Asleep on the Job: Sleeping pods at the Empire State Building in New York
AFP-Getty Images

By Tina Peng 

If Kristine Johnson gets fewer than seven hours of sleep at night, she barely makes it through the workday. So when that happens, Johnson, a 33-year-old San Francisco office manager, takes a nap. She’s slept in a lawn chair on the roof of her office, in a locked private bathroom (with just a pillow for support) and in her car. Johnson naps at work only twice a month, but it makes a noticeable difference, she says. “It makes me more alert and better able to do my job,” she says.

She’s in good company. In March, the National Sleep Foundation reported that 37 percent of Americans nap during the day. About a third of the people surveyed by the NSF said their workplace permitted naps, and more than a quarter said they would sleep at work if their employer let them. Worktime napping has seen enough of a popularity boost to fill its own business niche: Yelo, a New York City store that opened last year, has private rooms with sleep pods for quick naps ($15 for 20 minutes; yelonyc.com). Its founder, Nicolas Ronco, plans to expand to three New York City locations next year and then to other cities.

Naps do more than make up for lost sleep. They increase creativity, memory and alertness, says Sara Mednick, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and author of “Take a Nap! Change Your Life.” A recent six-year study of 23,500 healthy Greek adults by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Athens Medical School showed that taking naps at least three days per week reduced coronary mortality by 37 percent.

Illustration: Mark Matcho for Newsweek

Working part time can be good for your life and your checking account. But you need to know how to do it.

Louise Richardson of Parker, Colo., likes to work. But with four teenagers in her house and a firefighter for a husband, she prefers to do it part time. Through a placement service called 10 til 2, she landed a 15-hour-a-week job as an event planner. “It’s given us more financial freedom. My kids don’t see me as the person who cooks and cleans all day. But they also see that my family is my priority,” she says. “It allows you to have that balance between work and family.”

More than 25 million Americans—twice as many women as men—work part time. They’re moms, dads, retirees and people who are sick of the rat race. Employers are making it easier to work fewer hours: 36 percent now give employees the chance to work part time, according to a survey of 90 employers released last week by Hewitt Associates, a human-resources consulting company. The survey also found that 31 percent of employers now offer flextime, 46 percent permit job sharing and 39 percent allow telecommuting. TIP SHEET gives some tips on how to work part time successfully:

 
Illustration: Alex Nabaum for Newsweek

By Linda Stern 
April 7, 2008 issue

Let interviewers know you’re talking to others. Expect to take at least six months to find a good job.

Here’s a case of bad timing: being midcareer in midrecession. In February, 63,000 U.S. jobs evaporated; 17,000 were lost in January. The job market is deteriorating just as a generation of workers is looking to move up a rung. How can you find a better job when you’re only tenuously clinging to the one you have now?

Ask Patricia Jones. In November, the 41-year-old midlevel manager was laid off from her job as head of a support staff of 18 at a large New York law firm. She took the holidays off and then hit the job market, just as the job market was hitting that wall. She continued the day-care arrangements for her 5-year-old daughter and spent each day crafting her résumé, sending it to everyone she knew, making countless phone calls, answering ads and networking. Now she’s one month into her new, bigger and better post: managing 150 support workers at a big international law firm. Nice salary, nice benefits, great situation and the better of two offers she received almost simultaneously. “I’m very happy,” she says.

So it can be done, though it isn’t easy. “People in midcareer are getting jobs now, though they really have to work harder at it,” reports Anita Attridge, a career coach with the Five O’Clock Club (fiveoclockclub.com), an outplacement and job-counseling firm. “In many cases they are changing careers or industries to do it.” Here’s how to job-hunt like it’s your job.

Glen Zabriskie’s three sons like to watch DVDs, play games and catch some of their favorite PBS shows on the aging televisions scattered throughout their Salt Lake City home. But in a little less than a year, they, along with millions of Americans, could find themselves looking at screens full of snow when they try to tune in to their favorite programs.

On Feb. 17, 2009, television stations across the country will stop transmitting analog signals over the air and start broadcasting exclusively in digital, a bandwidth-saving technology that sends crisper pictures and sound. Preparations for the transition are already underway.

