Features

By Dr Tareq Rasheed
International Consultant 
and Trainer

To gain a competitive edge in today’s world, an individual, group or organisation must be continually evolving. If you’re looking to enter the dynamic and progressive area of coaching and leadership, there are important tools for the continuous development of individuals and organisations-begin by understanding the five levels of leadership.

Leaders play different roles in organisations to help achieve business continuity and growth. These roles are: teachers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, mentors, consultants and counsellors, and I define each in two words: 

• Teachers: Knowledge Providers 

• Trainers: Skill Providers 

• Facilitators: Support Providers

• Coaches: Energy Investors 

• Mentors: Goal Motivators 

• Consultants: Problem Solvers 

• Counsellors: Path Advisors

Situational leadership

Situational leadership directs leaders towards their roles depending on the situation followers face. Vary your style according to the situation. Leaders can delegate most roles except coaching and mentoring, which are the roles that ensure leadership effectiveness.

Level #1: Make the most of your position to understand people, their emotions and their motivators to help influence their abilities to higher levels. Management is position and authority, while leadership is character and power. Once you master this secret, you can gradually move to the next one.

Level #2: Gain people permission. Leadership is dynamic; people will respond to you based on your level of trust with them. To gain trust, consider competency and credibility. Are you competent for the position as a leader? Are you credible in your values and ethics? If yes, then you master the second secret and people will grant you permission to lead.

Level #3: Start the production process and each advance allows you to be more effective in leading others. Greater effectiveness is achieved once you are productive and can affect others. Good leaders always make things happen. They get results. They are productive individually, but they can also help the team produce. This ability gives leaders increased influence.

Level #4: Develop your people, apply the roles mentioned, teach them, train them, support and facilitate their performance and maximise their energy. Here you need to understand the psychology of people. The law of circles comes in handy here. Leadership is the art of influencing followers; once you know their centres of concern, you can influence and lead. We all have concerns and people can be classified according to their centres of concern:

• Money-centred people

• Work centred people

• Family-centred people

• Society-centred people

• Friends-centred people

• Pleasure-centred people

• Self-centred people

• Spouse-centred people

• Fear-centred people

Level #5: Empowerment of others to create second, third and fourth layers of leaders; leaders develop leaders. You can achieve this by applying these steps: Teach, Train, Develop, Qualify, Delegate, Support, Appreciate and Empower. At this leadership level, you achieve greatness, not only effectiveness. Great leaders leave a legacy and are remembered for what they left in their people, community and country. On the other hand, ordinary managers leave the position and no one remembers them. Leave a legacy to have the greatest influence.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Wednesday said it is strapping a smartwatch onto its Pixel hardware line as part of an “ambient computing” vision to make its services available anywhere at any time.

The Alphabet-owned Internet titan used its annual developers conference to showcase a Pixel line expanding to include a smartwatch and tablet, as well as upgraded earbuds and a more affordable version of its flagship smartphone.

Backed up by artificial intelligence, cloud computing and sophisticated custom mobile chips, the family of gadgets is intended to work seamlessly together, Google senior vice president of hardware and services Rick Osterloh said during a briefing.

“All these things work in concert on our vision of ambient computing,” Osterloh said. “Providing the help people need, whenever they need it.”

The Pixel Watch will be released late this year, along with a new premium Pixel 7 smartphone, with pricing and other details to be disclosed closer to launch, Google said. 

The first Pixel smartwatch designed and built by Google will integrate health features from Fitbit, which Alphabet bought in a $2.1 billion deal that closed last year, and take on market leading Apple Watch.

“It just takes time to integrate a company with all the technology and people that Fitbit has,” Osterloh said of the Pixel smartwatch timing.

There will be a version of the Pixel Watch that synchs to Android-powered smartphones and one that has its own wireless Internet connectivity, the Internet giant said.

Google is also working on a Pixel tablet computer expected to be released next year, figuring there is an interest in large screen mobile devices even if that overall market has been lacklustre.

“We’ve got a lot going on in the Pixel pipeline and it represents investments across all different kinds of technologies,” Osterloh said.

A smaller version of the Pixel 6 smartphone released by Google late last year will hit shelves on July 28 at a price of $449, along with new Pixel Buds Pro ear pieces priced at $199.

While smartphones powered by Google’s free Android operating software dominate the global market, the Silicon Valley company’s Pixel models have amassed scant share.

