{"id":37271,"date":"2024-04-07T12:16:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T19:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37271"},"modified":"2024-04-07T12:16:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T19:16:53","slug":"too-many-actors-too-much-noise-not-enough-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/too-many-actors-too-much-noise-not-enough-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Too many actors, too much noise & not enough space.\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Focusing so much on reading, writing, and synthesizing this semester ( all things im not exceptionally skilled in) meant learning new skills, creating new processes of support, and facing many unknowns. Doing this meant utilizing what Daniel Kahneman calls\u00a0 System 2 thinking, which requires much more consideration, awareness, energy exertion, and conscious thought than System 1 thinking, which i<\/span>s automatic and impulsive<\/span>[1]. Knowing that threshold concepts are paradigm shifts that allow so many other things within a discipline or practice to come together in the mind of the learner has enabled me to see that until certain thresholds are crossed, there will be concepts\/ideas\/functions that often won\u2019t make sense[2].\u00a0 Thus, it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise to have found myself in an uphill struggle where the mental output and processes needed to succeed in this course left me with added anxiety and stress. However, that didn\u2019t stop my body from reacting. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve learned a lot about what happens when we react out of stress. Eve Poole\u2019s work showed us how it <\/span>kicks us out of our neocortex and into our amygdala, where our flight, flight, freeze, and fawn processes take control, making conscious thought, decision-making, and problem-solving all the more difficult [3]. \u00a0 In the long run, this harms our ability to think, act, and lead a fulfilled life. <\/span>While each book we\u2019ve read thus far has something of value to offer, stacking the learnings from one upon the other has been truly powerful as I navigate how best to support my growth and development not only in this course but in life altogether,\u00a0 through the development of a<\/span> daily practice <\/span><\/i>of support. While I\u2019m not there yet, I am getting closer and closer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week\u2019s reading was no different. I found it<\/span> particularly encouraging to my inquiry of w<\/span>hy<\/span><\/i> navigating many of the \u201csimple\u201d day-to-day things of life has felt so complicated and overwhelming lately,\u00a0 as it gave me even more language to express what\u2019s been happening <\/span>within<\/span><\/i> me ( from a neurological standpoint) without feeling wholly crazy or as though I\u2019ll be perceived as weak, lazy, or incompetent.\u00a0 Additionally, it provided tangible adjustments to work in a brain-smart way. I appreciated the intentionality in why and how Dr. David Rock structured \u201cYour Brain at Work\u201d as a play with four acts, walking through 1) the fundamentals of thinking, 2) emotions and thinking, along with the impact it has on thinking, 3) research on how we can all get along better together, and 4) how to facilitate change in others [4].\u00a0 Knowing that our brains so easily get overwhelmed, he used Story rather than a bunch of scientific jargon to teach us about the brain, for he knew that by doing so, our brains would be better positioned to understand, retain, and apply the insights to our lives. Simply noticing how much the layout aided my ability to follow, glean from, and apply the book to my own life, I immediately began to wonder how I might do this as it relates to whatever \u201cproject\u201d\u00a0 takes shape from my NPO.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Overall using the metaphor of a mental \u201cstage\u201d set a strong foundation for my mind to make the research, concepts, and ideas shared in the book much more tangible. It\u2019s easy to comprehend that only a limited number of actors can do a limited number of things on a stage simultaneously. But why, when it comes to our minds do we try to juggle so many different actors (concepts, thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc.) on our mental stages at once? The book shows why this doesn\u2019t work and offers alternatives to apply instead. I could resonate with bringing too many players to the table to play too many games at once and understand precisely how it\u2019d get me nowhere in my work.\u00a0 Yet, despite knowing better,\u00a0 I still often find myself sitting down to work on something and getting lost in everything at once, rather than prioritizing the priorities, getting things out of my head and onto paper, looking for patterns, and then chunking things into groups so I can tackle them one by one.\u00a0 If I apply any of these, it\u2019s the first two, but then I\u2019m pulled off again by multiple actors wanting to be on stage before I can get to a higher energy-consuming function. Alternatively, I\u2019ll look at an idea\u2019s salient elements and begin grouping to tackle them individually, but then I won\u2019t prioritize the priorities and will run out of steam when I get to what needs doing. A key insight I took away was how my <\/span>capacity to make decisions and solve <\/span>problems is limited by what Rock calls our \u201cenergy-hungry prefrontal cortex\u201d[5].