Why is philosophy included in discussions of morality?

Philosophy and morality in homo sapiens? Why?
I am always puzzled by the inclusion of philosophy within discussions of morality. We are wired with an empathy system, unless suffering from a "broken brain" of one sort or another. Newly born infants will cry harder when hearing a recording of other babies crying, than they will at hearing a recording of their own crying. Toddlers will move to help someone who has dropped something that they didn't mean or want to drop, yet ignore it when a person drops something they mean to drop and don't care about.

Empathy in rhesus monkeys
In the 60's Mirsky and Miller conducted studies with rhesus monkeys demonstrating empathy between two monkeys. In these studies they trained monkeys to associate a sound with a shock. After the onset of the sound, the shock could be avoided by the monkey pressing a lever. The monkey were then paired, and one monkey was exposed to the pre-shock tone, while the second monkey was simply watching the first on a television screen. When the first monkey heard the pre-shock sound, the observing monkey saw the fear in the first monkey's face, and pushed the lever to spare the first monkey from the shock. This demonstrated the capacity to communicate affect in rhesus monkeys, and also the presence of strong empathy. In a small detail of this study, they narrowed the range of what was seen by the observing monkey, to determine how the affect was being communicated. Showing a narrower and narrower view of the observed monkey, they found that the affect was communicated by the eyes alone, so that if the observing monkey had nothing to go on but observing the eyes of the observed monkey, the observing monkey would press the shock-relieving lever when needed, saving his or her conspecific from being shocked. There is something to be said about "is" equalling "ought." The effort to prevent shock in a conspecific is automatic, a split second reaction to fear in the eyes of the conspecific. Empathy in mammals is a biological fact of life. Rats will suffer "personally" in an effort to help a conspecific in distress.

Survivor guilt in chimpanzees: Discomfort in reaction to begging, why is there begging?
As for fairness, in 1936 Yerkes reported on a study of two chimpanzees caged side by side. If one of the pair and not the other was given food, the chimpanzee not receiving food began begging. The provisioned chimpanzee at first ignore the begging, but over time became uncomfortable and share some food with the chimpanzee without. This happens not always, but often enough to demonstrate that the reaction to begging is to share. Why would animals beg, if not to induce feelings of discomfort (survivor guilt broadly defined) in the animal who is the recipient of begging, with the intention of getting the animal with food (or with some other desired object) to share the product of his or her good fortune. Babies beg in order to get fed, and adults also beg in order to receive. Our domestic animals beg in order to get us to share. Begging demonstrates the presence of a drive to share, to be shared with, equity, or "guilt" (survivor guilt or whatever we want to name it) --that s some internal state of discomfort in the absence of equity, that is resolved by sharing.

A drive for equity and the fungus in the forest
Sharing, or the drive for equity, has at its base, an adaptive purpose, and extends far beyond primate or mammalian behavior. In a forest trees of the same species may compete for resources, and trees of different species may do the same. But under the floor of the forest, hidden underground, is a network of fungi, connecting all the trees. If one tree or one species is getting more of needed resources than other trees or other species, the fungi will absorb nutrients from the overly endowed tree or species of trees, and will redistribute the resources to those less fortunate. Therefore even in the forest there is a system that enforces a kind of equity and cooperation between trees of the same species, and between different species. Cooperation is the name of the game, and sharing and "morality" are mechanisms working in the interest of cooperation. Bacteria that live in our mouth live in cooperative clumps, and to survive the bacteria have to maintain their "group" structure. If the group is disturbed as it is in flossing our teeth, the group is dismantled, and individual bacteria can't make it and are killed off. Here, this smallest of units, is dependent on group living and cooperation, and we make use of that in efforts to protect our gums and teeth, enabling us to have dental health far past our 40s.

Our place in the animal world...we are not unique and why should or would we be?
The only way I can see philosophy at work in this picture is found in how we explain our history of narrowly focusing on self-interest, individuality, and gene-centrism, at the expense of focusing on cooperation as a very old and fundamental adaptation, in response to evolutionary pressures. What is it about our thinking that has led to such errors in attention and explanation of natural phenomena? I have been very happy to see the return of group selection, or multilevel selection theory, as finally we seem to be on the right track in our efforts to understand the world. Philosophy or world view, in the face of evolutionary data, seems narrow and "besides the point" and can only be considered, in my own opinion, as factors that contributed to our errors in attribution. In the end, it always seems to me that taking a philosophical stance in discussions of morality, goes hand in hand with denial of our place in evolution, and by necessity ends up once again proclaiming that man (and woman) is qualitatively "different" from other animals, and thus is at heart, an anti-evolutionist perspective.

WordPress, My Technological Ignorance & Teaching

As usual I'm reading and following Seah, and he is talking about "WordPress" so I went right to them and started a blog called "Lynn O'Connor's Process Notes: Second Edition." I have no idea if I'll switch or not, but their format feels very cool. I wrote them a note saying I needed some instruction and maybe they could get in touch with me. They are located here in San Francisco, I could have their whole team over for dinner, which I offered. I am so behind and backwards. I never read computer manuals, and I certainly didn't read anything that Blogger puts out, nor the few books I picked up about Blogger and how to use it. Following the culture while wagging a tail far being is almost becoming a quasi obsession. Its time for some self-analysis.

Coming attraction: A huge and somewhat frightened class lies right ahead of me
I have a class of 60 first year doctoral students at our program starting up in the third week of April, so I might have to put my new interest on hold, but I doubt that I'll do that. I care about the class and plan to be very over prepared this year to see if it goes better than it has in some years past. Its a very large (for our program and our style of classes) and its difficult for students to settle into in and not feel overwhelmed. We have for the most part clinically focused students and this course is all about psychological science which is where I put my brain most of the time. So its not only overwhelming, but it actually frightens some students though it shouldn't because they aren't expected to understand anything they don't understand. I shift between thinking I should perhaps make it more demanding --not more confusing, just more of a challenge, and perhaps I should design it to have fewer demands, though I can't image how.

Class design as it stands
As it stands, I have a series of professors of various areas of psychological science come and introduce the students to their areas of expertise (in cognition, emotion, or personality), talk about their own research, and consider possible clinical implications of their work. The students just have to read articles assigned before each lecture, write thoughtful questions about the readings each week, and write a 12 page final paper. No exams, no quizzes, though I am rethinking that one. Despite this basic simplicity in course design, there often is an air of "confusion" around the course that I can't figure out, and that I'm hoping some big time over-preparation on my part might somehow rub off on them and extinguish even a hint of confusion. I thought about starting a blog for the course, but too many of our students absolutely freak out at anything having to do with technology. They signed up for clinical psychology because they are shy of technological innovations, or so it seems.