“We’re really investing a lot and expanding the mobile part of our vision,” Osterloh said.

“It’s like an iceberg and that you didn’t see a lot of what was happening underneath, but now you can really see all these things coming to the surface.”

Software smarts

Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai provided a peek of augmented reality glasses that Google is working on, providing few details but demonstrating how they could translate conversations in real time, showing wearers transcriptions.

“All of this work is in service of a timeless mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Pichai said of what Google shared during a 2-hour presentation before a live audience in a concert venue near the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

Google’s hardware announcements were backed by a slew of enhancements to software powering its core search service, artificial intelligence capabilities, and Android mobile devices.

Improvements included enabling artificial intelligence to converse with people more naturally, and to “read” through pages of documents or messages and provide people with insightful, terse summaries of their contents.

An enhancement to search lets images captured by smartphone cameras and queries uttered by users be combined to allow, for example, someone to ask Google to scan a market shelf to find a top-rated brand of nutless chocolate, demonstrations showed.

And a new Google Wallet being rolled out in the weeks ahead is being designed to one day replace real-world billfolds, right down to holding digital versions of driver licenses.

KIMBOLTON, United Kingdom — Angela Wood proudly recalls the poached chicken in creamy curry sauce recipe that she helped create for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, and which has since become a British culinary classic. 

Coronation Chicken — also called “Poulet Reine Elizabeth” — is now so popular it can be found in supermarket ready-meals, pre-packed sandwiches and on the pages of many recipe books. 

“It’s not the same recipe though. It’s just mayonnaise with a bit of curry put in,” Wood, 89, says laughing as she talks about some modern versions of the famous dish.

Wood was only 19 when, as a student at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Winkfield, near Windsor, west of London, she was asked to perfect a recipe created by the school’s director, Constance Spry.

Spry had been given the task of putting on a banquet for foreign dignitaries after the coronation on June 2, 1953. 

“Constance Spry walked into the kitchen and said ‘this is something we’re thinking of doing for the coronation... we’ll keep testing it until we get it right,’” said Wood at her home in the picturesque market town of Kimbolton in eastern England.

“Knowing that it was going to be foreign dignitaries from all over the world, she decided that it had to be slightly spicy but not over spicy,” she told AFP.

Another constraint was that the dish had to be prepared in advance so had to be cold, added Wood, looking elegant with short white hair, fuchsia-coloured lips and a matching cardigan. 

The ingredients also had to be available in the UK, where, even for a royal banquet, imported food was limited after World War II because of rationing. 

A strange mix

So Wood set to work in the kitchen, experimenting “two or three times a week, for possibly three or four weeks”.

“We were forever boiling chickens,” she said.

After constantly tweaking the ingredients, they found the right balance.

Wood showed AFP the original recipe, published in an old edition of the British gastronomic classic “The Constance Spry Cookery Book”.

The chicken should be poached with a bouquet garni, while the sauce is a reduction of chopped onions, curry powder, tomato puree, red wine and lemon juice.

The mixture is then cooled and added to mayonnaise, lightly whipped cream and apricot puree. 

“It’s a strange mixture. And people do the first bit [curry powder and wine] and taste it and it’s just so horrible and strong,” she laughs. 

“I mean you can’t believe that it can be right.”

Wood is sometimes asked why she didn’t use mango, as is used in many of today’s versions of the classic.

“Well, we didn’t have mangoes..., we didn’t have Greek yoghurt,” she said, adding that “nowadays people add all sorts of things”. 

The dish was described on the banquet menu, written in French, as “Poulet Reine Elizabeth” and was served to the 350 foreign guests with a rice salad containing peas and herbs.

It followed a tomato and tarragon soup and trout. 

Strawberry galette was served for pudding, all washed down with Moselle and Champagne wines.

Platinum pudding

Wood never pursued a professional career as a cook, and instead ran the family farm after she got married.

But for special occasions, she and her daughter still sometimes prepare the recipe that has assured her place in British culinary history. 

She said she is “honoured” to have helped create the British classic, which earned her a reception with the Queen at the royal estate in Sandringham in February to mark her 70 years on the throne. 

To celebrate the monarch’s record-breaking Platinum Jubilee, which will see four days of celebrations in early June, Britons have been invited to create a dessert for the Queen.

