Comprendre mon cerveau: un pas de plus [fr]

[en] One step further in understanding my flaky brain (which is much-less-flaky as of late). Our brain puts ressources where our motivation and intention is. If I'm super involved in an online community, that's where my energy will go, rather than on cooking. When we feel sucked into Facebook or incapable of focusing anymore, well, it's because we like candy.

Vous savez que ça fait un moment que mon cerveau me préoccupe. J’ai passé une année avec assez peu de “temps de repos” pour mon cerveau, et je me demandais si le foisonnement d’activités avec lesquelles je jonglais pouvait expliquer oublis, zappings, et autres difficultés à me concentrer. Etais-je en train de devenir sénile à 40 ans, de perdre la boule? Est-ce que Facebook, Google Hangouts et Ingress m’avaient grillé les neurones?

J’avais gentiment pris les décisions suivantes:

  • j’allais faire un effort conscient pour prendre des temps morts (ne pas être tout le temps en train d’écouter un truc ou de pianoter sur mon téléphone durant mes trajets et activités quotidiennes)
  • idem pour être moins “éparpillée” en travaillant, faire des efforts de concentration et ne pas passer d’un onglet à l’autre toutes les dix secondes, ou ne pas vérifier mon téléphone quand je lis un livre ou regarde un film (plus de “monotâche”)
  • mettre plus de “conscience” dans mes actes: par exemple, allumer une plaque en prenant note que j’allais devoir l’éteindre, ou faire un effort “d’impression mentale” quand je dis que je vais faire quelque chose

Avec les semaines et les mois qui passaient, j’ai senti un retour à la normale. Ouf, je n’étais pas en train de devenir sénile, et mes neurones n’étaient pas irrémédiablement grillés!

Cygne

Ma conclusion à ce stade était que, en effet, “trop” d’activités dans tous les sens avait eu un effet délétère sur ma façon de fonctionner. Mais j’ai aujourd’hui révisé cette conclusion — je ne crois pas qu’elle était tout à fait correcte.

Deux éléments ont fait évoluer ma réflexion:

  1. La lecture d’un article expliquant (neurosciences) que se plaindre à répétition crée des connexions qui facilitent par la suite la “génération” d’idées négatives. C’est très logique, en fait, on met en place par nos actions et mouvements de pensée des connexions neurales qui rendent plus facile la répétition de ces mêmes mouvements.
    Et je connais bien ce phénomène dans sa version positive, que je pratique sous forme de l’exercice des “trois bonnes choses” quotidiennes. On peut entrainer son cerveau à être plus optimiste/positif, comme on peut l’entraîner à être négatif. J’avais d’ailleurs rencontré cette idée pour la première fois il y a plus de 15 ans maintenant, en lisant le livre “L’intelligence émotionnelle” — quand on est dans un certain état émotionnel, on va naturellement chercher autour de soi ce qui le confirme et l’entretient.
  2. A l’occasion d’une journée pédagogique où j’étais invitée à intervenir, j’ai eu la chance de parler un peu avec le pédopsychiatre Philippe Stephan, qui venait de donner une excellente et très instructive conférence sur le cerveau des adolescents, et ce que son développement nous apprenait par rapport à la relation des ados au monde numérique.
    On parlait du “non-danger” des écrans (le problème est l’absence de limites plutôt que l’écran lui-même — un défaut de cadre plus qu’une activité néfaste), et je faisais part tout de même de mes doutes, me basant sur ma propre expérience récente et des articles comme celui-ci, qui semblaient mettre en rapport temps d’écran et troubles d’attention chez les enfants. Je ne sais plus exactement comment il a formulé ça, mais j’ai retenu l’idée suivante: c’est une question d’investissement/de motivation plus que, de nouveau, la nature de l’activité.
    Si je suis très investie dans ma “vie Facebook”, par exemple, ou ma “vie Ingress”, mon cerveau va “délaisser” en quelque sorte les autres pans de ma vie. On met l’énergie là où “c’est important”, du point de vue de notre motivation. Et là où c’est délicat, c’est que Facebook et cie sont faits pour nous plaire et nous stimuler.

