Trick-or-Treat Times for Central Indiana - Has Your Town Moved to Friday?

Halloween is almost upon us -- do you know when your town or city is holding its official trick-or-treat time?

WRTV6 is compiling the trick-or-treat times for Indiana cities and towns. Many cities have not yet set their times for trick-or-treating yet, so if you don’t see your city’s time, check back with us. Or, if you know the trick-or-treat times for your city and you don’t see them on here, send the information to wrtvwebstaff@wrtv.com

HALLOWEEN TRICK-OR-TREAT TIMES
All times are on Oct. 31 unless otherwise noted. Due to severe weather, many cities and townships are moving their official trick-or-treat times to Friday or Saturday.
Advance: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Alexandria: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Anderson: 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday AND Friday
Atlanta: 6 to 8 p.m
Avon: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Bainbridge: 7 to 9 p.m. Friday
Beech Grove: 5 to 9 p.m. Friday
Brownsburg: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Carmel: 5 to 8 p.m.
Chesterfield: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday AND Friday
Cloverdale: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Columbus: 5 to 8 p.m.
Crawfordsville: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Cumberland: 5 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Daleville: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Danville: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Edgewood: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Fillmore: 5 to 8 p.m.
Fishers: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Franklin: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Frankton: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Gosport: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Greencastle: 4 to 8 p.m. Friday
Greenfield: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Greensboro: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Greensburg: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Greenwood: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Hagerstown: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Henry County (rural): 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Indianapolis: 6 to 8 p.m.
Ingalls: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Johnson County (rural): 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Kirklin: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Kokomo: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Lawrence: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday
Lebanon: 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday
Martinsville: 6 to 8:30 p.m.
McCordsville: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Mooresville: 6:30 to 8 p.m. Friday
Muncie: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
New Castle: 5 to 8 p.m.
New Palestine: 5 to 9 p.m. Friday
Noblesville: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Pendleton: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday
Plainfield: 5 to 9 p.m.
Roachdale: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Rockville: 5 to 9 p.m. Friday
Shelbyville: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Sheridan: 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Southport: 5 to 8:30 p.m. Friday
Spencer: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Westfield: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Westport: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday
Whitestown: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday

Call your local police department if you have other questions about trick-or-treat safety.

Other trick-or-treat venues: Find out where to trick or treat safely inside!

5 Ways Meditation Can Make You Happier and More Successful at Work

Whether you work from home or in a corporate high rise, taking a little time each day to rest in the inner quiet of meditation will protect your mind-body balance, help you stay centered and calm, and open you to your highest potential for creativity and success.

As the popularity of meditation grows in the West, we now have access to thousands of ancient and modern techniques. It can feel overwhelming to know where to begin, so to help people get started, at the Chopra Center they launched the 21-Day Meditation Challenge™– a free, online experience where I offer daily instruction and guidance in the practice of meditation. They "have been honored that more than a million participants have joined us for the meditation challenge so far, including thousands of busy professionals, parents, and others who have enjoyed the convenience of being able to access the daily meditations at any time and from anywhere in the world via their mobiles devices."

Now let’s look at the five ways that meditation can help you prevent burnout, and experience more fulfillment and happiness at work.

1. Meditation Reduces Stress

Chronic, unmanaged stress can make you sick and accelerate aging. As many scientific studies have found, prolonged stress contributes to the development of high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, cancer, insomnia, chronic fatigue, obesity, and depression.

In meditation, your body releases stress and reverses the effects of the flight-or-fight response – that ancient instinct we all have to either run from perceived danger or take it on in battle. Intended as a short-term protection mechanism, fight or flight causes our body to speed up our heart rate, increase our blood sugar, suppress our immune system, reduce insulin production, pump out stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, and reduce the blood supply to our digestive organs. All of these reactions happen so that our body can focus on either running away as fast as it can – or staying to fight. Although few people reading this article face daily threats to their bodily existence, many live in a prolonged state of fight or flight, generating stress in response to bad traffic, criticism from a supervisor, or a workplace disagreement.

