May 2006

May 2006=

Focus, Poise and The Impact of Technology

Part 1

Greetings Cl= ients and Colleagues,

In life, how important to achieving serious success are Po= ise and Focus? Those who have the ability to stay cool, calm and collect= ed under pressure and the ability to sustain focus regardless of outside influences, have a huge advantage. . .

Stu= dents who have focus and poise do better in school (and have a much easier ti= me with it). . . Athletes who have it perform better consistently, especia= lly in tense situations. . . Pick any career and you’ll realize how f= ocus and poise impacts the capacity to be successful in it. (If this still doesn’t make sense think of how many adults say of kids who are diagnosed ADD “I just don’t know what he is going to be abl= e to do with his life?).

Con= sider as well how Focus and Poise are essential to cultivating and sustaining healthy relationships. How many relationships unravel because people lo= se sight of the things that really matter, and how many relationships are destroyed by people taking out their frustrations on those they are supposed to love? As one colleague of mine pointed out, “Think= of how many parents would be so much better at parenting if they just recognized when they were tired and took care of this before saying and doing things to their children that they wouldn’t be saying and d= oing if they weren’t tired?” This applies to any relationshi= p in their lives of course.

= What are we doing as a culture to cultivate, teach and impart Focus and Pois= e in the lives of young people?

Not= much.

= What are we doing though to create short attention spans, addiction to immed= iate gratification and beliefs that the we are entitled to expect that the w= orld will accommodate us?

Unf= ortunately, far too much.

And= the cost of this in the next decade or two could be devastating. . . (Unles= s of course you are in the pharmaceutical industry but that is a different message for another time!).

I am going to be sending you several newsletters on this topic over the next= few weeks, summarizing some of the main points I am finding in my research = and presenting some highly effective approaches to empowering your kids with these vital – even essential – characteristics.

Jeffrey Leiken

RECENT RESEARCH AND FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

The difference between “Multi-Tasking” and “Toggling”

There is considerable research exploring the impact of technology on the brain and the unfortunately, too often irreversible effects it has on young people. All the IMing (Instant Messaging) wh= ile trying to do homework, talk on the cell phone, text message and watch t= he OC is DEFINITIVELY NOT MULTI-TASKING! Researchers at the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of M= ichigan have recently released significant research on this topic. =

Mul= ti-Tasking is literally being able to do two or more things at once – driving while carrying on a conversation, cooking while watching TV, etc. The activities that humans can Multi-Task are limited to which parts of the brain can be active simultaneously and be done with what we call ‘parallel processing’ – listening while doing somethi= ng physical for example. The decision-making needed to do these things can happen at the same time as the decision-making needed to do these other things.

Try= ing to do homework while talking on the cell phone and IMing though require ac= cess to parts of the brain that cannot operate in simultaneity, and in fact invariably require sequential thinking, i.e. “What did they just = say, what does it mean, how do I feel about it, what do I want to say in response?” These kinds of activities require toggling, that is jumping from one task to another and processing it, then jumping back to the first task, as each one requires the brain’s full attention t= o be processed sequentially.

= Spend multiple hours a day doing tasks which require toggling and the brain w= ill learn to specialize in jumping from one task to another. What it definitively won’t do though is learn how to stay fixed and focus= ed on one thing for an extended period of time. During the = teen years and early adult years when the brain goes through another major p= hase of myelination, the brain then essentially programs itself in a way whi= ch is “hard wired” to specialize in this. The cost of this specialization is the dying off of millions of neurons that are for the parts of the brain that it has decided it no longer needs.

Translated simply, if from a young age the brain is not being required to focus for long periods of time on a single task, by the end of adolescence it wil= l no longer have the capacity to do so, not in any simple direct way at leas= t. (How many= of you know adults who are now taking medication for this, and the other consequences that come with it?)

One school counselor recently commented to me that the students she’s worked with who grew up going to Waldorf schools consistently make excellent eye contact, concentrate better and have a much greater sense= of presence about them. This education model of course deters kids from exposure to electronic mediums, spends lots of time personally engaging kids and having them express themselves creatively, as well as being hi= ghly physically active in the early childhood years doing all sorts of activities around balance, flexibility and movement – all activit= ies which require focus and poise.

It = is my experience as well that the kids I work with who grew up in homes where they were read to or told stories at night, where families eat meals together and have extended conversations (Time magazine recently quoted= a UCLA research that is finding that the typical ‘wired’ fami= ly is now spending just 4 minutes together a day at home, but hours on the= ir individual computers), where families are physically active taking hike= s, playing sports, doing things that involve physical activity and extended interpersonal engagement with others, are kids who tend to have significantly more focus and poise, often dramatically more so.

= It is not to say that these kids don’t have their common adolescent struggles with relationships or wanting their independence from home, b= ut their ability to stay centered and positively oriented amidst this is o= f a remarkably higher caliber than most of the kids who lack the kind of fo= cus and poise that these other kids cultivate during their growing up years – and that gets hard wired into their brains as they grow into adults.

What can we do about this?

• If you are a parent, minimize your childrenR= 17;s contact with computers and television until they are at least 12 years = old. It is not to say never let them on it, but make certain you are mixing = in more time doing physical activity and active personal engagement with others than they are spending on the computer or in front of the TV. (N= o, watching TV with a friend is not active personal engagement with others, nor is IMing! Active personal engagement is done in person, where we le= arn to read all the nonverbal signals that are essential to human communication)

= 226; Those of you running programs, especially summer programs. TURN OFF = THE TV and get out the board games and the dodge ball. They may whine a= nd complain at first but hit them with a dodge ball a few times and it is amazing how focused they become!

= 226; Engage on an active personal level with your kids with much more frequency, duration and intensity. Conversations, laughter and questions are critical to the healthy development of the brain. Doing it while taking= a walk or throwing a ball is even better.

= 226; Tell stories. The process of hearing or reading a story and translating = the words into images is one of the most critical skills for kids brains to develop. It becomes vital for succeeding in school later on and for creative problem solving as they become adults. Watching the movie version of the story is definitively NOT the same. Kids may enjoy i= t in the classroom but they won’t learn it in the same way, and more critically, they are destroying their brains’ capacity for critic= al thinking. (There is a whole other technical description of what happens= in the brain with television and when images are presented versus needed t= o be created using imagination – the difference is dramatic!).

= End of Part 1. . . More on all this coming soon. . .!

Best regards, = Jeffrey Leiken

= ;

email: Jeff@Co= nfidence-Success.com

phone: 415.441.8218

web: http= ://www.confidence-success.com

The Center for Confidence and Success | Empowering youth to lead extraordinary lives (R) | = San Francisco | CA | 94109