The Myth of Multi-Tasking….

Take a minute to observe your colleagues. Are they tweeting while the boss talks to them from across the room? Holding a meeting while checking their BlackBerry? Speaking on the phone as they send an e-mail? With redundancies, squeezed budgets and job insecurity, doing several things at the same time would seem to make sense. At the very least, it pays to look busy.

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I will only ‘Think Bike’ if the bikers can be persuaded to ‘Think Motorist’….

Five common myths about deafness and deaf and hard of hearing people….

Sign language is a universal or international language:

• Contrary to popular belief sign language is not international. Sign languages are as diverse as spoken languages. Deaf people in different countries do not use the same sign language, but some sign languages do have a similar structure.

  British Sign Language (BSL) was officially recognised by the government in 2003 – far too late, I agree. Deaf people in the UK use various methods of communication but BSL is the most widely used method of signed communication.

  Some people use Sign Supported English. This is not a language in its own right, but more like a kind of English with signs. BSL is very different as it is structured in a completely different way to English and, like any language, it has its own grammar.

  You can read more about BSL in this leaflet “Sign Language“.

Deaf people are good lipreaders:

• Many people assume deaf people can understand everything by lipreading. But, as many words use the same lipshapes, no one can lipread everything. This is why lipreaders may welcome gesture, fingerspelling, sign or other clues to indicate the subject of conversation.

  Some people may find it more difficult than others to lipread. How quickly you learn to lipread will depend on your ability, your memory, your degree of hearing loss and how keen you are to learn. How other people speak can also affect how well you lipread.

  Many people don’t speak clearly and lipreading someone with an unfamiliar accent may be tricky. It may be difficult to lipread someone with a beard or a large moustache. However, many people do become skilled lipreaders and find lipreading very useful.

  For more information about lipreading read the leaflet Watch this face.

Hearing aids can restore hearing:

• Hearing aids can be a great help to many deaf and hard of hearing people, but they cannot restore hearing that has been lost. About two million people in the UK use hearing aids, but it is estimated that a further three million could benefit from them.

  While analogue hearing aids merely amplify sound, digital hearing aids are also able to convert it into information that can be “processed” by a tiny computer. In this way, professionals can finely tailor a hearing aid to suit any individual’s hearing loss.

  Background noise can be a problem, as hearing aids tend to amplify everything. Although digital hearing aids are better equipped to deal with background noise, no hearing aid can cut it out entirely. All aids work best when their wearers are having one-to-one conversations in quiet environments. Yet despite their limitations, hearing aids can make a huge difference to people’s lives.

  You can read more about hearing aids, how they work and how to get them in these hearing aids factsheets.

If I shout, the deaf person will hear me better:

• It’s not a good idea to shout at a deaf or hard of hearing person. When people shout they distort their voices and make it more difficult for hard of hearing people to identify words. You can appear to be angry and cause embarrassment if you shout. And the increased volume can actually be painful for deaf or hard of hearing people, particularly if they wear a hearing aid.

  Instead of shouting – or speaking too slowly or exaggerating your lip movements – speak clearly. To speak clearly you should form your words properly and speak at a regular volume. Try to maintain the natural rhythm of your speech. Use plain language if that helps, rephrasing where necessary; but don’t oversimplify, as that can appear patronising.

  Read the “Communication tips” card.

Deaf people only hear me when they feel like it:

• Deaf and hard of hearing people may be able to understand what you are saying some of the time, but not always. This can be confusing.

  The reasons vary. Depending on the degree of deafness, a deaf person may be able to hear some sounds at certain pitches, but hear little else. Those who lipread find that lipreading requires intense concentration. That means that someone who relies on lipreading has to concentrate all day long and may not be able to continue when they are tired. Other hard of hearing people use hearing aids. These work best in quiet environments across a distance of no more than 1.5 metres and in one-to-one conversations. If there is noise or several  people talking, or even a windy day, the hearing aid user might need the help of assistive devices like induction loops to eliminate background sounds.

  Read the “Communication tips” card to find out more.

Manners….

Manners matter. For anyone on the inside of a particular culture, they are simply assumed. Barristers know how to deal with other barristers, investment bankers with investment bankers, clerics with clerics. But for anyone trying to enter these worlds, manners can seem like a secret code barring entry to an elite. They help define the lines between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

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Intimations of Immortality….

…. by William Wordsworth.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream,
It is not now as it has been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth

Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountain throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay,
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday,
Thou Child of Joy
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd Boy!

