Don't spend all your time at the office. Take a break.
                                 By Kim Painter, USA TODAY, April 7th, 2011
Remember the lunch hour? In a more relaxed, less plugged-in era, office workers would rise up midday to eat food at tables, gossip with co-workers, enjoy a book on a park bench or take a walk in the sun. Can it still be done, without invoking the scorn of desk-bound colleagues or enduring constant electronic interruptions? It can and should. Here are five ways to break free: 1. Give yourself permission. As the hair-color ads say, “You're worth it." Taking a break in the workday is more than an indulgence, though: It's a way of taking care of your body and mind, says Laura Stack, a time-management expert and author who blogs at theproductivitypro.com. “You have to eliminate the guilt and remind yourself that the more you take care of yourself, the better you are able to take care of others," she says. “We have to recharge our batteries. We have to refresh. It's OK." 2. Get a posse. “Indeed, many people are wishing they could just peel themselves away, but they don't have the discipline," Stack says. Thus, invite a co-worker to take daily walks with you or a group to gather for Friday lunches. Pretty soon, you'll be working in a happier place (and feeling less like a shirker and more like a leader). 3. Schedule it. Put it on your calendar and on any electronic schedule visible to co-workers. “Code yourself as 'unavailable.' Nobody has to know why," says Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. And, if a daily hour of “me time" seems impossible right now, then commit to just one or two big breaks a week. Or schedule several 15-minute leg-stretching, mind-freeing breaks each day. Keep those appointments, and spend them in “a cone of silence," without electronic devices, Vanderkam says. 4. Apply deadline pressure. The promise of a lunch break could make for a more productive morning: “Treat it as a deadline or a game," Stack says. Pick a meaty task or two that must be finished before lunch and dive in. Plan what you'll finish in the afternoon, too. That will free your mind to enjoy the break, Vanderkam says. 5. Eat at your desk. That's right: If you can't beat them, seem to join them. If you really don't care about eating elsewhere, “pack your lunch and eat it at your desk, and save the time for something you'd rather do," whether it's going to the gym or sneaking out to your car to read, Vanderkam says. (But remember, you still have to schedule this break.) While most co-workers care less about your habits than you think they do, she says, “this has the extra advantage that you can be seen eating at your desk." . Access on April 7th, 2011. Adapted.

                                                               Off the Deep End in Brazil
                                                                        Gerald Herbert

With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal. Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in the most difficult places on the planet is just getting underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultradeepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Brazil’s Petrobras, which already controls a quarter of global deepwater operations, is just starting to plumb its 9 to 15 billion barrels of proven reserves buried some four miles below the Atlantic. The reason is simple: after a century and a half of breakneck oil prospecting, the easy stuff is history. Blistering growth in emerging nations has turned the power grid upside down. India and China will consume 28 percent of global energy by 2030, triple the juice they required in 1990. China is set to overtake the U.S. in energy consumption by 2014. And now that the Great Recession is easing, the earth’s hoard of conventional oil is waning even faster. The International Energy Agency reckons the world will need to find 65 million additional barrels a day by 2030. If the U.S. offshore-drilling moratorium drags on, look for idled rigs heading to other shores. Available in: Retrieved on: June 19, 2011.

                                                               Off the Deep End in Brazil
                                                                        Gerald Herbert

With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal. Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in the most difficult places on the planet is just getting underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultradeepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Brazil’s Petrobras, which already controls a quarter of global deepwater operations, is just starting to plumb its 9 to 15 billion barrels of proven reserves buried some four miles below the Atlantic. The reason is simple: after a century and a half of breakneck oil prospecting, the easy stuff is history. Blistering growth in emerging nations has turned the power grid upside down. India and China will consume 28 percent of global energy by 2030, triple the juice they required in 1990. China is set to overtake the U.S. in energy consumption by 2014. And now that the Great Recession is easing, the earth’s hoard of conventional oil is waning even faster. The International Energy Agency reckons the world will need to find 65 million additional barrels a day by 2030. If the U.S. offshore-drilling moratorium drags on, look for idled rigs heading to other shores. Available in: Retrieved on: June 19, 2011.