Behind in technological innovations
The school is way behind in technology and I think --though I don't know-- I'm probably the only faculty member deep into chasing after the Internet and in love with what I guess is called "web 2." I try to explain the visual and tactile experience of writing on Ajax, how things just visually slide into place, and people look at me blankly. I don't know enough to make myself clear, or to make the technological innovations I'm speaking of clear, I just know what is aesthetically pleasing so me, and the Ajax thing for sure is. So of course I would like to bring that into this class, but since students already seem confused, and I'm confused about what it is I'm trying to describe, I guess that has to wait for another year.

I need hands on instruction
I hope I hear back from someone from WordPress and get some clarification about the whole web world and how to use it. I'm not about to read a how to do it text book, I need some hands on instruction. It puts me into the position my students must find themselves in, when put right into the center of some of the most active psychological scientists in the country. I heard from a friend that it is not possible to respond to my blog right now, and I have no idea of what to do about it, other than go out to Apple and beg my own Apple Genius, John, to help if he can. He is very brilliant in my estimation, so its right to call him an Apple Genius, and I'm sure if he has the time, he could figure out the problem and teach me much more than I know, helping me gain some mastery over the technology I'm using in absolute sheer ignorance. I apologize to anyone who wants to write comments here, for the glitch in my very simple set up. People could write comments a few weeks ago, so I have no idea why they can't now. But my heart felt apology for the error in set up here, and I am going to try to correct is as soon as I can.

Being in the position of learner helps me to take a more sympathetic stance
Writing this has made me feel greater sympathy for my students, as the teacher here is in the position of learner, and confusion is the name of the game. I think confusion always comes first when learning anything new, so I hope I'm not expecting too much in the way of calm and organized clarity from students in terms of their moods and their efforts to get into my science-based upcoming class. I sure would like to start a blog for "Cognition, Emotion and Personality, 2007" that the more technically sophisticated students could enjoy and contribute to, you know a "psychological science page" on the web, for clinical graduate students.

There is still a big role for psychosocial treatment:

That which makes us clever, makes us mad:

From The Times OnLine, by Mark Henderson, Science Editor
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1355884.ece
" One of the most devastating types of mental illness could be a by-product of the evolution of human beings’ uniquely sophisticated intelligence, a new genetic study has suggested.
Scientists have discovered that a common version of a particular gene appears both to enhance a key thinking circuit in the brain, and to be linked to a raised risk of schizophrenia."

Major mental disorders appear more clearly to be biological in origin
The genetic basis of major mental disorders is increasingly clarified, although no one study can be assumed to have a final word. I have personally seen reports of many differing studies, with different areas on the genome found to underlie bipolar disorder which is among the most heritable mental disorders, more than schizophrenia, and up there with ADHD. Same goes with unipolar depression although that has been found to have a lower concordance rate. Still, major mental disorders all seem to be biological in etiology, and when people speak of the environmental piece, they often neglect to mention that the most important environmental factors also seem to be what we might consider "physical" or "biological' in origin. For example, OCD, a highly heritable disorder, is not infrequently set off in children following a strep infection. The strep bacteria apparently releases a neurotoxin, which in vulnerable children, leads to brain inflammation and whatever other local trauma which then leads to OCD. Neurotoxins are also found increasingly to be associated with severe mental disorders. So it is important that we make it clear when we speak of environmental factors that we include exposure to pathogens and to neurotoxic agents. It is almost impossible today, from my reading anyway, to determine what neurotoxin is contributing to what, because neurotoxins don't come in "single neurotoxic" packages. In heavily polluted areas, the neurotoxins are multiple, and no one has really studied the effects of multiple interacting neurotoxins on the brain, to say nothing of the embryonic brain, or the young developing brain.

Some psychologists are worried, "are we out of work?"
I think some psychologists worry as things become more clearly biological, thinking we will be out of work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I doesn't matter what the etiology of a serious mental disorder is, psychological treatment is often essential for a good prognosis, along with psychopharmacological treatment in some cases, and other types of psychosocial treatments as well. Consider the problems that confront a child with ADHD. They are disliked by their peers, they have difficulty in school, all of which amounts to serious failure for the child. Thus ADHD may be entirely biological in etiology, but the person with ADHD has dealt with so many difficulties as the result of their illness, they need and deserve psychological help.

What about addiction?
Consider addiction. A person with addiction disease may have been prone to addiction because of heritable factors, and may have been environmentally triggered by neurotoxins, or multiple neurotoxins. But the treatment is abstinence from mind altering drugs, and often this is only possible with the support of a psychologist or other mental health professional. People with this disease need and deserve a great deal of psychosocial support as they find in programs like AA, and the individual kind of support they get in psychotherapy.

Along with illness comes a whole package of psychosocial insults
People with all "biological" illnesses whether they are "mental illnesses" or "other physical illnesses" often suffer from numerous psychological insults, stigma, increased daily life stressors as they monitor their illnesses, the need to take multiple medications, the list goes on and on. It doesn't matter if the etiology is all biological, the treatment often has to include a psychosocial component for the best prognosis and outcome. So for those who worry that the growing knowledge of the biological nature of mental disorders means we are out of work, worry no more. We just have to be ready to help people as they struggle to recognize, deal with, get treatment for their biologically based disorders. There is a great deal of work for us, perhaps more than ever as the importance of solid psychological support is recognized as an essential component of treatment for all illnesses.

Some Notes on Writing

Responding to a lament about writing on a GTD Listserv:

On a GTD listserv, someone was speaking to the trouble they were having in getting themselves to write, and there was some commentary about why it was so hard to write. I have another experience, and posted it there, then realized, hey I can post it on my own blog!! So here's my personal story about writing.

I'm a writer and I write every day or almost every day for the last --almost 40 years. I am also a psychologist and professor, so I do other things as well, but writing is probably my first love in terms of something that puts me in a "flow" state. Analyzing data from my research also leads me to a flow state, but not with the same ease and fluidity. I don't write fiction, I write research reports, articles, personal and political commentary, reviews, notes to students, notes to colleagues, case studies, just about anything I can think about. In fact, anything I think about at all, I think about in writing. I have an @writing category in contexts, and I also schedule in 7 to 10 or 11 AM as prime time writing time. That doesn't mean I always use it for writing, I may be needing to deal with emails that came in, possibly having to do with my research, or teaching, or this or that. So I have to skip writing that morning. Sometimes when I'm into my sleeping in in the morning and staying up late at night, I write in the evening as a way to come down from the day. Writing puts me in a flow, maybe an alpha state, so I hate not writing.

