Mindfulness

A new year resolution of mine was to kick start my reading habit and start completing books that I start reading. Finally, I've managed to start doing something about it. To keep this thing going, I've decided to blog a small gist of the book that I complete (as I understand it :-)) and possibly be of service to the limited people who read this blog with their own will or are forced to read it because of my constant nagging :-)

A couple of days back I completed a book called "Mindfulness" by Ellen Langer. This book talks about the pitfalls of routine and automatic behavior in our daily lives and also describes the various psychological experiments that were conducted to prove the benefits of mindful behavior.

The book starts off by explaining mindless behavior and some common reasons for such kind of automatic behavior. Some of the reasons discussed are,

1. Pre-Cognitive commitments to categories: In most of the tasks we do, we already have a number of assumptions or prejudices that influence our decisions. Our mind categorizes anything we do and these categories are rigid and are formed from our experiences.
2. Mindless Expertise: Expertise developed by repetition of the same task over and over again is termed "Mindless Expertise". A slight change of context may make the mindless expert fail in his/her endeavor.
3. Narrow Perspective: Single perspective and lack of alternative thinking could lead to mindless behavior. People are locked down on a single solution when alternatives could be viable in solving the problem probably more efficiently at times.
4. Focusing on the ends: Focusing on the effect, rather than the cause may actually hinder mindful thinking. Knowing the end goal but not focusing on the methods could be frustrating.
5. Influences of context: The context we perceive to be in plays an important role in the decisions we make. An interesting quote the authoress makes about the failure of the railroad industry in the US is that the railroad industry thought of themselves as being in the railroad business instead of being in the transportation industry.

The second half of the book deals with the experiments conducted in proving how the above points influence mindless behavior and talks about mindful thinking in aging, at work and health. The book elaborately speaks about how creating new categories, welcoming new information and focusing on process rather than on results can transform mindless thinking.

At the work place, the book talks about the importance of an "outsider" (a person who has a different perspective e.g. a target user in software development) in decision making and also how uncertain managers can influence employees to be more risk taking and successful. "Mindlessness is the application of yesterdays business solutions to todays problems" is a quote in the book that holds true for many business decisions that have led to mishaps (some in front of my own eyes. I guess you know what instance I'm talking about ;-)).

Another significant topic the book touches is decreasing prejudices by increasing discrimination. Though this looks like a contradicting statement, the book speaks about making fine grained distinctions and looking at things on a case by case basis, instead of generalizing things into categories. For example, a person with an eye impairment could be termed as a person with a handicap or a person with that particular eye impairment. The former categorization may influence us to disregard the person for any kind of activity, though the person maybe good at listening and making subtle distinctions in some other activity, say music.

Overall, a pretty good book with lots of illustrations. The first half is more interesting than the second. The book is not very heavy and is around 200 pages. I didn't find it to be a self-help book so if you are looking for shortcuts to increase mindfulness, it is not the book for you. Application of the concepts has to be self-willed. Now that is a hard thing in itself, isn't it? :-)

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An Inconvenient Truth

Is the "truth" always bitter? Is the title of the blog a truism? This is what constituted my train of thought before going to the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", an Al Gore presentation on the phenomenon of Global Warming and its repercussions. Sad but true, truth is generally bitter and we just tend to cheat ourselves by lying, feigning or failing to believe in the truth. But we must understand that when the era of pro-crastination is over, the period of consequences does follow. This is not only true about the environment, but a good lesson to take in our daily lives too.

The facts and points made in the movie are very lucid for the layman too. The research is profound and Gore's passion for Global Warming awareness is commendable. The melting ice on the Kilimanjaro and the drying up of Lake Chad are shocking. It is sad to see lakes disappear and fertile land turn into arid zones in a matter of a couple of decades. But a very interesting point Gore makes is that all is not lost and we can still save our planet and secure our future with political will and co-operating people. Gore brings out an interesting statistic that shows that with stringent global environment standards, the ozone depletion rates have come to a near standstill. I'm neither a democrat nor a republican, but a single negative in the movie was that Gore brings his Florida ballot into the scene which seemed unnecessary politicising of the issue.

I loved some of the quotes in the movie. I've tried to collect them below :):

• Mark Twain: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
• Upton Sinclair: "You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it."
• Winston Churchill: "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence."
• Al Gore: "Political Will is a renewable resource"

Visit www.climatecrisis.net for more information on global warming and how you can help secure the future of our species. If possible, I would encourage you to see the movie too and pass on the word.

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