“It’s quite surprising how it [Coronation Chicken] certainly stood the test of time and I hope whoever wins the pudding, the same thing happens,” said Wood. 

It would be a fitting tribute to “the most incredible reign” and a woman who “dedicated her whole life to the country”, she adds.

KAPFENBERG, Austria — Fans still sing and dance away to Russkaja’s Soviet nostalgia beats, but the Austrian ska-punk band say their mission to bring “fun and love” has become tricky since Russia invaded Ukraine.

“We were concerned. To what extent can you represent something Russian?” Moscow-born lead singer Georgij Makazaria tells AFP in a joint interview with Ukrainian bassist Dimitrij Miller.

“Singing ‘The Russians are here’ gets stuck in my throat.”

The group — one of whose tag lines is “peace, love and Russian roll” — started in Vienna 17 years ago, after a chance encounter between the two men. 

They shot to fame as the house band of one of Austria’s most popular late night shows, electrifying young, western Europeans with their blend of “Russian Turbo Polka Metal”.

They have now released six albums — many with left-leaning political messages, like the most recent “No one is Illegal” about a young refugee — and regularly tour Europe.

But since Moscow invaded Ukraine in late February, the seven-piece band have found themselves in a bind and has even considered changing their name, which stands for “Russia”, “ska” and “yes”.

They have also rewritten some of their lyrics, which generally mix Russian and English. For example, their plea to Moscow “let’s tear down all these walls” has morphed into “Hello, Moskva, let’s stop this f*cking war”.

Miller concedes that since the invasion, bringing fun and partying to their fans has been “extremely hard”. 

“To be happy on stage when my best friends are fighting there, in war, that’s inconceivable,” says the 41-year-old, whose cousin headed to the frontline last month to defend his country against Russian troops.

‘Music connects’

But still the party goes on. 

In March, the band toured the United States for the first time, as the supporting act for Celtic punk band Flogging Molly. It has some 20 concerts lined up this summer in Austria and neighbouring Germany, France, Hungary and the Czech Republic. 

“Look, for us it’s about the music,” explains Makazaria, 48, on the sidelines of a concert in the small town of Kapfenberg, about 150 kilometres south west of Vienna.

For this gig in late April, the band performs its infectious, high-energy numbers in front of a Ukrainian flag embellished with a peace symbol.

“Dimitrij here is from Ukraine,” Makazaria tells the crowd after the song “Russkij Style”. He puts his arm around Miller to loud applause.

“And I am from Russia... What’s happening now is an extreme catastrophe for us, for everyone and we condemn this insane war!” he yells.

Social media posts about their shows have sparked some critical responses, with commentators asking why a band glorifying Russian culture and music is still allowed to play in Europe.

“Music connects but it can also separate. There are people who feel that way and that’s something we have to accept,” says Makazaria. 

In Kapfenberg, black-clad fans, a few sporting Russian fur hats, are keen to enjoy the music and ask for autographs. 

“To me, this war is senseless and music connects, whether you’re from Ukraine or you’re from Russia,” says 38-year-old tattoo artist Daniel Mayerhofer. 

Markus Heil, a 28-year-old designer, thinks it would be “absolutely wrong” to boycott the group now. 

“Of course, I really don’t like what some people in Russia are doing. But Russia itself has an interesting culture and you can’t forget that in this situation.”

PARIS — With his hand pushed firmly into his cheek and his eyes fixed on the table, Garry Kasparov shot a final dark glance at the chessboard before storming out of the room: The king of chess had just been beaten by a computer.

May 11, 1997 was a watershed for the relationship between man and machine, when the artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer Deep Blue finally achieved what developers had been promising for decades. 

It was an “incredible” moment, AI expert Philippe Rolet told AFP, even if the enduring technological impact was not so huge. 

“Deep Blue’s victory made people realise that machines could be as strong as humans, even on their territory,” he said.

Developers at IBM, the US firm that made Deep Blue, were ecstatic with the victory but quickly refocused on the wider significance. 

“This is not about man versus machine. This is really about how we, humans, use technology to solve difficult problems,” said Deep Blue team chief Chung-Jen Tan after the match, listing possible benefits from financial analysis to weather forecasting. 

Even Chung would have struggled to comprehend how central AI has now become — finding applications in almost every field of human existence.

“AI has exploded over the last 10 years or so,” UCLA computer science professor Richard Korf told AFP. 

“We’re now doing things that used to be impossible.”