Pour moi ça fait complètement sens. Si on passe beaucoup de temps à faire quelque chose, qu’on y est investi émotionnellement, qu’on a envie de le faire, c’est là que va aller notre attention. On peut bien sûr se remettre sur le droit chemin à coup d’astuces comportementaux, ou aussi simplement en mettant de l’énergie à autre chose (ce qui revient probablement au même). Ça explique aussi pourquoi un changement de rythme de vie (vacances, chalet) nous permet souvent de prendre du recul ou de “décrocher”: on se réinvestit dans d’autres choses.

(En relisant ce que j’ai écrit en conclusion, je me demande s’il n’y a pas un petit bout qui m’échappe encore, parce que ça me paraît un peu “plat” comme conclusion en comparaison avec la “grande illumination cérébrale” que j’ai eue pendant la discussion.)

Writing: Desired Distraction [en]

[fr] Quand j'écris, j'ai besoin de m'interrompre, écrire un bout, repartir, revenir... De temps en temps je suis "avalée" par le processus d'écriture pendant un bon bout de temps, mais la plupart du temps le processus est bien plus fragmenté. Dès que les mots cessent de couler de mon clavier, je file vite quelques minutes faire autre chose. Je pense que mon cerveau travaille en tâche de fond pour préparer ce que je vais dire ensuite.

A topic I’m very sensitive to is multi-tasking. I stand somewhere in between the multitasking fanatics and those who point to it as the worst evil computers have brought us.

I’m very much aware of the benefits of the flow state, and how interruptions (what multitasking is all about) jerk you out of it. I’m convinced, though, that smooth and steady multitasking can in itself be an activity which can bring about a flow state (guess this would have to be demonstrated).

There are a certain number of things I have done to decrease interruptions in my daily activities: turn off e-mail (and other) notifications to almost nothing, put GMail in a different application than my browser, for example.

One activity during which I realised that I actively multitasked is when I’m writing. I write a bit, chat a bit, write a bit, fool around on the web a bit, write a bit, e-mail a bit… Every now and again I get sucked up and write-write-write, diving deep into it and coming out an hour later, but most of the time my writing process is more fragmented.

I realized that my brain needs the “off-time” between spurts of writing. Probably while I’m chatting or looking at my e-mail, my brain is preparing what I’ll write next in the background. When the words stop flowing to my fingers, I don’t stop and think hard to try to figure out what to say. I head out and come back a few minutes later. Sometimes I do this two or three times before I actually start writing again.

Basically, being distracted (or distracting myself) helps me write.

Brain Space [en]

[fr] Mon amie Steph a utilisé hier au téléphone l'expression "brain space" pour exprimer qu'une tâche était peut-être minime mais qu'elle occupait beaucoup de place dans son esprit (dans le genre envahissante). Je cherche une bonne expression en français, mais j'échoue: "espace mental", peut-être?

Yesterday, I was having a lovely “catch up” phone call with my good friend Stephanie Troeth. At one point, she mentioned something that wasn’t a huge project but it “took up brain space”.

I thought, “Brain space! What a great expression!”

Of course, it’s about stress, attention, you name it — but I think that “brain space” is a really good way to express what it feels like.

Regularly, I’m asked to do a small thing (or worse, I volunteer) and it ends up eating at my ability to focus on something else. It’s on the “stress-list”. It’s the thing I’m asked to do but I’m not really supposed to be doing, so I have to use up energy to explain that to the client. It’s the thing that seemed simple initially but ends up having an emotional charge that is more important than expected. It can even be my taxes, which I put off doing each year until it’s really really late (think October or even November, people).

David Allen’s Getting Things Done method also recognizes that each “thing you have to do” eats a certain amount of storage space, irrespectively of how large the thing actually is. Hence the lists. Getting things out of your head.

Over the past year, I’ve been trying to learn to say no to assignments which will use up too much brain space. I’m getting better at it, but it’s not completely painless yet. I’m also very much aware that I’m flirting with the limits of how many different projects or clients I can have, or even how many friendships I can keep alive (Dunbar’s number, anyone?) — even with the help of technology, which in my opinion does allow one to push those limits further.

