RULES OF ORDER/SHIFT SETS
Nick wanted to be an emt, and at first glance, he appeared as if he was well suited for the job. Certainly, he seemed able to meet the basic requirements for that job, as specified by the Massachusetts Office of Emergency Medical Services.
He was over 18. (Nick was 23 when I first met him.)
Nick grew up in the Greater Boston area; he could also speak Spanish.
He had no physical impairments. (Or at least I’d be willing to bet on it. When we shook hands on first meeting, I thought my fingers had been put in a vise.)
His desire to be an EMT was laudable. I got the sense in just a few minutes talking with him that he was driven by a genuine desire to help people and save lives. First, however, he had to work out a problem. The state certification course consisted of many hours of classroom and field training, as well as in-hospital observation and training. Like every other aspiring paramedic, Nick was going to have to study hard. And while I could tell he was determined to do well, he was already falling behind and feeling overwhelmed. That’s what had brought him to my office.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “What’s going on in the classes?”
“It’s very interesting—what we’re learning,” he said, “but I’m having trouble.” He told me what had happened during a recent lecture. The topic was how to respond to someone who might be having a stroke. First, the instructor needed to explain what a stroke was, how and why it occurs, symptoms, risk factors and so forth.
“There was a lot of information, so of course I took notes,” Nick said.
“Of course,” I agreed.
As Nick went on to describe it, the notes he took were voluminous and involved. He even started drawing pictures and diagrams of the brain, based on what the instructor was saying about the causes of strokes. About halfway through the lecture, however, he realized he was the only person taking notes.
“What was everyone else in the classroom doing?” I asked.
“They were watching the instructor demonstrate on a dummy,” he said. “He was showing the class the best way to transport a stroke victim.” He had also used a teaching assistant as a “victim” to go through the standard questions and assessments that EMTs ask in order to determine whether a stroke has actually occurred and its extent. But while the instructor had stopped lecturing and started demonstrating, Nick was still busily making notes.
“Did you just not realize he had stopped lecturing?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Nick said. “I guess, sort of. But I just couldn’t pull myself away from the stuff I was writing. I needed to finish that.”
Nick did say he was embarrassed when he noticed some of the other students in the class giving him sideways glances as he continued scribbling away, while everyone else had put down their pens. I also got the sense that it wasn’t the first time. “This kind of stuff has happened before,” Nick admitted. “I’ve never done well in school. For some reason, I’m not good in the classroom.” He attributed his subpar scholarship to deficiencies in his own intelligence or abilities. “I guess I just don’t have what it takes to succeed in school,” he said. “I’ve always had trouble learning. I just can’t keep up.”
I suspected that the problem was really not that vague nor that it had anything to do with intelligence. Nick struck me as a bright young man, and based on what he’d told me, he obviously could focus and take notes. But we needed to learn a little more about this apparent inability to shift gears when everyone else in the class had.
“Does anything like that ever happen at home or in your social life, outside the classroom? Do you ever feel sort of set in your ways or unable to change or be flexible about things?”
“You mean like ‘rigid’?” he said, with a grin. “That’s what my old girlfriend called me. She said that I was never flexible, couldn’t be spontaneous. That’s one of the reasons we broke up.”
He went on to relate an example. “Thursday night was our movie night when we were dating,” he said. “Then one Thursday morning, she called me and told me that someone from work had two tickets for that night’s Sox game. We’re both big Sox fans, so she was really excited about going.”
“What did you do?”
“Part of me wanted me to go,” Nick said. “But I was like, ‘tonight’s movie night.’ And we had this whole routine. I’d go to the gym after work, we’d meet for dinner and then catch a movie. That’s what I was expecting we’d do. I mean, I really wanted to be spontaneous, but I just...couldn’t. That’s hard for me.”
There were other examples. He told me that he’d been having trouble in the gym as well. “I’ve been doing the same workout for years,” he says. “This friend of mine, he’s a trainer, told me it would be good for me to get more core strength as an EMT since I’ll be lifting stuff around, and your legs and your core muscles are really important for that. He sent me this routine that he’s used, it was kinda cool, using medicine balls and other stuff.”
The friend even dropped by Nick’s gym to show him how to do these new exercises. But when his buddy arrived, Nick had already started his regular workout—his bench presses, shoulder presses and biceps curls—and he just couldn’t bring himself to stop. “I kept saying, ‘let me just finish one more set,’” Nick said. “Finally, my friend just shook his head and did the new workout on his own.”