The good news is that the majority of couch potatoes will be unaffected when the switchover occurs. If you receive programming via cable or satellite, you can relax. According to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, most cable operators will continue to transmit both digital and analog signals to customers (your existing cable box will function normally). You’re also all set if you already receive digital or high-definition television over the air through a newer TV.

But if your set lacks a digital (or ATSC) tuner—and you get reception through rabbit ears—you may not have “House” in your house come February. Nielsen Media Research estimates that more than 13 million homes (about 10 percent of households) receive analog broadcasts exclusively via an antenna, while an additional 6 million homes have at least one TV that would stop working after the switch (the National Association of Broadcasters puts these numbers even higher.

Generally speaking, says Jonathan Collegio, the NAB’s VP for digital-television transition, sets purchased before 2002 probably don’t have a digital tuner while most televisions bought in the past year should; TVs purchased between 2002 and 2006 are a gray area, though the larger the screen, the more likely it is to be equipped. If you don’t know whether your television has an ATSC tuner, check your manual or look up your model on the manufacturer’s Web site.

If your TV is outmoded, you have three options: subscribe to a cable or satellite provider, upgrade that old Zenith to a set that has a digital tuner or purchase a DTV converter box, which allows digital signals to be displayed on analog sets. Converter boxes are available at retailers like Wal-Mart, RadioShack and Best Buy, and will range from $40 to $70. For a list of approved boxes, go to ntiadtv.gov/cecb_list.cfm.

If you choose the third option, the government will subsidize the purchase by doling out two $40 coupons per household (you can use only one coupon per box). Coupons started shipping in late February, and more than 6.6 million have been requested (to apply, visit dtv2009.gov). If you apply today, you’re not likely to receive your coupons until May, which is about the amount of time it will take to get through the backlog of requests. In the future, the turnaround time will be approximately three weeks.

The government has allocated enough funding to honor 33.5 million coupons. Since the coupons expire 90 days after they’re mailed, wait until you actually plan on buying the box before applying. There’s another advantage to being less zealous: more boxes should be available this summer (including a $40 model from EchoStar), and you could see price drops.

Most important, make sure you’re aware of your choices before hitting the stores. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), many clerks are ill-prepared to answer questions about the switchover. Last fall the organization sent secret shoppers into 132 Wal-Mart, RadioShack, Circuit City, Best Buy and Target stores, and found that sales clerks did everything from misinform consumers about converter boxes to trying to sell them new TVs.

“What we found is that salespeople were woefully unprepared to give good, accurate information to shoppers,” says Steve Blackledge, senior policy analyst for CALPIRG, the California arm of the U.S. PIRG. So it’s essential that consumers do research ahead of time (sites like dtv.gov, dtvanswers.com and dtvtransition.org are good sources). Whether you use the switch to digital as an excuse to finally splurge on a big flat-panel, or opt for one of the cheaper options, crisper viewing is in your future.

 

By Anna Kuchment

March 10, 2008 issue

Last year Sam Chapman banned gossip at his small Chicago firm. “Since we put the regime in place, it’s changed everything,” says Chapman, CEO of Empower Public Relations. Each of the company’s 17 employees has agreed that when an employee says something negative behind a co-worker’s back, he or she will be required to repeat that gossip to the person’s face. As a result, one person who was seen as unproductive got the chance to explain she had negotiated reduced hours because she was still in school. Another was rumored to be dating someone at the office but revealed she had recently become engaged to someone else. “When you clean up the stories, you find that more than half of them are untrue,” says Chapman, who credits the policy with helping to double his firm’s business; workers, he says, are less distracted, more efficient and communicate better with one another.

Chapman’s policy offers a drastic solution to a common workplace problem. A recent survey by the staffing firm Randstad USA found that 60 percent of employees named gossip as their No. 1 pet peeve at work. As the economy sours, problems with office gossip may well increase. “Sometimes people deal with anxiety over layoffs by focusing on others and not getting along with them,” says Fran Furman, director of a large employee-assistance program run out of St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, who has already seen an uptick in complaints related to the office rumor mill.

March 10, 2008 issue 

Star in your own action sports video with a wearable, miniature camcorder. Helmet cams are the latest must-have gizmo for adrenaline junkies, who post their exploits online and e-mail clips to friends. They mount to your head, handlebars, surfboard or kayak, leaving hands free for rip cords or ski poles.