Thanks to Steph, I now have a new way of classifying tasks and activities, by the amount of brain space they take up.

Reboot9 — Stowe Boyd: Flow, a New Consciousness for a Web of Traffic [en]

Here are my notes, unedited and possibly misleading, blah blah blah, of the Reboot9 conference.

Stowe’s happy to be back (“reboot was the best single thing I did last year”).

We’re hearing the word “flow” a lot during this conference, used in many different ways. It’s a term that is being stretched in many different ways. Complementary, or not?

Today: flow as a new kind of consciousness. Complementary to yesterday’s “flow” in the first conference.

Stowe Boyd at reboot9

Apology: because of blogging, Stowe doesn’t write/talk anymore in a very constructed way (“this is my thesis and here are the arguments”) — so lots of fragmentary and incomplete thinking. Incompleteness: the new rhetoric?

Human? “We make our tools and they shape us.” steph-note: cf. Stowe’s talk at last year’s Shift conference. Other note: Thomas is having to drag the Blimp off stage… Cycles.

We’re going towards a new kind of consciousness, which will not clear up the problems we have, but we’re going to change. How are we changing? How are brains changing based on the tools we use to understand the world? What are we losing, what do we gain? How will sociality change based on using new tools that shape cultures?

There is a new consciousness evolving, different enough that it’s going to cause trouble, that a lot of people are going to say it’s bad, and that the people participating in it are doing something illegitimate. (Finger-wagging.) Developing a new moral sense: valuing certain things more highly, and certain things less highly. Hive-mind? Sniffing each other’s pheromones all day?

Will take what the naysayers are saying, and debunk their arguments.

The juggler’s paradox

A small number of “true” jugglers in the room. To learn to juggle, simply do it. The ball falls, and you try again. You train your neurons to do something you didn’t know how to do before. The way jugglers describe what they’re doing doesn’t help other people learn it. They don’t focus on the balls, they don’t focus on their movements. They unfocus. A learned state of consciousness.

Other example: karate. During his first karate classes, Stowe couldn’t even “see” what his sensei was doing. Like magic, because so different. Learning to see. Also, shortening the delay, the dollar bill trick. People can’t catch it. But if you do martial arts, you can — you’ve trained your brain to do something you couldn’t do before. A different state of consciousness. steph-note: I’m not sure I’d call these things “different states of consciousness”. Now, when Stowe sees karate, he knows the moves they’re making, he can see.

A lot of people have caracterised the things that happen to us in a negative way. Over-stimulation is driving us nuts. Stowe thinks we’re learning to accommodate a new world and cope with it. Also doesn’t agree with the “scarcity of attention” economy. (Davenport and Beck.) Another failed metaphor. Treating aspects of human cognition in economic or industrial terms fails miserably.

Psychology of Attention: we actually don’t know much about attention. It doesn’t reside in one place in your brain. It’s all over the place. An emergent property of a bunch of stuff that goes on in your brain. Conventional wisdom about attention is probably wrong. Steer clear of advice of best-selling business authors about what we should do with our attention.

We have witnessed a shift in the way we perceive media: not rival anymore. We used to turn on the radio and just listen. Later, became a background. TV too. People who have the TV on all day, or while they play a video game or listen to music (Stowe is anti-TV). Talking during the movies.

Flow media. We’re getting used to having a bunch of things going on at the same time (IM windows, skype calls, etc.)

ADD: inability to focus, hyperactive. Invented disease. Treated (paradoxically) with stimulants. Maybe kids shouldn’t sit still (over-diagnosing and medicating). Stowe doesn’t think we’re creating a toxic environment for our children, but the school system has not snapped into the 21st century.

Stowe strongly disagrees with Linda Stone’s Continuous Partial Attention theses. In general, CPA is a disorder, for her. Stowe thinks this kind of thinking is based on an old model of how one should deal with the world. FIFO. Stowe doesn’t believe flow is bad, it’s just a different model. It’s not about speed, it’s about remaining connected. We can’t stay head down for hours or days at a stretch when important events might be occurring that require immediate response.

