Severe Trauma does NOT Lead to Mental Disorders: The Case of Child Soldiers In Africa

An article in New Scientist, May 10, 2008, written by Peter Aldhous, reports on research on the fate of children in Uganda and other African war zones, who went through horrendous experiences, such as being kidnapped and abducted, being beaten, taken from their families, and forced to fight, kill people and even commit atrocities. Instead being a 'lost generation" as has been predicted, many seem to reintegrate into their home environments after the immediate warfare was over. Furthermore these child soldiers seem to often turn out in better shape when compared to those who remained at home and didn't have to fight at all. They were more likely to be politically active and to function well in society in terms of being able to earn a living and being otherwise productive. This certainly casts doubt on the trauma theory of psychopathology.

But what is really the dynamic that would influence these child soldiers to do better ultimately than those who were far less traumatized? Perhaps the child soldiers who were not forced to passively watch the violence but instead actively participated, suffer from lower levels of survivor guilt. Perhaps being beaten oneself has far less effect than watching others being beaten. Perhaps being a witness to violence rather than participating in it is the trauma that leads to a psychologically poor outcome.

The report of data coming out of these extreme war situations has to have implications for the trauma theory of psychopathology.

Conducting Research: How to Write the Introduction to Your Dissertation Proposal

A dissertation proposal (the the final dissertation) begins with the chapter titled: "Introduction". Students have asked me: "How do I write the introduction?" The question deserves an answer. Writing the introduction to a dissertation is no more magical than writing any other part of the work. While students have different styles, and professors have different demands and requirements, the opening chapter is literally what it is called, the introduction. I learned long ago that this chapter is designed to answer a simple question: "What is this study about?" I often recommend that my students use this as their opening sentence..."This study is about...." and succinctly in the first sentence, tell us, the readers, what the whole thing is about. When you are ready to do that, you are ready to write the rest of your dissertation proposal.

After stating in clear language what your study is about, a few more sentences to elaborate the opening sentence should provide the reader with the big picture. Then you are on to the rest of the introduction. I ask my students to lay out the big picture in the paragraphs following. Let me use an example. Lets take an example, and say that a student is studying levels of survivor guilt in adult children in alcoholics. The dissertation proposal begins with "This study is about levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics." Adult children of alcoholics are known to take a great deal of responsibility within their families, and some appear to have difficulties that relate to feeling overly responsible for others, and that give rise to feelings of guilt. (Here we make a few unsubstantiated statements that will be developed in detail, with numerous references to the literature in the literature review). Understanding the role of guilt in this population may contribute to our knowledge related to treatment, when treatment is needed.

From here the story is expanded greatly, and we, the readers, are told why it is important to discover this information --namely, how pervasive is this problem potentially, how many people are we talking about? How many alcoholic families are there in the United States (or Europe, or any specific country, or within any specific population, ethnicity, gender etc, depending on the focus of the study). In other words, the student lays a wider net for the story, describing the bigger issue, providing the context for the study. If the population overall has a very low rate of alcoholism, the reader wants to know that. That would tell us that not many people would be affected by whatever you find out in the study. If there is a large alcoholic population, we want to know that as it would imply there may be many people walking around with this specific problem. You go from the broad figures, demographics of alcoholism, to the more detailed picture, perhaps getting into the rates of alcoholism within sub-populations within the larger culture. How many disadvantaged people compared to how many higher socioeconomic class people suffer from alcoholism? Is this a problem that exists across class, race, ethnicity, gender? Or is it particularly relevant for sub-populations.

You might address some common myths about alcoholism and being the child of alcoholics. You don't get heavily in to the literature, except to reference perhaps a few major studies. You get all the government statistics possible, related to your study. You might give a few examples, to bring a story element to light. While you make the text meaningful, avoid any polemics or hyperbolic writing. You only get to polemicize at the end, if in fact your data, once its collected, confirms whatever hypotheses you might hold. This said, the whole introduction in a sense, is telling a big story. "Here is why I am doing this study, this is why it is important, meaningful," is what what you are saying. If there is a history to the story, a sociopolitical context, here is where we write about it. If there is a biological component to your study, you broadly describe that. You are using broad brush strokes so to speak, so by the end of the introduction the reader is into the story, and wants to find out the answer to the question that the dissertation is posing.

In the study of levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics, part of establishing the big context might involve discussing guilt in general and the history of knowledge about guilt, or excessive responsibility for others. You might get into the whole issue of dysfunctional families, families where communications are altered by the presence of alcohol or other substances; you might discuss the importance of communication in general, in creating functional family life. You might discuss family communication across cultures. You might suggest an evolutionary aspect to your topic. From telling the reader about rates of alcoholism in the nation, or in the world for that matter, in developed nations and developing nations, and in describing big issues involved, the larger context, you get us, your reader involved. This is your aim.

Towards the end of the introduction, you move in again, to the specific study, and you describe briefly what you are going to do. You might briefly describe your over all design, giving the name to the kind of research design you're using. You end the introduction by a restatement of the first question "What is this study about?" with the hopes that your reader knows a great deal more about your study, why you are doing it, what are the major issues involved, and why it is important. Hopefully, you will have your reader with you, eager to go on, and eager to find out what you discover when you collect your data.

I need to blog again

What happened to my blogging?
My blogging waned over the year, from my daily posting to at best, once a month, when I had a specific message to send to my students. I would like to recommit myself to blogging. I find it the most rewarding kind of writing and since I write everyday in numerous emails, I write academic articles and notes to students and opinion pieces on news in psychology and psychiatry, I want to (note I say "I want to" not "I will" pick up blogging again. I am not sure what discouraged me. Perhaps it was a problem presented to me by some readers "I tried to write a comment, but failed each time I tried." Rather than going in there, figuring out the problem, and fixing it, I just left it alone. After a while of no responses, even in "private" I lost interest. I have lots of readers on my various listsesrvs, why not write to them, instead of to no one, here. Well one reason is that I can write more personally here. And I can put my commitments in public, something I would not dare to do on my academic listservs.

The anti-medication frenzy needs to be analyzed
I am in a spin about the anti-psychiatry, anti-medication tear the press and even the professionals are on now. In response to one of those articles declaring that medication doesn't work, the British government decided to pour money into training 10,000 new cognitive behavioral psychotherapists. My main collaborator and statistician Jack Berry, upon hearing about this , said in his driest tone "Awfully impulsive, don't you think?" Yes I do think.

So expect an upcoming piece about the state of the medication debate (hysteria would be a more precise way of describing teh current atmosphere.

Bottom line, a new in-box called "bedroom" is screaming out for help
I may think its time to resume blogging because I have a new 'inbox" taking over a bed room. The "inbox" has turned out to be a bottle next in my GTS system. I wrote to David Allen's people to see if they might direct me. I told them to get Allen back out here to San Francisco, I need a booster shot right now. The whole point of mentioning this is I need some kind of accountability, and I am hoping that by writing about this, even if I am downplaying it, may help me deal wiht the situation. So if I do nothing but what I started doing here a year ago, I have to do at least that. Track my progress on GTD and resume getting things done.

From Dustin Wax: A Great Summary

50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life. To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better.

1. Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day. Do them first. If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.
2. Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment. Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward.
3. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.
4. Wake up earlier: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.
5. One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard. Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old. For example, you buy a new shirt, you get rid of an old one. (Variation: One in, Two Out — useful when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your possessions.)
6. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself. Lots of people use mindmaps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of. Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not — you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head. After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts.
7. Ubiquitous Capture: Always carry something to take notes with — a pen and paper, a PDA, a stack of index cards. Capture every thought that comes into your mind, whether it’s an idea for a project you’d like to do, an appointment you need to make, something you need to pick up next time you’re at the store, whatever. Review it regularly and transfer everything to where it belongs: a todo list, a filing system, a journal, etc.
8. Get more sleep: Sleep is essential to health, learning, and awareness. Research shows the body goes through a complete sleep cycle in about 90 minutes, so napping for less than that doesn’t have the same effect that real sleep does (although it does make you feel better). Get 8 hours a night, at least. Learn to see sleep as a pleasure, not a necessary evil or a luxury.
9. 10+2*5: Work in short spurts of 10 minutes, interrupted by 2 minute breaks. Use a timer. Do this 5 times an hour to stay on target without over-taxing your physical and mental resources. Spend those 2 minutes getting a drink, going to the bathroom, or staring out a window.
10. SMART goals: A rubric for creating and pursuing your goals, helping to avoid setting goals that are simply unattainable. Stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
11. SUCCES: From Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick, SUCCES is a set of characteristics that make ideas memorable (”sticky”): sticky ideas are Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Stories.
12. Eat the Frog: Do your most unpleasant task first. Based on the saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, the day can only get better from then on.
13. 80/20 Rule/Pareto Principle: Generally speaking, the 80/20 Principle says that most of our results come from a small portion of our actual work, and conversely, that we spend most of our energy doing things that aren’t ultimately all that important. Figure out which part of your work has the greatest results and focus as much of your energy as you can on that part.
14. What’s the Next Action?: Don’t plan out everything you need to do to finish a project, just focus on the very next thing you need to do to move it forward. Usually doing the next, little thing will lead to another, and another, until we’re either done or we run into a block: we need more information, we need someone else to catch up, etc. Be as concrete and discrete as possible: you can’t “install cable”, all you can do is “call the cable company to request cable installation”.
15. The Secret: There is no secret.
16. Slow Down: Make time for yourself. Eat slowly. Enjoy a lazy weekend day. Take the time to do things right, and keep a balance between the rush-rush world of work and the rest of your life.
17. Time Boxing: Assign a set amount of time per day to work on a task or project. Focus entirely on that one thing during that time. Don’t worry about finishing it, just worry about giving that amount of undivided attention to the project. (Variation: fixed goals. For example, you don’t get up until you’ve written 1,000 words, or processed 10 orders, or whatever.)
18. Batch Process: Do all your similar tasks together. For example, don’t deal with emails sporadically throughout the day; instead, set aside an hour to go through your email inbox and respond to emails. Do the same with voice mail, phone calls, responding to letters, filing, and so on — any routine, repetitive tasks.
19. Covey Quadrants: A system for assigning priorities. Two axes, one for importance, the other for urgency, intersect. Tasks are assigned to one of the four quadrants: not important, not urgent; not important, urgent; important, not urgent; and important and urgent. Purge the tasks that are neither important nor urgent, defer the unimportant but urgent ones, try to avoid letting the important ones become urgent, and as much as possible work on the tasks in the important but not urgent quadrant.
20. Handle Everything Once: Don’t set things aside hoping you’ll have time to deal with them later. Ask yourself “What do I need to do with this” every time you pick up something from your email list, and either do it, schedule it for later, defer it to someone else, or file it.
21. Don’t Break the Chain: Use a calendar to track your daily goals. Every day you do something, like working out or writing 1,000 words, make a big red “X”. Every day the chain will grow longer. Don’t break the chain! That is, don’t let any non-X days interrupt your chain of successful days.
22. Review: Schedule a time with yourself every week to look over what you’ve done that week and what you want to do the next week. Ask yourself if there are any new projects you should be starting, and if what you’re working on is moving you closer to your goals for your life.
23. Roles: Everyone fills several different roles in their life. For instance, I’m a teacher, a student, a writer, a step-father, a partner, a brother, a son, an uncle, an anthropologist, and so on. Understanding your different roles and learning to keep them distinct when necessary can help you keep some sense of balance between them. Make goals around the various roles you fill, and make sure that your goals fit with your goals in other roles.
24. Flow: The flow state happens when you’re so absorbed in whatever you’re doing that you have no awareness of the passing of time and the work just happens automatically. It’s hard to trigger consciously, but you can create the conditions for it by allowing yourself a block of uninterrupted time, minimizing distractions, and calming yourself.
25. Do It Now: Fight procrastination by adopting “do it now!” as your mantra. Limit yourself to 60 seconds when making a decision, decide what you’re going to do with every input in your life as soon as you encounter it, learn to make bold decisions even when you’re not really sure. Keep moving forward.
26. Time Log: Lawyers have to track everything they do in the day and how long they do it so they can bill their clients and remain accountable. You need to be accountable to yourself, so keep track of how much time you really spend on the things that are important to you by tracking your time.
27. Structured Procrastination: A strategy of recognizing and using one’s procrastinating tendencies to get stuff done. Items at the top of top of the list are avoided by doing seemingly less difficult and less important tasks further down the list — making the procrastinator highly productive. The trick is to make sure the items at the top are apparently urgent — with pressing deadlines and apparently large consequences. But, of course, they aren’t really all that urgent. Structured procrastination requires a masterful skill at self-deception, which fortunately bigtime procrastinators excel at.
28. Personal Mission Statement: Write a personal mission statement, and use it as a guide to set goals. Ask if each goal or activity moves you closer to achieving your mission. If it doesn’t, eliminate it. Periodically review and revise your mission statement.
29. Backwards Planning: A planning strategy that works from the goal back to your next action. Start with the end goal in mind. What do you have to have in place to accomplish it? OK, now what do you have to have in place to accomplish what you have to have in place to accomplish your end goal? And what do you have to have in place to accomplish that? And so on, back to something you already have in place and/or can put in place immediately. That’s your next action.
30. Tune Out: Create a personal privacy zone by wearing headphones. People are much more hesitant to interrupt someone wearing headphones. Note: actually listening to music through your headphones is optional — nobody knows but you.
31. Write It Down: Don’t rely on your memory as your system. Write down the things you need to do, your schedule, anything you might need to refer to, and every passing thought so you can relax, knowing you won’t forget. Use your brain for thinking, use paper or your computer for keeping track of stuff.
32. Gap Time: The little blocks of time we have during the day while waiting for the bus, standing in line, waiting for a meeting to start, etc. Have a list of small, 5-minute tasks that you can do in these moments, or carry something to read or work on to make the most of these spare minutes.
33. Monotasking: We like to think of ourselves as great multitaskers, but we aren’t. What we do when we multitask is devote tiny slices of time to several tasks in rapid succession. Since it takes more than a few minutes (research suggests as long as 20) to really get into a task, we end up working worse and more slowly than if we devoted longer blocks of time to each task, worked until it was done, and moved on to the next one.
34. Habits: Habits are as much about the way we see and respond to the world as about the actions we routinely take. Examine your own habits and ask what they say about your relation to the world — and what would have to change to create a worldview in which your goals were attainable.
35. Triggers: Place meaningful reminders around you to help you remember, as well as to help create better habits. For example, put the books you need to take back to the library in front of the door, so you can’t leave the house without seeing them and remembering they need to go back.
36. Unclutter: Clutter is anything that’s out of place and in the way. IT’s not necessarily neatness — someone can have a rigorously neat workspace and not be able to get anything done. It’s being able to access what you need, when you need it, without breaking the flow of your work to find it. Figure out what is “clutter” in your working and living spaces, and fix that.
37. Visualize: Imagine yourself having accomplished your goals. What is your life like? Are you who you want to be? If not, rethink your goals. If so, then visualize yourself taking the steps you need to take to get there. You’ve got yourself a plan; write it down and do it.
38. Tickler File: A set of 43 folders, labeled 1 - 31 and January - December, used to remind us of tasks we need to do on a specific day. For instance, if you have a trip on March 23rd, you’d put your itinerary, tickets, and other material in the “March” folder. At the start of each month, you move the previous month’s folder to the back. On March 1st, you’d transfer your travel information into the “23″ folder. Each day, you move the previous day’s folder to the back. On the 23rd, the “23″ folder will be at the front, and everything you need that day will be there for you.
39. ToDon’t List: A list of things not to do — useful for keeping track of habits that lead you to be unproductive, like playing online flash games.
40. Templates: Create templates for repetitive tasks, like letters, customer reply emails, blog posts, etc.
41. Checklists: When planning any big task, make a checklist so you don’t forget the steps while in the busy middle part of doing it. Keep your checklists so you can use them next time you have to do the same task.
42. No: Learning to say “no” — to new commitments, to interruptions, to anything — is one of the most valuable skills you can develop to keep you focused on your own commitments and give you time to work on them.
43. Unschedule: Schedule all your fun activities and personal life stuff (the stuff you want to do) first. Fill in whatever time’s left over with uninterrupted blocks of work. Write those into your schedule after you’ve completed them. Reward yourself after every block of quality, focused work.
44. Purge: Regularly go through your existing commitments and get rid of anything that is either not helping you advance your own goals or is a regular “sink” of time or energy.
45. One Bucket: Minimize the places you collect new inputs in your life, your “buckets”. Ideally have one “bucket” where everything goes. Lots of people experience an incredible sense of relief when everything they need to think about is collected in one place in front of them, no matter how big the pile.
46. 50-30-20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.
47. Timer: Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work. When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.
48. Do Your Worst: Give yourself permission to suck. Relieve the pressure of needing to achieve perfection in every task on the first run. Promise yourself you’ll go back and fix any problems later, but for now, just run wild.
49. Make an Appointment with Yourself: Schedule time every week or so just for you. Consider the state of your life: what’s working? What isn’t working? what mistakes are you making? what could you change? Give yourself a chance to get to know you.
50. [This space left intentionally blank]: This is a big list, sure, but it’s not an exhaustive one. The last space is left for you to fill in. What works for you? What would you like to share with the rest of the lifehack.org community? Let us know in the comments — or write your own list and link back to us!

