If I can watch TV while having dinner, and if I can walk listening to my iPod, then I can also answer a call or listen to my voicemails on my cell phone while driving without any problem.

That’s what many of us believe that we are very good at multitasking and we are capable of performing multiple demanding task simultaneously.

But it isn’t so, unfortunately.

A research team from Carnegie Mellon University found in their study that a simple task of listening to sentences while driving degrades the driving performance significantly and also decreases brain activity in key regions that control the driving task.

In their experiment, twenty nine participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they steered a virtual car in a driving simulator in single task condition. In dual task condition, while driving the virtual car they also had to listen to general knowledge sentences and answer true or false.

The simulated driving performance was evaluated in terms of road maintenance error (hitting a road barrier) and path maintenance error (deviating from the lane). The listening performance was evaluated in terms of accuracy (true/false) and response time.

What researchers found is quite interesting:

• The participants answered the listening comprehension with 92% accuracy level. This confirmed that they were paying attention to the sentences.
• There were significantly more road maintenance errors when the listening task was added to the driving task.
• There were larger deviations from the ideal lane when the listening task was added to the driving task.
• There was significant decrease in the activation of brain regions that control the driving task when listening was added to the driving task as compared to driving alone, though the language regions showed considerable increase in activation.
• There was no additional activation in the executive functioning regions when driving with listening as compared to driving alone. Generally, our executive functioning regions show increased activation when we do multi-tasking in the form of task-switching, such as, checking emails while writing a report and watching TV.

Thus, even though the driving and listening tasks draw resources from different non-overlapping regions of the brain, when performed concurrently the activity in the driving related regions is significantly decreased. So, does the brain divides its resources when performing two demanding, but moderately difficult, tasks concurrently?

According to the researchers,

We interpret this diversion of attention as reflecting a capacity limit on the amount of attention or resources that can be distributed across the two tasks. This capacity limit might be thought of as a biological constraint that limits the amount of systematic neural activity that can be distributed across parts of the cortex.

It is highly likely that other activities, such as, tuning radio, talking to fellow passenger, eating or drinking, can also degrade your driving performance though their impact has not been researched yet.

Just imagine if a simple task of listening sentences can degrade your driving performance, how adversely your driving will be affected if you talk/text on the cell phone while driving.

I wonder how the pilots manage the challenges in flight operations posed by multiple tasks that need to be performed simultaneously.

Also read:

• Just, M. A., Keller, T. A., & Cynkar, J. A. (2008). A decrease in brain activation associated with driving when listening to someone speak. Brain Research, 1205, 70-80.
• Learning and multitasking are not good friends

[image credit: Kyle May]

I thought that by telling myself to do this task, I will be motivated to act on it. However, this positive declarative thought process didn’t help to fulfill my commitment.

This happens many times in our daily lives. We commit ourselves to do a particular task and usually fail to do it. If we cannot keep our promise of ‘I will’ to ourselves, then how can we motivate ourselves towards a task at hand?

The answer lies in changing the ‘self-talk’ from declarative form to an interrogative form. Thus, instead of saying “I will”, ask yourself “Will I?”.

This concept of interrogative self-talk was recently investigated by a research team from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and published in a recent article. In their article, the authors say,

… the interrogative compared to the declarative form of introspective talk may elicit more intrinsically motivated reasons for action resulting in goal-directed behavior.

In their experiment, the fifty three participants were divided into two groups and were asked to solve ten anagrams in ten minutes. However, before solving the anagrams, one group was asked to think for a minute whether they would work on the anagrams – question thought; where as the other group was asked to think that they would work on the anagrams – assertion thought.

Any guess on the outcome of the experiment?

As it turned out that the group which asked themselves the question that whether they would work on anagrams solved significantly more anagrams than the group which asserted that they would work on the anagrams.

So, why the group that questioned itself on whether they would work on a task performed better than the group that was committed to the task?

The authors believe that self-posed questions about a future behavior motivate us to pursue the goal and perform the behavior.

I believe that such introspective self-talk evokes two types of emotions within ourselves that motivates us to perform the intended task:

• Willingness: When we question ourselves “Will I?” and then perform the task, somewhere in our mind we have reinforced the willingness to do that task. This willingness is a form of intrinsic motivation that leads us to engage in the particular activity.
• Challenge: In the question “Will I?”, there is another question hidden “Can I?” which challenges us. And when there is a challenge facing us, generally we work harder to win it. Note that the effect of the interrogative form of other verbs, i.e., can, should, is not investigated yet.

