Rush. Hurry. Urgent. A couple hundred words tell us to get moving. The dictionary is full of them, and so are we. But why are we always in such a hurry?

When I was fresh out of college at my first job in Des Moines, I would debate whether to take I-235 or Grand Avenue to work from my West Des Moines apartment. That was like choosing between a punch in the face or a kick in the kidney. Neither was appealing. Neither was predictable. But what was predictable was that I would wait until the last minute to leave, then drive in a panic to avoid being late. Not exactly a great way to start the day.

Eventually, I learned something simple: leave 30 minutes earlier. Avoid traffic. Arrive with a smile. Get a head start on the day’s tasks. Revolutionary.

The ride home was no different. Cranking a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD probably didn’t help my stress. And, as a young, single guy in the early 1990s, what exactly was I rushing for? A game of darts with my roommates? A re-run of “Cheers”? A trip to the car wash?

Years later, I met newly retired Joe Weeg, a former Polk County prosecutor who is now a CITYVIEW columnist, at our Des Moines office. I walked in our conference room to meet him with my yellow pad and pen. He laughed.

“I remember rushing from one meeting to another, taking notes on those yellow pads,” he said. Then, with a smile, he offered, “Now all I rush for is another cup of coffee.”

Retirement slows some people down. Others just choose to stay in a hurry. Always.

A Georgian proverb says, “He who is in a hurry always arrives late.” And a bumper sticker I saw recently read: “Go ahead and pass me. I left on time.”

The solution to all this hurriedness? It’s simple. Start earlier.

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

Hands in the air, fingers slightly shaking upward, a smile on his face — that’s how my friend Dion Higgins would answer any chiropractic question, along with the words: “It’s all in the hands.”

On the rare occasions I ever set foot on a golf course, it was usually with him. When I smacked my club into the ground with a pathetic swing, he would give my wrists a quick adjustment so I could try again.

As a chiropractor, Dion loved his work. He was good at it, too. But nearly 13 years ago, a 21-year-old driver crossed the center line, and both their lives were taken. No amount of medical care could fix that.

I think of Dion often, especially when hands come up. Looking at my own now, I notice the changes: wrinkles, scars, misaligned knuckles, arthritic joints. Dion could do a lot of magic, but he couldn’t turn back time.

When I was younger, I would look at older people’s hands and wonder how they aged so suddenly. Now I look at my daughters’ hands and see smooth, unmarked skin. What happened?

My younger years were full of days pounding nails, pouring concrete and pitching manure. Wrestling and coaching for decades also took their toll. My fingers and wrists bear the marks.

I’m convinced you can tell a lot about a person by their hands. Ask a palm reader. Your heart line, your sun line, your fate line, your life line, your head line. It’s all in the palm of your hand.

Palm reading, or palmistry, is “the art of analyzing the physical features of the hands to interpret personality characteristics and predict future happenings,” according to Allure.com. Hands are “portals that shed invaluable insight,” the article says, offering a beginner’s guide to reading them.

I don’t know much about palmistry, but I’ll give it a try. Because now, more than ever, I believe Dion was right. It’s all in the hands.

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

The words in the above headline create some great advice for people of all ages but especially for those of a younger generation. 

Des Moines entrepreneur John Ruan, Sr., who died in 2010 at age 96, said his business success wasn’t because he was so much smarter than other people, but rather that he simply got out of bed earlier and, as a result, accomplished more each day. Great point. 

Cyd Koehn, owner of Cyd’s Catering, told me that some of the most important decisions are hammered out over early breakfasts that she caters while the majority of people are sleeping. She’s correct. 

Michael Gartner once suggested that I sleep in as much as I could while I was young because the older I would get, the more I would be staring at the ceiling at 5 a.m. Bingo. 

Getting out of bed earlier does seem to get easier the older I get, and it was certainly a challenge when I was younger. Regardless, it is a good habit that we can all form if we put our minds to it. 

In a 2014 article in the Huffington Post, Mike Fishbein wrote 11 ways to get out of bed faster and have more energy in the morning. Some are wonderful ideas, like opening your blinds before going to sleep so you wake up with the sun, placing your alarm clock away from your bed so you can’t hit the snooze button, exercising when you wake up, and simply being accountable to others. Others are just awful ideas, like drinking water before going to sleep, eating before bedtime, and setting the alarm clock to play your favorite music. 

