The Three Brain Virtues

Benjamin Franklin: A balding ape.

As I mentioned last time, I've been reading the incredibly engaging and inspiring biography of Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson - "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life".  In the context of this blog's founding concept of self-improvement via self-awareness, I took note of Franklin's famous "virtues" and related tracking system that he devised to improve in each area.  Of course, I am hardly the first person to be drawn to Franklin's virtues: there is an entire website dedicated to virtue tracking for the sake of Pete!

Despite the worn ground around the thirteen virtues of Franklin, as a self-satisfied brain philosopher, I can't help but take a crack at my own set or cognitive/neuro-science inspired set of virtues.  Before doing so, however, here are Franklin's virtues, as reported by the Wikipedia article describing Franklin's life:

1. "Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
2. "Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
3. "Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."
4. "Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."
5. "Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."
6. "Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions."
7. "Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
8. "Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
9. "Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
10. "Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
11. "Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable."
12. "Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation."
13. "Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

Upon review of these virtues, I can't help but notice that successful practice of each relies on a central capacity for impulse control.  I've pontificated on this concept to nausea and beyond, but the fact remains that implementing the virtues requires the ability to have an impulse to do something but also having the cognitive self-control necessary to quash that impulse and redirect attention to a more "virtuous" activity.

So, I draft my own virtues with an eye toward the "fundamental" cognitive characteristics that would support any other set of virtues, Franklin's or otherwise.  I like to think that these are somehow the foundation for doing anything based on a plan rather than based on a whim:

1. Self-awareness - the ability to think about your own thoughts, to analyze those thoughts, and to compare how you are thinking to the way you would rather be thinking.

2. Focus - the ability to attend to something of choice and hold attention despite distractions.  The ability to maintain a line of thought.

3. Resilience - the ability to try again even when you fail.  The ability to get back on the horse.

And...  That's it!  Wait, what?  How can that be it?  When I think about virtues, they have to be very personal and specific things.  We all put value on different ways of living.  However, to actually stick to any set of resolved virtues takes a short list of cognitive skills, and I think that list is simply: metacognition, focus, and resilience.

Why?  Because a virtue is like walking on a tightrope.  First, you need to know if you're even on the tightrope or on the ground.  You need to also know if you're on the right tightrope, or if you even want to walk any tight rope.  This set of decisions require metacognitive self-awareness: we need to recognize our own thinking and behaviors and be able to compare these to some alternative.

Second, you need to stay focused while on the tightrope.  Eyes on the rope, careful foot placement, move, stay centered, etc.  If you're mind is frequently wandering to topics like monkey poop, then you'll be falling off the rope a lot.  The same goes for a virtue: we need to focus on the task of being virtuous without letting distraction or temptation creep in.

Lastly, you need to get back on the rope!  Tightrope walking is hard, as is sticking to any goal of personal change.  You will fail.  Again.  And again.  We all do.  If you're committed to being a good tightrope walker, you're going to have to get used to the idea of falling and getting back on the rope.

I'm convinced.  If you're not, let me know in the comments or with an email.  I look forward to convincing you that these are the "simple" characteristics we all need to do anything we need to do, virtuous or otherwise.  I'm definitely right on this one....  

The Mental Reboot Script

Time to reboot.

There's no way around it - the grind has been grinding you down.  You're tired, you're stressed, your motivation is low.  Sometimes life can be really tough and, lately, life has been really tough.

But bad times ebb and flow, come and go.  Sometimes things are tough, other times things are great.  Perhaps the tough times seem to happen more than the good times, but it's hard to know for sure.  When you're stressed it's difficult to keep perspective.

Situations can change though, and situations change faster if you make an effort to move forward, to make progress.  Who cares if you only make a little change today for the better?  At least it's a step in the right direction.  One small change to make life better is all you need to feel some hope.  Who knows?  Maybe this is the beginning of a period of incredible success.  Until you get started, you'll never know.

So get focused.  Don't let all the nagging stressors creep into your mind all at once.  You can only do one thing at a time.  Just pick something to do that would make a difference in your life and start working on it.  Pick something small, manageable and doable and just get it done.  No more worrying about picking the perfect thing to do, just trust your instincts and make progress.  Block out all other intruding worries and attack that one thing that will make you feel the most accomplished.

Oh, and please? Give yourself a break when you're done?  In order to make real, lasting progress you're going to want to stick to your goals.  Most things that need to be done take some time to happen, so let's not burn out.  After a full day of focused effort, you deserve to relax, rest and recover.  Your brain is an organ and a day of hard work is like a mental workout: you need some recovery time to be ready for the next day.

And while we're on the topic, don't lose sight of all the good stuff you have going on.  There are things that bring you joy even if they are little, simple things like McDonald's breakfast sandwiches.  Look around and remind yourself about a few things that make life fun and enjoyable.

Feeling better?  Good.  But, don't beat yourself up about getting down in the dumps from time to time.  It happens to everyone.  The important thing is to keep an eye on those nasty thoughts and be sure to reboot when things get out of hand.

7 Free Guided Relaxation Sessions

Just relax.