‘One man cracked’

After his defeat, Kasparov, who is still widely regarded as the greatest chess player of all time, was furious.

He hinted there had been unfair practices, denied he had really lost and concluded that nothing at all had been proved about the power of computers. 

He explained that the match could be seen as “one man, the best player in the world, [who] has cracked under pressure”.

The computer was beatable, he argued, because it had too many weak points. 

Nowadays, the best computers will always beat even the strongest human chess players. 

AI-powered machines have mastered every game going and now have much bigger worlds to conquer.

Korf cites notable advances in facial recognition that have helped make self-driving cars a reality. 

Yann LeCun, head of AI research at Meta/Facebook, told AFP there had been “absolutely incredible progress” in recent years. 

LeCun, one of the founding fathers of modern AI, lists among the achievements of today’s computers an ability “to translate any language into any language in a set of 200 languages” or “to have a single neural network that understands 100 languages”. 

It is a far cry from 1997, when Facebook didn’t even exist. 

Machines ‘not the danger’

Experts agree that the Kasparov match was important as a symbol but left little in the way of a technical legacy.

“There was nothing revolutionary in the design of Deep Blue,” said Korf, describing it as an evolution of methods that had been around since the 1950s.

“It was also a piece of dedicated hardware designed just to play chess.”

Facebook, Google and other tech firms have pushed AI in all sorts of other directions.

They have fuelled increasingly powerful AI machines with unimaginable amounts of data from their users, serving up remorselessly targeted content and advertising and forging trillion-dollar companies in the process. 

AI technology now helps to decide anything from the temperature of a room to the price of vehicle insurance. 

Devices from vacuum cleaners to doorbells come with arrays of sensors to furnish AI systems with data to better target consumers. 

While critics bemoan a loss of privacy, enthusiasts believe AI products just make everyone’s lives easier. 

Despite his painful history with machines, Kasparov is largely unfazed by AI’s increasingly dominant position. 

“There is simply no evidence that machines are threatening us,” he told AFP last year. 

“The real danger comes not from killer robots but from people — because people still have a monopoly on evil.”

SAN FRANCISCO — As urban traffic gets more miserable, entrepreneurs are looking to a future in which commuters hop into “air taxis” that whisk them over clogged roads.

Companies such as Archer, Joby and Wisk are working on electric-powered aircraft that take off and land vertically like helicopters then propel forward like planes.

“’The Jetsons’ is definitely a reference that people make a lot when trying to contextualise what we are doing,” Archer Vice President Louise Bristow told AFP, referring to a 1960s animated comedy about a family living in a high-tech future.

“The easiest way to think about it is a flying car, but that’s not what we’re doing.”

What Archer envisions is an age of aerial ride-sharing, an “Uber or Lyft of the skies”, Bristow said.

Neighbourhood parking garage rooftops or shopping mall lots could serve as departure or arrival pads for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

Commuters would make it the rest of the way however they wish, even synching trips with car rideshare services such as Uber which owns a stake in Santa Cruz, California-based Joby.

Joby executives said on a recent earnings call that its first production model aircraft should be in the skies later this year.

That comes despite a Joby prototype crashing early this year while being tested at speeds and altitudes far greater than it would have to handle as part of an air taxi fleet.

Joby has declined to discuss details of the remotely piloted aircraft’s crash, which occurred in an uninhabited area, saying it is waiting for US aviation regulators to finish an investigation.

“We were at the end of the flight test expansion campaign at test points well above what we expect to see in normal operations,” Joby Executive Chairman Paul Sciarra told analysts.

“I’m really excited about where we are right now; we have demonstrated the full performance of our aircraft.”

Its eVTOL aircraft have a maximum range of 241 kilometres, a top speed of 322 kilometres per hour and a “low noise profile” to avoid an annoying din, the company said.

Joby has announced partnerships with SK Telecom and the TMAP mobility platform in South Korea to provide emissions-free aerial ridesharing.

“By cooperating with Joby, TMAP will become a platform operator that can offer a seamless transportation service between the ground and the sky,” TMAP chief executive Lee Jong Ho said in a release.

Joby has also announced a partnership with Japanese airline ANA to launch air taxi service in Japan.

And Toyota has additionally joined the alliance, with an aim to explore adding ground transportation to such a service there, Joby said.