2. Meditation Helps You Create Harmonious Relationships
When you’re feeling balanced and centered, it is much easier to respond rather than react, to be present with a client or co-worker and really listen to what they are saying and what they may need.

As you meditate on a regular basis, you develop what is known as “witnessing awareness” – the ability to calmly and objectively observe a situation, notice when you are being triggered, and consciously choose how you want to respond. The ability to be present and aware is valuable in the workplace and every other area of your life. 

3. Meditation Improves Focus and Concentration

Many people feel frazzled because they’re trying to do more than one thing at a time. As neuroscientists have discovered, the conscious brain cannot multitask. If I’m speaking to you and checking my emails at the same time, I’m doing neither. Meditation helps us to train our brain to stay focused on the task at hand rather than letting our attention be pulled away by every passing thought and distraction. This one-pointed attention makes us more productive and less stressed.

There is a lot of interesting research showing how meditation and mindfulness improve the brain’s focus and concentration. A study carried out by the Kyoto Convention Bureau found that when people meditated for at least ten minutes before a meeting, they were much better at focusing, listening, retaining information, and completing tasks. The next time you’re leading or attending a meeting, you may want to suggest just a few minutes of meditation for everyone to get centered and present. It doesn’t have to be complicated – just have people close their eyes and focus on their breath for a minute or two.

4. Meditation Enhances Your Creativity
We each have between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day – unfortunately, many of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, and last year. The mind tends to get stuck in repetitive thought loops that squeeze out the possibility for new ideas and inspiration. Meditation takes us beyond habitual, conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. We connect to what is known as the field of infinite possibilities or pure potentiality, and we open and receptive to new ideas, fresh perspectives, and flashes of insight.

The world’s great innovators, athletes, and other high achievers have described this state as “being in the flow,” being in the right place at the right time, or a state of grace. Time seems to stand still and instead of struggling and trying to force things to happen, everything you need comes naturally to you. You do less and accomplish more. You aren’t burdened by the past or worried about the future; you’re flowing in the ever-present, eternal now. This higher state of consciousness, which we can access through meditation, is the birthplace of all creativity.

5. Meditation Improves Health and Vitality and Enhances the Power of the Brain

When we’re feeling healthy and energetic, it is much easier to stay focused and meet the daily demands of work. Meditation is now recognized as a healing tool with numerous benefits for the mind-body system. In the state of restful awareness created by meditation:

• Your blood pressure normalizes
• Your heart rate slows
• Your immune function improves
• You use oxygen more efficiently
• You produce fewer stress hormones, such as adrenaline, cortisol
• You make more sex hormones particularly DHEA
• Your pituitary gland release more growth hormone (an anti-aging chemical)

In addition to all of these benefits, the deep state of rest produced by meditation triggers the brain to release neurotransmitters that enhance feelings of wellbeing, focus, and equanimity, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Meditation choreographs the simultaneous release of these neurotransmitters, something that no single drug can do – and all without side effects.

Getting Started with Meditation: The 21-Day Meditation ChallengeWhen you’re beginning to develop a meditation practice, it is helpful to have structured guidance and a supportive community encouraging your efforts to take the time for meditation. These elements are part of the 21-Day Meditation Challenge, which is a free online experience that guides you in the foundations of meditation with three weeks of daily audio meditation and tips on establishing a practice, via your smart phone, tablet or computer from wherever you are.

Written by: Deepak Chopra, MD

The First Thing You Must Do On Monday Morning

The first step in the morning routine I've developed for myself is all about stepping back and taking a pause before life comes rushing in on you. And therein lies the absolute best advice I ever received about what to do first thing each and every day - and especially on Mondays.

If there is only one thing you do this Monday morning before beginning your week, it's this:

Do Nothing.

Yup, you heard me.

It's not fancy advice, and it doesn't require a set of instructions, a coach or an app on hand.

Instead, it's just a few simple words.

Do nothing.

Take five minutes -- better yet, take ten. Sit at your desk, on the porch, or on the floor. Have tea or coffee in hand (I find finishing a cup is the perfect timing for a 10 minute pause). And just sit there. Avoid journaling or reading. Consider listening to peaceful music. And let the thoughts come flooding in.