When work and life stress increases, I tend to get into a state of feeling like I always have to be "on".  It's at these times, when things get really complicated, that I find it hard to know when it's O.K. to relax, unwind and let go of all the worries.

When I'm "on", the last thing I can do is relax.  I'm just too jacked up on an adrenaline-laced need to get shit done that when I sit down and try to unwind, I end up getting more frustrated because I just can't come down.  More frustration and I'm even less likely to relax: the stress goes through the roof.

For me, I've found that relying on guided meditations increases the likelihood that I'll be able to relax successfully, because it takes the pressure off of me to think about how to relax: someone has done all the work for me.  I highly recommend using guided relaxation sessions, especially when you're really having a hard time calming down.

I've personally listened to the following free, guided meditations and can vouch for the quality.  I also selected the following because they promote many of the concepts outlined in The Relaxation Response, a classic in the science of relaxation, especially passiveness and a focus on breathing.

Try them out!  I always feel so relaxed after doing any of these.  Hopefully you'll find they work for you.

From Diana Winston of the UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center:
1. 19 minutes - Mindful meditation with instructions
2. 12 minutes - Body, breath and sound mindfulness
3. 7 minutes - Meditation for working with difficulties
4. 10 minutes - Empathy and compassion

From Duke University's Student Health Resources:
1. 19 minutes - Progressive deep muscle relaxation
2. 20 minutes - Basic meditation exercise
3. 10 minutes - Quick, relaxing meditation

Missing gorillas. What?

What gorilla?

Back in my younger days, as an impressionable undergraduate, I was exposed to a now-famous experiment in attention.  Sitting in a lecture hall at Yale University, my Introduction to Cognitive Science professor, Brian Scholl, played the class this video.  Watch the video, do the task, then read on.

The task was simple.  Watch the ball, count the passes.  Don't be distracted by the players in the black uniforms, watch the players in the white uniforms. And, like most of my fellow over-achievers at Yale, I wanted to do this right.  So, I got really focused and did the task.

The task ended, and the results were summarized.  Thankfully, I thought, I did it right - I counted the correct number of passes for the white team.  Hooray!  However, the video soon prompted: "But, did you see the gorilla?" An audible murmur vibrated from the audience: a group equivalent of "WTF"?  Soon, the murmur was followed by gasps and giggles as the video was replayed in slow motion.  There, walking right through the scene, was some dude in a gorilla suit.  Almost everybody in the audience had missed him.

Oh, that gorilla.

In the video, the task was clearly defined: count the passes for the white team.  And, for that task, I did very well - a perfect score.  However, in life, our tasks are usually less well-defined.  In life, picking up new information, being observant and open-minded, is just as valuable as extreme focus.  This relates back to my recent thesis regarding attention: for some tasks, we need to be very focused; but for others, we need to be open-minded.  In other words, if we reframe the task of the video above to "be observant", then I failed miserably.

What does this mean at a practical level?  My interpretation is that we must consciously select a level of intensity for our focus depending on the task.  In addition, since life's challenges are often so poorly defined, we must be sure to get into an open-minded state from time-to-time.  Otherwise, we might miss a gorilla.

Fruit Ninja and flavors of focus

Slice that bananna!

Recently, my wife and I have been obsessed with the game Fruit Ninja.  And, having been simultaneously obsessed with the idea of focus and obtaining metacognitive control over my intensity of focus, I couldn't help but start to analyze Fruit Ninja as a tool for fine-tuning my already ninja-like ability to focus.  Let me explain. (Also, I'm not getting paid to write this, I just like Fruit Ninja).

For those of you who don't know, Fruit Ninja is a game that originally became popular on the iphone and has since expanded to the Android platform, the iPad and (I think) to an online game.

The game is simple, grasshopper.  But not easy.  The goal is to slice up fruit by swiping your finger across the screen of your touchscreen device.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is that, in addition to fruit, there are bombs that fly into the scene and occlude your target fruit.  Hitting the bombs earns a point penalty in some versions of the game, and in other versions of the game can lead to instant failure. Check out some video footage.

What does this silly game have to do with flavors of focus?  Well, cynical adult, the game offers three "modes" of play: classic, arcade, and zen.  Ooooh, zen!

Just one more game, please?

Each mode places different cognitive demands on the player.  In classic, the number of fruit slowly increases over time and if you miss three fruit in total, your game ends.  In addition, hitting a bomb results in instant failure.  For these reasons, classic mode require intense focus and precision.

On again, off again

Smug monkey?

I've been all meta-focused: you know, focused on focusing?  And, I've come up with a little hypothesis.  Specifically, if I want to be as awesome as possible at my job, focus isn't just a matter of more is better.  Oh no, no, no, web-buddy. The name of the game is to attain an intensity of focus that is just right for the task: the Goldilocks Zone.... I couldn't come up with a better name.

