Ed Batista

Talking About Feelings

My work as a coach often involves encouraging clients and students to talk about their feelings--a process known to psychologists as affect labeling--in order to manage difficult emotions more effectively. Experience tells us that this is a useful practice, but why? How does talking about feelings make them easier to manage?

Recent neuroscience research, including a substantial body of work by Matthew Lieberman of UCLA [1], has helped us to better understand the processes in the brain that contribute to this effect. [2] Some of the earliest research on this topic was conducted by Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger, and several other colleagues [3]:

Putting feelings into words has long been thought to be one of the best ways to manage negative emotional experiences. Talk therapies have been formally practiced for more than a century and, although varying in structure and content, are commonly based on the assumption that talking about one's feelings and problems is an effective method for minimizing the impact of negative emotional events on current experience. More recently, psychologists have discovered that merely putting pen to paper to express one’s emotional ailments has benefits for mental and physical health. Although conventional wisdom and scientific evidence indicate that putting one’s feelings into words can attenuate negative emotional experiences, the mechanisms by which these benefits arise remain largely unknown.

Recent neuroimaging research has begun to offer insight into a possible neurocognitive mechanism by which putting feelings into words may alleviate negative emotional responses. A number of studies of affect labeling have demonstrated that linguistic processing of the emotional aspects of an emotional image produces less amygdala activity than perceptual processing of the emotional aspects of the same image. [The amygdala is a region of the brain associated with emotion processing that plays a role in helping us interpret and respond to perceived threats, among other tasks.] Additionally, these studies have demonstrated greater activity during linguistic processing than during non-linguistic processing of emotion in [the] right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC), a region associated with the symbolic processing of emotional information and with top-down inhibitory processes. Finally, the magnitude of RVLPFC activity during affect labeling has been inversely correlated with the magnitude of amygdala activity during affect labeling in these studies. Together, these results suggest that putting feelings into words may activate RVLPFC, which in turn may dampen the response of the amygdala, thus helping to alleviate emotional distress... [page 421]

The results of this study provide the first clear demonstration that affect labeling disrupts the affective responses in the limbic system that would otherwise occur in the presence of negative emotional images...

These data thus suggest that one route by which putting feelings into words may regulate negative affect is by increasing activity in RVLPFC, which in turn dampens activity in the amygdala by way of intermediate connections through [the medial prefrontal cortex]... [page 426]

In summary, this study provides the first unambiguous evidence that affect labeling, compared with other ways of encoding, produces diminished responses to negative emotional images in the amygdala and other limbic regions...

These findings begin to shed light on how putting negative feelings into words can help regulate negative experience, a process that may ultimately contribute to better mental and physical health. [page 427]

While the specific neural mechanisms involved remain unclear, it's noteworthy that this research highlights the connection between the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain most closely associated with logical reasoning, and regions of the brain involved in processing emotion. Although this may seem counterintuitive, given our popular conception of reason and emotion as opposing influences on our behavior, it's entirely consistent with decades of research by neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio [4] and Richard Davidson [5], whose work emphasizes the complex and intertwined relationship between these modes of mental processing.

Lieberman also explored these neural mechanisms in work that he conducted independently [6]:

[T]here is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the process of sharing one's worry, of putting bad feelings into words, can diminish one's emotional distress at least under certain circumstances. This chapter examines the neurocognitive mechanisms of disruption effects, the process by which putting feelings into words can disrupt the feelings being verbalized... [page 188]

RVLPFC activity is associated with reduced activity in limbic regions, such as the amygdala and [dorsal anterior cingulate cortex], and [symbolic processing of affect] is associated both with increased RVLPFC activity and decreased limbic activity. [page 199]

Given that [symbolic processing of affect] appears to regulate limbic responses...this would provide a mechanism by which putting feelings into words would have benefits for regulating emotional distress and for mental health more generally. [page 200]

Numerous philosophers and psychologists have noted over the years that thinking about affect has the capacity to alter and even dampen the affect that is being thought about. This has been used to good effect in various forms of therapy, from formal psychotherapies to informal social support networks in which people talk about their feelings with friends. The reason that putting feelings into words helps has remained elusive and somewhat mystical. The work presented here describes a neurocognitive process focused on RVLPFC that provides the beginnings of an answer. Putting feelings into words activates a region of the brain that is capable of inhibiting various aspects of immediate experience, including affective distress. [page 203]

Lieberman later summarized this research in his insightful book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect [7]:

It turns out that putting our feelings into words or simply being able to label them can regulate our emotions and promote our mental and physical well-being...

Preschoolers who can describe their feelings have fewer emotional outbursts, get better grades, and are more popular with their peers. High school students who write about their math anxiety right before taking a math test actually do better on the test. In my lab we ask adults to perform a simple task, called affect labeling, during which people choose a word to best describe the emotional aspect of a picture. For instance, a picture of an angry face might be shown, and the participant would have to choose whether the word angry or scared describes the target's emotion. We have found that labeling the affective aspect of a disturbing image reduces the distress a person feels while looking at the image...

When people label an emotional picture or their own emotional response to a picture, it activates the RVLPFC and reduces activity in the amygdala... It is still unclear what exactly the RVLPFC does to stimulate self-control. The debate typically focuses on whether this and similar regions are directly inhibiting responses in other brain regions, like the amygdala, or are helping to strengthen the nonimpulsive alternative so it can compete effectively with the impulsive response. [pages 219-221]

So while we can't explain the underlying mechanisms with absolute certainty, a highly plausible theory has emerged over the past decade that allows us to explain why talking about distressing feelings mitigates the counterproductive impact of those emotions. How can we make more effective use of these ideas?

Practice

Many of us lack experience talking about our feelings, particularly in a professional setting, and just thinking about it can trigger a sense of anxiety and unease. This response is understandable--being called "emotional" is typically a criticism in business, and yet it can be unclear what would cause that label to be applied to us. But in our efforts to avoid this outcome, we may over-correct and never disclose our feelings at work--which prevents us from leveraging the neural processes discussed above, making our negative emotions even more difficult to manage.

Psychologist Daniel Wegner quoted educator John Dewey on the importance of routinizing desired behaviors: "Habits must intervene between wish and execution in the case of bodily acts, [but] we still cherish the illusion that they can be dispensed with in the case of mental and moral acts." [8, emphasis added] The key here is recognizing that talking about emotions is a bodily act, not just a mental one. By definition emotions aren't purely cognitive processes--we often become aware of our emotions when we suddenly feel our heart pounding or a pit in our stomach. And just like any other embodied experience that involves multiple physiological systems, like driving a car or public speaking, we must make it a habit in order to grow accustomed to the challenge. But the good news is that practice inevitably increases our comfort with discomfort and reduces our self-consciousness as we grow more competent.

