By DENNIS NISHI

As vice president of a Los Angeles film-production company in the 1980s, Ronald Kaufman had nearly everything that he’d ever wanted in a job — great pay, friendly co-workers and interesting work coordinating product placements in films. Unfortunately, he hated the job.

“The owner of the company was a master at intimidation and would scream at everybody. An hour later, he would be a great guy. It made everybody unhappy to be there,” says Mr. Kaufman, now an executive coach.

Dennis Nishi

But he knew he wouldn’t earn the same salary elsewhere, so Mr. Kaufman committed himself to making his situation work. “You can’t really change people’s nature, so I changed how I responded to him. I learned to align with his demands, instead of questioning them, and that made my 8½ years at the company so much easier.”

Toxic workplace relationships, failing company fortunes and limited advancement opportunities are just a few compelling reasons to quit a job. But career experts say many workplace problems that employees may think are irreconcilable can be improved or even resolved with some action and a change of attitude.

First, find out if your problems are unique. Reach out to co-workers in other departments, peers through industry associations or even call colleagues at other companies to compare notes.

“It’s a very individual perception that leads to people believing that others are receiving better treatment,” says Christopher McCarthy, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who researches workplace stress.

Separate the demands of work from your own expectations of yourself. If you’re unhappy about falling short of your own personal career goals, try breaking your big goals into smaller, more realistically achievable ones. This can improve your morale by reinforcing small successes.

Pitch your boss on a less formal and more goal-oriented workplace. And offer improved results in exchange for more autonomy. “Most people are generally happier at work when given more creative freedom to do their jobs,” says Mr. McCarthy.

If the operational processes of your job are leading to failure, alter your approach, if you can. Spencer Belkofer was an account representative for a telecom firm in Montgomery, Ala., and he didn’t like the way the company trained him to sell phone services. Unhappy customers frequently complained about bad contracts. So Mr. Belkofer decided to go off script and spell out every detail of the services offered, and he frequently sided with customers to resolve problems.

The extra effort didn’t improve his sales, but Mr. Belkofer felt better about the work and customers thanked him for being forthright.

—Email: sjdnishi@gmail.com

By BILL STREEVER

Lisanne Aerts

UNDER THE SEA | The writer diving off the island of Roatán

IN 2010 an Austrian named Herbert Nitsch strapped on fins and a diving mask, took a deep breath and made an underwater round-trip to a depth of 409 feet.

I will never reach 409 feet and I will probably never meet Mr. Nitsch, but I want to understand how a dive like this might be possible. So I walk the dirt road through the village of West End on the island of Roatán, the largest of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras and the country’s diving capital. Roatán’s coral is part of a barrier reef that extends north through Belize into Mexico. Second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, it has made Roatán a bucket-list scuba destination. But on this trip I want something different than scuba, so at every dive shop I ask for Andrew Graham.

He is the only person on the island teaching apnea diving, from the Greek, a-pnoia, literally “without breathing.” It is also known as free-diving and breath-hold diving, and good divers—ordinary ones, not record holders—often swim at depths below 100 feet. Divers with a day or two of training can often reach 50 feet.

Mr. Graham lives on a boat anchored just offshore, but no one knows how to reach him.

So I repeat my walk the next day, and again the day after. At last, someone sends me to a beach bar at the edge of town. A waitress who knows Mr. Graham sends for him. He is youthful and smiling.

“I’m 50 years old,” I say, “and I want to get to 50 feet.”

“It’s not about depth,” he tells me. “It’s about comfort.”

According to Mr. Graham, comfort does not require breathing. I sign up.

Many years ago, I dived 50 feet underwater on one breath. I got there by hyperventilating, breathing deeply and repetitively to flush carbon dioxide from my bloodstream. Humans rely on carbon dioxide levels in the bloodstream to trigger breathing, and hyperventilation tricks the body into thinking it doesn’t need to inhale.

I describe my previous dive to Mr. Graham. “Hyperventilation is not the right way to breathe,” he says. It can fool the body so effectively that, oxygen starved, the body shuts down. Hyperventilated divers occasionally black out without warning.

The next day, we sit near the water while he teaches me to breathe. I practice moving my diaphragm without moving my chest, to better understand and control my lungs. I lie on a dock and practice relaxed belly breathing, the kind of breathing that occurs as one drifts to sleep and the kind I will use between dives.