How it Started
I don't know how it got to be this way but I think it started with daily reports to a very close friend and mentor. I was trying to write my way out of some mess I had gotten myself in, a really terrible relationship. Everytime I thought I was going to call some guy who I knew I should stay away from, instead of making the phone call, I went to the typewriter (in those days I didn't have a computer) and said whatever was happening, and it worked, I didn't make the phone call. I always say I wrote my way out of trouble and that is not an exaggeration. As time went on I expanded, but I always need to have an immediate "audience" or what I call a "reader" or "readers." I still do, the reader changes, the circumstance varies throughout the day, but the writing is steady and the source of enormous pleasure. I think it really does put me in a meditative state, my blood pressure goes down, heart rate goes down, and it just works that way. I recommend to anyone who feels stuck about writing that they have at least one reader. If I'm sending something out for publication in a journal I edit and re-edit at least five or even seven or eight times, and it always improves. Towards the end I edit every single line outloud, and play with the sentences.

Always writing in the back of my mind..
Someone who I was talking to once about writing, on hearing how I could sit down and write ten pages and not know where the time went, said "you must be writing nonconsciously all the time, for it to just come out like that, as if it were already written." I started paying attention to the underground thinking we all do, and sure enough, I found myself working on sentences while day dreaming and doing who knows what other things. So that is how that happens, and he was right, I had something already written under the surface before I sat down and started writing. My best advice is to write every day, write endless emails or letters to a friend or two who is willing to be a reader. Write about your daily life, the mundane, the things that give you trouble and the things that are easy. It becomes a habit and something you can't do without. I say sometimes that I think with my fingers, and this is how it feels to me. If I am having trouble explaining something to someone, I know that if I sit down at the keyboard it will be easy. I tend to be too wordy (witness this post) but I don't let that stop me. I long ago discovered that if I was having trouble getting something down, I just had to think to myself "who is looking over my shoulder?" and figure out who was I worrying about, who might disapprove of me. Having located the problem, I could make sure that the person was not able to look over my shoulder, and on I could go free from criticism. I would love to be able to write fiction, but so far that has alluded me. Maybe in the future I'll figure that one out.

Write Daily and Make it Real
Write daily, have a reader, make it real --about your real life-- make time for it and avoid feeling self-indulgant (this is easy to say and hard to do), and just write your heart out, it gets so easy you can't do without it. I guess its like runners feel about running, or basket ball players feel about playing, or violinists feel about the their playing music... its got its own reward that is intrinsic, needs no other success to keep me going. Eventually if you become a really active writer there are many ways you can use it in career ambitions, depending on your field and interests. But even without extrinsic rewards, it remains a source of pleasure and perhaps a way to put a foot print somewhere and feel like one is contributing to life on our planet.

Learning and the Brain: Part III, Kenneth Wesson

The Brain-Considerate Classroom of the Future

Introduction
Wesson was a lively and somewhat colloquial speaker, speaking passionately to a full audience of well over 1000 people, 75% of whom were teachers. Transforming his talk into a note summarizing his point of view, is difficult because he had a rhythm and an obvious passion for his material that can't be summarized in notes. So instead I have reproduced his talk, transcribing as much as I could from notes and listening to a CD of his talk. Therefore, what follows here is in Wesson's voice, and is marked by blue text. I’ll make some comments after this near-transcription of his inspiring lecture.

Teaching Our Kids How To Think
We need to teach our kids how to think. More than any other skill or knowledge, teaching children how to think and how to solve problems, this is important because jobs are constantly changes, and what is big in the job market today didn't exist 20 years ago, and jobs are going to continue to change in this way. Therefore the skills and knowledge we give to our children have to be what they need to be able to retool their skills as needed. We are failing in this task.. In the US only 18% who graduate from kindergarten go on to finish college. In Japan 82% complete college. This suggests we are not doing so well in inspiring and educating our children. In the 1960s we got obsessed with standardized testing. We asked our kids to read a paragraph and they go through the process but it had no meaning for them. (Wesson then did an experiential exercise with us, having us read something consisting of half made up of meaningless words/sounds. We got his point.)

No Child Left Behind?
"No child left behind" ends up meaning we only do repetition and practice for a specific test. No "child left behind" means no thought of children. Tests are not what we should be doing in our schools; you can modify your statistics so they support your point of view, or so they make the school look better than it is. Our educational system takes in healthy kids with nothing wrong with them, and they get problems while they are going through our system. We fixate on the wrong things. In the classroom the teacher throws out a question, someone, or a group of someone’s, answers and then we hear the answer and comment on it, and everyone has stopped thinking.

Teaching our Kids to Learn How to Learn

Things We Can Do
But there are things we can do so our kids learn how to think, we can help them. They can learn how to learn. They can learn how to make connections in a brain-considerate classroom. We are constantly changing the "facts" so the facts are not what are important, it’s how to think and learn so we can always learn new facts, that's important. Our brains are remarkable, always functioning in numerous ways. And we do our best when we're working with another person. A teacher should be a guide on the side, an academic mentor, facilitating learning. Learning should not be competitive. Look for ways that your students can collaborate.

Put Our Teachers Under a Microscope
Instead of putting our students under a microscope, we should put our teachers under the microscope. Instead of walking around the room to see if they're learning anything we should walk around "to see if I was clear." We should encourage boys and girls to work together, to solve problems. If they think differently, that is great, together they'll be great problem solvers. We should all be following Problem-Based Learning. We need a student-centered not content-centered learning environment. We are always looking for patterns, connections, and we go from the concrete to the abstract. We need to move from a passive to an active model of learning. An ideal situation would be a brain-considerate classroom, with both teachers and researchers involved in the kids' learning.

Every Kid is Successful
Education should be designed s that every kid is successful. Instead, we have a model where the goal is to weed out kids. All of us have trouble with change and making brain-considerate classroom involves very dramatic changes. We have to change, complacency is fatal. We have to wake up, we can't continue to fall behind. We expect our kids to be good at multitasking, but multitasking is impossible. (He gave us an experiential exercise here, having us move our hand in a circle going clockwise then he told us: "Now make a six with your foot." Go ahead and try it, the audience got the point, you will too).