So whenever you feel less motivated to perform a particular task, take a minute and ask yourself, “Will I?”.

Also read:

• Seney, I., Albarracin, D., & Noguchi, K. (in press). Motivating Goal-Directed Behavior through Introspective Self-Talk: The Role of the Interrogative Form of Simple Future Tense. Psychological Science.
• Will I? : The Frontal Cortex

Lately, I have come to the conclusion that life is all about taking decisions and making choices. At each crossroad, we have to evaluate plus/minus, advantages/disadvantages, pros/cons, etc. and decide from the choices infront of us.

Being in a pseudo-creative profession, I have faced such situation quite a few times and every time I get perplexed by myriad of choices to start with. For example, when trying to solve a new problem, I tend to choose unfamiliar, complex, and fancy methods, as I like to learn new things. However, this has always proved to be detrimental to my productivity. It takes time, lot of time, to fully comprehend the output of the new fancy method for my specific problem. In the end, I have to revert back to the methods that I already know and improvise to meet the timeline.

So, one thing that I have learned through this process is that you have to start with something that you know already. Being in a familiar territory, you have more control on the output. Secondly, it forces you to be creative with what you already know, and to incrementally improve your skill set to solve the problem.

Most of us relate learning directly with teaching. What is being taught is being learned. What is being learned is being taught. When the goal is learning, the focus becomes teaching. That’s why wherever there is a need for learning, we setup infrastructure for teaching. But do learning and teaching hold such a straight-forward relationship?

There are many things that children learn that are not taught to them intentionally and many times we do wonder from where do they learn such things – good and bad. The answer is that they are learning it from us. Yes, we are teaching them without knowing. This is called unintentional teaching.

Children don’t need to be taught everything. They are very observant. They learn things just by watching too. If you say sorry without being apologetic, or say thank you without being grateful, children learn to say these things without feeling regret or gratitude. May be you wanted to set an example for them to learn good manners and didn’t intend them to see through you but they do and they learn what they see.

Unintentional teaching puts a lot of responsibility on us towards our own behavior and character. It requires a paradigm shift in your thinking – from personality ethic to character ethic as Stephen Covey says. It requires you to investigate your own character. You are a learner as well as a teacher for your whole life, irrespective of whether you intend to be or not.

So, what are children learning from you? Watch again: Children see. Children do.

Why do we believe that we can perform multiple tasks at the same time without any hindrance to learning? Does multitasking really exist? Is it really beneficial for students? Here is where most of the students go wrong. They don’t understand how exactly multitasking works in their brain, when to do it, when to avoid it and how to make the best use of it.

The illusion of simultaneousness in multitasking

Multitasking refers to simultaneous/concurrent processing of two or more tasks. Please take note of the word ‘simultaneous’ as it plays important role in our understanding of multitasking. Technically, ‘simultaneous’ means at the same instant of time. But now in context of multitasking, it is also used in short for ‘perceived simultaneousness’ or ‘illusion of simultaneousness’. Now you would ask, why? Because most of the time multitasking involves context switching, which means that only one task is performed at an instant of time but the tasks are constantly juggled/switched giving the illusion of simultaneousness.

So, how does it affect us?

Your brain cannot process two relatively different thoughts simultaneously. It makes heavy use of context switching between different thought processes. Surprised? But it’s true. Whenever your brain switches from one task to another, it saves the current state of the task so you can come back to it later (somewhat similar to ‘hibernation’ in Windows machines). So, in essence your brain is processing information in serial order and not in parallel fashion. These context switches are not free. They cost time and perhaps more. The time costs are directly related to your familiarity with the task. Thus, when you are doing complex unfamiliar tasks, you are actually taking more time to finish them by constantly switching between them than if you had done them sequentially.

Multitasking and learning

As we learned just now that the time costs for context switching increases with the complexity and unfamiliarity of the tasks, we can easily conclude that multitasking hinders learning. Why? Because learning involves delving into unfamiliar territories which is not favorable for context switching. So, it takes more time to finish the learning task. Secondly, the available ‘attention’ resource is limited at any instant of time. A learning task requires more attention and you might compromise its requirement if you are multitasking it with other tasks that compete for your attention. Even my computer hangs when I switch between different windows too fast. It needs some time in between not only to switch the context but also to come to a ready state. Similarly, your brain takes time to come to a ready state after context switching and if you switch too fast, you might not be able to concentrate on learning. Same goes for tasks that require creative thinking and imagination.

