Every November Pip Coburn and his co-workers instigate a gathering in Manhattan that brings about a hundred and fifty people together. I've been going for a long time and have met a few wonderful people. If you look at backgrounds, I'm sort of an outlier. On the other hand, from my perspective most everyone else is an outlier, so it's a good time to listen.
This year I had a time constraint and, other than giving a talk, was only able to attend a few sessions. One on creativity, another on the future of food and finally a chat with a group of articulate high school students. Three of the students - all seniors - hung around after my talk (self driving vehicles). That conversation triggered this post.
I mumbled something about techno-solutionism and cloudy crystal balls and turned the table to ask them a few questions - something like: "tell me about screen use, face to face interactions, time management and our plans for the future". It's much more interesting to sit back an listen rather than to lead them towards your preconceived ideas. The sample was tiny and non-representative - I'm guessing all were from affluent families. But it's always interesting to ask questions.
They place great value on face to face time with their friends, but find it hard to come by as all of them are heavily scheduled. Two of them said they hang around school for about an hour - their best time of the week. All of them were stressing on getting into the "right" colleges and all were worried about picking the "right" career paths. Two were very worried about pleasing their parents. None seemed to be worried about the cost of their education, but worried about what jobs in the future would pay. One had an interest in the arts, but thought she couldn't take that path. To them college was training for work. Finally all of them talked about multitasking and told me how good they were at it compared to their parents and teachers.
None of these comments were surprising, but hearing them in person brought me back to issues all of us deal with. Time management for example. A few people are self-driven. They prioritize and make time often making sacrifices along the way. Again nothing new, but it's nice to see clear articulations by people who are good at it. I told them to check out a post by Sarah Pavan. Sarah is a world class professional beach and indoor volleyball player - perhaps the only one who does both sports at such a high level. Growing up she studied the piano and was a biochem major with a 4.0 average in college along with being one of the standout student-athletes in the country (she's Canadian, but went to college in the US). Her recommendations are straight-forward and solid. Although they're aimed at student-athletes, anyone can use them. They aren't easy to follow, but that kind of focus is necessary if you intend on excelling in many paths. Recommended!
I'm concerned about external over-scheduling. I'm a great believer in more unsupervised time that allows kids to find and explore their passions. I did that as a kid and had time management problems with my normal high school work. I made some choices and fortunately my parents went along with them. I wonder if I would survived in the current environment and, if I did, what I'd be doing.
There were some threads I would have loved to have followed more deeply. How they found information and vetted it seemed shallow. That may be an artifact of the change that is currently taking place. And then the comment on multi-tasking...
Our brains do an enormous amount of multitasking, but almost all of it isn't available to our conscious mind. A large amount of research suggests it is difficult/impossible for us to do true conscious multi-tasking. Instead we context switch,. You're thinking about something and someone walks in talking to you. You park the state of what you were thinking about and focus on your visitor. When they leave you have to move out what you were talking about and recreate as much of the original thought process as you can. And that's a simple linear case. It turns out context-switching/multitasking isn't very efficient.
People can train themselves to context switch more efficiently, but it turns out it's not close to the efficiency of finishing a task and moving on to the next. Some of the most efficient thinking - though associated with Csikszentmihalyian flow (I love that word:-) - effectively blocks other conscious thoughts from taking center court.
A conjecture is people who have trained themselves to multi-task are better suited to complex situations where many shards of shallow thought are the norm. That would be very interesting.
We're always rewiring some of our brain - an enormous amount when we're babies and toddlers and massive chunks extending up until our late teens. Learning second and third languages changes your brain structure. The same with learning music and playing a sport seriously. Some of these may turn out to be useful outside of their domain. A high percentage of scientists were serious about music as kids. I wonder if Sarah's brilliance on the volleyball court and in biochemistry were aided by music?
So the question: Is high screen usage doing it's own wiring and is that orthogonal to some skills? The first part of the question is clear - yes it does. The second part is under serious study now and we won't know much for some time.1 We're living in a huge experiment. We've been through similar experiments in the past, but this one is massive by comparison. Will work change to match newer wiring? Will it have to? Stay tuned...
It seems like the wrong place to stop, so on to something a bit more up-lifting. I mentioned a session on creativity. It seems I'm approaching it wrong. On the other hand what I do works for me. I'm approximately curious and manage my time in such a way that I have the time and space to light the fuse and hang on. A lot of work is involved, but it really doesn't seem like work I'm better at it now than when I was in my teens and twenties - much better. I've been lucky enough to work in places and situations that don't penalize my rather lumpy productivity. One of my main goals is finding questions I hadn't imagined. Answers are just stepping stones,.
It turns out being very curious is a good way to keep your brain flexible and "plastic." As you acquire new areas they begin to connect up in ways you hadn't imagined. Old thoughts even from high school come back with a new freshness and it's just exciting even if most of it seems to be impractical at the time.2
Anyone can do it. As you get older a new type of connection emerges. Part of the wiring of nerve cells is surrounded by myelin - an insulating layer. As you age the myelin sheath breaks down a bit effectively slowing down communication. While that sounds unfortunate, the upside is it allows for easier communication between some parts of the brain that normally don't link.
We like to think of neural paths as highways between regions of the brain. Highly creative thought at any age is different. It's slower and tends to meander here and there making curious connections and ideas come together. It can be very slow and insight can come at the most unexpected times. It'd take too long to describe it, but some neurologists refer to transient hypofrontality being a mechanism associated with creativity. It's accessible with practice and may be aided with age.
There's a down side. A couple of you have had to take me by the arm when we're walking engaged in joint thinking. I'm not very good at knowing where I am when I'm thinking. Having to save me from traffic is a good sign you're engaging my mind.
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1There are too many other explanations, but anecdotally young people taking their PhDs in the physical sciences in the past two years show extremely social media usages.
2 There are several types of creativity - I separate perceptual curiosity and epistemic curiosity ... they're so different that it is probably a mistake giving both of them the label 'curiosity'. It's probably worth a post some day. For what it's worth I value and am driven by epistemic curiosity.
One of the time management issues I constantly fight is the balance between driven focus and novel connections. You need both.
I *love* your curiosity. It always leaves my head spinning! You should write more about the different kinds.
Can you say something simple about curved space?
Posted by: Jheri | 11/22/2017 at 08:59 AM