The world is more like an ER than a supermarket checkout. Reverting to pre-agricultural consciousness. Hunter awareness. Scanning the savannah.

The war on flow (steph-note: not sure I’d call this flow, again… agree with the concepts exposed here but the “label” flow bugs me). Remaining connected is not a disease, but a new ethos, a new set of beliefs. Time as a shared space, and psychology is adapting to that. Conflicts with industrial norms: maybe the tribe is more important.

The Buddylist is the centre of the universe. Made greater by the sum of our connections. Flow is generational. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be doing 16 things at once. steph-note: I must be rancid old-school, because I still think there is value on being able to concentrate/focus on one single thing during a stretch of time.

If you expose kids to more language, they tend to be smarter. We’re training our neurones.

Why call it Flow? steph-note: that’s the bit I’m curious about

CM’s notion of flow: “being in the zone”. He’s opposed to the stuff Stowe is talking about steph-note: not surprised, incompatible to me. cf. definition from wikipedia. Usually not a solitary activity steph-note: surprised… what about meditation? that’s an obvious example of flow.

Flow changes the way time works. Four flavours of time: physics, linear (industrial), cyclic (mystical), flow (lived time).

steph-note: Stowe says time slows down when you’re in the zone, you can see the tennis ball. But I’m not sure that’s the main characteristic, I think: that’s because you learnt to see. In flow, time passes fast.

Social applications (Stowe’s business): social networks are how we discover meaning, belonging and insight on the world. Traffic flow is the primary dynamic of all future social apps. Tools which will allow us to unfocus and concentrate on sociality.

Pushing Dunbar’s constant. steph-note: cf. Stefana Broadbent at LIFT… our tools allow us to manage more relationships Can you ‘know’ and ‘care’ about more than 150 people? What is the limit with these tools?

How do we use time? a way of sharing something. Productivity is second to connectivity. steph-note: perfectly agreed. Important stuff will find its way to you many times. You can miss things (not that important to be a slave to every e-mail, every RSS feed), but your network won’t, and things will get back to you.

Flow is a state of mind. Flow is a verb.

Discussion: Stowe says we still need to focus (steph-note: phew!), but it’s a question of degree. It’s about how we do a lot of things which don’t necessarily require full focus. Change from “head down with occasional coffee breaks” to “long coffee break with a few focused interruptions”.

Back to Being a Low-Tech Audience [en]

[fr] Dans une conférence où beaucoup de blogueurs sont présents, on a besoin de pauses-blogging 😉 -- et peut-être aussi de présentations qui tiennent bien dans un billet? Suivent quelques suggestions pour les personnes qui font des conférences -- sachant que je ne fais certainement pas tout ce que je dis.

Running a bit late for Emmanuelle‘s talk on anonymity online, I decided to go in without my laptop, which was in the other room. Decision also fueled by my earlier cogitations about my decreasing attention span.

Well, there we are: I was more attentive and took notes on paper.

I was telling Robert that conferences like this lacked blogging breaks. The audience is in the real-time information business if you have lots of bloggers in the room, so if you don’t want them to spend half the talk time uploading photos, chatting, and writing up blog posts. So, how about give us blogging breaks, and plan post-sized talks? Wouldn’t that be neat?

For many people, the most interesting moments of a gathering like this is around and outside the talks. Try to change the balance a bit? I know there are organisational imperatives, but I’m sure a solution could be found.

Other than that, some ideas for speakers (and I’m aware I don’t do what I preach when I’m giving a talk):

  • Give me an outline of the talk, paper would be best (I’ll get lost somewhere else by trying to find it online). If I tune out of your talk for a minute (and I’m bound to) I need a chance to tune back in. An outline will help with that.
  • Be theatrical, keep me listening, or make me participate. Effective use of slides is good, but I don’t know how to do it so I won’t give you any advice on the topic.
  • Don’t talk to fast, particularly when the audio in the venue isn’t too good. Articulate. (Yeah. Sorry.)

Update: I took hand-written notes of Robert’s talk too. Lesson learnt.

My Notes of Robert Scoble's Talk

Now let’s see if you can decypher my handwriting!