In my personal experience, multitasking leaves me unsatisfied with my work except when I am doing trivial or repetitive tasks and the goal is just to finish the tasks rather than learning something new. When the goal of a task includes learning, e.g., reviewing research papers for publications, I find it efficient to do the tasks one at a time. Serial execution also gives me satisfaction as I get enough time to absorb what I learned and to think about new ideas.

Multitasking and students

Two main aspects of multitasking are context-switching and attention resource. From what I have read, my conclusion is that multitasking, in general, should be avoided, especially by students. The goal of a student is not just to get things done but to learn new concepts and develop the thinking process. But while multitasking, different tasks compete for the limited resources in your brain and thus, there is no room for learning and thinking. Agreed that brains of younger people are better capable of switching contexts efficiently than those of grown-ups but too much of context switching is going to decrease your attention span and your ability to concentrate, in long terms. In habitual multitasking, your brain gets into a habit of being in hyperactive state whenever you take up a task to finish and it diminishes your ability to focus and concentrate on the task at hand.

If multitasking is inevitable, then it should be planned in a way that requires less context switching and makes best use of your available attention at the moment. Don’t ask me how. I am still trying to figure it out. Also, it is said that if the tasks are drawing resources from different parts of the brain then it doesn’t affect our performance. For example, I have experienced a few times that music helps me concentrate better. It might be because that particular music doesn’t require much of my conscious attention and that’s why context switching might not be happening, or it might be that I focussed my attention completely on the task at hand that I didn’t notice any phonetic distractions. I don’t know the answer but I am eager to find out.

Now, I have become more conscious of how I perform a task or multiple tasks. I first try to recognize the type of tasks I want to do. Do they require my full attention? Do they require me to concentrate and think? Are they trivial tasks? Are they familiar tasks? Are they repetitive tasks? Based on these questions, I decide whether I should perform more than one tasks at the same time or do them sequentially. Being a graduate student and having most of the ‘to-do’ tasks related to my research, the option that comes more often is sequential processing instead of multitasking.

Even if you are not a student, I would suggest you to check your multitasking habits and see if it helps or hinders your growth. As I have said earlier too, we are always learning and my experience says that multitasking hinders learning. In the end, it is upto you to decide if multitasking is for you or not.

Also read

1. Is multitasking more efficient?
2. The multitasking generation – Claudia Wallis
3. Multitasking wastes time and money – Megan Santosus
4. Multitasking makes us stupid – Kathy Sierra
5. How not to multitask – Leo Babauta

Fear

Yes, I do fear writing on some of the topics of my interest. Why? I am afraid of criticism. I am afraid to reveal myself to my readers. It feels like being naked in public. I am afraid that my blog won’t have any common theme other than the fact that I am writing it. But I am overcoming this fear gradually. Steve’s post on ‘the hidden inner life of existential depression’ made me realize my weakness. It takes courage to write on topics that reveal parts of you. I am sure he must have been criticized and ridiculed by some. But it helped me. It must have helped others. So, I am going to shed my fears and try to help others like Steve. See I am writing about my weaknesses in this post hoping that it’ll help you to shed some of your fears.

Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don’t want people to know. – Janet Flitch

Writing skills

Earlier I used to write drafts that I would delete eventually. I know I should have saved them if not post them but I couldn’t bring myself to hit the save button seeing the poor writing. Now I regret. I am still new in this writing arena. Also, I have not been an avid reader until recently. So, I never developed a good writing style. But I am trying. John at ‘Pick the Brain’ is one of my inspiration. His post on ‘how to attract an audience by writing with style’ provides useful suggestions for writers to improve. The process is slow but I believe I am improving.

Why bother?

It is difficult to realize that Educated Being is helping others unless someone communicates it to me. Sometimes I start writing and then just delete it thinking why bother, does it matters. Recently I received an email from one of the readers on how Educated Being has helped him, and how he wants to hear more from me. Another one asked for my permission to nominate it for best education blog at blogger’s choice awards (though I haven’t heard back from him yet). This surely flattered me but it also opened my eyes. I realized that there might be other Educated Being readers who enjoy my posts but just don’t communicate for some reason. Most of us are like that. I am no different. But I’ll change now. And I won’t let it bother me anymore. I’ll write.

Ph.D.

Well, this is just an excuse though I have to fight for time away from my research.