I practice yogic breathing, the drawn-out breathing used just before a dive. It starts with a forceful exhalation so deep that the diaphragm migrates into the rib cage, the shoulders slump forward and the arms cross in front of the chest. When the lungs feel as empty as possible, a belly breath drops the diaphragm, drawing air into the lower lungs. The ribs expand. The upper chest inflates. The shoulders move back and the arms arc upward. Altogether it takes 14 seconds.

I repeat the sequence three times. Then, on Mr. Graham’s cue, I stop with my lungs fully expanded. He pushes a button on his watch.

“Count while you hold your breath,” he says. “Focus on slowly counting. While you count, feel your body relax. You don’t need more air. You are fine. You have plenty of oxygen.”

He is not holding his breath. He has plenty of oxygen. I, on the other hand, do not.

“You will begin to sweat,” he says. “That is natural.”

My diaphragm spasms. It feels as if I am trapped by a hiccup.

The Lowdown: Roatán, Honduras

Getting There: Direct flights depart to Roatán from Houston and several other U.S. hubs. It is also possible to fly into Honduras and take a local air service or ferry to Roatán.

Staying There: Options range from as little as $10 per night for a backpackers dorm to as much as anyone would care to spend. Anthony’s Key Resort, just outside of West End, has been accommodating divers for more than 40 years (from $150 per night, including meals and two snorkeling trips, anthonyskey.com).

Diving There: Apnea diving can be dangerous—deadly if done incorrectly. The Association Internationale pour le Développement de I’Apnée (aidainternational.org) and Vertical Blue (verticalblue.net/school.php) are two well-established training organizations.

Andrew Graham, who is teaching in Roatán, can be reached at
andrew@fair-tradewinds.com.

Other Activities: Roatán is a famous scuba destination, with boats, guides, rental gear and instruction readily available for all levels. Roatán is also popular for fishing. Several operators run sailing tours, and it is possible to charter a three-person submarine to a depth of 2,000 feet. On shore, there is zip lining, horseback riding and bird watching. And there is, of course, cold beer.

“It’s your brain’s way of saying that carbon dioxide levels are on the rise,” he tells me, “but what matters is that plenty of oxygen remains. Ignore it.”

I can’t ignore it. I exhale.

“Ninety seconds,” he says. “You’re ready to get in the water.”

I don a pair of apnea diving fins. Unlike scuba fins, which are short and stiff, these extend two feet from my toes and are springy, designed to move the diver through the water with as little effort as possible, conserving oxygen.

Following Mr. Graham’s instructions, I dive to 10 feet and latch one finger to a mooring block, counting. When I reach 40, I drift back to the surface. I practice this exercise three times, testing my yogic breathing and my underwater breath holding. I begin to relax.

We swim over conch hiding between thick green blades of turtle grass. A school of reef squid hover like humming birds just below the surface of the water. We paddle through a channel with a white sand bottom and walls of coral, spotting lobster antennae poking out from crevices.

Along the way, I practice dives as Mr. Graham coaches me, sometimes on the surface, sometimes with hand signals underwater.

I exhale, then fill the bottom of my lungs, and then fill my chest. I point my head and torso toward the channel floor 25 feet below and throw my legs up into the air, letting their weight propel me downward. I hold my yogic breath, lying on the channel floor, one finger hooked around a rock. I count. At 30, I discover a dimly lit spot in my brain that is perfectly calm. I have plenty of oxygen. A four-inch wrasse swims in front of my mask.

As I ascend, my lungs gradually expand. There is no need to rush. Mr. Graham shows me a ballet step with fins, the legs moving outward in opposite directions, the feet flat, slowing the ascending diver, turning the body from side to side to see the reef.

Alamy

Soft coral in the reef

On the surface, I breathe as if I am drifting to sleep. And it starts to become routine: yogic breaths, dive, slowly ascend, belly breathe, repeat.

Mr. Graham swims through a coral cave at 35 feet. I follow.

I pause in the midst of several hundred doctorfish in tight formation, the edges of their fins painted iridescent blue. In no hurry to surface, I feel like part of the school.

We swim a quarter of a mile offshore. The water has taken on a deeper blue. From the surface, the coral remains visible but no longer distinct.

“It’s 50 feet deep here,” he tells me.

I no longer feel a strong desire to reach 50 feet, but I also see no reason not to dive. I take three yogic breaths, point my head and torso downward and slide into the depths. I kick gently from the hips, letting my fins do the work. On the bottom I find that calm place in my head, and I count.

When I reach 60 feet, Mr. Graham appears at my side. He flashes me the OK sign, forefinger and thumb forming a circle. I flash him my own OK, with a flourish of my wrist. I check my depth gauge: 59 feet. And I move toward the surface, slowing my ascent with a ballet kick. I am 50 years old, I think, and I have been to 50 feet without breathing.

