Blog on mind and brain research and advice

YOU: A Work of Art in Progress

May 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

As long as you’re alive, your life is a work in progress (unfinished). But is it just work or is it a work of art? And what difference does it make?

The idea of living one’s life as a work in progress is not original. But several decades ago, when I was struck afresh by the rich possibilities of artistic metaphor, I not only looked at my own life in this context, I also queried some friends.

No one had trouble responding, and I was surprised by every one of their answers. A former insurance industry executive said his life would be a multi-media performance piece. A writer described her life as a sculpture, while a musician referred to his as a “junk” sculpture. A computer programmer declared his life was a symphony. Here are a handful of detailed descriptions:

Kathy:

I see myself as a mobile spinning out of control.
I’m not quite put together in a way that moves with the ebb and flow of gentle breezes yet.
I’m unbalanced and jerked around right now.
One or two pieces of something substantial need to be added so I can untangle myself when the forces of nature, or human hand, cause me to spin temporarily out of control.
(This temporary spinning does not inflict permanent damage. It just causes me not to be my usual self.)

Kelly:

The work of art in progress: me covered in layer upon layer of steel, concrete, wood, glass, gunpowder, feathers, year after year and lots of work…maybe some layers come off to expose this work of art…me.
Kinda like a big clump of marble, taking off what is not me and getting to the real David…um, no…Kelly.
Warning: completed works of art are not on our plane anymore.

Lee:

A sand castle, co-structured by a small child.
We came from the sea, I will go back to the sea…
Imperfect, made from tiny pieces and subject to the whims of nature…
Able to be tall and strong, ridged yet soft…
Able to be shaped by the people and the world around me…
Formed by wet sand dripping from a child’s hand or sculptured by forms and expert hands.

Linda:

I think of MY LIFE as an oil painting. Starting with a clean canvas I splash some paint on, just to see what it will look like.
After experimenting, I decide that it would be better to Have a Plan.
I draw out in pen what I want to paint. I add some color.
If I catch the paint before it dries I can change it or scrape it off entirely.
The memory of what has gone before is still there, but it is not entrenched in who I am.
When I wait too long and the paint dries, it becomes a part of the canvas.
I draw a new plan.
As I build up the layers of paint, adding depth, my canvas thickens with layers of paint.
I realize that I do not have to have a plan for everything.
I realize that my painting looks better when I have gone outside the lines of the plan.
My canvas now has years and years of paint added, paint that has dried, colors that have changed or been scraped off.
I’m really starting to like what I have painted.

Nicole:

Well, it would be a whirlwind in places spinning lots of reds, fiery and out of control, deep yellows, oranges, spinning AUTUMN colors. And then over where the BLUE starts to outnumber the red you will find other places: neatly categorized and presumably alphabetical little BLACK stacks. Each one placed with precision, stacked up to the ceilings in wavering stature, suggesting that they might fall at any moment in time.

Steve:

My life has always been a film, with music rambling in my head, the stimuli being “things passing by/me going forward”—motionless.

The Play’s the Thing…

Once upon a time, I saw my life as a play. There’s an inherent discipline in living life as a play in progress that’s different from the discipline involved in living life as a sculpture or a symphony or a painting. Staging, timing, and pacing are crucial. Significantly, in a play the props and scenery are vital—but only to the scenes they belong in. It makes no sense for an actor to become attached to any particular props.

I was aware of things as background props and of people, including myself, as characters from an early age. I wrote plays, read plays, hung out with the local drama group, and thought up names and descriptions of characters, as well as elaborate decorating schemes, to entertain myself.

At some point I noticed what I was doing and decided it was an odd way to think about myself and the world. Whereas other people seemed to make choices almost instinctively, I could consider a range of alternatives: a final choice would depend on the requirements of the scene or the plot line. Choosing otherwise seemed arbitrary. In spite of considering my view of life somewhat idiosyncratic, I continued to operate within that framework. When a major plot twist offered the opportunity for me to reinvent myself, I had no difficulty doing so. It was just a play, after all.

Although I probably appreciate the value in that point of view now more than I did then, I wouldn’t use the same metaphor to describe my current life. It often feels more like a surrealistic jigsaw puzzle: challenging, colorful, so much to look at, still not put together (still creating), and not at all what you’d expect.

There’s value in experimenting with styles and forms, imagining and reimagining our lives through different lenses and perspectives.

So, if your life were a work of art in progress, what metaphor would you choose to describe it? What shape would it take? What colors and/or sounds would it have? What process or media would be involved in its creation? What emotions would it evoke?