What is Beauty? Is it really the most "average?"

I just ran into (was directed to, from World Science) a fascinating experiment trying to determine what beauty consists of. One theory is that an average of faces is going to be considered most beautiful, based on the brain being most comfortable with the most average.

Here's a link to go play with this idea yourself, I found it quite intriguing.

http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average

From Zen Habits: 7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done

Over at Zen Habits http://zenhabits.net/ Leo has written a simple and rather brilliant analysis of what he calls "resistance" meaning, procrastinating on going to work on what you should be going to work on. Many psychologists (and other mental health workers) use the concept of resistance to suggest clients are unconsciously gratified by their problems, and they deliberately resist the therapists efforts to help them. They remain blind to reality and ignorant about their lack of motivation because they want to. I don't agree at all with this perspective. It suggests that cure is in the hands of the therapist, that clients are not motivated to resolve their problems. This is simply untrue. Clients are highly motivated to recover from whatever harms them. If clients appear to resist the help of therapists, it is either because therapists are frightening them, or on the wrong track, or because clients are inhibited in doing what they really want to do, for one or another reason. Something gets in their way, it is not that they resist deliberately, or don't want to get better.

Taken into the world of how to get things done, the Zen Habits post is certainly not unfriendly like the traditional psychologist's concept of resistance. But it too leaves out the underlying reason for stopping oneself from moving forward. I think as in the case of psychological problems, the s0-called resistance represents an internal inhibition, often some form of survivor guilt, or fearing that if you become highly active, efficient and successful, you risk making someone close to you feel inadequate simply by comparison. So you stop yourself from moving ahead effectively, the way you really want to. The source of inhibition may lie elsewhere, but whatever it is, it might be worth while to think about your resistance to getting things done as a kind of inhibition.

This said, here's the post, its well worth reading (I still don't exactly know the etiquette here, about putting someone else's blog inside mine. I think as long as I put the link, it may be ok. If not, forgive the breach of good behavior). In any case, getting into Zen Habits http://zenhabits.net/ on a regular basis is well worth while.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/01/7-powerful-steps-to-overcoming-resistance-and-actually-getting-stuff-done/#more-620

Photo courtesy of Pikaluk

7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done

There are a slew of popular books and systems, from favorites of mine such as Getting Things Done to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to the Now Habit and more, all designed to get us more productive and effective.

But getting things done is really about one thing, and one thing only: overcoming the resistance to doing what we need to do.

OK, I would add a couple more steps to that, to ensure that we’re managing our tasks correctly:

1. Have all our projects and tasks stored in an external system (out of our heads), such as a to-do list or lists.

2. Pick the tasks and projects that are most important to work on.

3. Overcome the resistance to actually doing those important tasks.

And I would submit it’s the last step that’s the most important (although I wouldn’t ignore the other two). Unfortunately, because we’re not very good at overcoming resistance, we procrastinate on this third step by fiddling with the external system — the tools we use to organize our tasks, coming up with new and better systems, tweaking them until they’re near perfect, and so on.

That’s Resistance.

As Stephen Pressfield writes in his excellent book on this topic, The War of Art:

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

What’s keeping us from sitting down is Resistance.”

The War of Art is all about Resistance, not only for writers and other artists, but for anyone trying to pursue their dreams or become what they’re meant to be. I highly recommend it. This, of course, is also a topic that is central to Zen Habits: overcoming Resistance to create new and better habits, to find happiness and simplicity, to do what you need to do and love to do.

I fight Resistance every single day, and I thought you might be interested in some of the ways I fight and beat Resistance, daily.

1. Become aware. The problem usually is that we don’t think about Resistance. We don’t understand it or even realize it’s there most of the time. We just think, “Oh, I better straighten out my desk … or get my to-do lists in order” or we get distracted by something on the web, or we feel that we have to check our email, or we’re just going to watch this one TV show, or any of a limitless amount of distractions.

Combat this by realizing that you are facing Resistance. Once you become aware of it, you can fight it, and beat it. It can be difficult to become more aware, but the key is to focus on it for a couple of days. Print out the words “Defeat Resistance” and put it somewhere visible as you work. That will help remind you to be aware of Resistance. Every time you do something that isn’t the most important thing you could be doing right now, be aware of what you’re doing.

2. Become a pro. This is the main technique that Pressfield outlines in The War of Art: combating Resistance by turning pro. The professional, unlike the amateur, comes to work ready to work. He’s doing it for a living (and loves what he does) and knows that as long as he shows up and starts working, the rest will come. Approach the work like a pro, and you’ll get the work done.

3. Be very clear, and focus. Before you start the day, be very clear about what you want to accomplish. You won’t be able to finish 10 major projects, but maybe you can finish one important project, or at least move it along to a certain point. Set three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Once you have those things defined, you’ve got to focus on them to the exclusion of all else (at least, during your prime work time). Do them first. Focus, finish, then move on to the smaller tasks you need to complete today. If you find yourself being lured to do something that’s not on that short list of three things, bring yourself back and focus.

4. Clear away distractions. Don’t spend a lot of time on this, because eliminating distractions can be a distraction itself. Instead, take one minute: close your email program and IM program and turn off all notifications. Shut down the Internet if at all possible. Close all programs except the one you need to do the important task in front of you. Clear your desk quickly (stuff everything in a drawer or something — you can organize it later) and turn off the phones if possible. Put on headphones or alert your coworkers (or family, if you’re at home) that you’re not to be disturbed for the next hour (or however long you plan to work on this task). Then get to work.

5. Have a set time and place. Make your first important task a daily appointment. For me, that’s writing. I always start the day with a writing task (such as writing this post, for example). For you, that might be different. Have a set start time, and possibly a set ending time — you’ll have to see what works for you, but the important thing is the set starting time. And when that time comes, you have to start. No exceptions.

6. Know your motivation. Why are you doing this? Why is this task important? What is it working towards? And how important is that end goal to you? Why is it important? You need to know these things to build up the motivation to overcome Resistance.

7. Just start. In the end, all the tips in the world won’t make as much a difference as this simple (and timeless) instruction. Just sit down and start. Feel Resistance to doing that? There’s no way to overcome it than to just start. Reading more about Resistance won’t help. Going to an online Procrastinator’s Forum won’t help. Working on your to-do lists won’t help. Only doing actually helps. And the only way to do something is to just start.

So how do you start, when you feel resistance? You just start. Feeling the need to do something else? Stop yourself from getting distracted. Remind yourself what you need to be doing, and why. Sit down and the set time and place. And just start.