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this article’s headline incorrectly included the phrase: Exploring the reef-filled waters off Honduras without an oxygen tank.

For an investment return that tops those offered by hedge funds, insurance firms or Wall Street banks, baby boomers should look to Social Security.

That’s right: The same math that is driving Social Security costs higher can provide fat returns for people approaching retirement. All you need is a way to make ends meet while delaying the start of Social Security benefits from age 62 to as late as 70.

Sure, those who defer will miss a bunch of checks in the early years—but then will lock in bigger payments for life. This trade-off can be calculated as an investment return, just like a bond yield.

I asked John Shoven, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and author of numerous books and studies on Social Security, to perform such an analysis. The numbers might come as a surprise.

Consider an unmarried man in average health, age 62—the youngest age for starting retirement benefits. His payoff for waiting until age 67 to collect is the equivalent of buying a long-term bond that pays 3.2% a year. For a woman, all else held equal, it’s a 4% yearly return, according to Mr. Shoven and his research partner, Sita Slavov at Occidental College.

Here’s the whopper: For married couples, if the higher-earning spouse delays payments from age 62 to 70, but at age 66 begins collecting spousal benefits from the lower-earner’s plan (as Social Security allows), the return is like owning a 7% bond.

Not just any bond, either. The fictional alternative would have to be government-guaranteed and provide periodic inflation adjustments. And the income would have to be tax-free for most recipients.

The closest real-world investments are Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS. They’re government-backed and inflation-adjusted, but they’re subject to federal (but not state and local) tax. Ten-year TIPS on Thursday paid minus-0.21%. That’s not a misprint; bond rates are so low that investors are paying to own TIPS just to get the inflation adjustment.

Put differently, a 7% annual return for delaying Social Security payments is for many investors better than a bank certificate of deposit that pays more than 10%, considering the inflation adjustment and tax advantages.

Social Security wasn’t designed to offer such generous terms to those who wait. Amendments in 1956 and 1961 gave participants a choice to collect benefits as early as 62 rather than wait until full retirement age, then 65. The formula determining payment size made collecting early as good a deal as waiting, says Gary Burtless, an economist and Social Security specialist with the Brookings Institution, a think tank.

Two things changed. Life expectancies have soared since the 1960s, while interest rates have collapsed. Insurance companies, which sell annuities that can turn savings into lifetime payments, monitor both factors to keep their terms competitive and profitable, says Robert Fishbein, vice president and corporate counsel at Prudential Financial

.

But for Social Security to adjust, Congress must act. The plan’s current math uses a return assumption that dates to 1983. It assumes investors can easily find risk-free investments that pay 2.9%—after inflation. As the aforementioned TIPS yields suggest, the actual rate now is below zero.

“We look at long-term averages, not short-term swings in interest rates,” says Stephen Goss, chief actuary at the Social Security Administration. The reward for delaying benefits might look generous next to today’s low rates, he says, but rates should eventually normalize to higher levels.

Some retirees find advice on when to start Social Security benefits confusing. That’s because even a ballpark calculation must consider not only factors like gender, marital status, income and health, but also long-term changes to life expectancies and short-term changes to interest rates.

For now, the deal remains sweet. The plan’s trustees say there is enough cash to pay full benefits through 2036 and three-quarters of benefits thereafter, and Mr. Goss says such deadlines historically have served as a call to action for Congress.

Members of both parties are considering legislation to rein in costs. “We clearly have to make changes to things like the retirement age to keep the program affordable,” says Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), the ranking member of the Finance Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy.

Future changes aside, with interest rates this low, delaying benefits is a good idea for just about anyone of average health. There are only a few exceptions, according to Mr. Shoven and Ms. Slavov. A single 62-year-old man of average health should delay until 69, not 70. Given his life expectancy, 69 is the age that maximizes his “net present value” of estimated payments, as a Wall Street analyst might say.

The lower earner in a two-earner household doesn’t get much benefit delaying past 66. Social Security also provides benefits to spouses, and in some cases participants can collect both regular and spousal benefits. Most eligible couples should start collecting spousal benefits at 66, according to Mr. Shoven and Ms. Slavov.

Most retirees miss out on the juicy returns for delaying benefits. The most popular age to begin collecting is 62. Many retirees simply need the money. But low-income workers approaching retirement should try especially hard to wait, even if it means working longer, says Prudential’s Mr. Fishbein, because this might be the best investment deal they’ll see.

