Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the tag “Habits and Routines”

26 Jul 2008
4 Comments

The Balance between Focus and Multi-tasking

Out of Focus by Billy Alexander

Out of Focus by Billy Alexander

I commented yesterday on the challenging tension between multi-tasking and focus on GTD Times. I referenced how I use Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow methodology (see blogroll) to enable as much focus as possible during day to day working.

What’s been nagging at me has been catalysed by my reading of Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind.  

In the book Guy argues that our ‘intelligent unconscious’ is a sophisticated nervous system that gets to know the world by the idiosyncrasies of our own experience: ‘a brain is plastic: it transmutes ignorance into competence….. categories and concepts are distilled from particular encounters so that, by a process of spontaneous analogy, ‘what I do next’ can be informed by records of ‘what happened before”.

It ‘registers its patterns and develops and coordinates skillful responses’

Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Business, Control, Focus, Habits and Routines, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , , ,
24 Jul 2008
1 Comment

The Psychology of Game Playing… continued

Kid's Game 5 by Adrian van Leen

Kid's Game 5 by Adrian van Leen

Further to a series of posts on game playing, it was great to be able to add to the different tools after reading a post on Mark Forster’s blog about Chaining.

Mark explains ‘There is a simple method called “Chaining” which can greatly increase your chances of success. It takes the form of competing against yourself to produce the longest chain of days in which you succeeded with your goal. 

For example, if your goal is to practise the piano daily you manage to carry this out for two weeks and then miss a day. You have made a chain of fourteen days. Now your aim is to beat your record of fourteen days.’

Great links on the comments, including one from Janine Adams to http://www.dontbreakthechain.com./

I’m still fascinated though why game playing is so effective in helping us change. Why is it so core? I thought about a number of different nature/ nurture sources, and will explore these further in weeks to come. Steve Nichols’ article on Game Psychology provides a fascinating primer before then.

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Game Playing, Habits and Routines, Learning, Mindfulness and tagged , , , ,
21 Jul 2008

Finally Fooled by Taleb’s Randomness?

Indicating my need to improve my reading speed, I have finally finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s excellent Fooled by Randomness. The string of posts on the impact that Fooled by Randomness has had on me as I have read it is linked here.

I leave the book definitely impacted, and – as I should be – with questions.

I need to percolate on thoughts over the next few days. I’m reading Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind to try and act as counterpoint to the thing that I think left me most concerned on leaving the book:

1. That emotions are hard-wired and cannot be changed: ‘the epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions’

– I need to dwell on whether my problem with this is that I consider NLP to be something which can at least ‘re-direct’ my emotions (if I identify emotions with ‘state’)

Read more…

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Habits and Routines, Learning, Mindfulness, NLP and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

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