Remember, the overwhelming point is to - at all costs - clear your head. So whatever you do, do nothing.

But here's a caveat. You may read this and draw inspiration to turn this into a time for meditation or prayer. I'd urge you not to. I love both practices and rely on both in my life, but this particular moment of the day is not for either. Instead, a moment of doing nothing should really be just that. Do nothing. Prayer and meditation hold their place as well, but this five to ten minute period is about a complete reset, and a complete stop. And, as you'll see, it's a huge challenge in and of itself.

So go on, try it. Do nothing.

When was the last time you spent 5 minutes doing absolutely nothing? Could you try it this Monday morning?

Written by: Claire Diaz-Ortiz

The Two Types of Leaders

Just when we think we’ve harvested every pearl from the oyster of management wisdom that is Clayton Christensen, we discover one more. 

In an interview with strategy + business, a magazine by global management-consulting firm Booz & Company, Christensen posits that senior executives and leaders of companies fit two distinct archetypes: those who play and those who don’t. 

“The first is like Tom West, the leader of the computer-building team at Data General in The Soul of a New Machine,” Christensen explains. “West says in the book that success is like pinball. If you win with one project, you get to play again. I think a lot of senior executives are just that kind of person: They like to play. They don’t care that much about where they end up in a hierarchy. 

“The second group is made up of people who have a need to be in charge and who care a lot about their hierarchical position. 

“If I were recruiting a leader, I’d look for people in the first group — people who like to play.” Of course, it’s one thing to understand this idea in the abstract and another to put it into action. How do you find and vet leaders who like to play? Here are two tips from other experts. 

1. “Make sure that something makes their eyes light up.” That’s the advice Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, gives in an interview on Skip Prichard’s leadership blog. (Bushnell, who hired Steve Jobs in 1972, recently wrote the book Finding the Next Steve Jobs.) 

“You say that the secret sauce of creatives like Steve Jobs was enthusiasm,” Prichard notes. “How do you detect enthusiasm when you’re interviewing a candidate?” 

Bushnell replies, “Make sure they are passionate about something! Sometimes you can get to that through asking about the books they’ve read. Sometimes you can get to it by asking them about their hobbies. What do they do when they’re not working? What are they really passionate about? . . . If they are not passionate about anything? Next.” 

2. Reconsider how your organization treats failures. One thing that inhibits a sense of play in anyone — prospective leaders or current ones — is the feeling that playing and failing will lead to negative career consequences. On the HBR Blog Network, consultant Doug Sundheim suggests three ways to combat this: Define a “smart” failure. Reward smart failures in addition to successes. And make your approach to risk-taking transparent.

3 Steps To Understanding Your Customers’ Needs

What do your customers really want — and how can you better deliver it? Business model expert and Strategyzer.com co-founder Alex Osterwalder has created a tool to help you find out. The Value Proposition Canvas “allows you to sketch a profile of how your products and services will create value for a specific customer,” he writes in the Wall Street Journal. “Once you’ve made these clear, you can test them.”

Osterwalder provides this three-step approach to using the tool, which aims to help you “avoid making stuff nobody wants.” (Tip: In a follow-up interview with Build, Osterwalder urged template users to write in pencil and to collaborate, because this yields more strategic conversations than typing and working individually do.) Each step corresponds to one third of the canvas:

1. Customer Job(s).
“First, you want to outline what jobs you believe your (potential) customers are trying to get done that lead them to purchase your products and services,” he notes.

“Jobs,” of course, is a very general term. Osterwalder’s canvas prompts you to assess the specific types of jobs that your product or services can help with. For example, ask yourself: What functional jobs are you helping your customer get done (e.g., perform or complete a specific task, solve a specific problem)? What social jobs (e.g., trying to look good, gain power or status)? What emotional jobs (e.g., aesthetics, feel good, security)?

• What basic needs are you helping your customer satisfy?

---

2. Pains.

“Second, describe all the pains you believe your customers might have or might fear related to those jobs — negative emotions, undesired costs or risks.”