Would it be a painting, a sculpture, a black and white photo montage? A novel, a short story, a play, a poem, an essay? Would it be a song-cycle, a symphony, an opera, a collage, a Rodgers and Hart musical, a movie? Or…something else altogether.

A metaphor is always a framework for thinking, using knowledge of this to think about that. —Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a Life

A focus on creating yourself is the opposite of a focus on fixing yourself: the motion and the action are forward rather than backward. Thinking about your life as a work of art in progress can shift your view of what you’re doing in life—and of what you’re capable of doing. Creating art is compelling and juicy and expansive. It is an ongoing process of bringing something—in this case you—into being.

It is that dimension [our imagination of ourselves] whereby we are not merely living our lives—passively, as it were—but are actively giving them shape: ceaselessly interpreting and inventing ourselves afresh. It is that dimension whereby we do not receive a life as much as compose a life—as we might compose a story. As we appreciate the extent of this dimension, it becomes impossible to see how any aspect of our lives can escape our self-creative touch. —William Lowell Randall, The Stories We Are

Scout vs. Soldier
(more on mindsets)

April 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Do you want to be right or do you want to get it right?

You might manage to do both at the same time, but the question isn’t about your result. It’s about your underlying intention or aim.

It’s an important question because the answer determines how you process information. And how you process information can have a considerable influence on how well you succeed at accomplishing what you set out to do.

Soldier or Scout?

Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality in Berkeley, has come up with a great metaphor to describe these two different mindsets: the soldier and the scout.

She says that when you operate from the soldier mindset, your actions stem from reflexes rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy, whoever or whatever it may be.

On the other hand, when you operate from the scout mindset, your actions are based not on attacking or defending but on understanding the terrain and potential obstacles. You want to know what’s really there as accurately as possible.

Confirmation or Feedback?

In the grand scheme of things, both mindsets are valuable. Obviously there are times when you need to defend and protect—and maintain the status quo. But if you’re trying to change your status quo, you need to know how to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information. You also need to pay attention to what happens when you take steps to achieve your goals. You can interpret what happens as either confirmation or feedback.

If you’re aiming to confirm and defend your pre-existing beliefs (soldier mindset), you won’t be inclined to examine what happens with any degree of objectivity. Instead you’ll be quick to jump to a conclusion and then build a case to support it by what’s referred to as motivated reasoning.

But if you view what happens as feedback (scout mindset), you tend to be curious about it. You want to understand it because the better you understand it the better you’ll be at making accurate course corrections. People with a scout mindset, Galef says, “are more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.”

The soldier mindset is easier to access because System 1 is often more concerned with being right than it is with getting it right. Soldier mindset is automatic. You don’t have to do anything to slip into it. It’s easier to jump to conclusions than it is to be deliberate and thoughtful and willing to acknowledge doubt and uncertainty.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire

You can end up paying a very high price when you aim to be right instead of to get it right. It’s easier to dig your heels in than it is to admit you’ve made a mistake or have changed your mind. But if you can’t change your mind, you won’t be able to change your status quo.

Bias and the soldier mindset come naturally to us. But in order to master the art and science of change, we need to develop critical thinking skills and operate from the scout mindset more than we do from the soldier mindset.

How Your Mindset Sets You Up

April 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A mindset is the set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which you approach situations or people—or through which you view them. It determines how you interpret situations and respond to them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means largely unconscious. They are a type of mental shortcut; they operate based on assumptions, and they generate expectations.

You can have mindsets about yourself, other people or groups of people, places, situations, events, political organizations, types of music—actually just about anything. A mindset can have surprisingly deep and far-reaching effects.

Mindsets Are Self-Reinforcing

You’ve probably heard someone described as having a victim mentality, which is the same as having a victim mindset. If you have a victim mindset you would tend to:

feel that others are to blame for your misfortunes
believe you are powerless to alter your circumstances
have a primarily external locus of control
be disinclined to take personal responsibility
distrust other people
fail to take positive action on your own behalf

The first three attitudes and beliefs lead to the subsequent three behaviors—which, in turn, confirm the attitudes and beliefs. Like any mindset, a victim mindset causes you to view situations, events, and interpersonal relationships through a distorted filter. It leads you to believe your perception isreality. That’s one of the ways your mindset sets you up.

A Few Other Mindsets (Labels)

I’ve written about the productivity vs. creativity mindsets. Here are some others to consider.

