One of the most fascinating, and to me unnerving, results to come out of a lot of recent psychological research is just how much of our behavior is subject to unconscious influence.  I for one and I think most people like to believe we are acting deliberately when in fact we often are not.  This article will focus on a phenomenon referred to in research as priming.

Consider the following sometimes very large effects:

• Subjects exposed to words about elderly people walked more slowly and amazingly had worse recall (!) of the experiment than the control subjects.
• Subject exposed to words related to rudeness were much more likely to interrupt a discussion than those exposed to words related to politeness.
• Subjects primed with Albert Einstein performed better on trivia tests than those primed with Claudia Schiffer, but performed worse on general knowledge tests.  This is known as the contrast effect.
• People exposed to stories about moral indiscretion are twice as likely to choose cleaning products as gifts as those exposed to stories of moral virtue.  Its seems they feel the need to “clean up”.
• Subjects holding a cold drink rated others’ personalities much colder than subjects holding a warm drink.
• Students exposed to a faint odor of a cleaning product are 3 times more likely to clean up after eating a snack than those not exposed.
• African American students primed with racial stereotypes will perform worse on intellectual tests than those primed with examples of black achievement.
• Subjects given a word puzzle containing words like “strive”, “succeed”, “achieve”, etc., are more than twice as likely to continue working on other puzzles past the time they are instructed to stop.
• Reading stories about people seeking sex will make you much more likely to help attractive people.
• Reading stories about money making will actually improve your performance on tasks where you can earn money.
• People invested much more conservatively in a room with a briefcase than in a room with a backpack.
• You will eat a lot more week old crappy tasting popcorn in a big container than you will eat fresh popcorn from a smaller container, even though both of them are too large for you to finish.
• People primed with arbitrary numbers will anchor on that number when making subsequent decisions.  For example being primed with a low number will cause subjects to be willing to pay much less for an item than those primed with higher numbers.
• People ate 69% more jelly beans when all the colors were mixed together than when they were separated by colors.  Along the same lines, presenting 10 colors of M&Ms instead of 7, increased consumption 43%.

All of these effects are unconscious and subjects will often deny they’ve been influenced when told about them.  They will come up with ad hoc rationalizations rather than admit they have been so mindlessly influenced.

This small sample show wide ranging and hard-to-believe effects.  Thinking about old people causes my memory to be worse?!  See a someone behaving rudely will make me more likely to be rude?  If I meet someone new and they are holding a cold drink I’m doomed?

Whether we admit it or not we are heavily influenced by our environment and we are mostly ignorant of these influences.  The obvious conclusion is that the more you can control your environment the more control you will have over these influences. You can’t just assume you are in control and independent of such influences.

Another important point to make in this regard is that the priming trigger may be even more hidden than you imagine.  As an example, I could decide not to watch TV news because I don’t want to be influenced by all the negativity and trumped up scare stories.  However, what if the TV news is on but my attention is elsewhere and I’m not paying any attention to it?  What if I’m completely oblivious to the fact it is even turned on?

Our conscious attention capacity is very limited and what we can hold in working memory is very small compared to the amount of data entering our brains through our senses.  Research has proven that are brains are taking in information that we are consciously unaware of.  That means we are likely being influenced by the TV news that is on even when we are not watching or paying attention.  Our unconscious mind is still hearing it.

We are not simply automatons programmed by our environments, but neither are we the independent decision makers we like to believe.  For me, that’s a tough pill to swallow, but I accept the evidence wherever it may lead.

I find this kind of research fascinating from a purely intellectual standpoint.  From an emotional standpoint, I found it quite disturbing.  I think the takeaway is that the people we hang around with and the environments we expose ourselves to have a much more significant influence upon our behavior than some of us we would hope.  We can’t help that; it’s simply the way we are made.  Now what are you going to do about it?

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I’m thinking old age regret is going to suck.  In order to avoid it, I find it useful to put myself on my death bed and imagine how I will feel.  It’s easy to piss your precious life minutes away when you are young, or even when your not so young, but it is sometimes helpful to realize at some point you are done and will get none of them back.

Some of these thoughts represent my personal experience but many do not; they are just observations of the habits of others.  Some of these may offend you, but don’t take it that way.  What’s good for you may not be good for others.  In the end, I hope they stimulate you to think a little about what you are doing with your precious life minutes.  These are not meant to make you feel good; they are meant to make you think.