For me, that means opening up a blank text file and writing the title of whatever I’m writing. Then I start brainstorming and outlining ideas. This gets me over the initial Resistance. And once I’ve started on that, I can usually get into the flow. But the important thing is to get started.

So stop reading this. And just start!

Update: See another great article on this topic just published over at LifeDev.net: Keeping Focus While Beating Back Distractions.

It's All in the Eyes

Its been a month and a half since I posted here. There's no better way to drive people away, but that was not my intention, although I continue to keep this forum rather private for now and sporadic writing may be the way I make sure of that.

That said, a few days ago I read about a study so compelling that I feel I have to post it here. In a study involving rating the intensity of emotion expression on faces, the subjects --people who were to be the "raters"-- were shown photographs of faces and asked to rate the intensity of the emotion shown on the face. The emotions were common ones (at least for experiments), like happiness, anger and sadness. Then the experimenters manipulated nothing but the pupil of the eye, that was visible in the photograph. Now how big or how small one's pupils are are NOT under our conscious control. Meaning no matter how much I want to fake this or that emotion, I couldn't use the size of my pupils to do it. I might be able to fake a smile, but not pupil size.

Three photographs of the same face were shown. Each of the three faces differed, only by pupil size. In one it was big, in one medium, and in one small. Then the raters were asked to estimate the emotion and intensity of the emotion. In sadness (and only in sadness) the raters significantly rated the photo with the face with smaller pupils as more intensly sad.

Additionally the experimenters got a general empathy score for each rather, using a standard empathy measure. They found that those who were more empathic in general, were more often rating the smaller pupil as sadder, meaning they were more tuned in to this signal of intensity than other raters.

This study got my head spinning. For many years, whenever questioned, Paul Ekman, a leading emotion researcher, had insisted that guilt was not a pure emotion, because there was no, clear and cross cultural muscular display of guilt, that would be systematically identified by raters. This he took to mean that guilt was a composite of different emotions. This didn't make sense to me, but who was I to argue with a major authority. Lets face it, I argued anyway, but had no evidence for my own conclusion, that guilt is indeed a pure and universal emotion. Upon reading this article this week, the light dawned --guilt might be conveyed in the eyes, by pupil size or some other special feature of which we are entirely unaware, as experiencers, or as raters, those responding to the gestures of emotions. And what else is communicated by our pupils, over which we have no control. We know that people make instantaneous snap decisions about people they meet for the first time. How does that happen? We can read book after book telling us how to make a good first impression, but something is always missing. Of course it is. Our pupils change without conscious awareness, and we read faces, also without conscious awareness.

It's all in the eyes.

Harrison, N.A., Wilson, C. E., & Critchely, H.D. (2007). Processing of Observed Pupil Size Modulates Perception of Sadness and Predicts Empathy. Emotion, vol 7, #4, 724-729.

How to do Research III: The Literature Review, Part B.

How do you "review" the literature?

I've served as Chair on over 25 dissertations, and I've written many articles for "scholarly" publications, so I think I know how to review literature. A review of literature doesn't necessarily mean a "critical" review, that is it doesn't mean you have to criticize the studies you are describing. If a study has serious flaws, you would mention that, but many if not most articles in journals are reporting on studies that are basically sound, if they weren't they wouldn't have been accepted for publication. When I write a literature review, what is expected is that I report on the studies that came before the one I'm presenting or that led me to want to do the study I've done. "The literature" means in essence, the published results of studies in a given area. To review the literature means to write a readable summary of published research reports related to my study. Its that simple.

Please, don't write detail after detail and after detail

Students often begin the literature review, thinking they are supposed to write details about the studies they're describing, and they start listing the number of subjects in the study, all the measures used, the demographics of the study, one right after the other --almost like they are summarizing methods sections of prior research reports. This is not what I want to read, nor what I write, when I'm summarizing a body of studies, that is "the literature." Instead, what is more appropriate, is to write about the essence of a study, to report on the main findings, and only include details as much as is needed to provide the story of the study. Think about a body of research on a topic that has been "hot" for a decade, and I am doing research on some different aspect of the topic. Perhaps there are fifty studies that are relevant to the current study being presented in the dissertation or journal article. No one wants to read details about fifty studies. What we want to know is the basic findings of these studies, and we want to read this material after it has been organized coherently, so it is relatively easy to read. We want the author to figure out and present the conclusions from the mass of data presented in numerous research reports. If the findings of the studies on the topic are contradictory, that is more important than findings from any one study. We want to know right off that the literature presents contradictory findings. This tells us that the data found in all these studies suggests different conclusions, and therefore there is not yet a consistent and coherent understanding of whatever it is that is being studied. Perhaps our study will provide some new slant that will clear up areas of confusion, perhaps it will just add more to the mix. The point here is that we want to know the conclusions we can come to, even if it is only to say we don't yet have a clear conclusion. This all forms the background for presenting our own current study. Thus the literature review presents the story of a body of research.

Learning how to read studies is not the same as writing the literature review

In trying to teach students how to read literature, professors often come up with a fairly complex structure that they hope will help students focus on the details of an article, thereby be able to understand the study being described. This is useful for learning to read research articles, however it is not a model for describing prior research in a literature review. To use the model of the 50 studies done around a given topic --in preparing to write the literature review, it is fine to tear each study apart into this complex structure. This might ensure that you know what a study is about, what was done, and what was found. But in writing about the study, you only need to summarize what was found, what was concluded by the study. On occasion you might provide a detail, for example if a study was unusually large, you might refer to that .."In a large multisite study of treatment for unipolar depression" provides the picture of a very large, or substantial study and suggests that one should probably pay attention to the conclusions. This is obviously different from writing "in a study of 98 subjects diagnosed with unipolar depression..." although you could get away with this phrasing, provided you don't repeat that level of detail for one study after the other.

The literature review is the story of a body of research

When you write the literature review, you are transmitting the story of the relevant research. You are saving readers a whole lot of time and trouble by summarizing prior studies and then presenting some conclusions. If you keep the concept of a story or a series of stories in mind, you are more likely to write something that is lively and readable. There are limits of course because academic writing is by nature, likely to be, at least, slightly, boring. However, as you have found a topic interesting enough to conduct a study of your own about it, you have a good chance of presenting an interesting background story in your presentation of the literature. An essential feature of an outstanding literature is that it is interesting -- the author has managed to report on many sources of data, in and of itself rather dry, and has woven it all together with important conclusions, thereby lifting it out of the realm of tedium and into something that is almost light and interesting. That is the kind of lit review I want to read, and the kind I hope I know how to write.

I love New York (I do)

I don't know how I've survived this long without an introduction to reality TV, probably because I never watch TV, that is until I discovered I could download pilot shows from ITunes, and scan it in the middle of the night so it didn't inconvenience me --and the next thing I knew I was hooked on "Gossip Girl" and then "Grey's Anatomy" and finally disaster hit, I fell into something called "At Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" and I was gone. Well that was nothing. Last week a client, upon hearing of my affection for Tila Tequila, said "You've seen nothing yet, you're really going to love "I love New York."

Stop.

36 hours later:
I have watched Year One and Year Two (up to now) non-stop, no breaks except for 40 minutes of Kundalini yoga and food intermittently.

I am so irritated, none of these second season guys are in any way good enough for New York. She doesn't like any of them, she feels the pressure of the time limit of the show, and the lousy characters they selected for the second season. She's still hot for Chance and who can blame her, Chance and his brother are intelligent, smart, come close to her high intelligence unlike the rest of the choices. New York is rather brilliant. Why did the producers pick out idiots to pair her up with? What's with her mother? Her mother can't stand Chance. He has fits of hysterics all the time. But he's not violent like "Buddha," he's just prone to hysterics. He would freak out if anyone got really violent. He poses. She's as hysterical as Chance, so what's the big deal. Why should she have to pretend to get into these second season losers? She can't stand them, and she's right. She's trying to get into the best of them, but in no way are they good enough. And as for last season's "winner" -what a turkey he turned out to be, upset because of New York's comments about his mom. OK so New York is not always the most political woman, so what. What did he expect anyway?