Here, Osterwalder’s questions help you to specify the pains — fiscal, emotional, or performance-based — that your customers are concerned about. For example: What do your customers find too costly (e.g., takes a lot of time, costs too much money, requires substantial efforts)? What makes your customers feel bad (e.g., frustrations, annoyances, things that give them a headache)? How are current solutions underperforming for your customers (e.g., lack of features, performance, malfunctioning)?

• What’s keeping your customer awake at night?
• What risks does your customer fear?
• How are current solutions underperforming for your customer?

---

3. Gains.

“Third, describe all the gains you believe your customer expects or desires as an outcome of that job. This could be benefits like functional utility, social gains, positive emotions, or cost savings.”

Osterwalder’s cues for “gains” are also category-specific: Which savings would make your customers happy (e.g., in terms of time, money, and effort)? What outcomes do your customers expect, and what would go beyond their expectations (e.g., quality level, more of something, less of something)? How do current solutions delight your customers?

• What would make your customer’s job or life easier?
• What positive social consequences does your customer desire?
• How does your customer measure success or failure?

---

The Value Proposition Canvas is part of Osterwalder’s wider Business Model Canvas, which we wrote about last year. He stresses that, even if you master your value proposition, it can only be effective if your wider business model makes sense.

After all, answering these questions is just the beginning of your quest to understand your customers’ needs. Your answers, after all, are only your answers: The point of this exercise is to learn “which core beliefs you need to test with customers,” Osterwalder concludes.

That’s why the most important part of the Value Proposition Canvas may very well be the iteration number. The first time you ask yourselves these questions should not be the only time.

In other words: Ask the questions. Fill out the canvas. Test your answers with your customers. Then repeat the process — in pencil, every six months.

How to Choose What to Work On, and When to Work On It

Former president Dwight Eisenhower lent his wisdom — and his name brand — to the all-important practices of decision making and time management. Using the Eisenhower Matrix, pictured here, you can evaluate every decision to manage your time based on two elementary questions: (1) How important is it? (2) How urgent is it?

Featured on Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street blog, the matrix has made something of a comeback in recent years. (There’s even an app for it, which you can find at Eisenhower.me.) “We often focus too strongly on the ‘urgent and important’ field, on the things that have to be dealt with immediately. Ask yourself: When will I deal with the things that are important, but not urgent? When will I take the time to deal with the important tasks before they become urgent? This is the field for strategic, long-term decisions,” writes Parrish.

Here at The Build Network, we wanted to know: How did Eisenhower himself assess urgency and importance? When you’re the president, isn’t everything urgent and important, at least to someone? Yes — but there are degrees. Mary Burtzloff, archivist at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas, helped us sort through them:

Urgent and important: In 1957, Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and called in parts of the 101st Airborne Division to ensure the integration of an Arkansas high school after the governor defied Brown v. Board of Education.

Urgent but not important: In 1953, Eisenhower chose to break tradition and not wear a top hat to his inauguration. “He had to make a decision by the [inauguration] date, but it was a relatively inconsequential one,” says Burtzloff.

Important but not urgent: In 1956, Eisenhower signed The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 into law. Two years earlier, he publicly shared his “Grand Plan” for upgrading America’s highways. The idea first gripped Eisenhower back in 1919, when as a lieutenant colonel in the Army he took part in an arduous cross-country military convoy. During that trip he saw firsthand the poor condition of U.S. roads.

Neither urgent nor important: Deciding whether to respond to notes from concerned citizens fell into this category. “Tens of thousands of letters came to the White House,” says Burtzloff. “The staff responded to the vast majority, but on occasion one would be forwarded to his desk, and he might choose to send a personal response.”

What's Not To Like about a 600 MPH Pneumatic People Tube?

Elon Musk has a plan to build a high-speed transit system that would let you go from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes -- and which would cost one-tenth as much as California's current high-speed rail plan.

Musk initially called his "Hyperloop" concept a cross between a “Concorde, a railgun, and an air hockey table." Then he announced, a few days ago, that he'd publish more detailed Hyperloop plans in August and that he would be seeking feedback.

But you don't have to wait until August. We now have a pretty good idea what Musk's plan might look like thanks to an enterprising, self-taught "tinker" named John Gardi.