1. Lying on my death bed, I will be so happy I spent my life compromising with my partner.  When they left me and took half my money after years of letting them tell me what to do, I thought “Wow, that was really worth it.”
2. Lying on my death bed, I probably won’t remember anything from the tens of thousands of hours I spent watching TV and surfing the internet during my life.
3. Lying on my death bed, I probably won’t get to see my friends and family. My death room will be likely be filled to overflowing with the grateful executives from the corporation where I slaved away my entire career.
4. Lying on my death bed, I’ll be thinking “It sure was good I saved so much money for a rainy day.”  Then I’ll turn my head and notice it is raining outside.
5. Lying on my death bed, I will be so happy that I spent endless hours searching for coupons so I could win the “be frugal” contest.  I felt so good in the checkout line saving my pennies.  That was better than talking a walk in the sun or spending quality time with friends and family.
6. When I get really old I will probably fall down and break my hip. I won’t have one of those “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” devices. I’ll be really mad that I didn’t go see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda while I could still walk; before I fell down and died.
7. Lying on my death bed, I’ll be so glad I spent half my life being angry at the government, big corporations, my stupid neighbors, idiot drivers, my ungrateful family, the communists, the liberals, the illegal aliens, and everyone else who is ruining my life.  I couldn’t do anything about any of it, but at least I died a bitter old unhappy man.  That will show them.
8. Lying on my death bed, I’ll be thinking it was so worth it to eat myself into obesity and sit myself into physical atrophy.  Who wants to play with the their grandchildren on the beach when they are 80?  It was much better having a nurse push me over to the window in my wheelchair.
9. Lying on my death bed, I’ll be so happy I spent my life working my ass off so I could buy houses, cars, big screen TV’s, clothes, furniture, and all the other fine things in life.  Oh the memories of those experiences.  Parking my fancy car in the garage of my fancy house was like the highlight of my life.  Sometimes I would just sit in the car and hug the steering wheel.  I felt so good to have someone to hold onto.
10. Lying on my death bed, I’ll be grateful I lived life on my own terms and not according to the dictates of others.  I’ll be thinking that in some way parts of me will live on in the lives of others I have touched.  I’ll be happy that I took each day as it arrived, neither reliving the past or fretting about the future.  Life was one hell of a ride and I enjoyed just about all of it.  No regrets.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Surveys show most people do, but only a little bit longer.  75% do not wish to live to 100 and very few want to live to 120 even if that were possible.  I am among the minority who want to live as long as is possible.

I think the key is where the emphasis lies; whether it is on the word live or on the word longer.  People are concerned about quality of life in old age; things like losing their health, losing their mind, and losing their ability to live independently.  I don’t want to live like that either.  Those humans who live to a very advanced age, like the current record holder Jeanne Calmet who died in 1997 at the age of 122, don’t just live longer; they age slower.  They stay healthy, vibrant, alert, and independent into advanced ages.  Jeanne was still riding her bicycle at 100,  a good 20 years after the average woman has already died.

Researchers are beginning to understand the mechanisms of aging and this makes it very likely they will uncover ways to slow it down; anti-aging drugs for example.  At the end of this article I will list some natural substances that may affect gene expression and offer promising possibilities while research continues.

The Naked Mole Rat

The naked mole rat is an interesting creature when it comes to aging.  First of all, they are very long-lived for animals of their type and size.  But even more interesting, is that they don’t seem to show signs of aging.  They live healthy and active lives into their third decade and then often just drop dead with no obvious cause.  That is the way I want to do it. That’s the kind of aging that I think most people want, and while it is not likely we will be able to achieve it exactly, I certainly believe we can age much more gracefully than we do now.

Genes

Experts currently believe that the way we age is about 1/3 genetic and about 2/3 lifestyle.  Jeanne Calmet obviously was dealt a very good genetic hand and that is likely the case for about all people who get past 100.  About twenty years ago I told my doctor that I was concerned about my low body temperature and that maybe it was the sign of some metabolic problem.  He told me the only thing I had to worry about was a long life because low body temperature was found in many long-lived men.  I have since learned the other common biomarker is low insulin levels.

There is a known correlation between versions of the APoE gene and longevity.  Various alleles are also known to be positively or negatively correlated with heart disease and neurological disease like Alzheimer’s.  There are a set of genes called SIRT that are likely involved in aging.  Given the complexity of human disease and aging there are likely many, many genes involved.

Lifestyle

Regardless of your genetic makeup, most people can significantly impact the way they age through lifestyle choices.  Most of the major disease of aging like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and bone loss are significantly impacted by lifestyle.  Just as importantly it also appears that loss of physical and mental function are just as sensitive to lifestyle choices as disease.