So what are the writers/producers going to do? I know nothing about reality TV, and it would have been better if I had remained in the dark. I have however, formed a strong opinion, namely that if the characters selected to be on the show this year suck, she should not have to settle on any of them. Surely the producers are not morons and will not force her to carry on with this charade.

I have been kidnapped by reality TV, and will continue posting on this heady topics. Whomever was reading for academic edification, read no more. My brain has been highjacked.

If you have ANY spare time, I recommend "I love New York." I have no spare time and I wouldn't miss a minute of New York. Finally a woman we can identify with. Just imagine if she turned her attention to real politics, psychology, academia.

How to Do Research III: The Literature Review, Part A.

The Background: Reading, thinking and writing
Writing a literature review for a dissertation or publication is difficult, only because it involves long stints of careful and sometime tedious reading and then shorter stints of consistent writing. From my perspective, preparing for, and producing a literature review is the only "difficult" part of doing research. It is an essential component of the dissertation and/or a scholarly or academic publication and at various moments, its not a whole lot of fun. It means in essence, knowing what is in the academic literature about your topic, knowing what studies have been done prior to your own, thoroughly reading the literature related to your own research, and then finding a way to write an organized report on "the literature" for others to read. Covering the literature can be deadly boring because scientific writing has traditionally been so archain, obtuse, and obfuscating, and therefore difficult to read. Writing it up coherently may at times be mind-bending but once you are solidly into it, its never as bad as feared. I may sweat over the literature review part of a paper, (and there's a chance that you will too), but only because I am easily bored, prone to restlessness, and the amount of reading required is not great for the restless. However in the end, its just a job like any other job, with an orderly series of steps to completion. Once you make up your mind to do it, you just dive in and do it. For some reason it brings out the most serious procrastination. We stall, we hesitate, put it off, find a million other things to do. But as I said, once you decide to do it, its just like any other job.

Overcoming inertia: How to deal with procrastination
There is a simple, across-task method of overcoming procrastination called the "ten-minute dash" (for me this originated with Merlin Mann although I don't know if he was the first anti-procrastination dasher http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025). The secret here is acknowledging that you can do anything for ten minutes, no matter how boring or difficult it might be. Get a timer, set it for ten minutes, and GO. Take whatever part of the job you're doing, and work as hard as possible until the timer goes off at ten minutes. Stop, do whatever you want to do (surf the web, look at TV, get something to eat) for 2 minutes, and then set the timer for another ten minute dash. If you're like many people, once you get over that initial inertia, you'll keep on task and want to keep going. At worst, make yourself do another ten minute dashes in a half hour, or sometime relatively soon. If you do this on and off all day, through the weekend, you'll get quite a bit done, and you'll have overcome the inertia. Another method, perhaps a precursor to the ten minute dash, is "time boxing" described by Steve Pavlina http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/10/timeboxing/. Here, when you have something that you're procrastinating, it seems to stretch endlessly in front of you, you block out a period of time in which you can make a dent in it. For example you block out 30 or 40 minutes during which you'll begin some part of the work of the literature review, without planning to finish any specific piece of it. Like the ten minute dash, it gets you over that inertia. Personally, I like the speed of the ten minute dash, it works for me. The time box is usually a bit longer and if I am seriously procrastinating, it seems like too much.

What is a literature review?
Before we get to the "how to do it," its a good idea to have a clear picture of what the literature review is. To put it simply, its an organized written review of all the studies, articles, summaries, that came before your study. The lit review is your presentation to your readers of everything that you know about the studies, the articles, the theories, the history, of the constructs that were done earlier, before you got interested in your topic. Its a summary of all the work done before your work. Its literally, a review of the literature preceding whatever you are going to do to add to the literature. Keep this in mind as you proceed. You have readers. They don't know much about your topic. Pretend you are talking to your readers, and tell them everything that you know, that you have gained from reading the literature. They don't want to read all that stuff that you are being forced to read, you are doing it for them. This is definitely not magic, or particularly difficult in concept. Think of someone who might be interested in your topic and start writing after you have done the reading or while you're reading. If you have trouble writing when you think it is something "formal" write it as if you're writing an email. Talk to you audience.

How to gather the literature
I recommend starting with whatever seems to be easiest to tackle. If I am approaching a relatively new topic, I like to begin with popular books if there are any out there. A well written popular book on a scientific topic is relatively painless to read, and has within it, either in a reference section or within the text itself, leads to the most important studies already conducted, that you will need to refer to in your literature review. So start with popular books. While you're reading, make lists of all the experiments, studies, articles, other books, mentioned. Don't skip by references without listing them, thinking you'll remember to go back to them without reminders. You won't, and you'll be missing some of the best leads you can find. If you don't want to write everything down, xerox the reference pages and then mark with colored marker all the references that you know you should have in your literature review. You'll go back to these shortly.

Heading into Google Scholar
Then head to Google Scholar, or if you prefer, PsychInfo or another professional data base. Personally, I prefer Google Scholar because it draws from data bases across disciplines. I'm a psychologist and any phenomena I'm investigating has, in one way or another, been approached by biologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists as well as psychologists. Using Google Scholar I'm likely to find references across a wide range of fields and data bases, which serves me well. I suggest starting with an obvious combination of words that describes in some way, the topic you are studying. I study self-conscious emotions, and specifically, I'm an expert in empathy-based guilt. So I begin with "guilt" and "empathy" and then "empathy and guilt." This connects to "altruism" so that gets thrown in both by itself and in combination with the other words. Very quickly I have found numerous articles that look interesting. Many are immediately available on line, and if not, at least the abstracts are available instantly. I print out page after page of abstracts, lists of articles, and more abstracts. I put in more words, and go at it again. I may leave Google Scholar and go into PsychInfo, or the APA wider data bases, and go at the whole thing again. I end up with a huge pile of pages of references, and abstracts.

How to start reading: Skim abstracts like you read gossip in the Enquirer
This part is fun. I hole up and skim abstracts. For me this part feels some like reading the Enquirer, which I happen to enjoy. There are these brief summaries of a study, like bits of gossip. I read rapidly and get completely absorbed in whatever I'm reading. Abstracts are usually succinct and to the point. I always have colored highlighters with me as I do this, and mark clearly the articles/abstracts that may be related to my topic. Through this process, I discover at least a reasonable number of articles that are connected to my topic. I then go back into a data base that I have access to (meaning that I will have access to the PDF of whole articles), and I begin to go after the articles that have grabbed my attention when I read the abstract. I gather large piles of articles in this way.

The next step is to return to the lists of references that I located in popular books, and I search for the the abstracts or whole articles in the same manner. If an article looks relevant from the abstract, go for the gold, the PDF of the whole article. Add these to the piles of article you obtained from your search in Google Scholar or whatever data base you have been using. Your pile of articles is by now, growing. Make no effort to organize at this point, go back and forth between data bases, when you get bored working in one format, move to another. The goal here is to get as much as you can. Its rather like the brainstorming state of a project. You don't need to be critical or highly selective, you are aiming for quantity; quality comes later.

Beginning to read:
At this point (there may have been many ten minute dashes, many blocks of time, and days or weeks gone by) I try to select out what seem to be summary-type articles that include rather extensive literature reviews themselves. Now the more difficult task begins, and stalling or procrastinating is again a problem. Pull in the ten minute dash to get yourself to start reading one of those thick and often difficult articles, that review all the work that has already been done. Read slowly and carefully, sometimes it is helpful to outline as you read, as it forces you to pay attention by being an active reader. This will pay off in the end, as it begins to make you an "expert" in your field of study. Mark all the studies noted that have high relevance to your topic. At the end of an article, pour over the references at the end. There you will find numerous articles that you somehow missed when you did your initial search in Google Scholar or Psych Info etc. Go back to your search engine, and go after those articles, they belong in your growing piles that may by now, be taking over your desk, your couch, the whole floor. Read another one of those thick summary articles that are in themselves extensive lit reviews, in the same rather tedious but conscientious manner. Again, pour through the references and grab anything that you missed earlier. Find the references, get them in PDF format, print them out, and add them to the piles. By the time you've done this three or four times, without knowing exactly when it happened, you're beginning to become an "expert."

