I am now reading the 5th edition of the classic, “Diffusion of Innovations,” ©️2003, by Everett Rogers. It has been good. On page 69, I thought he did an excellent job of pointing out why more good can be more effective than JUST less bad. He stated: (emphasis added by me)

… A preventive innovation is an idea that an idnividual adopts at one point in time in order to lower the probablity that some future unwanted event may occur. The unwanted future event might not have happened anyway, even without adoption of the preventive innovation, so the relative advantage is not very clear cut to the individual at the time they are urged to adopt by public health programs. Also the prevented events do not occur, and thuse they cannot be observed or counted…For these reasons, preventive innovations…have a relatively slow rate of adoption.”

Everett Rogers, PhD – p. 69 “Diffusion of Inovations” 5th Ed.
Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition: Rogers, Everett M.: 8601300412962: Amazon.com: Books

What do you think? Do you agree this provides a good foundation for why the focus should be on more good, not JUST less bad? Please share your thoughts on the best ways to move forward. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Manifesting a Good Message

I know it is an impossible show and could not happen. However, I found Manifest, a series on Netflix, an interesting show. I look forward to its continuation on June 2, 2023. What I found most interesting in the series was the repeated message that everything is connected and that we all are on the same lifeboat. The often repeated message in the show is that we should help everybody do well because we all do well when we all do well. This is also the finding of my research. According to my work and many others, we are all connected, and the ripple effect of doing good causes good that ripples out.

If you are one of my readers, you will see how this also relates to yesterday’s Post, about Stephen Post’s book, “Why God Things Happen to Good People.”

In other words, Manifest seems to promote the creation of all the good messages I send out. This message is that all good can be accomplished by generating comprehensive improvements. I note that this is the concept of Paneugenesis – which literally means creating all good. Practicing paneugenesis is accomplished by creating net-positive, pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits (see video below). Please share how you generate comprehensive improvements by practicing paneugenesis!

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com

Why Good Things Happen

As a takeoff of Harold Kushner’s fantastic book, “WHEN Bad Things Happen To Good People,” Stephen Post offers WHY Good things Happen to Good People. (see Everything Happens for a Reason! Make it Good! for a discussion, I posted about Kushner’s book). In grad school, I led a discussion about Kushner’s book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Only then was it brought to my attention that the title was not WHY, but WHEN. WHEN does not explain; WHY does. A change from when to why is profound. Even so, throughout Post’s book on Why Good Things Happen, he cites supportive research his Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL) sponsored.

Dr. Post does a fantastic job documenting why and how good things happen to good people for taking beneficial actions. At the end of the book, he suggests this is ultimately selfishness because we get the most for ourselves by giving to other people. “Why Good Things Happen to Good People” is a good read that reinforces how being a good person helps others as it also helps us. I thought he especially did an excellent job helping us learn how to be better listeners and better communicators with each other.

Throughout the book, he suggests 40 ways to give love – 10 areas in 4 domains (Family, Friends, Community, & Humanity). His 10 ways to capture Love include:

  1. Celebration – gratitude through ritual
  2. Generativity – generating love
  3. Forgiveness – freeing the self from guilt, pain, rumination, and bitterness
  4. Courage – confrontation with caring, what he calls Carefrontation
  5. Humor – used to convert pain to joy
  6. Respect – civility, acceptance, reverence, and appreciation
  7. Compassion – empathetic, emotionally caring
  8. Loyalty – loving over time and difficulties
  9. Listening – giving attention and foundation of relationships
  10. Creativity – the spontaneous, joyful expression of life

All of these 10 suggestions provide great ways to share love. For each, supporting research evidence of “Why Good Things Happen to Good People” is provided. Of course, he is also saying good people should do these 10 things.

Better Listening Suggestions

He offered many communication suggestions, which I thought were especially good. A couple I have been working on using include using my mirroring ability to be able to better empathize with what others experience. This, he suggests, may also help me better understand. Another way he suggests improving communication is by repeating back emotional words heard and asking for more information to better connect. Using this, he suggests a way to empathetically probe without judgment. He suggests this method can help us all connect better. I like these suggestions and will work to use these ideas. Have you used these techniques? Please share how they work for you.

Belonging Insight

Another insight I liked was about belonging. As I have seen many times, one of our most basic human needs is to belong. Interestingly, Post says when we change, such as to a quadriplegic from an accident, or even more simply, when entering a new group, we will feel as if we don’t belong.

Throughout life, we often change into different kinds of people. A person may be newly married, become a college student, or do any other new activity. We don’t feel like we belong when entering a new area because it is different. The feeling we experience, according to Post, makes us feel like an outsider and alone. He says it is at this point we want what we had yesterday — that is, to feel like we belong. In other words, he seems to be saying we are experiencing what Kahneman and Tversky called Loss Aversion and want what we had yesterday. There are many interesting and helpful suggestions throughout the book. It was better than I had expected.

Below is Dr. Posts TED Talk, “Its Good to Be Good“.

It is All Connected

Sometimes art imitates life, and other times, life imitates life. Well, at least I often see things in shows I find meaningful. A meaningful concept I recently saw was the repeated message in the Netflix series Manifest, that it is all connected. As I have noted many times, it is all connected.

Capturing the idea of connection, at the end of his book, Post says this is all about selfishness. As I noted in the review I posted on GoodReads and Google Books, “…While all this is good, we must also ensure these actions do good for the environment, or all will suffer. I hope he pushes for not just selfishness but selfish, selfless, synergy, so these promoted interactions become net-positive, pervasive, and reciprocal so everyone and everything benefits,” as I promote with the Paneugenesis video below. Everything is interconnected, so we must generate more good by generating comprehensive improvements. True selfishness is selfless, “…if you understand how the world works” stated President Clinton in the 1-minute video below.

BeWell’r,

Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!

#SelfishSelflessSynergy

Please share your thoughts and questions below.
Contact me: BeWellr@gmail.com