The POV.1 features a lipstick-size camera, a wireless remote, a microphone and editing software that allows you to organize and upload clips to video-sharing sites ($700; vio-pov.com). The Digital Hero 3 has waterproof housing, shoots 56 minutes of video and sound and features a slide-show mode that takes a picture every five seconds ($140 to $180; goprocamera.com). Built for simplicity, the VholdR features aluminum housing, one on-off switch and no cables, and weighs 4.8 ounces ($350; vholdr.com). Already own a camcorder? Hoyttech.com sells lipstick cameras that can attach to your camcorder such as the EconoSport HelmetCam kit ($190). Helmetcameracentral.com sells a variety of brands and includes product reviews. Post images on YouTube or upload them to rip.tv and watch the spills and thrills.

By Tara Weingarten

March 10, 2008 issue

‘I’m Ready for My Chase Scene’

Forty years ago Steve McQueen popped his Mustang GT over San Francisco’s pointy hills in “Bullitt.” Ford pays homage to that iconic man-car with a limited edition. Get on the list fast: just 7,000 will be built.

Mag Wheels: These 18-inch cast aluminum Euroflange wheels are made in the original charcoal satin finish with Argent gray-painted brake calipers.

Ride: A high-performance engine with 300hp is sweet at this price point. And a Tremac five-speed manual transmission is easy and quick to shift.

Interior: The engine-turned aluminum dashboard trim is inspired, even if hard plastic on air vents, the audio system and door panels isn’t.

March 10, 2008 issue

If spring’s impending arrival has got you wondering what to do about your overgrown yard, you might consider hiring a gardening coach. Gardening coaches provide one-on-one consultations to first-time gardeners, as well as those with a little more experience looking for a second opinion. They’ll help you get a handle on that chaotic overgrowth, as well as identify your flora, make design suggestions or show you how to fertilize properly. “We try to teach people how to do it themselves, not do it for them,” says Susan Harris, a Takoma Park, Md., gardening coach. And, compared with the cost of a full-time landscaper, they are relatively cheap, charging as little as $25 an hour. To find a gardening coach near you, log on to thegardeningcoach.com, a worldwide directory. If there isn’t one for your area, check with your local garden center, nursery or garden club and ask if someone is available to serve as a consultant or coach. Then put on your garden gloves and get ready to face the spring.

March 10, 2008 issue

True balsamic vinegar, that slightly sweet, deep, dark purple, syrupy condiment that many of us use on salads, comes from only two places on Earth: Modena and the Reggio Emilia region of Italy. Ferraris and Parmesan cheese are made there, too. Clearly, it’s a special spot. TIP SHEET sampled three balsamicos of various ages:

Fattoria Estense 8 Year: Less dense than an older vinegar, it’s an ideal consistency for salads and a dipping sauce for bread. $9.95 at surlatable.com.

Fattoria Estense 12 Year: At this age, the vinegar begins to show its true personality, being more viscous and with deeper flavors of the grape. It’s also more expensive. Use sparingly atop grilled vegetables, grilled fish and other simply prepared dishes. $35.95 at surlatable.com.

Richard Dobson/Getty images
Wild Things: A family comes across Masai giraffes during an afternoon excursion in South Africa

Feb 11, 2008 issue
By Tara Weingarten

Twice before, Alison and Geoff Edelstein had been on an African safari and thought it was the best vacation they had ever taken. They awoke each morning at 5, hopped on an open-air 4 x 4, and drove into the world of giant elephants that gathered at sunrise to chomp on the dewy leaves. But it wasn’t until they brought their two teenage boys with them on a recent trip to South Africa and Zambia that they fully appreciated the journey. “It is the biggest experience you can imagine, and you just want to share it with the people you love the most,” says Alison, 44, of Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Many families dream of visiting southern Africa to see free-roaming lions and rhinos up close. But such a trip is likely to be one of the most expensive vacations you’ll take in your lifetime, even if done on a budget. For that reason, many travelers wait until midlife to make the trek, when they have more disposable income and their kids are old enough to cope with jet lag, sit through long safari rides and get the full impact of what they’re seeing. Now winter through springtime is the best time to go—the bush is less dense and the animals are easier to spot.