Expand Our Vocabularies

A consequence of our inexperience with discussing emotions--and a contributing factor that holds us back--is a limited emotional language. Even when we're ready to talk more fully about our feelings, if we lack the precise word to convey our emotion to another person in such a way that it has the intended impact, we're likely to struggle. A simple solution is to expand our emotional vocabulary.

This one-page document lists eight primary emotional states--angry, averse, caring, embarrassed, excited, fearful, happy, inadequate, and sad--and 52 synonyms. Psychologists differ on the nature and number of primary emotions--Paul Ekman defined the six basic emotions as anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, while the late Sylvan Tompkins believed there are eight: anguish, disgust, fear, joy, interest, rage, shame, and surprise. [9] I've adapted this list from one originally developed by David Bradford, Mary Ann Huckabay and Carole Robin at Stanford, and I find that it works well for my clients and students.

Create a Supportive Culture

As Lieberman's work indicates, and as ample empirical evidence makes clear, merely reflecting on our feelings also allows us to regulate them over time. But the process of internal reflection appears to work less efficiently than openly discussing our feelings, and in many circumstances it's simply not possible to pause the interaction in order for us to take time to reflect. If we want to manage difficult feelings as effectively as possible, we need to talk about them with others--including those people who may be the cause of our emotions.

And yet even if we're willing to have this conversation with a rich vocabulary at the ready, our ability to do so will be significantly influenced by the surrounding culture. Note that every relationship and group has its own culture--a set of norms, often tacit and unspoken, that determine what behaviors or statements are acceptable and what will result in embarrassment or threat.

If we want to make full use of the neural processes described above, we have to create a safe, trusting and intimate culture in which talking about feelings is accepted as normal. I fully recognize that this may involve taking some risks in order to move the culture in the desired direction, and I'm not suggesting that we do so heedlessly. But what gives me hope is that the bold act of talking about our feelings is what tends to create a safer, more trusting, and more emotionally intimate culture in the first place.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Matthew Lieberman's faculty page at UCLA

[2] Twitter Study Confirms the Power of "Affect Labeling" (Christian Jarrett, BPS Research Digest, 2019)

[3] "Putting Feelings Into Words" (Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger, Molly Crockett, Sabrina Tom, Jennifer Pfeifer, and Baldwin Way, Psychological Science, 2007)

[4] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[5] The Emotional Life of Your Brain (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[6] "Why Symbolic Processing of Affect Can Disrupt Negative Affect: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Investigations," Chapter 13 in Social Neuroscience: Toward Understanding the Underpinnings of the Social Mind (Alexander Todorov, Susan Fiske, and Deborah Prentice, editors, 2011)

[7] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (Matthew Lieberman, 2013) I highly recommend Social as a lucid and thought-provoking guide to recent neuroscience research on a wide range of issues beyond the topic of this post. When I taught Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely) at Stanford, I included chapters from Social on my syllabus for the first and last classes in the course.

[8] White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts, page 14 (Daniel Wegner, 1989)

[9] For more on primary emotions, see The Emotional Brain, Chapter 5 (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)

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For Further Reading

Comfort with Discomfort

Conscious Competence in Practice

Vocabulary of Emotions

Self-Coaching Is SOCIAL

Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

Safety, Trust, Intimacy

Taking the Leap (Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty

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This is a revised and expanded version of a post first published in February 2008.

Thank you to Stephanie West Allen for helping me grasp the implications of current neuroscience research for my work as a coach, and, more specifically, for initially referring me to the work of Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger, and their colleagues at UCLA.

Photo by Gideon.

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

I'm an executive coach, not a meditation teacher, but I regularly discuss mindfulness with my clients, all of whom are busy professionals in demanding leadership positions. This aspect of my practice has evolved over the past decade as a combination of research, my clients' experiences, and my own life have highlighted the role that mindfulness can play in our overall well-being and our professional effectiveness. While I don't advise clients on specific mindfulness programs, here are a set of concepts that guide my approach:

1. Overview

Mindfulness need not be viewed as an esoteric or mystical subject, although it's often perceived that way. It's merely the process of noticing what's happening around us, observing where our attention is going as a result, and sensing our cognitive, emotional and physical responses. A heightened sense of mindfulness allows us to direct our attention toward an intended object of focus and away from undesirable distractions, which can have a significant impact on our professional effectiveness. We can cultivate this ability through a number of practices, most notably meditation. A key is viewing meditation as a workout in attention management rather than as a break from the stress of daily life. It can be challenging, but like any workout, the difficulty is the point of the process. Consistent practice is essential, but meditating for just a few minutes a day can be sufficient.

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2. Getting started

One way to begin is to block off just a few minutes--no more than 5--at a regular time of day when you won't be interrupted, set a timer, sit or lie comfortably, close your eyes, and focus on what it feels like to breathe. You will almost immediately be distracted by a thought, feeling or sensation--this is expected and part of the process. Notice what's distracting you, acknowledge any response you're having as a result, and return your attention to your breathing. This will happen repeatedly and probably throughout the entire experience, which will make it mildly stressful and somewhat unpleasant. Again, this is expected and part of the process. When the timer goes off, you won't feel anything other than a sense of relief that it's over and a concern that mindfulness is a waste of time. You'll be reluctant to repeat the process because you're a busy person, and this is the critical moment: You can allow those feelings to dissuade you from trying again, or you can try again despite your resistance. If you persist and make this practice a regular habit, your feelings about the process will not change much, nor will you observe any obvious results, for weeks or even months. But slowly, eventually, it will get easier, and you will likely notice subtle shifts in your ability to manage your attention, maintain focus, and remain calm under stress.

I know I'm not making it sound very appealing, but I think it's essential to be blunt here. Too often mindfulness is portrayed as a sort of spa treatment, which gets people engaged but also leads them to give up when it turns out to be something quite different. The remainder of this essay explores the concepts referenced above in greater depth, but you need not read any further to get started.

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3. "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

While Voltaire certainly wasn't considering a meditation practice when he penned this line, it's highly applicable. [1] Mindfulness practices--and meditation in particular--can seem like the domain of experts, inaccessible to people lacking specialized training. Many clients and students I talk with are interested in the concept, but also feel daunted at the prospect of getting involved with something that seems to require major investments of time and effort, or even a radical change in lifestyle.

In part this stems from our association of mindfulness with figures at a distance from contemporary professional life--master monks and spiritual seekers. While we may admire their dedication and commitment, we may also mistakenly conclude that mindfulness is for people have little interest in following an ordinary career path. My own perspective on this changed when I heard Bill George talk in 2009, and he noted that he and his wife had meditated daily for the past 30 years. [2] Bill was the CEO of a public company for over a decade and has taught at Harvard Business School since 2004, and he comes across as a grounded, straightforward person who's squarely in the mainstream of corporate life. I've met many others like him over the past decade who view mindfulness as not merely compatible with their identity as professionals, but as a contributor to improved performance.

