I Challenge You to Do Nothing for 2 Minutes!

With its relentless focus on productivity and efficiency, the business environment tend to stress, well, stress over relaxation.

But now researchers are finding that doing nothing is actually really good for the brain. It turns out that down time is as important as sleep for allowing the brain to consolidate learning.

Especially downtime outside.

But what if you can't get outside and are stuck at your screen? Try a visit to

http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/

which the New York Times reporter Matt Richtel, who writes about digital distraction, posted to his blog.

A while back I aired this radio commentary about a related topic--falling asleep while listening to the sounds of the surf. There's something almost primal in the soothing sounds of the ocean.

Anyone else trying to build a little downtime in their busy days?

The Incredible Tale of Cognitive Overload

As instructors, or students looking to instruct, we use slideshows a lot. With every new slide we impart a chunk of the story: the story of a product’s evil half-sister, the story of how an industry found happily ever after. With every slideshow we want our audience to acquire meaningful learning (deep understanding of the story and its many characters) through multimedia instruction (teaching that uses words and pictures).  

Ideally, the listeners can not only recall the story (retention), but can also integrate their acquired knowledge with stories of their own (integration).

But sometimes we get swept away by our narrative potential: we use too many words and pictures. It is the equivalent of the writer who obsessively pounds her reader over the head with metaphors (much like this post). In Nine Ways To Reduce Cognitive Overload in Multimedia Learning, Richard E. Mayer observes that multimedia learning is acutely sensitive to cognitive overload. He reminds us that audiences have a limited capacity for cognitive processing. Handling that capacity, feng shui’ing the space in the listener’s brain, can mean the difference between "good" and "meaningful" story-telling.

There are infinite ways to overload, and you have done or seen half of them. Possibly the most egregious is simultaneous appeal to two cognitive channels. Suppose you want to represent a product’s life cycle with words and animation. Teaching too much and too fast means listeners will not meaningfully translate the visual into the verbal, and the verbal into the visual. By the time viewers select germane words or picture from one segment, the next one is underway, stifling the ability to retain and integrate. Life cycle? What life cycle?

But alas, the Fairy Godmother brandishes her presentation wand. She cuts the presentation into bite-sized segments, with time in between so that the viewer can complete each cognitive process. Ever the erudite mentor, she also suggests pre-training which means first teaching the components and terms of the to-be-learned idea. For instance, tell your audience what ‘growth’ and ‘maturity’ signify before unveiling the life cycle graph.

And you're off to the ball.

Silly Little Things

I'm kicking off the blogmester  with lexical habits we should kick! Topping the list are puns like the one I just used.

Ok, if you have a penchant for puns, and direly need them in your life, that's fine - I can't change you. Overused puns are hardly a pressing matter, just an irksome one. Don't be confused, though, by the many raised eyebrows, eye-rolls and other eye-proximate facial expressions that people are shooting at you (yes, shooting).

More salient is the ubiquitous use of everyday words in a way that disregards their intended use and their most fitting context. They're words that slip in and out of colloquial speech haphazardly. As speakers, we have transplanted them into so many contexts, that we often stray from their actual meaning. And as speakers, we can get away with that. As business writers, however, it is a cause for distraction. Not because misused words are an offence to the Queen's English -- linguistic purity is not the goal here -- but rather because they offend clarity of meaning.

Even in 2011, clarity and sense should be the quintessential sisters of business writing.

So here they are, the viral perpetrators. Let's call them,
SILLY LITTLE WORDS (inspired by the book Grammar Grams, by Stephen K. Tollefson):

basically - In speech, we use it as a loose connector, flying everywhere, or to help us go into an explanation ('Basically, CBC is awesome because...') In writing, it can dull the formality and freshness of your text. Opt instead for essentially, ultimately, in effect, and only when you must point to a 'so what?'

actually - This is basically's spoiled cousin.

real - as in, 'a real big problem.' The word is more of a problem. Use instead considerably, or simply very.

etc. - More appropriate for memos or lists, and less so for extensive reports and research papers. Go with and so on, and other concerns...

factor -  This is the word that tries too hard. Reason, cause, consideration are all good, humble substitutes for the less scientific portions of your text.

reportedly - You are reporting it, so it's redundant. Or if you read about it, it has been reported, so it's redundant. It's a 'duh' word.

correlate - Is relate what you mean? A smaller word can often carry your meaning more clearly, without confounding the reader.

