![]() I can hear the energy and enthusiasm in their voice. It might be a business idea or something they wish they could try out. I see this shutting down phenomenon happen when clients start to tell me excitedly about some idea they have. How am I going to find a nonclinical job? But when we append it with a question mark, it morphs into a brick wall. This three-letter word getting in the way is To improve your decisionmaking, look past the nicely packaged data to the conditions that shaped them.One of the biggest problems I see my clients having – and it happens to me too– is shutting down an idea prematurely because of a three-letter word. Public speakers, politicians and marketers count on being able to provide information that subtly blends into the listener's understanding of the world without prompting questions or analysis. The danger, however, is that our brains tend to be overly accommodating. On the whole, key messages that are thoughtfully constructed and articulated can be helpful. Abuse is commonly seen in tools such as PowerPoint presentations, where rich data are distilled down to a few key messages. Information abuse simply means dumbing down information to the point at which it is not questioned. To increase your performance or to enhance your ability to learn, it is important to focus on the task at hand. But halting, unloading, loading, and restarting takes a toll. When we switch between tasks, our brains must halt any processing of the current rule set and load a new rule set for the next task. The truth, however, is we are optimized for task switching. Multitasking: With so many demands surrounding us all the time, it's tempting to try to do it all and at the same time. If there are days you know you'll need to be at the top of your game, reduce the number of choices you need to make on those days. Each choice we make drains a little more from our mental reservoir. In the time between getting up in the morning and going to bed in the evening, an average person makes thousands of decisions. The human brain has limited resources and energy to expend to make each choice. Here is a brief overview of some of the noise contributors and some tips to more effectively handle them:Ĭhoice: The more choices we are given, the more tired and less effective we become. Over the last few years, we have observed that when participants in The Regis Company simulations become aware of some the contributing factors to breaker moments, they do better at filtering incoming data, helping them when they need to make tough calls. ![]() But when the information load became too much, it was as though a breaker in the brain was triggered, and the prefrontal cortex suddenly shut down.Īs people reach information overload, Dimoka explained, "They start making stupid mistakes and bad choices because the brain region responsible for smart decision making has essentially left the premises." Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in blood flow, she found that as people received more information, their brain activity increased in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead that is responsible for making decisions and controlling emotions. The truth is that to improve our thinking abilities, we need to understand the root of our problem - our brains.Īngelika Dimoka, director of the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University, conducted a study that measured people's brain activity while they addressed increasingly complex problems (i.e., noise). ![]() ![]() If they did, we would all be much happier and more effective. Don't go out and buy a new day planner or learn a five-step decision-making process - they won't work. ![]()
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