I mean, sometimes we want to be a laser: when we're doing fine-motor work, or reading, for example.  During these activities, we want to pay some serious attention, because a wandering mind is a liability.  I've already talked about my experience with a wandering mind during fine-motor work, but I think more of us can relate to the effects of a wandering mind when we're reading: that sort of weird, absent-minded state where we "read" a whole lot of material, and then realize that we actually processed zero information.  I've had a similar thing happen to me when I'm driving where I won't remember much of the drive... What is up with that?!

However, at other times, we want our minds to wander.  A wandering mind is the kindling of the creative process.  (Nice metaphor, huh?) When we're trying to deal with complex decisions, or come up with new and inspired ideas, it's time to get our day-dream on.  It's in this state-of-mind where we incorporate all information at our disposal and we stumble on new ways of thinking about big-picture stuff.

Flexibility of focus: what and how much?

Multitasking?

Attention deficit: another modern malady of excess.  Too much food, and we became larger.  A surfeit of sitting, and we grew softer.  Now, with the information revolution, we wrestle with an excess of ideas, and we grow distracted.

Recently, science has begun to unearth the pitfalls of poor focus.  In one study, researchers at Stanford examined the cognitive consequences of multitasking and found that the chronically distracted lost the ability to control attention.  Cognitive performance suffered as a result.  Gross.

But regulating our attention is more interesting, and complicated, than focusing on one task at a time.  Yes, we must choose where to place our attention. However, we must also decide how much to focus.

A recent article in the Journal of Neuroscience, emphasizes the importance of intensity of attention as it relates to cognitive performance.  In this fascinating study, the authors rely on recordings from a group of neurons in the monkey brain that correlate with attention: the more neurons firing in this brain region, the more focused the monkey.  Intriguingly, the authors found that as the focus of the monkeys increased, so did performance on a visual discrimination task... To a point.  Surprisingly, when the monkeys were most focused, they often performed poorly when the task demanded recognition of large changes.  In these cases, focused monkeys were very good at detecting minute changes, yet large visual changes resulted in more errors for dialed-in monkeys.  Did the monkeys miss the forest for the trees?

Good hands and the Goldilocks zone

Stay focused.

As an amateur molecular biologist, I often wrestle with lapses of concentration.  This can be linked, I speculate, to the simultaneous terror and boredom that molecular work entails.

Picture this: six, clear tubes, labelled in a simple code that belies the complexity of the underlying experiment.  I add liquid, typically clear with no discernible color, hue or other distinguishing features that might signal that this is anything more than water.

I set a timer.  Ten minutes of incubation at room temperature.  I place the tubes in a centrifuge and spin, 15,000 cycles per minute.  I wait fifteen minutes more, remove some clear liquid and add more, but a different kind.  I repeat each step six times, one for each tube.

In between actions, I change the tip of my pipetman - the device that allows microliter control over the liquid added to the evolving biochemical reaction.  Change tip, add liquid, next tube. Repeat.

During these day-long exercises in repetition, I've experienced some failures.  These mistakes fall into one of two broad categories: external or internal.  In the external class, I become distracted by something happening outside my head.  A conversation between colleagues or a conversation I've started.  When these conversations reach some mystical level of distraction, I will realize in a moment of panic that I've skipped a critical step.  Or, I've lost track of the tubes.  Or, I've lost count.  Failure.

Sixty Days of Cognitive Fitness

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Normally, when I hear "mental fitness" I think word-puzzles, sudoku, and sequences of numbers. Basically, I think about the SAT and my homunculus gets a little queasy.

Homunky loves metacognition!

However, life is more complicated than word games. I have to motivate myself, interact with people, process new information, and stay calm enough so my friends and family don't disown me.  Instead, I need skills for dealing with life: mental toughness, optimism, self-awareness, self-control, people-skills and more. I need some metacognition up in here.

Distraction-Free Zone

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Yesterday, we decided it would be prudent to physically extract ourselves from the distractions that tempt us to procrastinate.  But why should we move in order to focus?  Why can't our desks be a bastion of serenity?  An oasis of peace?  An island of focus?  A tree of... OK, that's enough.

In case you need some scientist to tell you that a clean and organized workspace helps you focus, then here you go: a study.  And those aren't any scientists, they're from Princeton so it has to be awesome science...  I don't mean to brag, but I've actually met some people who went to Princeton, so I must be awesome by association, right?  I digress.

The bottom line is that the more stuff you have in front of your eyes, the more time it will take to process any one piece of information. Thus, reducing stuff in your face will free brain-juice to focus on other, more important stuff.  So, clean up your desk.

Distraction-Free Zone

Task: Clean up your desk.

Info: How you get organized is up to you, but I recommend to go through everything piled on your desk and be ruthless about throwing things in the garbage.  More and more I realize that I don't need to save that much stuff to get the job done.  I have been a neat-freak before about filing everything in a super-duper system.  But, I soon realized that I rarely open most files.  So, if you're on the fence about anything... Repeat after me: "in da' trash."

Goal: Enjoy 1 hour of productivity on your newly cleaned desk.

Please don't argue with me that your messy desk is some expression of your individuality.  I don't care what your homunculus says.  Are you a rebellious 13 year-old again?  If you want to express yourself, get organized, get focused, and get a ton of incredible work done.  Rock on!