These classic simple tips will help us improve our day-to-day productivity right now.
 
1) Emancipate yourself from email and phones
 

We have email and telephones to keep connections alive and do business, not to ensnare us together. If we can choose times when we check our email or answer the phone, then we are free to handle these tasks when we wish.
 
Tips to accomplish this:

• let your voice mail take some messages (specify times when you check your messages)
• only check email once or twice a day, at regular times (less if you can handle it)

2) Batching
 
Create a to-do list and perform similar tasks together. If you have to call people, just call all of them in one sitting. If you have to read a few magazine articles, read them all in one sitting. Often it can take 5-15 minutes to start a task after interruptions. By batching tasks you can get and keep your flow.
 
3) Schedule breaks
 
Not all of these tips are about pushing yourself. Sometimes we can push ourselves too hard and tire ourselves out. In order to keep our energy levels at an optimal level, scheduling small breaks for ourselves will help us stay focused during the times when we are working. I think of it like this: we can work at 100% efficiency for 4 hours or we can work at an average of 40% accuracy for 6 hours (2.4 effective hours).
 
4) Eat well
 

I find that eating too much or eating really heavy foods at lunch is the surest way to decrease productivity. One of Benjamin Franklin’s tips for success was to eat a light lunch; while he was working hard through the afternoon, his compatriots were taking a nap. As excited as I can get about some projects, when I am sleepy and bloated, I just don’t work well.
 
5) Schedule self-improvement time
 
This is more of a long-term tip for productivity. By scheduling some time for self-improvement we are able to improve our efficiency, productivity or simply happiness in the long run. While at times we are pressured to deal with urgent tasks, taking time to improve ourselves will give us the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, week or month. Read a novel (fiction or non-fiction), pick up an instrument, go for a swim. You’ll be happy you did.

Sorry for my absence the past few days, I’ve been feeling a little burnt out with medical applications, work, a driving test and updating this site. This weekend has refreshed and rejuvenated me and I am ready to post again!
 

Thanks for your patience.

Alvaro from SharpBrains.com is graciously letting me host the August 20th edition of the Carnival of Brain Fitness!
 
If you have any interesting links related to (even loosely) to the following, we’d love to see them: brain fitness, science, medicine, health and wellness, education and professional development, news about the field, personal stories and techniques, and finally brain teasers.
 
You can submit any interesting content with this handy-dandy submission form.
 
I’d like to thank Alvaro for this wonderful opportunity.

Qualia (singular: quale) [pronounced: KWAH-lee-ah / KWAH-leh] is a philosophical concept which tries to describe the “what it is like” character of mental states.
 
Qualia are knowing what red is like, what pain feels like, what a rose smells like. A quale is a single unit of sensory perception.
 
These words are used to describe the connection (or disconnection) between the mind and body. For example, if one could create a perfect molecule by molecule copy of you (affectionately called a “zombie“), they may perceive the same things as you, but would they feel pain just as you do? Would they understand the smell of a rose as you do? Would their red-ness be the same as yours? Would they have the same qualia?
 
This is actually a very hot philosophical debate. If you interested in hearing more, here are the sources I checked out:

• Qualia from the University of Waterloo: A quick little definition.
• Quale - Wikipedia: A little more detail.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Qualia: Almost too much information (not that there is such a thing).

During work or school, sometimes your professor, TA or boss says something that sounds fishy; it makes you think, “Really? Are you sure?” Some may just blurt that aloud anyways without even thinking about it. Yet questioning authority can be a delicate situation.
 
We could just decide to always accept what our “superior” says as law. However, this does not always work either. It can result in a lot of confusion and extra work for you both. Later, you may even regret not speaking up when you had the chance.
 
The questions are then:

• When is the right time to question authority?
• How should we question authority?

Before we get to that:
 
Why should we question authority?
 
As mentioned above, if you nip this problem in the bud (excuse the cliché) then the problem will be stopped before it can grow out of control. Other reasons include the following:

• You have a different perspective: since you deal with knowledge from your unique perspective, you may have read or understood something in a better way. This can allow you to see a new solution or problem that your boss had not noticed.
• You will have, at the very least, a subtle impact: Even if your superior explains away what you have questioned or dismisses it completely, this questioning will subtly impact their thinking. Every time a fact is questioned it makes them reassess its truth. A recent experience has shown me that even a subtle probing may cause a revelation days later.