\u00a0 L<\/span>earning to see the mental stage of the brain as a limited resource, where energy management is key, is truly a powerful reminder that\u2019s already helping me make positive changes. <\/span>\u00a0Looking at everything i<\/span>n terms of energy management and highlighting <\/span>our ability to make great decisions as a limited resource<\/span><\/i> helps create urgency around truly considering my brain\u2019s capacity in all I do so that I can work <\/span>with<\/span><\/i> my brain, rather than against it, to maximize mental resources while relinquishing stress and overwhelm.<\/span> Rock says \u201cIt\u2019s only through knowing the brain that you can change it\u201d and I see how understanding my brain patterns will do this [6]. As someone who has watched tons of YouTube videos about creating a \u201csecond brain\u201d and tried a variety of productivity hacks, this book has already helped me better understand where many of those \u201chacks\u201d have come from, why they work, and where they fell short for me, due to my lack of understanding about how the brain works.\u00a0 I now feel better equipped to revisit some of the practices I was trying to implement or already using and either pick them back up, ditch them completely, or adapt them to be most supportive, now that I understand the science behind them. The book also talks about how the more ideas we try to hold at once, the more our memory degrades. I can tangibly see how mine has degraded over time due to the compound effect of holding too much at once resulting in a mental and physical shutdown that cripples me even before starting anything.\u00a0 As Rock shares about parallel processing, I couldn\u2019t help but think about how often I take in multiple pieces of information simultaneously but cannot do anything with them. It was helpful to know that two is the optimal number for comparisons and three is the ideal number of ideas to hold simultaneously [7]. I\u2019m already applying this to how I work on things moving forward, and it\u2019s been empowering to learn how anyone\u2019s cognitive capacity can drop to that of an eight-year-old when juggling two tasks at once. This is called dual-task interference. [8] It has everything to do with our capacity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That said, something this book has made me begin to think about is what activities would be helpful for me to practice more so that I can move them away from being functions of my prefrontal cortex, into automatic activities in the basil ganglia. Embedding patterns as stored \u201c if-then functions\u201d or routines serving as \u201c maps\u201d in my mind is a big \u201caha\u201d I feel would radically transform my ability to work[9]. Rock explains how our prefrontal cortex and limbic system interact like a seesaw \u2013 when one goes up, the other goes down; when one expands, the other\u2019s capacity contracts.\u00a0 This gives me words to explain the limited mental capacity I often experience but which gets misunderstood or dismissed by others as me not simply trying hard enough. Reading about the \u201ccost\u201d of constantly being \u201con\u201d and the impact that juggling multiple things simultaneously has on the brain offers a sense of internal ease and comfort, as it validates the physical impact chronic stress and overwhelms have on one’s health. Rock discusses how always being \u201calert\u201d damages your brain\u2019s ability to adequately sense threats which then creates a false sense of constant stress that the body experiences as real and responds accordingly[10]. This is exactly where we begin to see how \u201cthe body keeps the score\u201d and psychosomatic symptoms take over as the brain starts to rewire itself in ways that make it far more challenging to do everyday tasks that used to seem simple. His explanation and framing help me stand in my truth as I continue to heal from overwhelm, anxiety and compassion fatigue, without feeling as much shame that it\u2019s a personal inadequacy of not trying hard enough. Plus, Rock also provides many tools to understand and change the brain, which feel so much more accessible due to how I can tangibly see them in action through the lives of Paul and Emily. <\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

[1]Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/i> (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).<\/p>\n

[2]Ray Land, Jan H F Meyer, and Michael T Flanagan, Threshold Concepts in Practice<\/i> (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2016).<\/p>\n

[3] Eve Poole, \u201cLeadersmithing | Eve Poole | TEDxDurhamUniversity,\u201d www.youtube.com (TEDx Talks, April 12, 2017), https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=73L1613KDnw<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4] David Rock, Your Brain at Work, Revised and Updated<\/i> (New York: Harper Collins, 2020).<\/p>\n

[5] Ibid, 35.<\/p>\n

[6]Ibid, 3.<\/p>\n

[7] Ibid, 51.<\/p>\n

[8] Ibid, 56.<\/p>\n

[9] Ibid, 63.<\/p>\n

[10]Ibid, 85.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Focusing so much on reading, writing, and synthesizing this semester ( all things im not exceptionally skilled in) meant learning new skills, creating new processes of support, and facing many unknowns. Doing this meant utilizing what Daniel Kahneman calls\u00a0 System 2 thinking, which requires much more consideration, awareness, energy exertion, and conscious thought than System […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2979,2681],"class_list":["post-37271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlpg03","tag-rock","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37272,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271\/revisions\/37272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}