The wild card is health. Retirees with life-shortening illnesses might be better off collecting early. Determining how each illness affects the equation is beyond the scope of this column, but Mr. Shoven offers a rule of thumb: “If you’re healthy enough to work at 62, you should probably wait as long as you can to collect.”

—Jack Hough is a columnist at SmartMoney.com. Email: jack.hough@dowjones.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The 10-year TIPS yield was minus-0.21% as of April 19. The figure was mistakenly given as 0.21% in an earlier version of this article.

A version of this article appeared April 21, 2012, on page B7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How to Beat Government Bonds—Using Social Security.

By BART ZIEGLER

Susan McWhinney for the Wall Street Journal

That’s me in my shade garden.

I’m starting to think that my yard and gardens are just too, well, ordinary.

Yes, I have way more shrubs and flower beds than normal people do but many of the plants I grow are run-of-the-Big-Box fare, things like daffodils and peonies and phlox. Unlike some expert gardeners I don’t have beds filled with exotic flora recently discovered by plant hunters in the Himalayas or the rain forests of Brazil.

Or maybe it’s all in my head and I’ve spent too much time lusting over the esoteric offerings in catalogs such as Plant Delights,
Heronswood, and Rare Find Nursery.

Tour the Garden

After all, after many seasons of futzing, I’m pretty pleased by how my enormous hillside shade garden has turned out—it’s at least 60 feet long and 15 feet deep. Yes, it is composed mainly of plants your grandparents may have grown: primroses and lady’s mantle, spiderworts and lungworts. (You’ve got to love those ancient names.) But I think I have found interesting ways to juxtapose and intermingle them. And I’ve looked for plants whose green leaves are spotted or outlined in yellow or white, which show up better in the shade. Long after these plants give up their flowers they still seem interesting.

On top of that I’ve gravitated toward variations in familiar plants. Though my shade garden has lots of standard bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) with green leaves and red, heart-shaped flowers, I also have planted a newer variety called Gold Heart that has yellow stems and leaves. I love how they jump out amid all the green, especially in early spring when they are their most yellow.

Though I have many green-leafed ferns I also have groupings of Japanese painted ferns (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum), whose brownish, spiky leaves are streaked with white. I also grow a silver-leafed version of the common green-leaf brunnera called Jack Frost, which is particularly amazing-looking when its bright blue flowers are blooming, and a variety of spiderwort (Tradescantia) called Sweet Kate, whose own blue flowers stand out against its unusual bright yellow leaves instead of the typical green ones.

My mission to make my yard more creative goes beyond the shady spots. Last fall I ripped out several dozen of the common pink-purple coneflowers called Echinacea purpurea from my full-sun beds. I was simply tired of looking at them—you see them growing in so many yards and at every garden center. Instead, I’ve been planting a newer variety called Sunrise that has soft yellow flowers, an unexpected color for this plant.

Recently, my friend Tom has been helping me expand my plant horizons. Tom runs a business that installs and maintains homeowners’ gardens. In his own yard he shuns the standard plants that many of his customers favor. Instead, he has filled it with dozens of curious things you’d never find at a Home Depot or even at many independent garden centers.

The other week Tom gave me samples of an ancient woodland plant called Korean Fairy Bells (Disporum flavum), which has odd-shaped drooping yellow flowers on its tall stems. He also shared his Iris cristata, a dwarf member of the iris family that lives in shady areas and has small blue flowers, and a type of hardy geranium called Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor,’ whose notched green leaves have big purple blotches. To make room in my hillside garden I removed some of the common lungworts (Pulmonaria), which have a habit of self-seeding everywhere. (One of the great things about longtime gardeners is their willingness to share, both out of friendship and the need to thin out their ever-expanding perennials.)

Of course, part of the reason that advanced gardeners avoid common plants and tackle more finicky or unusual ones is a bit of one-upmanship—and snobbery. After all, if your brown-thumb neighbor can readily grow the hardy stuff he or she finds at Lowe’s—impatiens, daylilies, black-eyed susans–then there isn’t much to recommend the hobby. And real gardeners certainly don’t want their flower beds to resemble what they see decorating the median strip outside gas stations and the lawns of nursing homes.

But the appeal of unfamiliar plants goes beyond avoiding what the Joneses do. Gardening can be a window into nature’s oddities, and a travelog in your backyard. You may never take a trip to rural Korea, but you can grow a strange-looking plant that came from there.

Write to Bart Ziegler at bart.ziegler@wsj.com