Hurdles on the path include establishing infrastructure and adapting attitudes to make air taxis a part of everyday life.

“For mass adoption, people need to have a mindset change,” Bristow said.

“Getting people to want to travel in a different way will take some rethinking.”

The need for the change, though, is clear, she reasoned.

Roads are congested with traffic that wastes time, frays nerves and spews pollution.

“There is nowhere else for traffic to go,” Bristow said.

“You have to go up.”

Miami and Los Angeles are already exploring the potential of aerial ridesharing, and Archer is hoping to have a small air taxi service operating in at least one of those cities by the end of 2024.

“It’s a monumental task that we’re taking on,” Bristow said.

“It’s going to take a while before the infrastructure supports the mass expansion of what we’re trying to do.”

Archer last month announced that it teamed with United Airlines to create an eVTOL advisory committee.

The US airline has pre-ordered 200 Archer aircraft with an eye toward using them for “last-mile” transportation from airports, Bristow told AFP.

“Imagine flying from London to Newark, New Jersey, then getting in an Archer and being deposited somewhere in Manhattan,” Bristow said.

Silicon Valley startup Xwing specialises in making standard aircraft capable of flying safely without pilots, with an aim of turning commuting by air into a cheaper and more efficient way to travel.

“We’re strong believers here that the industry is going through a pretty dramatic transformation,” Xwing chief and founder Marc Piette told AFP.

“In a few years you’ll start seeing taxi networks of electric aircrafts regionally or on long hauls and it’s going to be quite a different landscape.”

Thousands of regional airports used mostly for recreation could become part of aerial commute networks, air mobility consultant Scott Drennan told AFP.

To Drennan, the primary reason for taking to the skies is to “give people back their time”.

With certain “grey” Volkswagen independent imports from China and elsewhere growing in sudden popularity in recent months almost exclusively consisting of less than exciting, heavy and un-sporting EV crossovers and saloons, one’s attention instead turns to the German auto giant’s less complex, lighter and sportier offerings. Smallest and least powerful, yet, closest to the brand’s historic hot hatch recipe, the Volkswagen Up GTI is conversely among Volkswagen’s most interesting and exciting sporting current European models, which in many ways would be well suited for Amman.

Uptown appeal

Launched in early 2018 but never officially imported to the region, the Up GTI presents a fresher face and more desirable driving prospect than the many bloated and bland “grey” EVs increasingly populating local roads. With its stylish design, tiny dimensions, frugal fuel consumption, nippy performance and eager dynamics, the Up GTI would be an ideally suited quick commuter for Amman’s busy and increasingly congested but often fast moving roads, as well as for ever more limited city parking situation, and incrementally rising fuel prices.

Harking back to the iconic original Giugiaro-designed 1976 Volkswagen Golf GTI in its uncomplicated but effective recipe — not to mention similar output, dimensions and weight — the Up GTI’s design is that of a modern and narrow city car, with short stubby bonnet and relatively high roofline. Angular and upright, the hot Up GTI version of Volkswagen’s urban runaround is subtly more athletic, with a tailgate spoiler, bigger alloy wheels, more prominent bumper and sills, bigger exhaust and the telltale red pinstripe detailing customary to Volkswagen’s GTI models. 

Upbeat and off-beat

If not quite the high performance heavy puncher that is the current model Golf GTI Clubsport, the Up GTI and its small but prodigious turbocharged direct injection 1-litre 3-cylinder engine, nevertheless pack plenty of pep. Producing 114BHP at a comparatively low-revving 5,000-5,500rpm peak and a mighty 147lb/ft torque throughout a broad and easily accessible 2,000-3,500rpm plateau, the lightweight 1,070kg Up GTI can briskly sprint through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 8.8-seconds and onto a 196km/h top speed, yet return enviable 5.6l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

A perky performer with an off-beat three-cylinder soundtrack, the Up GTI is eager from standstill with its turbocharger spooling up swiftly and with little lag. Launching with its driven front wheels digging in to tarmac and a slight torque steer tug, the Up GTI is a brisk and upbeat drive that feels even quicker, given its lightweight, small size and comparatively narrow 195/40R17 tyres. Pulling with conviction from low-end, it is confidently quick on inclines and when overtaking as it rides its muscular mid-range torque band.

