CHAPTER 1
Setting the Stage for an Optimized State of Mind
Several years ago my family established a tradition of celebrating the tenth birthday of each of our children by taking them on a trip to a city of their choosing somewhere in North America. My son Dominic picked New York City. While I travel to New York several times a year for business, I really had no idea what kid-friendly activities we could find for a five-day vacation in one of the world’s greatest cities. Where did I go for advice and information? Some people reading this book will think of a search engine like Google or Bing. For others, Facebook or Twitter will come to mind. Some might even know specific people they could e-mail for travel tips or specialty travel websites that focus on New York. What did I do? I used all of these ideas.
I posted on Twitter that I would be bringing my son to New York for his tenth birthday and that we were looking for kid-friendly activities and places to see. Numerous suggestions were offered, and from them I made a list. Dominic and I used Google to research each destination and to find out details such as available activities, location, fees, and schedules. Based on what we found, we further refined our search phrases, which influenced follow-up questions posted on social networks. Some of the websites we found posted ratings from customers; others had links to blogs, photos on Flickr, and Facebook fan pages. From our research conducted through a combination of search engines, ...