In the field of psychiatry we define impairment as something that gets in the way, manifesting itself across multiple situations, not just one setting. Simply deciding not to take advantage of the baseball tickets because Thursday was movie night is not by itself evidence of a problem (although I must admit, free Red Sox tickets is not something to be taken lightly in this town!). Still, when it creeps into every aspect of life—in Nick’s case, into the classroom, the gym, as well as his personal life—and when he feels stuck with this mind-set, despite evidence that it’s causing him problems, then it becomes more serious. Nick’s problem was not that he was “just set in his ways,” if only because, in my opinion, he was a little too young to have set ways. Nick’s problem was that he was not able to shift his attentional or behavioral set. He could not easily change his focus from one thing, situation or setting to another.
SHIFTING GEARS
Before we look at what Nick’s case can tell us about the next Rule of Order, let’s step back a moment. By getting to this point in the book, and following some of the suggestions that have been made in the previous chapters, you should have a solid foundation for a more organized and less stressful life. If you’ve been working on integrating the first four Rules of Order, you should by now be able to
This doesn’t mean you’ll never be flustered or get distracted again. But now at least you have the beginnings of an operating manual so to speak, a plan that can help you start facing the day with greater confidence.
So let’s continue to build on these successes.
But as we do that, it’s important to remember this: although we have broken these various cognitive skills up into discrete rules or steps, in reality, they are closely interrelated. As we have learned, brain regions tend to work together, not independently. It’s less like a weight lifter doing curls that isolate the biceps muscles of the arm and more like a batter using his or her legs, trunk, abdominals and biceps in tandem and in coordinated fashion, in order to swing a bat and drive the ball over the fence.
Such is the case with this next Rule of Order—what we call Shift Set. This refers to the ability to be flexible in your thoughts and behaviors. In order to be organized, you must be able to effectively and efficiently shift your focus or “set” from one object, action or situation to another. In so doing, you can move on to the next action—take the off-ramp if it leads to a better road or a new opportunity. Without this skill, our attentional system starts looking more like tunnel vision (as was the case for Nick that day in the classroom). We need to be nimble and ready to adjust and to shift our focus and our behaviors when necessary, in both our work and personal lives.
What does it mean in practical terms?
Successful set shifting is you being able to pull yourself off of the interesting news article you were immersed in in order to answer the emergency call from a colleague. She needs some details on the big project you’re working on before going into a client meeting, and she needs them now.
Successful set shifting is you at a meeting where you were prepared to present some important data. But when others in the meeting steer its focus on to some other topics, you don’t get flustered or annoyed that you’re not getting your turn and that the work you planned to present is not going to be heard. Instead, you switch gears to engage and participate in this new discussion.
Successful set shifting is you coaching your kid’s basketball team and changing your practice plan because only three kids showed up.
Some people do this naturally. Others (like Nick) have a very difficult time making these shifts. And if you can’t—can’t switch gears to pull together the information your colleague needs, can’t go with the new flow of the meeting or can’t modify practice—you’re going to find yourself frustrated, overwhelmed and disorganized.
In these examples, perhaps you can also see how set shifting may be inextricably tied to a couple of our previous steps.
How can you shift directions if you haven’t first successfully applied the brakes?
And how can you shift with confidence if you aren’t using your working memory? As you are shifting your attention, you are leaving a path behind you, one which you may want to hang on to, to remember in your working memory and to guide your way. You should shift with a sense of intent or planning. Now that shouts “Organization!”
SCIENCE OF SET SHIFTING
As we have seen before, scientists typically study cognitive processes like set shifting by having experimental subjects perform various kinds of tasks. Thanks to brain imaging, researchers are then able to observe the subjects as they perform these tasks and to see which parts of the brain “light up”—or are activated.
The original test for what we call set shifting, however, far predates the advent of modern brain-imaging technology. One of the oldest and still most reliable tests of cognitive agility, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was developed at the University of Wisconsin in the 1940s by a team that included the famous American psychologist Harry Harlow (who also conducted groundbreaking primate research on the impact of love and affection in development). The test was first described in a 1948 journal article titled “A Simple Objective Technique for Measuring Flexibility in Thinking.” In the WCST, subjects are asked to sort and stack a series of 132 cards. But the rules of how they are to be stacked change, unpredictably, during the course of the test. The degree to which the subjects can adapt to the new rules is a measure of their mental flexibility—or what we would now call their ability to set shift. It has been found that those with brain (frontal and prefrontal cortex) damage will get stuck in one sorting modality. ADHD sufferers often have a similar problem—an inability to easily shift or adapt to the new rules presented.