Even after we've begun exploring mindfulness practices, Voltaire's warning remains relevant because of the all-too-common feeling that we're somehow inadequate and not up to the task. We may begin meditating and find it impossible to "clear our mind," leading us to conclude that we're just not "good" at it. But the idea that "clearing the mind" is an achievable goal is rooted in a misunderstanding. Unbidden thoughts and feelings will constantly distract us when meditating, and the task of noticing these distractions and returning our focus to its intended object is the whole point of the process. The distraction doesn't make us a "bad meditator"--it makes us a human being.

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4. Mindfulness and attention management

The definition of mindfulness that I find most helpful is nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of experience. There are many different purposes this awareness can serve, but the function that's been most relevant to my clients and students over the past decade is attention management. [3] As a coach I've come to view attention as our most precious resource--one quite distinct from time, which we often use as a proxy for our attention because it's easier to measure. [4] But we often have little awareness of where our attention is going or find it difficult to maintain our desired focus.

We can overcome these challenges through conscious effort, for a time, but that's fatiguing and impossible to sustain indefinitely. What’s needed is a heightened ability to sense where our attention is being directed and to assess whether that focus is aligned with our intentions, both in the moment and over time. [5] Here mindfulness practices can play a uniquely helpful role. The definition I cite above refers not only (or even primarily) to our external experience--the world around us--but also to our inner experience--our thoughts, emotions and other responses to our environment. And a greater capacity for mindfulness not only allows us to take in more information about the world around us, but also to more fully sense and understand how we’re interpreting this data and where our attention is being directed as a result.

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5. Mindfulness and Systems 1 and 2

In 2000 psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West coined the terms "System 1" and "System 2" to describe distinct reasoning processes in the brain [6], a model later popularized by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. [7] System 1 is automatic, unconscious, and fast, while System 2 is controlled, conscious, and relatively slow. It's inaccurate to characterize System 1 as "emotion" and System 2 as "logic," because emotion plays a role in both processes, but the former generates a host of "impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings," in Kahneman’s phrase. Some of these System 1 responses prompt immediate action, while others are assessed more deliberately by System 2.

An advantage of this arrangement is that System 1 can take in a tremendous amount of data from our environment and generate numerous responses simultaneously, which allows us to take action quickly and efficiently, with a minimum of conscious thought—in effect bypassing System 2. But in some circumstances, particularly when we’re under stress, we’re better served by slowing down our automatic System 1 response and engaging System 2 to assess the situation more thoughtfully and choose our response more deliberately. A challenge is that System 2 lacks System 1's parallel processing capacity and must work sequentially, focusing on one issue or problem at a time, which can create a bottleneck when we’re operating in a fast-paced environment. In addition, both Systems 1 and 2 are subject to a number of cognitive biases, systemic errors in how we think that lead us astray even when we believe we’re being careful and deliberate.

A greater sense of mindfulness helps us manage these difficulties in a number of ways: we’re better able to acknowledge our System 1 responses without immediately putting them into action, we can slow down [8] and engage System 2 more readily, and we’re more aware of the cognitive biases that distort our thinking in both modes.

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6. The importance of feelings

One of the most significant benefits of mindfulness practice is heightening our awareness of feelings—not only emotions, but also physical sensations. The two are directly connected—emotions manifest themselves as physiological events before they register in consciousness. As noted above, such heightened awareness can at times allow us to bring our deliberative System 2 to bear on an automatic System 1 response, but the goal isn’t to try to bring our emotions under conscious control, which would be neither possible nor desirable. A critically important role that emotions play is to act as "attention magnets"—to interrupt conscious thought and orient us toward something in our environment that is likely to be significant. The ability to control our emotions would undermine this function and actually jeopardize our survival, given the slowness and inefficiency of conscious reasoning. Nor would we want to heighten our awareness of physical sensations too far--beyond a certain point such sensitivity can be uncomfortably distracting and even painful.

But many of us often operate at the other end of the spectrum—we're out of touch with our emotions and poorly attuned to our bodies, and so we have difficulty interpreting our feelings, or they build in strength and then catch us by surprise. [9] Mindfulness practices create an environment in which there are fewer external distractions and it’s easier to sense our inner feelings. We can pay close attention to our breathing, feel our heart beat, and be more aware of visceral responses or muscle tension—and we can more clearly grasp the emotions that accompany these sensations. We begin to make associations among these various feelings and the thoughts and ideas that may have triggered them. I think of this as "lowering the waterline"--increasing our ability to notice and observe mental and physical processes that ordinarily occur on the margins of consciousness.

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7. Meditation: the most powerful mindfulness practice

There are other ways to pursue mindfulness—see below—but meditation deserves special mention. We often think of meditation as a complex process shrouded in mystery. In part this derives from the historic connection between meditation and spirituality—most religious traditions possess a set of practices that either involve meditation or evoke a meditative state through prayer or ritual. And yet while some people find it beneficial to integrate meditation more fully into their spiritual life, the two are not inextricably linked. When we examine meditation in isolation from any spiritual context, it emerges as the straightforward process of simply noticing where our attention goes and observing our response. This is a reductive description, to be sure, and there are many different views on the practice, but demystifying it in this way can make it more approachable for those who haven’t tried it before and help to clarify the potential benefits for professional effectiveness.

From this perspective meditation is a concentrated form of attention management with minimal distractions other than our endless stream of thoughts, emotions and sensations. While the absence of a concrete task to accomplish may seem disorienting, the process is directly related to the challenge we face when we are trying to complete a cognitively demanding task or work in a stressful or overly stimulating environment: Tune out unhelpful distractions and direct our attention toward an intended object. This is precisely what we’re doing when we meditate. And while we may question the ability of merely noticing where our attention is going to have an impact on our experience, a substantial body of research has emerged showing meditation’s positive effects on mood [10], anxiety [11], sleep [12], happiness [13], and even pain. [14]

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8. But there are other paths as well

Meditation isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t the only way to pursue mindfulness. If you do find meditation particularly challenging, I consider point #9 before abandoning it—as with any workout, the difficulty of the process is the point of pursuing it. That said, while other mindfulness practices might not serve as a direct substitute for meditation, we can certainly pursue greater self-awareness (or augment a meditation practice) through a number of means:

• Exercise: Certain types of physical activity lend themselves well to a mindful state, in which we’re better able to reflect on our experience, sense our unbidden thoughts and emotions, and attune to our bodies. Any activity involving repetitive motion in an environment that supports sustained focus has the potential to serve this purpose. Note that the need to consciously navigate the outside world—on a busy road, or in a noisy gym—will diminish this impact. [15]
• Time in nature: While walking itself can be a form of mindfulness practice, there’s a particular benefit to being outdoors in a natural setting. Again, it’s important to minimize external distractions, but even if we live in an urban environment (as more than 80 percent of the people in the United States do) we can still take advantage of this process. Recent research suggests that as little as one hour a week in nature has a positive effect on our mood and ability to focus. [16]
• Journaling: Writing about our experiences can serve several purposes related to mindfulness. It allows us to see our thoughts and emotions from a new, more structured perspective. It helps to reinforce memories, enabling us to access them more readily in the future (even if we never return to the written document). And if we allow ourselves to write in a more spontaneous, automatic way we tend to discover unexpected ideas and associations that couldn’t have been accessed via conscious effort. Note that we often find the idea of journaling unappealing because what comes to mind is a sort of daily diary--“This happened, and then that happened…”—which most people find uninspiring and unsustainable. What I’m recommending here instead is any form of consistent practice that we do find both inspiring and sustainable. This can be as simple as jotting down three bullet points at the end of the day. [17]

