Reality Upgrade

I have not tried this yet, but only because I have not had to study for anything in a while. However, with school starting around the country, this may be very useful to some of you.

This is a great article on how your brain works, and how to take advantage of it in order to study more effectively, especially when it comes to studying information gathered from the internet.

Thanks to Lifehacker for turning me on to this article!

If any of you end up using these techniques, please comment and share how they worked for you!

Self control. We exhibit self control all the time, in all sorts of ways.

When I sit down to watch a movie, I really enjoy eating a bowl of ice cream while I watch, even though I know how bad it is for me. Sometimes I know I should go to bed and get some sleep, but I stay up watching TV instead. And sometimes, I just want some french fries.

What is interesting is when I am able to resist the temptation, and when I give in. When I have a long exhausting day at the office, chances are I am going to be busting out the ice cream scoop when I get home. On the other hand, if I have a nice easy day at work, I might cut up an apple instead, or skip the movie completely and go running.

As it turns out, the reason I fail to resist temptations sometimes is because I have used up my self control, or will power.

There have been many studies done on this subject, but in this particular study test subjects are given two plates, one with radishes and one with chocolate chip cookies. One group of subjects is told to eat only the radishes, and solve a complicated (and unsolvable) puzzle. Another group was told to eat the cookies, and solve the puzzle.

On average, it took the cookie-eaters 19 minutes to give up, and it took the radish eaters 8 minutes.

This is because the radish-eaters were using up their willpower on resisting the cookies, and therefor had less to spend on trying to solve the puzzle.

By remembering that willpower/self control is a limited commodity, it is possible to make decisions about where to spend it. If you have a big test tomorrow, maybe tonight you should let the house cleaning go. If you don’t want to drink too much at a party, maybe you should not go window shopping before hand. And whatever you do, don’t go car shopping if you have used up any of your willpower at all.

On the other hand, willpower can be trained, just like muscles.

The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

- NY Times

So start with small changes, something as small as brushing your teeth with your opposite hand, and slowly build up to bigger challenges, and your willpower will increase over all.

I have talked about this before, here, and mentioned another article about it from the NY Times.

You stay up late the night of the release. You go to the 12:01 showing. You meet your friends the next day to brag about how amazing the movie was, and one of them says “How about that scene after the credits? Amazing, right?”

D’oh.

Some movies have amazing epiloges after the credits. Some have funny pictures, or interesting things during the credits. And some have nothing.

And the only way to find out is to sit through ten minutes of a black screen with writing on it, while the house lights come up and everyone else leaves.

Until now. (continue reading…)

You have 8 seconds. No, I’m not kidding.

Continuous Attention Span

The average continuous attention span on an adult human is 8 seconds. This is how long a human can focus on an object without any lapse at all. After this amount of time, it is likely that an individual’s eyes will shift focus, or that a stray thought will briefly enter consciousness.

This means that you have 8 seconds, and only 8, to get across your brand message.

That does not mean you have to give an entire presentation on what you do in 8 seconds, but your brand message - the “Just Do It” - has to fit there. Any longer, and something else will distract the audience from your message. After all, how effective would “Just Do - huh, how’d that bug get in here - It” be?

General Attention Span

The average attention span of an adult human is about 20 minutes - this is how long a person can stay concentrated on one general thing without needing a break or some kind. That means that if you are making any kind of presentation, you must keep it to under 20 minutes, or your audience will stop paying attention, without even noticing that it is happening.

You can get around this time limit by giving the audience “breaks”, but in general your should keep it to under 20 minutes. Anything you really need to say, you can say in that amount of time.

And in the spirit of keeping it short, see you next week.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

Step 3 - Keep it simple

Step 4 - Keep repeating it