After writing all this I am contemplating if I should publish it, save it as a draft or delete it. After re-reading what I wrote I have decided to publish it. I am trying to walk the talk. So, here it goes.

In a recent issue of a popular technical magazine, there was an article on networking for about-to-graduate-students. In that article, the author gave some ‘practical’ tips on how to build your network of prospective employers by pretending that you are not a job-seeker, and asking ‘sincere’ questions to build credibility. One of the tips was to ask recruiters their advice on how to improve your resume. In a nutshell, the author was implying that the perception of genuineness matters more than genuineness itself. But as Penelope says,

When you need a job, you’re not networking, you’re calling in favors.

It is really painful to read such articles with ‘practical’ tips. Why are such authors teaching students to pretend and manipulate, when the students are actually looking for a job? Why editors are allowing such stuff for publication that misleads the students? Don’t they feel responsible to educate students to be honest and genuine, and build a strong foundation for young generation? Or is it just about getting from here to there by any means?

What concerns me most is that the people who have ‘authority’ to disseminate knowledge are not careful enough to understand how such advice affects the younger generation. If these so-called ‘educated’ people don’t realize it’s impact, they shouldn’t be given such authority. They are corrupting the youth, the future. They are planting seeds of insincerity and dishonesty, which will soon grow into trees of hypocrisy and corruption.

This is related to what Stephen R. Covey said about the shift from character ethics to personality ethics in his book. The new trend is to create a perception of genuineness for personal gains. Many individuals and business organizations are doing it. Yes, it works sometimes, but in the end we are corrupting our own society. We are weakening the foundation on which a civilization survives.

Once you manipulate and if it works, you are tempted to do it again. The effects of such manipulating behavior are so subtle on you that without you knowing, soon it becomes a habit. You start manipulating your boss, clients, family and friends to get what you want. It seeps into your character and soon a wall of pretension builds around you, eventually leaving you alone, desperate and unsatisfied.

So, I request you all fellow students to not fall for such cheap tactics which will harm you in the long run. You don’t need to manipulate to become successful. Let’s not kill ‘genuinity’.

Also read:

• Networking for People Who Hate Networking – Penelope Trunk
• I remove my masks today – Lerner Rokelle
• How to GET people to trust you – Lisa Haneberg

Promises may fit the friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies. – Benjamin Franklin

A promise gives other person a basis to expect something humanly tangible from you. He is then less worried about the uncertainties and this makes him at ease to some extent. But if you want to rise beyond expectations, over deliver.

Why to deliver more than promised?

1. For personal satisfaction: I try to keep promises I make. That makes me a responsible person. But there is nothing unpredictable in it. Fun is when I over-deliver and exceed the expectations. Whenever I deliver more than promised, I feel good for doing a quality job, and my confidence gets a boost. Moreover, my ‘extra’ efforts are recognized and appreciated by others.

2. To gain trust: Once people around you know that you put in extra efforts to deliver beyond expectations, they start trusting you. They will stick with you as long as possible since they know that at the least they are going to get what is promised. I am a vegetarian and I face problems when I go out to dine because of limited choices. But in a few restaurants, they understand my plight and offer me more options than stated on the menu. So, I visit those restaurants more often.

3. To take relationships to the next level: Delivering more than promised makes you extraordinary. You not only gain trust but also win a following. You create evangelists for your brand. Why people love Google, Firefox and Apple so much? Why their users become their marketers too? It is because they deliver more than what other search engines, internet browsers, and personal computers offer. The relationship between them and their users has advanced to the next level. Please find me a user who is not happy with them.

Have you ever under-promised and over-delivered? Do you put extra efforts to rise above expectations?

However, sometimes we are not able to keep our promises, even if we want to. After all we are humans. Things do go wrong and mistakes happen. It is important to remember that mistakes are allowed provided we accept and don’t repeat the same.

What to do if we could not keep our promise?

Instead of hiding, ignoring or lying about it, if we just communicate and accept it openly, we can still maintain the relationship and not lose the trust.

- Accept it. Tell the truth. Move on.

- Learn from your mistake or keep your mouth shut next time.

[Update]

Also Read:

• The brand formula – Seth Godin
• Ego – Seth Godin
• Who says we need our logo on every slide? – Garr Reynolds
• Overdeliver – Yuri Filimonov

Promise less, deliver more. That should be the mantra of life. I promised a lot in my Ph.D. proposal but I think I will not be able to deliver the same given that I have only couple of more months left to graduate.