Gardi's plan -- which he sketched out in Microsoft Paint and posted to Twitter -- is basically a pneumatic tube with magnetic accelerators and decelerators. (Illustrator Brent Couchman prettied up Gardi's sketch, creating the version you see in detail below.)



This is a shining example of how independent thinkers can come up with brilliant technological ideas that outstrip the best plans that any government bureaucracy can create.

But without that bureaucracy's consent, it will never be built.

Here's Gardi's plan: You'd climb into a sealed pod along with other passengers and strap yourself in, and then the magnetic accelerator would inject the pod into a compressed column of air moving at 600 miles per hour. The air would propel you -- and any other pods in the tube -- down the length of California. Thirty minutes later, the system would shunt your pod into a decelerator, which would use magnets to slow your pod down until it reaches the station at the other end, where you'd disembark.

Connecting pipes would be between the northbound and southbound segments, with turbines to pump the air, making the entire system into a "loop" of air moving at extremely high speeds in a continuous circle.
"Your guess is the closest I've seen anyone guess so far," Musk told Gardi via Twitter after he published his sketch.

Musk also gave Gardi an important clue: He is planning for pods that are about 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter.
"The 2-meter diameter pods tells us that #HyperLoop will be an 'ultralite' transport system," Gardi told me via Twitter. "This means the pods, tubes, pylons, and trusses can be made of light, strong materials. This makes elevated construction much easier.

"It will also use less energy, but the biggest plus to lightweight construction is it can be built to withstand earthquakes better."

One thing's for sure: It beats the current plan from the California "High Speed" Rail Authority (CHSRA).
I put "High Speed" in quotes because, while California's $69 billion plan is called that, it would actually be one of the slowest high-speed rail systems in the world, as Musk correctly pointed out a few months ago.
According to the CHSRA, the system -- when it's complete in 2029 -- will make the S.F.-L.A. trip in about three hours, at speeds "over 200 miles per hour." But at three hours for a 380-mile trip, that's an average speed of just 125 miles per hour. Parts of it, such as the northernmost segment from San Francisco to San Jose, will go only slightly faster than the existing commuter rail system.

[Disclosure: I'm no fan of the California plan. In addition to its high cost and low speed, plans call for a giant, concrete, elevated structure that runs through one of the most densely populated parts of the state, the San Francisco Peninsula and Silicon Valley -- and it would loom over my backyard. So yes, I have a personal stake in this.]

By comparison, the French TGV train system has segments with average speeds over 175 miles per hour, and its maximum speed has hit as much as 350 mph. (France started construction on the TGV in the 1970s.) A Chinese bullet train regularly averages 186 mph, making the 630-mile trip from Wuhan to Guangzhou in under four hours.

I'd like to think that someday I'll be able to ride the Hyperloop for a short day trip to Los Angeles. But the practical side of my brain is extremely skeptical. No government is set up to embrace innovation at Musk's speed (witness all the legal trouble Tesla is having just finding a place to sell its electric cars).

It's doubtless that Gardi's plan doesn't take a host of factors into account, such as making sure that the tubes don't leak air and figuring out how to make them safe in case something goes wrong.

And then there's the issue of securing the right-of-way to install these pneumatic tubes. Even with lightweight construction, you still may not want a 2-meter pipe containing pressurized air and pods moving at 600 mph running through your backyard. (I'd prefer that to big concrete overpasses, but that's just me.) That means you'd still need to secure the right-of-way, deal with political issues, ensure that there is mitigation for sound and safety issues, and so forth.

One of the reasons the proposed bullet trains will be so slow is that they make a lot of stops, which lowers the average speed for the full journey. The Hyperloop, by contrast, has just two, speeding it up and simplifying the plan. Reality is likely to be a lot more complicated.

So building the Hyperloop for just $6.9 billion seems like a pipe dream.

But as pipe dreams go, it's a pretty good one. If the idea does nothing more than pressure the California government to rethink its basic assumptions, it will be successful. Why settle for 200 mph when you could go 600 mph?

We need more visionaries like Musk and Gardi who are willing to think about the big picture, and tackle tough problems with audacious imagination.

Top photo: fhirART

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