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9. It's a workout, not a break

Another challenge with mindfulness is the way that it’s portrayed in popular culture. It’s typically associated with rest and relaxation—a break from the stress of daily life. [18] This poses a dilemma, especially for beginners, because mindfulness practices—meditation in particular—can be stressful. The approach to meditation that I’m discussing here involves focusing our attention on a given object, such as our breathing, or even just a spot on the wall. Almost immediately after beginning to meditate we’re inevitably distracted by a thought, an emotion, or a physical sensation—and this will happen repeatedly in the course of every meditation session.

The task we face is to notice that we’ve been distracted, to let go of this new object that our attention has been drawn to, and to return our focus to its original object. And we’ll have to do this over and over and over again. This is repetitive, boring, and even stressful. And that’s the point, because meditation is a workout in the process of managing our attention. It’s not a break—it’s not a soothing shelter from distraction, but rather a stressful, head-on encounter with all of the spontaneous thoughts, feelings and impulses that distract us constantly.

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10. Consistent practice > Long sessions

 A dynamic that’s common to the primary activities I recommend to clients and students—including exercise and sleep, in addition to mindfulness—is the importance of daily practice. These activities contribute more to our ability to do our best work and to our sense of fulfillment when they’re consistent habits. But even when we have the best of intentions, we often allow these important activities to get bumped off our calendars by more urgent ones, and we tell ourselves we’ll "make it up later," with a harder workout, more sleep, or a longer meditation session at some point in the future. [19]

This approach is problematic in two ways: First, it’s much easier to commit to a mindfulness practice when it’s truly habitual—when we’ve created a set of routines and triggers that generate an automatic response that makes it more likely that we’ll follow through on our intention. The more we have to stop and consider whether or not we’re going to meditate, the less likely we are to actually do it. The second problem is that inconsistent practice doesn’t appear to yield the same benefits as a daily routine, even if we meditate for longer periods of time. Current research suggests that there’s something important about a consistent practice—the closer to daily the better.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Voltaire and Patton on Perfection

[2] Bill George on Leadership at the Stanford Faculty Club

[3] The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 3: ATTENTION

[4] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[5] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention

[6] Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? (Keith Stanovich and Richard West, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000)

[7] Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

[8] The Importance of Slowing Down

[9] Underdoing It and Overdoing It (Assertiveness Over Time)

[10] Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (Madhav Goyal, Sonal Singh, Erica Sibinga, et al, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014)

[11] Randomized Controlled Trial of Mindfulness Meditation for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Effects on Anxiety and Stress Reactivity (Elizabeth A. Hoge, Eric Bui, Luana Marques, Christina A. Metcalf, Laura K. Morris, Donald J. Robinaugh, John J. Worthington, Mark H. Pollack, and Naomi M. Simon, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2014)

[12] Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances (David S. Black, Gillian A. O’Reilly, Richard Olmstead, et al, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015)

[13] Meditation and happiness: Mindfulness and self-compassion may mediate the meditation–happiness relationship (Daniel Campos, Ausiàs Cebollaah, Soledad Quero, Juana Bretón-López, Cristina Botella, Joaquim Soler, Javier García-Campayo, Marcelo Demarzo, Rosa María Baños, Personality and Individual Differences, 2016)

[14] Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Pain, Bypasses Opioid Receptors (Wen Chen, NCCIH Research Blog, 2016)

[15] Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)

[16] This Is Your Brain on Nature (Florence Williams, National Geographic, 2016)

[17] The Value of Journal Writing

[18] Meditation is a WORKOUT, not a BREAK

[19] Importance vs. Urgency

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For Further Reading

The Emotional Life of Your Brain (Richard Davidson. 2012)

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Daniel Siegel, 2010)

Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being (Linda Graham, 2013)

Developing Mindful Leaders for the C-Suite (Bill George, Harvard Business Review, 2014)

Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2007)

Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2010)

Full Catastrophe Living (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2013)

Self-Directed Neuroplasticity: A 21st Century View of Meditation (Rick Hanson, Coaching Supervision Academy)

White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts (Daniel Wegner, 1989)

• Daniel Wegner's work on mental control and thought suppression

A Simple Way to Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments (Leah Weiss, Harvard Business Review, 2016)

The How of Happiness (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2008)

Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential (Ian Robertson, 2000)

The Compassionate Brain (Gerald Hüther, 2006)

Meditation Techniques for People Who Hate Meditation (Stephanie Vozza, Fast Company, 2014)

26 Scientifically Proven Superhuman Benefits of Meditation (Jon Brooks, ComfortPit, 2014)

This is what eight weeks of mindfulness training does to your brain (Christian Jarrett, BPS Research Digest, 2016)

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age (Richard Louv, 2012)

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healther, and More Creative (Florence Williams, 2018)

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Mindfulness Tools

Tools I Use

• Don't Break The Chain
• Productive
• Calm

Other Tools I Recommend (But Don't Use)

• Headspace
• Buddhify

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This is a companion piece to Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People). Revised March 2019.

We've all heard variations on this post's title, but it's often mistakenly attributed to Dwight Eisenhower or Lewis Carroll. Actor, director and producer Martin Gabel deserves the credit.

Photo by Strevo.

The Importance of Slowing Down

The impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down.

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Our culture worships speed, particularly in the business world. We sing the praises of instant communication, always-available downloads, and same-day delivery as if they were miracles, and we curse the slightest interruptions in our expectations of immediacy.

But a problem posed by speed is that the reflexive responses we feel under stress—in a crisis, or when engaging in conflict--are often counterproductive, making it more difficult for us to achieve our goals. We react quickly and impulsively, when we would be better served by slowing down and choosing a more thoughtful response.

I’m not suggesting that speed is always undesirable. In many difficult situations it’s more important to make a good-enough decision and take action, and if we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, the delay will cost us. [1] Nor am I suggesting that we always perform worse under stress—up to a point the opposite is true, although once that threshold is crossed our effectiveness often declines rapidly.

We tend to feel an increased sense of urgency when we encounter a situation that we perceive as threatening in some way, and the threat response (aka fight, flight or freeze response) that we’ve evolved to navigate these situations can lead us in precisely the wrong direction. When we’re in the grip of a threat response we experience a host of physiological and psychological reactions: our heart rate and blood pressure escalate, we’re more likely to feel fear and anger, and we process information more quickly, all of which prime us to make decisions quickly and take immediate, decisive action. But speed has a cost, and in these situations we also process information less accurately, and we’re less effective at creative problem-solving and collaboration.

