[ExI] Attention Spans Decreasing?

[William Flynn Wallace]

Thanks!

The most important thing we get out of school is learning how to learn.
The next time I am faced with 10 shelf feet of manuals for some giant
computer program I will know better what to do, after having done it.  Know
what you need to know, know what you don't need to know right now, and know
what to ignore completely.

I don't know what you do or how you do it, but if you are learning some
kind of language, I'll bet you have done it a few times, eh?  I can't
recall how many word processing languages I've learned since 1980 but each
time it was easier.

Religion and politics:  certainly you can find all the wackos you need
there.  I was talking with a physicist and remarked that in my field I
thought that at least 75% of the articles published were junk - either non
repeatable, or just trivial.  He said that in physics it was probably 25%,
which astounded me - that high?

If you teach something a few times you know what kind of errors from, say,
students, that you are going to get.  Then you warn the next students about
avoiding those.  Negative reinforcement and negative correlation come to
mind.  With those I start out with what not to do or think before I teach
them.  The percentage of students who get those wrong right away is very
high.

But I am reminded of an industrial psych study.  The expert spent a couple
of weeks trying to figure out what kinds of accidents would take place in a
certain setting, and then proceeded to teach those to the workers.
Accidents went up.

Myth?  A car mechanic found a Coke bottle in a door of a new car that was
causing the rattle.  In it was a message:  You found this one - now find
the rest!  Some disgruntled (who ever is described as gruntled?) worker
stuck that in there as a joke and I'll bet that other workers hearing that
story then started to think of their own sabotage.  Should older and wiser
workers tell the new kids what to do or avoid?  Hmmmmm.........I am not
sure what that depends on.

How to memorize names.  But first, why we don't.  In meeting a new person
we check them out on all levels (digression:  I have this feeling that men
stare at women's chests to assure themselves that they are female.  I do
not think it is a sexual thing.  It's primitive.)  We study body language,
voice, clothing and so we are distracted.  Maybe we are thinking about what
we are going to say rather than really listening to them.  When we hear the
name we gear up to talk and announce ours.  If we talk for more than about
30 seconds it is likely that their name has cycled through our working
memory and is no longer in there and has not gotten into permanent memory.

So, what to do?  Apologize and ask their name again.  Silently say their
name over and over to yourself.  If you can find any characteristic of
their name that is similar to something you notice about them - something
simple like John Bass has a low voice - you will give meaning to it.

I watched Johnny Carson one night when a memory expert was on.  Before the
show he had the audience stand and say their name and then sit.  About 150
of them.  Then during the show he went into the audience and named them all
but one, which I think was just a little acting.  He then described what he
did, which was what I described above.  Just a few repetitions and a link
can work.  Also , there was this guy who took an IQ test and was miffed
that he could not remember more than 7 random numbers.  So he started
practicing with a random numbers table.  He said that after a few weeks he
had gotten up to 80 and quit.  All memory experts I have read (three or
four) all claim to special intelligence and say they had a normal memory
before they started working on it.

I have to ask:  are you being interviewed by some human resource person or
a person in your field?  My inclination when asked if I know something is
to say yes, and then spend the next week learning it!  Maybe not totally
ethically sound, however.

I'd just put up a front.  I (Kelly) am a guy who deals with high level
stuff and I learn the low level stuff when I need to.  So just toss off any
ignorance of some program language.

Did I answer all of your concerns?


On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 28, 2014 11:20 AM, "Kelly Anderson" <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > As I interview for various computer jobs, I notice that they want
>> someone who has all the relevant skillset memorized, which is different for
>> every job. It's frustrating because there are so many different skillsets
>> in computer science. My skillset is to know how to solve problems, I don't
>> need to memorize every keyword in PHP to do that. I can learn PHP in a few
>> days enough to solve any problem I need to. But people don't trust that.
>> It's silly, but I digress.
>>
>> Quite silly, and most of the best material for how to interview for
>> programming jobs points out "drill on memorization of keywords" as
>> something not to do.  Problem is, most interviewers never get training on
>> how to interview, so they have to guess - and this is a common example of
>> something that seems on first glance to be helpful in assessing, but in
>> fact is not.
>>
>>
> I suggested the following test to my (now former-) employer:
>
> Give the candidate a room with a whiteboard, a bucket of Lego bricks, and
> 5 minutes to produce "a plan to build a house." After 5 minutes, come into
> the room and discuss the plan.  Then give another 5 minutes to "build that
> plan."
> After 5 minutes, assess the lego-house for similarity to the proposal.
> Invite the candidate to explain how/why the physical model didn't end up
> matching the proposal.
>
> If he or she can plan the work, work the plan, and explain any
> disconnect:  hire.
>
> Depending on the organization, even mediocre skills in either planning or
> working can be compensated by a team/support.
>
> * for extra twist, set an expectation of 10 minutes but return in 5  (or
> vice-versa)  - see what happens :)
>
>
>
>
>
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