A Tortoise Enclosure

John Cleese talks about creating an enclosure, a safe space where it is safe for the tortoise – our creative mind – to come out of its shell without its head being knocked by a passing object. An oasis in which we can be creative – free from interruptions and distractions (like the constant drip of incoming emails and other interruptions):

“You have to create boundaries of space, and you have to create boundaries of time.”

Boundaries, and the space that results from them, are essential. For me, that means taking a walk out of the office – either in my local woods, or wherever I can get away to. For others, that might be closing the office door or putting in ear phones and playing music.

After space, the other dimension is time. Creating time boundaries, a defined starting time and a stopping time, is actually great for productivity and creativity. After a brief twitter exchange with Amanda Rose (organising the Twestival for charity:water) and Bastian Lehmann  I realised I haven’t specifically blogged about time boxing (although it is the idea behind “…see what you can do in an hour“). Setting aside a fixed chunk of time enables you to focus on getting something done.

Learning New Things

The talk touches on learning, and that is really my subject here. John says:

“To know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as are required to be good at something.”

He then states that in reverse: if you are not good at something, you lack the skills to know that you are. A much better way of stating something I often have to tackle: We don’t know what we don’t know.

“Most people who have no idea what they are doing, have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they are doing.” John Cleese.

The Science of Lifelong Learning

Behind his usual dry humour, he is making a very serious statement. Learning, life long learning, is an essential skill. We need to be like tortoises, not like hares, when it comes to our education. I was brought up in a generation where we hared our way through school, and for the privileged few, university. A learning sprint, then work. The pace of change in society and business, and the speed at which new knowledge is being created, means that is no longer sufficient. Learning must now be a life long process. Like the tortoise, we need to plod on, in a steady and sustainable way. As John Cleese says, again with his unique humour:

“I try, today, to learn something new. Each day I want to learn something new – because I am very, very old… and I’ll be dead soon. So, I want to be as well informed as I can possibly be, when I die.”

Part of what drove me to start Redcatco was the concept of build learning organisations empowered by technology . Disparate communities linked by what is often called collaboration or social software today.

Businesses need to be places where people learn new things everyday. The only sustainable way for that to happen is as a result of people gaining knowledge from each other by sharing it. Those learners then build on that knowledge and share it in turn. That process is at the heart of innovation and development, from design and marketing to effective sales. I believe that learning best takes place in a social context (and Bandura and a number of other Psychologists would tend to agree).

This week I attended a panel at the RSA on the subject of life long learning, looking at what new research, especially in neuroscience, can tell us. There are lots of questions: What is the scope for lifelong learning, and what are the best methods to support it? We live in an ageing society, where people are staying in the work force for longer and longer periods of time. Can we still learn, even when we are old? Is the explosion in brain training (from 10 minute newspaper mental workouts to Kawashima’s brain training game) based on good science?

The speakers included Andrew Pollard, ESRC Institute of Education; Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL; Paul Howard-Jones, University of Bristol; Usha Goswami, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge; Matthew Taylor (Chief Executive of the RSA); and was chaired by Tom Schuller, Director of IFLL -  the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning. The session was recorded – will be on the RSA website in due course. You can read Matthew Taylor’s blog post on the evening too. 

From my own investigations of brain plasticity (the ability of the brain to adapt and change), I know that understanding has changed dramatically in the last few years. Developments like Project Prakash (which restores sight to people who with life-long blindness) has shown that our brains can learn and relearn significantly later into life than previously thought. 

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, UCL institute of cognitive neuroscience, asked if it was meaningful or helpful to reduce accounts of educational events to neural level. All the current “brain training products” are sold with the promise, but there have been no randomised, controlled trials on most of them. She talked about an article from Weisberg et al, “The Seductive Allure of Cognitive Neuroscience“, from 2008 which shows an interesting psychological phenomenon: we are suckers for pseudo science. We fall victim to specious explanations. Adding “brain words” into a bad explanation made people believe it more. Sarah-Jayne finished her talk with a slide of images of developing brains. While scientists used to think brain development stopped early in life, scans show that the brain actually continues to develop for decades. 

Andrew Pollard argued from a very  different perspective, saying that we need to acknowledge the place of biography and identity in the learning process. It can’t just be studied at the neurological level, although such study does help – a point that all the other speakers seemed to agree with.

Matthew Taylor hypothesised that neuroscience will make a huge difference to our lives. The only threat is that there is too much hype around neuroscience. By the way, the same could be said for social media and Web 2.0 as well. What are the things that give us a desire to learn? “Collaboration and the use of technology are the meta-learning skills that will be critical to life long learning.” We can learn from arcade games. If we get up to 85% we are motivated to try again. How many people in schools are at that point? We need to keep ourselves at the point where we are doing well, but know we could do a bit better. Then we are motivated to try.

Usha Goswami, centre for neuroscience, University of Cambridge (who specialises in developmental dyslexia) talked about the developmental origins of flourishing. It is a well know list, including warm, responsive, contingent care and a family embedded in social network. I think that actually extends out to businesses that want to be learning organisations. They need to be supportive environments, with good networks into a broad community that can support their learning.