Growing New Neurons in the Brain-Considerate Classroom
We recently learned that there is the possibility of growing new nerve cells, and we have to learn how to teach so that we are sponsoring the growth of new brain cells. We have to work at developing ways that teaching can mirror learning, to have learning in sync with how we teach. In the brain-considerate classroom emotions drive everything. Touch does wonders for the whole brain system. We need touch every day. We need 16 hugs a day for a normal emotional state. They used to think that we shouldn't touch babies, we'd give them "germs." They kept infants in their own rooms, saying "Don't touch the baby." Kids need touch, hugs and words, they need us to tell them how great they're going to do this year. Recent experiments demonstrated that when the mother is taken away from baby rats the babies simply stop growing. When the mother comes back, the babies start growing again. They found out that what mattered was the mother's licking the pups. They can't grow without the mother's licking. Touch is essential, the same thing happens with people who don’t get touched, they stop growing.

Safety, Acceptance, Involvement, Inclusion
Our kids should feel acknowledged, wanted. We have dropouts because no one even noticed that they never dropped in. They feel they're not part of the class because they were never made part of the class, they were never invited in. We have to communicate the message: "I really like you." Emotions drive all intelligence and you only remember what you care about. Our goal is to get students engaged, we have to get to know the students, not get them to know the curriculum. Our kids need safety, acceptance, involvement, inclusion. Instead we scare our kids, not realizing what we're doing. If a person is frightened, all their blood rushes from their head, and it goes right to their large muscle groups, to their limbs, preparing for fleeing or fighting. When people are frightened they can't think very well, the brain shuts down.

A Safe Environment
We have to make the environment for learning as safe as possible, then we'll see our kids do their best work. The illiterates of the future are not those who can't read or write but those who can't learn and relearn. We have to relearn things all the time, as things change. (He called on those in the audience who had been teaching more than 20 years and said "you are our national treasures"). He said "For many no one ever turned on that light." Our students look like a lot of work, but we should be thinking "You made a difference, I'm sure glad I had you in my class." Every student has to be acknowledged, accepted, and that presents a challenge. Our goal is to teach them to connect and to do this we need a classroom environment that is risk-free. Students need a lot of feedback from their teachers. They need our positive emotional responses.

Students May Forget What You Said, but They’ll Never Forget How You Made Them Feel
We need to use drawing and singing in our classrooms. You can't draw without thinking, and that is what we need to be teaching. We have to allow for downtime, our students need it, and given downtime they will do better. The biggest thing you can do in the classroom is offer hope, the kids often have no hope from anywhere else. In the end students may forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Margaret Mead said "Never think that a small group of citizens can't change the world, that is the only thing that can change the world." Teachers are the group that can change the world, if we teach with the brain in mind.

Day 14, GTD Implementation

David Allen reports in GTD, that between collecting and processing, plan for at least a few days, best done over a weekend or holiday. I suppose if I hadn't procrastinated over where to put my various categories of files, I might have been finished in 8 days, but I can't see how I could go much faster. It is very tedious, time consuming, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s a bright light indeed. I am gaining a sense of control over my "stuff" that I don't think I've ever felt before. Its really being master of my own ship, and I can tell there is smooth sailing ahead. Having solved the problem of why I was procrastinating yesterday while writing here, last night I was able to make a detailed plan of action and attack, and today I've been implementing the plan. It looks so haphazard while its in process, files all over the place, hanging folder, manila folders, labels as my labeling machine (Brothers as recommended) is putting out labels --not for every file, but for every main category. The way I figured out the plan last night was to assign a number to each file cabinet drawer (over 45 of them at last count). Then I made a massive list of all the categories the files would fold into. Then I sat and stared at the room plans I made specifically for this project on a wonderful Internet service called "Gliffy" http://www.gliffy.com/and tried to figure out what I need near me at all times, and what could be housed a greater distance from my main work space. Finally I began assigning categories to specific numbers (file drawers). It was a simple process, and it was indeed the hurdle that had held me up for almost a week.. I wonder if anyone else has had this particular problem. I have so many things I do --teach, research, write, see patients (or clients), supervise, work as a consultant and my research interests are widely distributed drawing on social, cognitive, personality and evolutionary psychology. My lab is called the Emotion, Personality & Altruism Research Group, www.eparg.org and that covers a lot of territory. So I have a whole lot of files. To cap the whole thing, I've been somewhat obsessed for almost two years now I guess it is, with the whole field of productivity. It’s that new interest that got me here, feeling like I'm finally going to be moving in exactly the way I want to be moving. However the downside, there are now almost as many files (articles, how to pieces, computer manuals) about productivity as there are about my scientific interests. Although I consider this GTD process to be highly scientific, and based on years of empirical observations. Maybe if I keep power whacking away at everything, filing, labeling, throwing away, then more filing, maybe I can finish by Thursday night or Friday. Maybe.

Day 13: GTD, Procrastination, Commitments, and Moving Ahead

Falling Behind

Its day 13 of this major GTD implementation and I am falling behind on my commitment to myself to get everything sorted, filed, and put away in a "timely" manner, meaning do it at least before our spring break when I ostensibly don't have to teach for a week. I wanted to have a real "break" during spring break, or at least nothing on my mind but analyzing data, writing, and preparing a poster presentation for a scientific meeting coming up the first weekend in May, in Vancouver. At least we found my lost passport in the first round of sorting, after piling everything in our living room. I filed that quickly before I had time to lose it again. But I regret to admit that there are still many boxes --I might know what is in them, or sort of, but the contents should have been tossed or filed by now, as I move up to the end of the second week of GTD implementation, full-scale, head-on style. I have to make myself resume sorting, trashing, filing. The big stumbling block, I have to confess, is what files go where, I vaguely realized that insight as I was sitting around ruminating this afternoon, about other things I haven't gotten done. I really got it while sitting here writing about this process.

Color Coding and What's Stopping Me: Making a Decision
So now I know what has stopped me from a rapid powering through of everything, for well over a week, since March 3rd to be exact. The problem started then, but I didn't realize until this afternoon what the problem was. I can't seem to make a decision about where to house different sections of my files. I have many categories of files, and I even have a color-coding system, using those round brightly colored sales circles that you can put on anything and peel it off as easily as it goes on. I have a mind map up of my color coding system, i.e. I LOOK very organized, but that is deceptive. Since I can't decide what files go where, it doesn't matter if all of my files were already color coded which they aren't; color-coded or not, they are still piled in various parts of the house (not all still in the living room). Yes, they are sitting there and I feel foolish admitting what the hang up has been, that has apparently led me to a bout of procrastination. The thing I am really procrastinating is making that decision.