When should we question authority?
 
Often.
 
If something seems weird to you, there are usually three possibilities:

1. You do not fully understand the situation.
2. Your superior does not fully understand the situation.
3. Both of you do not fully understand the situation

In the first case, you must do something to clarify this gap in your knowledge. How are you going to do that? The simplest way is to ask a question.
 
In the second case, you must probe your superior’s understanding to see how solid it is. The best way to do this is by questioning.
 
The third case is most often the position we are in (even if we do not realize it). In this case, the solution is still the same: question authority.
 
No matter the situation, you stand to improve your stance by asking some questions. Either you will learn more, or reveal something to your superior.
 
What the hell do I know?
 
I can hear the clamouring already: What gives me the right to question my superiors?
 
To address the first question, I will give you some questions in return:

• What can’t it be you to speak up?
• What causes you to feel subordinate to someone else?

Too often, we wait for someone else to speak up, to correct a boss or professor; yet that may never happen. If done in a tactful way, you will gain the respect of these people once they see that you are a critical thinker. Remember the intent here is not to show that you know more than someone else – everyone has something to teach you – the hope is to learn more through questioning.
 
If you are concerned about “rank”, upon careful analysis, we find it doesn’t matter as much in this case. Age, titles, experience do not mean that that person is right all the time or that they know everything in a field. If they are truly wise, they will know that there is always something to be learned. If we are truly wise, we will remember this lesson applies equally to us.
 
Trust your intuition
 
You are going to have to go with your intuition some of the time. I don’t like to think that your intuition is some lower level process that only lets you mate and eat. Your intuition is the culmination of your knowledge and unconscious mental processing. While not at the stage of full awareness, you can feel that something is wrong before knowing why. This excerpt from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell shows this nicely. In this example, gamblers can feel which deck is riskier before knowing why.
 
How should we question authority?
 
Diplomatically, tactfully.
 
Understanding the importance of questioning, is very different than the questioning itself. If done too harshly, we may face the wrath of an angry boss or professor. The fact that they pay or mark you will not slip their minds.
 
As a personal example, during seminars or tutorials occasionally the TA will mention something that seems a bit off or just plain wrong. It would be easy to bluntly say, “Yo, that doesn’t make sense” and yell the correct response. Yet I have to remember two things:

1. I don’t want to hurt anyone
2. He/she may be marking my exam

Instead, these strategies often work for me when questioning authority:

1. Politely, ask for more details or clarification on the point they made. Most of the time they will catch their mistake.
2. If that doesn’t work, say that “I remember reading…” or “I think the professor said…” or simply, “Oh, I thought that…” then insert what you believe to be the correct answer.
3. If you still have some problems, approach them in private. There is no sense in making a scene about one topic. If the topic is particularly important, but the teacher is still persistent in their views, seeing them after lecture will prevent public embarrassment (of either them or yourself).

Before questioning everyone…
 
We should remember that it takes a special creativity to be diplomatic, it only takes a loud voice to be heard. Further should remember that we could very easily be wrong; we may have misinterpreted some data or learned something incorrectly in the first place.

 You should still respect “authority” not because they weld power over you (although you should consider that), but because they are fellow humans with more experience that are trying to help you.

 Take all the lessons you can, but if something smells fishy, it might just be a fish.

This beautifully binary edition of the carnival of education is brought to you by the Education Wonks. I’d like to extend a hearty thanks to them as it seems like this is one of the hardest (largest) carnivals to post. Not only that, it looks like they’ve read every post for this. Quite a feat considering the number of entries (roughly 45).
 
I would also like to thank Education Wonks because they have graciously linked to my previous post on Knowing your history to learn more. It is about how we need to go back to the basics to help understand the tough stuff.
 
The posts I found most interesting were the following:

• If you can’t fly, walk - I thought Vivek’s comment on how we accept challenges in our life were cute and a little touching. A quick little post to make you think about the nature of hardship.
• Out of Africa - Lesson’s from a 15-year-old boy who built a windmill to help his community.
• 5 Habits: Habit 4 - Personal Procedure - While directed at teachers, these personal habits can be used by us all to keep us sane in a seemingly insane world.
• How to figure out your learning style - While I have a lot to say about how we over-compartmentalize ourselves, it is important to think about how we learn and what learning styles suit us best. This post discusses the implications of this a bit, and has a link to a learning styles quiz. Everyone loves quizzes!
• My life would be better if… - A college professor asks his students what they think would make his life better. The video (youtube) is a slow format of showing this, but the answers are cute and candid making them worth the wait.
• The Vicious Circle of Misery and Company - I often wonder to myself if complaining/venting to someone will actually makes me feel better, or is just reminding me of some bad times. Dr. Deb suggests its the latter, and describes how this fits in with young girls.
• Worst…Regression…Ever - Only because I love lies and damned lies, I like seeing when the media screws with statistics to force a point. This is a bit of a complicated but delicious example.
• Did you know? v2.0 - Another YouTube movie, this one discussing the importance of educating our youth in this rapidly changing world. Again the pacing is a little slow, but the effect is nice.

Thanks again to Education Wonks, and I hope everyone enjoys this carnival!

Steve Pavlina reminds us how to approach big and small tasks in his posts about breaking problems down into microtasks.
 
Although a popular approach to tackling a goal is to write down the next 3 small steps you can take to accomplish it, often this is not enough to motivate us to complete the job. Writing out all of the small tasks that you need to do to get the job done will help to make each step seem manageable and clearly define the endpoint.
 
This is an example list of microtasks that I have just completed to improve a program that graphs some data:

• add legend
• fix axes labels
• add titles
• change colour scheme for lower graphs
• comment code
• check output graph (see if program is working properly)
• make needed changes
• regraph old data

This list is not perfect and may not make complete sense without proper context, but there are only a couple of really important points to remember.

1. Each step should seem quite manageable and easy to do in a short period of time (Steve mentions 10 minutes).
2. The list should also help you to see the end clearly.

Seeing the end clearly is important in that it reveals what you are working towards and ensures that you don’t continue to work endlessly when all your required tasks are complete.
 

Just some thoughts on the beautiful fruit: Pomegranate

• Pomegranates, called granada in Spanish and grenade in French, inspired the naming of grenades (the weapon), for their similar shapes.
• The Island of Grenada was named after pomegranates because of its abundance of this fruit.
• Grenadine (a sweet red flavouring) was named after pomegranates as it was once derived from the very same fruit.

Sources:
Good Eats (TV Show)
Jewish Recipes
Wikipedia: Grenadine

I have been hearing some talk recently about people using brown sugar as a healthier, lower calorie alternative to white sugar. This thought made me wonder how true this sweet theory was. To my surprise, not very.
 
Roughly the same amount of calories
In fact, brown sugar has 373 calories per hundred grams, while white sugar has 396 calories per hundred grams. Since brown sugar is more dense though, it has slightly more calories per tablespoon.
 
Brown has only slightly more nutrients
Although brown sugar has more nutrients than white sugar (e.g.: calcium and potassium), the amount is pretty minor. You’d have to eat cups of brown sugar to get your daily required intake, but there are definitely healthier ways of getting your nutrients.
 
Sweet sources:
Ask Yahoo
New Scientist
Wikipedia - Brown Sugar

Talia Mana at the Centre for Emotional Well-Being is graciously hosting the July 2007 edition of the Brain Fitness Carnival. I’d like to thank her for taking the time to get everything together and linking to my previous post on Education from a Buddhist perspective.

Of all the posts, I thought the following were the most interesting:

• Working Out Your Brain - Exercise may actually make you smarter.
• Don’t Get Glad, Get Mad! - An interesting theory that being angry actually makes us more able to make rational decisions. Personally, I can see some flaws in this, but it’s still good to think about.
• Bridging the Gap Between Hot and Cold Cognitive States - Thoughts on how our predictions of how we will act when “hot” or emotional on how we act can change based if we are “hot” or “cold” (analytical).
• Mind advice? Bring attention to the conflict - After a string of Buddhists posts (No vacations, Stonecutter, and Education from a Buddhist perspective), it is always nice to see others talking about the benefits of bare attention in learning.
• Apes, Speedy Learners, and new Brain Fitness Channel
  - Discusses the evolution of learning and shows a cool video from New Scientist about an ape figuring out how to get a peanut.
• Keep your mind active - Nothing to revolutionary here, but I like being reminded that we should try novel things in our lives to help us grow. Some suggestions are on that page.
• Five foods for your brain - As good as supplementation can be, I prefer the idea that our brains (and bodies) can be nourished with wholesome eating. Here is a list of 5 common foods to help you stay smart.

I hope you will enjoy the carnival just as much as I did.