If we’re facing a literal threat to our physical safety we’re still well-served by rapid action, but few of us experience such threats on a regular basis in the contemporary world. It’s much more likely that we experience a threat response in the midst of a professional crisis or interpersonal conflict—what psychologists call social threat—and in these cases our inclination toward rapid action can be profoundly unhelpful.

To begin with, our perception of threat may be entirely unwarranted. We may sense danger where there is none. Executive coach David Rock’s study of current neuroscience research indicates that we’re more likely to experience social threat under a specific set of circumstances: when we encounter someone of higher status or from another social group, when the outcome of a situation is uncertain, when we feel a loss of autonomy, or when we perceive an injustice. [2] And yet these circumstances are daily occurrences in our professional lives; if we treat every such encounter as a potential threat, we experience our workday in a permanent state of vigilance and paranoia.

Further, our diminished capacity to process information accurately under stress means that we’re more likely to misinterpret environmental signals and interpersonal cues, and we suffer from a cognitive bias that makes it difficult to envision missing data. [3] Even when faced with massive gaps in information, we tend to focus on the information at our disposal and rely on it to construct an explanatory narrative, as flimsy as it might be. But a consequence is that we’re inclined to see threats where there may be none, and once we’ve come up with an explanation for the perceived threat, we’re unlikely to question our judgment and look for alternatives.

So what can we do? What helps us slow down when we’re feeling a sense of urgency?

Meditate

Meditation is often promoted as a source of stress relief, when in practice it can actually be unpleasant and even distressing to try to "clear our minds" only to find that thoughts and emotions immediately distract us again. It’s more helpful to view meditation as a workout in managing our attention, and, like any tough workout, it’s not always going to be easy or fun. But the process of repeatedly noticing where our attention is focused and gently re-directing it strengthens our ability to do the same when we’re in the grip of a threat response.

Exercise

Among many other benefits, regular physical activity helps us be more attuned with our bodies. The significance here is that the feelings of anxiety, fear, frustration, and anger that can accompany a threat response have many physiological elements, and our ability to sense these cues earlier and more acutely can help us be more aware of a threat response in the moment.

Sleep

Our ability to do any of this work is enhanced when we’re well-rested and impaired when we’re sleep-deprived. This isn’t news—ample research supports the importance of sleep—and yet this awareness often fails to translate into behavior change that results in better sleep hygiene. One concept that I’ve found helpful in my practice is recognizing the distinction between importance and urgency; sleep is a quintessential important-but-not-urgent activity that we need to prioritize in order to do our best work. Another idea that can help is reframing the workday as a cycle that begins not when we wake up, but when we go to bed; all our subsequent efforts on any given day are support (or not) by our commitment to this first step.

Practice

The heightened degree of mindfulness and self-awareness that are required to slow ourselves down when we’re under stress require effort, and this can be uncomfortable. But if we fail to undertake this effort, if we fail to increase our comfort with discomfort, we guarantee our underperformance. We never learn what we might accomplish with a greater willingness to challenge ourselves. The good news is that when we spend time outside our comfort zones, they tend to expand.

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Footnotes

[1] Voltaire and Patton on Perfection

[2] David Rock on Neuroscience, Leadership and the SCARF Model

[3] Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

 

For Further Reading

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)

A compilation of readings on sleep

Importance vs. Urgency

Comfort with Discomfort

 

Revised April 2019.

Photo by Jenny Jozwiak.

Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

Previously I've discussed biases that affect problem-solving and decision-making, such as the availability bias, the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind. Another is the representative bias, the assumption that an event is more likely because it conforms to a known category or that a given situation is typical and will be consistent with expectations derived from past experience. [1]

I've also written about the "ladder of inference," a concept developed by Chris Argyris that illustrates the (sometimes quite large) gulf between our perceptions and reality. [2] The foundation of the ladder--its first rung, so to speak--is the recognition that in seeking to understand the world around us we focus on certain data and ignore other data. And it's essential to bear in mind that this selection process is not objective but is itself riddled with errors and biases that have a tremendous influence on our perception of the world and our experience in it. [3]

Much of our understanding of cognitive biases comes from the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics for explaining apparent paradoxes in our decision-making. As Kahneman notes, when information is scarce, we rapidly craft a explanatory narrative on the basis of existing information and jump to a conclusion. In a sense, our brains are making a bet that it's preferable to act quickly on the basis of limited information than to wait while we fill in the gaps. [4]

This process allows us to immediately interpret a situation and "make sense" of it in a way that will guide future action, and most of the time it works well; we're generally successful at navigating the world of experiences and interactions. But as effective as they are, the mental systems that evolved to do this work are as subject to errors and biases as any other aspect of our thought processes.

One of the most significant cognitive errors is what Kahneman calls What You See Is All There Is, or WYSIATI, which is shorthand for the fact that we find it very difficult to envision missing data. Our brains, Kahneman says, are "radically insensitive to both the quality and the quantity of the information that gives rise to impressions and intuitions." [5] Even when faced with massive gaps in information, we tend to focus on the information at our disposal and rely on it to construct a narrative, as flimsy as it might be. A corollary to Kahneman's WYSIATI might be called WYDSDE: What You Don't See Doesn't Exist. And as a result we're typically overconfident in the validity and coherence of our explanatory narrative. Kahneman writes,

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgment is missing--what we see is all there is. Furthermore, [our brain] suppresses doubt and ambiguity. [6]

Bear in mind that our cognitive abilities are often diminished when we're under emotional stress, such as when we're resolving a conflict or are in the midst of any tough conversation. At the very moments when we most need to make accurate judgments about a situation and about others' intentions, we are most likely to be confidently wrong.

So what can we do? First, merely being aware of our tendency to ignore missing data and rely instead on readily-available information to construct explanatory narratives can be helpful. We can't turn off this mental mechanism (nor would we want to--it usually serves us well), but we can look for the errors it tends to generate. Applying the framework of the Ladder of Inference, we can drop down a few rungs and go from taking action to assessing the data that serves as the basis for our actions. We can ask ourselves: What don't I know here? What assumptions am I making to fill in the gaps? How might I challenge or test those assumptions?

The ability to ask these questions in the first place rests on a foundation of self-awareness and the practice of self-inquiry. We need to be able to step outside our immediate experience and understand our habitual responses and tendencies. We need to understand and explore the mental models that we're bringing to the situation and determine whether they apply here (or are still accurate at all.) One way to do this is through journaling--even 30 seconds can be useful, when done consistently.

