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How To Stop Making Tiny Mistakes That Make You Look Stupider Than You Really Are
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Posted: 09/13/2013 10:25 am EDT
By Leigh Newman


Columnist Leigh Newman finds out a new way to fix our mental glitches with the help of Sendhil Mullainathan, the co-author of the new book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.

Last Saturday night while cleaning the house, I was talking to an old friend. We agreed to have dinner on Sunday. Twenty-four hours later, I was surprised when my old friend called. "I'm almost there," she said.

"Where?" I said.

"The restaurant. Where we're meeting."

"Oh no," I said, looking down at my pajamas, which I was not only already wearing but had also splattered with the spaghetti sauce I'd just made. In a split, heart-sinking second, I knew what I was going to have to say, because I'd already said it so many times this year that it was laughable -- and humiliating. "I forgot. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I didn't used to be like this."

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Step 1: Realize It's Not You

Let's start from the beginning of Mullainathan's story. In order to start his job teaching this fall at Harvard, he had to move from New York to Boston. Because he had a small apartment, he allotted 24 hours for the project. The day of, he spent from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. supervising the movers and packing. From 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., he drove up to Boston in the full van. Then he parked the van, spent the night in a hotel, woke up at 8 a.m., brushed his teeth, washed his face and left his very-much-needed glasses on the counter.

Every time we do something like this, says Mullainathan, we think, "I’m stupid!" Mostly this happens because we realize that we're the only one who could have done it. There is no else one to blame. But (a) you're not stupid, and (b) feeling stupid is not the problem and will only cause you to feel discouraged and, frequently, to make more mistakes.

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Step 3: Plan Your Mistakes In Advance

The first step is looking ahead -- the same way you would with drinking before a party. You know that there are certain tasks that take large amounts of focus and energy. For example, take packing up an apartment. After putting everything you own into boxes, you're going to have low bandwidth and be more liable to make small mistakes. In a perfect world, of course, you could give yourself some time to recover. But if you can't, just recognizing that you'll be "drunk" before, say, you hit the road in the van, will reduce the number of mistakes you do make, say Mullainathan, because your brain moves into a more conscious thought process about the problem.

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Step 5: Revamp Your Calendar -- Or Throw It Out

Recognizing times of low bandwidth and dealing with common errors is helpful. But a more efficient solution might keep you from getting low bandwidth in the first place -- in other words, keep from getting "drunk." It would be nice, of course, if we could just increase our bandwidth capacity, but research, Mullainathan says, has yet to prove a way to effectively do so. Our ability to focus simply has a limit.

Most of us think we can cope with our mentally taxing lives by managing our time. Let's say you're looking at your calendar for next week, the way that he did with the move. Most of us think in terms of hours about what we can fit into our days. We have the morning free, so we fill it with the big meeting with the boss (10 a.m. to 12 p.m.). Then we have an intense lunch with the possible new client. (12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m.). Then at 2:30 p.m., we're getting off early to take all three kids to all three after-school activities. Timewise, this should work fine.

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Step 6: Go On Automatic

Another thing you can do is to transform certain high-bandwidth activities into low-bandwidth ones by making them "automatic." When you first began brushing your teeth, the activity took a lot of time and concentration. But as you did it over and over, you no longer had to think about getting the toothpaste on the brush (without squirting it all over the counter) and moving that big plastic tool over all your teeth (including the back side of incisors). You can certainly do the same, repeating responsibilities at work or at home until they are, if not mindless, then less mindful. Serve the same breakfast for 30 days. Send an email in the same way 60 times (i.e. write, spell check, reread, send).

Moving, unfortunately, isn't something most us can do with sufficient repetition to make automatic. So what was the solution for this social scientist, other than to have a quick fix after he'd already erred? "I should have done as I teach others," he says with a sheepish laugh. "It wouldn't have taken much to keep me from losing my glasses. All I needed was an hour to recover from the move the next morning. In other words, I needed to sleep in a little later, eat breakfast and rest my bandwidth." In other, other words: The next time you get your brain drunk, consider giving it time to recover from the hangover.




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