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel – I feel it all.
Oh evil day! If I were sullen
While the Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are pulling,
On every side,
In a thousand vallies far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
- But there’s a Tree, of many one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the common light of day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A four year’s Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his Mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his Father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part,
Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her Equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul’s immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, -
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find;
Thou, over whom they Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of untamed pleasures, on thy Being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The Years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! That in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
With new-born hope for ever in his breast:-
Not for these things I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprized:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish us, and make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And o ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Don’t Pet The Snakes….

Sometimes when you’re the one who was unpopular and neglected for so many years, you develop a deep compassion for all others similarly suffering. And, you vow to yourself that if and when you ever make it, you’ll never be so cruel as to leave anyone all by themselves at a party or at some other similar social event. That you’ll at least make the effort to introduce yourself to them and try to make them feel included somehow. Alleviate what must be their painful sense of rejection and humiliation as a result of it. Or, at least those are some of the recurring thoughts I had whenever I saw a loner, looking either sad or angry. I always assumed the angry ones were just putting on a front to hide their shame at having no friends.

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Don’t You Believe It….

Winners always give 100%

I wouldn’t recruit someone using it for a job in finance or anything involving numbers, because it isn’t possible. The most you can give is 100% – trust me on this. Even if not taken literally, the idea that you should ‘always give 110%’ expresses a dangerous confusion. Here’s why:

You can’t always be at a constant level of effort, because the work you have to do varies continually. I’m glad that my local fire brigade doesn’t feel the need to give it even 100% all the time, but in fact spends hours playing volleyball or drinking tea. I’m reassured that, if I did need to call them, they’d be able to respond immediately with all their energy.

Arithmetic confusion may disguise, or even promote, real confusion about business priorities. I’m reminded of the entrepreneur who said she spent ‘50% of the time looking after customers, 50% looking after staff, and then, of course, another 50% looking after shareholders’. Maybe it’s a joke, but it suggests that some difficult strategic choices have not been made.

It equates input with output. It’s not what you’re putting in that counts, but what you’re achieving as a result. There have been times in my career when for months I could have – as they say in Hollywood – ‘phoned in my performance’, but then there have been part-time projects done over weeks that have made millions. Obsess on inputs and you miss this vital distinction. In fact, the need to be constantly active can create futile ‘busy-ness’, which crowds out the opportunity for genuinely productive activity.

Still want to give it 110%? Lie down until the urge passes. Take time to think, then do something useful.

© Alastair Dryburgh

The Human Face of Burma’s Tragedy….

Earlier today, the military junta in Burma convicted Aung San Suu Kyi of violating the conditions of her house arrest, after an uninvited man spent two nights there in early May. A jail sentence of three years with hard labour was commuted to a further 18 months of house arrest. This keeps the pro-democracy leader conveniently locked up until after the 2010 elections.

It seems the Burmese authorities are hoping that a sentence shorter than the maximum (5 years) will be seen by the international community as an act of leniency. So it’s now vital that we show them that Aung San Suu Kyi’s continued imprisonment is both shameful and intolerable.

Act now – email the Burmese authorities and demand human rights for Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained for a total of over 13 of the past 20 years – her latest house detention order had been set to expire on 27 May this year. She should be free – and she should never have been arrested in the first place.

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of 2,150 political prisoners in Burma.

By Gordon Brown….

Britain’s prime minister is calling the conviction of Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi a “show trial.” In a guest editorial, Gordon Brown argues the international community must be firm in its stance against the Burmese regime, which is “virtually alone in the scale of its misrule.”

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The Problem With Hearing Aids….

As a hearing aid user, I find that in some environments, I will often find that the level of background noise – general shuffling and coughing – can be as loud as the speaker’s voice, and amplified sound, such as television, can sound distant and unclear. This problem is usually accentuated by poor room acoustics. It is difficult for hearing people to appreciate the problem.

The human ear seems to be capable of filtering out many unwanted sounds, but a hearing aid is unable to do this. Whereas a pair of spectacles can correct sight, hearing aids do not fully correct hearing loss.

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How Many Friends Are Enough?

How many do you need? How many do you want? How many can you handle even if you have an unlimited number? Not all of us want to spend all our free time with our friends. At least not since we left high school.

So, how many is enough for you?

I’ll be completely frank with you. One is enough for me. But, I can probably handle up to three comfortably. Why so few? Because I prefer very close, trusted friendships where I can really be myself around them and let them really be themselves around me. That takes a lot of energy on both sides.

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