Organize the piles: Getting ready to write
The next phase may be the most mentally challenging, as it involves figuring out how to organize the material you're going to review so its comprehensive and coherent. Sometimes its by topic, sometimes it may be historically sequential. Meaning, in what order were the studies done, where did the field begin, what were the first studies conducted relevant to the one you're going to do. I have also organized lit reviews by method of study --theoretical papers go in one pile and are approached together, empirical studies in another. Finding the links between sections of your review is difficult but again none of it is magic, no one has ownership of "the right way" and you may as well be confident that however you decide to organize the material is the best. Intellectual confidence goes a long way here. If you lack confidence, fall back on the old "fake it till you make it" and pretend you have it. If you are in the position of having to write a literature review, you are already at the top of your area. In fact, by the time you have the job of writing a literature review, you are in the top of your field in education and experience. Most people never dream of writing a lit review, so if its a task in front of you, you have every reason to feel confident and competent. You had to do something academically impressive in order to get to that position in the first place, so slide into feeling like you belong there. Take over and be your own boss.

Give yourself permission to be the expert you already are
Taking the reins here may be the ultimate secret to writing the literature review. At some point, as you keep gathering and reading more and more articles, you begin to note the same references cited over and over. This is a sign that you have really covered the terrain, you know a whole lot about the field, and you have become an expert. Expertise in activities like building a house, putting in and fixing plumbing, sewing a suit, filling cavities, repairing a heart valve, conducting an exposure and response prevention therapy, all require carrying out a process numerous times until the necessary actions become automatic. Writing a literature review requires a set of sequential steps over and over; searching for literature, printing it out (or xeroxing it in a library), reading it and noting whatever is important in your head or somewhere on paper, organizing numerous articles you've read in some coherent manner, and finally telling the story in written form. By the time you have to write a lit review you've already mastered most of the specific steps involved, they're already automatic. You know how to look for articles, you know how to read, you know how to take notes (maybe) or at least you know how to make lists, you know how to think about an outline or how to organize thoughts. Its easier than mastering other tasks that consist of things you don't already know how to do. If you give yourself permission to be the expert you already are and just dive into extensive reading and a little thinking, you're already there.

Kundalini Yoga and the Kumbh Mela

For the past month or so I've been watching movies about Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, and yoga. Perhaps its because I challenged myself late in October to run a fitness/yoga experiment, by practicing kundalini yoga every day. I've been successful thus far and it feels good, not earthshaking, but good. For those of you who don't know what kundalini yoga is, its considered the most "ancient" form of yoga that was entirely secret until an Indian named Yogi Bjahan brought it to the US in the 1970s with a plan to train teachers of kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga focuses on the breath (which can be slow, or can be fast panting known as "breath of fire), chanting mantras, and positions that I at least find easier than the positions in many other types of yoga. This kind of yoga had never been seen except by the masters themselves, and the students of master practitioners. The first time I saw it was on a DVD by "Anna and Ravi" two famous kudalini yoga teachers/masters. I fell in love with it immediately which was a surprise because I had never liked all the other schools of yoga. I called this my "rock and roll yoga." I was however, sporadic in my practice until now, when I have successfully doing it for a half an hour or 45 minutes every day.

Last night I watched two movies about a huge event that take place in India every 12 years, a Hindu the Allahabad Kumbh Mela. In 2001, it was particularly important. Not only was it 12 years after the one before, but it was the last Kumbh Mela in a 12 year cycle, an event that occurs every 144 years. About 70 million people came to worship, many taking long pilgramages on foot from every corner of India and beyond. The Dalai Lama was there, Andy Weil was there, captured on the movies I watched. I have never seen anything quite like the Kumbh mela. At some point, a day marked to be the day everyone gets in the Ganges River, all 70 million head towards the Ganges to immerse themselves in the water. There is an overwhelming feeling of joy, conveyed by the participants as they splash in the river, some seeming to be engaged in an almost child-like water play. One group of well over 100 were yogis who have taken a vow to live out their lives completely naked; they ran en mass into the River.

Watching 70 million people --even on a DVD-- was a strange experience. I had never seen anything quite like it. The noise made by so many was like a background roar and almost deafening. When looking at the shots from higher up (I don't know if the filmmakers got these by helicopters, or there there were a few tall enough buildings) it appeared as if there were a massive ant colony swarming below. I had seen scenes of crowds in India, and it was that scene magnified by a million.

Everyone stayed in one or another encampment, all of which ran into each other, so from above it looked as if it were one long encampment centered in tents. Scenes of cooking included food being prepared in gargantuan pots, whatever it took to feed 70 million worshipers. Although the festival is a Hindu tradition, there were obviously Buddhist monks attending, along with tourists from various nationalities and ethnicities. Announcements were made by loudspeaker, though with the loud roar of 70 million people it was hard to imagine how anyone ever heard it. Clearly it did because one announcement called out to the people about a lost child, and then showed the mother and child being reunited. I would be surprised if there weren't many lost children, it was so vast and it seemed like people were literally body to body, like the subway in New York City at the worst rush hours. As I watched I thought if I ever attended the Kumbh Mela with my husband I would have us somehow tied together. To get out of there took a whole day of walking, or so someone who was followed through her experience there, reported to us, the viewers.

Both films did a remarkable job of capturing the Kumbh Mela, and I recommend them to everyone, to catch a glimpse of this extraordinary human experience. I wouldn't recommend one over the other; I think by watching both of them back to back, I got more of a picture of the Kumbh Mela. So try to rent #1) Kumbh Mela: The Songs of the River and 2) A Day in the Light. I don't know if they were particularly attractive to me, in the midst of this study of Tibetan Buddhism that I seem to be doing while getting myself to practice kundalini yoga every day, or if they would just be inherently fascinating to anyone, but you can always just give them a try.

Supply and Demand: What Happens When We Can't Afford Oil?

A friend just forwarded an article from the New York Times, November 9th, "This time it's supply and demand." The rise of the price of oil is attributed to the rise in demand, initiated by the rapid growth of China and India. I think the anxiety behind this and other articles is that we have probably capped in our world wide supply of oil, not just the current growth in demand for oil by developing nations. While I have not heard that announced officially, I have heard that we will have reached the cap on oil potential within the next two years, however I suspect that has happened already. Meaning, we --the global we, everyone-- will never again be able to produce as much oil as we do currently, and this is taking into account world wide capacity. Demand for oil will grow exponentially, but the world's supply is on a downward march, there will be less and less oil available for consumption. This then is a real crisis, perhaps the first real crisis we have experienced in our lifetime, and here "our" refers to the "us" in the United States. Other countries have experienced real crisis before, but we haven't. I have wondered for years what it would be like to live here in my house in Noe Valley, San Francisco, when we have to grow as much as possible of our vegetables in our backyards and when we have to turn off the heat, and the air conditioning as well. We are lucky here in the Bay Area, we have a mild climate year round, we can survive easily without such fine climate control. I have already begun "practicing" water conservation, when I take a shower I only keep the water running briefly. I turn it off as I soap up my hair and turn it back on to rinse myself off. I find myself day dreaming, planning, my vegetable garden that will take over the yard. I want to talk about my fantasy with my husband and adult child who share he house with me. Most of the things I daydream about turn out take place. I should make clear that this is not a horror show I'm running in my head, its quite alright. Its rather the same as now, only some of our activities have changed. We're all somewhat stronger and healthier and could hardly consider the changes to be "hardships."

Ridiculous as this sounds, it seems likely that we are going to all be facing changes in our basic economic organization, although how soon or how abrupt these changes will come is unknown. How will we be able to commute long distances when the price of gas will drive us out of our cars, and public transportation is limited? What will my obsession with organization mean in a new form of social and economic organization? What happens to the perfect GTD lifestyle without a car? I daydream more about getting some kind of generator to use when supply of electricity becomes less reliable. I worry more about access to my keyboard than I do about food.