Finally, in order to do any of this work we need to cultivate the ability to slow down, both in the moment when we're under stress, and on a regular basis to make time for reflection. I recommend meditation to my clients and students, not as a source of stress relief but as a workout for attention management. I also recommend exercise, both for its impact on our mental effectiveness and as a reflective experience. And, of course, good sleep habits are essential. Note that pursuing these activities will require us to set boundaries and say no in order to invest time in our own growth and development--if we don't make it a priority, it will never happen.

 

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Footnotes

[1] When Heuristics Go Bad

[2] Racing Up the Ladder of Inference

[3] Cognitive bias cheat sheet (Buster Benson, 2016)

[4] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 85 (Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

[5] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 86

[6] Thinking, Fast and Slow, pages 87-88

 

Photo by David Kingham.

You're Not Multi-Tasking, You're Half-Assing

It's been amply documented that the idea of achieving greater productivity through "multi-tasking" is a myth. [1] Here's the late Stanford professor of communication Clifford Nass on an NPR broadcast with Ira Flatow in 2013:

The research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social science, and it says that people who chronically multitask show an enormous range of deficits. They're basically terrible at all sorts of cognitive tasks, including multitasking... People who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy. They can't manage a working memory. They're chronically distracted [but] they actually think they're more productive... [They say,] "When I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused." And unfortunately, they've developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They're suckers for irrelevancy. They just can't keep on task. [2]

The problem is that when it comes to cognitively demanding work, we can truly focus on just one task at at time. We can switch rapidly from task to task, but that results in a tremendous loss of efficiency. So we're never actually "multi-tasking"--we're working serially on multiple tasks, and each time we switch we have to repopulate the items in working memory in order to return to the new task at hand. Not only is this slow and inefficient, but it also makes it profoundly more difficult to experience the state of mind that most of us require in order to do our most creative and imaginative work. Multi-tasking prevents us from entering a state of flow. [3]

Even more troubling, because our brains remain plastic and malleable throughout our lives, when we consistently engage in multi-tasking we reshape our brains for the worse, and we become habituated to this counterproductive way of working. It can be so difficult to return to a more focused way of working that Nass likens the experience to addiction:

NASS: [W]hen we try to revert our brains back, our brains are plastic but they're not elastic. They don't just snap back into shape.

FLATOW: Can you retrain them to come back?

NASS: We would love to know. It's very hard because frankly in the few studies we've tried to do it, people refuse. It's almost impossible to get a group of people who believe their lives are built around multitasking to stop for two weeks to actually see whether their brains have changed.

FLATOW: What an addiction. It must be really--is it correct to call it an addiction?

NASS: There's some debate about what the term addiction means, but by any of the behavioral measures of addiction, these people are absolutely, positively addicted. [4]

Bear in mind that this self-destructive behavior isn't happening in a vacuum: We are the targets of multi-billion dollar industries that are bent on capturing our attention, and we've welcomed into our lives a rich assortment of devices that are capable of distracting and interrupting us at every turn. So what can we do?

• Recognize that our attention is our most precious resource.

• Expect a return on our attention when we invest it and understand how to spend it wisely.

• Stop rubbernecking and allowing ourselves to be so easily distracted.

• And most importantly, manage our emotions in order to focus more effectively. This entails building capacity through such practices as meditation, minimizing interruptions from our devices, and blocking out time and space for unstructured, deep thought. [5]

 

Thanks to the late Clifford Nass--I never had the privilege of meeting him, but I heard him lecture once, and it was deeply thought-provoking.

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Footnotes

[1] Multi-tasking: switching costs (American Psychological Association, 2006)

[2,4] The Myth of Multitasking (National Public Radio, 2013)

[3] Spiral Learning and Flow States

[5] For additional resources, see The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 3: ATTENTION.

 

Photo by Nathan Jones.

Can't Decide? Flip for It

In my work as a coach I'm often asked to help clients wrestle with big decisions, and I typically advise people to stop worrying about them. I'm not being flippant--to paraphrase former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, "It's important to make good decisions. But I spend much less time and energy worrying about 'making the right decision' and much more time and energy ensuring that any decision I make turns out right."

My attitude stems in part from the fact that by the time a client brings a decision to a coaching conversation, it's likely that they're weighing two equally good options that offer significantly different sets of pros and cons--what we call a tradeoff decision. At this point the answer isn't going to be found in the data. The individual has already made lengthy lists and gone over the various tradeoffs endlessly, and they still can't make up their mind.

The answer is to stop using the mind--or, more specifically, to break the logical logjam by abandoning reason. I tell my client that we're going to conduct a thought experiment to which they need to fully commit themselves: They're going to flip a coin and allow the random outcome of that coin toss to determine this decision. Heads, they take the job in New York; tails, they stay in San Francisco. Heads, they accept the offer for their company; tails, they turn it down. Heads, they fire that difficult VP; tails, they give them another chance. The bigger the decision, the higher the stakes, the more important it is to psychologically commit to the experiment--to be prepared to allow a random event make the decision for them.

This makes most clients feel ambivalent--it seems childish to evade responsibility for making the call, and yet the idea of letting fate take the decision out of their hands offers a sense of respite. But they usually agree to try it. So they flip the coin, there's a moment of intense anticipation, they reveal whether it's heads or tails... And just as their "decision" is made clear, I ask them, "How do you feel?" Typically they're experiencing one of two emotions: relief or regret. And that reaction tells them what the real decision should be. [1]

There's a connection here with the conceptual model of System 1 and System 2, a way of "thinking about thinking" that was popularized by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman [2], but which was originally coined a decade earlier by Keith Stanovich and Richard West [3]. This model suggests that we possess two distinct, parallel systems for reasoning: System 1 is automatic, unconscious, fast, and cognitively efficient, while System 2 is controlled, conscious, relatively slow, and cognitively burdensome. It's inaccurate to characterize System 1 as "emotion" and System 2 as "reason," because emotion plays a role in both processes. As Kahneman has written, "System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification." [4]

In one of the responses to their paper, Stanovich and West describe the work of numerous colleagues who, "conceptualized emotions as interrupt signals supporting goal achievement. They see emotions as System 1 constructs that are particularly important in the characterization of systems whose behavior is governed by neither fixed action patterns nor impeccable rationality... The basic idea is that emotions serve to stop the combinatorial explosion of possibilities that would occur if an intelligent system tried to calculate the utility of all possible future outcomes." [5]

In other words, emotions can serve as crucial inputs in the decision-making process, serving as biasing mechanisms that help us choose when the possibilities are too numerous or complex to for us to rely upon reason alone. [6] This isn't to say that emotions are always an accurate guide to the best decision, of course, but in the situation I've described here, the problem isn't an excess of emotion, but its opposite--insufficient emotion that's needed as an "interrupt signal" to break through the logical logjam.

The drama of the coin flip--the uncertainty of the outcome and even the momentary thrill of irresponsibility that it fosters--creates a heightened emotional moment that allows us to tap into deeper System 1 impulses that can augment and inform--or disrupt--System 2.