New research will and should be more interested in the emotional self regulation system. Early capability makes later learning more efficient. So  enhancing early capability at the outset of learning also increases the complexity of what can be learned. Small differences in perceptual systems can make big differences in the developmental trajectory. Think about a ship going off course. 1 degree off course, caught early, makes little difference. If it isn’t caught for a long time, you are miles from where you need to be. Early intervention is important – something else that extends out to be a business truth as well.

The interventions which promote cognitive reserve and resilience education might surprise you. It is a case of use it or loose it, another reason that we should be lifelong learners like John Cleese – learn something new everyday. Another very significant factor is physical exercise. Yes, you heard it. Before you go chasing after those cognitive enhancing drugs, get out for a walk or a run. Neurocognitive activation or cognitive training may be useful (i.e. brain games), but it really remains to be determined. What is known is that poor nutrition and poor quality of sleep can impair cognitive function. So, if you want to learn well, eat well and rest well too.

Paul Howard-Jones,  University of Bristol,  asked if brain training can help. There is research to show that practice on a cognitive function can improve that cognitive function, the bigger question is does that generalize out to other activities. Does your executive team being great at Sudoku mean that you are going to be better at strategic planning? The ACTIVE Study (Willis et al., 2006) showed some improvement in  ”fluid intelligence.” That is a good indicator of how well you will do academically.  Jaeggi’s results showed that some training improved working memory and fluid intelligence, so there is the possibility to produce brain training products that do work, but products on the market today have insufficient published evidence. Again, Paul noted that exercise helps with learning, academic achievements and motivation. Psychology is the link between neuroscience and education.

The Q&A was lively, with Peter Cook asking about “learning, unlearning and relearning” for businesses – something institutions like banks are going to have to do quite a bit of after recent events. One point that came up is that if you believe that there are hard neurological limits, you are actually less likely to reach them. Disposition and agency (believing in and taking responsibility) are critical learning factors. Likewise, learning is better when there are discussed objectives and clarity.

The word education literally means to bring on, in the sense of “to bring out” or “lead on”. It is something that we can continue to experience, and to expect for others, for the duration of our working lives, at the very least.

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I was bowled over by the tenacity of my fellow learners. People who had been studying towards their degree for years, on top of their day jobs. People who were still 5-7 years away from getting their professional qualifications (which involve a PhD and chartering for some). This was a group of people who are committed to learning. There again, tenacity is at the very heart of the Open University.

The roots of the OU go back to the 1920′s, when educationalist J C Stobart envisaged a ‘wireless university’. Those words mean something different today – it sounds more like someone using a wifi enabled laptop in the back garden to do literature searches. However, back then it meant using the cutting edge technology of the day to create an open learning platform.

It look a few more decades for the OU to be born, predominantly driven by the tenacity of Jennie Lee (you can read the full story on the OU site). It’s that tenacity again. Today the OU continues a tradition of technology-mediated learning, using social software tools to connect students and tutors to form a gigantic learning organisation. It is the largest Moodle deployment in the world (Moodle is an on-line social-learning platform – think of a blogging, forum and content management system on steroids).

Non-technology industries work on different timescales. A couple of decades working in the technology industry has twisted me into believing that 2 years as a long-time, and 3-5 years is a time window beyond which predicting change is futile. Technology means that software and hardware develop rapidly, driving quick changes. Building institutions and companies takes longer. Much longer. When was the last time you took on a 10 year project? It takes tenacious long-term goals.

The long-term path of the start ups, now grown ups, I have worked with has been relatively predictable. Likewise, the major technology trends of the last few years have been too. Yes, 20-20 hindsight does make predictions simpler, but technology has strong homeostatic tendencies. After all, it is driven by people and people change slowly, if at all. Today, people drive (or hold back) technology, rather than the other way around.

The emerging web-browser and cloud computing model isn’t that different from my early experiences of computing with dumb terminals and mainframe computers. What is new this time around is a greater emphasis on people-centric design. The nature of application and systems design is being changed by rafts of new technologists with user experience qualifications (many of whom studied the same Psychological theories I was wrapped up in last week).

The area of science that I am most interested in doesn’t really exist yet, but it will, because it must. How does all of this technology change the way that we work? How can we build companies that make better use of technology, and technology that makes better use of people? We can’t do all of our learning at school or university anymore. Successful businesses and people will have to make continuous learning part of their very being, just to keep up.

There is still a long way to go in all of these things. It involves big goals. But tenacious long-term goals have always been how big things get done.

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My memory has improved since I started using GTD to keep my head clear. If you are using GTD, you’re not using your memory for trivia anymore, so it must be storing important things! That is a good reason to get better at using it and understanding how memory works will do that. Did you know you can improve your memory?

It is OK to forget

It is actually good that we don’t remember everything. Exceptional memory can be a problem. Imagine if you recalled everything, all at once, all of the time. It would be completely distracting, making it hard to focus on the moment or to step back and look at the bigger picture. You would be overwhelmed by memories.

You see, it is actually OK that we forget some things. The important thing is that we can recall the things that we do need to recall. That is all we need to achieve with our memory.