A Crisis in Wooden File Cabinets
Now let me explain further. I already had many (and I do mean many) file cabinets in the house before this project began. However I knew there weren't enough to hold all the papers I have that I (no doubt erroneously) think I should hold on to. On Saturday, March 3rd, two four drawer and one three drawer wooden cabinets came into the house, which when added to my other file cabinets, is surely enough to house even my excessive amount of papers, articles and more articles, my own endless stream of letters, emails, articles, and finally old data print outs, and old questionnaires from old studies (well I have to keep those at least seven years, after a study is published). Naturally not all my file cabinets fit in one room. I have the equivalent of 5 files drawers in my office, 7 file drawers in our living room, 3 file drawers separating the dining room and the living room, 8 file drawers in the entering hall way, 15 file drawers in our "back room, " and finally, another 8 file drawers in our bedroom. This comes to a grand total of 38 file drawers. Now some of them are smaller than others, the two drawer file cabinets are not quite as deep as the 3 and 4 drawers, and hold less than the lateral file (Its huge, and hard to open and close). Also the 6 drawers in hall (two cabinets, three drawers a piece) are so packed with old files, much of it possibly needed, that I can't open them easily, it takes all of my weight pulling on them. This is an untenable situation. So now I really see the problem, having reviewed in public this problem which is in some way, awfully personal. Look I sleep with 4 files drawers right beside me, with just enough space between them and our bed for me to open them and use them.

This then is the problem. I have 38 file drawers to choose from, and I can't decide which category should go where, or even which category should be on which floor of our house. By category I mean things like 1) articles about evolutionary psychology 2)articles about animal behavior, 3) articles about psychotherapy, 4) personal medical records for everyone in the family, 5) correspondence 6) social psychology articles, 7) Files related to teaching (either about teaching, or the products of teaching). That's enough, there's lots more, but you get the idea.

A New Plan of Action: Strategizing & Coming Up with a New Tactic
Putting it this way, I think some things are going to clear and that I will make a decision right now as I sit here writing, I'll let my brain be creative and logical all at the same time. Hopefully this will break my spell of procrastination. Knowing however, how difficult this job is for me, I am not going to plan on finishing anything, but instead do the time blocking method again. I'll begin by pulling out Seah's Task-Order-Up form.

http://davidseah.com/archives/2007/01/15/the-task-order-up-2007-editions/

This form includes three separate progress trackers on one page. Its the perfect form for what's ahead of me, zeroing in on the different piles and "gone through once banker boxes." Seah modeled the task-order-up after the hanging waitresses use to communicate multiple orders with the short order cook in old style restaurant. I'll use one progress tracker for each "area" to be attacked in my war against chaos.

Next I'll go around the house and note each pile to be sorted, organized and filed, and have a column be for each area or pile of concern. It might take 3 or even 4 or 5 task-order-up forms (meaning possibly having 12 or more 1/3 page forms. It sounds elaborate but it isn't. Having organized the work, then I'll go to it, in 15 minute intervals. Otherwise I'll never be able to even begin the task. But before I do that I need to make a decision about what categories of files go where, write it down, and stick to it. Hey I wonder if this is just another example of my problem with planning, doing almost everything on the fly? I have to plan this however, or I won't be making a decision about where to file what, and I'll remain in a state of procrastination. That could conceivably go on until next Thanksgiving if I'm not careful. Right now I am saved by a call from a client that just came in.

Learning & the Brain Part II: Gabrieli

John Gabrieli: Educating the Brain: Implications of Neuroscience for Learning and Learning Disorders

John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist from MIT and Harvard spoke on "Educating the Brain: Implications of Neuroscience for Learning and Learning Disorders." He began with comments about how natural is for neuroscientists to be gathering with teachers as both groups are often focused on learning and memory. He then posed a question around which he built his lecture: "What do we need to know from brain science about learning and memory to be prepared for the future?"

How Do We Study Brain Functioning
From this beginning, addressing an audience that was 75% teachers and 25% neuroscientists, he went on to give a brief description of how they study brain functioning today. "We give a task which is followed by neural activity, marked by increased blood flow or oxygenation to the most active parts of the brain for that task which show up in bold contrast to less active parts of the brain for that task. This is all measured and recorded by fMRI. From this basic method, along with single case examples, they have discovered that the hippocampus, inside the temporal lobes, with one section on the left and one on the right, is in part (though not alone) the seat of memory. He discussed the case of H.M., an epileptic with an entirely normal memory, who had his first seizure at age 16. At age 27, in an effort to control his seizures, H.M. underwent a bilateral medial resection and ended up with anterograde amnesia due to damage to the hippocampus. He lost the ability to remember anything for more than a few moments.

The Stages of Memory
Memory goes through three stages: 1) encoding, 2) storage, and 3) retrieval. Gabrieli finds the moment of encoding to be the "magical moment." He gave us all a small test, asking if we remembered what direction Lincoln was facing on a penny, or if we remember what was above and what was below him. Of course no one does remember something like this. He told us that suppose we say that on average a person handles a penny three times day. Despite the fact that we hypothetically from age 5 to age 30 have handled a penny about 30,000 times, and yet we don't remember this simple information. This is because most of our experiences in life are simply not encoded in the brain: "Only a tiny percent of what we experience is remembered." Consequently, the moment of encoding is indeed something of a magic moment.

Encoding is the Magical Moment
In order to study what is going on in the brain in that moment, a long series of studies were initiated. People were put in an fMRI (imaging) machine, and showed a large number of scenes and the subjects were asked to say if the picture was indoors or outdoors. Next, after the fMRI stage of the study, these subjects were shown some of the same scenes and asked if they had seen them before, or not. The researchers tracked how sure the subjects were about whether or not they had seen a scene before. The study was aimed at investigating what was remembered and what wasn't remembered, and what parts of the brain were most active when a subject remembered a scene correctly, in comparison with failure to remember a scene. Greater activity in encoding, the more likely they found, the subject was likely to remember the scene, with the simple conclusion that greater activation at the moment of encoding predicted subsequent memory. The hippocampus was to be found of central importance. Also significantly involved in encoding were the medial temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex.

Learning is Driven by Beliefs
He moved on to discuss mechanisms that enhance learning and memory: 1) knowing how to learn; 2) motivation to learn and 3) emotions influence and activate learning. Knowing how to learn is responsible for a student knowing they have learned enough to remember something, or if they have to continue studying in order to able to remember the thing they are trying to get into memory. This is related to the capacity to investigate your thoughts. The ability to gage the state of learning is driven by beliefs, and in this process there is increased activation of the left medial prefrontal cortex. Subjects were asked, when seeing a picture: "Do you think you'll remember that or not. Most fascinating results indicated that one's beliefs about learning and memory were predictive of remembering. If you believe you will remember something, you are far more likely to remember it. Thus in this way, our beliefs about our own capacity to learn and remember highly influences our actual performance in learning and memory. Here we have a rigorous scientific study supporting what we knew about the influence of teachers' attitudes towards students and their academic capacity or lack thereof. This also supports the idea of "intentioning," or imagining ourselves having succeeded in some endeavor we are beginning, hoping for success. In intentioning, the goal is to provide the brain with help in forming the belief that they can and will be successful, which then leads to actual success in the area around the intentioning.