In a nutshell for physical health:

• Eat a low calorie diet
• Eat natural foods rather than man-made or processed foods
• Get most of your carbohydrates from low-glycemic fruits and vegetables
• Raw is better than cooked, because cooking destroys enzymes
• Get plenty of protein but try to avoid too much grain-fed meat; grass-fed and free-range are best
• Eat nuts and berries which are loaded with phyto-nutrients and antioxidants
• Eat plenty of the good fats from small fish, olive, coconut, and canola oils, nuts, and seeds
• Restrict sodium intake
• Supplement with non-contaminated fish oils, potassium (you don’t get enough), vitamin D (if you don’t get sunshine), selenium, and a good all-around vitamin and mineral mix.  I recommend Life Extension Mix as I think it is unparalleled and is much cheaper than all the ingredients separately.
• Move, don’t sit.  The human body is made to walk and move so walk and move as much as you can.
• Strengthen your muscles as muscular atrophy is the main reason for loss of physical function as you age
• Increase your maximum heart and lung capacity by short bursts of intense activity followed by rest.  This is something like interval training but it consists of very intense intervals.  Maximum heart and lung capacity are correlated with mortality.  Constant aerobic activity does not increase maximum capacities and is less beneficial.

In a nutshell for brain health:

• Do everything listed in physical health because your brain is part of your physical body.
• It appears in the case of brain health, sustained aerobic activity increases nerve growth and reduces age-related loss of brain matter.
• All forms of exercise, including strength training, seem to protect brain health
• Be socially active.  For whatever reason, it appears that maintaining an active social life (friends and family), confers a strong protective effect on the brain function.
• Cognitive exercise unambiguously reduces the risk and amount of cognitive decline associated with aging.  Combining cognitive activities in a social setting seems particularly helpful (playing bridge with friends for example).

Calorie Restriction

If there is any universally agreed upon way to extend life-span and enjoy healthy aging, it is calorie restriction.  Calorie restriction is a semi-starvation diet that amounts to eating 30% fewer calories than you would normally eat to maintain weight.  There is recent evidence that an alternate day calorie restricted diet in which every other day you eat 50% fewer calories may also provide the same benefit.  There is a lot of research going on right now to uncover what genes or other processes are being activated in calorie restriction.  Some genes known as SIRT are prime candidates.  The goal is to come up with a way to mimic the effects of calorie restriction without having to half-starve yourself.

Anti-Aging Nutrients

Resveratrol

Resveratrol may be a miracle molecule.  It is found in grapes and peanuts.  There are indications it has anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-viral, neuro-protective, and cardio-protective effects.  It can reduce both insulin and blood glucose, which are both markers for improved health and longevity.  It seems to dramatically increase physical endurance if given in high enough doses.  It is believed to be an activator of the SIRT longevity genes.

How much humans need to trigger these effects is disputed as is almost anything new.  It may be more potent in sub-lingual form so it can be absorbed into the blood stream without being metabolized.  Twinlab vitamins has just introduced a sub-lingual version.  I am not waiting for further studies to get more evidence and judging from the shelves at vitamin shops neither are a lot of other people.  It appears to be perfectly safe in massive doses far exceeding what anyone takes.

Quercetin

Quercetin has gotten a lot less attention, but it may also be another potent activator of the SIRT genes.  There are many promising indications of various benefits in initial studies of this substance.  It is found any many plants that are good for you like tea, green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, onions, and apples.

Fisetin

Fisetin is another activator of the SIRT genes and is found in strawberries.  Some studies have shown it to be synergistic with resveratrol.

CR Mimetic Longevity Formula contains all three of these nutrients and more.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life, which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run.” — Henry Thoreau

The medium of trade in a modern economy is overwhelmingly currency.  In the U.S. it is U.S. dollars.  We use terms like “spending money” and “making money”, but that isn’t really what we are doing.  What the overwhelming number of us are actually doing is trading our time for goods or services now or in the future (by saving).  Some of us trade a lot of time for a small amount of stuff and some of us trade a little time for a lot of stuff.  What you are really giving up in return for that stuff is a part of your life, which you can measure in time.

A typical person probably does not have an accurate picture their real earnings or their real spending in those terms.  If you are thinking of buying a $1,000 large flat-screen TV, it might be good to know how much of your life it will cost you, and as you will see below you can’t just use your alleged hourly rate and do the math.  It’s more complicated.

Aside from not really knowing how much we earn and spend in terms of our time, earning and spending hardly seem real anymore.  It’s become very abstract.  You can get your paycheck direct deposited and pay your bills automatically.  We don’t actually see money coming in and money going out.  I work and my money automatically goes into my bank account.  I don’t ever see it.  I call my debit card my “magic” card.  I give people my magic card and they give me stuff.

Calculate Your Real Earnings

I’m going to use round numbers for simplicity.  If you make $50,000 a year and work a 40-hour week, then your hourly rate is approximately $25 per hour.  You might think that $1,000 TV will cost you 40 hours of your life and you can pay for it in a week.  Actually no.  Let’s look at things a bit closer.  Please don’t be tempted to quibble over the numbers; they are just there to illustrate the point.  You can do your own calculations.

You probably spend more than 40 hours a week working because you have other time invested in your work week like commuting and getting ready.  If you spend 1.5 hour per day on your commute and 0.5 hours per day getting ready for work, you are actually spending 50 hours a week getting paid for 40 hours a week.  That drops your hourly rate from $25 to $20 ($1,000 per week / 50 hours).