 

 

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Footnotes

[1] This method of decision-making is widely attributed to Freud, although I can't find a shred of reliable evidence. Still, it makes for a charming story.

[2] Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

[3] Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? (Keith Stanovich and Richard West, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000)

[4] Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice (Daniel Kahneman, Scientific American, 2012 [an excerpt from Thinking, Fast and Slow])

[5] Stanovich and West.

[6] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

Photo by Marcy Leigh.

Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

Ironies abound as I turn to this review of Scott Eblin's Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative. I've been meaning to write about it for months, but have continually delayed, feeling too busy with students, clients, my own writing and life in general. It would be inaccurate to say that I'm "overworked," but my plate's been pretty full for a while. (Irony #1.)

I finally made time for it when a recent cold left me feeling capable of reading and writing, but not well enough to hold any coaching sessions, so I had an unexpectedly empty calendar for a few days. I know myself well enough to be confident that I got sick because my self-care practices have fallen apart the last few weeks. To take the most relevant example, after meditating roughly every other day from August 2014 through mid-February, I've meditated just 3 times in the last 5 weeks. (Irony #2.)

And all this has happened as I prepare to teach The Art of Self-Coaching, a new course at Stanford aimed at helping MBAs manage themselves more effectively through periods of difficulty and transition. (Irony #3. Coach, coach thyself.)

Some disclosures: I've met Scott and consider him a friend, and we've occasionally referred potential clients to each other, although we don't have a business relationship. But even if I didn't know Scott at all I'd be a fan of this book because I believe in its message--as he writes in the Introduction,

Mndfulness is the intersection of two qualities: awareness and intention. By awareness, I mean awareness of what's going on both around you and inside of you in any given moment. Being aware enables you to act in the moment with the intention of creating a particular outcome or result.

The purpose of Overworked and Overwhelmed is to make the practice of mindfulness easy, accessible, and relevant for people who feel like they're trapped on the gerbil wheel. The goal is not to turn you into a Buddhist monk or nun but to offer the knowledge that, along with simple, practical, and applicable routines, will help you align your work and the rest of your life with the results that matter most. The emphasis here is on small steps that, when taken consistently over time, lead to big results."

This is exactly how I talk about mindfulness with my clients and students. A tremendous amount of research has emerged in the last few decades, which Scott cites in the book, that suggests the power of mindfulness practices to improve our ability to cope with stress, manage our emotions, focus our attention, and perform effectively under difficult circumstances. To reap these benefits we need not embrace any spiritual principles that have historically been associated with mindfulness or meditation, nor do we need to make major changes in our daily lives. As Scott notes, all that's required is a consistent commitment to some simple, regular routines.

The centerpiece of this process is meditation, but Scott discusses a wide range of other activities that contribute to a heightened state of internal and external awareness, from regular physical activity and better sleep habits to breathing exercises and listening skills. And one of the book's great strengths is its open-ended, non-prescriptive approach to these practices. I talk about mindfulness, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction with almost all of my coaching clients, but I don't prescribe any particular set of practices for a given individual. We're much too complex for any single formula to apply to everyone, and Overworked and Overwhelmed respects this complexity, providing readers with a thoughtful set of possibilities and yet also recognizing that each reader must decide what will work best for themselves.

Another strength of the book is Scott's voice as an author, which shows up not only in his informal, conversational style, but also in his level of personal disclosure. He reveals that in 2009 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and that his commitment to meditation, yoga, and an improved diet in recent years "literally saved my life." And he's not merely surviving; he writes that today, "I'm stronger than I've ever been before and savoring each moment of life in a way that I never have before."

If you're already a committed meditator or actively engaged in other mindfulness practices, I suspect you'll still find something of value in Overworked and Overwhelmed, particularly in Scott's discussion of how these practices can contribute to a greater sense of meaning and purpose. And if you've been curious about (or skeptical of) the value of mindfulness as a personal management tool, I recommend Scott's book as an engaging introduction to the topic.

Making Feedback Less Stressful (HBR Webinar Video and Summary)

I recently conducted a 1-hour webinar for HBR on Making Feedback Less Stressful, and an archived video of my talk is now available. HBR has also produced an 8-page summary of my comments [PDF, 517KB], and you can view my slides separately.

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Thank You

First, thanks to Angelia Herrin for inviting me to participate, to Ally Russell for her tremendous help and support, and to all their colleagues at HBR and Citrix/GoToWebinar who made it happen.

Much of what I discuss in the webinar I learned through my work in Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics course over the years, and thanks are due to to my amazing co-facilitators: Karin Scholz Grace, Sue Neville, Zoe Dunning, Inbal Demri Shaham, Chevalisa Bruzzone, Lisa Kay Solomon, Liselotte Zvacek, Erica Peng, Michael Terrell, Chris McCanna, Jimena Galfaso, Saraswathi Ram Mohan, and Agnes Le.

Thanks also to my colleagues on the Stanford faculty and coaching staff from whom I've learned so much: Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, Chris McCanna, Collins Dobbs, Gary Dexter, Hugh Keelan, John Cronkite, Lara Tiedens, Richard Francisco, Ricki Frankel, Scott Bristol, and Yifat Sharabi-Levine.

I'm indebted to David Rock, whose SCARF model has had a significant influence on my approach.

As always, thanks to Mary Ann Huckabay, my coach and mentor.

The Marshmallow Test for Grownups

Originally conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s, the Stanford marshmallow test has become a touchstone of developmental psychology. Children at Stanford's Bing Nursery School, aged four to six, were placed in a room furnished only with a table and chair. A single treat, selected by the child, was placed on the table. (In addition to marshmallows, the researchers also offered Oreo cookies and pretzel sticks.) Each child was told if they waited for 15 minutes before eating the treat, they would be given a second treat. Then they were left alone in the room. [1]

Follow-up studies with the children later in adolescence showed a correlation between an ability to wait long enough to obtain a second treat and various forms of life success, such as higher SAT scores. And a 2011 fMRI study conducted on 59 original participants--now in their 40s--by Cornell’s B.J. Casey showed higher levels of brain activity in the prefrontal cortex among those participants who delayed immediate gratification in favor of a greater reward later on. [2] This finding strikes me as particularly important because of the research that's emerged over the last two decades on the critical role played by the prefrontal cortex in directing our attention and managing our emotions.

As adults we face a version of the marshmallow test nearly every waking minute of every day. This doesn't involve sugary treats, but our browser tabs, phones, tablets, and even our watches--all the devices that connect us to the global delivery system for those blips of information that do to us what marshmallows do to preschoolers.

Sugary treats tempt us into unhealthy eating habits because the agricultural and commercial systems that meet our nutritional needs today are so vastly different from the environment in which we evolved as a species. Early humans lived in a calorie-poor world, and something like a piece of fruit was both rare and valuable. Our brains developed a response mechanism to these treats that reflected their value--a surge of interest and excitement, a feeling of reward and satisfaction--which we find tremendously pleasurable. But as we've reshaped the world around us, radically diminishing the cost and effort involved in obtaining calories, we still have the same brains we evolved thousands of years ago, and this mismatch is at the heart of why so many of us struggle to resist tempting foods that we know we shouldn't eat.