While the WCST has had an important role in our understanding of and ability to measure set shifting, current investigations are attempting to isolate the very specific brain regions underlying set shifting in order to understand better how this process works.
In one study involving scientists at both Stanford and the Michigan Institute of Technology, they investigated the brain regions shared between the skills of inhibition (applying the brakes) and set shifting and tried to determine what brain areas are unique to each. In this study, healthy college students were presented with a series of large letters made up of smaller letters in various colors. Subjects were asked to identify large letters or small letters as cued by color. Sometimes the large and small letters were the same (dozens of little h’s that made up one big letter H) or different (little letter s’s to form a big letter H). Sometimes subjects were asked to toggle their focus back and forth between the small-or large-letter components—in other words, shift sets—and sometimes they were asked to simply focus on the large or small letters.
Through brain imaging, the investigators were able to watch which parts of the brain were active as the subjects performed the tasks. They found that one specific brain cortical region was particularly important in the set-shifting process: the inferior parietal cortex, which we talked about earlier in regard to its role in helping us both sustain attention and consolidate memories. But—true to the brain’s cooperative nature—the parietal cortex did not work alone. It seems that a network of brain regions (prefrontal, parietal cortex, basal ganglia) all work together during both inhibition and shifting, suggesting that the two are actually one major process. Or perhaps that inhibition is a needed component or a sort of “prerequisite” for the more complex task of shifting. (That’s how we introduced these concepts in the Rules of Order and that makes intuitive sense.)
Given the complexity of this task and the number of brain areas involved, it again makes sense that this ability to shift sets appears to be a skill we develop as we mature. For children, transitioning from one activity to another is often a painful process (and, as any mom or dad can attest to, it’s no picnic for their parents either). Of course, there are exceptions such as Nick, who continued into young adulthood to have difficulties making transitions and shifting sets.
As we get older, shifting again becomes more difficult (something that anyone dealing with aging parents will recognize). This is often blamed on older adults being “stuck in their ways” or intransient and unwilling to change. A group of researchers at the University of California, San Diego demonstrated that the decline in one’s ability to set shift as we grow older may be due to a degradation of the so-called white-matter tracts that we’ve mentioned before, those neural “highways” that connect brain regions. The tracts are composed of whitish, insulating tissue called myelin that surround a string of nerve cells. Like the asphalt interstate highways that crisscross America, these routes link the various regions of the brain. Some of the tracts are straight and short, others long and winding. As we get older, the integrity of these roads—like the highways we drive on—can degrade. They get bumpier, there are more potholes and moving information along them becomes a slower, more difficult process. Older adults, whose brains are connected by this aging infrastructure of white-tract matter, must proceed with caution and deliberation—not because they necessarily want to but because they have to.
WHY BOTHER WITH ALL THIS SHIFT AND CONTROL? JUST MULTITASK!
Here’s some advice from various online authorities about the wonders of multitasking.
Well, there you have it. No need to read any further, is there? The secret is doing three or four or five or six things at once. That’s the real key to organization, right?
Wrong.
Back to the automotive analogies and our last few Rules of Order.
Inhibitory control is your driving a straight and true course and applying the brakes when needed to avoid going off the road due to some distraction.
Working memory allows you to recall the road back and that side road you just passed, which may just have the only gas station in the town.
Set shifting is your being able to turn the wheel on a dime and redirect the car when that distraction is worthwhile, significant or valuable. The ability to do all three is a sign of the organized mind. What the organized mind cannot do is drive in three different directions at once. Yet some of us are trying to do just that. I’m talking here about that much-used and -abused term multitasking. A concept borrowed from the world of computers, a great deal has been written about this supposed ability to skillfully juggle many tasks at once.
In an early 2000’s article, “The Multitasking Generation,” Time identified the teenagers who seem to text, burn CDs and do their homework at the same time as the main perpetrators of this new and questionable approach to life. But the truth is that multitaskers come in all ages and settings. “In most project environments multitasking is a way of life,” wrote management consultant Kevin Fox. “This seemingly harmless activity, often celebrated as a desirable skill, is one of the biggest culprits in late projects, long project durations and low project output.”