You might have heard that there are three types of memory. An immediate, sensory memory, which is very fleeting. A short term memory, which deals in seconds or tens of seconds. It remembers things just long enough for you to dial that phone number, or to do the next action. Finally, there is long term memory.

When things make it to long term memory, we can pretty much remember them for life – with a bit of practice. That is the magic place for remembering things.

Remember, it is all part of the process

The process of remembering things is clearly key. It turns out that there are three parts to this as well.

Firstly, there is what is termed encoding. It sounds a bit technical, but it is basically the process by which your brain sorts and processes things, and links them to other memories, ready to put them inside your brain. This is the second piece, storing things. Then the third piece, of course, is actually remembering it or recalling.

There are different ways of getting things back from memory. There is recognition, the way that we recognise someone’s face when we see it. It is quite easy isn’t it? It is intuitive, because we are better at it. That is what is so easy about multiple choice questions. We only have to recognise the answers, rather than recalling them.

Recalling is the important bit for your productivity. That is when you have to go inside your brain and find the piece of information you want, digging it out. The discrepancy between recognition and recall tells us that there is more stuck in our head than we can normal get out.

Getting better at remembering (recall)

There are two things we can do to improve the situation. The first is to work on putting things into our head, the encoding. The trick here is to work at it. The short cut to success is hard work, right?

If I give you a phone number, you will probably have forgotten it in a few seconds. However, if you start to think about the number more deeply, to engage with it, it enhances the encoding process and helps get into your long term memory. Is the phone number like somebody else’s? Are there patterns in the number? What are they? Any rhymes or rhythm?

Break the number down into chunks and see if you can visualise those chunks in your mind. Make the image vivid and colourful, perhaps use animals or objects related to things about the number to make the shape of the digits (there is a great trick for this in an old post about memory on litemind). Think deeply about the number and try and make some logical sense of it.

Getting the information linked to things we already know, and thinking about it at different levels, improves recollection. If you are trying to remember information from a textbook, write the information out in your own words. This puts the information through more of your brain, engaging at a higher level than just reciting it.

You’ll remember I said there are three parts to memory function. We can’t do much about the middle bit, storage, our brain just does that. However, the last bit we can also perform some magic on: recalling.

Get to the right place to remember

Godden and Baddeley (1975) performed an experiement which used two groups of people. One half stayed on the beach (sounds good to me), the other half went 15 foot underwater.

Both groups had to memorize information. The groups then split again, with half the people from underwater going to the beach, and half of the beach people going underwater. Who remembered things the best? It was the people who were in the same place they were before. Recalling the information in the place they learnt it was more important than the effect of being underwater. Now, before you rush off to try and revise for your next exam in the actual exam hall, we can approach this another way.

It is a state of mind

One of the tricks about recall, and this is a wonderful technical word, is ‘salient cues’. It essential means that if there is something relevant to a memory, based on how we encoded it, it will help cue (or trigger) that memory.

If you are stuck trying to recall something, rather than focussing on that thing, think about where you were when you learnt it or any related facts you are able to bring to mind. Anything at all related, even what you were concious of when you learnt it. What was the emotion? Was there a particular smell or location? Were there any other things you can bring to mind?

Try ‘walking backwards’ through time. Remember how you lost your keys; you mentally retraced your steps and then you suddenly remembered where you put them. It works. Look for associations, anything related to the memory. If you learnt it when you were 15 feet under water, go back under water! In fact, if you learnt something after a little alcohol, you’ll remember it better after a little alcohol. The reverse is also true, but you’ve probably figured that out already,

You see, we can greatly improve our memory, just by working at the way we put things into it, and the way we fetch things from it. No there’s something to remember.

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iPods and GTD

I’ve been using my iPod as a universal capture device (see here), but I miss being able to capture things visually as well as in audio. The iPhone hits the UK shortly, so may be I’ll be able to join Steve’s experiment in due course. Whatever workflow you create for getting things done, it does need to be efficient, but also functional for your style and needs. The challenges for me are that I work across multiple locations and countries, and other people need access to my system. I am attracted by the idea of web-based systems, but connectivity in the UK isn’t ubiquitous enough to depend on them yet.

Talking to yourself

Personal productivity is about our ability to communicate with ourselves. This might sound odd, but think it through for a moment. Task lists, reminders and diaries are all ways that we send messages to ourselves. In order to do that well, it is important to understand your communication style, just as with it is in communicating with others. There three main styles:

• Auditory:linear - tend to love lists and to work sequentially. Like to hear things.
• Visual:spacial - think in pictures and in a non-linear way. Like to see things.
• Kinesthetic:tactile - a rarer style. Like to feel, or experience, things.

What type are you?

You will probably do best with a capture device that fits your style. Visual people will love Steve’s camera method. Auditory people may prefer the voice memo method, or a written list. Kinesthetic folks, I’ll still thinking on what the ideal system for you might be. I suspect a pen and pad would work well. Let me know!

Discover which communication style works best for you and use that to communicate with yourself and see how it boosts your productivity. If you are enthusiastic about your organizational system, you are more likely to use it and much more likely to get results from it.

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