I promised many months ago to put up my "after" GTD picture, guess I need to get the camera out after I finish my weekly review, still a weak point in my GTD program. At least kundalini yoga requires nothing but internal energy. But I sure like to do it accompanied by that music with Sanskrit mantras, electricity dependent. Is everyone else quietly thinking about what things will be like when...

Schizophrenia: Genetics and...

For those who have read my prior posts, you already know that I am quite certain that serious mental disorders are biological in origin, with some of the bio components resting in genetics, and some in other environmental physical factors (i.e., not really "psychological" or psychological alone). A study presented in Nature this week (Nature Oct 26, 2007, pp. 576-577) discusses the impact of the maternal placental environment. It appears that when monozygotic twins share a placenta, the concordance rate is quite a bit higher than when they each have their own placenta. Furthermore, there is an impact of maternal infection, with a significantly higher rate of schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders in adult offspring, when pregnancy occurred in the midst of a flu epidemic. This has been confirmed with animal models. The article concludes with "..Although a genetic element clearly contributes to schizophrenia and other mental disorders, the maternal-fetal environment must also be taken into account. Environment can alter genetic outcome, and vice versa..." p 577.

Bullied by Diversity

For almost a month now I've not been posting because I've been actively censoring myself. Now I'm getting restless, the end of inhibition is at hand. I am tired of being bullied by "diversity."

I'm a psychologist who practices from what is called a "bio-psycho-social" perspective. That means exactly what it says, namely, when I think about anything psychological, be it a patient who has a problem, a construct I'm studying (for example survivor guilt), a review of some type of psychopathology, I first think "bio." What does biology have to do with this problem/person/disease entity? Biological factors are operating in everything, and I have to have them in mind, in order to move on to other levels of organization. If one of my clients tells me she's gotten depressed recently, I have to consider physical illness such as a thyroid malfunctioning, and I think about whether or not her depression might lift more quickly and effectively if she started a regime of anti-depressants, while also being engaged in a cognitive behavioral treatment of depression, in addition to some general supportive therapy. This then, is the "biological" part of the picture. It more elaborate than that, if someone has many depressed people in the family, they are likely to inherit genes that are vulnerable to depression.

Somewhere in the equation, as important as the biology of her mood state, I question her social situation and standing in her community. If someone is being put down by a boss, a close friend or family member, their likely to experience that awful sensation "my heart crashed." Then, the person gets depressed and forgets when and under what circumstances, the depression started. By tracing back their mood to the precipitating event, well its helpful. Often the dark mood passes. We need one another for limbic regulation --meaning in order to have well regulated comfortable state of being, we need other people being nice to us. If a person has been treated badly for much of his or her life, she might be used to being dysregulated, and might do little or nothing to surround herself with more supportive "regulating" people. She might engage in "self-sabotaging
behavior. If someone feels guilty about being better off than siblings or parents, she might feel she doesn't deserve to be happy, and if she is happy she will be making a loved one feel inadequate, simply by comparison. While there is of course a biological component to this, it falls more into the realm of what I call "psychological."

Finally, if someone is being put down because of group membership, namely gender, class, race, ethnicity, this too leads to a state of dysregulation, and I consider this to be the "social" component to the problem. Or should I say more accurately, the "socio-economic-political.' Here is where we can authentically take into account what people are calling diversity. Diversity may be a central issue, but no more so than is the bio or psycho component to a person's problems or sense of well being.

The diversity Nazis are being Nazis, rather like what happened in Germany. Only they are not promoting the "arian" race, but "minority" races, or really, some minority races. They are suggesting that the issue of diversity should be the most important issue over all other factors. Everyone is afraid to offer a different opinion, at risk of being called a racist or sexist. Everywhere I turn, there are people along with big organizations with a great deal of clout, pushing diversity, giving credence to a frightening trend in our culture. I am seeing people who deserve to be treated with respect, being ground down and harmed by the diversity police. Is the issue really about diversity, or is diversity becoming a bullying tactic, used in ugly political fights? Everyone is afraid of the diversity police, people are being silenced. Reverse racism is everywhere. The problem of male supremacy goes unmentioned. Diversity is not really about diversity, its about some kind of "payback" and therefore, its about oppressing yet another group of people.

Portrait of David Allen & GTD from Wired Magazine

I just read a fascinating article about David Allen, author and founder of the organization movement, Getting Things Done (GTD) that appeared this week in the geek-oriented magazine, Wired.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/ff_allen?currentPage=all#
I can't say I was surprised to read of Allen's difficult past, or early years of adulthood, and nor was I surprised that there is some kind of "spiritual" underpinnings to Allen's yearnings. Allen and his methods appeal to me for some reason, and although I can't exactly put words to it, I feel I'm half-way there in implementing GTD. When family teases me about my new "cult" membership, I shrug and acknowledge there is some truth to the accusation. But I don't care. I'm sitting in my office and its almost the orderly environment I'm aiming for. I was looking for a chapter of the book I'm writing the other day, and didn't find it right away in a small stack of papers waiting to be processed. I knew it would take no more than two minutes to find the right place to hold the chapters awaiting editing, or input from someone who specializes in a chapter's content. I knew where the glitch in my system occurred, why I couldn't locate the item in 60 seconds or less. This is so far ahead of where I was six months ago, there's no comparison.

What is the spiritual element in GTD? I think the quest for order as a knowledge worker is undeniable. So much of what I do in a day is internally motivated and driven. No one is insisting that I conduct a study, or write up an article reporting on a study I've conducted. I have no CEO driving the ship. I think many knowledge workers are in the same situation, even if they're functioning within a company. I remember reading something that Drucker wrote about the new work environment, where everyone is an entrepreneur. If we are all steering our own ship, that leaves us without the natural mode of organization offered by social hierarchies. Accepting Allen's GTD gives us a "road map" as he calls it, and what person, floating around, working in a socially unstructured environment, wouldn't grasp onto an overarching plan by which to make decisions? I really don't care if I've fallen into a cult-like movement, in fact I'm ready for a refresher course and I wish Allen would plan another stop in the Bay Area.

I recommend to anyone who is interested in GTD, read this article from Wired.

How to do Research II: What is a Dissertation, what are the pieces of it?

A dissertation is: 1) a long paper, focused on a topic of interest; 2) a review of "the literature" or studies that have been done on this topic in the past; 3) a project or something you actively do, to give you "data" about some aspect of your topic; 4) a write up of what you have done, written so carefully that anyone can read your dissertation and replicate your study 5) a written analysis of what your data tells you, or your "results" 6) a final essay on what your results mean, in the big picture of your topic. If you think of your dissertation as a long paper that includes these six concrete sections, you'll have an overview of the project.
The dissertation project: The "doing" part of the dissertation
Students tend to get frightened by #3, that is by the very idea of actually doing something, that will give them data. In fact this is the easiest part of the dissertation, its just doing research. We all do research all the time. If we're planning to go out for dinner with some friends we make a list in our minds of possible restaurants to go to. We might look up on the Internet one or two that we haven't heard much about. We might ask the friends we're going out with what they feel like eating. In this way we collect some different types of data, and then, based on time, energy, interest, preferences, mood, we make a decision. To decide on the restaurant we've done some research. We do the same thing when we're figuring out what movie to go to, or where to go on vacation, or what classes to take in a semester in school. Doing research for the dissertation is no harder. It might involve more steps, it might take longer, but the process is basically the same.

Doing your project
This part of the dissertation is the easiest and often the most fun. To help you on your way in terms of figuring out what you are going to do, what question you are going to pose and what methods you are going to use to find answers to your questions, it is wise to have a group that you meet with regularly. This is what happens in research groups, and is called the "lab meeting." Everyone fills everyone else in on what they've done that week, what ideas they've had, what they've read, who they talked to, where they're at in the research process. Lab meetings are fun. There is no "right" or "wrong" in a brainstorming session. There is certainly nothing to be afraid of in this part of the dissertation process. What you are going to do doesn't need to be remarkably creative. It often is just another tiny step in finding something out about a topic. Students tend to think they have to do something that is earth shaking, when all they have to do is study one small piece of a big problem. The smaller the objective of the dissertation, the more doable it tends to be. In figuring out what you are going to do, make it small, make it concrete, something you can visualize, imagine in detail.