Some people claim to be the most productive at night. It’s possible, but research says that less than 1% of the population are actually genetically programmed to work best later in the day. The rest of us need to simply get out of bed. 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305

Not your goals or visions or plans. I mean, what do you literally dream about while sleeping? Well, if you are in the 95% of us who forget our dreams, you simply don’t recall. Seeing how most of us have four to six dreams that last up to 20 minutes each, that’s a lot of dreaming to forget. 

Do you sleepwalk? My brother Steve did when we were kids. I thought it was funny. He didn’t laugh. About 15% of people do sleepwalk, and it can be a dangerous habit, especially when it involves grooming oneself, cooking food or driving a car.

Do you dream about falling? More than half of Americans do, making this the most common recurring dream. It is followed by being chased, being back in school,or being naked in public — or in my case, all three at once. These kinds of dreams are likely brought on by stress.

Does everyone dream? The vast majority of us do, and even blind people can have visual dreams. If you are a pet owner, you likely know that animals dream, too. 

Do we dream in color? Most people do (in pastel colors, to be specific), but about 12% dream in black and white. Either way, the visual aspect is the primary sense. People rarely use their smell or taste senses in dreams.

Did you know that we can only dream about people we’ve seen before? Whether we know them well or just met them briefly, the people in our dreams are all people we have seen prior.

Do you have nightmares? Up to 85% of adults do, at least occasionally. Nightmares are common for children ages 3-6, but the serious ones usually diminish with age. As a child, I would dream that Santa Claus was chasing me down to kill me. I hid under my lower bunk bed in each dream and would wake up in a sweat when he would reach for me. Merry Christmas.

And finally, how about recurring dreams like being late, failing an exam, being attacked or losing control of a car? I often dream that I am driving a car too fast with hopes I can ramp over open water and land on ground. When it becomes apparent that I can’t, I wake up. Recurring dreams occur when people have to deal with unresolved conflicts in their lives. Hmmm.

Want to learn more about dreams? Check out the research behind the statistics I shared and much more at disturbmenot.co/dreams-facts.

Have a thoughtful Tuesday, and, as always, thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

I am often asked how we are able to grow the readership of our publications while paid subscription newspapers continue to suffer from declines. The answer is two-fold.

First, it starts with our business model, which is based on providing our publications for free to our readers. Unfortunately, many paid subscription newspaper publishers became greedy over the years, increasing the costs for consumers to subscribe while providing less content (more on this in point No. 2). Charging more and giving less is not a good recipe for any business. This became more complicated when paid subscription newspapers decided to give away content on their websites and social media for free. I challenge you to name any other industry that had two-thirds of households buying their product and then acted dumbfounded when fewer people continued to purchase it because they could get it for free from the same company elsewhere. That decision by newspaper execs continues to be mind-boggling.

For us, the digital option was simple. We give our publications away for free in print… and online. Our digital efforts do not exist to replace our print publications (and alienate our most loyal readers) but rather to enhance our print publications. That may change over time, but, for now, our print readership far exceeds our digital readership. Meanwhile, we are focused on providing as much news and information as we can through every available medium — for free.

Second, content truly is king. Michael Gartner shared a story with me a few years ago from Abe Rosenfeld, who was the executive editor of The New York Times. Rosenfeld’s father ran a lunch counter in Manhattan. He said there were lunch counters everywhere at the time, and business was awful for all of them. To help their bottom line, some of them started adding water to the soup. Their customers soon realized this and went elsewhere. Slowly, those lunch counters went out of business. Rosenfeld said his father took a different approach and added more tomatoes to his soup, and his customer base grew. That was Rosenfeld’s — and is Gartner’s — advice to improve newspapers. Newspapers and magazines today need more tomatoes — more content.

At Big Green Umbrella Media, we spend substantial time and money on producing local content for our publications. Although we certainly don’t have it all figured out, we are convinced that a focus on local content is crucial to any success we may have.

So despite the fact that most paid subscription newspapers are dying, all print is clearly not dead. We are proving it. Others are, too. There is also no doubt that in the media world — both in print and online — content is king. We are determined to prove that as well — one tomato at a time. 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading. 

Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305