A similar process is at work in our response to information. Our formative environment as a species was information-poor as well as calorie-poor. The features of that environment--and specifically the members of our immediate community and our interactions with them--typically changed rarely and gradually. New information in the form of new community members or new ways of interacting were unusual and notable events that signified something of great importance. Just as our brains developed a response mechanism that prized sugary treats, we evolved to pay close attention to new information about the people around us and our interactions with them.

But just as the development of industrial agriculture and mass commerce has profoundly altered our caloric environment, global connectivity has profoundly altered our information environment. We are now ceaselessly bombarded with new information about the people around us--and the definition of "people around us" has fundamentally changed, putting us in touch with more people in an hour than early humans met in their entire lives. All of this poses a critical challenge to our brains: the adult version of the marshmallow test.

Not only are we constantly interrupted by alerts, alarms, beeps, and buzzes that tell us some new information has arrived, we constantly interrupt ourselves to seek out new information. We pull out our phones while we’re in the middle of a conversation with someone. We check our email while we’re engaged in a complex task that requires our full concentration. We scan our feeds even though we just checked them a minute ago. There’s increasing evidence suggesting that these disruptions make it difficult to do our best work, diminish our productivity, and contribute to a feeling of overwhelm.

It doesn't help matters that trillion-dollar industries are dedicating some of their brightest minds and untold resources to come up with newer and better ways to capitalize on this mismatch between our neurological response to new information and our current information-rich environment. We are at the mercy of tremendously powerful and well-designed systems crafted with the express purpose of interrupting us and capturing our attention.

The agricultural and commercial revolutions were clearly net gains for humanity, making it possible for more people to live better lives than ever before, and it would be both wrongheaded and fruitless to suggest that we should somehow turn back the clock on these advances. Similarly, the information revolution is helping us to make great strides as a species, and I’m tremendously grateful for it.

But just as we need to be more thoughtful about our caloric consumption, delaying gratification of our impulsive urges in order to eat more nutritiously, we need to be more thoughtful about our information consumption, resisting the allure of the mental equivalent of "junk food" in order to allocate our time and attention most effectively. So what can we do?

• Recognize the issue. Awareness is rarely sufficient to drive change, but it's always the necessary first step. How often do you check your phone? Does this get in the way of other interactions? How often do you interrupt focused work to look at your inbox? Does this break your concentration or affect how long it takes to accomplish these tasks? How often do you scan various feeds? Does this result in wasted time? We face the marshmallow test constantly--are you passing or failing?
• See the tools around us and exert some control over them. These interruptions are deliberately provoked by the designers of the tools we use. The best tools we use come to feel like features of the landscape or even extensions of our own body; we ultimately fail to see them as tools. What tools are you using? How are they interrupting you? How do they make it easy for you to interrupt yourself? What alarms and alerts might you disable? What limits might you place on the "convenient" features that contribute to these interruptions?
• Manage our emotions and cultivate our capacity for mindfulness. No technical interventions will be enough unless we’re also willing to work on ourselves. Emotions are at the heart of this dynamic--the excitement and anxiety generated by new information are the fuel that drives us to interrupt ourselves over and over again, and any changes we seek to make will be contingent on our ability to access, understand and leverage these emotions rather than being impulsively driven by them. As I've written before, there's no simple prescription for emotion management, but there are steps we can take: Regular physical activity and sufficient sleep are critical. Reflecting on our experiences through journaling or coaching conversations can help us understand and make sense of our emotional responses. And perhaps most importantly, even just a few minutes of meditation each day has been shown to have a powerful impact on our ability to sense our emotions and focus our attention. [3]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Delaying Gratification (American Psychological Association)

[2] Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, B.J. Casey, et al, 2011)

[3] The Most Productive People Know Who To Ignore (Harvard Business Review, 2014)

For Further Reading

A Better Information Diet

You're Not Multi-Tasking, You're Half-Assing

Attention Surplus Disorder (Attention and Anxiety)

The Art of Self-Coaching: Attention (Stanford GSB Class of 2016 Reunion)

Originally published at Harvard Business Review.

 

The Communication Funnel

The communication funnel is a concept I regularly discuss with coaching clients, most of whom are senior leaders in constant contact with their direct reports and/or managing virtual teams.

We prioritize immediacy and convenience in our communication, so we start with the fastest and easiest channels at our disposal--text, chat or email. But these channels lack bandwidth, so they're poorly-suited to conveying nuance and complexity.

The obvious solution when a dialogue stalls at one level is to step up to a higher level. Stop texting and send an email. Stop emailing and talk by phone or video. Get off the phone and wait to talk until we're face-to-face.

On occasion this isn't feasible--there's truly an urgent need to complete the dialogue now. But much more often this perceived need is an illusion. Our ability to assess the situation clearly is clouded by anxiety, fear and excitement--emotions that are compounded by organizational cultures that lead us to expect immediate responses. We become emotionally triggered and lose perspective.

(And, of course, this illusory desire for immediacy is driven by trillion-dollar industries that stoke, fulfill and profit from our need for speed.)

The key is managing those emotions that keep us stuck in a stalled, unproductive dialogue. How can we do this? Four suggestions:

1. Turn off unnecessary alarms.

The functions on our phones and other devices that beep, blink and thrust red numbers in our faces are designed to capture our attention and create a sense of urgency. They play a critical role in keeping us stuck. But how often are any of these interruptions truly urgent? Almost never. Turn them off to avoid being unnecessarily triggered and to minimize anxiety, fear and excitement.

2. Reframe the situation.

Concepts such as David Rock's SCARF model and Chris Argyris' Ladder of Inference can help us step back and view our immediate experience from a new perspective. This process of reframing is a well-established psychological technique derived from cognitive behavioral therapy, but it's important to apply it early in a potentially stressful situation, before we're triggered and reactive.

3. Acknowledge our emotions.

Emotions play a critical role in decision-making and rational thought, and they can also easily lead us astray in stressful situations. Acknowledging what we're feeling in the moment can help us manage our emotions by regulating their appropriate expression, rather than trying to suppress them, which almost always fails. This starts with expanding our emotional vocabulary, but it also involves developing working relationships and organizational cultures within which we can express what we're feeling.

4. Build our capacity for mindfulness.

Over time we can increase our ability to manage our emotions and focus our attention in a productive direction, and the key is our capacity for mindfulness--non-judgmental awareness and acceptance of our immediate experience. Meditating for just a few minutes a day has been shown to have a powerful impact, and other reflective practices such as journaling and time in nature can play a role as well. Further, regular physical exercise and good sleep hygiene allow us to be more attuned to our emotions and comprehend them more fully without being governed by them.

 

Photo by Je.T.