Think of Outcomes (What is the desired outcome?) Think of Next Action (What is the next action?)
Early in the dissertation its time to start thinking in terms of "Desired Outcome" and "Next Action." What is the desired outcome of your project: Its a completed dissertation (as the large outcome), and at each step of the way, you have many desired outcomes. If you consider the desired outcome at each step of the way, you are then able to break what you need to do down into very concrete and doable "next actions." Learning to think of desired outcomes and next actions will make the whole process move smoothly and continuously. Instead of freaking out about the enormity of the whole dissertation, you will begin to think in a much more concrete and doable framework. Each week you can ask yourself 'what is the desired outcome" for the week. From there you consider "what is the next action" to lead you to your desired outcome. Your brain is a great information processing and planning machine. Whether or not you deliberately try to consider the next actions, once you establish a desired outcome for a piece of the project, or for a period of time, you will automatically begin to consider what might be your next actions.

From Lifehack: How to read like a scholar

Lifehack has a great blog today, for students about how to read like a scholar. Its one of those blogs that is good enough to repeat here, given that my students are struggling with this right now, as they begin to work on their dissertations.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/advice-for-students-how-to-read-like-a-scholar.html
So here it is:
Reading as an academic exercise involves not just gleaning the content form a book or essay but engaging with it. We read not just to learn some new set of facts but also to learn how facts are put together to form an argument, to learn what kinds of arguments are acceptable in our chosen disciplines, and to prompt us towards further research. Reading of this sort raises as many questions as it answers, or more.

While reading, students should keep the following questions in mind:

• What is the author trying to say? This seems obvious, but it seems to be a stumbling block for many students. I’m convinced that the failure to ask this simple question is what leads students to avoid reading, to feel that reading is a chore or, worse, busy-work. Remember, authors — academic or otherwise — aren’t in the business of writing just to bore students; there’s something important they want to communicate. Granted, not all writing communicates well, but regardless of the writer’s skill, if a professor assigned a reading, it’s because there’s something there worth knowing about.
• How does the author say what they’re trying to say? What evidence do they use? What style of argument are they making? How are they positioning themselves? You’d be surprised how many people read an essay about, say, infanticide (the killing of newborn children) and assume the author is advocating this practice instead of simply describing it. These readers totally misread the author’s position.
• Why is the author’s point important? If you can figure out why the author felt he or she needed to write the article or book in your hands, you’re a good way towards figuring out what they’re trying to say. What contribution does the work make to the author’s discipline, to our understanding of society or the world? What problems are they trying to solve?
• Do you agree or disagree with the author? Why? Just because something’s in print doesn’t make it right. As a student, it is essential that you read critically, with an eye towards inconsistencies in an author’s argument or evidence. Are there other explanations for the data they present? Is the author’s interpretation colored by his or her religion, professional background, political orientation, or social position? Note: far too many students seem to think that criticizing style is a good substitute for critiquing substance. It’s not. A lot of academic writing is stilted, difficult (sometimes deliberately so), or just plain bad; this does not mean that the ideas are not good.
• How does this work connect with other works? What’s new about it (or, if it’s an older work, what was new when it was published)? What disciplinary debates is the author engaging? How does this work build on, or refute, earlier works by other authors? How does it fit with the author’s other work? What other work is the one you’re reading like?
• What is the social context of the work? Always consider the historical moment in which a work was created. What kind of person wrote it, and for what kind of audience? What historical events shaped the author’s perceptions and ideas? How was their world different from yours, and how was it similar?

These questions should be on your mind even if you can’t read the whole book. It’s a sad fact of college life that not everything that is assigned can be given the same level of attention. In grad school, for instance, I was regularly charged with reading three (or more) hefty books a week, plus supporting essays and commentaries — while carrying out my own research at the same time. This is not humanly possible. You have to learn to prioritize reading, and to approach it systematically to make sure you get as much as possible out of whatever amount of reading you can manage.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Skim the book. Examine the table of contents to get a feeling for the structure and main points of the book. Flip through the chapters, skimming the first few paragraphs of each, and then the section headings. Check the index for any topics you feel are especially important. Then, if you have time;
2. Read the Introduction and conclusion. Most of the author’s theoretical position will be laid out in the introduction, along with at least a summary of the chapters and sections within. The conclusion revisits much of these points, and usually gives a good overview of the data or other evidence. Sometimes the conclusion is not marked as such; in this case, read the last chapter. Then, if you have time;
3. Dip in. Read the chapters that seem most relevant or interesting. Get a sense for what the author is trying to accomplish. Flip through the rest of the book and look more closely at anything that catches your eye. Then, if you have time;
4. Finish the book. Read the whole thing. If you know you’ll have time, skip 1 - 3 and just read, cover to cover.

Obviously it’s best to read the whole book; you’ll miss a lot reading anything less. But given the choice between not reading at all and skimming to at least get a taste of what you’re missing, I say, go for skimming. And try to keep yourself better organized in the future so that you don’t shortchange your entire education.

How to do Research: Part I

The mystique of research
This is the first of a series on how to do research. Research carries with it a mystique, a vague reputation that it is very hard to do and that you have to be super smart to do it. Reality check here: Research is easier than most things that psychologists do, if you make a mistake its only some numbers and no one gets hurt, you can apologize and correct it. In clinical work if you make a mistake a client might get hurt, there are human lives involved in the endeavor. Research has no such hidden disasters, consequences are small and something anyone can deal with.

Finding a topic: Gathering data about interests
Research begins with ideas about topics, or research begins with topic. How do you find your research topic? You find your topic by being honest with yourself. One of the many myths about research is that you shouldn't’t do anything that is “too close to home” or of great personal interest. This is dead wrong. Most of the great scientists in our field have began with something of personal interest. Seligman began studying depression because his father lapsed into a terrible depression after he had a stroke. Sternberg from Yale had been studying intelligence. Then his marriage broke up and he fell in love with someone. Suddenly his research focus shifted to love. You need to choose a topic of great personal interest. Choosing a topic because you think it will be easy or convenient will never work. Choosing a topic because it is someone else’s interest will never work. I recommend that you walk around for a few months with a small notebook in your pocket. Whenever you find yourself thinking about something of interest, or worrying about something of interest, write it down in your notebook. When you go to a bookstore and you think no one is looking, where do you go? When you go to Amazon and you’re browsing, where do you go, what books are you looking at? When you’re browsing on the interest and time flies by without a trace, where are you anyway, what topic or ideas are you researching? Write these all down in your notebook, and you’re well on your way to coming up with a research topic.

Making a list
Read and re-read the topics you’ve identified. Type them all up on a giant list. If you dare, bring them up in a group and see what discussion ensues. A topic that starts a big conversation is likely to be one you’re interested in. The conversation follows from the excitement you have generated. If you bring up a topic and there is no response, chances are you aren’t really excited by it yourself, and doing research on it will be like pulling teeth.

Go back to your list of topics, and select the ones that most excite you. Remember not to worry about methods, or convenience. Methods will follow after you have studied your topic for a while, and will be derived from you research question, but that is still a way off.

A list of what excites you
Make a smaller list of topics that most excite you. Then go to Google Scholar and put in one of your favorites, use several combinations of words and see what comes up. Print it out. Get the articles that are easily available online. Go through your school’s library/Internet system to get access to the full text of those not readily available. Skim the abstracts of the articles you have. Pay attention to your heart as you skim them –are you instantly bored, or do you want to go back to Google Scholar to search for more articles?

Move on to the next topic on your “most exciting” list, and repeat this process. Do this a few more times, and pay attention to how your experience with each topic feels. Through this process you will discover the topic you want to study.