thinking

Erik Tyler | August 13, 2015 | 4 Comments

How to Remember Things PART 4: Order – Erik Tyler

This is the final installment (for now) in our “How to Remember Things” series. If you’ve been keeping up along the way, I trust I have presented a compelling case for how valuable memory is to communication.

And if you’re just joining us, welcome! You may want to take the time to review the first three posts in the series, since they provide important foundational principles regarding how to remember things using the right (in both senses of the word) side of your brain, rather than the left. Here are the fast links to those earlier posts, for your convenience:

Part 1: How to Remember Tricky Spelling

Part 2: How to Remember Names and Faces

Part 3: How to Remember Facts and Vocabulary

Today, we’re going to learn how to remember information that must remain in a particular sequence in order to be valuable. In school, this took the form of remembering the presidents or the steps to solving long division problems. As adults, this becomes useful when you need a strategy for how to remember any new process at work. Leaders will also find it useful as a way to keep meeting or presentation points flowing without having to constantly refer to your notes (or lose your place in them).

Erik Tyler | August 6, 2015 | 8 Comments

How to Remember Things PART 3: Words and Facts – Erik Tyler

Everyone would like to have a stellar memory. In PART 1 of this series, I offered strategies on how to improve memory, focusing for that post on how to remember spelling of similar or unusual words. In PART 2 last week, we dove into how to improve memory for names and faces, building on the same foundational strategies from PART 1. If you haven’t yet read those posts, I believe that doing so now may be the best 10 or 15 minutes you invest today, since they will offer a framework for today’s tips.

In this post, I want to visually show you how to improve memory for words and facts. But before we do, I want to remind us all why memory is important to communication. Thursdays here are, after all, “Communication” days.

In my very first official post here, we explored exactly what communication is – a form of mind reading. Written and spoken words exist to allow us a means of transferring images and sensory information between minds. That is, I experience or think something that is clear to me; and language allows me to convey my experience to you.

An effective communicator must continually be adding tools in order to make sure that our message is sculpted like the David, and not merely passed off like a hunk of clay. In addition, those same tools allow us to be able to receive the mental masterpieces being put on display by other fine-tuned minds, through being able to fully envision what we see and hear. The tools we must continually be adding are new vocabulary, phrases, figurative expressions and world knowledge of facts among many others. The thing is, not everyone remembers things easily, so adding to your arsenal is slow going, a chore at best. [Read more…] about How to Remember Things PART 3: Words and Facts – Erik Tyler

Kirby Ingles | December 6, 2014 | 6 Comments

What No One Tells You About Boredom – Kirby Ingles

Have you ever felt an emotional flatness, where something grabs you involuntarily and you are not able to name the cause?

Boredom’s been scrutinized for quite a bit as a significant issue, although it is a widespread experience. Boredom is our bodies’ default mode and it is a wonderful thing to experience.

Automation has absorbed productivity.

Most work is not engaging us intellectually and anyone can do it. Repetitive tasks are avoided and outsourced as a direct result of boredom. This causes a destruction in the blue-collar community. The computerization and automation of labor has left a surplus of workers causing social issues. This change in work changes how boredom affects your life. Breakthrough technology makes allowances for the removal of burdensome work. Drones are replacing delivery carriers. The automation of production lines and distribution centers are eliminating the worker. These workers are left to their own devices in a competitive world.

Even the communication process has become affected by technology. Communication is meant to be an interactive connection between people. We are losing the fight on face-to-face interaction.

Technology has cleared the way for how we measure wealth.

I can remember when wealth was a measure of the leisure, pleasure and enjoyment a person experienced. Today the score consists of who dominates the market and who can cash in on every dollar. We no longer travel, learn and love, but have the need to get back to work and stop wasting time.

We cannot keep cranking up the speed of technology and information. Eventually it will block our ability to process information for the sake of fatigue. Our brains are able to handle information entering, but we have not been capable of filtering out the noise. Leading technology creates a poison better than a cure for the world’s problems. When you overload your brain it shuts down and you feel bored. The shutdown is a reaction to the fight or flight mechanism, the mind has gone into protective mode. We continuously stimulate our minds with information and never power off. White noise has become a necessity even while we sleep. The stimulation feels like a reward, but it is hijacking your brain like an illegal drug does. Each time you become bored, you feed your brain in an addictive way.

Boredom is a way of decelerating things, a coping mechanism.

Have you ever gotten bored of a smart phone, finding yourself mindlessly opening and closing applications without really accomplishing anything?

Checking your email but reading the same thing multiple times?

Boredom is a way towards stopping what you are doing, sizing up a situation, deciding what we want, and what to do next. It is a default mechanism to ensure we are investing in our desires and goals.

Today, boredom is when you are not stimulated by information. Your mind shuts down the flow of information entering. You feel guilty, idle and time moves slower. You feel like doing something, but are not sure where these feelings come from. We have become afraid of boredom and do what we can to avoid it. You feel secure when overbooked. Busyness makes you feel desired and valuable. I love being productive and I love automating systems. The goal is meant to enjoy what you already have, not to have more.

Wonder about this past holiday.

Were you bored?

Were you so busy that you felt run down, needing a day to recover?

I faced boredom, and I was capable of processing lots of things that I shelved for a long time. You just don’t have the brain power to process everything on the spot. Studies have illustrated that boredom can cause mind wandering, which can be advantageous in trouble shooting.