I can't promise you eternal life, but I think it would be safe to guarantee longer and happier life if you would follow the next three rules. They are easy to do, don’t require changing your diet or joining an expensive gym, and there is no need to read pie-in-the-sky books with psychedelic covers.
Follow these rules, and you will live a long and prosperous life!
Rule # 1: sleep more.
Over 1.3 million car crashes a year in the US alone are the result of people driving with their eyes closed. It's a neat trick, but very hard to do. Most of us have tried it at least once in the past, probably more. When we are tired, we want to get home so we just keep on driving, barely able to keep those lids from shutting down. When we don’t get enough sleep the previous night, the slow moving traffic jam rocks our car like a baby's cradle and ever so slowly we drift away. We've all been there.
Stay awake for 18 hours straight, and your reaction speed, short and long- term memory, focus, decision-making ability, math processing ability, cognitive speed, spatial orientation, etc., all begin to suffer, and this is just a partial list.
Let’s look at it from a different angle... How far do you think you could drive and how safely do you think you would get there if I cut your reaction time in half, blur your focus, slow down your decision-making ability and mess around with your spatial orientation? Not very far.
Now, sleep for just five or six hours a day for several days in a row, and all items in the entire list mentioned above are magnified.
Wake up call! In driving, experience is a double-edged sword. Stop drinking your own cool aid. Just because you managed to get away with it in the past provides no guarantee whatsoever you will be able to pull it off again. Driving with your eyes closed will kill you.
Rule number two: Don't Rely on Your Instincts.
Life is full of hard realities, so here's just another one we have to accept. Your reaction time is probably slower than you think. Even if it’s as fast as you think, it’s not nearly fast enough for to rely on as a safety net to protect you in case of a crash.
Let's say you are traveling at the not-so-fast speed of 50 miles an hour. Suddenly the car in front of you slams to a sudden stop, or a kid suddenly appears in the center of the road, right in front of your car.
You start thinking about what you are supposed to do; normal reaction time measurements tell us you will pass about 15 meters (the length of about 3 cars) before your foot will start pressing the brake pedal.
Next this mass of metal and plastic bits (your car) has to start slowing down. At 50 MPH this will require another 40 meters. But wait, you are not parked yet, because you need to add to the 40 meters stopping distance the 15 meters of thinking distance. So over all, from the moment you saw the need to stop until you have fully stopped, some 55 meters have passed. You have just traveled the length of half a football field "stopping".
Remember that kid from the start of the paragraph? You will need to look pretty hard in the rear view mirror to find him now.
Rule number three: Save Money.
Or how about make money? I did promise at the top both a long and prosperous life. From all three tips it’s the easiest one to complete because it actually requires you to do less than what you do today, not more. Do less, earn more, isn't that a compelling value proposition?
What is it that if you did less of, would put more money in your wallet? It’s very simple, and it’s a trade secret, so please do not pass this knowledge around. All you need to do is apply less force to the gas pedal in your car. Drive at anything above 55 MPH and that smell coming from the exhaust pipe of your car is not burnt fuel, it’s your money going up in smoke. Take a deep breath. Under normal conditions (typical car, normal gas prices) every 5MPH over 60, will cost you an extra 25 cents for each gallon. With today's oil prices, probably more. Kling, kling.. Hear those quarters rolling out of your exhaust? Slow down.
Drive slow, live long,
Hod Fleishman.
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