Still, many people boast that they are good multitaskers; the implication is that they are somehow performing several tasks at once—talking to you on the phone, writing a report and...who knows?...knitting a sweater and monitoring the evening news all at the same time. While you plug along, trying to do one thing at a time, these people have left you in the dust as they speed along through a hyperefficient life, adroitly handling several tasks simultaneously. Those who see themselves left behind lament at what they perceive as their inability to do this. “I need to learn to be a better multitasker!” is a complaint I sometimes hear from patients.
No they don’t. And neither do you.
There are indeed important cognitive skills you can learn in this book; and, as we said in the beginning of this chapter, if you’ve been reading and applying Coach Meg’s prescriptive advice, you are probably starting to utilize better the innate organizational tools and abilities of your brain already. But I’m afraid that multitasking is not one of these. Despite the glowing promise of multitasking enthusiasts, the idea that you can really attend to many things at once is simply a myth of the pseudoorganized. Certainly, it would be nice if we could simultaneously work on four or five tasks. But it’s simply not true. Trying to do a multiplicity of tasks well at the same time usually leads to one end—all of those tasks done inadequately or incompletely. Multitasking is your trying to stretch your ability and to do more than you can. It’s the illusion of a lot of balls in the air. In a snapshot, you look like you’re juggling six different things, but in the next frame, they all fall to the ground.
A recent study showed that those who identified themselves as heavy media multitaskers processed information differently than infrequent multiple-media users. Were these masters of the media universe better able to process tons of information on various channels? On the contrary. Heavy users did not filter out irrelevant stimuli well, they did not ignore extraneous information and they did not switch tasks well.
How could they? Do a little experiment for yourself: Take out your cell phone, turn on your television, and boot up your computer. Now try texting a friend, watching a television program and listening to iTunes on your laptop...all at once. Can you do it? Sure. But can you do it in any meaningful way? No. You will inevitably say little, see little, hear little. To those of us who study the brain and its impact on behavior, this is no surprise. We’re simply not designed to attend to multiple inputs and perform many tasks at once. On the other hand, we have an innate and marvelous ability to concentrate deeply on one subject but very quickly pull our attention off of that and apply the same level of focus on something else that we have rapidly surmised is of greater immediate importance. So if you focused most of your attention on composing your text to your friend, then shifted to watch the television program and then changed sets again to concentrate on the music, the level and quality of the experience for each would be far, far higher.
That ability is what we call set shifting and that, along with its “partner” process—inhibitory control—is what you need to practice doing more, in order to truly become more productive and efficient.
When it comes to getting things done, as a twelve-year-old boy might colorfully phrase it, set shifting kicks multitasking’s butt.
Let’s look at a practical example of how and why that is.
MULTITASKING YOU, SET-SHIFTING YOU
Think of yourself for a moment as the typical multitasker at home with the kids on the weekend. You start off doing the laundry and then see some cleaning to do in the cellar. As you sweep behind the dryer, you spot an old toy—a charming wooden riding horse that your aunt gave the kids—lying there. The children are delighted to see it, having long since assumed it was lost forever. A project is undertaken to begin repainting it, while the laundry is left half-folded.
Meanwhile, the morning is drawing late. Now it’s time to head to the store to pick up lunch and, in returning home, to begin a project in the garden that you remembered as you were pulling into the driveway—while still partially juggling laundry and the toy-painting project. Now you’ve got laundry, cleaning, toy painting, gardening and not to mention lunch on your plate. You are feeling confident in your multitasking.
But, not for long. Suddenly, it’s 4:00 pm, and a friend calls to remind you that you were supposed to be dropping by for a barbecue—and, oh, hadn’t you volunteered to bring the fruit salad? Not to worry, you say confidently, pointing with pride to the fact that you are “multitasking.” You start to list the various projects going on, and as you do you begin to realize that none of them have really been completed; all have resulted in more work. Most of the laundry has been washed, but none ever made it to the dryer (the discovery of the toy sidetracked you), and now some of it will have to be redone. The cellar is still a mess. That toy is still unpainted. The cold cuts that you left out on the counter that were supposed to be made into sandwiches have spoiled in the heat. There are now half-dug holes in your garden; the implements of which are lying about and now have to be put back in the garage.
Oh, yes, mighty Master of Multitasking, you’ve really got a lot of things going on this Saturday! The problem is that they are all unfinished, resulting in more work for yourself and greater disorganization around your house. Oh, and by the way—you arrived late for the barbecue, and by then everyone had eaten and no one was really in the mood for your fruit salad.