So why don’t we promise less and deliver more? After all, people remember what you deliver (especially, if it is more than they expect) rather than what you promised (unless you don’t fulfill them).

What is a promise?

“an express[ed] assurance on which expectation is to be based” – Dictionary.com.

- A mission statement of a company is a promise they have made to their customers, e.g., Walt Disney – “To make people happy.”
- A thesis proposal is a promise you make to your area of research and your committee members.
- A job announcement is a promise to the future employee about work opportunities.
- A banknote is a promise to pay the bearer that amount of money.
- A political agenda is a promise by a politician or a political company to the people.

Promises are the keys to start and maintain a relationship.

How much you care about a relationship is measured by how much you deliver to fulfill your promises. Promises need not be big. You have started a relationship, even when you make a small promise. To maintain that relationship, all you have to do is to keep your small promise.

But still we see people making big promises and not delivering. It jeopardizes the relationship. Credibility and trust is put on stake.

Why do we promise more than can be delivered?

1. Short term gains

- Promises are made to gain approval, to impress, or to please (to win election, to get a grant, to close a deal).

2. Wrong notion of available resources (or capabilities)

- Promises are made without estimating how much and when they can be delivered (product release, project/thesis proposals).

3. Can’t say no

- Promises are made because we don’t know how to say ‘no’ in a ‘non-hurting’ way.

If promises are not fulfilled, employees move to other companies, new employees are hired and old ones are fired, new collaborations are made breaking the old ones, new friends are found replacing the old ones, new relationship is sought replacing the old one.

Promises are responsibilities you take upon yourself setting an expectation bar. If we are not careful with them, they can lead to a lot of stress and disappointments. Remember,

For every promise, there is price to pay – Jim Rohn

Have you promised more than you could deliver? What price did you pay for it?

Earlier I couldn’t understand why people, especially some of my friends, are not able to comprehend things that are simple and quite obvious in my understanding.

I believed that a person in any given situation would act/react based on logical thinking by default. But it doesn’t work exactly like that.

I believed in existence of common sense and it led me to confusion and frustration. But not any more.

I have learned that actions and reactions that are obvious to me are not necessarily obvious to others and vice-versa.

Every individual has different origin, experiences, and way of interpreting the situation. Based on which we feel that we have acquired the knowledge to act/react in a particular situation in the best possible way. In fact right now I am assuming that this is common sense by saying ‘we’ on your behalf. But of course, you might disagree with me. So it is not common sense.

Belief in existence of common sense doesn’t lead anywhere, definitely not to happiness. When we believe in common sense, we are disrespecting people who don’t ‘get it’ according to us. This is not a healthy attitude and eventually it leads to clashes in relationships.

Instead, now I believe in existence of responsibility. Responsibility to become a better person, an educated being. Responsibility to understand the world around us and our actions/reactions. Responsibility to respect others’ views and opinions. Responsibility to make relationships work.

I have stayed in many different cities over the years changing schools and making new friends every time I moved. Fortunately, I have been blessed with great friends everywhere. Like others, I have seen and experienced the making and breaking of relationships. A group of friends disintegrates on petty arguments while another sustains through disagreements. Common sense has no role in it. Obvious is not obvious. Each individual has to become responsible to maintain relationships.

I have come to the conclusion that only those relationships survive in which each individual takes responsibility to accommodate both differential and integral aspects of the relationship. Yes, you read it right – differential and integral aspects of a relationship.

You might be thinking that I have lost my mind to talk about mathematical concepts. Not exactly. Let me explain what I mean by the differential and integral aspects of a relationship.

In differential approach an individual takes responsibility to keep and develop his own identity, and pursue individual goals. It helps in preserving who you are as an individual. It is a must-have feature. Flexibility and freedom play important role in it.

Whereas in integral approach each individual takes responsibility to respect each others’ identity and invest in each others’ goals. This too is a must-have feature. It helps in preserving who you are together. Cooperation and compromise play important role in this.

(Sounds simple but there is more to it. I will save it for another post.)

The presence of both differential and integral aspects is important to make and maintain good relationships. In absence of the differential aspect, an individual might feel suffocated where as in absence of the integral aspect, one might feel alone and disconnected. In either case, the relationship disintegrates.

I am not a relationships expert. But I am learning. Even if there exists something like common sense, I prefer to believe in responsibility, responsibility to become an educated being.