i’m a sucker

in just a few days the heath brothers will release their latest book, switch.  the synopsis is a bit eerie considering what is happening – ‘how to change things when change is hard’.  their first book made to stick was brilliant and i can’t wait to get my hand on their second.  in fact, they are coming to speak in houston, but i don’t think i’m going to be able to make it.  although a friend has been asking about babysitting…i digress.

they have been working their blog pretty hard recently to prep the masses for the release and they have absolutely nailed it with their post on multitasking.  long story short, multitaskers aren’t cognitively superior in any way, in fact they tend to be worse.  the part that i think was just perfect is when they sum up the research by saying that multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy, and that everything distracts them.   they’re right.  i say this as a person who tends to multitask more times than not.  you get in to that frame of mind and instead of having a narrow focus you almost get in to a zone of looking for something else to do instead of cycling back to everything in front of you.  i would like to think that i do pretty well having a single focus when the task calls for that type of attention, but i’m not the kind of guy with one browser window open or one document open at a time.  i have zero interest in going down the path of which is better, however i think that this study spotlights an inherent danger in not having a single focus when working.

 

everyone reads the crowd

i was in a situation last week to observe ‘experts’ talking to ‘non-experts’ regarding a somewhat technical subject.  excuse my vagueness, but you’re just going to have to get over it for this post.  at any rate, i saw experts adjusting their message, tone, vocabulary, etc. based upon the people they were talking to.  assumptions were running rampant, these guys were sizing up these people (perhaps there was background knowledge, i’m not sure on that one) and addressing them in a way that i consider to be a bit risky.  if i were to be approached and spoken down to it would not go well.  so which is better…to take the high road and risk speaking over someone’s head and be perceived that way or to take a potentially condescending route and talk to someone like they are a child?  both are fraught with peril.  i go with the former, but both have a high degree of danger in terms of message delivery, right?  if you overshoot or undershoot you risk losing the message in the way its framed.  talk about a topic a way that is too unfamiliar and it won’t stick, insult someone and they don’t care what you have to say.