Technology & the Ability to Focus

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There are two schools of thought on attention. The first argues that we haven’t lost our ability to focus, it has been wrested, even “stolen”, from us by technology. In this view we’re little more than lab rats lured by notifications and algorithms, pings and dings in a large-scale social experiment. We may develop strategies for resisting those dopamine dispensers, such as blocking software or switching to a “brick phone”. But the game is rigged against us.

Those in the second camp may scoff at this: they maintain that most of our struggles with focus are more to do with self-control. There is no notification that can distract us unless we are on some level willing to be distracted. Even the notion of a “shorter attention span” may provoke skepticism.

Instead, could it be that you’re just not that motivated? Whichever worldview you subscribe to – that our attention has been hijacked by our devices, or by our lack of self-discipline – they share an element of fatalism: there is either little you can do, or you’re just not doing enough. 

Elle Hunt writing in The Guardian

Our Brains Trick Us

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The futures we imagine contain some details that our brains invented and lack some details that our brains ignored. The problem is that our brains fill in and leave out. God help us if they didn’t.

No, the problem is that they do this so well that we aren’t aware it is happening. As such, we tend to accept the brain’s products uncritically and expect the future to unfold with the details—and with only the details—that the brain has imagined. One of imagination’s shortcomings, then, is that it takes liberties without telling us it has done so.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

15 Data Science Articles from Jan 2023

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Bosses: Don’t be Jerks

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After decades of being bossed, and 16 years of bossing, I’ve developed a prime directive for bosses which will probably not be taught at Harvard Business School: Don’t be a jerk. Organizations need hierarchies and leadership, so yes, you get to call some shots. You can be tough and demanding. But remember that your authority over other human beings is an artificial construct. You are not better than the people working for you. Fire people if you must, but humiliate no one. Be kind. Granted, many bosses don’t operate this way, and I can understand why women in positions of power want the right to be as obnoxious and tyrannical as their male counterparts. But wouldn’t it be better still if no boss could get away with acting like a jerk?

William Falk writing in The Week Magazine

Imagination inflation can lead to false memories

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Imagination inflation refers to the tendency of people who, when asked to imagine an event vividly, will sometimes begin to believe, when asked about it later, that the event actually occurred. Adults who were asked "Did you ever break a window with your hand?" were more likely on a later life inventory to report that they believe this event occurred during their lifetimes. It seems that asking the question led them to imagine the event, and the act of having imagined it had the effect, later, of making them more likely to think it had occurred (relative to other group answer the question not having previously imagined it occurring).

Accounts that sound familiar can create the feeling of knowing and be mistaken for true. This is one reason that political or advertising claims that are not factual but are repeated can gain traction with the public, particularly if they have emotional resonance. Something you once heard that you hear again later carries a warmth of familiarity that can be mistaken for memory, a shred of something you once knew and cannot quite place but are inclined to believe. In the world propaganda, this is called "the big lie" technique—even a big lie told repeatedly can come to be accepted as truth.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Great Leaders vs Managers

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Great leaders aren't always the most likable people. In the long run, great leaders recognize that their job is to get people to do things they might not want to do, in order to achieve goals they want to achieve.  Contrast that with "mere managers," who either want to be liked or try to convince themselves that they don't care. Great leaders know that cordiality is necessary, but also that they might sometimes have to sacrifice short-term likability in favor of long-term respect. 

Bill Murphy Jr. writing in the Understandably newsletter

By Our Love

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In a 2021 sermon, controversial pastor Matt Chandler called leaving the faith “some sexy thing to do.” He denounced the process of critiquing one’s childhood faith, saying, “If you ever experienced the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, actually, that’s really impossible to deconstruct from. But if Christianity is just a moral compass, I totally get it.” 

Ultimately, Chandler and those who follow his teachings are wrong: Christianity isn’t losing followers because leaving is “some sexy thing to do.” It comes down to how people are being treated, specifically marginalized communities.

Brandon Flanery writing in Baptist News

When we use depression as an excuse

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We often use depression as an excuse for not doing something we don’t want to do or afraid to do. When someone suggests that we go ahead and do whatever we are trying to avoid, we usually agree and say, “I think you’re right, but I’m just to upset right now to do it.” For example, your company is downsizing and you lose a good job through no fault of your own. You tell me what happened and how depressed you are. I try not to pay much attention to your depressing. Instead, I say, “I know it’s hard, but don’t sit around; get out your resume.”

But you are depressing for a good reason. You have just been laid off and feel rejected, even though it was not your fault. You are afraid of another rejection, of facing the fact that there may be no good jobs for you at your age and with your experience. As painful as depressing is, it’s less painful at this time than looking for job and getting rejected again and again.

William Glasser, Choice Theory

A Digital Generation Gap

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An international 2018 study that measured eighth-graders’ “capacities to use information and computer technologies productively” proclaimed that just 2 percent of Gen Z had achieved the highest “digital native” tier of computer literacy. “Our students are in deep trouble,” one educator wrote. But the issue is likely not that modern students are learning fewer digital skills, but rather that they’re learning different ones. 

Nicolás Guarín-Zapata, an applied physicist and lecturer at Colombia’s Universidad EAFIT, for all his knowledge of directory structure, doesn’t understand Instagram nearly as well as his students do, despite having had an account for a year. He’s had students try to explain the app in detail, but “I still can’t figure it out,” he complains. “They use a computer one way, and we use a computer another way,” Guarin-Zapata emphasizes.  

Monica Chin writing for The Verge

Deadlines & Productivity

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People like to say if it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done. But research shows people’s productivity is not linear. When people sit down to do a task, they’ll put in a lot of effort initially. At some point there’s going to be diminishing returns on extra effort. To optimise productivity, you need to maximise benefits and minimise costs and find that inflection point, which is where you should start to wrap up. 

Elizabeth Tenney, University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business quoted in a BBC article

Deepfakes Flourish

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Deepfake technology — software that allows people to swap faces, voices and other characteristics to create digital forgeries — has been used in recent years to make a synthetic substitute of Elon Musk that shilled a cryptocurrency scam, to digitally “undress”more than 100,000 women on Telegram and to steal millions of dollars from companies by mimicking their executives’ voices on the phone.

In most of the world, the authorities can’t do much about it. Even as the software grows more sophisticated and accessible, few laws exist to manage its spread.

Read more about Deep Fakes in the New York Times

10 Seconds

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Image: EmmY AWARDS VIDEO

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Will you just take, along with me, 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are?  Those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life.

(Ten seconds of silence)

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, how pleased they must be to know the difference you feel they’ve made.

Fred Rogers (of Mister Rogers Neighborhood), Academy Award Acceptance Speech

Switching Strategies

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Parents need a veritable smorgasbord of strategies to raise their children, everything from tough discipline and strict boundaries to treating kids to ice cream and a day off. Knowing when to use which one is a sign of healthy flexibility. The same goes for leaders at work, who might want to change the way they manage their employees when the company is going through a season of stress.   

Kira M. Newman writing for Greater Good Magazine