Nobody I know keeps all their money away from the government.  Let’s say in total your payroll taxes (income, Social Security, Medicare) take 15% of your income.  Your hourly rate is now $17 per hour ($850 per week / 50 hours).

If you spend $200 a week on child-care that you wouldn’t have to spend if you didn’t work, your hourly rate is now $13 ($650 per week / 50 hours).  If you drive 150 miles a week and it costs a total of $0.40 per mile in total vehicle costs, that is another $60 per week.  It costs an average of about $30 dollars a week extra in food to eat at work and on the run.  Your are now down to about $11 an hour.  There could be other costs.  You may be paying for house and lawn care that you would do yourself if you didn’t work.  This could easily chew up another $1 per hour and bring you down to $10.

Whatever your income and your time, it’s well worth the effort and probably will be quite an eye-opening to actually sit down and calculate your true hourly earnings.  Gross dollars per month or year are just too abstract and don’t give you a useful picture for the purpose suggested here.

Calculate Your True Costs

So that $1,000 TV that you thought would you 40 hours of life actually would consume 100 hours of your life. (at $10 per hour).  That’s 100 hours of your life, not some bits stored on a computer somewhere.

What about that $25,000 car that will likely cost $30,000 when you add interest and payments?  That requires 3,000 hours of your life.  If you have to have a car and can choose between the $15,000 model and the $25,000 model, keep in mind that more expensive model will require 1,000 extra hours of your life.   That’s a better way to decide than the difference in monthly payments made in magic money.  That 1,000 hours isn’t going to just take 5 months either.  That would assume you were only paying for the extra nice part of the car and nothing else.  Most of your life is already being consumed by shelter, food, clothing, and everything else.  That nice car is going to slice parts of your life away for many years to come.  Is it worth it?

When you buy that $100,000 home that will really cost you $175,000 over the life of the mortgage, you can now see that it will consume 17,500 hours of your precious life. That’s not even the true cost because taxes, insurance, and maintenance add a lot more.  If you rent and your share is $500 a month, then you know that you are spending 50 hours a month out of your life just to pay the rent.

How You Spend Your Life

None of this leads to any particular conclusion as to what you should or should not do.  Everyone’s situation, needs, and desires are different.  I do think a good use of a small part of your life would be to go through this exercise to find out how much of your life is required to obtain various goods and services.  You should be making informed decisions about how you use your most precious resource.  When you commit to an expense, big or small, you are trading part of your life for it.  You will never get that life back so don’t trade it casually.

Isn’t that a better way to look at spending?  You waste a $1,000 on something you didn’t use and you think so what, I can afford it.  When you realize you wasted part of your life on it, it takes on a different meaning.  Even if you love what you do and you don’t consider it work, you still must choose how to spend or save it.  Why would you casually waste it?  Don’t lock yourself into the Golden Handcuffs.  It really sucks to get 30 or 40 years down the road and realize you traded your life for a bunch of stuff or experiences you didn’t enjoy.  You don’t get to go back and do it over.

My attitude about how I spend has definitely changed.  Realizing when you give someone a dollar you are giving them some of your life is a big step towards more awareness.  It’s truly a different way to look at it.  When you are young, it can seems like you have an eternity to figure things out and get it right.  You don’t and it will go by faster than you would ever imagine.  Spend wisely my friend and thanks for spending a small part of your life on my blog.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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“Contemplative Man, the fellow who came to understand the world sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, is a goner. He’s being succeeded by Flickering Man, the fellow who darts from link to link, conjuring the world out of continually refreshed arrays of isolate pixels, shadows of shadows. The linearity of reason is blurring into the nonlinearity of impression; after five centuries of wakefulness, we’re lapsing into a dream state.”  — Nicholas Carr

Note From Stephen:  This is a moderately long article.  In the spirit of it’s content, I resisted the urge to shorten it even though I know that means fewer people will read it all the way through.

Our brains are plastic; their structure changes based upon the way we use them.  This is no longer in dispute.  Therefore, it would be reasonable to conclude the Internet and our modern, always connected, world is changing our brains in new ways. We may actually be changing the way we think in important ways.  Whether this is good or bad is a subject of considerable debate.

Aside from changes in the wiring of your brain, there is evidence that the way information on the Internet is organized impacts how much of it we retain; how well we learn.  As an example, when we are reading on the internet we are typically bombarded with a lot of decisions to make.  The very existence of hypermedia links require our brain to make a decision on whether to click on them or not.  These decisions and other distractions increase the cognitive load on our brain and make us less likely to remember the material.  The more of your very limited cognitive resources you focus on encoding and integrating the ideas you are exposed to, the more likely you will be to remember them.  The web is not optimized for that kind of focus.

