This is a new design challenge in this age of information anxiety and abundance of meaning. More and more people, myself included, are doing many things at the same time. However, decades of research (and common sense) have indicated that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. For example:

• “We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” says René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a recent NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes (thanks, Susan Mernit).
• When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” (thanks, DeedsDoing 2006)
• “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in a CNN report last year.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FOR EXAMPLE: During Nexus 2007 last Saturday, I found myself switching among three screens on my laptop most of the time. We were using Twitter.com for message sending, Campfirenow for chatting, and Nexus Live/Interactive to view Twitter messages from everyone. I could barely pay attention to the speakers/panel on the stage. Probably listened to only half the words. One possible way to reduce distraction could be better to replace Campfirenow with a shoutbox hooked onto Twitter via its API, the way Uzyn managed to hook Ping.sg shouts into pingsg_shouts on Twitter. Open Tweetbar on the sidebar and everyone would have two less screens to distract their attention — in other words, Let everyone look at just ONE screen.

Recently, Bjorn Lee twittered: “i have ADD, maybe i shld enrol in that china camp where they reform internet addicts.. oops, thats called NS in spore.” (ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder here, I think.)

What other solutions are there? Listen to former Microsoft VP Linda Stone perhaps (thanks, Mike Rohde):

“Continous Partial Attention (CPA) is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities. CPA’s motivation is being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment…”

“But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice? Is everything really such an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.”

And learn from Jakob Nielsen (thanks, Beth):

1. Don’t check your email all the time. Set aside special breaks between bigger projects to handle email. Don’t let email interrupt your projects, and don’t let the computer dictate your priorities.
2. Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle… send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication. A one-minute interruption of your colleagues will cost them ten minutes of productivity as they reestablish their mental context and get back into “flow.” Only the most important messages are worth 1,000 percent in overhead costs.
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language. This will save your customers a lot of time — thus making you popular — and will keep them from pestering you with time-consuming phone calls and emails.
8. User test your intranet. Clean it up so that employees can find stuff faster, and make the intranet homepage their entry point for keeping up on company news and events.
9. Don’t circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it. (This obviously assumes that you’ve fixed the intranet’s usability.)
10. Establish a company culture in which it’s okay not to respond to email immediately. This frees employees from the pressure of incessantly checking email and lets them get more work done.

Finally, run 5 miles or do a spin class like Beth does. She explained:

“For some reason, vigorous cardio exercise helps clear out the information anxiety Maybe it is the just the stepping away from the reflected light dancing across my eyes coming from the monitor.”

Related Posts:

• Web of Mass Distraction I

ACTUALLY, none of us got the right answer, although I did come quite close (the answer is in the Dutton & Aron link above, just scroll to the middle of the page). The Capilano story was one of many concrete examples (and experiments) which Professor Henck Schmidt used during a talk at Republic Polytechnic yesterday, to illustrate six key principles of learning and teaching, namely:

• Learning is basically construction of meaning, e.g. coherent theories about the world.
• Activation of prior knowledge facilitates the subsequent processing of new information.
• Elaboration of knowledge at the time of learning enhances subsequent retrieval. E.g. use of paired assocation.
• Organization of Knowledge: E.g. “Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when news on 911 broke out?” (Note: Actually, I kinda puzzled by this illustration. Didn’t get to clarify my doubts though.
• Contextual Dependence: Matching context facilitates recall.
• Intrinsic Interest: External rewards does not steer the learning, in fact it may reduce intrinsic interest and make the subject matter studied less interesting.

We (the audience), including many instructional designers from various IHLs in Singapore, were asked many interesting questions in order to trigger more questions and activate critical thinking. Truly gratified to have attended a talk by a man who models what he teaches. And to leave with an adrenaline rush…

Y’all know the relativist argument: Other people have views they hold as strongly as you hold yours. Those views are incompatible with yours. Thus, a sense of certainty is insufficient to guarantee truth. Therefore, we can’t trust certainty. Therefore, we have no way to decide whose views are right.

Good things come from this relativism, including a willingness to listen to others and maybe even a little humility. (That was, at least, until the Bush Doctrine declared humility to be unpatriotic.) But relativism contradicts a tenet of knowledge: To believe something is to believe that it’s true. Relativism wants to keep sneaking in a qualifier — “Of course, I might be dead wrong” — that seems to destroy the possibility of knowledge.

Worse, relativism can sap action: Since all sincerely held beliefs are equally valid, why go to any pains to defend yours?

THERE’S JUST something wrong with relativism…. it literally goes against everything we believe by telling us that we have no right to believe any of it. There’s something wrong with the setup.

I think the Internet is showing us what’s wrong with relativism.

Relativism works by pointing to the most extreme differences… There is an assumption — not a logical part of the argument but part of its appeal — that cultures live apart from one another, developing wildly different ideas and values… Neither has privileged access to the truth, or at least neither can reliably know that they have privileged access. So we’re all stuck in our silos of knowledge.

That picture explains why relativism is not just frustrating but depressing. It’s an isolationist’s view of the world.

But now we have a world that’s snapping itself together through talk and writing and conversation. In this world, relativism is much less important and appealing. You don’t have to sit alone and try to undercut your every belief in the name of a humble relativism. Instead, you can put your knowledge out into the world where it can talk with others who hold contrary views. Rather than being silos, we are conversations that — as conversations do — continuously and eternally negotiate agreement while iterating on difference.