We are not aiming to achieve robotlike efficiency or effectiveness every living minute of the day. But on the other hand, a multitasking scenario like this is inevitably discouraging (trust me, I’ve heard it recounted angrily by many an ersatz “multitasker”)—and understandably so: it’s very frustrating to feel that you are rarely achieving what you set out to do, and in the big picture, this can be quite damaging to your goal of being better organized.
To get back to our Rules of Order, it’s time to shift from the multi-tasking myth to the science of set shifting and to take another step toward a more organized life. Now, let’s take a second look at the scenario we just described.
Instead of you as the typical multitasker at home with the kids on the weekend, let’s see how things could go differently if we made you an ace set shifter.
So instead of trying to do a number of things at once, you are now more cognitively nimble, ready to respond to opportunities as they present themselves—thanks to your good set of brakes and your skill in holding and molding information.
We witness the same beginning to the day. The laundry is brought down to the cellar and you spot an old toy lying behind the dryer—a charming wooden riding horse that your aunt gave the kids. The children have wondered where this is and are interested in reclaiming it. But this time, instead of springing willy-nilly into a reclamation project, you apply the brakes. You imagine the day’s schedule on a virtual whiteboard in front of you, and then you set shift. It’s 9:00 am. The to-do list for today is reviewed and altered. Besides the laundry, there is general clean-up around the house, food shopping and the barbecue later this afternoon. (Notice that leading up to your success as a multitasker is your ability to stay calm, keep your focus, apply the brakes and run through scenarios in your working memory. Sound familiar?)
You decide to complete only one full load of laundry this morning, and shift for just a few minutes to getting a space in the cellar ready for the kids to clean and paint the toy later this afternoon—after shopping, while you are prepping for the barbecue. This occupies all your attention for a short while. When it’s done, you stop again, shift away from this task—without engaging in anything else—and head out to the store. When you return, you hear the weather forecast as you’re putting away the groceries. They’re calling for rain tomorrow (in the multitasking version of this story, you had the radio on but were too busy thinking about the other things you had left undone to really pay attention). Hearing the forecast, you recall that tomorrow, you were planning to spend some time in the garden. You realize that the garden project is probably better suited for the sunshine of today and the indoor toy painting for tomorrow. So instead of heading down to the basement, you stop, shift and devote a couple of hours to the garden.
There is a much more organized feel to this day now, isn’t there? Maybe it seems subtle, but the payoff even in this domestic example is significant. Instead of limp, soggy laundry, a messy basement and a garden in disarray, not to mention spoiled luncheon meats and an unmade or unloved fruit salad, you have several tasks done or on their way to completion and others have been rescheduled for tomorrow. Notice how application of brakes, retaining and molding information and shifting directions are done in a thoughtful way. In so doing, smaller tasks are defined, prioritized and accomplished. Your shifts take place in the face of new contingencies or information (such as the weather forecast). They are not rapid fire and random; they are deliberate and purposive. Here we see also how applying the brakes, molding information and set shifting are tightly related concepts. Notice, as well, the potential influence of some of the other Rules of Order on your ability to shift sets. If after hearing the forecast and realizing you couldn’t work in the garden tomorrow, you worried yourself into a tizzy or threw a fit, your ability to recognize and react—to set shift—could, like your half-done laundry, be hampered.
How do we attain the nimbleness of the set shifter? As with the other Rules of Order, for most of us it’s an innate skill but one that can be improved.
COACH MEG’S TIPS
My vision is that all of us working on organizing our brains become master set shifters—not just out of the need to respond to the many valid interruptions of our focused attention. No, it’s more than that. The master shifter has expanded his field of vision to welcome the new opportunities that life presents us. The shifter’s mental flexibility allows him to be nimble and agile, changing the “set”—or situation—fluidly. Instead of reluctantly letting go of the comfortable feeling of his focus on a task, the shifter appreciates the gift of change and what it might bring both to the new situation and to the original task as well.
Dr. Hammerness has described set shifting in terms of cognitive flexibility—which it indeed is. But it’s also a skill of cognitive creativity. And spontaneity—because set shifting is not always deliberate. It could happen during an interruption.