An excellent tool to remove the clutter and distractions surrounding text on websites is Readability.  Try it out on this article.

“The ability to skim text is every bit as important as the ability to read deeply.  What is different, and troubling, is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of reading.  Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for deeper study, scanning is becoming an end in itself – our preferred way of gathering and making sense of information of all sorts.  We’ve reached the point where a Rhodes Scholar like Florida State’s Joe O’Shea – a philosophy major, no less, is comfortable admitting not only that he doesn’t read books but that he doesn’t see any particular need to read them.” — Nicholas Carr

If you care about your intellectual self, you owe it to yourself to consider how your Internet behavior is affecting your brain.  A thoughtful argument that we are losing something important with our Internet ways can be found in Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.  I found the book to be a compelling and thought-provoking read. As a book, it is much more in-depth and persuasive than his famous article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”  For an alternative viewpoint try Clay Shirky who is endlessly enthusiastic about the potential of the Internet.  His latest book is Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.  The Google article and and a series of articles by various authors in response are available on the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog.

I think both sides are right.  Google and the Internet are making us both smart and stupid.  There is endless potential, but if we are not careful we may be risking some of the traits we value most in ourselves.  I for one don’t want to become just another node on some giant global Google brain.  Wisdom and creativity spring from a deep well of personal knowledge and experience that is absorbed, integrated, and shuffled over a period of time.  People who believe they can outsource their knowledge to the Internet, and this is quite common among the young, will be missing that deep well of knowledge from which our intellect arises.  That well doesn’t come from the shallows of social media and infotainment.  Unless we drag ourselves out of the shallows and into some deep water on a regular basis, I think we are indeed losing some of what makes us special.

Attention spans have shrunk to what seems like a few seconds.  How many of you can sit still for a 10 minute video?  You would think people are being asked to watch 4 hour documentary on the history channel.  Unfortunately the best ones are usually the longer ones; occasionally they have some meat (TED talks for example).

Deep and reflective thinking seems to be disappearing and I think it is in large degree a result of changes brought about by Internet.  If it is still there it is being overwhelmed by the shallows.  Writers no longer write what they think, they write what they hope will rank in Google.  Despite all the touted diversity of the Internet, obsession with Search Engine Optimization often takes priority over content.  Google is funneling us into the narrow and boring land of the common.

We are undergoing a monumental technological and cultural shift in the way we live, work, and communicate.  We are probably undergoing a significant shift in the way our brains work.   On the whole I think it is a positive change and I for one would never want to go back to the pre-Internet era.  I doubt many others would either.  I have benefited in immeasurable ways from this information explosion; I feel like the world is literally at my fingertips.

The key to thriving in this new world while retaining some of our intellectual heritage is a sense of balance.  I know that sounds cliché but it may be nowhere more important than with regard to the Internet.  Unfortunately, if you watch the trends especially in young people who have grown up with all this, balance is exactly what is missing.

Here are some suggested alternatives to being online; alternatives that encourage deeper intellectual development:

• Disconnect for significant periods of time – When you disconnect that means stop texting, talking on your cell, and checking email on your PDA.  You should disconnect for hours at a time and if that is too hard start slowly.  I know this is hard; it’s hard for me.  That seductive addiction to the online world will want to drag you back.  But you simply can’t focus the way you need to when you are connected, regardless of what you may believe.
• Focus on something intellectual while you are disconnected – If you spend all your disconnected time watching mindless reality shows, you really aren’t accomplishing anything.  Yes you need down time and relaxation time, but I’m suggesting you also need thinking time.  TV is somewhat passive so it’s not my first choice, but there is quality content if you look for it.  Documentaries, history, biographies, nature, and science shows are all excellent choices.
• Read books – Reading rates for pleasure are dropping rapidly.  Even more frightening is that much of the time spent reading is also spent multi-tasking with other media like watching TV or texting.  This is especially true among children.  Reading paper books or electronic books on something like a Kindle in a quiet place away from your computer allows you to concentrate in a way that’s nearly impossible online.  If you are using other media or skimming and hopping around online you simple can’t get lost in your thoughts or in a story.  If you are in a noisy environment put on headphones and listen to white noise such as pleasing rain sounds.
• Read non-fiction part of the time – I read mostly non-fiction.  You don’t have to read books on theoretical physics, but try to read books that make you think.
• Read in moderate stretches of time – I will sometimes read for hours at a time.  That’s probably a mistake because your brain needs time to consolidate what you are reading.  There is some evidence that you should take short breaks about every 30 minutes.  But you can’t get lost in thought or into the flow of what you are reading if you read in 5 minutes stretches.
• Spend time in reflective thought – This is probably by far the toughest for most people.  I know it is for me.  I have a difficult time doing it in a chair so I usually combine it with a walk in a pleasing, at least partially natural environment.
• Rest and Renew – learning requires renewal time.  Time for your brain to reload and to consolidate and integrate what you are absorbing into long-term memory.  Sleep is critical to this process so get plenty of it.  But even beyond sleep, activities like a quiet walk in a park have been shown to increase subsequent mental performance.