…Relativism simplifies the world. It renders all views equal. The Internet complicates the world. All the world’s beliefs are in play as conversation engages us in the mutual quest of trying to find what’s right and wrong, what’s better and worse, what we can agree about and what we’d better leave alone.

In a connected world, relativism is just a way of giving up.

AS THE RECENT NKF saga unfolded, was rather surprised at my own actions, thoughts and feelings. Two nights ago, upon finding an online petition posting in the ChannelNewsAsia forum, i felt angry and outraged enough to go there immediately and enter my details for the petition for the resignation of TTD. A few hours later, i thought that i should be more merciful. “Who has never sinned?” So, i emailed the petition author to cancel my online signature. (This he did and informed me via email promptly.)

Come to think of this: Thinkers aren’t always cold and merciless; and Feelers aren’t always compassionate and caring. In following my feelings, i had called for ‘blood’. In following my thoughts, however, i had chosen to be more merciful.

More and more, it seems to me that Thinkers only seem cold and merciless to Feelers. Actually, both Thinkers and Feelers can be positive or negative, depending on the situation. And it seems to me that Thinkers are often positive or negative on an issue level while Feelers are often positive or negative on a personal level.

Are there research studies to confirm or negate these inferences of mine?

“This is a wonderful explanation for why we prefer some items over others. This can have some learning design implications. The finding: We prefer items that we ‘remember’, rather than that we ‘know’. So, what’s the difference between ‘remembering’ and ‘knowing’?

“When we ‘know’ something, we’re completely aware of its existence, but we don’t recall the specific instance when we learned of it. When we ‘remember,’ we’re recalling a particular occasion.”

“To put it simply, if we have story to tell about the item, we are inclined to prefer it. Not a bad marketing mantra if you think about it.”

Strange. Wouldn’t it be the other way round? When we like something, we are impressed by it and so we remember it? Could the researchers be inverting the symptom (remembering) and the cause (preference)?

GETTING lazy. Just quoting some interesting posts of others and then commenting on them. Originally wanted to post my comment on Elearningpost, but comments are not allowed for its news items.

From what i’ve learnt last semester, there is a concept in social psychology which suggests that the probability of liking someone or something increases with familiarity. This does not always happen, but it can happen quite often. Sometimes, “familiarity breeds contempt”. Remember this proverb?

But “we prefer something because we remember it”? This could become a convenient excuse for marketing folks to persuade advertisers to put in more money into their ads. But remember how we can get so very irritated by songs or products that are advertised incessantly? Maybe there’s an optimal balance in exposure somewhere.

In any case, i can think of songs which i ::like:: very much and whose lyrics/title i can’t remember. The reverse is true for me too — i can also think of songs which i ::dislike:: very much and whose lyrics/melody i can remember.

(Note: i read Elearningpost regularly because i’ve found the information there very interesting and useful most of the time.)

Was quite struck by the statement. It wasn’t new. But so it is. When we write learning objectives for a desired attitude in an earlier module (”MID801 Instructional Design Models & Practices”), we had been taught to write, “The learner will choose to behave [in a certain way].” Yes, regardless of whether s/he likes or dislikes that particular behavior. And often, when someone has a bad attitude, it’s not so much that s/he does not know how or does not have enough practice, but rather s/he is not convinced by the why.

OTHER VERBS often used for writing attitude-related learning objectives include: “accept, adopt, advocate, approve, assess, challenge, characterise, criticise, defend, evaluate, formulate, judge, justify, manage, model, persuade, recommend, resolve, select, specify, value, re-assure, empathise.”

An extract from Instructional Design, a book by Patricia Smith and Tillman Ragan:

“An attitude is a mental state that pre-disposes a learner to choose to behave in a certain way (G. Gagne, 1985). Gagne describes attitudes as having cognitive, affective and behavioral components that interact. Attitudes influence the choices that learners make. For instance, an individual’s dislike for math may cause him to choose to avoid all courses that contain a math component. A child who loves animals may choose to purchase a pet. Certainly attitudes play a strong role in learners’ motivation to initiate and persevere in learning. (p.68)

“… The basic idea of attitudes is captured in the idea of choosing to do something… they are generally “affective” in nature … [that is,] the “knowing why” … The most fundamental condition achievement of the affective component is provision of a role model … a respected person who demonstrates the desired behavior. (p.252)

“… Gagne (1985) underscores the utility of modeling as an instructional technique … [and] presents a four-step procedure for the use of human models in attitude learning:

a. Establish the appeal and credibility of the model.
b. Stimulate the learner’s recall of relevant knowledge and concepts.
c. Demonstration or communication of desired action by the model.
d. Demonstration or communication of reinforcement of the model as a result of the action taken.

“… According to Gagne, in addition to particular role-playing methods that may be employed, such as case studies and simulations, conventional group discussion is also a legitimate means for practice of a desired behavior. In a discussion, as each student contributes from the point of view of the attitude at hand, that student serves as a role model for the attitude. The discussion leader has the opportunity to provide reinforcement for the discussion participant/role model, and as the discussion progresses, the attitude may be expressed with more and more precision.

“… the most powerful reinforcers seem to be those that we can call “natural consequences.” The thanks from someone you have helped, the safe passage through a dangerous situation, and observation of the benefit gained from help you supplied are all much more direct and powerful reinforcers than praise or reward from a teacher. In fact, in many situations, praise and reward can be worse than no attempt to reinforce at all.” (p.256)

(See also Attitude Is A Choice II. By the way, according to research, “persuasive messages” and “dissonance” are two other fundamental sources of attitude change besides “modeling” (p.252).)