Who is Left Behind: Implications of the Role of Beliefs in Learning and Memory
The implications of this series of studies are vast. A large number of children from disenfranchised sectors of our population are quite automatically considered less intelligent than others in the mainstream. Faced with teachers who have low expectations of them, they would be hard pressed to develop the belief that they can learn and remember, and thus they underperform. This phenomenon is based on beliefs, and confirms with neuroscience, the landmark study conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1966). In that study teachers were told that a small group of students within their classroom were exceptionally bright, even gifted. by the end of the year, that group of students who in reality were no different in terms of intelligence than other children in the classroom, had excelled far beyond what might have been expected had the teacher not been led to believe that they were indeed especially gifted children. Thus we can see a teacher's beliefs translate quickly to students' beliefs about themselves and their ability to learn and to remember, and this in turn, predicts how much they will in fact learn and remember. Our ability to learn is highly influenced by our thoughts about whether or not we can learn and remember. The medial frontal cortex is particularly important in this aspect of learning, and it is activated in essence, by beliefs.

The Second Ingredient for Learning: Motivation
The second essential ingredient for successful learning and memory is motivation. Motivation to learn rests on the activation of the nucleus acumben, in the midbrain. Scientists have known that when monkeys or rats are given the opportunity to press a lever, for which they are rewarded with food, they get very excited and the "reward center" of the brain (the nucleus acumben) is flooded with dopamine. It appears that the very act of anticipating a reward, acts as a great motivator. As teachers and students we all know that being motivated to learn, feeling like we have an important purpose, has an enormous impact on our ability to work at learning and memory. A study designed to evaluate the role of motivation in learning and memory was conducted with subjects who were told they would get $0.50 for participating and learning some task. Fifty cents is not much of a reward these days, and in fact nothing lit up in the brains of the subjects who were being promised $0.50. However when subjects were offered $5.00, in anticipating the reward they grew excited and were far more motivated to learn the task they were given and consequently they did much better than those offered only $0.50. Motivation to learn turns on the medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus, preparing the brain for learning. A tangible reward is not the only kind of reward that inspires us to learn. We all know how efforts to please a favored teacher, can motivate children's (and our own) learning.

The Third Ingredient for Learning: Emotion
The third ingredient for learning is emotion, focused in the amygdala. Gabrieli likened the amygdata, an emotion center, as the "Vice President" of the memory system. "The amygdala makes the memorandum for memory." If shown an upsetting picture, subject are far more likely to remember it than if shown a neutral picture. We remember powerful stuff far better." Thus the amygdala enhances memory, on the basis of learning. In the study in which people were show neutral to disturbing pictures they asked people to rate their experience of intensity at looking at the pictures. Items that were most intense were likely to be remembered. This makes total sense when we consider ourselves in the context of our evolutionary history. As living creatures we are always on the outlook for danger and safety and it is far more important that we have a high level of learning and memory in the face of danger, or 'high intensity" in order to avoid the danger in the future. Our highly active memory for danger serves a protective function, and no doubt through our ancient history, those who remembered danger would have higher fitness, that is would live to give birth to and nurture more children and grandchildren.

The Developing Brain: How the Child Differs from the Adult
Gabrieli then went into a discussion of the development of the brain. He noted that different parts of the brain are specialized for specific visual tasks. The back of the brain is selectively specialize for what we see in the world. When we look at shapes using the lateral visual cortex is particularly activated. When we see faces the fusiform facia responds. By age then, teh functional parts of the brain that we use to respond to shapes is as developed as it is in an adult. But the response to faces and to places is far less developed in a ten year-old, it is 1/3rd less developed compared to how it will be later. Another part of memory and learning that keeps developing from childhood to adult status is how we know where or under what conditions we learned something we learned, called "source memory." This apparently also keeps developing beyond childhood.

Learning to Read: Difficult for Every Child
In the finale to his talk, Gabrieli moved on to learning disorders and the special problems of the human brain. Our brains evolved to speak and hear, and to be audio learners. We were not evolved to read, and the act of learning to read is very difficult for children. There are two kinds of learning involved in learning to read, the first being phonology or the sounds of speech. The second is orthography, or how to map something from sight to sound. This is a complex task that children have to master in learning to read.

He described dyslexic children who were "at risk" educationally, and having great difficulty learning to read. They were given special classes for only eight weeks, and their performance went up dramatically, and stayed up through the whole school year. Most fascinating in this story is that they found that the remedial training actually changed the structure of the brain, demonstrating the plasticity of our human brain.

How are We Going to Make Neuroscience Applicable to the Classroom?
Gabrieli ended with questions: "How are we going to make neuroscience applicable to the classroom?" and "How close are we in using brain science to help in the classroom?" He answered his questions by telling a story of 64 children, at risk for failure in reading, who were accepted into a special program. From neuroimaging the researchers were able to predict how the children would do throughout the year. This suggests that brain structure itself determines student performance. However I traveled back in my thinking, to remembering the Rosenthal and Jacobson (1966) study on the importance smaller on the importance of teachers' attitudes to children's classroom performance, and to Gabrieli's comments on the importance of the belief that we can learn effecting our learning and memory.

Day 11: Progress Not Perfection --GTD & Early to Rise

"Progress not perfection" I'm telling myself. I've continued to put things in order, making files (not using the labeler yet, that can happen later, I have Research Assistants (RAs) to help me go back and label my work files. But the going is slow, and every time I turn around I've created yet another pile from something I just "had" to print out and read in hard copy. Hopefully this paper-intensive habit will stop now, as I am finally on my MacBook Pro with a big 15 instead of a 12 or 13 inch scrreen. Things seem much more legible, the key board is normal, and my writing is flowing again, wihtout the stops and starts of a keyboard layout that is not what its supposed to be. The 13 inch --on the sales end-- doesn't mention that they key board is a little bit off, and I wasted several months thinking the problem was me, I just had suddenly lost the ability to type in my sleep. As a psychologist I of course had the nagging worry: "Is the problem neurological?" But now having resumed my normal rapid typing, I can rest assured, Steve Jobs did something with the 13 inch keyboard, and failed to mention it in any public announcement that I've seen anyway. What a relief to be typing away at a breakneck speed.