“But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available”.  A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become “pancake people”—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” — Richard Foreman

I don’t want to be a pancake.  What about you?

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We all know we are supposed to not let circumstances rule us, not get upset with what we can’t control, not be victims, etc.  The problem is that it is easier said than done.  It’s a little abstract.  Habits and human nature are not so easy to overcome.

A metaphor that really helps me is that of picking up and putting down rocks.  I don’t know where I first heard this, but it really helps when I visualize something physical like a rock.  It makes the letting go seem real; you are putting down a rock and your load instantly seems lighter.

Some of the rocks we pick up are mere pebbles, some of them are bigger rocks, and occasionally we hoist a large boulder onto our shoulders.  The pebbles most of us pick up on a daily basis add up to a heavy bag of rocks by the end of the day.  The solution is to stop picking up the rocks, and when you do, put them down immediately.

I went snow skiing about 10 years ago and somebody plowed into me and I ended up with a fractured arm near my shoulder and some broken ribs.  At that point I had broken bones, pain, inconvenience, and rehab in front of me.  All those are circumstances that were given, but in addition I started picking up rocks immediately. I picked up the anger rock at the idiot (that made it a bigger rock) who plowed into me.  I was feeling sorry for myself because I had to sit in the condo while everyone else was out having fun.  I had to breath shallow so my broken ribs wouldn’t move.  I had a lot of time to sit around and be upset wondering how I was going to type on my computer, wondering how I would drive, and about a million other things.  Poor, poor, pitiful me.  I picked up every rock in sight and then some.

We do not have to pick up all this other baggage.  And it’s really simple to put it all down when we do.  When someone cuts you off in traffic, don’t pick up the rock.  When you are standing in line and the person in front of you doesn’t seem to realize they actually have to get some form of payment out of their purse until after the final total has been rung up, don’t pick up the rock.  When somebody is rude to you, don’t pick up the rock.  When life craps on you, don’t pick up the rock.

Just visualize the rock sitting on the ground as you casually walk on by.  For any rocks you have already picked up, just stop and breathe and then visualize yourself slowly sitting the rock down and walking away.  It works wonders on your mental well-being.  You actually feel physically lighter.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Sunk cost bias is one of the most common and difficult to avoid mind traps.  Sunk costs are costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered.  They can be in the form of money, time, or even emotions and stress.

You’ve spent two hours on a task and you have three hours remaining to finish it.  You’ve invested $1,000 in a stock that is now worth $750.  You’ve spent $10 on a movie ticket and you’ve watched the first 15 minutes and you hate it.  You’ve spent $150 on theater tickets and tonight is the night of the show.  You’ve “invested” a year in a relationship and you now have serious doubts about his commitment.  You’ve spent five years at your current job.

These are all examples of sunk costs.  You can’t get them back.  The mind trap occurs when you irrationally consider those sunk costs when making decisions about the future.  In these examples and innumerable others, the only important factors are those that lie in the future, and not what you’ve done in the past.  Despite being fully aware of this trap, I still have a difficult time avoiding it myself sometimes.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve already invested two hours in your task.  Whether you finish it or not, you will still have spent that two hours.  They are gone, sunk.  It doesn’t matter that you spent $150 on theater tickets.  Whether you go or not you’ve already spent the money.  It is gone.  The question now is whether you want to go to the theater for free or just chill out at home.  You would be in the same position if you had lost $150 in cash and someone had given you the tickets for free.

It doesn’t matter that you invested $1,000 in stocks that are now worth $750.  The only question now is what is the best investment you can make with your $750.  You shouldn’t hold on to that particular stock so you can avoid selling at a loss if there is a better investment.  My wife says it is only a “paper loss”.  Baloney.

In the case of the task, the fact that you invested two hours is irrelevant to what you should do with the three hours remaining.  You shouldn’t “hold onto” that task either.  You should invest your time in the most valuable activity you have available to you.  The fact that you spent $10 on a movie and time travelling to the theater and so on, is irrelevant to whether you should spend an additional two hours watching a movie you hate.  You’ve already wasted time and money so you shouldn’t compound the problem wasting more time.  Don’t throw your valuable resources down a hole just because you dug one.

You should be looking forward and making your decisions based upon what is before you and not what is behind you.  Do you want to spend two hours watching a bad movie?  Do you want to take your free show tickets that you already have and go to a show or do you want to stay home or do something else?  You need to decide how you should you spend the time and money that you have now and not the time and the money you had yesterday.