Survivalist
Globalist
Entrepreneurial
Lifelong Learner
Achiever
Maker
Activist
Liberal
Conservative
Libertarian
Progressive
Outsider

Recognizing and Changing a Mindset

When examining a mindset, it’s important to know what it is, when it’s in effect, and how it affects your perception, interpretation, and response. But trying to understand where it came from or how it developed is a side trip that won’t get you closer to altering it. (It doesn’t matter how you came to possess the diffusion filter for your camera lens. Once you install it, it affects what you see when you look through the lens.) Instead, focus on determining your mindset’s attributes: what beliefs, attitudes, personality traits, etc. are part of it?

One of the best ways to catch your mindset in the act is to notice when your expectations of a person or a situation are not met. Instead of pausing to consider the source of your expectations, your brain is more likely to jump into action to find a suitable explanation that will allow you to comfortably fit the experience into your ongoing inner narrative. Unfortunately, even when reality conflicts with your mindset, your brain’s tendency is to interpret what happens in a way that reinforces your mindset.

After you develop an understanding of a mindset you want to change:

Clarify why you want to change it.
Determine your desired outcome.
Identify one situation to change.

Remember that it’s easier to focus on and change a behavior (what you do) than it is to focus on and change a thought, a thought pattern, or a belief. Create an intention to change your behavior in one situation and apply repetition and perseverance until the new behavior or response becomes the status quo.

It isn’t easy to recognize or change a mindset, but if you focus on the mechanics (what, when, and how), you can do it. And it’s worth the effort to open your mind, shift your perspective, and learn how to adjust your personal camera lens filters so you aren’t stuck with whatever lenses you happen to have developed over the course of your life.

Do You Want a Resilient Brain?

March 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The greater your cognitive reserve, the more resilient your brain will be. Brain reserve—or cognitive reserve*—helps your brain adapt and respond to changes and resist damage. It gives it the ability to improvise and find alternate ways of doing a job or performing a task.

Your cognitive reserve begins to develop in childhood and gets stronger as you move through adulthood. If you continue to learn, embrace new activities, and develop new skills and interests, you will continually build and maintain your cognitive reserve.

This is another reason to aim for challenging yourself rather than taking it easy and following the path of least resistance. You don’t know when you’re going to need your cognitive reserve, so it’s good to have as much of it as possible “in the tank.”

Protection from Damage

The concept originated in the 1980s. Researchers discovered that some people who were found at autopsy to have brain changes consistent with advanced Alzheimer’s disease had displayed no apparent symptoms of dementia before they died. These individuals had enough cognitive reserve to offset the damage to their brains to allow them to continue functioning as they always had.

Cognitive reserve can also help stave off degenerative changes associated with other brain diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or a stroke.

Even if you’re fortunate enough to never experience any of these diseases, you can still benefit from developing cognitive reserve. It can help you function better—and for longer—when you experience unexpected and stressful life events, which tend to require more effort from your brain.

You can’t prevent yourself from aging or insulate yourself from all stressful, unexpected, or life-altering events. You don’t have total control over what kinds of diseases or deficits your genes might predispose you to develop. But you can do something to moderate how much these challenges affect you, your well being, and your ability to function.

Learning, Curiosity, and Dopamine

Even if you don’t develop neurological or psychological disorders, brain circuits that rely on dopamine tend to decline in function with aging. But curiosity prepares your brain for learning by activating the reward system, enhancing memory and motivation in the process. When you’re learning something you’re deeply—as opposed to idly—curious about, you’re more likely to recall and retain what you learn about that topic. You’re also more likely to retain unrelated information you encounter at the same time.

Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it. —Matthias Gruber, UC Davis Center for Neuroscience

Curiosity, challenge, and complexity seem to define the path that leads to strong cognitive functioning and a more active and enjoyable life now—and to greater cognitive reserve whenever you may need it.

Have your education, work, and leisure activities challenged you over the years? If so, they have contributed to your cognitive reserve. If not, there’s no time like now to reverse course if you want to do as much as you can to maintain your memory and your cognitive skills for as long as you can. Engaging in a variety of activities—physical, mental, and social—with differing levels of complexity have a synergistic effect. So the more things you do in these areas, the better—for both you and your brain.

*“Brain reserve” is sometimes used to refer to physical changes in the brain such as an increase in neurons and synapses (aka the “hardware”). “Cognitive reserve” is sometimes used to refer to the brain’s capabilities and skills in regard to completing tasks, learning new things, or recall (aka the “software”). These distinctions are really two sides of the same coin, and research is currently being conducted on the relationship between them.

Dueling Mindsets:
Productivity vs. Creativity

March 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Is it better to have an uncluttered desk or a messy desk? Does it depend on your personality? Or does it depend on the job you have—or on your habits or circumstances?