But the habit I'm most concerned about right now is arising early. About three weeks ago (or is it four weeks now? I'm not sure) I vowed to change my sleep patterns from a life-long late to sleep and late to arise style. For many years now I justified my late to bed tendency on the grounds that I didn't have enough peace and quiet until very late at night, and therefore I needed to stay up late in order to write. As time marched by, in the last year or two I have found myself tired out by my heavily people-oriented work during the day, and realized my most alert and creative times were when I first woke up in the morning. And so began my journey of turning myself into a very early riser. This worked quite well for the first few weeks, and I found myself more productive, including beginning this full implementation of GTD methods aimed at finally feeling like a well-organized productive person. The last five days however, have been a bust, and I am slowly creeping back to staying up and rising late. Not what I want. Not ultimate productivity for me. I'm going to buy a super loud alarm clock today and put it across the room, so I have to get up to turn it off. Maybe that will work. Somehow GTD and rising up early are connected for me. So here I am, a work in progress not perfection. Steve Pavlina write lucidly about arising early, and a method he used to get himself to be an early riser. What you do is get into bed at various times of day, pajamas and all, set the alarm clock for a short while later, pretend to fall asleep until the alarm rings, and then jump up to turn it off and resume your days. Pavlina suggests this gets you into the habit of leaping up at the alarm, its a simple behavioral intervention.

Pavlina suggests:

What’s the real solution then? The solution is to delegate the problem. Turn the whole thing over to your subconscious mind. Cut your conscious mind out of the loop.

Now how do you do this? The same way you learned any other repeatable skill. You practice until it becomes rote. Eventually your subconscious will take over and run the script on autopilot.

This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/

I'm ready to try it, I thought I didn't need to go that far, but obviously I do. Pavlina also suggests that it takes 30 days to establish a new habit. He describes his own ventures into developing new habits, by promising himself that he will do the new habit he wants to develop, for thirty days, no less and more only if he wants to continue it after the 30 days. He says to look at it as an experiment, and one you have to do every day for 30 days before you decide if you want to institute some new behavior on a permanent basis. I don't know where he got his evidence for the "30 day mastery to a new you," meaning this might be one of those pieces of folk wisdom that is right on target, or it might be folk mythology. But having failed at waking up early, or seeing myself slip backwards, I'm ready to try Pavlina's methods, not only in the "going to bed in the middle of the day" behavioral intervention, with the addition of the cognitive trick, tell myself this is only for 30 days and I can change my mind at the end of 30 days, and not one day sooner.

Day 8: Implementing GTD

I can't say this has been a wonderful week thus far; I am still processing that whole room “in-box” although I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Most discouraging is that a large percent of the “stuff” –and even the stuff I am keeping—is not needed. I have thousands of articles on topics I’m still writing about and I justified keeping many of them on this basis. But in fact, there is always new material coming out since I’m a scientist. So I’ll always be in the process of getting the latest in the literature, and the “older” news from four years ago I could let fly into the recycling bin. But I didn’t. And then there are piles of journals that no one wants anymore, “We’ve gone digital” is what I hear when I’ve asked “Would you like to have these journals?” I’ve gone digital too, and that just reminds me that I have a whole other life, my digital files. I’m going to have to go through this same process on my computer(s). A computer sweep, collection, seems absolutely daunting because it feels less physical; my computer files are not something I can touch, move around in real time and space, or place in real physical piles. What has been particularly difficult is that I have tried to maintain my regular schedule. I held my seminar, met with students and clients, exercised, and otherwise maintained all of the regular patterns of my ordinary life. Thus the amount of time I can spend is limited, as I sift through that giant in-box, organizing and putting all those pieces of paper in the “right place.” The process has not made me have a ‘mind like water” which is of course the promise of David Allen’s GTD. But I admit, in the past three days, I have also finished an article that I should have completed two years ago, and it going out later today. So there has to be something in this process, difficult as it may be, that is liberating my work energy to finally move ahead with a rather formidable list of projects and commitments.

To be continued…

Day 4: GTD Implementation

I had a real meltdown yesterday. I was overwhelmed by the sheer numbrer of boxes and piles of paper sitting in the middle of my living room. My husband helped me as I began to sort through the piles. I could not stick with it for more than a few hours at a stretch. I spoke to a coach from Davidco (that's the name of David Allen's company). She said that I had "over-collected" meaning I should have left some of those piles of paper wherever they were, as I should only be processing current data. But that would miss the point. First, I don't know what is current and what is not without going through everything; there's a mix in every box. The way I came to have all these banker boxes full of stuff is what I have called the "Thanksgiving Syndrome." We always have a large and wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, with all of our dearest and oldest of friends coming, as well as family and even some more distant friends. Preparing for Thanksgiving we start noticing the piles and piles of "stuff" everywhere, cluttering up every surface. What we do then is to put all the stuff into banker boxes and stash them away in a back room or closet. And that is where they have remained, until we began the major collection on Thursday. There must be at least 15 of them, in addition to the many piles of papers that were everywhere; sideways on book shelves, on top of every cabinet, every desk, and in my home office, in a variety of corners on the floor. This then is the issue at hand; how to whiz through these boxes without getting distracted, without the melt down I had yesterday. Furthermore, I slept in today which is upsetting. It was the first time since I began the program of changing this sleeping in habit and turned myself into an early morning writer. I am disgruntled, and heading off to more sorting out of the boxes.

Day 3: GTD Implementation, Getting Up Early, & Planning

It's 5 AM and I awoke half an hour ago. This is the first time I woke up spontaneously, in what is now over two weeks of my new "habit formation," with the new habit of getting up early. I finally went to sleep early enough last night to get up this early, with no feeling of fatigue. I read e-mail and blogs for half an hour before feeling ready to write. I mentioned on Seah's blog a few days ago that I am very poor on planning and I'm trying to imitate Seah's new habit of taking an hour devoted to planning at the beginning of the day. I actually wrote this into my Google calendar a few months ago, but before I began getting up early I couldn't do it. Waking up at 11AM filled me with too much panic to engage in what seems to me a luxury of planning the day. I am a horrendous failure at planning. I have never been able to plan effectively; any plan I have made is likely to be broken almost immediately, as if I am defying an authority who is trying to tell me how to live my life and what to do, instead of running with it, knowing it is my best estimate for how to structure my day. Having done over two weeks of getting up early, I think today is the day to create a structure and follow it. I put it in the absolute so as not to give me room to alter it. Ordinarily I would say: "Today is the day to create a structure and try follow it."