Up, up and away

Somewhat low-revving for a hot hatch, one works through the Up GTI’s slick and satisfying 6-speed manual gearbox quickly and easily. With a relatively short lever throw action and intuitive clutch biting point, the Up GTI’s manual gearbox perfectly complements its frisky and fun character. Easily manoeuvrable zipping around in town and easy to place on narrow roads and to park in tiny spaces with its excellent visibility and tight 9.8-metre turning circle, the Up GTI is, meanwhile, more stable and refined at speed than expected.

Given its diminutive dimensions, it is, however, the Up GTI’s darty and nimble handling which best characterises it. With a short wheelbase and low weight and more basic torsion beam rear suspension, the Up GTI has a charming and rewardingly connected driving feel. Agile and eager into corners and ever-alert and responsive to directional changes, the Up GTI turns on the proverbial dime and delivers good steering feel. Body roll is, meanwhile, well controlled through fast sharp corners, even as the inside rear wheel goes almost lifts up.

Uplifting ambiance

Reminiscent of an old school hot hatch in its light-footed, fun-loving handling, the Up GTI, however, delivers quicker, lighter and more precise steering, and far more reassuring braking than its distant original Golf GTI predecessor. An effortlessly agile corner carving and playful hot hatch, the Up GTI also delivers reassuringly good grip levels, and is meanwhile settled in its ride, if slightly firm over sharper edged lumps and potholes. Comfortable for its class, the lightweight Up GTI well absorbs and dispatches most imperfections without feeling harsh.

Fresh and vibrant with red accents and stitching, trim graphics and tartan upholstery rather than over-ambitiously luxurious, the Up GTI’s narrow cabin is well-organised, user-friendly and intuitive, with its thick flat-bottom steering wheel, short gear lever and controls falling easily to hand. Providing good front headroom and an alert and comfortable driving position, its two-passenger rear seats are adequately if not generously sized, and accessed by folding down the front seats. Luggage volume meanwhile expands from 251-litres to a spacious 959-litres with rear seats folded down.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1-litre, transverse, turbocharged 3-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 74.5 x 76.4mm

Compression ratio: 10.5:1

Valve-train: 12-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, front-wheel-drive

0-100km/h: 8.8-seconds

Maximum speed: 196km/h

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 114 (115) [85] @5,000-5,500rpm

Specific power: 114BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 106.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 147.5 (200) @2,000-3,500rpm

Specific torque: 200Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 187Nm/tonne

Fuel consumption, combined: 5.6-litres/100km

Fuel capacity: 35-litres

Length: 3,600mm

Width: 1,641mm

Height: 1,478mm

Wheelbase: 2,412mm

Track width, F/R: 1,412/1,408mm

Headroom, F/R: 993/947mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,009/789mm

Hip room, F/R: 1,417/1,388mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 251-/959-litres

Unladen weight: 1,070kg

Steering: Variable electric-assisted rack and pinion

Turning circle: 9.8-metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/drums

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/torsion beam

Tyres: 195/40R17

Most of us think we don’t have time to exercise or prepare healthy meals in advance. If that’s you, think again.

Pockets of time are tucked into our days and evenings that are wasted on unessential things we use to unwind. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d rather watch my favourite television show than cook veggies after a full day at work. I get it. I’d rather log onto my social media than log my food intake on my app (yes, there are apps for that and if you haven’t discovered them check them out as they are free and easy to use!).

Whether it’s food prep, logging your intake for the day or getting your steps in, there are a million ways to sneak these essentials into our busy schedules. I don’t care how busy we think we are. If we prioritise self-care, we will find ways to get things done even on the craziest of days. It does, however, take intentionality and persistence. It won’t just magically happen on its own and no one is going to keep you accountable and offer to free your schedule so you can take better care of yourself!

This is one area we desperate dieters need to learn to be selfish in. We seem in to be good at taking care of everyone else around us, but neglect to care for ourselves. Last night I reminded our 25-year-old to take his antibiotics before bedtime only to realise I had forgotten to take my own medication! This is a classic example of over-extending ourselves to our own detriment. I confess that I’m guilty of trying to put the oxygen mask on our children before putting it on myself even though they are now adults. Old habits die hard!

Five tips for building new habits

Making it non-negotiable: Set aside some essential self-care habits and decide ahead of time that they are non-negotiable. If someone else tries to sabotage your priorities, practice how you will firmly respond ahead of time. It might sound something like, “I’d love to do that for you, but it will have to wait until I’m done with my workout.”