Here’s an example of what I mean by the master set shifter’s attitude and skill on the mental throttle:
You’re in the middle of preparing dinner, and you get interrupted by a phone call. The less-than-organized mind is not prepared for this interruption, not willing to allow it much less embrace it. It’s an annoyance, a distraction. The organized mind—the master set shifter—sees it differently. The organized mind stops in midpreparation and takes the call. Ten minutes later, when you resume your cooking, you remember, “Oh gosh, I have fresh basil growing in my garden! That would really add a nice taste to this pasta sauce.”
Voilà! You unhooked the brain from its tether and allowed it to wander off from thoughts of recipes and cooking during the phone call, and in that space, new ideas bubbled up, as welcome as the warm and delicious aroma that is emanating from your pot.
Skilled set shifting can be strategic as well. Think about how it could help you at work. You’re plugging away at that PowerPoint presentation you have to deliver, and you arrive at this point of diminishing returns where you just feel you’re spinning your wheels. You could throw your hands up in disgust, adding to your feeling of disorganization and disarray. Instead, a strategic set, stop and shift can change the game—when you say “I’m not getting further on this, so I’m going to jump on to that.” Make a phone call, check e-mails, take a break. That’s the deliberate intention choice—and very often it will result in the fresh idea and the new perspective that pops into your mind when you jump back on the original PowerPoint task.
We chose that verb—jump—deliberately. A shift is like a leap, letting your feet leave the ground for a moment and jumping from one wire in your brain to another. The shift brings new insights, new ideas and new thoughts that will eventually improve your performance on the task temporarily left behind. A deliberate shift is an opportunity not to be missed to get out of a trench and rise to a higher viewpoint.
You can’t force set shifting—it’s almost a state of mind; when you suddenly remember the basil that makes the meal, you have no idea why talking to your mother on the phone brought this on. But it did.
Still, while you can’t summon up a set shift on command, you can create the conditions for it to occur when the opportunities present themselves. You need to be open to it and ready to make that leap.
Here are some suggestions on how to make yourself the master set shifter—a critical step in getting yourself better organized.
Except for professional basketball players or track stars, most of us find it hard to jump, and don’t do it very often unless we are asked by a cute leader in spandex of an exercise session. Gravity is a tough force to beat. Sometimes we are prone to resist jumping because it feels more comfortable to stay in the groove of a task.
If you’ve ever woken up suddenly from an intense dream, you’ll recall the sense of amazement at your brain’s ability to leap around in wild ways to wild places. Unbridled by the demands of the day, our brains show their raw potential to roam untethered to reality.
Let’s wake up and put the “roaming” power of our brains to work. Remember, also, that when our frenzy has been tamed and our brains are more organized, our thoughts start to feel lighter and more agile. Getting better at all of the rules that we’ve shared so far will help you lighten up.
You may have heard this term before. “Silo busting” was a hot buzz phrase in business a few years ago. “People talked about ‘operating in silos,’ meaning they weren’t acting cohesively,” writes executive coach and blogger Linda Henman. “The metaphor was apt since the new meaning also meant to communicate you’d have to crawl over a barrier to get a message to someone in another silo.”
Silo busting was targeted at people in an organization who get so locked into their own department, specialty or individual “silo” that they were unable or unwilling to see or think about connections with other silos. Busting these boundaries, the thinking went, would help stimulate interchange and interaction with different parts of the organization, leading to new, happy and productive collaborations.
Implicit in the act of silo busting is the skill of set shifting. That is what happens in those spaces between the silos: perspectives must be changed and new situations, new people and new and unexpected ideas reacted to. And it’s not just limited to the business world. In many areas of science, the greatest discoveries do not emerge in the narrow silo of one specialty but in the cracks between or among specialties—in the spaces outside the narrow field of vision of the specialist.
A way to practice set shifting—the cognitively “light on your feet” skill we’ve been talking about—is to deliberately try and think like a silo buster. These don’t have to be radical, shake-the-world changes, although you may find yourself leaping to new insights that improve the quality of your professional life!
You’ve heard me say this before in previous chapters: it’s amazing how our bodies and minds support each other. Sometimes the shift we need is to get out of our heads and into our bodies—standing up during a long meeting and stretching, taking a walk around the corridors or the block, doing some yoga stretches or taking a few deep breaths. Many studies have shown the cognitive benefits of physical activity; certainly the “clearing your head” effect is one of them—in this case, clearing and refreshing the mind as surely as it does the muscles. Just as surely as your back and neck feel more supple after that stretch and your legs less tight after a brief walk, so will your mind feel fresher and more flexible—ready and able to shift sets.
