Another thing lost in the mindless haste of the modern world is time to reach a proper understanding before taking action

In all the topics discussed on the subject of making our world a better place, one that rarely occurs is time: the necessity of giving yourself time to allow change and development to take place. Time is an essential component in any change involving human beings. Despite all the rush in today’s world, and the constant demands for the gratification of desires now, almost any progress people make in their lives takes far longer than they typically allow for.

One of the worst aspects of modern life is the constant hurry. Not only does it create stress and tension, it goes a long way to making people seem dumber than they are. If you want to get your brain going, slow down and give it some time and space to work.

Time to consider the facts fully

The first requirement is time to explore, to inquire into the facts, to think, to reflect and to internalize fresh ideas. Everyone has the experience of thinking they know something, only to find they’ve forgotten it after a few days. Our brains are not like bags we can stuff with facts and ideas and expect them to stay there. They’re more like boxes full of holes that let a great portion of whatever we put inside escape quickly. New thinking is “liquid” and easily runs out through the holes. Only by repeating the learning and thinking experience several times can we make what we are trying to remember “sticky” enough to stay behind. Continued

Why do we get so hung up about consistency?

The US presidential campaign has thrown our obsession with consistency into sharp relief. Over and over again, the words ‘flip-flopping’ are brought into play as a form of attack. Past speeches and writings are combed for supposed — or even real — inconsistencies with what is being said today. Once found, these changes of opinion are waved over the candidate’s head like weapons. “Look, he once said this and now he’s saying this. He’s flip-flopping!”

If you stop to consider this, free from the synthetic excitement the media try to whip up, the only thing worth wondering about is the extent to which people’s opinions fail to change — even over long periods.

Times change. Contexts change. We learn new things, find new possibilities, ought to forget old grudges and hurts. Why shouldn’t our opinions change in line with the new realities?

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
~William Blake

Continued

Why the pundits are so often wrong

One of the more annoying aspects of modern life is the way we are subjected to the constant prognostications of various forecasters: the so-called experts who tell us what is going to happen — to the economy, in politics, in the world of technology, in fashion, and, it seems, just about anywhere else.

You can’t get away from these irritating nuisances. Turn on a news program on the television and you hear more about what is going to happen that what has just come about. The newspapers are the same: endless forecasts and speculations displace real news, let alone reasoned comment designed to help the reader understand the implications of current events.

That’s I applauded this brief article by Matthew Parris in the London Times newspaper (“The trick: forecast what happened yesterday”). As he says, “I suspect that economic forecasting owes more to a mirror held up to yesterday than a crystal ball held up for tomorrow. ” Continued

Too much safety may be bad for you

Human beings have an odd tendency to evaluate risk as much by whether they feel safe before they start as by the inherent nature of the risk, or the chances that something will go wrong. We evaluate risk intuitively, and intuition is often a poor guide in this area.

That’s the conclusion of research by Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book “Government Failure versus Market Failure,” as reported in The Washington Post (“Taking More Risks Because You Feel Safe”).

“The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse.”

“There is a tendency for people to say, ‘If things are safer, then I will take more risk,’ ” he added. “It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, ‘Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.’”

Continued

Try using this proactive tool for making better decisions

One of the worst aspects of the modern world is the way that speed rules people’s lives. Sometimes it seems that doing something quickly is seen as more important than doing it right. And nowhere is this tendency more common — and more dangerous — that when it comes to making up your mind about someone or something.

We’re also encouraged to accept superficial news measured in sound bites, accept the word of spin doctors as essentially true, jump to emotional conclusions rather that wait until feelings subside and reason re-asserts itself, and assume that there is a single, one-size-fits-all, ‘true’ answer to everything.

That’s why it’s important to train yourself to open your mind and see all those aspects of a situation that you miss by rushing — or which other, highly interested parties want you to overlook, so your decision works in their interests. Continued

Scott Berkun says it’s the easiest way

Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen says that the most common bottleneck to progress in the middle ranks of corporate America is too many people in the room — especially too many people with the power to veto progress.

He writes:

In these recessionary times it might seem cruel to bring this up, but if the goal is to be more creative, or to up the odds new ideas become products, the easiest move is is to get people out of the room. Either take away their power, or get them off the team, but reduce the number of people in rooms where decisions are being made.

I have to say I think he’s right. Few, if any, major breakthroughs, now or in the past, come from committees or teams. Nearly all are the product of creative individuals, who often had to fight tremendous odds to be heard at all in committee-mad corporations. Continued

Maybe high expectations aren’t quite as positive as you thought

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has a piece in TIME magazine’s ‘Work in Progress’ blog that throws an odd sidelight on what it may really mean to approach your work in a positive frame of mind (”Positive thinking leads to…job dissatisfaction?“).

She cites a forthcoming research study by Dr. Olivia O’Neill, assistant professor of management the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, showing that: employees “higher in positive affect had higher salary expectations, and changed organizations more frequently, which leads to lower overall job, career, and life satisfaction.”

If I’ve got that right, she’s saying people who have a positive outlook on life expect more from their work than they get. As a result, they end up with worse careers and lower levels of satisfaction with their life. Whew! That seems like a good reason to be miserable. Continued

We’re always being told people resist and dislike change. Not so. What they hate is stupid, pointless changes that produce nothing useful.

Change has become a constant mantra. We’re always being told that “change is inevitable” or “change is necessary” and that “without change, there is only decay.” All true — up to a point. You would think people would have got used to change by now. Besides, there’s little doubt that some kinds of change are welcomed. Look at the thousands of people turning out for rallies in the American presidential election, excited and energized by the prospect of significant changes after eight years of President Bush.

So why is it also a truism that much change is resisted, whether it’s change at work, change in social attitudes, or personal changes affecting how we live?

The Financial Times tackles the topic in an article called “Change we can believe in”. As you would expect, their emphasis is on changes in the workplace, but you can easily apply the same principles to any other type of change that threatens to effect groups and individuals. Continued

Not only do set targets rarely prove useful, they can sometimes make things worse

Corporations and governments love setting targets. It gives them the illusion of being in control and allows them to tell the world how tough and businesslike they are acting — never mind that such targets can cause more problems than they cure.

That’s why this piece from The Guardian’s ‘Comment in free’ section in Great Britain caught my eye (“Crunch time for numbers”). The subhead says it all: “Government targets don’t work - and the decision of four police forces to dispense with them is a brave and significant step.”

The arguments against targets are now pretty familiar — the weaker pupils who lose out to those who might be coaxed over the line, the trains that set off happily without their passengers to avoid being late, the hospital bugs (the waiting lists are down, but one in 10 hospital patients now face real harm). . .

      Small changes in definition also have dramatic effects. Bag-snatching used to be defined as lost property until the 1930s, minor vandalism became defined as criminal only in 1977 - doubling the vandalism rate overnight, and fueling some of the angst about rising crime that followed.

Continued

I guess most of us have become used to the constant efforts by the media to induce mass hysteria over some minor topic. I had come to think of it as little more than marketing, on the basis that disaster stories always sell better than good news. Then I found this article by Robert Skidelsky and realized that such apocalyptic thinking has a very long history (“The apocalyptic mind”).

He says that, “classical apocalyptic thinking is certainly alive and well, especially in America, where it feeds on Protestant fundamentalism, and is mass-marketed with all the resources of modern media.” Even scientists are not immune, expressing probabilities as certainties and attacking dissent as some sort of heresy. Continued