We all have our own tendencies in regard to clutter and organization (which may or may not be associated with personality), and we’ve also developed habits that we probably have opinions about. But whether an uncluttered desk is better than a messy desk depends on whether you’re aiming to be productive or to be creative.

Note: Sometimes create is used in the sense of produce or make, so the terms are often used interchangeably. That’s not what I’m talking about. Nor am I using creative as a synonym for artistic.

In the Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt write:

We master what is and envisage what-ifs.

If we place productivity in the domain of “what is” and creativity in the domain of “what-if,” that can give us a sense of the distinction between the two. Both mindsets are equally powerful—meaning they provide us with the ability to do something or act in a particular way—but only when we apply them appropriately.

Productivity Mindset

Mastering what is: sometimes velocity is power.

The productivity mindset is all about making the most efficient use of your resources (time, energy, effort, etc.). It is associated with speed, performance, output, and production. It is the mindset of getting things done: finishing projects, completing tasks, meeting deadlines, and reaching goals. The productivity mindset is effective for achieving measurable results.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You know what you’re doing.
You know how to do it.
The tasks or objectives are clear (understandable and unambiguous).

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

You aren’t sure what needs to be done.
You aren’t sure how to do it or if you can do it.
You haven’t clearly defined the problem or you’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

Some things to remember about productivity and the productivity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s attention network. That kind of focus requires System 2 attention, which is limited.
Because System 2 attention is limited, your productivity will be greatly enhanced by organization, preparation, and delegation.
Practice saying no. Distraction is detrimental to both focused attention and productivity. Eliminating distractions and interruptions and setting boundaries can boost productivity.
Acting deliberately—thoughtfully, carefully, and intentionally—can help ensure successful results or outcomes.
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the productivity mindset include: doing for the sake of doing (checking items off a list), absence of reflection or awareness, failure to develop a vision, a tendency to lose track of the vision, and taking action when stopping or pausing would be a better choice.

Creativity Mindset

Envisaging what-if: sometimes wandering is power.

The creativity mindset is all about seeing existing ideas or objects in a different light, generating new and better solutions to new or old problems, and connecting the dots in novel ways. Whether in business, the arts, science, or your personal life, the creativity mindset requires flexibility, imagination, originality, and inventiveness. The definition of a satisfying end result may be more subjective than objective. The desired outcome may be altered or transformed as you wander toward it and your perspective changes.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You aren’t following—or don’t have—a blueprint, set of guidelines, or format to go by.
You haven’t yet determined or defined the full scope of the project, idea, or problem.
You are either open to, need to, or want to arrive at an innovative solution.

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

The best outcome amounts to reinventing the wheel.
You’re facing a deadline and the existing system or guidelines are good enough.
It’s a ploy to help you avoid making a commitment, taking action, or making a mistake.

Some things to remember about creativity and the creativity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s default mode network, which includes mind wandering, free association, spontaneous cognition, and other System 1 processes we’re not consciously aware of.
System 1 processing is non-linear and doesn’t produce results according to an external time frame.
Practice saying yes. Distraction—and even daydreaming (what’s called “positive constructive daydreaming”)—can be more helpful than harmful to the creativity mindset.
Pursuing ideas, interests, or trains of thought that seem far-fetched or disconnected may turn out to provide the missing link or lead to an aha!
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the creativity mindset include: drifting and dreaming (losing your way), continually second-guessing yourself, not meeting deadlines or being unresponsive to others, focusing on vision to the exclusion of action, and failure to contribute anything useful or meaningful to the world.

Both Mindsets

Of course you undoubtedly use both of these mindsets, sometimes on the same project or process. You may have a preference for one over the other, or you may simply have more experience with one of them. But it’s much easier to achieve the desired results or outcome if you identify what you’re trying to accomplish and which mindset is the best one to get the job done.

Both the productivity mindset and the creativity mindset function best when they have a target: a clearly defined—and juicy—desired outcome or vision. You can move the target, but you won’t get anywhere satisfying without one.

Both mindsets also function best when you:

Develop supportive habits and routines—and maintain them.
Take breaks throughout the day and get enough R&R and sleep.
Move! Exercise, walk, dance, or hike.

As for your desk:

A messy desk is distracting and can hamper your ability to focus and process information. So if you want to be productive, clear your desk.
But a messy or disorderly environment can help you “break free of tradition,” according to researchers, which can lead to fresh insights and a free flow of ideas. So if you want to be creative, don’t clear your desk—or maintain a “creative” space to work in.