I did little yesterday on GTD implementation, having completed the collection process the day before. Finding myself procrastinating, I pulled out the Task Progress Tracker or PCEO-TPT01-Standard. (http://davidseah.com/archives/2005/09/23/the-printable-ceo/) and at 6:30 PM I promised myself I would use the time-boxing system as I had planned. I committed to 15 minutes (measured on Minuteur, a free timer made for the Mac (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19356) of processing, i.e., clarification of each item from my 3' x 4' x 5' in-box collection, resulting from the Day 1 GTD implementation, the collection process that happened on Thursday. After the first 15 minutes I filled in a 15-minute bubble on my graphic representation of my progress. Then I went ahead and powered through another 2 hours, after which I was starving for dinner. After dinner I spent some time with a friend who was visiting us for dinner, and soon thereafter I drifted into a wonderful sleep.

Despite my history of failure in planning, I challenge myself to plan successfully, after awakening spontaneously at 5:00 AM, fully rested. Now (as in in the next ten minutes) I am going to pull out an Emergent Task Planner Form and plan my day. http://davidseah.com/archives/2006/09/16/the-printable-ceo-vi1-emergent-task-planning/
I have a few clinical appointments forming the fixed structure of the day, exercise (Kundalini Yoga) to be structured in, listening to my voice mail, reading any important emails, returning necessary phone calls, a few academic tasks, and the rest will be continuing to "clarify" and organizing the collected items, down to every single piece of paper. I am also going to do a mindsweep but that won't be exactly scheduled, just an ongoing effort every time I need a break from clarifying and organizing. I'm committing myself to tracking my progress here as well as on Seah's forms, in an effort to keep me honest, and to spend most of my time clarifying and organizing the collection dumpster in our living room. (See picture, I decided to make that public). Today's motivation will also rest on time-blocking as the task is too formidable to do it any other way, from my perspective and knowing my strengths and weaknesses. To be continued...

GTD Implementation Day 2: A Slow Start to "Clarification" and "Organizing"

I am still just looking at the rather unbelievable mound of papers in my living room. As soon as it doesn't look like it looks right now, I'll post picture (yes we took pictures). Or maybe I'll wait until I can post "before" and "after" shots. Meanwhile I heard via email from Meg, the GTD coach who said it would be wise to just haul the things that are "current into my "in-box" (renamed "living room in my house")." I wrote back to her "too late" and it is, its all there and I have no idea what came from where so I can't just put it back. I am procrastinating jumping into it and beginning the process of "clarification" or asking "What is this?" Is it something I need to: Delegate, Defer, or Trash? Making the decision and acting. That's all I have to do, but I'm procrastinating.

Time-Boxing and Seah's Bubbles
So here is what I'm going to do right now. First I'm going to the gym (physical therapy). Then I'm coming right home and I'm going to pull out one of David Seah's Printable CEO (PCAO) "Bubble Charts" called Task Progress Tracker or PCEO-TPT01-Standard. (http://davidseah.com/archives/2005/09/23/the-printable-ceo/) Then, finally I'm going to tackle this project with the time-boxing method. What that means is that instead of saying "I"m going to get through the first pile in front of me" I'll tell myself "I'm going to do this for 15 minutes." Then if I get into it, I can do another 15 minutes. I can do almost anything for 15 minutes and by stating my intentions this way, I'll overcome the inertia I feel, just looking at the so-called in-box in front of me. As should be obvious here, I've decided to track my mental progress here on my blog, make my procrastination when face with an unpleasant task public, with the hope that it might shame me into dealing with the process before night falls and its on to the next day.

Implementing GTD: "Collection"

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Implementing "Getting Things Done"
I spent all day yesterday in the first phase of GTD implementation. Now I've been using parts of GTD for over a year, but I failed to do the first step, that is putting absolutely everythng that is somewhere it doesn't belong into my "in-box." It took almost six hours, and there are many things left behind, for which I am supposed to make a "placeholder" by writing them down, each on a single piece of paper, and put into my in-box so I have them included in the pile of things to be done. I have created a monster, and there are still plenty of placeholders. I think my pile is about 3 feet high and four feet by four feet wide. This is an incredble amount of "stuff" as David Allen calls it. I was then supposed to sit down and do a "mindsweep" getting everything I have to do, want to do, am supposed to do, and everything that has my conscious attention, putting it all on paper. I froze. I've done mindsweeps recently, maybe I can use those lists. I sat staring at this mountain of papers (things like "clean bathroom cabinet drawers" I delegated to a place holder, I couldn't see dumping the bathroom drawers on top of what is the most formidable collection of papers I've ever been privy to. I could do no more. Today, while I'm still fresh and have not yet gone down to my living room which is housing this so-called in-box so I haven't been startled and upset yet, I'll do yet another mind sweep. Then I plan to dive right into the clarification process, where I begin the process of "processing" this awesome collection. I can't see how I am going to do this in anythign under a week, and I have other obligations. Oh well, here it goes.

Today is the Day: A Major Overhaul

Today is the BIG day I've been waiting for. My house is like a giant inbox with piles of papers and books absoulutely everywhere. After almost two years of following David Allen's GTD and implementing as much as I seemed able to implement, I decided to take four dedicated days to go through all the piles, put post-its on everything as soon as I lay eyes on it, then sort and throw away or put in appropriate piles for labeling and filing. I have four wonderful Research Assistants (RAs) coming over on and off for the whole four days (they are free undergraduate labor from UCB, and the pay off for them is they will be knee high in research papers and they can sit down and read any time they want to --Its my job to be sure they are learning as they are in the act of helping me. I also have four new wooden file cabinets arriving tomorrow morning. Last summer I consolidated all of my offices here, into my home office, and there was an influx of stuff that is only now going to be dealt with. I get wooden files becasue they are essentially home furniture and metal would look way too cold. I have my fingers crossed that I can throw out enough such that the file cabinets already in the house, combined with the new ones, will be able to accomadate my papers. Some things we may have to put into storage. For example any data I have collected over the years that is in hard copy (now we use the Internet as our data collection device) has to be kept for at least 10 years, and I get worried about throwing it out before we hit 12 years. Suffice it to say there is way too many banker boxes holding years of studies, pre-Internet.

I think, following David Seah's plan of action (he is doing an experiment of trying to develop the habit of going to bed earlier and waking up at 6:30AM, and I've been doing the same --for two weeks now, and for the most part I've been successful and it is helping me get more done, much to my amazment. Well Seah's been doing it and he has developed a ritual of going to a coffee shop every morning and planning his day in a "morning notebook." I think I will imitate this, as I am so poor at planning and maybe it would teach me to become a better planner.

So I'm off to planning the four days of "collection" and "clarification."