At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, employee wellness manager Bill Baun had installed eighteen “stress-busting stations” throughout the Center’s facilities for use by everyone from secretaries to surgeons. The stations consist of an elliptical machine, a Precor stretching machine and a special chair with resistance tubing. “We encourage people to take a ‘microbreak,’” said Baun, an exercise physiologist and wellness coach. “You don’t have to get sweaty; you don’t have to do a twenty-minute workout. What we’ve found is that those who use our stress-busting stations even for just three to five minutes not only release their stress, but also find that that they’re more creative, more effective and have more energy on the job.”
In other words, just a few minutes of stretching, cardio or resistance training puts them in a place where they are ready to react agilely to new situations and take fresh perspectives on the task at hand or the next challenge coming around the bend. Is there proof of the value to these innovative stations in helping to foster this kind of set shifting and creative thinking? At one point, Baun noted, he and his staff relocated the stress-busting station located on the bridge between the surgeons’ offices and the operating rooms. “I had surgeons calling to ask me what happened to their station,” Baun said. “‘I won’t operate before I get on that elliptical machine,’ one of them told me. That’s significant.”
Rather than being annoyed or irritated at a call for a shift in your attention, treat it as a welcome messenger or a possibility for new insight and clarity. It’s an invitation to rise above the weight of the task at hand—even better, rise above a disorganized life. Greet it with a smile and light energy just as you might notice a much-loved child, mate or pet. Mindfully ask “How can this shift help me perform better?” The answer may not come until later. The shift may be an opportunity not to be missed.
This attitude should be fostered in your personal as well as professional life: Let’s say that you regularly spend the holidays at your spouse’s parent’s house. It’s a comfortable routine you’ve gotten used to over the years. Suddenly, your spouse announces that this year you’re going to visit a sister in Ohio instead.
Now you don’t mind the sister, but her husband is a bore; they live in a rural part of the state, far from the attractions and stimulations of a city or major town. It’s going to be a longer trip—and the weather probably colder. How do you react?
The plodding, lead-footed brain will go along with this change in holiday venues only under duress, complaining and either slow or reluctant to try and even analyze, much less welcome this new opportunity. The flexible, light-footed mind—the master set shifter—does exactly the opposite. It doesn’t mean that you have to pretend to suddenly find the brother-in-law’s company stimulating or that you must relish a long drive to an off-the-beaten-path location. It’s not even a “grin and bear it” attitude. Instead, the set shifter pivots and changes directions, looking at what might be good about this new “set” or preferable to the old one. (Hey, your sister-in-law’s a good cook! And did you know they live near a big state park with beautiful walking trails...and if it snows, you can rent snowshoes, something you’ve always wanted to try?)
Often when a potential shift presents itself, there’s a decision to be made. Stop and consider your options: Should you stay at the task at hand or shift to the new task? What are the benefits of either option? Which one wins? Be fully present and awake to the choice. Engage your thoughts and feelings. What do you think about the choice? How do you feel about the choice? Come to a decision; this can all happen rapidly and beautifully.
As Dr. Hammerness explained earlier, multitasking isn’t about nimble jumping or leaping to engage in new tasks with a shifted attention and focus. It’s about attending to multiple tasks simultaneously and mindlessly without deliberate shifting to or from one task to another and back again—or onto something else.
So whatever you do in shifting the set, don’t try to do both. Don’t try to shift to the new opportunity or task while continuing to attend to the one you were originally focused on. It won’t work—both will suffer. Again, think light feet: attend to the new situation and, if necessary, then return to the other, hopefully with a new and fresh perspective.
Whatever the new task or situation—a change in work assignments, a new vacation venue or an interruption that compels you to attend to something else—jump into the new task with both feet, holding the intention of greater performance on the task left behind. Focus with mindfulness and appreciation of the opportunity. Let go of fretting and frenzy. Don’t allow yourself to doubt your switch. Trust that the switch will bring new clarity and insight to the newly embraced task as well as the one set aside for a while.
When you return to the task you left behind, stop and pay attention to your mind-set before you shifted and notice where you are now. What is new? What happened to your energy level? Do you find yourself renewed and revitalized? What discoveries have emerged almost effortlessly? What gifts did the shifting bring?
The way to anchor the development of a new skill or behavior, such as set shifting, is to notice the rewards early and often to reinforce what might feel difficult at first. The joy of a new idea, insight or perspective is something we all need more of. It’s a key step on your way to the organized life.