And here's something as silly as these words, from http://tpdsaa.tumblr.com/. Recognize the symptom?

At Facebook, Dot Com

According to this Forbes article, Facebook’s latest novelties will not only be the college kid’s playground, but a boon for companies as well.  Gone are the days, says Forbes, when employees would block workers’ access to social networks. Integrated networks like Facebook may very well be the language of business communications.

What are these novelties? On November 15, Facebook announced that it will soon launch an upgrade of its messaging service, Facebook Messages. This new and improved communication platform will merge the most popular communication media: Facebook Messages, SMS, chat and email.

This allows a live conversation to happen through a juggling of any of these media. If you’re a fan of SMS, for instance, you can reply to a Message using your phone, directly to the inbox of the sender. The inbox, soon to be the ‘Social Inbox,’ will act as a ‘net,’ trapping any sort of message sent or received. The Facebook Message may become Every Message.

That’s not all. Facebook will give an @facebook.com email address to everyone who wants one, whether they have a Facebook profile or not. @facebook.com  will also be merged with the Social Inbox.

Many predict that if Facebook can match the functionality of email clients like Gmail, it will give the Hotmails and the Gmails a run for their money. On a similar vein, Gartner says 20% of workers will use social networks as their preferred vehicle for business communications by 2014.

The Facebook blog claims that the idea behind Messages is to tear down barriers to communication. If there is something worth saying, the message should reach its recipient right away, unimpeded by something as technical as the recipient not currently being online on MSN messenger, or not checking their Yahoo!mail often enough.

Perhaps the idea beneath this idea is that Facebook wants to ensure that people’s attention is on Facebook, all the time, everywhere.

For a change.

It Says To Be Human is To Be Wired

Thanks to Lenore for alerting me to this AT&T video, It Says, which I am adding to my short list of brilliant if nefarious ads which promote technology as benevolent, empowering, and totally embedded (or about to be, or should be) in our day-to-day lives and key rituals--

--here represented by bedtime, driving, shopping, and dating, and culminating in getting married!

Anyone else uncomfortable with this representation or have comments?

Business, Evil Business

Some schools are stepping it up from a nondescript honor code to a more specific honor code of business.

Leslie Wayne tells us more in this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?_r=2. According to this, 20% of Harvard's business grads have signed 'The MBA Oath,' which urges tomorrow's business managers to care about how they fill up their bank accounts; to pursue their "narrow ambitions" less and to serve society a little more than, say, the Enron days.

Basically, it's an affirmation of CSR's increasing importance in business. It is probably naive to roll out the peace signs, but  it is true at least that business schools are offering a lot more business ethics courses than they did twenty years ago.
Modern life seems to be squeezing business down a funnel, forcing it to reshape itself into a more ethical social actor. More than ever, we are aware of the admonishing fingers pointed at Business, evil Business. We are now raising kids who will have the weight of the gasping environment on their shoulders. We are also still licking our wounds (and stiching up our wallets) after an economic let-down that was so much more than a "technical blip."  At face value, it seems business is starting to reflect people's desire for lives that mean more, and for organizations that care more. 

And beyond face value? Time, and products, will tell. But for now, let's assume that all the rallying for sanity is starting to pay off. Pun decidedly not intended. 

Should we disconnect? Or just teleport to China?

My student James Fine brought the video "Disconnect to Connect" to my attention. What do you make of it, especially given the fact that it appears to be sponsored by Thailand's second-biggest cell phone provider?

Also worth viewing, on only a slightly different topic, Cisco's video starring Ellen Page (image to the right) contrasting the seeming joys of virtual field trip to China with the horrors of a real-world field trip (who knew cows could be so scary?)

(Also, note how Ellen is ACTUALLY in the classroom--she is not virtual.)

Could someone please explain these two videos to me and what they say about our current age of digital distraction?