Learning to speak up for yourself: Perhaps you need to practice saying, “Instead of meeting for lunch, can we go for a walk instead?” You could even learn to specify which places you can eat at where you already know that they offer healthier choices on their menu. Don’t feel guilty about speaking up because most of the time the people you’re with are also struggling to make better food choices.

Keeping it simple:  Be authentic but don’t feel like you have to over-explain yourself. If you’re trying to cut back on calories and your boss announces it’s time to celebrate another co-worker’s birthday, permit yourself to say “no, thank you”. Even if they insist, you can always tell them that you’ll take your portion to share with your family. Truth be said, no one really cares if you have any or not!

Distracting yourself: Most of the time, distractions are annoying and prevent us from accomplishing the task. But there are times when distractions can save us. When it comes to food cravings, we can distract our brain long enough for the cravings to pass. Usually, that takes about 20 minutes. Maybe you could use that time to allow yourself to check into your social media, call a friend or even listen to your favourite podcast. Whatever you do, don’t give in to the craving until at least 20 minutes pass. In my experience, I usually forget about those crispy potato chips if I engage my mind in something else.

Separating the work: Who said we have to do everything at once? Some of us don’t have long periods of time, but we certainly have a few minutes here and there. Sneak in small amounts of meal prep throughout the day and by the evening, you’ll have your dinner all ready to go. Peel that onion between your errands. Wash your greens and squeeze those lemons. Marinate that chicken overnight. By the time you are ready to eat, you will have had all the messy work done ahead of time and can enjoy putting together a healthy home-cooked meal.

Here’s to springing into a new season with a whole new set of tools to help us succeed! 

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

By Isabelle Tourne
Agence France-Presse

PARIS — French doctor and researcher Marthe Gautier, who died last weekend, was one of a long line of women scientists who greatly contributed to scientific discovery only to see the credit go to their male colleagues.

Here are just a few of the women scientists whose work was forgotten by history.

Marthe Gautier

Gautier, who died at the age of 96 on Saturday, discovered that people with Down’s syndrome had an extra chromosome in 1958.

But when she was unable to identify the exact chromosome with her lower-power microscope, she “naively” lent her slides to geneticist Jerome Lejeune, she told the Science journal in 2014.

She was then “shocked” to see the discovery of the extra chromosome 21 published in research six month later, with Lejeune’s name first and hers second — and her name misspelled.

It was not until 1994 that the ethics committee of France’s INSERM medical research institute said Lejeune was unlikely to have played the “dominant” role in the discovery.

Rosalind Franklin

British chemist Rosalind Franklin’s experimental work led to her famous 1952 X-ray image “Photo 51”, which helped unlock the discovery of the DNA double helix.

But Francis Crick and James Watson were working on a similar theory at the time, and their research was published ahead of Franklin’s in the same journal, leading many to think her study merely supported theirs.

Crick and Watson won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery in 1962 — Franklin had died four years earlier at the age of just 37.

In a letter from 1961 that emerged in 2013, Crick acknowledged the importance of her work in determining “certain features” of the molecule.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars when she was a postgraduate student in 1967.

But it was her thesis supervisor and another male astronomer who won 1974’s Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.

Lise Meitner

Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner was one of the key people responsible for discovering nuclear fission, leading to Albert Einstein dubbing her the “German Marie Curie”.

However it was her long-term collaborator Otto Hahn who won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery.

Chien-Shiung Wu

Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu worked on the Manhattan Project and conducted the “Wu experiment”, which overturned what had been previously considered a fundamental law of nature — the conservation of parity.

But again it was her male colleagues who won the 1975 Nobel Physics prize for the research.

Her work earned her the nickname “Chinese Madame Curie”.

And so on

The list could go — and the women scientists named above are merely those whose contributions have been belatedly recognised decades later.

The contributions of male scientists’ wives, mothers and daughters are also believed to have long been overlooked, including that of Einstein’s first wife, mathematician and physicist Mileva Maric.

In 1993 American historian Margaret Rossiter dubbed the systematic suppression of women’s contributions to scientific progress the “Matilda effect”, after US rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Even today the role played by women in scientific history is under-represented in school textbooks, French historian Natalie Pigeard-Micault told AFP.

“It gives the impression that scientific research is limited to a handful of women,” she said, pointing to how Marie Curie was always an “exceptional” reference point.