Go back to the theater tickets which I admit is a really hard one.  You are emotionally invested in that $150 you spent on them and you are very unlikely to let it go to “waste” just because you don’t feel like going when the day of the show rolls around.  You would just rather stay home but since you spent $150 on the tickets you have to go right?  No, your decision at this point is would you rather go to see a “free” show (you already have the tickets) or would you rather stay home and chill.  That is very hard to do and very few people would choose to stay home, but it’s the rational way to make the decision.

Just the other day a friend of mine offered me free tickets to a show.  They were VIP tickets but I declined.  I just didn’t feel like going that night.  However, I can almost guarantee you that if I had paid for those same tickets I would have went.  I would not have so casually decided I would just rather stay home.  Sometimes we just can’t help our irrational selves

Do not cling to your past actions.  As hard as it is to do, make your decisions based upon what is before you.  Make the most of your present life by living for what you have now.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Novelty is an important component in fostering creativity.

Optical illusions work because of the perceptual shortcuts your brain has developed from past perceptual experience.  This tendency of your brain to make snap judgments and statistical predictions is a very good thing.  It occurs in many different areas of your brain and it reduces by many magnitudes the amount of mental resources required to function in your every day life.

The downside of this is that your thoughts tend to fall into ruts.  Thoughts travel easily along well worn neural pathways.   You get stuck inside a path and can’t easily get out of it.

You can’t think outside the box if you  keep sitting in the same box.  Imagination uses some of the same visual circuits as perception.  In order to imagine new ideas you need  create new visual wiring in your brain.  You need new and loosely connected patterns to help trigger new ways of stringing ideas together.

Seeking out new experience does exactly that.  Children squeal with delight at novel experiences because their immature brains are desperately trying to make sense of the world.  They instinctively act in a way that produces discovery and learning.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some of that delightful attitude back into our adult lives?  Even more, there is evidence that novelty seeking is a key to long term well-being and brain health.  See Todd Kashdan’s book Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life.

Since we are visual creatures and since visual circuits are used in imaginative thinking, novel visual experiences are very important to creativity.  The richer the experience the better.   Here are some ideas on things you can do to increase novelty in your life.

1. New experiences involving both vision and movement.  Your brain loves physical movement as long as that movement is attended to and is not automatic.  Combining physical movement with a visual experience is ideal, so do something that makes you keep your eyes open.  Whether it is dance, yoga, sports, martial arts, or something else, novel movement with focused visual attention is great for your body and brain.  Be sure and change it up frequently.  Play different sports, learn new dance moves, etc.
2. People, people, people.  There have been a slew of studies showing the mental and physical benefits of social involvement.  For novelty, go further out into your social networks.  Engage more with people you know who are not your friends or regulars in your inner circle.  Going even further and meeting and socializing with brand new people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds is a fantastic way to experience novelty.  Your same old friends bring the same old things – lovely as they may be.
3. Physical is better then virtual.  Brain scans show that you have a richer pattern of neuronal activity when viewing an actual physical object than you do when viewing it on a two-dimensional screen.  I am not opposed to computer stimulation (that sounds bad), but obviously being there and experiencing it in the real world is better than watching pixels flash on a two-dimensional plane.
4. Change up your environment.  Doing the same thing in the same room with the same furnishings is not conducive to creativity.  Novel surroundings boost the creative juices.  So instead of sitting in a bland office, talk a walk in the woods to do some thinking.  Get out your laptop and do some work on a beach, a park, or in a different room.  Change your furniture and decorations around.  Do things in a variety of places.
5. Drive, walk, and exercise using different routes.  Just travelling a new route and seeing something different can trigger a new connection in your brain.
6. Diversify your reading material.  Read fiction and non-fiction, something technical and something light and breezy, thrillers, biography, philosophy, etc.  I know you can’t read everything and I personally tend to focus on narrow categories, but I’m committed to expanding my reading horizons.
7. Travel, travel, travel.  This one activity can introduce you to so many novel experiences visually, intellectually, and socially, that it may be hard to beat.  If you can afford it, actually live for a while in different locations.  Even if you don’t have time or means to travel far, you can travel out of your neighborhood or city almost any time you want.
8. Natural is better than artificial.  I admit this is just a personal bias, but I have to believe our brains do better in a natural environment for which they have been sculpted than in an artificial one.  I know there have been some studies showing the benefits of natural sunlight and green spaces, but mostly this is just an intuition of mine.
9. Vary everything.  Whatever it is you do, look for ways to vary it.  The more variation the better.  Look for the mysterious or the things you have never noticed before, even in the mundane.  Just stop and smell the roses for once.  You’ll be amazed what you see for the first time if you just stop and look.
10. Think Laterally.  This is a great way to generate novel ideas.  Check out this Wikipedia article on lateral thinking, especially the tools section.  Lateral thinking generally involves trying to put random and unconnected or exaggerated ideas together.  It’s a way to challenge your default modes of thought.

Please add your own ideas on how to stimulate creativity through novel experiences.  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Correlation Does Not Prove Causation

Note from Stephen: There are a number of hot button issues mentioned in this article.  In general, except where noted, I’m not indicating a preference for any explanation, nor am I intending to start a debate on any of these issues.  These are merely examples of alternatives that can be used to illustrate the main point of the article.

People who have been beaten as children are more likely to beat their own children.  Therefore being beaten as a child makes the child more likely to grow up and become a child beater himself.

This thinking trap is an incredibly widespread problem that shows up daily in media reports.  A is correlated with B so therefore A must have caused B.

If there is a correlation between A and B, there are multiple possibilities.

• A may cause B
• B may cause A
• A third factor C may cause both A and B
• A and B may influence each other in some kind of reinforcing relationship
• It might be a coincidence that A and B are correlated
• Some combination of the above

Some of them can be ruled out in certain cases.  Beating your child cannot have been the cause of your having been beaten as a child, so the second possibility (B causes A) can be ruled out in that example.

Similar to the child beating example, children of smokers are more likely to become smokers.  Therefore smoking causes your children to become smokers themselves.  That kind of narrative sounds plausible and we hear it all the time.  The implication is that children are learning these behaviors from their parents.  While that is certainly plausible, another just as plausible explanation is that children are genetically inheriting these tendencies from their parents.  The genetic explanation for both violence and smoking have a lot of supporting evidence from adoption studies.

Socioeconomic class is correlated with all kinds of things, therefore socioeconomic class must be the cause of all those things.  A classic example is crime.  Poor people commit more crimes, therefore the cause of some crime is poverty.  Maybe, but then maybe something else is causing both crime and poverty.  Some argue for exactly that and it seems that your preferred explanation depends upon your politics.

Children that are read to by their parents do better in school.  Therefore, reading to your child helps him or her do better in school.  Maybe a third factor such as a genetic trait for academic talent causes you both to do better in school and to be more likely to read to your children.  It seems likely that academically talented parents and educated parents are more likely to read to their children.  They also gave their children some of their academic genes and that could be the explanation.

Children in music programs do better in math, therefore you should enroll your child in music programs so they will do better in math.  Maybe, but then maybe the same trait makes one both good at music (and thus more likely to participate) and good at math.  There is a correlation between being in a high school orchestra and being Asian.  If you want to become an Asian, should you join the orchestra?

There is a correlation between ice cream sales and drowning incidents.  Neither is likely the cause of the other.  Instead a third factor is likely increasing both – summer.  Marijuana is the gateway drug to more dangerous drugs.  We are told this all the time and it is proven by the fact that those who smoke marijuana in their youth are more likely to take more dangerous drugs later on.  This plausible sounding explanation ignores the just as plausible explanation that someone with a personality or genetic tendency to take drugs is more likely to both smoke marijuana as a youth and take other drugs as they get older.  What caused them to be a drug user when they are older might be the same thing causing them to smoke marijuana when they are younger.

Here is one of my favorite examples because it got a lot of attention and seemed so scientifically acceptable.  A correlation was discovered between young children sleeping with a light on in their bedroom and development of near-sightedness.  It was implied that leaving a light on in your child’s room leads to near-sightedness.  It turns out the likely cause of this effect is that near-sighted parents transmit their near-sighted genes to their children and those same half-blind parents are more likely to leave the light on in their child’s room, possibly so the parents themselves can see better.

A properly controlled experiment can tease out likely causes, but much of what you hear in the media is not the result of carefully controlled experiments.  It is the result of people, often with an agenda, looking for correlations.  We don’t conduct controlled experiments on child beating and youth drug use.

They key lesson here is to not just automatically assume that because the media reports that people who do A are more likely to experience B, means that A is causing B.  It pays to be skeptical of media reports, books, and gurus when they imply correlation indicates a casual link.  This is especially true if it sounds like something that was just dug out of data or surveys and not the subject of proper experiments.  If you care about the issue, you should look deeper into the studies.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Asking yourself the right kinds of questions is a powerful tool to keep you focused on what really matters.  The following are some of the questions I like to ask myself.

1. Is this a strengthening decision that will create good habits or a weakening decision that will create bad habits?
2. Will this take me closer to my goals or further away from my goals?
3. Am I creating long term pain in return for short term gain?
   
4. Am I happy and having fun right now?
   
5. Am I doing what I want to do or what others (partner, family, friends, society) think I should be doing?
6. Am I living my values in this moment?
7. Is this the most important thing I can be doing right now?
8. Will I care about this issue in 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, or in 10 years?
9. When I’m lying on my deathbed, will I be glad I spent life’s precious minutes doing what I’m doing right now?
   
10. What action can I take right now to move forward.
    
11. What can I learn from this situation?
    
12. How is this affecting the people I care about?
    

Do you have a question to add to the list?

Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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